A spring break travelogue
We are tourists and interlopers
I didn't think we could do anything for spring break this year. I needed to save money. I needed to work. I needed to sit in my office and panic about everything.
But I got a little bit of good-ish news and the tight spaces in my chest relaxed a fraction. I looked at Katie's expense sheet from the last time we drove to the coast and thought... I think we can do this again.
I'm not normally one that likes spontaneity. I like having itineraries and maps and planned gas & potty stops---at least for the travel bits. I definitely do not want my vacation to be stuffed to the gills with touristy things to go and do (please lots of naps in fluffy comforters and books read by a fire), but I'm going to flip you all the middle fingers if you roll up and expect me to jump in the car without at least a week's notice.
However. Sunday night I found an affordable spot to rent, quickly plotted out the 16+ hour drive to get there, and called Katie and Ben into my room to see if they were game. Katie is always game. Ben had to think about it, especially after I reminded him California in March did not necessarily mean beach weather.
The next morning, the three of us chucked stuff into suitcases and got in the car like the wild, impetuous, carefree people we absolutely are not. (The older boys, far less enthused with the idea of a long road trip, stayed home for work/school, and to keep the pets alive.)
The last March road trip I can remember taking was in 1998 when some friends and I left Salt Lake and drove to Mexico. We thought we'd find temperatures warm enough for swim suits by the pool. We did not, though my determined friend Chad shucked his clothes and jumped into a chilly, unheated swimming pool anyway. I have a blurry photo of his skinny white butt through the rippling water and remember laughing so hard I cried.
When I left home with Katie and Ben it was snowing. Again. Thinking we were leaving it all behind, we quickly found ourselves driving through a terrifying blizzard as we crossed the expansive emptiness of Northern Nevada. We were happy to keep behind a semi truck whose tail lights were sometimes all we could see.
At long last, we arrived in Reno, Nevada. A place I have been to exactly once before and couldn't remember much about. My kids were appalled when I pulled up to a blinged out casino.
"We can't possibly be staying here," Katie said, cutting me a look. "We are minor children." If you have a Gen Z kid, you can imagine the inflection and deadpan facial expression.
I laughed and explained that casinos often have nice, affordable hotel rooms because they rake in the cash when patrons lose all their money at the Blackjack table. My children remained skeptical.
Both stayed in the car with the doors locked while I went in to double check our reservation and make sure we weren't assigned a smoking room. All was well, so I coaxed them inside and watched their eyes widen as our glass-walled elevator zoomed past another blinding neon building and dumped us on the tenth floor.
"What if there is a fire?" Katie whispered, eyeing the steel safety beams outside out window.
"We take the stairs," I shrugged.
Room service prices were outrageous, and what was starting to feel like the Wish version of Las Vegas did not have an all-you-can-eat buffet, so we trudged back down to the mezzanine and across the sky bridge to our car. I thought surely, in such a big city, we could find any number of places to eat without consulting Yelp, but, unfamiliar with the city, we found ourselves on a bewildering drive through graffiti'd storefronts and defunct 70s resorts in various states of boarded-up disrepair. We found three topless bars, but nothing that looked like we could get some good street tacos or a burger and fries without a pile of used hypodermic needles on the side.
(Renoians, I'm so sorry for this likely tired stereotype. I lean out my window and shout apologetically, as I often do at annoyed drivers, "We're from Idaho!" Our street smarts are nil; we flinch at trash bags blowing in the wind. Yes, we do need to travel more.)
By the time we asked Siri to help, we were somewhat lost and had to traverse three different freeway systems in order to find a packed Chick-fil-a; a restaurant we normally try to boycott in support of Katie 🖤🐘🤍💜 (no ace flag emoji), but whose familiar waffle fries and sunshiny 'my pleasure' employees felt like a warm and comforting beacon of suburbia to we, the exhausted and beleaguered travelers.
After returning to our hotel room, the kids conked out almost immediately. I peeled off my compression stockings and massaged my swollen knees feeling like both a country bumpkin and about a hundred years old. Unbelievably tired and with seven more hours to drive the next day, I of course, could not sleep. I tucked myself into bed and proceeded to have a spectacular anxiety attack.
Solo parenting is rough, y'all. I'm doing it (hurrah, huzzah, confetti, etcetera), but I'm never exactly sure how.
I rubbed magnesium lotion into my bare feet (I dunno if it's voodoo or not, but it sometimes helps me sleep---I like Mo'Maggie Magnesium [affiliate link])---and listened to this panic attack ASMR video. I found it late one night shortly after Eric died and now it's my go-to for putting myself back together on my own. I always cry when she gets to the part where she tells the listener she loves us. It's so silly because she's a stranger in a video and it's not live or anything, but somehow, it helps.
Eventually, I slept.
The next day we experienced driving through the Sierra Nevada Mountains in another snowstorm. This was strangely humbling. We all felt less smug about our own mountains and harsh winters as we drove through canyons made of snow packed walls and rattled over roads pitted from snow chains.
Finally nearing the Sacramento Valley, the snow turned to sheets of stinging rain. The rain did not let up for hours upon hours upon hours. This was not fun to drive in, but fascinating, as we only get short rain storms in our neck of the woods.
We passed through miles of orchards and trundled past water-logged fields and rivers and streams churning with muddy run-off and had to go around one washed out bridge. We had trouble googling whether or not this was a typical Northern California spring or more of the extreme atmospheric weather we've been seeing. (It was the latter.)
As we drove past houses built into cliffs around the startlingly large Clear Lake, we couldn't shut up about how the spring equinox actually means something in places outside the frozen north. There was green grass just... growing spontaneously out of the ground, daffodils in full bloom, trees in actual blossom, swaths of yellow and purple wildflowers, and sage brush that looked green instead of, well, dead. Only 50 degrees and still raining, it felt like summer to my Idaho babies.
Native Californians or more well-traveled readers will laugh, but as we drove toward the King Range Mountains, we had NO idea that the huge trees we started seeing were famous redwoods. We naively believed we'd only see those when we drove into the national park on Saturday. 😂 We drove open-mouthed through the woods, pulling over constantly to let faster drivers (obviously long since numb to the wonders) pass us. We were suddenly star struck tourists trying to take all the photos and video we could.
Screen captures from some of the video we took. Cut off from the windshield, those trees are two to three times as tall as they look.
"They have to be redwoods," I said, filming through the sun roof as Katie drove. "They're over a hundred feet tall."
Ben shook his head from the backseat. "No way, redwoods are way bigger. But these..." he trailed off, wishing he could consult the internet. Our service was terrible.
"Maybe these are baby redwoods," Katie murmured, as we skirted another tree trunk so large it was growing over the road. Then she started laughing. "Oh no! We're the nerds at Yellowstone who line up to see Old Faithful."
We all laughed then. We live very near a pretty magical place that has become old hat to us, but put us near an ocean or next to even a baby redwood tree, and we are overcome.
By the time we got to Richardson Grove Park and saw Big Foot signs tucked into trees and nailed to mossy stumps, we finally accepted that we were in redwood country. I know, aren't we just so cute you want to pinch our cheeks and pat our heads? This is what spontaneity does, folks. I was not prepared!
The drive through the King Range was spectacular. We knew we were headed to a rare kind of place where 4000 foot high mountains dropped right into the ocean, but it was still hard to believe it could be real. As we neared our destination, we kept waiting for the glimpse of the ocean through the trees and doubting whether or not it would really come.
And then, there it was.
I mean. Can you even?
The tiny hamlet of Shelter Cove makes our little Idaho town of Rigby look like a booming metropolis. No stoplights, about 800 regular residents (though people are leaving in droves due to economic hardship & affordable housing being snatched up by developers and turned into airbnbs/vrbos), one general store, one deli, and one cafe. No hospital or medical clinic, but there is a fire department and a tiny runway where life flight helicopters from Sacramento can land.
There's one place to get gas at the general store and it was nearly $6/gallon. If I'd sent my daughter on her own to fill up, it would have been her turn for a panic attack. Where is the credit card slot?! Luckily I am old and remember pre-paying for gas with a handful of change from my car's cigarette tray.
Our rooms at the inn are as close to the beach as you can get (terrifying sneaker waves, rip tides, and undercurrents; no one swims or surfs here), but the black lava rock beaches, starfish filled tide pools, and breathtaking sunsets make me want to live here forever. I have to tell myself they probably have gigantic and terrifying spiders here, or I'd never tear myself away from the realtor.com listings.
There's something so healing about the sight and sound of the ocean. I think it does the same thing for me as a starry night sky in the mountains, far away from the light pollution of cities. Both the ocean and outer space are somewhat terrifying; they are both massive, largely unexplored and unknowable, and can kill you dead. Why are they comforting?
Maybe because they'll go on existing long after I'm a pile of ash buried next to Eric's pile of ash. Maybe it's because they remind me that all those things I stress about in my office will still be there tomorrow. Maybe it's because I look for Eric everywhere but seem to find him most often in the unfathomable spaces; in the smear of wonder that is the Milky Way, in Venus twinkling next to a sliver of a moon, in a blazing sunset over an ocean so broad I can see how the whole world bends into a sphere. ❤️🩹
Ben exploring the Shelter Cove boat launch/beach. Protected by a stone jetty, the waves are less dangerous over here. I wonder if anyone swims on this side during the summer.
Tomorrow we are headed to Redwood National Park and will be making our way home on Sunday through another heretofore unexplored area for us; Southern & Central Oregon. 17+ hours for the win. Imma need my compression leggings on for this haul. We'll stay a night somewhere along the way---any suggestions?
I want to respectfully acknowledge that Shelter Cove is located on the stolen and occupied lands of the Sinkyone tribe, and that we traveled through or will be traveling through the stolen ancestral lands of many other indigenous communities, including the Pomo, Wiyot, Wailaki, Lassik, Nongatl, Coos, Hupa, Karuk, Klamath, Modoc, Takelma, Shasta, Siuslaw, Cow Creek Band of Umpqua, Yahooskin, and Yurok people. Once back in Idaho, we'll be traveling through the stolen lands of the Shoshoni and the Northern Paiute nations.
I realize that many feel acknowledging indigenous lands a waste of time. After all, conquerers and the conquered are common threads throughout history all over the world. Still, we are eager to learn more about indigenous reparations and movements such as landback, especially since we grew up in a religion that actively erased and silenced the histories of the "Native Americans" with a completely re-written version.
One of the very first steps on this journey is to learn about this land's indigenous peoples directly from their own descendants and record keepers rather than 'histories' or stories written by white men (even if the stories are claimed to be from god), and to acknowledge the rich history, cultures, and languages my people often worked so hard to erase in the name of missionary work and baptism.
xo, J