two days before the country made its hard right Tuesday Linda made ours onto US 89

to venture north towards Sunday’s weathers and

wildernesses,

crossing the Colorado at Marble Canyon [where one can make the turn for Lee’s Ferry,

lonely home to Emma] to blow past Lee’s Ferry Lodge and Cliff Dwellers in splats of rain,

circumnavigate the Vermillion Cliffs until I took over

to take us up to Jacob Lake and down to Fredonia, northernmost town in the state,

and out across the Strip, briefly pausing at

Pipe Spring National Monument so as to avoid stopping in either of the radical [some say

formerly radical] Mormon enclaves of Colorado City/Hildale at the border no no.

We eventually dropped into Hurricane, caught I-15 up to Cedar City’s last exit for gas and then Linda drove out 130, a northwesterly two lane, finding a likely if windy lunch spot between there

and Minersville Town whereat it terminated at 21 to take us over to Milford

where it became rebranded as the “Ely Highway” for the seventy-five spectacularly unpopulated

miles with much entertaining weather all the way to Garrison at the border

at which point, Nevada, the aka Ely Highway magically became 487 up through Baker to 50 as a most eventfully beautiful afternoon wound down…Linda continued as far as

the Sacramento Pass Rest Area where it lightly coldly snowed on the dogs, I drove into Ely for last gas and in 5:30 dark [daylight savings having just ended] through the occasional psychedelically semi-blinding snow flurry to Eureka’s Owl Club [“Do Not Feed Drugs to the Whores”] where a copious house salad and generously poured merlot were most welcome

…as was the quiet pet-friendly largish room at the Surestay down the street even though annoyingly all we could get on the TV was “Seinfeld”.

Monday morning, a cold 29 degrees and our last on the road, we were early out of town

but pulled off soon after to feed the Inkies breakfast [not us – too chill] at Roberts Creek Road

before seriously heading west with coffee, tea and bananas from Kayenta all the

way past Cold Springs

for a small stop [and the Surestay’s breakfast bagel] at one of the Pony Express sites

whereafter Linda drove on through Fallon but, feeling poorly by Fernley [the previous two

eleven hour days on top of the Teeth taking their toll] gave it up, barely making it through grocery shopping…I took over for the last lap; 447 to the Post Office and County Shop in Gerlach seeking [and finding] Willey Courtney who said he’d try to figure out something for our long-postponed sculpture install by the weekend*…then it was the water tank for leftover Kayenta

pasta [not for L.], on around the north end of the Smoke Creek to CR 34 [no longer called that]

and down to our gate, inside of which in absence of Sonny Seth

was madly working…1:30 or so p.m.

As Linda stumbled in to crash and Seth continued on his self-appointed rounds I, with one or two pauses, managed to unload all the crucial stuff within an hour or so.  Home at last…

*Ultimately he wasn’t able to; we postponed it all til “spring”.