Well, that was nasty. My laptop died on April 24. I have a new one now, a month later, and our rendezvous with the Ozarks is that much closer.

Lake Mead, Nevada - 29 April, 2006

We've spent the last week on the shores of Lake Mead in the Nevada desert 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas. Pictures from this part of the trip are locked in the dead laptop.

An evening in Vegas is surreal. The sidewalks are lined with hustlers who hand out pictures of scantily-clad women offering $35 'specials', apparently 'massages'. There is the Eiffel tower, live volcanoes, Venetian gondolas and other wonders.

I learn to play doubles in tennis and discover that there is an intact B-29 on the bottom of Lake Mead. We rent a powerboat and drive it twelve miles up the Colorado river to the foot of the Hoover dam. The scenery along the river includes mountain goats.

The next door neighbour is an iron worker named Clay who drives in to Vegas every day to work on a new 82-story casino. He appears to possibly be a meth freak and talks rapidly, changing the subject frequently. He says that his casino will be the tallest building west of the Mississippi. He walks on the high steel girders.

Wendover, Nevada - 30 April, 2006

We drive 300 miles north though some of the most lonely country in America. Wendover is a tiny town on the Nevada/Utah border on the edge of the Great Salt Lake.

My brother works here as a dealer. He used to be a pit boss peering down though security cameras at the action. He is sensitive, like me, and I imagine he tired of breaking fingers and burying dishonest dealers in the desert.

Mrs Phred and I are immediately pulled over by a Wendover policeman who informs us that Nevada has a helmet law. He calls in my license and registration and lets me go with a warning. He seems faintly amused by meeting grandpa and grandma Phred on a cycle with Florida plates.

My brother works the graveyard shift, so I get up at 4 AM and wander though all the casinos looking for him. A Nevada casino at this time of day is populated by very strange people. You have to study the vacant stare of the slot users with neon glare reflecting from their faces. All the slots take bills now, but they have programmed in the sound of coins dropping.

Most customers here are Mormons from Utah who drive 110 miles over the salt lake to play. We go to the Bonneville Salt Flats in the afternoon and visit the old B-29 base where Paul Tibbits trained with the Enola Gay. There is an abandoned rail line called the Tokyo Trolley where they ran mock-ups of tanks and trucks for target practice.

Here are a few Nevada pictures.

Cape Blanco, Oregon - 6 May 2006

We drive though Nevada to Oregon and visit Crater Lake which still has 11 feet of snow. On the way we encounter herds of wild burros in the lonely desert.

Two days hiking in the giant redwood groves of California. They run to a diameter of 22 feet and a 360 foot height. The sequoia trees on the western side of the Cascade Mountains have diameters of up to 40 feet, but they are shorter than redwoods. One of the redwood groves is named the Amelia Earhart Grove. Crater Lake and Redwood photos are posted here.

The coast of Oregon is spectacular as we head north. I see a few late migrating whale spouts at dawn at Cape Blanco State park. Here is a collection of Oregon photographs.

On 9 September, 1942, a Japanese submarine surfaced 25 miles off Cape Blanco. A modified Japanese Zero was assembled in eight minutes and Warrant Officer Fujita departed with two 170-pound thermite bombs to set fire to the forests.

Unfortunately, the fire danger was low that day and the bombs fizzled. In 1962 Fujita returned to Oregon and presented a 400 year old family samurai sword to the City of Brookings as a traditional pledge of peace. Fujita visited again in 1992 and planted a redwood at the bomb site as an act of apology to the forest.

Coos Bay, Oregon - 10 May, 2006

Waiting for Fed-Ex to bring the new laptop today. Up at dawn to clean, oil and tighten the motorcycle chain. The beach is 75 yards away just over the sand dunes.

Then I see and hear a red helicopter... whump! whump!... it's making slow passes along the surf line. There are emergency vehicles on the wide sand beach and an overturned small boat washed up on the beach.
The same red helicopter was on the news for weeks after Katrina.

Yesterday I went fishing. The captain said the water was about 47 degrees F. The pounding cold surf breaks on the coast rocks and sand beaches with great force. I caught Black Rockfish and we ate one for dinner with a cold very good Oregon Riesling wine and fresh spinach.

The helicopter pauses and comes very low to the ocean. It kicks up a great circle of spray. They winch down a rescue diver. I'm a certified rescue diver myself. Once I saved a two-year old from drowning. She's 18 now, very lovely, a daughter of friends. College on a volleyball scholarship in the fall.

The diver swims in with his burden. There are three bodies on the beach now. The helicopter runs search patterns for two more hours. There is no one left to tell him how many were in the capsized boat. The unused life jackets float easily to shore.

The new laptop arrives at noon. It works for an hour and crashes hard with the blue screen of death.

Any day you wake up is truly a wonderful day. We are heading further up the coast. Hiking in the Washington Olympic National Park will be the turning point.

Pilgrimage To The Ozarks Archive

Phred

01.06.06 Front Page

Back Issue Page