Apropo of my selling my 1994 Toyota truck, I thought I'd tell our story. Here is the first of who knows how many parts:
In 1994 I was finishing college and starting a summer firefighting job with the Fish & Wildlife Service south of Burns, OR. Only the main highway was paved; the other roads were dirt. Which was hard on the Dodge sedan I drove at the time. So in July I went to the nearest major town, which was a tossup between Bend, OR or Boise, ID. Ultimately I picked Bend so that I wouldn't have to pay sales tax.
Once in Bend I easily found that city's version of "auto row". I knew I wanted a 4-wheel drive with a little clearance and I couldn't afford anything very fancy. I test-drove a Nissan, a Mazda, and a Toyota. The Toyota was the first truck I drove and I knew I wanted it but didn't feel right about not giving other vehicles a chance. I came back to the Toyota. It was a stock, 4-cylinder, with power nothing (not even steering), no air conditioning, 32 miles on it, and no extended cab. But it was just me back then so I didn't care very much about passengers. I gave the keys to the Dodge sedan to the dealer, signed a whole bunch of papers that said I would be making monthly payments of $265 for 5 years and the truck was mine. I did upgrade the am/fm radio to something with a tape player. After all, there aren't many radio stations in that part of the country.
I loved driving that truck all over the dirt roads during my time off that summer. Somewhere I have a picture of my truck looking over a glacial carve-out of the Steen Mountains. Once while meeting my friend Terri in Idaho (she worked for the Forest Service) I looked for a "shortcut" in the Gazetteer and took it. It might've been shorter in mileage but took forever because the backroad were so rutted that I actually had to do some real four-wheeling. It was fun then but I haven't done it since. That night Terri and I camped in the back of it, looking at the stars next to some lake near the Idaho-Oregon border. I'm pretty sure I took a paved road back.
Not having air conditioning was a bit of a problem but I'm very adaptable and just drove with the windows down. It wasn't bad unless I got stuck in a traffic jam. That didn't happen until much later.
In the fall of 1994 I had one term left for my bachelor's degree and a new boyfriend who worked in the Everglades in Florida. It was easy enough to apply for an exchange program so I attended Florida International University on the outskirts of Miami. One day I left Bellingham and went east to Denver. I think I drove all the way to Utah that first night. The next day I arrived in Denver, picked up my boyfriend from the airport then started south and east. My mom and stepdad conveniently lived sort of half way but they weren't home. My stepdad was a PhD student in Louisiana at the time and he left a key in a flower pot for his apartment. We got there very late in an intense rainstorm that only those who live in the southeast understand. We got drenched running from the truck to the apartment. All my stuff in the back was soaked. The key was well hidden in the flower pot so we got muddy too.
The next morning we left Louisiana and got as far as about halfway down Florida. And finally we arrived in Homestead, FL. David left for a 3-week fire assignment back west almost immediately so it was up to me to figure out how to get to school in a state I had only visited once. I hadn't had time to meet anyone so I was terribly alone in a weird place. The drive to school was an hour. It was Florida in August. Even first thing in the morning I had to drive with the windows down because it was so hot and muggy. Every morning I arrived at school with a whacky hairdo from having the windows down.
Eventually I made a few friends at the Everglades, where I volunteered on days that I wasn't in school. Most park service people are transplants so unlikley friendships develop quickly. By the time David returned three weeks later I was fairly comfortable in my routine, although I didn't make any friends from college. I was very different from my peers as I had come from a "hippy college" way out west and this was an eastern college (well, southeastern) with foreign students. It didn't matter. I just wanted to be done since it was my last term. Finally the semester ended and I passed all my classes, even one by the skin of my teeth. Hardly anyone did well in this particular biochemistry course. It was enough for a diploma and that was good enough.
After the semester I had gotten a seasonal fire job at a nearby park, Big Cypress, and moved to Ochopee, FL, which is a lot more remote but no less weird. Then in the spring of 1995 I got a summer fire job at Rocky Mountain National Park on the hotshot crew. So on a hot Florida day in April I packed up my stuff and headed west. The first day I drove 1,000 miles to Jackson, Mississippi and spent the night in a questionable motel. The next day I got up early and drove another long day to Clovis, NM where my mom and stepdad lived. I spent a couple days resting from the long drive before finishing my journey up to Estes Park, CO. Somewhere I have a picture my mom took of me standing in front of the Toyota with a cup of coffee in hand, ready to go.
It snowed my first day in Estes Park, CO. Fire season was long and surprisingly cold that year. The crew spent more time in the snow, rain, and mud than on fires but we did get out to Utah, New Mexico, and up in Canada — Timmons, Ontario. In October the season ended with more snow and I had about 6 weeks until I needed to be back in Florida for the December through April fire season. One of my crewmates lived in Portland, OR so we hatched a plan for him to share gas costs with me and I'd go to Bellingham.
We couldn't leave until the employee dorms were spotless and all the tools and saws were put away cleaned and shiny. Everyone said good bye and went in separate directions as dusk was falling. "Sleepy" and I made it as far as somewhere in Wyoming before we had to stop for the night. I remember one tense moment on a lonely highway where the distance between gas stations was very long. The gas tank was below a quarter tank and we weren't sure where the next station was. By the time we found one the Toyota was likely nearly on fumes but we made it.
The next day on another lonely highway in Wyoming, on our way to Pocatello, ID I was exceeding the speed limit. The only other vehicle on the highway was a Wyoming State Trooper. He pulled me over for going at least 15 mph over the posted speed limit. I had no idea anyone could get a speeding ticket in Wyoming. The ticket was $32 with a $5 discount because we wore our seatbelts. Late that night we arrived in outskirts of Portland where Sleepy's parents live. They graciously offered me the guest room for the night, which I happily accepted rather than trying to make it all the way up to Bellingham. I left around 6 in the morning after only a few hours of sleep. The last time I saw Sleepy was when I knocked on his door and said goodbye.
Late that afternoon I arrived in Bellingham and stayed at my grandma's apartment. She could have guests for about 30 days and I'm pretty sure we stretched that for as long as we could. During my time in Bellingham I bought a fiberglass canopy to go over the bed of my truck because I hadn't forgotten that severe rainstorm in Louisiana that soaked all my stuff. The canopy weighed a lot and reduced my gas mileage some. More importantly, it helped me cure my leadfoot. I didn't want to go back to Florida but I had a job and a boyfriend so I said goodbye to Grandma at about 6:00 in the morning and drove south.
Much much later I spent the night in Merced, CA at a motel near the freeway. The next day I drove down 99, took a left to Barstow then headed east across the California mountains and desert into Arizona. My strategy was to stop every two hours to fill up (I learned my lesson in Wyoming), use the bathroom, stretch, and eat something. The best road food is sunflower seeds in the shell because they keep your mouth busy. Late that night I arrived somewhere near Gallup, NM and spent the night in a $22 motel that had three mattresses stacked on the floor for a bed. The next day I arrived in Clovis, NM and spent a couple restful days with my mom and stepdad. The road across that part of the country felt familiar. When I left again I drove all the way to somewhere east of Mobile, Alabama and spent the night in an enormous room that felt completely cavernous and run down. I checked the locks on the door several times before I finally fitfully went to sleep.
From that part of Alabama to Homestead, FL is a very long day drive. Not quite 1000 miles but possibly 800. David greeted me when I arrived. I still had a couple weeks before having to go back to work so I goofed around the Everglades during that time. By then I actually had friends in Florida. Some of them had been there for many years. Sometimes the Everglades feels like a black hole that is impossible to escape. I didn't want that to happen to me so I strategized that this would be my last season at Big Cypress.
Sure enough, there was a new crewboss at Big Cypress who was slightly unreasonable. Eventually I figured out that he resented the seasonal employees getting to go back west when he was stuck in south Florida. Still, at the end of the season he said that if I left early to go to my California seasonal job that I wouldn't be welcome back. That was precisely the excuse I was looking for.
In April, I packed my truck for yet another trip across the country. This time I was cocky and didn't consult the map but aimed for Jackson, Mississippi as my first night. In Alabama, I saw a highway sign for Jackson and followed it. Unfortunately it was for Jackson, Alabama, not Mississippi. So nearly 100 miles out of my way, I found my way back to my route and eventually ended up in Jackson, Mississippi but not without getting lost in Mobile first. Mobile appears to be a vortex for me as I've been lost in it twice. I remember watching people sitting on their porches in a poor neighborhood watching me drive by for the third time before I figured out the right route.
From the correct Jackson, I drove to Clovis, NM to spend those necessarily restful days with my mom and stepdad. After a couple of days I continued to California, although I don't remember the route or where I spent the night between New Mexico and northern California. All I know is that I arrived in Whiskeytown, CA (near Redding) on time and went to work almost immediately. I was the only female on a 9-person crew. That was only unusual in the sense that I was used to at least one other female on the crew, even if the other one was most often the princess.
End of part 1.
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