Notes from the Road: SW Oregon to SW Colorado edition

Also: Vaya con Dios Silver Bullet

🚙 Notes from the Road 🛻

Gem theatre, Pioche, Nevada. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

If you ever have the opportunity to take the flight from Denver to North Bend, Oregon, get a window seat. You will see where the Red Desert got its name, you will gawk at the cliff-ringed figure of Crater Lake, you will witness the rolling hills of western Oregon, and the quilted landscape formed by decades of clear-cutting.

When the pilot fails to stop or even slow at the coast, and jets out over the Pacific, you will imagine he has maybe fallen asleep at the wheel. You will look for expressions of concern from your fellow passengers: a mix of upper-middle-aged, upper-middle-class, fleece-vested male golfers — most of who sit up in the front of the cabin — and those whom can only be described as fitting a rural western Oregon stereotype, some mix of hippy and hick and State of Jeffersonian.

Then the plane suddenly banks, its wing perpendicular to the sea, and drops low enough to identify the model of cars on the ground, you will see the big lumber mills and the mountains of sawdust and will wonder whether the wing will catch on the steel trusses of the rail bridge crossing the entrance to Coos Bay.

***

I am here to visit my mother-in-law Hannah and pick up a car. After her husband Joe died this spring, she gifted me his 1997 Ford Ranger pickup. I will drive it to Durango as a sort of test: Is it worthy of succeeding the Silver Bullet? Not replacing it: Nothing will ever replace the trusty 1989 Nissan Sentra.

***

Rain on the windshield and the wipers are coated in what looks like moss and merely smear the water and blur the view and the frogbelly sky and steep forested hills seem to close in on me as I make my way up the Coquille River. It’s mid-morning but the light is dim and the claustrophobia of a desert boy takes hold and I yearn for open space and sky.

But another part of me wants to veer off the asphalt onto one of those loamy roads up an even narrow and darker valley and stop off at a little log cabin, climb out of the truck, and walk up to the door and open it and slide into the pages of Sometimes a Great Notion. I read the novel, by Ken Kesey, when I was a junior in high school, and even though I had never been to the Northwest it made a great impression on me. I wrote an essay about it for my favorite English teacher, and her reaction made me think I might become a writer someday.

Like my windshield wipers, the houses I pass appear to be moss-infested and moldering. Some have Trump signs. They probably believe he will make logging — and therefore western Oregon — great again. The hills will again hum with the buzz of chainsaws, the forests will be sheared, the vast mills will roar back to life, men with boots on will once again make an honest living for them and their families. And some writerly type will show up at one of the little family-run operations and fall in love with his brother’s wife and there will be a Sometimes a Great Notion remake.

False hope is a cruel thing.

***

In Medford I stop for gas and coffee and groceries and new windshield wipers. All of my camping gear is in Durango, but I don’t want to stay in hotels every night, so I also figure I’ll pick up a cheap sleeping bag and maybe a tent since the forecast calls for rain and snow. But at the Walmart, nearly all of the gear, really everything that costs more than about twenty bucks, is locked up in these cages or plexiglass cases. It feels wrong. I walk out without buying anything, a decision I will later rue.

***

Klamath country, where the river is newly free and salmon can swim inland without hindrance and the land and sky open up and forest gives way to straw-colored basalt-strewn hills. A hand-painted sign tells motorists on I-5 that without water there are no farms and without farms there is no food and no trucks and no anything. I suppose this has to do with the dams coming down, but maybe it’s just someone railing against aridity.

***

Yreka, California. JonathanP. Thompson photo.

In Yreka — pronounced Whyreeka — I take a run through downtown, which seems still to be in transition between the old economy and culture and the new, whatever that might be. It’s quiet on a Sunday afternoon, and I can’t tell if the businesses are just closed for the day, the season, or forever. A sign says there is an organic farmers market and one of the historic homes has a rainbow flag.

I continue up into the hills, where I come across the old City Cemetery, Est. 1854. It’s a lovely place, but seems as if no one has been buried here in decades. Maybe Yrekans have discovered immortality.

***

Some good friends from Durango are managing a rustic lodge in the eastern Sierras and it happens to be along my route, so I invite myself to stay for a couple of days. To get there, I leave I-5 and once again find myself rolling through forested country — much of which has burned in recent years — that I’ve written about but have rarely seen. One of the things I’ve written about is the county sheriffs — many of whom are “constitutional sheriffs” and openly disdainful of environmentalists and federal land management. I’m happy to be driving in an American truck with Oregon plates and wonder if I can pick up a “Citizen of the State of Jefferson” bumper sticker.

The highway is nearly empty save for logging trucks. It appears that they are servicing a large forest thinning operation, “managing” the forest in an effort to lessen the severity of wildfires, rather than clear cutting it. Yet judging by the loaded down trucks, some with rather girthy logs, it is also a logging operation.

Within an hour of reaching the lodge, which sits on the far shore of a lake surrounded by granite ridges, I become a laborer in our own little logging operation: Splitting big rounds from a fallen tree into firewood. It turns out I have arrived just as the work begins to shut down the lodge and its cabins for the season.

On Wednesday morning we awake to four inches of new, dense, “Sierra Cement” snow and I decide to join in the daily ritual of dunking in the lake. The snow so numbs my bare feet on the sprint from lodge to lake shore that jumping into the water is a relief.

***

On Reno’s fringe I pass by sprawling complexes of huge warehouse-looking buildings. At first I assume they are data centers, their interiors packed with rows of computer processing units manufacturing cyberspace. Then I notice that most of them are lined with docking bays for trucks. They may be distribution hubs, I suppose, receiving and sending out all the stuff in Walmart and from Amazon and all the rest.

Then I think: Maybe they really are data centers, manufacturing all that information and then packing it into trucks and sending it out to our computers and phones. Isn’t that how someone described the internet once?

***

Somewhere between Fallon and Austin I pull off of Highway 50 and wander aimlessly into the sagebrush, inhaling the pungent aroma as I go. I come across the remains of an old structure, thick walls made of dark, volcanic stone. Maybe it was one of those Pony Express stations, but seems older than that, much older.

NV Energy is hoping to put a major high-voltage transmission line through here, roughly following Hwy 50. It will move electrons from existing wind, solar, geothermal, and gas power plants to Reno, Las Vegas, and perhaps the California grid, improving reliability and providing “geographical smoothing” for intermittent renewables. But it will also open up all of the public land along its route to new solar and wind development to meet new data centers’ growing demand.

There is so much space out here. What’s the harm in devoting a relatively minuscule patch of it to the marvel of generating power directly from the sun? And yet, which patch is not too special to industrialize? Who decides which land is sacrificed for our incessant energy-hunger, and which land is “preserved” for the sage grouse or the pronghorn or future generations of humans seeking refuge from the clattering din of humanity and technology?

***

The Robinson Mine near Ely, Nevada. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

There aren’t many hardrock mining towns left in America — most have been transformed into resort or tourist towns, with mining relegated to museums and tchotchke stores. Ely, Nevada, has expanded its economy as well, but remains a working mining town, thanks to the huge Robinson open pit silver, gold, copper, and molybdenum mine nearby, which is owned by a Polish firm, KGHM. And it feels like a mining town, too, with its grit, the sprawling bright red sex complex at the entrance to the community, the big white trucks roaring around.

The price of gold and silver have soared since Trump took office, most likely because folks are worried about the state of the economy. And so, in an indirect way, Trump has brought a bit of new prosperity to Ely, I suppose.

***

East of Ely, juxtaposed against the rocky slopes of the Snake mountains, towering stark white wind turbines flap their long arms in the crisp autumn light. I can’t help but find it beautiful.

***

If you’re traveling in eastern Nevada, the old mining town of Pioche is worth a stop.

***

St. George swarms with motor vehicles. Tourists or residents or more likely a combination of both. It’s only as I pull over and begin searching for a hotel room that I realize it is the weekend in mid-October, which is the busy season in these parts. Reasonably priced places in the area are sold out, but there’s one hotel that’s under $150 and it gets good reviews, so I hold my nose and book it, only noticing after I’ve sent my payment through that it is located in Hildale, which sparks a moment of panic.

See, Hildale — along with its sister Colorado City, Arizona — is known as a stronghold of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an extreme branch of Mormonism whose members practice polygamy. I really don’t want to stay in any center of religious fanaticism.

But I’ve already paid for it, so on the 45 minute drive I spin myself a yarn of reassurance. Hildale is in a spectacular place very near Gooseberry Mesa, which has become a mountain biking Mecca. Maybe some outdoor adventure hipsters were passing through Hildale and saw an old motel for sale cheap and bought it to cater to the mountain bikers and Zion National Park tourists, and what I’d find would be a super cool, self-consciously retro lodging establishment that offers free cortados and craft beers and energy bars to its guests, and while checking in I could make a flirtatious quip about polygamy to the cute woman behind the desk.

It is a nice tale. It is also utterly false.

After driving several blocks away from the highway into the town’s residential neighborhoods, I come across a 15-foot-high brick wall topped with metal spikes. On one of the two openings in the wall is a sign with the name of the motel. As I drive into the small parking lot, where all of the other vehicles are large, black, SUVs, I notice the steel gate, also 15 feet tall, and also spiked, that could be slid shut, locking me into this fortress with no possible way to escape by vehicle or otherwise.

The woman behind the front desk is friendly enough, but she also seems a little taken aback at her newest guest, with his scruffy beard and long hair tied up in a man bun. I make no quips about polygamy or anything else.

The bedspreads and pillow cases in the room are dark purple and burgundy colored with gold paisley patterns on them. The refrigerator and microwave are in a large closet, that is otherwise empty except for white shelves. The list of possible wifi networks includes one called “Finicum,” which I presume to be named after LaVoy, or it could just be a relative of his. On the wall are photographs printed on canvas, one of which is of cows grazing on public lands, another is of an entrance to a ranch that has a giant metal cut-out of an assault rifle and a pistol and says PEACEMAKER. There is no coffee maker in the room.

At 6:45 the next morning, I flee, vowing never again to take a road trip without any camping gear.

Art on the wall of the Hildale hotel room where I stayed. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

It has become a ritual of mine to stop and take a gander at Glen Canyon Dam any time I’m passing through the area. This time, I was surprised to see a white stream of water shooting out of the river outlets, which usually are only used during flood simulations or when the reservoir is nearing capacity and more water must be released than can fit through the penstocks and turbines. After all, any water going through the outlets is water that’s not generating electricity, but could be.

River outlets at Glen Canyon Dam, 10/18/2025. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Thanks to the government shutdown, the visitors center was closed, so there was no one around to ask about it. I later learned that it was part of the cool mix flow operations aimed at disrupting non-native smallmouth bass from establishing themselves downstream of the dam. Back in the day, all water released from the dam was adequately cool, but as the lake levels drop, the water that goes through the penstocks (higher up in the dam) is warmer. The river outlet water comes from further below the surface, so is colder.

***

I’m hoping to happen through one of the many communities on the route while a No Kings protest is taking place, but I have no such luck. So instead, I protest in my own way, pulling off on a turnout next to the highway, putting on my running clothes, and heading up a sandy arroyo until I reach towering sandstone cliffs sculpted and smoothed and varnished by wind and water and I press my body against the cool stone, close my eyes, and listen to the silence.

P.S.

It is with bittersweetness that I announce the new vehicle passed the test, meaning the Ranger (I’m looking for a name for it, any suggestions considered) will become the Land Desk’s official vehicle. And I’m no two-car kinda guy, so that means that the Silver Bullet — which may or may not have a blown head gasket — is destined to transition into a new life. Maybe I’ll donate it to a public radio station or Habitat for Humanity, or maybe I’ll pass it on to a friend who needs a project. Someone suggested auctioning it off, while someone else thought I should just weld it to the bed of the truck. Again, I’m open to suggestions.