Superstition Mountains

Before we get to the trucking a few photos from the Superstition Mountains. When I first got into to Tempe I headed with some friends up to the Superstitions Mountain, a range just to the east of the Phoenix metro They are a popular destination for Phoenicians (?) trying to flee the misery of their awful city. I had a pretty low opinion of Arizona (except maybe the whole Grand Canyon thing) but that is because I am thinking of the (completely unacceptable) urban areas and not of the (completely sublime) rural areas. We headed east on US-60, the Superstition Highway (ohhhhhh) out to Apache Junction and then hit the Apache Trail toward the town of Tortilla Flat, the least populated town in Arizona with a zip code. Essentially it appeared to be a false front western sort of place that was a store and a restaurant and a tourist trap. In a dip just beyond Tortilla Flat the pavement ended and the Salt River (or a tributary thereof), full from the recent rains, flowed over the road. A sign warned against crossing in such conditions but we said fuck it and headed over. The road narrowed and became a harrowing single lane track along the side of a mountain with a scrap of a guard rail that was more a visual barrier than any sort of physical one. Not to far up the road we pulled off and hiked up Fish Creek canyon a ways. It was a scrambly sort of hike and a lot of fun. So Pictures...

again, again, againagain

back on the road friendos.
After delivering produce throughout Western Washington for 8 months I have returned to the long haul. The produce gig was interesting and it was fascinating to see another leg in the journey of our food from farm to table. I delivered produce to supermarkets and restaurants throughout the Puget Sound region. My first routes took me to Top Foods locations in the Seattle metro and after I while i "graduated" to deliveries further afield, typically to Bellingham and Blaine (a town north of Bellingham right on the Canadian border) and on the occasional weekend would make the run to the miserable town of Aberdeen (birthplace of Kurt Cobain) and the town of Ocean Shores to the west. All of these routes were at night, usually starting at 6am and getting off sometime between 2 and 5am. I spent most of the time in Seattle being excruciatingly tired and looking back on that time I was constantly in some sort of zombiefied haze. but it was nice.

It is time now to get back to the business of making money to start this other business and that can't be done making the money i was making at the produce job or working a job where paying rent was required. My initial plan was to switch to a long haul job and spend my weekends alternately in Seattle and Maryland (where the bread oven (and my parents) are) but when I called to finalize plans with the long haul company it turns out they had just instituted a hiring freeze in he Pacific Northwest. Turns out they did not have enough freight in that neck of the woods to get their current drivers who lived in Washington and Oregon home and they were not keen on having more. At first I thought, well fine I'll just change my driver's license back to Maryland and that's that but I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be relegated to the East both for the variety and the miles and so, having some friends in Arizona, I "moved" there. I shipped off most of my stuff via mail (i don't have a lot of stuff) and the rest came with me on a motorcycle down the coast and into the desert. It was a nice ride on which I will elaborate later.
I got my Arizona license and a few days later headed to orientation in Ontario, California via the always delightful Greyhound.
I wasn't sure I would continue blogging but at least one person wants me to and in their request referred to this as a "Photo Blog" which made me think, i can do that, just photos. less writing. so here you go.

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.