San Rafael Swell

First off it is Rafael. I spelled it Raphael in an earlier post and that is just wrong.

The San Rafael Swell is a desolate area of eroded beauty in central Utah. All of Utah could really be called an area of eroded beauty (though certainly not of eroded morals) but the Swell, pretty much smack in the middle of the state is exceptional.

Lets begin with geology. Simplistically land is made up of layers of sediment and then sometimes these layers are lifted up, or pushed down or cut through by water and wind. Though this is the case pretty much everywhere it is easiest to see out west since there is less of that pesky vegetation covering everything up.
Utah's layers (the layers of the Colorado plateau) were deposited successively by differing processes over the eons. At points Utah was the floor of a great sea and the sediments are those of shell and other calcium rich substances (limestone) other times it was the edge of the sea and there are layers of sand that has been compressed into cohesive strata (sandstone) and other times it might be hardened lava or volcanic ash. Tectonic forces pushed up the area known as the Colorado Plateau (which consists of parts of the four corners states, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico) in a relatively uniform block (as opposed to being folded or subducted into mountains.) The San Rafael Swell is an uplift upon this uplift. Structurally you could think of it as many blankets layered over a trampoline (the blankets are the successive rock layers). Then forces pushed up on the bottom of the trampoline resulting in a layered dome structure.
Any time land is lifted up water that falls on that land will want to move down to lower elevations and when it does so it will erode the rock along with it. In the southwest the climate is usually very dry and when it does rain it tends to rain a lot and the soils, as dry as they are, cannot absorb any of this water and you end up with catastrophic floods that have even more erosive power. As such you get great gorges and canyons cut through the strata which are very scenic (National Parks on the Colorado Plateau include: Canyonlands, Arches, Capital Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion and Grand Canyon)(I went on a road trip with my sister a few summers ago that included visits to all of these parks and by the time we were done I decided I was pretty cashed out on erosion and ready to see some volcanoes.)
The San Rafael Swell is so cut through and erratically eroded that it is quite difficult to travel across and, in fact, I-70 is the only paved road to cross it. Even then you have to wonder why since 70's western terminus is Cove Fort, Utah, which isn't much of a town. I suppose the reason would be to provide a link from the southwest (LA and Vegas on I-15) towards Denver, but still traveling 70 through Utah you have to think "this couldn't have been easy."

I-70 E following a canyon off of the swell.

Wrap up Posts

It has been a long time and I apologize. My excuse this time for the long absence will be the infernal Twitter. I have found it so easy to use my phone to snap pictures and quickly tweet them that it leaves me little inspiration for adding to the blog.
@truckermark is the name under which you will find my twittiness.

This will be the first in a series of wrap up posts on the experiences of trucking out west which perhaps has been so captivating that I have wanted only to soak it in and not immediately regurgitate it on these pages. At any rate now I will and that will be that.
Why, you ask? Well I have found myself a local trucking job delivering produce throughout western (and central) Washington state that will allow me to be home every day and that will be nice. I am not sure if it will provide fodder for blogging but if it does I will begin a new blog. In the mean time enjoy the following posts about the great western United States.

The Virgin River Gorge

I had picked up a load of imported Target merchandise from NYK Logistics in the LBC. For those of you not as "West Coast" as my self that's Long Beach, California, I will try and avoid thuggin out too hard henceforth.) This load of trinkets from Japan and China was headed to a Distribution Center in Pueblo, Colorado 1200 miles distant. Often there are multiple routes available to get from one point to another and many truckers just pick the Interstate, that uniform 4+ lane strip of dullness where the mountains are cut through and the valleys filled making travel through them easier, faster, and more unremarkable. Anyone who has driven across the country (or even any state) and found it dull did so on the interstate (or is just a hater, in which case, quit wasting gas.)
The back roads are often shorter, slower and almost invariably more interesting. Besides the towns and villages where you might encounter people smaller roads traverse terrain where building larger roads would be impossible or not cost efficient. i.e. prettier country. My advice, if you have the time, take the back roads.

HOWEVER, there are stretches of interstate with mind bending scenery. You can't avoid beauty that assiduously. Some such stretches are I-90 from Ellensburg to Seattle, Washington over Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascades (the only stretch of Interstate that is designated a national scenic byway), I-5 over the grapevine in Southern California, I-81 along the Blue Ridge in Virginia etc... Most of these roads clearly connect two important areas that need connecting an in so doing must surmount apparent obstacles (typically abrupt changes in elevation, mountains.) Some areas, however make you wonder why they would have ever put a interstate here, two such locations are ones that I had to travel to move this target shit to Colorado. I-15 through the Virgin River Gorge in the far northwestern Arizona and I-70 through the San Raphael Swell in central Utah.
The push to carve a highway in the Virgin River Gorge is more understandable as it connects Las Vegas and Los Angeles to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. There is an enormous elevation obstacle along this route in the name of the Colorado Plateau. I'm not going to get too geologically specific but suffice it to say this region, centered around the 4 corners area, was uplifted in millenia past by whatever it is that uplifts the earth. With all this elevation, and water still wanting, as it does, to flow down hill, gradually canyons were cut through this elevation creating the scenic amazements that are the Grand Canyon and the parks of Utah: Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Capital Reef and Zion. The Virgin River, which flows southwest out of Zion eventually tumbles off the plateau and into the Mojave Desert in so doing carving itself a nice canyon in the far northwest corner of Arizona (just to give you an idea of the elevation differential here, Vegas, down in the low hot Mojave, is at 2000 ft and Cedar City, UT is at over 5,800.
Naturally when looking for a way to mount this rise the interstate builders looked for a precut route and the Virgin River Gorge was just such a route. Nonetheless, mile for mile, it was one of the most expensive stretches of interstate. Some pictures:

Entering the Gorge














Curvyness

















Up on the Plateau in Utah



In the next episode: The insanity that is The San Raphael Swell...

Apology Post

I'm sorry friendos.
Inspiration/desire to write blog posts and the time to do so do not often overlap with internet access. Especially out here in this lonesome crowded west. I've been in a lot of really amazing places of late. of note: The San Raphael Swell in central Utah, US-50 through Colorado, US-395 in the Owens Valley of Eastern California, all of the desolate polygon that is Nevada, Craters of the Moon and the Salmon River Valley in Idaho, and the Bitteroot mountains and river valley of Western Montana. I will take on each of these places in pictures and words, probably more pictures.

I'm so sad about my lack of blog posts that I have taken to hiding between my truck and trailer where no one can hear me weeping.

getting to know I-5

This blog has been getting so much attention ever since Jaime started the TBTL Meta Blog. And that's awesome. This has occurred concurrently with my birth into the bizarre world of twitter and I have been twittering pictures of my travels so I'm not sure what I'll have to post here. I suppose I will have to get more interesting and less "then i took x from y to z." The extra attention is also a good motivator. thanks people.

I did not stray far, for the whole last 2 weeks, from Interstate 5. In fact, when I made this move (from the east coast) i was told/warned that this is how freight moves in the west. Unlike the east which has a dense coastal population and a good distribution of people throughout the Appalachians and Midwest, the west, aside from the dense coastal cities has almost no population and as such, no manufacturing and no demand for goods (relatively speaking). So I don't so much mind driving up and down the I-5 since I get paid by the mile and if I am sitting in Roswell, New Mexico for a day and a half I don't make anything. (and roswell is not a place i would choose to vacation, especially by myself).

I-5 begins, or ends, at the Mexican border, just south of San Diego and north of Tijuana. Immediately east of here is the area called Otay Mesa which is where the vast majority of the truck traffic from the maquiladoras enters the US. (Maquiladoras are Mexican assembly plants who import parts, tax free, and export finished goods for the US market. They are almost all in border cities like Nuevo Laredo, Juarez, Mexicali, and Tijuana. Does this make them essentially "wage shelters" where US companies can get long hours for low wages free of the tiresome and costly worker's rights laws (like the luxuriant $6.55 min. wage) of the US government? Yes, yes it does, but I'm not really trying to start that conversation.)

From there the freeway heads north through Orange County and into the LA Metro (Large limited access roads are called "Freeways" in California (mostly out east the term "highway" is used.) California gives names to all their freeways and different names to different sections. I-5 or "the 5" is known as "The San Diego Freeway" "The Santa Ana Freeway" and, for the majority of its route through California "The Golden State Freeway.)
North of Los Angeles the freeway passes through the San Fernando valley home of movie studios before climbing up to summit Tejon Pass and tumble into the San Joaquin Valley.
The entirety of southern California is a great low, mostly dry, valley. Through extensive aqueduct projects that move water from rainy northern California and the snowy Sierra Nevada down the length of the valley it has become one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country (25% of the nations production (cash value) (according to wikipedia)). Grapes for one provide much of the less expensive wine (like that sold in 1.5 L bottles or, better yet, boxes.) They also turn grapes into rasins. Almonds are a huge crop, and as i mentioned last week, they are in bloom currently and very much what you notice at this time of year. This area also produces a lot of the early season vegetables for those people in parts of the country that need vegetables at the wrong time.
North of Stockton, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers flow together toward the Bay Area estuary, you enter the Northern Central Valley, or Sacramento Valley whose products are similar to that of the southern San Joaquin, but add rice, olives and plums for making 2/3 of the worldwide production of prunes (again wikipedia).

Just before Redding the terrain, which has to this point been relentlessly flat, flatter than most of the midwest (though always with mountains visible in the distance to the east and west) begins to swell and rise a bit before climbing up into the Siskiyou/Klamath/South Cascade mountains. The road passes Shasta Lake, an impoundment of the Sacramento River, which provides much of the water for central valley irrigation projects. It is currently drastically low, a result of a three year drought in California.

I-5 skirts along the edge of Mount Shasta, which, when it is clear, is pretty dramatic. It is sort of the southern bookend to the Cascades (as Mount Baker in Northern Washington is the northern).

At the Oregon border the highway crosses Siskiyou Summit, the highest point on I-5 and the descent northbound is the steepest interstate grade in the US. Add to that frequent precipitation (frequently at temperatures at or below freezing) and you got yourself a pretty treacherous bobsled run.
All of southern Oregon (and northern California) is basically a big clump of mountains that separate the Central Valley of California and the Willamette Valley of Oregon (The Willamette was where you were heading during those hours of caulking wagons, shooting buffalo and repairing axles in Oregon Trail.) So in order to get from nice flat road to nice flat road you must pass a number of summits and traverse the valleys of mountain streams like the Rogue and Umpqua in Southern Oregon.
Finally, at Eugene, you're out of the mountains for good (on I-5 at least.)
The Willamette valley produces a lot of berries and hazlenuts, as well as hops (for all those Oregon microbreweries) and sod/grass seed. Oh yes and wine grapes of course.
Here again, the terrain is flat and lush and mountains are visible to the east and the low coast range to the west.
Portland is where the Willamette flows into the Columbia and where I-5 enters Washington as it follows the Columbia's northward bend to the cities of Kelso and Longview. The land is hilly and densely forested with trees that someone is aching to cut down and make into paper or a soon to be foreclosed on house. Joining the basin of Puget Sound at Olympia you can see the state capital dome prominently (I have heard that it is the second highest masonry dome in the world after the Duomo (designed by Brunelleschi) in Florence. but wikipedia says 4th tallest (damn them))
Between Olympia and Tacoma lies Fort Lewis, a large Army base, and that's all i have to say about that.
Tacoma, as I noted earlier, smells bad.
After Tacoma I-5 passes through the suburbs of Seattle/Tacoma like Fife, Federal Way, Tukwila and the beautifully named "SeaTac" (home of the airport) and all their terrible traffic, terrible probably because it all has to squeeze through the narrow space between the Cascades and Puget Sound.
North of Seattle (an area I have not traveled much by truck) there are the alluvial plains of rivers like the Snohomish and Skagit as they spread into marshy convergence with Puget Sound (The Skagit river delta is known for its tulip production) and then a small range of mountains and the basin of land around Bellingham Bay. North of Bellingham the land is quite flat and essentially in the valley of the Fraser River (the river that flows through Vancouver, BC). The road ends, or begins, at Blaine, about 30 miles south of Vancouver.

I'm not sure how this became a route description of I-5 but there you have it in about 1/100 the time it takes to drive it.

I-5, The Golden State Freeway!

I had a few days off after my last sortie, if you will, to spend in Seattle, and Seattle decided to woo me with clear skies and fair temperatures (but I know better.) I spent the mornings biking around my knew environs and the afternoons eating rich foods and drinking ciders and beers of local origin, which, coming from a place where this is less possible (the local part, not the drinking, we drink plenty in maryland), is really great. On the last night we ate salami from Salumi, Made hamburgers topped with thin slices of green apple and sharp cheddar cheese and made this:





Needless to say the next day i felt like shit.








This week has been, thus far, more what I expected from this new Western gig, I picked up a load in Seattle, also from NYK logistics which you may remember from the previous post, and took it down to Woodland, California, where there is a large and delightful Target Distribution Center. Then, it being sunday, I sat all day and then was assigned a load to pick up the next day in Folsom, east of Sacramento (indeed home of the eponymous prison of Johnny Cash fame). The load had nothing to do with prison but more with soy sauce, in big 5 gallon buckets from Kikkoman. This Soy Sauce was headed to Irving, Texas, but I only took it as far as French Camp (near Stockton) and dropped it for another driver to take the rest of the way. I, meanwhile, picked up a trailer load of Robert Mondavi Wine from Lodi and took it to the Vons warehouse in Santa Fe Springs (So.East LA). Vons is a LA area grocery store owned by Safeway.
Central California is alternately duller than dull and bizarrely wondrous. There are the parts that are unending fields or orchards and there are the parts that are surreal steep green hills folding into themselves, hiding other worlds, possibly, and then you're back in Illinois again.

From there i had a short load picking up a load of Target brand bleach cleanser from its manufacturer (also in Santa Fe Springs) and took those up to yet another Target dc north of Bakersfield.
And as of now I am sitting at a flying J in the central valley breathing in the sometimes lovely, sometimes, repulsive smell of almond trees in bloom. Tomorrow I pick up some sears crap to take to Everett, Washington. Oh the life.










Endless almond trees in the central valley, i had no idea we ate so many almonds.






As a side note, I have started a project of taking portraits of truckers and their dogs. here is one of the first, this is Dennis and his dog, Baby:

Front Range to the Wasatch Front (The Back Range?)

And Then! Another load from Denver back into New Mexico! (I was beginning to get exasperated, I-25 along the front range of the Rockies is beautiful but any road after the 3rd time in a row begins to get old.)
This load was Nestle PureLife Bottled Water from a plant in Denver on its way to a Wal*Mart DC in Los Lunas, NM. I asked the shipping clerk what the source of the water was and he said it was from the Denver municipal supply, i.e. tap water. Now, I know that a lot of bottles water is tap water but this movement struck me as ridiculous.
I know New Mexico is a desert but it has plenty of drinking water which, curiously comes from the Rio Grande, a river with its source in where? Colorado. And how does it get to New Mexico? By trucks running at 6mpg? no, by gravity. hmmmm.
Anyway. Then I got a load to pick up in Roswell, New Mexico, the sight (well biggest town near the sight of) of a "UFO" crash and alien autopsy. Look it up on wikipedia.
Roswell is a different part of New Mexico, part that feels more like Texas or Oklahoma with vast (dry brown) grassy plains and the smell of concentrated herds of dairy cattle all around.
New Mexico, surprisingly is a very productive dairy state and Leprino Foods here operates the worlds largest mozzarella cheese plant making IQF shredded cheese, primarily for pizzas, I would guess. I don't drive a reefer (refrigerated trailer) so I was not here to pick up cheese but rather a byproduct of cheese making.
When you make cheese, you must first separate the milk solids (curds, which will become cheese) from the whey, a protein rich translucent liquid (think what rotten milk in your fridge looks like). If you have a huge cheese plant (ie it would be very hard to do this at home) you can dry this whey into a fine powder, whey protein concentrate, which is used as a nutritional supplement and industrial baking additive.
I trucked this stuff up to Salt Lake City and unloaded at a cold storage warehouse on the west side of town, not far from the shores of the city's namesake body of water. When I opened the trailer doors a rich sweet smell reminiscent of milkshakes, wafted from within. I sit now, at a Pilot on the west side, typing away, waiting for some way to get back to the beautiful northwest.

(looking west on NW 116th or 117th St. in Seattle, down into Carkeek Park and across to the Olympic Mountains (click to enlarge and see the snowy peaks))

To the Front Range!

I've been not doing a whole lot of driving of late as freight is "soft" i.e. (brace yourself) the economy is not doing too well.
I drove down to the droptlot and then got a ride with Mylie, a Hawai'ian/Portugese lady who drives a truck based out of Portland. She was coming down from having just picked up a load in Seattle which she would drop in Portland for some home time. I had to get a ride with her because my truck was in Portland but my parking location is in Sumner, a small town with a heavily industrial north end, near Tacoma (about 39 miles south of Seattle.
I found my truck (inexplicably older than my last truck. One side benefit of transfering to the west coast, i thought, would be that I could almost certainly get a newer truck. well HA HA mark, of the 10% of the fleet that could be older than my last truck I won the lottery!) and settled in. The next morning I met with dispatcher, a nice guy from South Dakota who seems to be in the northwest for similar reasons to mine. I think we will get along well, at least as far as drivers and dispatcher typically do. (NB I am not the sort of asshole driver who thinks his dispatcher is trying to ruin his day.)
Then I hopped back in my truck and got a load with two stops, one on the far side of portland, out on the spit of land where the Willamette River empties into the mighty Columbia. The second stop was in Fife, Washington, right outside of beautiful Tacoma. (Tacoma, for those of you not familiar with the area, is seattle's ugly little sister. It is the Camden to Seattle's Philadelphia, the Gary to it's Chicago. Which probably isn't fair and I am sure there are lots of good things about Tacoma (and Gary and Camden) It often reeks of the "tacomaroma" the heady overcooked broccoli stank of paper making.
It's name is the Lushootseed (Puyallup) name for Mt. Rainier (Mother of Waters) whose presence on the southeastern horizon (on a clear day) is incredible). It is a much busier port than Seattle, importing goods from Asia that are then shipped by rail eastward across the country (like the busier port of LA/Long Beach, to the south).)
After making the delivery in Fife I headed over to the dropyard in Sumner and hopped in my car and headed over to Fred Meyer to buy some food for the next few weeks. Fred Meyer is a PNW chain of mega stores similar to Wal*Mart but somehow when you walk in they seem even more immense. When I returned to my truck I found I had gotten a new load assignment. A pick up at NYK logistics (a place that takes imports and sorts them out to be delivered to various locations (such as Target DCs, where this one was going) The place was conveniently, literally, next door (or gate) and so I popped over, picked up the trailer, and came back to the drop yard.
The load was going to Topeka, Kansas, a nice long one (1800 miles) though curiously out of my range (my new job description is Western Regional (meaning I drive the 11 western states (Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico). When I discussed this the next day with my dispatcher we eventually decided to relay it in Denver, still a healthy run (1200 miles).
From there I got a load of baled scrap cardboard from a Safeway DC in Denver on its way down to a paper mill that makes new cardboard out of old cardboard in Prewitt, New Mexico. Apparently when we pull these cardboard loads into Prewitt we often pull loads of new stock out of Prewitt and typically these go to Southern California, putting you on the I-5 and making a return up to the northwest easier. (Not a lot of freight goes up to the Northwest, other than up from southern California or from Mexico (Laredo, Nogales or Otay Mesa (Tijuana))
Inexplicably the load I got was headed back to Denver.

West Coast (my fingers are making a W)

So I have moved out here to the West Coast (coincidentally, did you know that it is also the 'best coast'?! crazy, I know.)
Goal is to see new places, make money, have good times in Seattle and eventually, when I'm ready, return to The B'east coast to make the bread oven happen fo' real.
The drive out, apart from my driving partner's sudden, quickly passing, and violent illness (he was poisoned by a serb) was pretty uneventful. In South Dakota it was even warm enough to eat lunch in Rapid City outside in shirtsleeves.
We slid into Seattle in a dusky fog and only the outlines and presence of the enormous trees of the magical forest.

Yesterday I headed down to Sumner near Tacoma where Schneider has a droplot. It may possibly be the most beautiful droplot in the world.
I waited there most of the day for a driver who was going to give me a ride down to the Portland Operating Center where I would pick up a truck. She was delayed at a shipper in Seattle (picking up crates of broken glass from TVs to be recycled.) Eventually we got down here, I found my truck and moved myself in.

This morning it is snowing in Portland as I am waiting to deliver my first West Coast load which has a stop in Portland and another in Fife, Washington, also near Tacoma.

Standby for more delightful adventures from the left coast.



Here's a view of the Olympics from Carkeek park which is not far from where I am crashing in Seattle:















And some ice on the beach beneath my feet: