How to Deal with Car Troubles on the Road

Not everything goes perfectly on the road. While we may set off for the idealized adventure of picturesque road tripping - from the sun on our backs to confidences around a campfire - sometimes the road gets bumpy in between. Such was our case on the beautiful morning we wound through the breakneck elevations of the Gila Mountains in southeast New Mexico. Our Truth or Consequences hot springs and camping high was quickly dashed as our car welcomed the new day with a terribly pessimistic grinding noise.

Nothing quite raises the haunches of worry like car troubles - especially when you are 2,200 miles away from home - but these are the chances we take when we road trip. This isn't my first bout of car troubles while on a car-reliant vacation, and I doubt it will be my last. But the important thing about facing the potential loss of time and money on the road is to 1. be prepared and to 2. stay calm. These two maxims have always helped me turn my travel frowns upside down.

1. Be prepared for car troubles

Duh, right? Hopefully we are all prepared for car troubles on the daily with a reliable car, an active subscription to AAA, and a savings buffer that can cover repair costs. But when you are miles away from home, it's also important to have the necessary supplies in your car to help you survive your location comfortably and the extra time to play the waiting game.

For example, the grinding noise in our car that morning intensified as we tried to take it over the Gila Mountains toward Silver City, where the promise of a "city-like atmosphere" would provide choices for auto repair. Up in the mountains, we found ourselves predictably without cell service on an isolated stretch of 75 hairpin miles. Luckily, we had all our camping gear, so spending a spontaneous night in the car while waiting for help wouldn't have been a big deal. However, we were running low on food and water. If you are heading off to extreme areas, always have enough supplies to support your party through a night or so of accidental isolation.

Don't forget that if you have to wait for repairs on your car, you will most likely have to find additional and last minute lodging in the area that can also run you a few extra and unplanned for bucks.

Which also leads me to the ever-so-important budget of time. I, for one, and hopelessly guilty of over scheduling my trips, which leads to the heartbreak of losing precious travel time and having to give up much anticipated activities. Even simple car repairs in remote regions can take up to three days, not including weekends.This is not good news for the busy traveler.

2. Stay calm

It's not always easy, right? Especially when faced with budget woes and time loss. And believe me, I am not always one to hold true to this little nugget of advice. I barely remember anything about the Gila's beauty because I was so focused on the grinding noise and all possible, terrible outcomes. Not fun. But I was lucky enough to have my boyfriend by my side who balanced out the yin of my over-the-top worries with the yang of his zen. He had to nicely keep reminding me that mechanics exist for a reason.

And never forget that unscheduled delays may be the most exciting things to happen to us on our trips. In Silver City, we had our lunch paid for us by a friendly patron who took sympathy on our car woes and then we ended up biking around the city on free rentals a friendly bicycle shop owner loaned out to us! When my car broke down in Arkansas, where we ended up stranded for three days, I ended up meeting wonderful friends, hanging at a motorcycle club, and experiencing Hot Springs, Arkansas, in a way I never intended. I still consider that "layover" as one of the most fortuitous moments of traveling I have ever had!

Truthfully, unless you are traveling in a beater who on its best day is on its last legs, car repairs should not be too surprising. Some repairs are just the predictable maintenance and responsibilities of car ownsership. When we finally got my car checked out in Silver City, the problem was a simple broken pulley that took no more than three hours to repair. Anderson was completely right to stay calm. Some cases may require more due alarm, but we shouldn't let a little bump in the road prevent us from being aware of our surroundings.

There is magic in traveling; some of the best experiences lurk in the unscheduled ether. Embrace travel interruptions and let the road guide you! Besides, there isn't much a car rental agency can't fix!

Accidental Light Painting

I've been seeing a lot of light painting on the internet these days, popular among tech geeks with tripods and headlamps or newfangled LED light strips (which I super want, by the way). And don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of intentional light painting too, but I am more often amused by accidental light painting. You know, when you snap a picture of pretty lights in the dark and when the digital preview pops up, you think, Woah.

My history with digital photography has been pretty loosey goosey. I've mostly stuck with point-and-shoots because lugging around expensive, bulky equipment on my many adventures is not my favorite thing to do. I want something small, compact, and inexpensive so I can continue throwing it in my bag without worry.

(It's hard to get drunken, on the fly shots like this if you have to lug your camera bag around Reykjavik, Iceland at 4am.)

Shitty camera + nighttime settings + pretty lights + the flick of your wrist and you've got yourself some blurry, streaky, colorful art, creatively dashing across your friend's beautiful faces or lighting up the night sky. I tend to lean towards drunken whimsy, so these pictures actually end up capturing my memories more closely than boring old real life.

There are many ways to light paint without props. With cheap point-and-shoots that don't give you supreme control over your exposure lengths, you'll probably end up sticking with nighttime as the best time to paint. I usually find the Night Portrait Mode, or something similar, as the best setting because it features a long exposure and a timed flash that prevents your subject (should you choose one) from getting too blown out (not that I mind that look too much). But don't forget to play around with your settings to find the best one for you and your camera.

The best thing about the Night Portrait Mode is that it will capture your subject but still give you that beloved long exposure to play around with. It can get double exposure-y and I love it. That's why I like to get jiggy and call upon that desired light play.

Here are some of my favorites over the years and some interesting lights to play with:

The bar/venue scene is a great place to start with some fun light painting. You know you are going to be there anyway, surrounded by bright lights and dancing around. Plus, the blown out quality of night portraiture can end up painting your subject in a flattering light once you reach that not-so-flattering part of the night.

Fire is also a quick and easy light painting subject. You can really never tell what kind of paranormal, sentient flame work might be captured.

Also, try burning a piano some time. It's fun.

Ever try to photograph the moon? It almost never comes out in photographs the way our mind's eye perceives it. A long exposure gives the opportunity for spelling and shape making, almost like reverse light painting: instead of standing in front of the camera and waving a glow stick to draw something, you move the camera around the light subject. Except you have to do it backwards. The following two pictures were taken with the moon and a lot of paper lanterns at the Wakarusa Music Festival in Ozark, Arkansas.

The above picture was also taken in Arkansas at Woolly Lake State Park in Greenbrier; a different place, a different time. Boy, I love Arkansas!

And then there's Burning Man. I won't even elaborate on that here. There are pretty lights everywhere and if you aren't seeing them streaky to begin with than you're doing it wrong!! It may be hard to tell, but the next picture is of a 60ft tall rooster mutant vehicle.

I also love these whitewashed pictures I took one overcast evening just before dusk at the Devil's Hopyard State Park in Connecticut. They fall more into the realm of double exposure photography than light painting, but the spooky swirls light get me every time.

And then, of course, there are just the streaky, unformed free-for-alls I love so well. The recipe for these is simple: point, shoot, and wave your camera madly around until the frame is captured. Some times they are psychedelic and some times they are just plain spooky. Win-win.

Hooray for low budget light painting!

Go: Okla-home

(Hi All- I am back with another exciting installment of 'Go' (Follow the link to the last chapter)... where do AGP and I find ourselves now? Oklahoma!)

As our friends headed east towards home, we headed just a little bit north in order to go straight west- all the way across Oklahoma, into the panhandle, and then right out the other side!

Oklahoma is a state that I have long wanted to explore, kind of like the way I felt about Arkansas. I knew I would love it- long, grid-like roads cutting through miles of wheat and faded nothingness- have you ever seen Twister? Absolutely one of my top five movies. Plus, before the trip, I tore through Prairie Women: Women of the Kansas Frontier (Joanna Stratton) and The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Timothy Egan). I recommend both of those very highly if you are interested at all in frontier life or the dust bowl. I was definitely prepped as we headed onto the prairie.

We cleaned up from our festival debaucheries at Kettle Campground in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, another town famous for its groundwater. Our trip had finally begun!! We still had a lot of technical things to work out regarding the packing method of our car and general campsite set up, so we spent the evening unpacking, cleaning, and finding a home for everything. The next morning we took a small side trip through the unique village of Eureka Springs, which has distinct curving streets with stores that have street level entrances on more than one floors. Then we hunted around for magically healing groundwater springs, took a quick trip up the fire tower to catch a glimpse of Christ of the Ozarks and a stop at the Thorncrown Chapel, an architectural jewel designed by E. Fay Jones.

And then Oklahoma at last! We hit the highway out of Fayetteville, AR towards Tulsa, OK and then jumped up into the Osage Nation to Pawhuska (home of the Pioneer Woman!). The small towns that we passed through really captured the essence of life on the remote plains. As a girl who grew up in the prolific suburbs between Boston and New York, it was strange to find myself in a supermarket devoid of fresh meat and with the produce selection of a corner bodega in the city (I would later learn in South Dakota that I was in what is called a “Food Desert”: despite miles of farmland, none of it was being dedicated for human consumption and with little to no access to grocery stores). In all of my travels across the United States and northern Canada had I yet to come across such isolated towns whose historic significance had all but faded away. (And please don’t think that I am trying to discount the personal significance that of course still bolsters each unique community!) Naturally, I was enraptured. I could have spent the whole summer crisscrossing Oklahoma, living off of kielbasa and frozen vegetables if I had to.

Our first stop was the Great Salt Plains Lake State Park, north-central Oklahoma, famous for two things: red sandstone cliffs and… well, the second thing I am going to keep that a secret for now! (Geology buffs should start getting excited!) Our campsite at the state park was not entirely secluded (abutted the only neighborhood in town), but was right on the lake edge and never mind that we didn’t see or hear from anybody the whole night. It was pretty sweet. Even better, the night was alive with cicadas! And I don’t just mean singing from the trees, but alit in a way that might be considered a swarm by those sensitive to insect proximity. Cicadas are clumsy and harmless, and extremely fun to chase around with sticks. Just a little tap and out of the air they fall. (Absolutely no harm was caused to any of the cicadas who were involved in my game… they seemed notorious for flying straight into things (read: faces, trees, parked cars) and falling on the ground anyway).

(Brussels sprouts for breakfast? Yes, please!)

We also consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have been witnesses to a remarkable celestial event that happened to occur the exact moment we were star-gazing over the lake. On that night, June 5th, at around 10pm, we were treated to a bolide meteor fireball! It was a like a green shooting star, bigger than anything I have ever seen in the sky!! Truly an extraordinary event. Since we obviously didn’t get a photo of the fireball, enjoy some pictures of us playing with our headlamps and imagine they are meteors streaking through the sky:

In the morning, before we left for the panhandle, we made a quick stop on the opposite side of the lake to do a little gem-hounding and satisfy the trained geologist inside of me. Yay! What I was keeping a secret was that the Great Salt Plains Lake is a mine for hourglass selenite crystals, which are unique to only this locale and completely free and easy to gather. Selenite is a form of crystallized gypsum, which when combined with the clay sediment from the Great Salt Plains Lake, form a unique hourglass shape inside. I gathered quite a few that chilly, wind-swept morning, and had such a good time (between that and the cicada chasing) that I would absolutely make a point to return to the Great Salt Plains Lake on a future trip. The following are a few pictures of me having a blast digging in the salty mud for crystals:

Our goal for the day was to make all the way to the western point of the panhandle. We cruised aimlessly around a bit to try to catch a glimmer of Gloss Mountain, which is also known for its high selenite content that makes the mountains shimmer like glass, and then we took a quick visit to the Sod House Museum in Aline.

(It was overcast while we passed Gloss Mountain so we didn't get to see very much glimmer!)

Then we entered the heart of the dust bowl! Amazingly, we could even still see the old drifts of dust built up around surviving fences from that time. Most impressive were the power lines that stretched the entire 200-mile span, bringing power into the lives of the people in towns like Guymon and Boise (pronounced like boy) City. And Boise, was it flat (I’m so funny!). Technically, the panhandle of Oklahoma is flatter than a pancake! We had a good time on the flat, quiet roads, just us and the waving wheat.

We made it all the way to the state park that contains Black Mesa, which at 4,973ft is the highest point in Oklahoma, and lies at the westernmost edge of Oklahoma and dust bowl territory. Today, it is a state park that marks where the Rocky Mountains meet the short-grass prairie. We took a day hike up to the peak through the land of black lava rock and spotted with juniper and cholla cacti.

(Oh yea, then we got to see some fossilized dinosaur footprints!! Though it might be hard to imagine, those aren't muddy puddles, but exposed mudstone with perma-dino tracks!)

Ah, Oklahoma. I was greatly impressed with my trip there. Despite its reputation and lack of obvious attractions for those from the crowded east coast, each day was long, eventful, and informative. Oklahoma plays an immense role in our country's history and I am grateful for those who endured the hardships then and now. Even now as I recollect, I long to be back to the flat, golden lands, sneaking with cacti and a-buzz with desert life. Maybe I could have been an effective pioneer, had I been given the cosmic chance!

Here is this chapters route-- so much happened in two days!:

 

A: Eureka Springs, Arkansas

B: Great Salt Plains Lake, Alfalfa, Oklahoma

C: Black Mesa State Park, Kenton, Oklahoma

[Follow this blog for more adventures!]

After the break, follow along as AGP and I head into Colorado in
Go: Colo-rockin’

Oklahoma on Dwellable