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Sunburn and Bugs 2016: Idaho? No, You Da Ho

July 20, 2016 Comments Off read Attractions, Idaho, Mountain, Travel, USA, Utah, West

Anxious to hit the road again, we had just enough time to grab some hotel breakfast and coffee next door, where I learned that while Virginia may be for lovers, Boise is for gangsters.

I should have known. Forget about the potatoes. Boise, Idaho has a longstanding reputation for being home to some of the hardest people on Earth. For instance, a quick visit to the idahogangs.com website shows that the area is routinely terrorized by members of the so-called “Insane Clown Posse,” a group which is well known for guzzling large (dare I say insane?) amounts of Faygo brand soda, smearing themselves with paint, and talking about how they’d kill people with hatchets if they weren’t so stoned they can’t get off the couch. The moose gang isn’t mentioned, but I have to assume they’re relatively new if they have to make up swag stickers to get people interested and build up their rep as true badasses and terrors in the night.

Owing to all that coffee consumption, we stopped at nearly every rest stop along the way, and I marveled at how much the scenery had changed over the course of our trip so far–from green mountains with dazzling blue lakes to desert hills to scrubby plains with silver bushes dotting the landscape like pills on your favorite sweater. One rest stop we visited was full of nesting swallows who scolded us as we tried to get a peep of their young. When we were able to tear ourselves away from the birds and convenient restrooms, we hit the road and continued to Twin Falls, home of “Niagara Falls of the West”–though not as wide and also taller, so not really like Niagara Falls at all. I’ve never understood that naming trend. Is it for people who can’t go and see the original? Is it for people who want to take a trip but want the familiar comforts of something they’ve already seen? Is it for the namers, who have an inferiority complex about the actual goodness of the thing they’re naming? My house is at the Everglades of Washington state, only with mostly ducks and frogs and way fewer (no) alligators and 0.00001% of the size! Come meet my dog, he’s the Lassie of jack russell terriers, except if you’re on the floor weeping in pain instead of going for help he tries to cram his tongue down your throat! I’m the Jennifer Lawrence of untalented regular people!

On our way there, we passed the spot where Evel Knievel attempted his Snake River Canyon jump in 1974, which had me pondering: in a post Evel Knievel world, who is our flamboyant daredevil? Must our canyons remain unjumped? Our gorges’ airspaces undisturbed? Our predators with slightly fewer chances to grab and eat a passing man off of a motorcycle? Our leather jumpsuit and cape artisans’ workload remain empty? The answer is no: Eddie Braun is making another attempt at the Snake River Canyon this September.

A mere three miles down the road is Twin Falls, aka Shoshone Falls, aka Niagara West, aka America’s Icelandic Toilet (no doubt as the popularity of this blog surges, that last one will catch on). Again, it’s 29 feet taller than Niagara and significantly less wide. It also can dry up over the summer, but we hit it around peak season and were suitably impressed. As is usual with the Harpies, we quickly made friends with other people in the viewing area, one of which was on another ladies’ trip to Kentucky–theirs probably involved fewer filthy jokes, but that’s just a wild guess. I tried to go a bit further down the path to see if I could find a better, quieter viewpoint, but it got extremely narrow and overgrown almost immediately with just a bare chain link fence preventing me from falling off the cliff should a snake or some other critter appear while I’m tramping down in an area with no other people, so I quickly reconsidered my plan and turned back, not wanting this excursion to turn into one of those “Mellzah stories” wherein I do something foolish and am surprised by consequences. (Somewhere out there a reader is whispering “She can learn!”)

After lunch and some more coffee (#jitteringdowntheroad #secretbackseatnaptime) we crossed over into Utah, and the landscape turned into some shit from the Sound of Music, which I helpfully sang from the backseat to make sure everyone else was feeling the vibe. For some reason, the music in the front kept getting cranked up, but luckily, I know a thing or two about singing from the diaphragm.

Our destination was Promontory Summit, which is where the USA’s first transcontinental railroad met, with the hammering of a golden spike. On the way there, though, there were signs indicating there was a “rocket display” of sorts coming up. While I appreciate that they had a sign to let me know about its existence, it was somewhat superfluous as there was absolutely no way we could have accidentally driven past this rocket display without seeing it. And even though there was a sign letting us know the rocket display was there, and there were informational signs in front of each piece, it still felt like we were walking around somewhere we probably shouldn’t be. Emily wouldn’t let me climb aboard one to do my best impression of Major Kong, so you have her to blame for that. And also all of those “don’t climb on the rockets” signs. Killjoys.

One thing is for certain: they definitely didn’t dumb their signs down for your average rocket-viewer. Some sample text: “The integral booster chamber then becomes the ramburner for the ducted rocket, and the end-burning, fuel-rich grain completes combustion in the ramburner.” Hmmm. You don’t say.

As employees started to leave the building, we stopped snapping photos of me posing with a rocket as if it were a giant dong which is a wholly unique thing that I’m sure no one has ever done before but I still wasn’t keen on the idea of having rocket scientists see me do it for some reason. Maybe because then they’d be less inclined to believe that I understood their signage and also because we were now in Modest Utah and I wasn’t certain if that was the sort of thing you could be arrested for, like wearing leggings that show your butt and drinking boozy coffee.

We started running low on gas as we approached Promontory Summit, which is always pretty exciting–would we make it to a gas station in time or would we be making use of the car’s exciting roadside assistance button and get to explain to a dispatcher that we were too busy making dick jokes to notice the gas gauge? But since there were no stations between us and the summit, we pushed on to the summit first.

Would you believe that I dinked up my camera settings and all the photos I took inside of the building are completely black, including the golden spike? Believe it. They don’t even have the real golden spike there, it’s just a replica–the real one is at Stanford University. The golden spike wasn’t the last spike driven, regardless–it was wholly for ceremony and immediately pulled up, along with the final tie, to thwart treasure hunters and souvenir seekers, who would have torn it apart within seconds of being laid. It was replaced with a normal tie and a regular iron spike. I don’t know when that tie was replaced with the varnished tie they have in place now. The tag on it says 1869 but frankly, I think that’s a load of hot steamy railroad smoke. Even so, it was cool to be standing at the spot that changed the way America traveled while in the middle of an excursion across a sizeable swath of it.

No, car, you’re doing it wrong.

Will our intrepid explorers make it to a gas station? Or am I blogging this from a Utahan jail after being mistaken for a prostitute? FIND OUT NEXT TIME on Sunburn and Bugs: No Really None Of Us Are Hos!

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Sunburn and Bugs 2016: IT BEGINS

July 18, 2016 Comments Off read Attractions, Idaho, Mountain, Oregon, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

It all started as an offhand remark in a facebook post. “Perhaps of interest?” attached to a link about the Meow Wolf art collective’s newest project, The House of Eternal Return. “I totally want to go!” I replied. Another friend chimed in that she, too, would like to go, and we started tentatively, jokingly, talking about taking a group road trip.

Only I wasn’t joking.

A few weeks later I sent a text message, saying I was serious about taking this trip and asking when we could embark, and then we began planning in earnest. Because you see, taking a road trip with three adult women is nothing like the easy-breezy depictions of road trips you see in movies about teenagers setting across America to discover themselves and their burgeoning sexuality. It’s not just a matter of deciding to go, hopping in the car, and going, perhaps flipping off your parents as a trail of dust kicks up in the wake of your passage. For instance, who would have thought that among three people, we would have three different preferences for the types of establishments we’d sleep in each night, running the gamut from camping to your finer hotels? To avoid potential conflict on the road, we had to discuss it all in advance. This meant figuring out work and school schedules, finding a range of dates when we were all available*, hammering out a budget, making sure our insurance covered all of the stuff we assumed it did, actually deciding whose car we were taking, packing and repacking and repacking again, looking at potential routes and things to do along the way, and then just flipping someone off randomly as we peeled out of the neighborhood because we ran out of time to properly research who most deserved a righteous flipping-off.

We decided on an eight day road trip from Seattle to Santa Fe and back with the option for a ninth day if one of the long drive days we had planned on the way back proved to be unbearable and we needed to take a break from the road. Collectively, we determined the most awkward and unwieldy name for the trip would be: Sunburn and Bugs 2016: The Harpies Take Santa Fe (#harpiestakesantafe #feminism) . The brand new car with all the bells and whistles remained unnamed for the time being. Even with all the planning, up until the day we left, I still wasn’t 100 percent convinced we were actually going. I kept waiting for someone to call the whole thing off, saying it was a joke that got out of hand, and I got the sense that everyone else felt similarly and we were all waiting for someone else to call off the dare, and when no one did, we were bound and determined to go through with it. The darker doubt lingering at the back of everyone’s brain remained: could a powerlifting animal rights activist, a driven psychology student, and a loudmouthed fart machine** spend eight days and nights together in close quarters and remain friends? Or at least not intentionally drive off a cliff to end all of the farting and inappropriate jokes?

We set off around noon on a Sunday with high spirits and music blasting. We made it three miles before we stopped for coffee.

Properly caffeinated, we started putting some solid mileage between ourselves and home, tentatively starting to play my two favorite road trip games: (Anal) RV names and Name That Landmark***. It always feels a little strange playing road trip games when you’re still in spitting distance of home, but the sooner you get started, the more enthusiastically everyone plays eventually.

I ended up being behind the wheel as we approached the town of Granger, and since I’d been there before, I knew of the delights that lay within, so I suggested we take a short detour. I also knew that it would likely be our only stop of interest between home and Boise since we’d gotten a late start, and I was anxious to get off on the right foot while we were still in “let’s call the whole thing off and turn around” distance.

My plan worked.

We stayed in high spirits the rest of the way to Boise, stopping at a scenic overlook in, uh Somewhere****, Oregon, though road fatigue began to hit around the time we hit the Idaho border and we suddenly started clucking along to the songs on Road Trip Radio like chickens.

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We may in fact have been a bit overtired on the road to Bawk-sie.

A post shared by Mellzah (@mellzah) on Jun 12, 2016 at 11:12pm PDT

To this day, I cannot hear Collective Soul’s “Shine” without clucking to it. I live in fear of the day that it plays on the overhead speakers at the grocery store.

*This is much harder than you’d think, considering none of us have children and two of us don’t have jobs. In any given period of time, at least one of us would have one or more other obligation that would preclude galavanting about the country like howling wine-chugging banshees, and we basically had to sacrifice a goat to the moon gods to temporally align our schedules to make this trip happen. I also had to postpone a dental appointment for a crown and promptly chipped that same tooth, because evidently the goat wasn’t all the moon gods wanted in repayment.

**Guess which one I am.

***Essentially, if someone asks about a landmark and you don’t know what it is, you get to rename it whatever you’d like. The faster and more authoritatively you Name That Landmark, the more likely it is that someone in the car will believe you. Alternately, if you think of something that tickles your funny bone, it will make that landmark more memorable and you’ll have a better idea of where you are the next time you see, say, Bitch Tit Mountain rising over the horizon.

****I knew not writing ACTUAL place names down would come back to bite me.

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The Presbytere Museum in New Orleans

February 3, 2016 2 Comments read Attractions, Louisiana, South, Travel, USA

The Presbytere Museum is a study in contrasts, from the height of revelry to utter devastation, showcasing gobs of money being thrown around for fun and how the poorest suffered during one of the bleakest periods in New Orleans history. You see, the upper floor is dedicated to the krewes and history of Mardi Gras balls and parades, while the lower floor is dedicated to the destruction and horrors of Hurricane Katrina.

From the moment I stepped into the first room, I was overcome with emotion. Watching the news, reading about it online, I still had no concept of just how powerful the storm was. I still don’t, not really. But I do understand it better than I used to. When you’re exhausted from hearing something on the news, you can just turn it off and walk away. There is no turning this off. It’s staring you in the face. It’s a garage door that was spraypainted with a message about a dead dog–a beloved pet that the owner would find a way to return and bury. It’s a teddy bear that was so coated in mud and silt that you wonder how it could have ever been soft, a child’s cherished possession. Your decision to walk away here is more meaningful, deliberate. Can you close off the sound of the wind whipping in the next room, ignore the 1600 bottles hanging from the ceiling representing the people who died in the floods and the hands of the first responders reaching out to help?

Ten years later, New Orleans is still struggling to recover from Katrina. I know, you got tired of hearing about it. There’s always more tragedy somewhere. A new worthy cause. There’s too much pain in the world for us to try and bear, much less comprehend it all. But if you can, spare a thought today for the people who didn’t make it out. For the people who did and lost everything and had no home and no family to come back to. For the people who tried to start anew somewhere else and were treated like second-class citizens because of their ‘refugee’ status, in their own country. For the people who came back and who are working hard to rebuild their homes and their lives. And help them if you can.

One of the ways New Orleans is recovering from Katrina is via tourism, and there’s no greater draw for tourists to their city than Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras, a French Catholic tradition, was first (simply) observed in the New Orleans area in 1699 (though obviously celebrated elsewhere before that time, it did not originate in New Orleans). The first recorded Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans was held in 1837, and the celebration has grown significantly in scope since then, with more than 40 parades running through the city over the course of the event, each headed by a different krewe.

What is a krewe? It’s an association of people who pay membership dues in order to put on these grand events, and membership is determined by the krewes themselves–some limiting their members to relatives of previous members, and some are open to all who can afford to pay. Membership fees also vary wildly, depending on how sizeable and elaborate their parties and parade are. Each krewe hosts their own parade, decides their own theme, pays for everything associated with having a parade, from floats to costumes to throws. It’s my understanding that the only way to be in a Mardi Gras parade is to be a member of a krewe. Me? I want to roll with the Krewe of Barkus, mainly to be part of a dog gang and have a solid excuse to think about puppy costumes all day long.

From the Mistick Krewe of Comus parade bulletin of 1891–their parade theme was Demonology and all their floats were badass, with badass names. Hobgoblins of Fear, Vampires of War, and the one my friends and I would’ve ridden on, the Harpies of Remorse.

A mardi gras costume design sketch. I think a bunch of these would make a rad coloring book.

The average amount of parade throws for one person on one float.

Mardi Gras parades are the public celebrations for all to enjoy. Mardi Gras balls are highly exclusive social events, with elaborate invitations, fancy favors bestowed at the end of each dance by krewe members (some of which are so large and ungainly that they’re later mailed to the recipient’s home), a king and queen complete with crowns, wands, and jewelry so bedazzled they’d make Miss America weep with envy, and a strictly formal dress code. Such a thing would never fly in Seattle, where utilikilts are considered semi-formal. What I’m saying is, I am both super bummed that I have never been invited to a party like this and at the same time, I completely understand why no one with taste would ever invite me to a party like this.

If you give me a piece of gilded china as an invitation to your party, you can be guaranteed of my attendance. I could be having dinner with the President that day and I’d be like “sorry, bro, can we reschedule? I’ve got a truly baller party to attend.” Once I told him about the china invitation, he’d understand.

Literally no reason to post this other than the name “The Gifts of Satan” makes me laugh every time I read it.

Thank you for the pleasure of this dance, here is an elaborate jeweled pin as a lovely parting gift.

Also no reason to post these bathrooms other than they made me laugh.

New Orleans is a city that has known adversity and finds a way to party anyway, to celebrate life in a big way, to see a period of fasting ahead and say “fuck it, we’re going to eat and drink and party until we can hold no more”, a city that rolls with the punches and comes back bigger, stronger, and more vibrant. They’re still coming back from this last punch. But they are coming back.