I was on the last quarter mile of my sunrise trail run at Chimney Rock in Capitol Reef National Park and was cruising on the descent. I heard and saw two people coming up the trail, it was pretty windy so I only caught a few words at a time but I definitely heard “so I rolled up a bunch of toilet paper for you incase, you know.” The woman saw me coming down but the man did not because the sun was in his eyes. He finally saw me as he started talking about pooping, he looked up at me saying “you didn’t hear that.” I stopped to let them pass but told them “hey…we’re all out here doing it!” They both agreed and then we proceeded to have a nice sunrise chat about morning poops. This conversation following one of the best sunrises I’ve seen in my life was honestly the best start to a day. If any of you saw my instagram, this is the same day I devoured an entire pie and ate dinner next to a lizard. The actual best day. Oh and the day that I got to poop in some bushes without the overhwelming fear of someone watching me. I also did not have to poop in a bucket this day. Overall, a major win. And if I can figure out how to translate my pooping in the desert stories onto this blog I will definitely do that because it was a new experience for me.
My roadtrip was probably my favorite trip I’ve done right after Vietnam…so far. Many, many more to come. I had planned on using those few weeks off to go to Croatia and Slovenia and was obviously bummed when the pandemic took my plans in a different direction. However, I have to say I might be forever grateful. There is probably a zero percent chance that I would have ever taken 14 days to meander through Utah and every second of it was better than the last. Except Zion. If I never go to Zion again that is fine by me.
I won’t rehash the entire trip as it is impossible to explain the beauty, joy and happiness that I scooped up through that experience. I have a travel journal in which I plan out my adventures and then when I am on said adventures I use it to write down my thoughts. The thoughts from this trip were too huge for a journal so at each park I jotted down a few of my takeaways and I think that is what I will do here.
The community involved when on adventures like this is perhaps my favorite part. I was alone but I never felt alone. I met different people every day on the trails or en route to my next destination. The energy is palpable. Everyone is SO psyched to be out seeing these beautiful places with their people that talking with each other most likely resembles children on Christmas morning. I had walked through this narrow gorge and up to these water tanks (which turned out to have no water because it was so late in the season) and a group popped up not too long after I got up there and we all just started talking at the same time about how amazing the view was and how crazy it is to think that this much sand is so high up etc. I felt like I was in an adult playground for two weeks.
Each night I would roll into wherever I was camping just a bit before the sun went down. My first night in the desert I was nervous because I am a super light sleeper and I have never heard something so silent as these deserts and canyonlands. Turns out, by 8:45pm EVERY night it was completely silent. I realized that we are all out here doing it. Getting up before the sun to start a day of activity, return before sundown for a quick meal and hop into bed to repeat. Honestly the biggest nuisance to my sleep was the moon being too bright and I somehow always managed to position my car so that my bed was facing the moon’s trajectory. And if that is my biggest complaint, I’m sold. I was also nervous that by the end of 14 days I would despise living out of my car. Quite the opposite. I got back to Portland into my tiny home and couldn’t sleep the first night because I was inside, no moon, no open windows right in my face, no cozy, tiny nook of a bed. I miss it still! When I started travel nursing my favorite lesson I learned from it was how few belongings I actually need. Even just after two weeks of living out of my car, I realized how even FEWER belongings I actually need. It prompted me to go through the belongings. I do own and donate items I haven’t touched or no longer need. I can’t recommend this enough. If you want to feel free, own just enough things to fit into a car. A real release for the soul.
My mindframe entering into this little excursion was less than ideal. The smoke had been so bad in Portland that the air quality was literally the worst in the world for about a week straight. It was at this same time that I was so graciously being ghosted by a dude. I am usually active outside in some capacity on the daily and even more so if I am feeling sad, upset, anxious etc. So when I was feeling this way and could not go outside because of the smoke I just turned into a big old dumb mess. Having a major pity party, going down the super fun road of “what’s wrong with me that people can drop me like I’m nothing”, low self esteem, and just sort of a general break. My relationship life is becoming somewhat of a comedy at this point. But anyway, my trip forced me to sit with my feelings and turns out, I am pretty cool. I also discovered that I am actually very happy. I am also awesome. I’m unsure why these guys I choose to waste my time on have zero regard for other human’s feelings but I think I have to accept the fact that I will never know. I would never do any of the things these people have done so it is something my brain can in no way comprehend and that is what I have the hardest time with. It isn’t even that the relationships don’t work out it is trying to grasp the idea of dropping someone like they are of no value. So! In light of my happiness and my awesomeness I am going to try and shine on, like a crazy diamond. I think the fact that I solo travel and dirtbagged it for two weeks, trail ran a bunch, rock climbed, fished and hiked my way through 6 national parks and 1 national monument is pretty sweet. 🙂
Let’s revisit the pooping in the desert before I end this post with a list. So. Prior to my embarquement I was looking up BLM sites via the free camping platform. I was reading the review on one of the spots and someone mentioned “absolutely no waste here, pack out your own.” The only areas I have ever camped in have been forested and so everyone just goes off into the bushes/trees etc and goes for it or if you have to poop, dig a hole and then go for it. I looked up portable toilets as I was in a slight panic that I had no portable toilet and I was leaving in two days. Turns out, in pretty much every BLM site I had hoped to stay in was located in a “wash.” I had zero idea of what a wash area even meant so I had to google that. Perhaps most of you know this but incase, a wash is an area in the desert where if it rains this becomes a total flash flood zone and basically becomes a river. First of all, NERVOUS. So, excellent, if it were to rain in the middle of the night while I’m sleeping then it is goodnight forever. This also explained the portable pooping. If everyone staying on these lands did their business ON the land, when a rain comes sweet lord, imagine the massacre. I just pictured so many turds afloat this rushing rain water and ending up all piled…somewhere. Yikes. Unfortunately, I worked the following two days after discovering that I would need something to go to the bathroom in. I figured I could just stop at a sports store somewhere in Idaho or Utah before arriving in the desert. I did not do that. My mom, back in probably grad school or earlier, had bought me this cute little polka dotted basket to use as a garbage can for my car. That super cute little polka dot basket also serves well as a toilet. Now. The tricky part of this whole ordeal is that staying in the desert means there are basically zero trees, potentially quite a few sage brush depending on where you are but that is about it as far as coverage goes. One night I came screaming in to the top of this mesa where I had planned to camp for the night. There were about three or four other van lifers up there when I pulled in and I ended up in the middle. The area is huge so none of us were close to eachother however, it was a mesa – super flat, suuuuuuper barren. My bladder was ready to burst upon arrival. I hopped out realizing there was literally no where for me to hide. The van lifers at least had large enough vehicles to hide their buckets or had bathrooms inside. Here I am rolling up in my crosstrek with a polka dotted garbage can. I ended up somehow waiting until the sunset, and then the damn moon was so bright I might as well have just gone with the sun up. I also woke up in the morning before the sun rose (which I had planned to do anyway) to poop because there was no way I was letting any of these folks watch me poop into a polka dotted basket. And so it goes that this charade went on daily for most of my trip. In Bryce and Zion I ended up staying in a national forest and then up at a reservoir all of which were forested and not in wash zones and man, I have never been so happy for trees in my life. And that’s all I have to say about that. Oh. And the polka dotted basket lived a good life and I really sent it off with a bang but it is somewhere at a garbage dump entering into an afterlife. RIP.
I am going to conclude this post by transcribing word for word the few thoughts I had jotted down from each park.
- Arches
- the desert is an amazing place
- it is incomprehensible to fathom how the rock and land in southern Utah came to be. there are no words to describe how beautiful it is.
- i’ve considered never going back to Oregon multiple times per day so far on this trip.
- Capitol Reef
- whoever misses out on sunrise at Chimney Rock is an idiot. which is a lot of people because i was the only one at the top/on the trail.
- so beautiful it made me tear up
- people were so friendly here!
- the sun is a killer in the desert
- the colors and formations at this park…insane
- Bryce
- it’s 1730 and some animal is making loud noises somewhere behind me in Dixie Nat’l Forest – so if someone finds me dead i blame it on that animal- though there’s a 98% chance it’s a cow.
- i saw some instragram influencer and her husband out on some point in the canyon today. they’re everything that is wrong with the world and why you can only take social media with a grain of salt. she was legit frolicking, leaping in the air in a white dress while her husband ran after her and crawled (no joke) taking photos. their one or two year old son sat in their backpack carrier, facing away from them staring at a phone…
- chatted with a couple who work at the park. they live in an RV and work the national parks in the summer and live in florida in the winter. the conversation started with the husband coming up to me to talk about his sandwhich and tell me how good powder peanut butter is. i love this
- there’s a bee that won’t leave me alone
- i finally washed my feet…oh! i officially turned into a chaco trailrunner today!
- Zion
- this place is a ZOO! and has me on time constraints and a schedule. RUDE.
- I can’t catch any damn fish.
- i’m cold but too lazy to roll the windows up.
- i completed my “trail run in each national park” agenda today! i ran watchman’s trail to complete it!
- angel’s landing was not scary. i mean you are definitely dead if you misstep but it was not scary.
- there’s some neurotoxic bacteria in the virgin river. still did the narrows.
- the rocks and cliffs i saw at zion today, so huge, so sheer.
- i need to learn how to change a tire.
That’s all folks. Last words of wisdom. You haven’t lived until you have traveled solo (in some capacity) and feel what it is like to sit with yourself, to get to know your own soul and the depths of it and the joy that comes from it all.
That being said. I got back into town, showered and within two hours was at my friend’s house for a bbq and drinks because solo travel also makes you realize how important human contact and connection is and the value of having an excellent network of friends to come back to is not lost on me.