on Mars

It's kind of a trip to think this is Trip's triple trip.

Ok, so in Arizona, they don't have daylight savings time. But the time zone is an hour later than Oregon. However, on the Indian reservations in Arizona, which are plentiful, they DO have daylight savings time. What does all this mean?

I have no idea what time it is. I think Dali must have visited this hot Arizona desert for the inspiration to paint his wilting clocks.

In fact, there's always something surreal about the desert. There's a part of me that is constantly aware I'm not really supposed to be here, that I shouldn't be surviving in this environment of cacti and dust dervishes with such ease. Water tastes a little more precious, invigorating. The air-conditioned travel-pod called a car feels a little more like a spaceship. With towering red mesas and empty, desolate land stretching to wide horizons, one could swear they must have landed on Mars awhile ago and simply forgotten about it.

On Route 66, there's a town that existed for over a hundred years without a water source. Every day, a steam engine would bring in water for the whole town. In 1976, they finally dug a well. The cars hardly rust here, it's too dry maybe, and old generations of Cadillacs and goofy-looking trucks still glint on the curb. All these desert towns now deserted thanks to Interstate 40, stand as some sort of highly accessible museum. Everything seems a little more important to me when it has the dust of a little history on it.

Hey, did you know tumbleweeds bouncing across lonely highways are a modern occurrence you can still experience?

Oh, you did? Well, I bet you didn't know they aren't actually native to North America - they're a mix of sagebrush and Russian Thistle. So there.

Listen, don't ever go to the Grand Canyon. I have found no sign of nature there, just shouting tourists, whirling helicopter blades, and the jackhammers of it all growing louder and worse.

I much preferred the drive there. We discovered enormous forests of Joshua trees, larger groves than I imagined possible. With their erratic branches and tufts of green and yellow, they look like something out of Dr. Seuss. Talk about surreal.

How do the tourists continue to miss this point - in cliche form it goes: "the journey is so much more than the destination"? They all know the same selected points of beautiful on the map and gather there in ugly clusters of tripods.

I cannot help but feel that the spirit of travel had been largely hijacked by all the guidebooks published and photos snapped. They both pull travel out of its element, out of its moment, into the before or the after.

What ever happened to the exultation of exploration? Yes, I know it's a little silly to feel like an explorer of places already mapped, but when I am not the cartographer of said map, am I not the explorer of my own world? The whole Earth may be my frontier - if I don't spoil it for myself with guidebooks - and when I come suddenly to a halt at the edge of an unexpected canyon cliff, my eyes squinting to witness the first view of a strange new land, why can I not breathe deep and feel a little like Meriwether Lewis? Is such a feeling lost to mankind until we really go to Mars?

I say this, and yet am guilty of carrying both items. I understand their value, but I try my best not to overdo it, certainly not to rely on them for inspiration or memory. When I live vicariously through this site in a few months from now, it will be hard to not feel like a hypocrite.

The facts in the post were brought to you by placards.
Placards, educating America one big sign at a time.