The campground showers open at 8AM. I am standing at the door at 7:50. A 30ish woman of Eastern European origin scowls at me as she unlocks the door. She slogs through her morning routine, starting the hot water in each side of the facility and depositing cash into the cash drawer. Fifteen minutes later she seems to notice me again, sticks out a hand to accept my money, and shoves a towel into my arms.

Early on in the trip I noticed myself becoming frustrated and unreasonably impatient. It has taken two days for me to push down the anxiety created by operating in “go go go’ mode while everything around me is moving slower than I’m accustomed to. I do my best to adjust to the new pace. Still, I wake up early each morning, not wanting to waste daylight. We have an aggressive plan for the day – a hike of somewhere between 16-20 miles (depending on which map we referenced and who we asked).

Removed from established civilization, humans revert to their tribal roots and their language evolves to match their new way of life. The second day into our journey the words breakfast, lunch, and dinner have fallen out of our vocabulary and have been replaced with first sausage, second sausage, and third sausage, respectively. Any meal that does not contain sausage is referred to as not-sausage. The Gregorian calendar has also fallen to the wayside.

Shortly after leaving the airport, I discovered that Boise, ID is the inexplicable home of several Hawaiian restaurants. There is probably some interesting tidbit of history about their origin, but I haven’t bothered to look it up. I also haven’t confirmed that there are, in fact, “several” of them. I’m just taking the Shaka Shack cashier’s word for it. He looked trustworthy, if not at all Hawaiian. Belly full of pineapple coleslaw and wienerschnitzel-jerk chicken, I piloted the rental Kia Sorento (a well equipped if comically underpowered vehicle) toward the first stop on a week-long road trip – a reserve for birds of prey just outside Boise.

Dark Night I setup camp in the dark. The campsite’s previous tenant had left behind a few pieces of firewood, but the wood was green and my efforts to get a fire going only resulted in a pyramid of burnt twigs and a campsite filled with smoke. That and becoming acquainted with an adventurous moth who somehow managed to fly up my pant leg while I was hunched over the fire ring.

Walking the Strip The Excalibur has surprisingly comfy beds for being a $45-a-night hotel so I felt well rested, if a bit sluggish. We abstained from our ritual cooking of camp-stove oatmeal as the hotel staff and fire alarms would have disapproved. I decided not to take my camera with me on our excursions for the day, mostly because I was tired of carrying it around. The map showed a McDonalds down the Strip from us near the Las Vegas welcome sign.

A restless night I don’t have many regrets, but if I could take back the decision to not camp on the chilly Kaibab Plateau, I would. The KOA in St. George stayed a muggy 80 for most of the night, so instead of shivering, I sweated. The moment I managed to fall asleep, a loud gurgling sound near my head woke me. I couldn’t connect the sound with any mental image so I just lay there staring into the darkness, confused.

Escape from Mokee Island We woke up late. The other guests (human and gnat) were gone, taking all the hot water with them. The motel owner was shuffling between rooms changing out sheets. She apologized again for the gnats, although she called them mosquitos, which would have been terrifying if true. A swarm of mosquitos that big would be a regional disaster, leaving a trail of exsanguinated livestock and dirt farmers behind it.

To Moab Todd & Hannah waved goodbye from their door frame and we began rolling south towards Moab, gateway to Utah’s eastern desert. Driving back through Salt Lake City, I considered that the city is far better looking from the ground than it is from the air, where it looks like a sprawl of humanity wedged between a swamp and ugly, brown mountains. From human-level it is full of low hills and little trees that make it more appealing.

Bryce Canyon When I woke up, Terry was laying on the deflated half of his air mattress. The other half, still partially inflated, jutted into the air and hit me in the face every time he moved, which was often. I stumbled my way through the cold morning air to the camp bathroom and was greeted by a far-too-cheerful-for-the-sun-not-being-up-yet Australian man. “G’day, mate!” at high volume in the early morning is a bit grating.