JULES STRUCK

Notes from the road for my blog followers (hi, dad!).

Why this, again? Great Plains-addict Ian Frazier wrote a beautiful essay about the allure of the open road for Outside: My Lifelong Addiction to Road Trips. Maybe I’m one of the “like-minded maniacs.”

California

Camped at the Salton Sea, which is surrounded by odd and beautiful rocks and bones. Read more of Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s “A Libertarian Walks into a Bear,” which is set in the deep, unruly woods of New Hampshire. He’s a great writer and an excellent journalist. Extremely thorough and very funny.

Drove from desert to mountains, from Ocotillo Wells SVRA to the Anza-Borrego State Park to Volcan Mountain County Preserve, which looks a lot like Switzerland. I emerged from the clouds and rolled right up to the Julian Pie Company. I mean, heaven.

Went to Encinitas and within two seconds of parking my car at the library met another road-tripper. It’s just that part of the country.

Backtracked a little to hike the el Cajon mountain trail, which is one of the most beautiful walks I’ve ever done. It was lovely to see how many jugs of water and snacks people had left along the trail for other hikers. And the mountain was full of female solo hikers that day (another hiker I chatted with had noticed as well) which is very cool. I have seen a ton of women on the trails this trip, which is awesome.

The lilacs are blooming right now (or maybe they’re blueblossoms — consulting a master gardener friend), and the bees were swarming the manzanita plants.

Went to San Diego to visit family and interviewed some bubbly young people for a social enterprise story for the Monitor. Drove out the next day through Joshua Tree National Park. Ali Martin wrote a really good story about the threatened trees for the Monitor a few months ago. Again, the national parks really leave visitors with the sense that nature is vast and untouched in these places — and there’s a lot of good in that. But the parks don’t exist in a bubble.

Arizona

Hung out in Tucson for a day and wrote up some notes. Caught The Wood Brothers at the Rialto Theatre. Went up to Phoenix for a few days to see friends.

Took beautiful Rt. 8 down to Yuma. More sand, more sun.

New Mexico

I didn’t stay too long in New Mexico, but I did hike the Alkali Trail in White Sands National Park. Never done anything quite like it. The trail is a series of red markers, and if you lose sight of one, you’re SOL. It’s pretty incredible that this place is in the middle of the U.S. I accidentally went into the very SNEAKY private gift shop next to the park-owned gift shop and dropped $8 on two postcards. Sigh.

Heard this “Field Trip” episode ages ago: WaPo with Lillian Cunningham. Interesting context on the missile range history.

I slept at a free campsite right next to the park on the shores of Holloman Lake (if you can call it a lake). It’s fed by treated wastewater from the Air Force, and it’s filled with PFAS dozens of times higher than the EPA recommends, according to AirForceTimes/AP. It’s a pit of hazardous water, basically, and the birds are guzzling this crap, reports KRQE. New Mexico’s AG wanted it closed in 2019, but it’s still there, and still disgusting. And it’s right next door to a beautiful, untouched (-ish, re: “Field Trip”) national park. It seems to me, increasingly, that our preserved spaces are always one tiny step away from intense environmental exploitation, both legally and geographically. What a weird feeling to drive out of one of the most stunning places in the world into miles and miles of pipeline construction and wastewater pits.

Texas

It’s been said, but this state and everything in it is huuuuuuuge. Drove through Houston and stopped at the Space Center, where Colonel Brian Duffy gave a presentation on how parts of the International Space Station were built. He was a pilot on an ISS mission (RIP the lost space tomatoes) and has gone into space three other times. Absolutely amazing.

NASA likely plans to retire the ISS by 2030 (it’s getting pretty old and starting to need a lot of fixes). They’ll sink it off the coast of New Zealand at Point Nemo, named after a submarine sailor in “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” Re: CNN, “Point Nemo is the point in the ocean that is farthest from land and has been a watery grave for many other spacecraft. … It’s estimated that space-faring nations such as the US, Russia, Japan and European countries have sunk more than 263 pieces of space debris there since 1971.“

NASA can’t afford to build another ISS while funding the Artemis moon mission, so they’re opening up those projects to private companies. Space capitalism, yay.

NASA Looks to Private Sector for Successor to the International Space Station

I have no particularly interesting thoughts about Houston, mostly because the city is not walkable so it’s hard get a feel for the place in a short amount of time. But I did go to the James Turrell skylight exhibit and watched the sun go down, which was very zen. The live oaks near Rice University are beautiful.

Another good road trip op: What It Means to See America in Person

Went down to Padre Island National Seashore and camped on the beach for a few days. The surf was full of washed up jellies and spindly-legged shorebirds. Had barbacoa with a couple of nice Texans. Saw a dolphin outside of Corpus Christi and almost fell straight off the seawall.

Drove up to Austin the next day and pulled into Aransas Pass for some food. I spotted the Butter Churn on the map and rolled up just to check it out. A retired firefighter and his wife saw my Massachusetts plates and started chatting with me in the parking lot, and they promised the food would be good. And wow, they were not kidding. It was classic buffet food (mac & cheese, chicken, okra, green beans, boiled carrots, etc.) and it was GOOD. I’m not the only who thinks so. No wonder the lunch room was the size of a warehouse. The people were very Texas friendly. And there were posters on the walls of oil and gas rigs with messages of thanks to the energy companies for shoring up the economy there.

Camped at Goose Island State Park and sadly did not see any American crocodiles. I did see a lot of pelicans, which are unrealistically big. And a majestic live oak, named “Big Tree.”

Austin was very cool and full of college students. I sat at a cafe near the university campus to do some work, and it was fun to watch the kids run into each other outside of class. The prevailing NUMTOT theory is that college is the best time of our lives because it’s one of the only times we live in walkable communities. I believe it.

Saw “Drive-Away Dolls” (or most of it; I missed the first 30 minutes) and was rolling around laughing at the main characters’ road trip antics. Some of it hit close to home. And guess the name of the bar in the movie – The Butter Churn.

Drove down to Big Bend and camped right outside the park. It was extremely quiet at night – there was no wind, no cars, no animals that I could hear. The sunrise was totally unimpeded by clouds so the sky lit up in a very clean, blue-pink gradient. I drove into the park very early the next day and hiked a few miles into Dog Canyon. The same day I drove north to the Permian Basin to speak to ranchers whose land is dotted with unused, unplugged oil wells. Some of them are leaking, some of them are on the verge of leaking, and no one’s responsible for plugging them. About one mile away, there’s a huge lake of spilled wastewater that’s threatening the local water supply.

Drove to the Guadalupe Mountains and dipped in and out of New Mexico and GMT. The scenery is very beautiful but very lonely. The red/orange mountain faces are pockmarked with caves. The only creatures around (that I could see) were the tiny lizards scrambling around on the rocks. How odd to be in this gorgeous, preserved natural area, and then to drive 10 minutes out of the park into a sea of oil wells and pipeline construction. The land for the part of the park I was in was donated by an oil prospector.

Stopped in El Paso for the best tacos of my life. Of course. Meanwhile, the Odysseus is transmitting photos, despite having landed on its side. Oh well, exploration isn’t perfect.

Louisiana

Ahhh, gorgeous, moody New Orleans. Who the hell comes here and doesn’t fall in love?

Anthony Bourdain loved this place. He wrote an article a while ago slamming critic Alan Richman for criticizing Creole cooking immediately post-Katrina. I can’t find the original (I think it’s in “The Nasty Bits”) but apparently the critics made up at a Richman roast.

Bourdain told WDSU: “There is no place like New Orleans. … There’s no explaining it, no describing it. You can’t compare it to anything.”

I arrived too late for Mardi Gras (still on the bucket list). Went bar-hopping on Frenchmen Street. Live bands, packed crowds in every single place. A not-insignificant part of me wishes I lived here, on this street.

Another cool cafe: Rue de la Course in East Carrollton. Also near Blue Cypress Books. I popped in JUST TO LOOK and dropped $50, easy. I’m no longer allowed to go into bookstores.

Stayed in a state park south of the city with “Don’t feed the alligators” signs everywhere. Saw another armadillo sniffing around in the underbrush. They’re beautiful to look at – their shell is segmented and incredibly flexible, more like chain mail than a shell. And, another weird example of why biodiversity it important for science:

“… The armadillo’s segmented osteoderms inspired researchers at Montreal’s McGill University to create a protective material out of glass plates segmented into hexagons and set atop a soft substrate. The material proved to be 70 percent more puncture-resistant than a continuous plate of the same thickness.” (Nat Geo)

Alabama

Camped overnight. Stayed at an RV park for the showers — not a huge fan of camping near RVs. The generators are pretty loud and honestly, the lone tent camper in the RV park (me) always seems creepy.

Drove through Magnolia Springs, which is full of gorgeous, blooming magnolia trees (didn’t take any pics, whoops). South Alabama Land Trust is working on some interesting projects in nearby Weeks Bay to mitigate the effects of coastal flooding, like putting up oyster barriers.

Stopped at a The Coffee Loft in Fairhope. I’ve seen articles cropping up about how all cafes are starting to look the same. I dunno. Leave the city!

Florida

Starting in Miami, because my car broke down periodically along the East coast. I’m hoping it’s done with its tantrums. Stayed with some friends who moved from New England down to Miami a few years ago to teach French and history. They work at private schools, but the restrictions about what they can and can’t teach are slowly creeping in. Scary.

Ft. Lauderdale is sunny and full of money. The beaches were beautiful (and full of Portuguese Man o’ War jellyfish). The plants have leaves the size of plates. It was nice to stroll along the boulevard with the retirees.

Headed up to Gainesville to interview a pair of entomologists at the University of Florida. Their offices in the museum of natural history have glass walls so that the kids who walk by can watch them work. Very cool. They have a million projects going on, including coordinating with local brewers to make a line of beers using yeast from the threatened or endangered insects they work with.

Camped in the swamp. Saw an armadillo and woke up to a gang of raccoons surrounding my tent one night. I was camped out under a fruit tree that they liked, I think (hope).