This time Alix survives Craters of the Moon

This morning we smell like day-old smoke. Last night Alix made us tomato sandwiches for dinner, then opened small plastic containers of potato and macaroni salad bought at a fancy grocery store in Bozeman. We sat in the dark by the fire, a little cold nonetheless; the temperature had dropped down into the thirties.

We set off early again, and Alix barely stirred in her bed. She had closed the back curtains so I used the side mirrors to back out of our campsite.

I woke her a couple hours later to see Mesa Falls, a 114 foot cascade south of Yellowstone. We had earlier passed through West Yellowstone, the most touristy town in the western U.S.--dozens of motels and souvenir shops, gear stores and outfitters, helicopter rides, even an IMAX theater where one can have the Yellowstone "experience" before actually visiting the park. A visit that did not seem to me at all alluring, considering the hordes funneling into the adjacent park.

We walked down a trail to a catwalk perched above the brink of the wide falls. Mist floated up and enveloped us; the air smelled of crushed water. Alix said, "do I look like an idiot?" My down jacket, which she was wearing, was long enough to cover her skirt, making it appear as if she was wearing just leggings. No, I said, the outfit, along with her Robin Hood boots, made her look as if she was on a fashion shoot. She vogued briefly. "What about me?" I said. "This looks ok, doesn't it?" I gestured at the black long underwear I wore beneath my shorts, a look I considered hikerboy chic. She shook her head and grimaced. "No."

By lunch time we had reached the moderately large town of Idaho Falls, where we ate downtown at the Snakebite Restaurant. The mood and food was hipster bourgeoise, apparently a growing demographic in some parts of Idaho, having drifted down from Montana (on the other hand I just read a newspaper story about the growing "Open Carry" movement in these parts. Apparently it's not illegal to wear a gun on your hip, and, according to one interviewee, preferable on hot days to the shoulder holster; a sweaty gun pressing against the underarm can be unpleasant.)

After lunch we walked to two thrift stores, first the Idaho Youth Ranch, then Deseret Industries (the latter a Mormon concern). The Ranch was a bust, but at DI Alix found a a green pair of cowboy boots and a grey hoody appliqued with the single word "Mom." Still, she didn't like the place. When she was trying on the boots, a young man had sidled up and said, "those look great on you." That didn't sound too awful to me. "Yeah," Alix said, "but he held eye contact just a little too long. Like what am I going to say, 'thanks, let's go somehwere and make out'?"

From Idaho Falls we headed west on U.S. 20, out across a vast sagebrush flat, just south of snowy mountains rising up to our right. The sky was blue blue, dotted with puffy clouds, Simpsons' clouds Alix called them. But the temperature was only in the lower fifties and a fierce wind was blowing. At a lonely rest stop a weather station gauged the wind at thirty to forty miles per hour, with gusts to fifty. It was cold.

We passed through Arco, the first town in the U.S. powered by nuclear energy, and soon after stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument. We had visited the park together before, when Alix was eight; on a walk she had fallen and cut her hand badly on the sharp black lava rock. When I couldn't stop the bleeding we had to turn to a ranger at the nearby visitor's center. I'd wrestled her into temporary submission while he cleaned bits of black grit from the deep cut. On this day we went on a careful walk a short distance into a lava field. I took a picture of Alix holding up her hand to display her scar.

We continued westwards, from sagebrush into dry foothills, coming after a couple hours to the town of Mountain Home. We had decided to seek a motel, so Alix could do her hair and I could shave, prior to meeting relatives the next day. However, there was some difficulty about choosing a motel. Alix prefers something reassuringly familiar, such as Sleep Inn, while I am drawn to the older, independent and much cheaper sort of motel. Unfortunately, Alix associates this latter type with the Bates Motel and sordid crimes. "Too creepy" was her repeated assessment.

We thought to maybe please us both with a Super 8 or a Motel 6, but that meant driving another hour to Boise, which we did, and where we indeed found a room at a Motel 6. Later, though, after we'd eaten Taco Bell, and Alix had discovered she had no shampoo and conditioner, and nothing good was on television, and we had listened for several hours to loud Middle Eastern music coming from the room below, she said, "this was a mistake."

Motels do sing siren songs of hot water and HBO, but camping is actually more satisfying.