Don't Step on the Dirt

By Ryan Elson

There is the normal way to get to a wedding held three time zones away. And there’s the Ryan-Elson way. When his youngest sister announces she’s getting married in Indiana, Ryan, already unemployed, packs up his trusty car Clyde to make the journey. Never forgetting to tell the roadside cows his final destination, Ryan camps his way across the American West, stopping at national parks, monuments, memorials, tribal parks, and natural landmarks.

Making sure to purchase as many coffee mugs as possible for his girlfriend and relishing his time away from her two ornery cats, Ryan weathers a thunderstorm in South Dakota, encourages (and discourages) weary hikers in Zion National Park, discusses the finer points of parking and used bookstores in Arizona, tries to avoid stepping on the dirt in Utah, and takes note of the absurdities that abound across our vast country, both in reality, and in his mind. Chocked full of hilarious anecdotes and amusing historical tales, Don’t Step on the Dirt will change the way you take your next road trip.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan Elson
• Release date: Nov 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301735587

Ryan Elson

It's widely known that you have to be a little bit crazy in order to think you can make a living as an author. For this reason, it's a wonder that it took Ryan so long to get there in the first place. Ryan was born during one of the most brutally cold Januaries that Chicago has ever seen. Perhaps that should have been an indication that he was bound for great things. Okay, maybe not, but it is an interesting aside. It all started when Ryan was two years old. At that time, he loved nothing more than to take several large puzzles, mix the pieces from all of them together, and then set to work solving each one (well, he may have loved eating eggs more than puzzles). In elementary school, he wrote a self-illustrated children's book called "The Revenge of the Porcu," an epic (and slightly unusual) tale about how the passenger pigeon went extinct and the porcupine got its quills. A long dry period commenced during which Ryan graduated from high school and then Iowa State before starting down a typical career path (i.e., working until he died). Along the way, he picked up a love of camping, hiking, and prettymuch anything in the outdoors. His job as electrical engineer at a cement plant took him to California. But with the collapse of the economy came the closure of the plant, and Ryan had to find other work. He found employment with a defense contractor, where he worked for almost two years, even though he never enjoyed the job. One day, Ryan put in his two weeks notice with his boss. It was time to do something new. Reenter writing. After trying his hand at science fiction, Ryan decided that travel writing came more naturally to him. So when his youngest sister announced her engagement, Ryan planned a road trip which would become the basis for his first book, "Don't Step on the Dirt." Ryan currently lives in Nevada and has several books in progress in various genres.

Book preview

DON'T STEP ON THE DIRT

A Comedic Travelogue through America's National Parks

By Ryan Elson

Copyright 2012 Ryan Elson

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2 - California

Chapter 3 - Arizona

Chapter 4 - Utah

Chapter 5 - Colorado

Chapter 6 - Wyoming

Chapter 7 - South Dakota

Chapter 8 - Minnesota

Chapter 9 - Iowa

Chapter 10 - Illinois

Chapter 11 - Indiana

Chapter 12 - Afterword

About the Author

Free Sample Chapter

Footnotes

Bibliography

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Fishers, Indiana... Fishers, Indiana... Fishers, Indiana...

We had been telling the cows where we were headed for almost three weeks now, and as we got closer to our final destination, they were becoming steadily less interested. Not only had their interest declined, but it seemed to have done so exponentially. I hadn't previously been aware of the inverse square law of bovine interest, but I made a mental note to write up a paper and submit it to a reputable journal as soon as I made it home.

To be honest, I wasn’t even aware that roadside cows wanted to know where I was headed until last year. Although this may sound a bit racist (although speciesist may be a more appropriate word if I may coin a new term; one that we’ll certainly need if we ever meet an alien race), I never considered the cows along the highway to be anything more than milk-giving, meat-providing, cud-chewing, and methane-producing large mammals (the milk-giving or meat-providingness of the cow being largely dependent on the breed). I had always considered cows to be well-mannered; they don't talk back to you, they don't honk at you in traffic, they don't drink the last beer or eat the last slice of pizza. But I never considered they would have intellectual interests as well. On the whole, I would equate their temperaments with that of a strawberry sundae; deliciously relaxed.

Of course, this all changed when my girlfriend informed me the previous year that roadside cows do, in fact, want to know where the thousands of cars that drive by each day are headed. Since most cows never get to travel, it seems that they like to live vicariously through the road warriors that zip past their bit of pasture. And being supremely knowledgeable about geography, they don't even need to consult maps for the most obscure of towns. You could just as easily be headed for Chugwater, Wyoming as Chicago, Illinois and nary a bovine would ask you to point out your destination on a map.

We discussed this phenomenon at length and although neither one of us spoke cow, we felt safe in assuming that they were less and less excited as our destination became more and more humdrum and boring. Whereas a happy cow in California might be genuinely interested in a trip to Fishers, Indiana, or the neighboring towns of Noblesville or Carmel (pronounced like the candy and not the Californian city of the same name, in case you care to go back and reread this sentence with proper pronunciations), a cow from Indiana would be about as excited as a worm at the prospect of being up early.

We were on the last leg of our road trip to Indiana for my youngest sister's wedding. We would also be attending the wedding of her soon-to-be husband which, conveniently enough was being held at the same time and place. Of course, we hadn't just flown into Northwestern Indiana to road trip through the country’s 6th most tornado-prone state. Our road trip started three weeks ago when I departed from Santa Cruz, California and improved rather immensely when I picked up my girlfriend, Dondra, in Denver six days ago.

The idea for the road trip all started back in November of 2010 when Tom, the groom-to-be, proposed to Heather, the bride-to-be and future Mrs. Hagenberg. Although, without rather strict qualifiers, the start date of the trip, or anything for that matter, is highly debatable. Since I wasn't actually employed at the time of the proposal and didn't plan on having regular employment when the wedding took place, you could say that the start date for me was when I left my previous job, an act which would give me the time for the road trip. Or perhaps the circumstances which led me to that job in the first place would be more appropriate. In that case, we could say that my trip began at a career fair approximately seven years earlier when a recruiter for a cement company asked if I could snag him a beverage koozie from another company’s table (which I did), which led me to give him a resume, which led to a series of interviews, and a job offer, which I would ultimately accept, move to California, and get laid off when the economy tanked. And if we take it even farther, I only ended up at Iowa State due to another series of life happenings which I won't go into because we could continue down this road all day. But were we to do that, then you would be reading something more akin to a biography of a particularly handsome and likable chap whom you don't even know, which is probably not what you set out to do when you picked up this book (If it is, then I'm sorry to disappoint, but perhaps we can meet up for a beer sometime). For the rest of you who set out to read a hilariously tangent-filled book about a cross-country road trip, national parks, and the outdoors, in order not to pull a literary bait and switch on you, we'll define the start of the trip planning and subsequent road trip as the moment when the happy couple became the happily-engaged couple.

Needless to say, I wasn't actually present for the proposal either, taking voyeuristic pictures from a nearby bush for example, as my best friend’s brother was during his proposal (I'm looking at you, Mike). So it would probably be more accurate to say that it all started when I heard that they were getting married and they booked the venue. Waiting for the venue booking was critical because I had been pushing for a destination wedding and hoped that I would be flying somewhere exotic, say, anywhere but Indiana.

Not that there is anything wrong with Indiana, of course. It's an eminently agreeable state; full of fields of corn, soy beans, and cows; professional sporting teams; some great college and high school athletics; and a rather well-known race track, not to mention the world's largest children's museum. We even have several ski resorts in Indiana. It's true. The largest one offers one hundred skiable acres and 400 vertical feet. And no, I didn't leave out any digits in those statistics. Go ahead... Take a moment to regain your composure... It does seem a rather modest tract of land to house a ski resort, and I'll admit that if you like skinning up mountains and hucking yourself off of perfectly good cliffs, then skiing in Indiana may not be for you. Powder hounds and heli-skiers should probably also resist the urge to vacation on the glorious alpine slopes of Indiana. On the plus side, you'll probably never need an avalanche beacon. And best of all, you'll get very good at skiing on very bad snow. I should know. When we have icy conditions in the Sierras, those are the only days when I can bomb down the mountain and leave Dondra, an admitted speed junkie, in my dust (or ice crystals as it were). I have the great state of Indiana to thank for that.

And so I decided that I was going to take some time off from my normal routine of reading, planning for other business ventures, and trying not to sneeze at the cats with whom we rented a room and whom I was allergic to, in order to drive cross-country for a spring wedding in the great state of Indiana.

********************

Since the date for the wedding had been set, I used it as the starting point for our road trip. It would be held on Friday, May 13, 2011.

Yes, the wedding would be held on a Friday. Yes, the wedding was going to be on the 13th. A fear of Friday the 13th, a condition so common that we actually have a term for it, friggatriskaidekaphobia, would not be tolerated at this wedding.

An estimated seventeen to twenty-one million Americans suffer from this fear, a figure that equates to roughly five to seven percent of the population. That seems like an awful lot of people to be afraid of a particular day which doesn't even occur every month. Heck, it doesn't even occur every six months. On average, Friday the 13th occurs approximately every 212 days, or about every seven months. There are longer stretches of Friday the 13th-less bliss, however. Every once in a while, we can make it a whopping fourteen months between these dreaded days. However, sometimes we have to endure the scariness two months in a row when February happens to have a Friday the 13th in a non-leap year. In that case, the 13th of both February and March will fall on a Friday. Heaven help us if one of those days is also a full moon…

Since the 13th of any particular month will not fall on a Friday every year, our fear is really based on the day itself, how we were brought up, and our calendar conventions. There's nothing mystical about the point in our orbit when we flip days of the calendar from Thursday the 12th to Friday the 13th. In fact, our calendar conventions are the only way we can even determine when Friday the 13th will occur. In that way, the day differs from most of our other holidays or meaningful days. Any day that falls on the exact same day every year (i.e. Christmas, the 4th of July, your birthday, my birthday, etc...) will take place at the same point in the Earth's revolution around the sun. By carefully observing the positions of the stars, precession of the equinoxes, and accounting for the differences between our calendar and the actual time it takes us to orbit the sun, differences that we attempt to correct for through the addition of February 29th every four years, you could be certain when any day would occur.

Of course, most of us don't even know as much about leap years as we think we do. In school, you were probably taught that leap years occur every four years, and we add a day to the end of February. Were we still following the outdated Julian calendar, you could remain secure in that bit of knowledge. One extra day, February 29th, every four years. End of story. However, the average time for a trip around the sun is not exactly 365.25 days. Instead we travel around the sun approximately eleven minutes faster than that every year. As a result, all of these eleven minute blocks started adding up and eventually the Vernal Equinox, when nighttime and daytime are equal in the spring (assuming you're in the Northern hemisphere) started getting earlier and earlier. In fact, by the time Pope Gregory XIII instituted what would become our standard calendar in 1582, the Vernal Equinox was taking place on March 11th, not March 21st. We were off by ten whole days! Since the date for the celebration of Easter is based in part on the date of the Vernal Equinox, or a tabular approximation thereof, this affected when the holiday was held. By losing so many days, Easter had to be celebrated earlier and earlier, which was entirely unacceptable in the eyes of the church.

The new Gregorian calendar was established to ensure that the Vernal Equinox remained on (or around) March 21st and was soon adopted by several Catholic countries; Spain, Portugal, and Italy. The British Empire (and the future United States, which was not yet a free country) adopted the new calendar in 1752, but in order to bring the Vernal Equinox back in line, eleven days needed to be skipped. In 1752, in the United Kingdom, the American colonies, and all across the British Empire, Wednesday, September 2nd was followed by Thursday, September 14th. So the next time you're reading an Encyclopedia Brown mystery based on a 1752 artifact or document of some sort, just remember that September 3rd through September 13th never happened. Similarly, when the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, the new owners were on the Gregorian calendar while Russia was still using the Julian calendar. As a result, it was necessary to skip twelve days to bring Alaska into sync with the rest of the country. Since it was also decided that the International Date Line would be moved from Alaska's eastern border to its western border, the ingenious solution was to skip eleven days and repeat Friday. So in Alaska, Friday, October 6th, 1867, was followed by Friday, October 18th, 1867.

The Gregorian calendar keeps the Vernal Equinox situated on, or near, March 21st by skipping three leap years in every four-hundred-year period, which provides a far superior method for keeping dates. With respect to the mean tropical year, it’s accurate to about one day in 3300 years.

The bottom line is not to worry about losing a day somewhere along the line. We’ll all be dead and gone by the time that happens. In fact, by the time we lose a day under the Gregorian calendar, possibly around the year 4000 or so, it will be so disparate from the Julian calendar that any remaining Julian calendar devotees will be celebrating Thanksgiving while their Gregorian counterparts open presents on Christmas morning.

The agreed-upon dates to skip leap years, and thus keep ourselves from opening presents on Thanksgiving, are every year ending in '00 that is not evenly divisible by 400. So while we observed leap year in 2000, as per our normal experiences, we'll skip the coming leap years in 2100, 2200, and 2300. The last skipped leap year was in 1900 and since the average age at which a person starts remembering their life is three and a half years, even Besse Berry Cooper, born on the 26th of August, 1896, and verified as the oldest living person by the Gerontology Research Group in 2012, would likely not remember the last non-leap-year leap year.

It so happens that no one knows the true origin of our fear of Friday the 13th. For different reasons, the number thirteen is considered to be an unlucky number, and Friday is considered to be an unlucky day. The number twelve is considered to be an important and complete number in many religions, and thus the number thirteen is considered to be irregular and unlucky; twelve apostles, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve signs of the zodiac, the Norse god Odin had twelve sons, twelve Imams in Islam, twelve full lunar cycles in a year, and so on and so forth. In one calendar year there are always twelve full lunar cycles, but occasionally we have thirteen full moons in one calendar year. In the same way that the Julian calendar was problematic for the celebration of Easter, having an additional full moon was problematic for other church celebrations, which may be one reason that thirteen is considered an unlucky number. At the Last Supper, counting Jesus and the twelve apostles, there were thirteen people around the table; Loki is the thirteenth, uninvited, guest in a Norse myth when Balder is killed; there are thirteen witches in a Wiccan coven; on Friday, October 13, 1307, the Knights Templar were arrested by King Philip.

Of course, not all cultures find Friday the 13th to be an inauspicious wedding date. In Greece, Spain, and many Latin American countries, Tuesday the 13th is known as a day of bad luck. And in Italy, Friday the 17th is unlucky. So a wedding held on Friday the 13th in those countries would likely be taken in stride.

Regardless of anyone's misgivings about the date of the wedding, this meant we would have to be in town by Thursday, May 12th, 2011, in order to attend the rehearsal dinner and take advantage of the free food and drinks that accompanied the event. With Dondra currently attending graduate school, we didn't have the luxury of meandering across the country at our leisure. She was able to take a week off from her research, but that hardly left us time to cover the 2300-plus miles and see much of anything along the way. As a result, we decided that the best way to plan our trip was to see how far we could drive in a week while still leaving ourselves time to camp, hike, and play the tourist. It turned out that if we pushed it, we could start as far west as Denver. Since we didn't live in Denver, Dondra booked a flight for May 6th. And to make sure I was there to pick her up on time, I decided it was necessary to leave the Republic of Santa Cruz and set out for California on April 22nd. It was time to start packing.

Chapter 2 - California

It was the morning of April 22, 2011. I had just finished loading the last of my gear to get underway on my very own national park road trip. And I had a lot of gear. So much so, that in my 4-door sedan I would only be able to fit myself and one other person comfortably. Which happened to work out splendidly, as that was all I needed room for. I wouldn't be able to pick up any hitchhikers on the way, owing to lack of space, but there were enough hanging around Santa Cruz that I could play the good Samaritan and make up for it after my trip was over.

The reason for such an absurd amount of gear was due to the variety of things we would be doing, their locations, and the time of year. I would need summer clothes, winter clothes, hiking gear, civilized attire, climbing gear, camping gear for car camping, camping gear for backpacking, and even clothes for the wedding.

That is to say, I needed to bring clothes that I might possibly wear to the wedding if necessary. Or I might not. When the engagement was first announced, I thought that I might not have to bring wedding clothes at all. Not because I wasn't planning on going or because I was planning on going in my birthday suit, of course. No, initially I didn't know what the size of the wedding party would be and as a brother of the bride, there was an outside chance I would have to rent a tuxedo as part of the wedding party, and thus act as a groomsman for my sister's fiancée. Thankfully, the wedding party was small enough that I was not asked to be a groomsman. And when I declined my invitation to be an usher, I was saved from having to worry about the cost of renting a tuxedo. But it did require me to bring along clothes for the wedding. And yes, you read that correctly. I declined to be an usher in my sister's wedding. But before you vilify me, let me tell you that I was polite about it.

It's not that I wouldn't have done it for her if she insisted, since she is, after all, my sister, but it's just that I don't like being an usher. I've been an usher at a wedding before. I realize that it's meant to be an honor and it's a way for the groom to acknowledge friends and family who didn't quite make the cut as groomsmen, but do people really need that much help to their seats? I've seen the commercials and I know that anyone who needs physical help to their seats should be able to get a Hoveround at little or no cost to them, so that couldn't be the reason. And it's not as though there are assigned seats or the venues are so large that guests don't know where to go. In fact, by the time they encounter the ushers, they've already seen the venue and on which side they're expected to sit. If it's terribly unclear for some reason, signs could be displayed at the rear of the seating areas. Bride. Groom. Two signs that would save the ushers the cost of tuxedo rentals and afford them the luxury of enjoying the wedding and not working it. Plus, from a gift-giving standpoint, it could work out well for the married couple. I, for one, am more inclined to give a better (i.e. more expensive) gift if I don't have to shell out the money to rent a tuxedo.

So I had to pack wedding clothes. Unless I still had a suit at home that would fit. I called my mom, and we exchanged pleasantries before I got down to business.

Mom, do you know if I still have a suit there that I could wear to Heather's wedding? It would save me bringing one along on my trip.

Well, it's funny you should ask because your father and I just bought you a suit.

This was unexpected. You bought me a suit? I asked, more than a bit incredulous. Firstly, I didn't know if it would fit. And secondly, for my mom to buy me a suit without a reason, it must have been on an amazing sale. I'm not talking about a twenty percent off sale because suits are expensive, and my mom is on the frugal side. I'm thinking seventy-five percent off or more, and I wasn't sure what type of suit would be available in such a fire sale. My father and his groomsmen had worn baby blue tuxedos for my parents' wedding, so I felt justified in my worries.

Yes, well, we found a good deal at J.C. Penney, and we thought we'd get it for you since you're helping us with our generator project, my mother explained.

Ah, now it was starting to make sense. The fact that the suit was coming from J.C. Penney alleviated some of my trepidation since they sell quality clothing there, as everyone knows; I'm still wearing a belt that I purchased there over fifteen years ago. And after a recent thunderstorm, my parents' basement had flooded when the backup battery on their sump pump had completely drained before power could be restored. That was when my dad asked me to help him set up a transfer switch and subpanel so he could run a generator for their sump pumps during future power outages. The suit was my payment. I had never heard of an electrical contractor taking suits as legal tender, but I could imagine.

Excuse me sir, but we'd like to schedule a bit of residential electrical work to be done. What types of payment do you accept?

For payment, we accept Visa, MasterCard, check, money orders, and suits.

Suits, you say?

Oh my yes. We accept all kinds of suits; tuxedos, double-breasted, pinstriped, pastel-colored. You know, you can never have too many suits.

I see. So, then the suits we'll pay you... they're a sort of trade for services rendered?

Heavens, no! Suits are just as good as currency.

And does it matter if they fit you?

"Not at all. The suits are valuable because we want them, not because they fit us. They're just one method of payment that we've chosen to accept, not because they're actually worth anything, but because we've all decided they are."

So I had a suit at home. I didn't know whether it would fit yet, so I decided that I was still going to have to bring something to wear to the wedding. I decided on a brown corduroy vest and jacket with leather elbow patches that I had worn to several previous formal events. My main reason for the selection was because it was terribly fashionable. The other was because I didn't own anything else that I might wear to a wedding.

Now I could get down to business with regard to camping gear. Since I'd be mixing car camping and backpacking, one person and two, hot and cold weather, I just threw my whole Rubbermaid container of camping paraphernalia into the trunk. In addition, I'd thrown in two tents, two sleeping bags and pads, backpacking stove, dual burner propane stove, lantern, climbing gear (including bouldering pad), duffle bag, day pack, backpacking pack, cooler, camp chair, food, laptop, National Parks Pass, and clothing. I would be driving through southern California and Phoenix, so I needed shorts. I'd be camping at the Grand Canyon and in colder climes, so I'd need winter clothes and jackets. There might be snow, so I brought snow shoes. There might be time in Indiana to play games, so I brought Carcassonne, a tile-based board game we'd purchased the month before. I brought everything I thought I might need and then threw in a few extra items. Very unlike me, but I would be gone for over a month, and I had the space.

Normally, I wouldn't bring along something like a board game; in fact, I never had. But as my dad, brothers, friends, and I used to get together for a game of Risk and a few beers, I thought that, owing to the similarities between the two games, they might enjoy it. Even if they were only trying to conquer a small French town and not achieve world domination.

And of course, I had to bring a box that I could store all of the mugs in. And there were going to be a lot of mugs. My girlfriend started collecting mugs from all of the national parks in 2009, and I promised that I would buy her some from the more notable parks that I visited. Before I picked her up, I planned to visit Joshua Tree, Montezuma Castle National Monument, Petrified Forest, the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches, with a possibility of stopping in at Canyonlands. Eight parks, some bigger than others, and I was obligated to pick up at least five mugs.

After I picked her up, we were planning on buying another three or four mugs while taking in the sights at Rocky Mountain, Devils Tower, Mt. Rushmore, and the Badlands. We were even buying mugs as gifts, so we might be toting as many as fourteen to sixteen mugs around the country. All I had was an empty old shoe box which would never fit that many mugs, but I threw it in the car anyhow.

So it was that I headed out of Santa Cruz with a ton of camping and outdoor gear, clothing, a board game, and an empty box. I reset both of my trip odometers. I was going to use the first one to track my gas mileage as I usually do, and on this trip, I was planning to use the second one to keep track of my total trip mileage. My objective the first day was to stay with a college friend in Riverside, California, where I would be positioned to move on to Joshua Tree National Park the next morning.

I got onto Highway 1 and headed south. Actually, I headed east. On Highway 1 South. Since the highway hugs the ocean for the majority of its length, it must conform to the natural curves of the coastline, which are not terribly straight themselves. At times, you might travel north, east, south, or west, but overall you'll make progress in the desired direction. And it's much less confusing than if the highway changed it's name every time you entered a curve, which is more or less what I-465 does in Indianapolis. As you travel around the loop, you'll find yourself on I-465 North, East, South, and West, without ever exiting the freeway. And to make matters worse, any direction on the highway will have a counterpart on the opposite side of the city. So you might be traveling on I-465 North on either the east side of the city or the west side of the city. Of course, the benefit of all this craziness is that you really don't need to know where you're going, because if you just keep at it long enough you'll end up back where you started and you can try again.

I got off of Highway 1 and made my way to U.S. Route 101, the next bit of road on my trip. Although most of my long days in the car would consist of interstate driving, this was a road that sometimes acted like an interstate even though in reality, it was not. Whereas construction of the interstate system was authorized in 1956, U.S. Route 101 was actually one of the original U.S. Routes established thirty years earlier, the most famous of which was undoubtedly Route