12 Oakdale

Forty-eight hours after my alarm was set for 3:00 Monday morning, we were back in bed, exhausted. We had arisen (I always sleep badly before an early plane trip), flown to Las Vegas, driven to Alamo, Nevada, toured Michel Heizer’s City , and returned home on the red-eye, to collapse in bed exactly 48 hours later. To break it down, and process all that: the first part of the trip was our usual get out of bed at o’dark hundred, dress, maybe eat, drive to the Marriott to park our car, shuttle to MCO, fly to wherever. We usually do this because flights are cheaper before 9:00 AM and we get a full day at our destination, especially if we head west to new time zones.  Then it got weird, not just because we were about an hour’s drive east of Area 51, home of the famous UFOs. For someone like me used to subtropical foliage and now central Florida’s coverage of green, the starkness of the scrub north of Las Vegas seems so barren. Plus no cell service. I definitely felt I was in a twilight z...

The Badlands were amazing, even after seeing them over 60 years when my family did a cross-country trip. Not quite as hot, just because we are here in June rather than late July. I complained then that I was hot, to which my unsympathetic mother replied, “It’s not hot!”. Yes it was, 104° on the ranger’s station thermometer. At least our long hair dried quickly in the hot air. This was all without air conditioning in the car. Now I refuse to drive 15 minutes to the grocery store without AC. Outside of the park, I saw a pronghorn and deer (whitetail?). Inside, we saw bison, prairie dogs, more pronghorn and deer, and after stopping where another car was pulled over, a mountain goat. Clara then spotted 2 more goats and a baby one. No piles of rocks could compete with that, even Mount Rushmore. The more I think about it, the more I am flummoxed that someone was inspired to sculpt huge heads out of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, before there were really even roads to get there. The hum...