Day Fifty, Denver, CO: Water, Hops, Yeast, and Barley

AWESOME Day Fifty, which was Saturday, the 8th of August.

Boulder, CO has a lot of microbreweries, for some reason or another. It started with the clean, mountain-run-off water supply, and then it became a chicken and the egg scenario; as the beer culture became more and more prevalent, more microbreweries popped up.

So, on Saturday I visited three breweries; Avery, Oskar Blues, and Left Hand.

I really enjoyed the Avery brew tour. As the tour guide – who doubled as the tap room manager as well as one of the brewers – said, each of the brewers are “handpicked”. They’re smart, loud, and competitive people. Their beers reflect this personality. Like most of the Colorado-brewed beers, they’re very hoppy and bold. Very loud beers.

Next was the Oskar Blues Brewery. They can their beer there, and it’s kind of funny. They are great people, and they do have a full batting cage in the brewery. I tried to trade the two free beers that I had won by answering trivia questions for a few pitches in the cage, but they were not interested in this exchange. (For the record, the only reason I was trying to ditch the free beers is because, having to drive on my own, and on top of other samples… otherwise, you should never turn down a free beer, kids.) Oskar Blues cans their beers mainly because it is cheaper, the beer stays fresh longer (light and dissolved O2 stay out of the can,) and, as modern cans do not impart any taste to the beer, it tastes the same. Everybody wins. Oskar Blues was the first microbrewery to can their beer (Dale’s Pale Ale being the flagship,) seven years ago. According to the brewery, 50 other microbreweries have now picked up the trend.

Unfortunately by the time I got to Left Hand it was well beyond brew tour time, (after 5pm at least.) But I picked up a pint glass for the bar back home for my troubles and headed back to my uncle’s. (I end the trip with 7 new pint glasses to add to the collection).

Beer!

Day Forty Eight, Moab UT/Denver CO: Delicate Arch Hike

Day Forty Eight refers to Thursday, August 6th. Early in the morning, I woke up and hiked to Delicate Arch, which is the unofficial state symbol. I hiked early to avoid the crowds, the heat, and get better lighting for pictures. After I hiked to Delicate Arch, which was a total 3 mile hike, I set out on the 6  hour drive back to Denver, where I stayed with my Uncle Ben once more. I’ve got a bunch of great pictures from this one. Make sure to check the Picasa album, linked below, to see more pictures.

I’ve recently uploaded many more pictures on the Picasa albums at http://picasaweb.google.com/reidksmith. Check them out!

Day Forty Seven, Moab, UT: Arching

Day Forty Seven refers to Wednesday, August 5th, during which I drove from Salt Lake City to Moab, which is the gateway to Arches National Park. Arches is a relatively small park, so it was a quick drive through. Here are some pictures:

The reason I only spent one night in Southern Utah is because of the heat. Not only is it so incredibly hot during the day, but it stays pretty warm at night. I plan on coming back around April to see the rest of Southern Utah when it’s cooler.

I’ve recently uploaded many more pictures on the Picasa albums at http://picasaweb.google.com/reidksmith. Check them out!

Day Forty Five and Forty Six, Salt Lake City, UT: The Parks

Day Forty Five refers to Monday, August 3rd, which I spent touring the Browning Firearms Museum, the Utah State Railroad Museum, the Classic Car Museum, and the Hill Air Force Base Aviation Museum. This was good, cheap fun, costing me a grand total of $5, (at this point, I have been running low on funds for some time now).

Day Forty Six, Tuesday, was spent at the Fort Douglas Military Museum and in two of Salt Lake City’s Parks.

I want to focus now on my experience within the parks on Sunday and Tuesday, both internally – through the books I read – and externally, through what I saw. Salt Lake City, while it is (to me, at least) a generally wealthy city, is not without its share of transient homeless men and women. And they are disproportionally represented within the city parks. It is not the mere existence of this demographic that interests me; certainly I was previously aware of it. I had not, however, spent entire days observing the culture and engaging in conversations with its members prior to this experience. I had originally included in this post a (still growing) discourse of sorts on the society and culture that I observed within the homeless community, but as it grew larger and larger I realized it was unfit for this forum. (If, for some reason, anyone is interested in my humble thoughts on the subject, I’d be glad to supply them.)

I’ve done a lot of reading on this trip, and I had intended to talk about the books I’d read here. But as with many of the experiences I have had, there has simply not been enough time for me to write what I wanted to on the subject, which, at least for me, has been unfortunate. I have been keeping a bare-bones, shorthand journal and am hoping to expand it into something one might refer to as a book in the coming year. I can’t make any promises as to its quality or interest to anyone, however, but I thought I would let the idea out into the open and see what comes of it.

Of the several books I’ve read, The Iron Heel, by Jack London – which I read on Sunday – was one of the more interesting. It is an astonishingly whimsical novel of a future in which an entirely utopian communist state has come into existence and discovered a manuscript written 800 years prior – back in the early 1900s's – in which the rise of  The Oligarchy forcefully and remorselessly eliminates socialists. Despite the painful socialist rhetoric unleashed by London’s hero – his not-so-cleverly-disguised alter ego – against an array of straw man arguments, The Iron Heel still stands on it its own as an example of the results realized when idealism clashes with power.

This theme continues in Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. Machiavelli, in his how-to guide for princes, had not undertaken an entirely unique endeavor. Others had attempted to codify the rules of power that must be present in an effectively-ruled kingdom. Machiavelli, however, explained that these ideals were impracticable and could not maintain power. For example, generosity, while considered the ideal, would eventually lead to the prince’s bankruptcy and subsequent unfair taxation of his subjects, ultimately leading to his downfall. “Machiavellianism” has come to represent a pattern of dishonest and anti-social dealings with others. In The Prince, however, Machiavelli does not advocate brutal and anti-social tactics, merely those which are effective, if very occasionally duplicitous. Of course, many of his observations on society and government still hold true, especially if one modernizes them a little bit.

So I’m catching up on posts right now. It is currently Sunday, Day Fifty One, and I’m outside Ogallah, Kansas, once more – the same site that I stopped at on my way out, back in Day Thirteen. I am tracing the same path home as I took out here, and expect to make it back on Saturday, the 15th.

Day Forty Three and Forty Four, Salt Lake City, UT: A Place to Stay?

When I first reached Salt Lake City – Saturday, August 1st – I had hoped to find a nice place to stay through couchsurfing.com, which I have mentioned before. I had sent out a few emails on the road down (Friday) and was hoping to hear back by Saturday night. Interestingly, my primary reason for couchsurfing had changed; when I reached Jackson, WY, I felt as though I needed a place to stay. I longed to sleep inside, get a shower, and enjoy at least a few of the goods provided by a culture and society. This was after only eight days of camping; upon reaching Salt Lake City, I had been camping for 10 straight days and felt no such need to get indoors. My primary motivation, then, for finding someone to stay with was the desire to experience the city with an additional person. Throughout my trip I’ve made extensive use of local information; in fact, I think I have relied entirely on this verbal guidebook.

(Above is a view from the road up the mountains in which I camped.)

In any case, my couchsurfing attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. Having arrived at the city relatively late in the day on Saturday, I drove to the Great Salt Lake just to have a look before I headed up into the mountains to find a campsite. This was a little more difficult to do outside of a larger city than it is anywhere in Montana or Wyoming. But, nonetheless, I was able to find a spur to spend the night. I spent the majority of the next day – Sunday – simply reading in a park within the city. This was an interesting experience, as I’ll talk about in my next update, because I was able to see another aspect of life that I had previously been spared.

Day Forty Two, outside Ashton, ID: Travel Day

I'll include Day Forty Two – Friday, July 31st – simply for the sake of continuity. But I didn’t do anything this day other than wake up and drive, for a very long time. It’s about 10 hours from Glacier National Park to Salt Lake City so I had to split the drive up; I planned to stop about halfway there wherever I found a decent National Forest Access.

And thus ended another day. I had driven most of the day and so was pretty happy to get into my tent and go to bed.

Day Forty One, Glacier National Park, MT: On Canada

Sorry it’s been awhile since the last update. I’ve been too busy getting in my last bit of adventuring to write much.

Day Forty One brings us back to last Thursday, July 30th. Having hiked some 28 miles in the last three days, I had only 8 more to go. I was starting from just south of the Canadian border and would hike across that, emerging in the town of Waterton. From there, it is an 18 mile walk back to the border, so I would likely have to find a ride of some sort. I hadn’t really figured out this stage of the trip yet. (The picture is of me on Waterton Lake, along which the trail ran).

Again, there isn’t a whole lot to say about the hike. There was, surprisingly, no rain the night before; a welcome change. However, the dew on the plants was just as horrendous. As had been the case the previous day, I was soaked through before I had really started the hike. This leg was generally flat for the first several miles, until I reached the Canadian Border, (picture to your left). The Canadians, however, had a different take on the trail. Their version continued to wind up steep inclines and was actually fairly exhausting. It wasn’t until I got about a mile from the town that I started to run into anyone else; all day hikers who were just taking a short walk from the town.

Once you cross the border, Glacier National Park becomes Waterton Lakes National Park. Canada, apparently, does not take National Parks as seriously as the United States. In the U.S., parks are viewed as pristine, untouched wilderness. In Canada, it seems, the parks are typically regarded as we regard National Forests – as land set aside for any use. The town of Waterton did not seem to reside in a National Park.

When I finally exited the trail, a genuine grin spread over my face. I was faced with an interesting problem, as my GPS did not extend into Canada; I had no idea what direction to go next. While I was at the trailhead, even that was still a bit outside. I had already hiked 8.2 miles that day, but it was another mile before I reached a place to stop and eat in the town. I was hungry enough that I quickly devoured a 1/2lb Bacon Cheeseburger and a Grilled Cheese, (which I had gotten a strange craving for about two days into the hike.) It was now about noon and I had to find a way back to the States.

I had hoped that I would be able to hitchhike my way back to the border. When the backcountry ranger gave me my permit, she said that the people frequently did this trail. I’m not sure what the basis for this comment was; I was the only person I met on the trail who was taking that route. In any case, I soon found that the townspeople were not very interested in helping me, even with verbal directions. I finally stumbled across the Prince of Wales Hotel, an old Scottish-style hotel which doubled as a shuttle stop to the border, the cost of which was $10. I had hoped not to have to spend so much money for an 18-mile ride, but I think it was probably the best choice; I had already walked over a mile through the city, not seen much traffic, and certainly not met anyone willing to give me a ride to the border.

The one problem with this plan was that, because the shuttle didn’t take me into Canada, they couldn’t take me out. (I don’t understand this logic myself, to be honest.) So the driver dropped me off a mile from the border, from which point I hiked across. This experience was a lot like walking through a drive-thru at McDonalds. There is no “hiker access” to the country, just a road for normal people in cars. I got behind a line of cars and waited patiently in line before an officer told me to come on up.

I was asked what I brought into the country - “just a tent, a sleeping bag, and some clothes, I guess,” – what I was bringing into the US – “just what I brought in with me,” – and where my vehicle was parked – “down the road, in the parking lot,” – and waived across. I’d never been so relieved to find my car intact, and all my belongings still inside.

My first order of business was to shower, as it had been 8 nights since I had enjoyed one of those. (In fact, by the second night of the hike, I smelled to bad to get all the way into my sleeping bag. Tragic. I decided to spend the night at the same site that I had picked when I first arrived at Glacier that Saturday; an old semi-formal campground on the Indian Reservation outside the park. I spent some time looking at a map and deciding upon my next destination, which I determined would be Salt Lake City. After that, it was a big dinner and quickly to the tent, as the rain was already starting to come down – again.