What a long, strange trip it's been (part 2)
One year ago today I drove over the Rocky Mountains.
I didn’t get far on my second day out. On the first night I stayed with relatives in Wheat Ridge, on the west side of Denver, and only got to Grand Junction on day two, barely 250 miles closer to California. I stopped in Dillon to look around and waste some time. When I started my car to leave I heard a loud roar I’d never heard before. All of a sudden my car had gotten noisy.
It was typical Wagner luck: A long road trip coincides with car trouble. One of my turn signals had burned out in Denver, so I had to get a replacement bulb at AutoZone. It just figured.
It sounded like exhaust trouble. I didn’t know if it was the gas (I filled up with 85 octane in Denver — oh, mysterious and exotic town of Denver) or if there was something wrong with the pipes along the undercarriage. The inside of my car began to smell like exhaust, too; it was seeping in from somewhere. But I was tight on cash and the car ran, so I didn’t see any harm in continuing to the western slope.
I was born in Grand Junction. I wanted to see my birthplace since it was along the way (kind of). My parents and I left on Election Day 1984, and had only been back once during a family vacation in 1995. My parents always said it’s the worst place on Earth, but only because it’s in a hot, dry climate. Both of them hate heat. I do too.
I don’t remember GJ — I was two when we moved to Iowa City — so I’ve always had a special place for it in my heart. It would have been nice if Santa Monica was my birthplace (mom and dad left LA three months before I was born — grrr), but GJ’s interesting and beautiful in itself. The town is dwarfed by Mount Garfield and its accompanying book cliffs to the north and east. Mesa County is home to the largest mesa on the planet (the Grand Mesa) and the Colorado National Monument. The area surrounding GJ has the largest known concentration of oil shale in the world — an estimated 800 gigabarrels of recoverable oil, enough to meet current US demand for oil for 110 years (the thing is, though, there’s no available technology capable of extracting it). Located along the Colorado River, the fertile Grand Valley is a major fruit growing region, where vineyards and peach tree orchards stretch to the foothills (if you eat a peach during the winter, it probably came from Grand Junction).
What’s Iowa City’s geographic claim to fame? Um…
The drive through Glenwood Canyon was incredible, and I got of Interstate 70 at a rest stop to dip my feet in the icy cold water of the Colorado. The water that passed through my toes was heading to California, like me. The difference was I knew I was going to get there. The water that rushed by may have ended up as irrigation in one of the drier portions of the west, splashed against the canyon walls at Lake Mead by a power boat, or perhaps passed California entirely and entered Mexico (it’s unlikely; by the time it reaches the border, the mighty Colorado has been diverted and channeled to the extent that it becomes a creek).
I knew nothing was going to divert me.
I didn’t get far on my second day out. On the first night I stayed with relatives in Wheat Ridge, on the west side of Denver, and only got to Grand Junction on day two, barely 250 miles closer to California. I stopped in Dillon to look around and waste some time. When I started my car to leave I heard a loud roar I’d never heard before. All of a sudden my car had gotten noisy.
It was typical Wagner luck: A long road trip coincides with car trouble. One of my turn signals had burned out in Denver, so I had to get a replacement bulb at AutoZone. It just figured.
It sounded like exhaust trouble. I didn’t know if it was the gas (I filled up with 85 octane in Denver — oh, mysterious and exotic town of Denver) or if there was something wrong with the pipes along the undercarriage. The inside of my car began to smell like exhaust, too; it was seeping in from somewhere. But I was tight on cash and the car ran, so I didn’t see any harm in continuing to the western slope.
I was born in Grand Junction. I wanted to see my birthplace since it was along the way (kind of). My parents and I left on Election Day 1984, and had only been back once during a family vacation in 1995. My parents always said it’s the worst place on Earth, but only because it’s in a hot, dry climate. Both of them hate heat. I do too.
I don’t remember GJ — I was two when we moved to Iowa City — so I’ve always had a special place for it in my heart. It would have been nice if Santa Monica was my birthplace (mom and dad left LA three months before I was born — grrr), but GJ’s interesting and beautiful in itself. The town is dwarfed by Mount Garfield and its accompanying book cliffs to the north and east. Mesa County is home to the largest mesa on the planet (the Grand Mesa) and the Colorado National Monument. The area surrounding GJ has the largest known concentration of oil shale in the world — an estimated 800 gigabarrels of recoverable oil, enough to meet current US demand for oil for 110 years (the thing is, though, there’s no available technology capable of extracting it). Located along the Colorado River, the fertile Grand Valley is a major fruit growing region, where vineyards and peach tree orchards stretch to the foothills (if you eat a peach during the winter, it probably came from Grand Junction).
What’s Iowa City’s geographic claim to fame? Um…
The drive through Glenwood Canyon was incredible, and I got of Interstate 70 at a rest stop to dip my feet in the icy cold water of the Colorado. The water that passed through my toes was heading to California, like me. The difference was I knew I was going to get there. The water that rushed by may have ended up as irrigation in one of the drier portions of the west, splashed against the canyon walls at Lake Mead by a power boat, or perhaps passed California entirely and entered Mexico (it’s unlikely; by the time it reaches the border, the mighty Colorado has been diverted and channeled to the extent that it becomes a creek).
I knew nothing was going to divert me.
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