Slashing coping and camping with Jenki & Will.
Road Trip
New Brunswick, NJ – San Diego, CA
July-August 2020
July 28, 2020
Jenki arrived in Newark in the morning. I picked him up around 7:00am. It was a hot and muggy morning even by then. The world was tinted yellow by my shades and Jazz was playing on the radio. It was very East Coast. Although there was a lot to do before heading out the next day, we decided to skate a little. We first checked out Shorty’s, the DIY park in Newark. It had grown a lot since the last time we were there about two years ago. They had built a section with steep 6-foot-plus ramps. It was fun, but we were both really tired because it was still early. After that, we drove back to New Brunswick. Since everything at Rutgers has been closed down due to the pandemic, I had been skating around campus and had found some fun spots. I took Jenki on my route around College Avenue campus. By now it was hot. Jenki hadn’t acclimatized yet to the heat and humidity, and it showed. We skated the black ledges for a few minutes, then went towards the basketball courts where someone had built a little spot. There were really steep wallride banks along the walls of the courts and there was a spot with a little concrete at the bottom to help you get up it. I did a rock and roll and Jenki backside grinded it. It was so hot that we didn’t skate for very long. I was preoccupied by the amount of packing and skating left to do, so we pushed on. We rode into the concrete bank off of the nearby stage, then skated the little brick bank. I did a noseblunt stall first try. Next, we skated into campus a little more. I tried a noseslide on the down ledges outside of some apartments then we hit the barrier. We skated over to the weird wallride things in the little tunnel. It felt really good to get into the shade. We skated past a few more ledges then called it a day and went back to pack. The rest of the day was an absolute doozy. Jenki fell asleep in my room like five times and the AC in my house happened to be busted during this particularly hot day. It was rough. I didn’t pack enough prior to Jenki’s arrival but we persevered and managed to pack everything up.
July 29, 2020
After a breakfast, and a frantic cleaning of the house while Jenki showered, we were off. Oh, we stopped at Fred and Denis’ place to drop some stuff off first. We barged west on the first day of driving; we blasted through New Jersey, plowed through Pennsylvania and made it most of the way through Ohio. It was a nice drive, despite the adrenaline that was still pumping through me from packing and preparing for the journey the day before. It was the nicest day I have ever driven through PA. Lots of trees and bright blue skies (it is usually drab and overcast). Me and Jenki talked about politics, the new wave of social justice advocacy, the nature of censorship and racism (but he doesn’t remember any of this). We basically just drove all day. We had to make good progress so we could pick up Shaun at 1:00pm the next day in Chicago. Unfortunately, there was only one campsite in the right place for us in Perrysburg, Ohio. We arrived right when the sun was going down. It was a nice place—a lot of people walking, taking photos and flying a drone. We skipped rocks on the river and we watched the sunset go down over it. It turned out that the campsite was flooded a few years ago and was permanently closed down. We could have driven a hundred more miles to the next campsite, or just get a motel, so we got the motel. It was only about 60 dollars. We got burgers and watched the news in the room. The room was actually gross. There was no one else staying at the motel but for some reason they put us on the second floor in a room that was not cleaned very well. There was a used bar of soap and a bunch of little hairs in the shower. It was an easy transition into the road trip at least.
After a breakfast, and a frantic cleaning of the house while Jenki showered, we were off. Oh, we stopped at Fred and Denis’ place to drop some stuff off first. We barged west on the first day of driving; we blasted through New Jersey, plowed through Pennsylvania and made it most of the way through Ohio. It was a nice drive, despite the adrenaline that was still pumping through me from packing and preparing for the journey the day before. It was the nicest day I have ever driven through PA. Lots of trees and bright blue skies (it is usually drab and overcast). Me and Jenki talked about politics, the new wave of social justice advocacy, the nature of censorship and racism (but he doesn’t remember any of this). We basically just drove all day. We had to make good progress so we could pick up Shaun at 1:00pm the next day in Chicago. Unfortunately, there was only one campsite in the right place for us in Perrysburg, Ohio. We arrived right when the sun was going down. It was a nice place—a lot of people walking, taking photos and flying a drone. We skipped rocks on the river and we watched the sunset go down over it. It turned out that the campsite was flooded a few years ago and was permanently closed down. We could have driven a hundred more miles to the next campsite, or just get a motel, so we got the motel. It was only about 60 dollars. We got burgers and watched the news in the room. The room was actually gross. There was no one else staying at the motel but for some reason they put us on the second floor in a room that was not cleaned very well. There was a used bar of soap and a bunch of little hairs in the shower. It was an easy transition into the road trip at least.
July 30, 2020
We had a slow start getting out of the motel partly because we had to repack things to accommodate Shaun. We built a wall of crap in the backseat, then we were off. By the time we got to Illinois, he called us to say his flight got in early. We hit a little traffic—unsurprisingly—around Chicago but we got him without too much trouble. The next stop was Iowa to see some old friends so we only needed to make a little bit of headway before calling it a day. We decided to check out a little skatepark in Villa Park, Illinois. Jenki said it was one of the earliest Evergreen parks. It was pretty fun, but I think we all weren’t used to skating much at that point. Shaun tried a frontside rock and roll on a little bank to bank thing but never got it. I did a little back tail on a steep quarterpipe that Jenki shot a picture of, but besides that, not a lot of tricks were done. The bowl section would have been a lot of fun though. There was a nice bank wall about 6 feet tall that you could launch into. There was a goofy kid eating nasty pizzas and a guy who was from OB. He was apparently just visiting family for the summer. After skating, we pushed on through Illinois. We made it into western Illinois and found a nice campsite at Hennepin Canal. We had to drive about 30 minutes through backcountry roads through the cornfields. I thought it was really pretty – the rolling green hills of corn and the sun setting behind them. Saw a lot of farmers in overalls. The campsite was dispersed camping along a beautiful little creek. There was only a couple camping there, but we found a site well away from them. We had a nice little fire and played some music on Jenki’s speaker.
July 31, 2020
From the campsite we headed to Des Moines where we met up with Adam. He met us by the river and we skated over to where they are building a massive skatepark. It is about 15 years in the making. It is being built be California Skateparks, or something like that. There was a crazy low handrail that I tried dropping into a few times. I almost fell on the rail so I called it and we pushed on. We went to a little skatepark just a few miles away. Shaun was charging it and got some good frontside grinds before falling on his knee. Adam gave us like 3gs of weed and took some photos. Then we headed out towards South Dakota. We ended up at a cool campsite called Botna Bend Campground near the small town of Hancock, Iowa. Some guy tried to buy our site by the river but we didn’t let that happen. Shaun was a dick to him. There were tons of birds at this site. I heard some peewees and was blown away by all the woodpeckers and birds that I couldn’t identify.
We had a slow start getting out of the motel partly because we had to repack things to accommodate Shaun. We built a wall of crap in the backseat, then we were off. By the time we got to Illinois, he called us to say his flight got in early. We hit a little traffic—unsurprisingly—around Chicago but we got him without too much trouble. The next stop was Iowa to see some old friends so we only needed to make a little bit of headway before calling it a day. We decided to check out a little skatepark in Villa Park, Illinois. Jenki said it was one of the earliest Evergreen parks. It was pretty fun, but I think we all weren’t used to skating much at that point. Shaun tried a frontside rock and roll on a little bank to bank thing but never got it. I did a little back tail on a steep quarterpipe that Jenki shot a picture of, but besides that, not a lot of tricks were done. The bowl section would have been a lot of fun though. There was a nice bank wall about 6 feet tall that you could launch into. There was a goofy kid eating nasty pizzas and a guy who was from OB. He was apparently just visiting family for the summer. After skating, we pushed on through Illinois. We made it into western Illinois and found a nice campsite at Hennepin Canal. We had to drive about 30 minutes through backcountry roads through the cornfields. I thought it was really pretty – the rolling green hills of corn and the sun setting behind them. Saw a lot of farmers in overalls. The campsite was dispersed camping along a beautiful little creek. There was only a couple camping there, but we found a site well away from them. We had a nice little fire and played some music on Jenki’s speaker.
July 31, 2020
From the campsite we headed to Des Moines where we met up with Adam. He met us by the river and we skated over to where they are building a massive skatepark. It is about 15 years in the making. It is being built be California Skateparks, or something like that. There was a crazy low handrail that I tried dropping into a few times. I almost fell on the rail so I called it and we pushed on. We went to a little skatepark just a few miles away. Shaun was charging it and got some good frontside grinds before falling on his knee. Adam gave us like 3gs of weed and took some photos. Then we headed out towards South Dakota. We ended up at a cool campsite called Botna Bend Campground near the small town of Hancock, Iowa. Some guy tried to buy our site by the river but we didn’t let that happen. Shaun was a dick to him. There were tons of birds at this site. I heard some peewees and was blown away by all the woodpeckers and birds that I couldn’t identify.
August 1, 2020
I started the day with a long walk to the shower. It passed by a lot of nice meadows and wildflowers. We took off towards South Dakota but stopped at Stone State Park near Sioux City to go on a little hike. Jenki rolled a 3-gram joint and Shaun tried to smoke it all but only got about halfway through. It was funny. From there we blasted through South Dakota to Badlands National Park. We stayed at Sage Creek Campgrounds, the same place I stayed with Mark and Marianne about 4 years ago. There were a lot of people, but it was still nice. The guy camped next to us got hit by a bison and his rental car was fucked.
August 2, 2020
We started by driving through Badlands and going on a little walk adjacent to the Fossil Trail. We took a lot of pictures and excavated a “fossil”. After looking at it more, I think it was just a rock, but who knows… We pushed on and took a detour through the Black Hills. It turned out to put us back a few hours because of road closures but it was worth it. We found a place selling brats and burgers where there were a ton of bikers heading to Sturgis, as well as locals drinking. It was a lot like 4 years ago when I was driving through South Dakota. We got to Wyoming and I pulled over to look for a grocery store. There happened to be an empty fountain with a cowboy statue in it near Buffalo. There were about 3 foot walls that had slight trannies up to them. Me and Jenki got some grinds and I wallied out of it. It was really fun and really hot. Then we went to the grocery store. There were a lot of cowboys there. As we were packing up the car some kid saw our boards and asked Jenki if he could kickflip. Obviously, he didn’t land it, but the kid showed him how it was done. Jenki asked him if there was a skatepark in town and the kid informed us that there was one only about a mile away. It was huge and gnarly, and clearly not skated much. There was an 11-foot bank wall in the bowl. There was also a fun little pocket with rock coping. Jenki did a sick frontside slash on it. After skating a little we made it to the Potts Landing campsite with a lake where we saw a really pretty sunset and a super moon that we took photos of. I had a nice Teton Brewery brown Ale.
August 3, 2020
We started the day with a refreshing swim in the lake. It was cold but felt really good. The water was super clear. You could see your feet even in chest-deep water. After the dip we pushed on to Montana. We stopped for gas at a town called Lodge Grass. It was completely run-down. Some people were chatting in the gas station about how cirrhosis has killed more people in the town that COVID-19. We decided to take a little tour. We passed multiple stop signs with “meth” written under “stop”. Pretty much every other home was boarded up. The town was trashed. There was graffiti everywhere. It was kind of shocking. We looked up the demographics later and found that it was about 90% Indian. Our next stop was our first Montana skatepark—the pink Evergreen park in Livingston. The park was pretty fun. There were some cool cowgirls that were skating and one of them was actually shredding. She left her cowboy boots on top of her car as she skated. Next stop was Bozeman. It was a hip little town where we admired the beautiful highland women. We got some good burgers and ate them at the skatepark that had a big gnarly bowl that was actually pretty mellow and easy to skate. The deep end was probably 10 feet deep with a 6-foot shallow. I got some grinds and almost died because my chucks were slippery. We went to a grocery store to pick up stuff for dinner and there was a storm that came and hailed on us as we left. The rain eased up and we then hit up the Belgrade skatepark, which was not too far away. It was small and kind of cool, but we literally got blown out. When we were at the skatepark the wind started blowing super hard. There was dust everywhere and we couldn’t even skate. The locals said it has never happened before. We booked it out of there and headed into a National Forest to camp (I don’t remember which one it was though. It couldn’t have been the bitterroot national forest because it was much before that). We explored and hiked around the hills and admired the scenery. It was nice to be in a forest. We got a chill site off the road and I slept in my hammock for the first time. It was pleasant, but it got pretty cold at night.
August 4, 2020
We started the day with a morning sesh at the Butte skatepark (Dreamland). It was pretty weird… Jenki liked it, and Shaun liked it moderately, but it was probably my least favorite skatepark. It had a massive bowl that was falling apart because of water draining into it from the grass hill above it. The park was fucked. I did manage to get a kickflip and tre flip up a euro gap though. We then left Butte for Missoula. There was a kid at the Missoula skatepark that talked to us a little. It turns out he was from California. The park was really big and me and Jenki skated the cradle a bit, but besides that it was just kind of hot and not that fun. Shaun didn’t even skate it. He just went to lay in the shade by the river that happened to be adjacent to the park. We noticed some kids that went to swim in the river then end up about a hundred yards down river. We went to try to find a bridge to jump off that the kid told us about but couldn’t find it, so we just decided to float down the river like the others. We went pretty far up stream and a pretty highland woman told us that from the riverbank that we were on, we could just cross over a little island to get to the spot where we could float down the river. It was treacherous getting across it. We floated through a spot that was kind of gnarly. It was really shallow with a lot of rocks. We just basically bumped our asses against the rocks as we floated until we got to the main part of the river that flowed more smoothly. It was fun and very refreshing. Next, we skated the green Evergreen park with an apple tree in Stevensville. It was fun and the park had a beautiful view of the mountains. There was a kid there who was pretty good. We called it a day and headed into the Bitterroot National Forest to find camping. We passed by a guy with a gun shooting stuff on the hillside. He didn’t wave back to me. We found an awesome site pretty far off the main road that had a creek right next to it. There were ammo shells littered across the site. I slept in the hammock again and got really cold in the morning. Shaun bleached his clothes and dried them over the fire the next morning.
August 5, 2020
In the morning we skated the blue Evergreen park in Hamilton, Montana. Crazy park… Shaun fell and hit his knee and was done with it. I really liked it and Jenki thought it was bonkers. We then went to our last Montana park – Darby, which was also an Evergreen park (the red one). It had a nice view of the mountains and was behind a rodeo. We shot some photos. It was a fun little park. From there we headed into Idaho. The mountains were massive. At one point we passed over 10,000 feet, I think. I thought I smelled gas in my car, which kind of freaked me out. Once we got over the mountains it was like the wild west. We checked out some campsites by a river, but Shaun wasn’t feeling it, so we left to go to a dispersed campsite on some BLM land at Morgan Creek, Idaho. The area was beautiful, and we saw a nice sunset. There were a ton of mosquitos though. We had to scrounge brush and cow pies to burn. The creek was a little underwhelming too. I thought the site was fine, but Shaun was super bummed on it. He slept in the car. We ended up getting a little bit of rain at night, but it was no big deal and our tents were even dry in the morning. There was a cool antique water pump to pump creek water.
August 6, 2020
From there we basically just blasted through Idaho. We stopped in Idaho Falls (Grindline) to skate the skatepark. It had a massive cradle and some big bowl sections. The best thing was a rock-coping quarter pipe. It was in a nice big public park and we had a picnic after skating a little. We ate turkey sandwiches and I also ate my smoked oysters. It was kind of gross. We made our way south past Salt Lake City and camped out around Nephi, about 1.5 hours south of Salt Lake City. We ate pizza and I spent my last night in the hammock.
August 7, 2020
I got up early and cooked bacon and eggs. I made coffee with creek water that had bugs in it. I noticed them floating around in the boiled water after I made my coffee. The evening before, Jenki bought a hatchet. We threw it at a tree a bunch. Shaun killed it and hit the tree times in a row. Jenki and I sucked, but we managed to hit the tree once. Next stop was Zion National Park. It turned out to be kind of a bust. It was really hot and the main road we wanted to drive up for a little hike was closed. We could have taken a shuttle but none of us wanted to do that. We drove through a tunnel a few times so Jenki could shoot some super 8. We were kind of bummed about how touristy it all was. I was being a crabby bitch so we just left after driving through the park. We found an awesome campsite a few miles away in the Dixie National Forest. We found a perfect site with a view but decided to look around a little more. When we got back, there was a van parked in our spot. We decided to wait it out, and the people who parked there came down from climbing on the rocks and left, thankfully. We almost decided to leave to camp out in the Valley of Fire in Nevada, about an hour away. Good thing we didn’t. Our site had beautiful red rocks to climb on that gave a great view. We took a bunch of pictures around sunset. There were bats flying around and some strange crazy big bug. After climbing on the rocks, we went for a swim in the creek. Someone had damned it up with rocks which made a little pool a few feet deep to soak in. It was awesome. The water was cold but refreshing. It was cool to be swimming in a creek in the high desert with bats flying around. That night, we ate some tortellini, listened to music, and looked at the stars. We had a bright moon most of the nights we camped on this trip, but luckily on this night, our last night of the trip, the moon was hidden, and we had clear skies. The stars were great. We saw the milky way, the big dipper, little dipper and the north star. I played around with the night sky app a little bit. Jenki slept outside on the ground and apparently slept better than most other nights.
August 8, 2020
We had about a 7-hour drive home from our camp site, so we just booked it out of there. As we were going south, we saw a crazy car accident. A burnt skeleton of a truck was on the northbound I-15. There was about 3 miles of traffic backed up behind it. Apparently, a trucker lost control on a bridge, the trailer fell off and caught fire. It dropped off the bridge and the truck caught fire itself. The guy managed to kick his way out of the cab and escape moments before the whole thing burst into flames. The only other stop we made on the drive was in Baker, California, because I needed some food. We drove through town and found an awesome pool at an empty motel. It had a 9-foot deep end, and good shallows. I battled a carve grind in the deep and a frontside grind in the shallow pocket, but it was too hot and I had to give up. Jenki also gave up on a backside grind in the shallow pocket. The temperature tower said it was 106 degrees while we were skating. We skated for maybe 30-40 minutes then got some overpriced Dairy Queen. We checked out another pool nearby, but it was trashed. I stopped around Zzyzx to take a photo of my dashboard. From there, Jenki drove us straight home through a bunch of traffic. We dropped off Shaun around 6:00pm at his place in North Park, San Diego, California, then me and Jenki went to his mom’s house in Lemon Grove. We stopped at Albertsons to get crackers to eat with the traditional meal of pineapple curry herring, which we ate on the trunk of my car with some cherry pie. And that’s it.
I started the day with a long walk to the shower. It passed by a lot of nice meadows and wildflowers. We took off towards South Dakota but stopped at Stone State Park near Sioux City to go on a little hike. Jenki rolled a 3-gram joint and Shaun tried to smoke it all but only got about halfway through. It was funny. From there we blasted through South Dakota to Badlands National Park. We stayed at Sage Creek Campgrounds, the same place I stayed with Mark and Marianne about 4 years ago. There were a lot of people, but it was still nice. The guy camped next to us got hit by a bison and his rental car was fucked.
August 2, 2020
We started by driving through Badlands and going on a little walk adjacent to the Fossil Trail. We took a lot of pictures and excavated a “fossil”. After looking at it more, I think it was just a rock, but who knows… We pushed on and took a detour through the Black Hills. It turned out to put us back a few hours because of road closures but it was worth it. We found a place selling brats and burgers where there were a ton of bikers heading to Sturgis, as well as locals drinking. It was a lot like 4 years ago when I was driving through South Dakota. We got to Wyoming and I pulled over to look for a grocery store. There happened to be an empty fountain with a cowboy statue in it near Buffalo. There were about 3 foot walls that had slight trannies up to them. Me and Jenki got some grinds and I wallied out of it. It was really fun and really hot. Then we went to the grocery store. There were a lot of cowboys there. As we were packing up the car some kid saw our boards and asked Jenki if he could kickflip. Obviously, he didn’t land it, but the kid showed him how it was done. Jenki asked him if there was a skatepark in town and the kid informed us that there was one only about a mile away. It was huge and gnarly, and clearly not skated much. There was an 11-foot bank wall in the bowl. There was also a fun little pocket with rock coping. Jenki did a sick frontside slash on it. After skating a little we made it to the Potts Landing campsite with a lake where we saw a really pretty sunset and a super moon that we took photos of. I had a nice Teton Brewery brown Ale.
August 3, 2020
We started the day with a refreshing swim in the lake. It was cold but felt really good. The water was super clear. You could see your feet even in chest-deep water. After the dip we pushed on to Montana. We stopped for gas at a town called Lodge Grass. It was completely run-down. Some people were chatting in the gas station about how cirrhosis has killed more people in the town that COVID-19. We decided to take a little tour. We passed multiple stop signs with “meth” written under “stop”. Pretty much every other home was boarded up. The town was trashed. There was graffiti everywhere. It was kind of shocking. We looked up the demographics later and found that it was about 90% Indian. Our next stop was our first Montana skatepark—the pink Evergreen park in Livingston. The park was pretty fun. There were some cool cowgirls that were skating and one of them was actually shredding. She left her cowboy boots on top of her car as she skated. Next stop was Bozeman. It was a hip little town where we admired the beautiful highland women. We got some good burgers and ate them at the skatepark that had a big gnarly bowl that was actually pretty mellow and easy to skate. The deep end was probably 10 feet deep with a 6-foot shallow. I got some grinds and almost died because my chucks were slippery. We went to a grocery store to pick up stuff for dinner and there was a storm that came and hailed on us as we left. The rain eased up and we then hit up the Belgrade skatepark, which was not too far away. It was small and kind of cool, but we literally got blown out. When we were at the skatepark the wind started blowing super hard. There was dust everywhere and we couldn’t even skate. The locals said it has never happened before. We booked it out of there and headed into a National Forest to camp (I don’t remember which one it was though. It couldn’t have been the bitterroot national forest because it was much before that). We explored and hiked around the hills and admired the scenery. It was nice to be in a forest. We got a chill site off the road and I slept in my hammock for the first time. It was pleasant, but it got pretty cold at night.
August 4, 2020
We started the day with a morning sesh at the Butte skatepark (Dreamland). It was pretty weird… Jenki liked it, and Shaun liked it moderately, but it was probably my least favorite skatepark. It had a massive bowl that was falling apart because of water draining into it from the grass hill above it. The park was fucked. I did manage to get a kickflip and tre flip up a euro gap though. We then left Butte for Missoula. There was a kid at the Missoula skatepark that talked to us a little. It turns out he was from California. The park was really big and me and Jenki skated the cradle a bit, but besides that it was just kind of hot and not that fun. Shaun didn’t even skate it. He just went to lay in the shade by the river that happened to be adjacent to the park. We noticed some kids that went to swim in the river then end up about a hundred yards down river. We went to try to find a bridge to jump off that the kid told us about but couldn’t find it, so we just decided to float down the river like the others. We went pretty far up stream and a pretty highland woman told us that from the riverbank that we were on, we could just cross over a little island to get to the spot where we could float down the river. It was treacherous getting across it. We floated through a spot that was kind of gnarly. It was really shallow with a lot of rocks. We just basically bumped our asses against the rocks as we floated until we got to the main part of the river that flowed more smoothly. It was fun and very refreshing. Next, we skated the green Evergreen park with an apple tree in Stevensville. It was fun and the park had a beautiful view of the mountains. There was a kid there who was pretty good. We called it a day and headed into the Bitterroot National Forest to find camping. We passed by a guy with a gun shooting stuff on the hillside. He didn’t wave back to me. We found an awesome site pretty far off the main road that had a creek right next to it. There were ammo shells littered across the site. I slept in the hammock again and got really cold in the morning. Shaun bleached his clothes and dried them over the fire the next morning.
August 5, 2020
In the morning we skated the blue Evergreen park in Hamilton, Montana. Crazy park… Shaun fell and hit his knee and was done with it. I really liked it and Jenki thought it was bonkers. We then went to our last Montana park – Darby, which was also an Evergreen park (the red one). It had a nice view of the mountains and was behind a rodeo. We shot some photos. It was a fun little park. From there we headed into Idaho. The mountains were massive. At one point we passed over 10,000 feet, I think. I thought I smelled gas in my car, which kind of freaked me out. Once we got over the mountains it was like the wild west. We checked out some campsites by a river, but Shaun wasn’t feeling it, so we left to go to a dispersed campsite on some BLM land at Morgan Creek, Idaho. The area was beautiful, and we saw a nice sunset. There were a ton of mosquitos though. We had to scrounge brush and cow pies to burn. The creek was a little underwhelming too. I thought the site was fine, but Shaun was super bummed on it. He slept in the car. We ended up getting a little bit of rain at night, but it was no big deal and our tents were even dry in the morning. There was a cool antique water pump to pump creek water.
August 6, 2020
From there we basically just blasted through Idaho. We stopped in Idaho Falls (Grindline) to skate the skatepark. It had a massive cradle and some big bowl sections. The best thing was a rock-coping quarter pipe. It was in a nice big public park and we had a picnic after skating a little. We ate turkey sandwiches and I also ate my smoked oysters. It was kind of gross. We made our way south past Salt Lake City and camped out around Nephi, about 1.5 hours south of Salt Lake City. We ate pizza and I spent my last night in the hammock.
August 7, 2020
I got up early and cooked bacon and eggs. I made coffee with creek water that had bugs in it. I noticed them floating around in the boiled water after I made my coffee. The evening before, Jenki bought a hatchet. We threw it at a tree a bunch. Shaun killed it and hit the tree times in a row. Jenki and I sucked, but we managed to hit the tree once. Next stop was Zion National Park. It turned out to be kind of a bust. It was really hot and the main road we wanted to drive up for a little hike was closed. We could have taken a shuttle but none of us wanted to do that. We drove through a tunnel a few times so Jenki could shoot some super 8. We were kind of bummed about how touristy it all was. I was being a crabby bitch so we just left after driving through the park. We found an awesome campsite a few miles away in the Dixie National Forest. We found a perfect site with a view but decided to look around a little more. When we got back, there was a van parked in our spot. We decided to wait it out, and the people who parked there came down from climbing on the rocks and left, thankfully. We almost decided to leave to camp out in the Valley of Fire in Nevada, about an hour away. Good thing we didn’t. Our site had beautiful red rocks to climb on that gave a great view. We took a bunch of pictures around sunset. There were bats flying around and some strange crazy big bug. After climbing on the rocks, we went for a swim in the creek. Someone had damned it up with rocks which made a little pool a few feet deep to soak in. It was awesome. The water was cold but refreshing. It was cool to be swimming in a creek in the high desert with bats flying around. That night, we ate some tortellini, listened to music, and looked at the stars. We had a bright moon most of the nights we camped on this trip, but luckily on this night, our last night of the trip, the moon was hidden, and we had clear skies. The stars were great. We saw the milky way, the big dipper, little dipper and the north star. I played around with the night sky app a little bit. Jenki slept outside on the ground and apparently slept better than most other nights.
August 8, 2020
We had about a 7-hour drive home from our camp site, so we just booked it out of there. As we were going south, we saw a crazy car accident. A burnt skeleton of a truck was on the northbound I-15. There was about 3 miles of traffic backed up behind it. Apparently, a trucker lost control on a bridge, the trailer fell off and caught fire. It dropped off the bridge and the truck caught fire itself. The guy managed to kick his way out of the cab and escape moments before the whole thing burst into flames. The only other stop we made on the drive was in Baker, California, because I needed some food. We drove through town and found an awesome pool at an empty motel. It had a 9-foot deep end, and good shallows. I battled a carve grind in the deep and a frontside grind in the shallow pocket, but it was too hot and I had to give up. Jenki also gave up on a backside grind in the shallow pocket. The temperature tower said it was 106 degrees while we were skating. We skated for maybe 30-40 minutes then got some overpriced Dairy Queen. We checked out another pool nearby, but it was trashed. I stopped around Zzyzx to take a photo of my dashboard. From there, Jenki drove us straight home through a bunch of traffic. We dropped off Shaun around 6:00pm at his place in North Park, San Diego, California, then me and Jenki went to his mom’s house in Lemon Grove. We stopped at Albertsons to get crackers to eat with the traditional meal of pineapple curry herring, which we ate on the trunk of my car with some cherry pie. And that’s it.
No comments:
Post a Comment