Exploration and Site Finding Tour

This is day four of the first exploration and site finding tour of the United States. I’m currently in Mesa Arizona. Catherine has remained behind for now to finish with work commitments and to finish planning our marriage which will take place on September 19 2009. This is the first chance I’ve had to work on the website and it will be completely revamped from the current look and feel. I wanted to work on the administration side and to do some test posts and upload some of the first test shots.

It was a bit of an adventure on the trip down as I made a bad timing mistake on my crossing of the US/Canada border. Crossing the border was quick and fairly easy – minus the strange questions of the US customs agent who asked if I was aiming to marry an American girl… had to tell him I was already engaged to a beautiful Canadian girl! But soon after I was immediately stuck in traffic on the I-5 at Everett, Seattle and Tacoma! What made it worse was the heat wave the Pacific Northwest was enduring in early June. The normal six or so hour trip to Portland took nearly ten hours, so needless to say with the heat and high humidity I was sticky like flypaper and in need of good shower only ten hours in.

I was using a TomTom for directions and quickly bored of the trip along the I-5 which I’ve done at least 100 times over the past couple of decades so I changed the settings on the device from quickest route to shortest route and went for it.

At first I was happy to be off the main highway and into the countryside. There are only so many McDonalds, Burger Kings, WalMarts and similar chain operations that one can take after all. I was coming out of Eugene Oregon and heading into Northern California via some country roads and minor highways. Now that’s the America we all hear about!

Well that great feeling quickly ended when I noticed the road ahead was changing from paved roads to packed gravel. Packed gravel – okay the Ford Mustang I was driving can handle that. Then came loose gravel, then came gravel and dirt mix. Did I mention it had recently rained? Yes, that gravel and dirt was more mud than anything. Great fun at first doing fishtails for kilometer after kilometer then I noticed the TomTom said I had 64 kilometers to go! It’s right then on a slight incline my car bogged down and stopped in the heavy mud. There is not a single person around and I couldn’t even hear any animals. This road, Pittville Road was leading me into Lassen Volcanic National Park on what should have been marked as a 4×4 only recommended road! I’m a brave dude but I started to get a little worried at this point as the sun was ready to set in less than two hours and I wasn’t prepared for an overnight stay.

I managed to get the car out of the mud and proceeded down the road instead of turning around. What can I say – I came for adventure and no darn mud was going to slow me down! About five kilometers in I was starting to really break a good smile when uh oh! Cows in the road! I came to screeching halt only inches away from a big black bovine who looked none to scared of the near miss. Guess this is a common occurrence in this neck of the woods.

Now running against time with the sun setting and dark ominous clouds rolling in sure to bring even more rain to soak the roads I needed to continue on and continue on I did. The road was crisscrossed by other similar roads with nary a marking as to just what they were, so thankful the TomTom was accurate in guiding from one side of the national park to the other. Still with all this I couldn’t help but feel the raw beauty of this place.

I do wish Catherine was with me as I couldn’t help but feel she would have her fingernails dug deep into the dashboard as I careened around blind corners with the car sliding to and fro. And wouldn’t you know it, as I came towards the end of the road and the salvation of tarmac there was the most beautiful rainbow. The pictures I have included in this post don’t do this section of the trip justice. The road was a nice red color, the cactus were everywhere and some sections were completely covered in flowers. For as dangerous as the trip was, I will do it again and highly recommend everyone take this stretch but please take the necessary precautions and if you can take a 4×4.

Tomorrow, Sunday June 6 2009 I will be hiking at Superstition Mountain which is located in the Superstition Mountain Wilderness Area. I will take photos and video which will be used on the first promo. Noted film director and producer Thomas Newman is on board with the production and will be working on the video footage and some of the web episodes.

Stay tuned!