Forked: Part 1

Why.

Why would I be nine miles outside of Twin Falls at midnight, standing at the edge of a truck stop with one foot on the pavement and one foot in the weeds, watching the cars pass by on the highway, gazing at the moon?

Because I was on my way to Seattle, obviously. In what has become an annual tradition, every summer I go on a road trip to Seattle.

Last year I went to Seattle to visit Nathaniel, who lived up there. He lives in Salt Lake now so me and he and a couple of nice young ladies went back to pick up his stuff or see his sister or steal t-shirts or something. Tip: any good road trip, especially a fourteen hour trip, should begin as late in the day as possible. We left at about 730pm, driving through the twilight hours, our truck like a stake through the heart of the night.

We brought a book along and took turns reading it out loud. Except for Nathaniel who was usually driving. Kept us busy for much of the drive. Though now we're three months past and we still haven't quite finished the book. That will soon be rectified I hope.



Nine miles out of Twin Falls and five outta Kimberly is a truck stop called Garden of Eden.

It's not just a name, it's a theme.

I think we had three more dead of night truck stop stops on the drive north. It's an interesting feeling, miles away from what you know at an unreasonable hour, roused from a bad sleep and feeling like your soul is on a three-second delay from the rest of your body. You inspect each aisle of the food section meticulously, as though this is your last meal and you can't miss the treasure that you've somehow overlooked. You can't even comprehend the array of oranges and yellows, reds and browns, cool-ranch flavors and 25% more peanuts. You couldn't wait to get out of the car and now you can't wait to get back in and the truck on the left has a Mexican Cowboy DH-ing his lady and the truck on the right is full of white supremacists.

Um, anyway truck stops.

I didn't sleep much and what sleep did come was poor, five seconds off and five seconds on. I had the Stars - The Five Ghosts on a loop in my ears for about three hours and now I can't even listen to it anymore because it is imprinted with the memories of this trip and I know no other memory will ever be able to eclipse that.

We finally came into town a few hours after the breaking of dawn and just in time for breakfast at the 5 Spot, whose french toast is one of the top five foods I've ever eaten. The restaurant has a rotating theme. Last time I was there it was Cannery Row, but this time the theme was Seattle, and they really nailed it.

I love that someone with artistic training and talent painted a portrait of Frasier.

I particularly enjoyed this sculpture of Ken Griffey Jr. inside of a shell of some sort. What is that, a geoduck shell?

Oh man I wish I hadn't just Googled "geoduck." Man. Ken Griffey Jr. One of the most tragic figures of our time. He could have saved us all, and instead he suffered injury after injury until his career ended one day when he didn't bother showing up for work.

We hung out around the water and the Pike Place Market and stuff. Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, home of the zombie.


The Lusty Lady is a beloved landmark, closed forever this summer because the internet took away all its business.

Is there anything the internet can't ruin?

I like Pike Place Market, even when it's humid. It's so colorful.

I got some avocado flavored bubble tea and it was yummy. Then later I had a cheese lunch. Happytimes.

We walked up to go to the Underground tour and on the way some lady pushed Nathaniel aside and then charged headlong into a busy street. Somehow she didn't get run over, but she did bash her head directly into a light pole while walking full speed.

Oh here's Chief Seattle.

A sculpture of him anyway. Loitering in this square we had a nice chat with a homeless sportsfan santa. He was talking about the Mariners and how great they're going to be once Matt Wieters comes up. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Matt Wieters plays for Baltimore. Then he went crazy talking about snacks. See me in person sometime, I'll tell you about it.

The Underground Tour takes you through the subterranean ruins of old Seattle. I was really interested in it at first but I'll say right off the bat that it's not quite worth it. Unless you like awkward puns delivered by college student-tour guides, who try to make everyone feel guilty for not laughing at their awkward puns.

Tourists are alright though. These two are better than any of us.

I'm not making fun of them, I really admire them.

Underground.
Not underground?

We kept going from Underground to Not and I was getting so confused as to what was what. Elin had to keep explaining it too me. As a general rule of thumb, darkness: underground, trees: not. But there are exceptions!

This freaky monster of a pig truck reminded us that it was dinner time.

We went to uh, a Senegalese? restaurant. Wow, it was good. I'd recommend it if I knew the name or where it was.

In this picture it may look like Nathaniel is wincing and crying, but really this is an advanced Krav Maga technique.


Ferry to Bremerton, where we would be staying and hopefully getting some good sleep for the first time in thirty-six hours.

Nathaniel and Amy tried to have a private chat on the stern while I stood a few feet away and took pictures of them.

Seattle skyline, beautiful sight from the water.

Moon over the water, still days away from being new.


So that was Day 1. What does Day 2 have in store? Well...

"We brought a book along and took turns reading it out loud."

That book?


Oh no.

where we're going we don't need-

I can't sleep so I'm making a list of celebrated thoroughfares. Did I miss any?

Route 66
Broadway
The Autobahn
Champs Ellysees
Sunset Blvd
Carnaby St.
The Crooked One in San Francisco
Haight-Ashbury (disqualified since it's a corner of two streets)
Wall St.
Sesame Street
Picabo Street
The Pacific Coast Highway
Rodeo Drive
Las Vegas Blvd
Abbey Road
The E Street Band
Bourbon Street
The Appian Way
The Road to Damascus
Baker Street (saxophone part only)
The Long and Winding Road
Mike Skinner
The Trail of Tears
The Ho Chi Minh Trail
Madison Avenue
Pennsylvania Avenue
Cormac McCarthy's The Road
The Road Less Traveled
Holiday Road
8 Mile

READER ADDITIONS:

Park Avenue (love Green Acres. Could probably come up with five more just from NYC)
Mulholland Drive
The Silk Road
Oregon Trail (texted to my e-mail from a Vegas number? Who sent that? Either way, good one)
Hiiiiiighway to the Dangah Zone

Beehived: Part 2

Oh no get them away from me I don't like it I don't like it I don't like it!!!

I'm talking about all those bats up there. That's too many bats. I think the girl at the zoo told me there were 150 of them? Horrible creatures. I hate any kind of creature that likes to be bunched up like that. It's too weird.

So I took that picture during a fun day at the Zoo. See how fun?



Children of all ages love the Zoo. I've written about the Zoo many times here. You should find those entries and read them. Especially if you like apes. No apes today, but maybe an elephant.

And these gossipy old ladies.


You can see the giraffe in the middle, but there are actually two giraffes in this picture. Can you find the other one?

Give up? Okay I was lying there's only one giraffe.

I like this handsome Saharan cat. He seems so non-plussed by the parade of humanity before him.


The Month of May has been covered already, so I'll jump the end, Memorial Day. I discovered this.

It's a Monastery hidden near Huntsville. It seems like it should be easy enough to find but then suddenly you get bombarded with conflicting arrows.

The monastery is called the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity. It's nice. Very peaceful and green up there.


There's a shortage of monks. No one wants to be a monk anymore. Honestly, I can't say I blame them. I don't want to be a monk. Maybe if monk-life was all hanging out with Robin Hood and acting like a rapscallion that would be one thing, but it seems like it's just singing a dozen times a day and doing minor household repairs.

Anyway where is that church...


Here's the inside. We watched the monks do their chant. They filtered in one by one, slowly and reverently. There are seats for many a monk but I think I only counted seven of them. That made me sad.


The gift shop has some cool stuff and this guy runs it. He really likes to chat.

They sell a delicious honey there made by the monks. It's how they stay in business. It's some fine honey. Mighty fine. Also if you buy any 25-cent Saint cards he's going to ask you why you chose them. The correct answer is that they chose you. Just a little tip for ya.



Oh hey a baby!

My dear friends Lee and Lisa got one for themselves. I like Olive and she seems to like baseball and might like AC/DC (test results inconclusive). However here she is at two days old, seeming a little suspicious of me.


Her suspicion continues to this day, but I'll win her over. Babies just don't know the facts yet.

Beehived: Part 1

The Summer is over. Or will be, soon. I don't know what the calendar says, but I've always felt that Summer runs from the first baseball game to the last. Okay maybe I haven't always felt that. But I'm declaring it now, this idea I had eighteen seconds ago when I started writing this post.

This has been one of the best summers I've ever had. Maybe the very best. Which is good, because it could have been awful. I've had some moments of darkness (suffocating darkness) but those moments were smited (not a word) by plenty of nice life affirming experiences, and I didn't even need to eat my way through Italy or pray all over India or love the crap out of Bali. Except for a Northwesterly interlude I just bumped around Utah. I took a lot of pictures and I'm going to go through them all and write about the happenings that happened, bookended by a couple of old ballgames.

This was mid-April. Summer's Eve. (I don't get it).


This was yesterday, my last game of the season.


Now let's get to everything in between.

The day after the home opener was the Scofield Adventure.

I've already written about that but here's an American Flag from that day.

FACT: if I see an American Flag flapping against the sky, I will stop to take a picture of it. I have dozens of pictures exactly like this. When I'm taking these picture I don't think I realize that they're redundant. I think "Well there's a striking image. I should preserve it for the historical record."

I searched this blog for the word "Taggarts" and came up empty. I'm amazed that I haven't mentioned Taggarts before. It's a restaurant called Taggarts in a town called Taggarts where the only thing in the town is the restaurant the town is named for. It's sits in the shade in a little bowl in the mountains, across the highway from the Ogden River.

You bet I threw rocks into that river. I threw rocks across that river. I threw rocks into the air and watched them descend as if pulled by gravity into that river.


We'll come back to Taggarts later.

Plans to open May with a camping trip were thwarted by unruly weather systems so a trip to Tooele was opted for instead, by way of Magna.

Magna is Magna. This fact cannot be called into question. But it has a cool old Main Street. I love an old Main Street.


Tooele is one of three places I claim as my ancestral homelands (trivia contest: name the other two!) Tooele County is a wasteland. Vast emptiness, salt, skulls, nuclear waste, toxic dirt. It's one of my favorite places to go. I like to drive out there and get hopelessly lost in the sagebrush canyons, driving down the long straight stretches of road unsure of where they lead. I always come back from Tooele wanderings freshly inspired.

Tooele City has grown up a lot since I was a kid. Not in a good way. It's a magnet for McMansions and McBig Box stores. But the old part is still there. Like this place where we stopped for breakfast, the seafoamiest place I've ever been in.

I worked for The Ritz-Carlton for six years. It was exactly like this.


I bet so many miners have been stabbed in this hotel.


Wandered into one of the few open businesses, a store that sells weird random crap. Like these super-gay things aimed at children.


So of course I bought that postcard of Namor. I also bought a Tiny John Adams and a Tiny John F. Kennedy. I didn't even know they made Tiny Presidents but now I want to collect them all.

Eventually I hung Namor up in the Podcast Room. Oh, did you know I do a weekly comic book podcast? Well I do. It's way nerdy. Deal with it.


Here's one of those canyons I like to get lost in. I believe this is actually the Old Lincoln Highway.

The road fed us into Skull Valley, through something called Terra and past the Dugway Proving Grounds (top secret UFO research facility).


Long road, past this murder house...

...took us to Iosepa (right).


Iosepa is a foreign word meaning "I bet these Hawaiians would like living in a treeless desert with terrible summers and worse winters."

The settlement lasted from 1889-1917. Not much left of it now, but the scent of Poi still hangs in the air.


On the way back home, spotted this sign under an overpass.


This interests me because of this AWARD WINNING FILM I made a few years ago.

Untitled from Bryton Sampson on Vimeo.

You don't actually have to watch it, just know that it exists.




(end part 1)