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It started snowing around midnight and I woke up to 4-5" of soft, fluffy snow this morning. This is unusual for this area to get two big snowfalls in the same month. We usually go two or three years without anything more than a dusting. The temps are in the high 30's (+/- 2.75 C) so it's starting to melt already. It never got cold enough for the snow to stick on the asphalt roads.
I got this odd feeling that the world is in the beginning of a huge change socially. Maybe the change will be physical. The earthquakes and tsunamis may be coming more frequently, but that may be the result of how fast and how thoroughly the news travels these days. It seems odd that recently I've written about the desirability of immigrating to Chile. I could be wrong.
The news and video arriving from the results of the earthquakes in Chile reveals that Chile is used to having a lotta earthquakes. It seems as though the frequency of earthquakes there had not registered with me. Maybe there's been a regular stream of information about the frequency of earthquakes in that region, and I ignored it. We don't get earthquakes here much at all. We get wind related events like hurricanes and the occasional tornado.
My life is segmented by houses or ships in which I've lived or places I've slept. It's clear that I could write about my life house by house. The places I've slept out in the open might be a little more tedious to locate. It is a little surprising to realize I haven't done much traveling in the last decade. The last of it was when I drove that semi around the country. I slept in the truck. I didn't like it much.
I do remember one particular Interstate rest stop in Texas I came to one day that totally surprised me because I'd never noticed it previously in all the dozens of times I've been through Texas. There were huge boulders poking up out of the ground right there is the rest stop. It had a name that had something to do with Hell.
I just stopped and attempted to locate that specific InterState Rest Stop that has those huge rocks right there in the middle of the InterState four-lane highway. Apparently, I am is not the only One who is fascinated by huge boulders laying in a careless pile as if pebbles. I got diverted by shifting my search to Google Maps. I was flabbergasted at the number of places that feature these huge boulders.
Many of them have been turned into tourist sites with motels, hotels, restaurants and all the appurtenances that cater to the traveling public. The first rocks like this that caught my attention happened when I was in the Navy in San Diego, California. To return home to North Carolina the east-west highway I took in the late Fifties was Highway 80. It ran parallel to the more famous Route 66 all the way across the country.
Both roads are about gone now. They were replaced by the InterState System. Especially west of the Mississippi River. You gotta go to some trouble to find the original Route 66 remains. Highway 80 is still signed in parts of the Deep South. It's Main Street in the South. Many of the larger cities including 3-4 State Capitols were built along that east-west route. Starting in Savannah, Georgia and ending in San Diego, California.
Those first pile of huge rocks and boulders I saw are due east of San Diego on the left hand side of the road as you cross the remnants of the Sierra Nevada mountains and drive down their eastern slope into the Mojave Desert. Since I was raised on the coastal plains of the Carolinas three thousand miles away where a rock the size of a man's fist is found as a rare treasure, those huge boulders really impressed me.
If I'd been raised in the mountains or even the foothills (piedmont) of North Carolina I might not have been so impressed.
Two other places that feature huge monolithic rock formations are carved by the same river/stream. In the west it's a river. In the east its a small stream. Its in Utah and runs through Zion National Park and from there to the border of Arizona and Nevada from Saint Gearge, Utah. InterState 15 follows it.
Zion National Park was an extremely interesting place for me to visit. The geological layout of the place seems to require grandiose terms even to describe it. The park and the river and the entire shebang covers hundreds of thousands of acres, but the most spectacular part of it for me was how it reminded me of how the plowed fields around here erode when there's a big rainstorm. The erosion literally looks the same in both places. Except there, in Zion National Park human being are dwarfed by the huge solid rock cliffs that are carved by the runoff of the river.
InterState 15 cuts through the northwest corner of Arizona. Like a lot of roads it follows this river that literally forms in and flows out of Zion National Park. The InterState highway goes through St. George, Utah (where I visited for a couple of weeks impulsively) cuts across the corner of Arizona, and right on the border of Nevada is the little town of Mesquite.
Like all the towns on all the highways and byways that enter the State of Nevada, Mesquite has a fair number of gambling casinos. Many frequently by long-haul truckers for whom convenient parking lots are furnished by the town of Mesquite to encourage them to stop and gamble a while. I made the trip from St. George, Utah to Mesquite, Nevada a goodly number of times during my nomadic visit to that part of the country.
When InterState 15 goes to cross that river that flows out of Zion National Park to get to Mesquite, Nevada it follows that river through the canyon the river cut through a basin and range ridge of solid rock. The four lanes of the InterState separate in order to find their way through the canyon. Practically the entire highway going through that ancient canyon is built on a continuing series of bridges.
The view is just spectacular. I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and say that anybody that grew up east of the Mississippi River might find themselves astonished by what they'll see just by driving from St. George to Mesquite. Frankly, for a flatlander like me, the drive from Mesquite to Las Vegas, in a different way, is just as powerful.
There ain't many land areas in the continental United States that I haven't at least drove or hitch-hiked through. I love traveling in this country any way I can. When I win the lottery, it's quite possible that I would never leave the United States to travel. There are too many places I still get surprised by.
I could spend months just traveling around the state of Nevada to visit all the little border towns. Many of those towns, as I understand it, are located where they are for more reasons than to lure local gamblers from the surrounding states. Up in the north of Nevada many of the border towns are also gold-mining centers.
My experience with those little towns out in the middle of nowhere is that they contain some really interesting friendly people. The location out in the boondocks seems to make them real easy to talk to. It's the way Texas used to be. I used to stop in some places in southwest Texas to eat, and feel compelled to stay much longer than I intended. Sometime the locals would buy me food and drink just to get a different point of view from a stranger. No mas. Not much anymore. Texas got moved in on by city slickers and the small towns only have franchise places like everywhere else.
I really believe I could spend the rest of my sorry life with a nice heavy touring car, with my lottery winnings in a bank account with a couple of credit cards, a list of greasy-spoon diners and cafes owned by the cook, and sleep nearly every night in a ritzy resort motel.
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
