Just so I do not forget the basic details: I drove to Pittsburgh and spent the next day driving back 300 miles to get a credit card I lost, then returning to Pittsburgh. The next day I chased the sun all day but he beat me over the horizon and I just kept driving from Pittsburgh to Columbus Ohio, then southwest to Cincinatti and Louisville Ky. I crossed the Mississippi at Cairo Illinois, turned sought through Missouri - where I started seeing cottonfields - and then Arkansas and Rt 40 West. I was getting tired and pulled over into a rest stop in western Arkansas. I slept OK in my car, peeing right out in the open late at night. The next day I did the same all day of driving, crossing OK, a bit of Texas, and most of New Mexico, till I got to Grants, where I spent the night in the parking lot of a Navajo Walmart. Next day got me all the way to my campsite.
At camp at Wamp Springs Trail (1/2 mile in) and plagued by much wind messing up my tarp. Spent two days walking around and sitting around waiting for dark. At night, the wind howled, flapped the tarp, and rocked the car. Knowing it would be impossible to sleep, I slept pretty well. I re-positioned the car and had less noise but not much less wind the next night. After two nights I upped camp and spent the morning at the glacial lake "hillocks" south of Coyote Spring. I found one broken base, not too diagnostic for me.
There is an extra little glacial lake there and I wanted to explore the north end, and took a dirt road, Sawmill Rd, east from 93 over to the broken-up land that I thought worth exploring. Well, that drive became hair-raising when the road was up on the top of the hillocks, winding past steep 20' gulllies with little road to spare and some foot-deep ruts in the road. After that little adventure, I drove back south to the access road to my little hill. Trying to setup camp with the car blocking the wind at the best angle, had me rearranging the pegs and guy ropes 3 times. But I got settled in, had coffee, had whiskey, had some corned beef hash with ketchup. I brought WAY more food than I had any intention of cooking. The next day, I explored the hill more carefully than usual, especially on the northeastern slope. Across from there, on the southwestern slope, I did find some slightly diamond-shaped bifaces. Two of them, at most 2 inches long.. These were as close as I got to realizing my dream of finding more Solutrean blades out there.
After a day at my little hill, I upped camp, drove down into Las Vegas, and spent the night at the same hotel I usually stay at: the Cannery on East Craig Rd. I was able to review my route back home but it did not really matter because I ended up sleeping at other rest stops that I could not have planned. I spent the first night west of Amarillo at a truck parking stop; with the most intense stink of cow manure that I have ever experienced. Even if I kind-of like the smell, I feel sorry for that part of Texas. From Amarillo, I just continued east, back past Oklahoma City, Fort Smith Arkansas, Little Rock Arkansas, north across the Mississippi at Cairo, and on to a rest stop at Beaver Dam Kentucky.
All the way along, going and coming back, I was plagued by not being able to charge my phone reliably. When I was camping, there was no signal, and I never did figure out a reliable charging strategy. Primarily because I needed that little extra white box for iPhone charging. The only thing that worked was running my laptop from the car and charging my phone from the laptop. I did not work well and I had become more and more reliant on Siri getting me to the right route. Turning Siri on and off to save battery, while trying to get through the mess of roads and hidden bridges in Cairo was no fun. I spent about an hour being lost and Siri rescured me at the end. So I got into Kentucky and on to that rest area. It poured very hard that night and I sat at the Beaver Dam rest area, really enjoying the coziness of my little bed setup in the back of my Rav4. But my computer stopped working and stopped charging the phone, so I barely got back to Pittsburgh with Siri's support. I will say that some of Siri's instructions are insane. She'll take you off a highway into a bunch of neighborhood streets and then back onto the same highway. I had to fight with her hard, to get south onto Rt 95 in CT. Before that, I got back to Pittsburgh and spent a nice visit with the Raatz-Vargas family. So it was 4 days driving out, and 4 days driving back. I ask myself: what was the point. I think there was one and did eventually shrug off the sense that my pain was appropriate to the guilt I felt. My car's "Maintenance Required" light came on - I changed the oil in Pittsburgh on the way out but it has been more than 5K miles of driving and was time to go again.
I was feeling pretty down when I got home but some food, shower, and sleeping in a familiar bed are helping get things back to something like normal. Then my new PC arrived and its like Christmas.
I'll tell you a poetic thought from the road: It is afternoon and you are driving past some red boulders in a field. Each boulder makes a dark shadow in the bright light. Then you see some shadows that are not attached to boulders - they are black cows - shadows without a source.
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