March 20, 2003

• I woke up yesterday at about 4am. I decided, rather abruptly, that I’d go to Issaqua and get Krispy Kreme donuts. This is a half-hour or so drive across town to the only Krispy Kreme store in the Seattle area.
  
  I tried not to listen to the radio. I was curious about the weather forecast and all that, but my brain couldn’t take any more war info.
  
  As I approached Issaqua, I saw the sunrise straight ahead of me. The clouds covered the valley where I was driving, and extended right to the tops of the Cascade foothills, where they stopped in a distinct line. The pink reflected sunlight accentuated this stripe in the sky.
  
  I decided not to get donuts. I kept driving east. I got to North Bend and the whole of the sky behind Mount Si was glowing like an ember.
  
  I stopped and got an Egg McMuffin at a drive-thru. The woman who handed it to me was stuck in her own little drive through world, and I said, “Uhm, I’m not usually up this early. Does the sunrise always look like this?” I pointed east. She looked out and smiled and said, “Uhm, no.”
  
  I kept going east up the mountains. I wondered what I’d see in the pass. It was bright and clear, and there was a little bit of snow blowing off the peaks.
  
  The road leading to Gold Creek recreation area was closed unless you had a 4×4, which I don’t. I decided to keep going east.
  
  I ended up at Cle Ellum, where I got some more drive-thru breakfast, this time at Burger King, which I have to say is much better than McDonald’s.
  
  I looked at my map. I wondered if the North Cascades road would be open; I could head east, go up 97, and back through the mountains on US20. I also entertained the idea of going north on 97 to Leavenworth, and then back across the mountains on 2.
  
  Then I thought about the Columbia river gorge, and so I ended up doing that.
  
  The only problem was that I hadn’t really had any sleep at all in the past few days. I should have turned back and been content with the lovely sunrise.
  
  By the time I was approaching Yakima, I decided I’d need to stop at a rest area and sleep a few hours. If you look at a map of Washington state, you’ll see that Yakima is about a third of the way along the loop I was hoping to drive. That I needed to stop and sleep did not bode well.
  
  But I did stop and sleep for about two hours. I had fitful dreams about war and violence. I woke up to a car door slamming. Just some guy going to the bathroom at the rest area. I was startled and still half-asleep, and I started up the car and started driving away. Only after I had done this did I realize that I still needed more sleep and that there wouldn’t be any more rest areas until I got to I-82 in Oregon.
  
  I contemplated getting a motel room. It was still before check-out time, however, and for some reason this was a good enough argument for continuing on.
  
  Highway 97 is one of my favorites. It goes from Canada to Mexico, and it passes through the desert high plains of eastern Oregon, the Klamath River basin, and the Shasta and Lassen regions of northern California. But I had never followed it between Yakima and the Oregon border.
  
  In my sleep-deprived state, I oggled at the lovely mountains and the grand, barren desert areas. There’s a point just north of the Oregon border where, if it’s clear, you can see Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Rainier. Of course I could only see Adams, because it was a mere 40 miles away.
  
  After that, it’s a steep downgrade into the Columbia gorge. Dive right in! I made an obligatory stop at the Stonehenge monument, since it’s a WWII memorial. Whenever I visit the Stonehenge monument, I get the sense that it’s like the version of Shakespeare that would be written randomly by the 10,000 monkeys typing on typewriters. An ancient but still potent tool for ritual magic, re-created to commemorate war deaths? Being there is like driving a Ferrari below the speed limit.
  
  Still, it’s nice to sit just inside the outer ring of concrete slabs and look southwest across the river to see the pointed cone of Mt. Hood rising into the clouds, framed between the uprights.
  
  I decided to find a motel in The Dalles. The Dalles is a town with a dam. It’s a big, fascinating dam. I thought about stopping and looking around, but then I remembered: Terror alert. Dam. They’ve got enough on their minds without keeping track of me.
  
  Still sleep-deprived, I would see the signs saying, “Lodging This Exit:” with little badges for each hotel, and only partially register what that meant until I had passed the exit. And then I was beyond The Dalles.
  
  The gorge is astonishingly beautiful. It’s mother nature’s experiment with fung shui. It’s a river that somehow drains westward, across a mountain range. The geological story of why this is the case is quite interesting, but I’ve mentioned it here before so I won’t bore you.
  
  But it’s a beautiful place, with terraced cliffs and rounded hills, and volcanic mountains. The weather was a little overcast, which gives the surrounding forests and moss-covered rocks a dark, mysterious quality.
  
  I stopped for some food at the mouth of the Hood River. I found a nice motel that was extremely crowded, so I didn’t even go in and ask. But I did sit in my car and eat a burrito and listen to music and toss scraps to the beggar birds. I thought that this little service-industry town that is the jumping-off point for skiing in the Mt. Hood region might be a nice place to live.
  
  And then I zoomed along.
  
  (Part 2 when I get some more momentum.)

  • 9:22 am
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