This hidden gem is one that’s been on my road trip bucket list for many years, and when I drove the Loneliest Road two springs ago, I finally got my chance. These strange stone kilns have been empty for more than a century—but thanks to their sturdy construction and the desert climate, they look like they were built yesterday, and are just waiting for someone to come by and stoke the flames again.
When I think of solitude on the road, I’ll admit the last place I’d associate with it is Zion National Park. In the twenty years that had passed since I first visited the park (when it was a sleepy secret), word had definitely gotten out. Nowadays Zion is a lot like the Grand Canyon: there are so many visitors that you can no longer drive the park road in your own car for most of the year, and forget any hope of a solitary moment. On my most recent visit, it worked out that I was there during spring break week for most of Utah’s colleges and universities—needless to say, I rubbed shoulders (literally! The shuttle bus was packed!) with a whole lotta fresh-faced students that day. But a kind park ranger gave me a great tip: she told me that if I wanted to escape the crowds, I should try Zion’s lesser-known sister site: the Kolob Canyons Unit, just forty miles to the northwest.
Reader, she was right. There was nobody there. Not one soul, save the ranger manning the lonely visitor center. So while the hordes teemed in Zion Canyon, I had this view all to myself. It felt like winning a trophy for braving the crowd earlier.
If you’re looking for a truly solo road trip experience, look no farther than the Loneliest Road: US Highway 50, where it crosses Nevada. The mostly two-lane road traverses the Great Basin desert, which consists of basin-and-range topography: wide, flat, parched valleys punctuated by parallel mountain ranges.
I wasn’t alone for the whole trip; the secret is definitely out about the Loneliest Road (thanks to Nevada tourism plugging it as a destination all its own), and there were other lookie-loos like me, as well as the occasional long-haul trucker. But because of the geography, what that translated to was little knots of traffic stuck behind trucks on the mountain passes, and then long, long stretches of empty road, like in the above drawing.
I lost count of the number of historic barns and rusted vintage pickups along the way, but that wasn’t unexpected…
What I didn’t expect was having so much roadside reading material! I love documenting my trips through found signage, but I think this place set a record for the most verbage in one, otherwise empty, place.
Even though parks and other road-trip destinations are beginning to open back up, my family and I are choosing to extend our self-quarantine for as long as we can, to help minimize the risk of spreading the virus. But that doesn’t mean I can’t host a virtual summer road trip instead! Since so many of my past road trips have been solitary, this summer I’m going to post a series of some of my favorite solo road trip moments—times when it felt like I was the only traveler for hundreds of miles—and tag the posts with #SummerofSolitude.
Since Memorial Day weekend is the traditional start of the summer road trip season, I’m going to start with an unlikely place to find a bit of solitude: Yosemite National Park. I visited in the shoulder season, when the high country roads were still packed in with snow, but even in the winter, it’s hard to find a quiet moment in Yosemite Valley. Still, I hit the jackpot that day. I spent the previous night in nearby Mariposa, and headed for the park at first light. So when I reached El Capitan and laid eyes on it for the first time, I had a big head start on the other tourists. I had plenty of time to sit and draw and listen to the birds waking up. It felt like such a luxury to get a whole sketch done before I saw another human. By midday the park was pretty crowded, but I’ll never forget the feeling of having Yosemite all to myself.
Though parts of the world are beginning to open back up, travel is still something we’re all doing from the comfort of our armchairs right now (and besides, I am firmly in camp #StayHome for those of us who can, to help others who can’t). So lately I’ve been remembering one of my all-time favorite sketchbook subjects: doors, gates, and courtyards. And this drawing seems to sum up all three.
What I love about drawing a door, other than its own inherent aesthetic qualities, is the fact that it represents a question: what’s on the other side? Long ago I lived in Rome, a city chock full of hidden courtyards and walled gardens—though I spent a whole year wandering (and sketching) every street and back alley, I only ever got to see a fraction of what lay inside the doors that faced the street. It felt like there was a whole separate city behind those doors, and every time I was afforded a glimpse of it, I was thrilled. I’ve felt the same feeling in a few places here in the States—namely Santa Fe and New Orleans—and when I sketched the above drawing, that feeling hit me with full force again. I’ll probably never get to see the inside of this little walled garden, but that doesn’t matter: with the orange trees and bougainvillea spilling over the stucco, it’s enough to imagine the little world that lies on the other side of the door.
I’ve been paging through a lot of my old sketchbooks lately (a sure sign that my wanderlust is flaring up—though this time there’s simply nothing to be done about it), and I keep finding myself drawn (no pun intended) to quiet moments and peaceful, solitary scenes. I’m sure that’s not an accident…but no matter. Whatever the reason, I was pleased to rediscover this moment that I’d forgotten about, when it felt fleetingly like I had the whole world to myself.
Sorry about the non-English post title—I realize it may need a bit of explaining. Italian is my other language, and since we’ve all heard the word “quarantine” a zillion times lately, this title just popped into my head. “Quarantine” comes from the Italian word quarantena, which means a period of forty days. It comes from the fourteenth century, when the city of Venice weathered the Black Death by making merchants wait outside the city for forty days before they could enter, to make sure they weren’t infected with the plague. Well, since our modern collective quarantine efforts are preventing me from visiting Mt. St. Helens for its quarantesima (fortieth) anniversary today, this seemed fitting—if a bit too on-the-nose.
So instead I’ll post a sketch I did around the thirty-fifth anniversary of the eruption (the same day I did the final sketch in this post). I remember marveling at the time that a scene so peaceful could belie such destruction in the recent past (and, certainly, the future to come)—and that seems just a little too on-the-nose right now, too. So instead I’ll just focus my thoughts on the pretty mountain, the pretty lake, the pretty wild irises, and the memory of a pretty perfect morning.
Speaking of sunny SoCal islands, on my last book research trip I finally got to cross a big line item off my national parks bucket list: Channel Islands National Park. I made this sketch at Inspiration Point (I really should do a post sometime about all the Inspiron Points in the various national parks…there are a bunch of them, and many of them have inspired me to sketch!) on Anacapa Island, and the finished drawing ended up being, in turn, the inspiration for one of the illustrations in my book.
These days I’m drawing a different kind of inspiration from my national parks sketches: inspiration for future return trips, when travel becomes a thing again. In the meantime, hoping you are safe and well, and finding inspiration in your own travel memories!
One of the things I’ve been doing in my little metaphorical lighthouse lately is dream of sunny shores and road trips past. And my favorite place to remember right now is Santa Catalina Island—26 miles off the coast of southern California—which I visited a few years ago while researching my book. The centerpiece of Avalon, the Catalina’s main town, is the Catalina Casino—which is not that kind of casino at all. The building is modeled after the Italian word meaning “gathering place.” Upstairs is a massive ballroom—the largest circular dance floor on earth. In the 1930s and ’40s, famous big-band musicians broadcast live performances here (which you’ll recognize if you’ve ever seen an old vinyl recording with “Live at the Avalon Ballroom” in the title). Hollywood stars made frequent appearances at these events, as Catalina was long a playground for movie stars from the 1920s until the 60s. Downstairs is the Avalon Theatre, the world’s first cinema ever to be wired for sound. (Its acoustically perfect design was copied at Radio City Music Hall in New York.)
Inside the theater and lining the entry portico are a series of breathtaking art deco murals by John Gabriel Beckman (who designed Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood)—those deserve a post all their own, so for now, I’ll stick to the exterior. What I love most about this building is its sheer presence. Not only is it absolutely massive (twelve stories tall!), but its location at the tip of the half-moon harbor makes it the centerpiece of every Avalon view. It’s postcard-perfect in every way.
Which, by the way, is why I had to include it in my new postcard book. There are sixteen different postcard designs in the book, and more than 400 illustrations in my Best Coast book—so that made for quite a lot of hemming and hawing between myself, my editors, and the design team at Sasquatch Books over which images to turn into postcard. But not this one. Thanks to the casino, Catalina was a shoo-in—and quite possibly my favorite illustration in both books.
So I’m mailing copies of this card from my studio right now, but it’s my current dream to get back to Catalina sometime soon (when it’s safe to travel, of course), and mail it with a postmark from Avalon.
I wish I could remember where, but long ago I read some author’s opinion that lighthouses were mankind’s greatest invention, because they were entirely selfless in nature. That thought has stuck with me all these years, and it pops into my head every time I draw a lighthouse.
The memory has occurred to me again during this strange time we all find ourselves in, of social distancing and trying to mitigate a worldwide pandemic. Weeks and weeks on end of self-isolation has given me just a glimpse of what it must have been like to be a lighthouse keeper—to spend long stretches of time in solitude, in order to ensure the safety of others.
Except today we can reach out to each other with more than just a blinking light. Thanks both to modern technology and the good old-fashioned post office, we can stay connected to one another, like a constellation of beacons up and down the coast. It’s good to remember that when I start to pine for the “before” time.
One way or another, sooner or later, we’ll find our way through this terrible time. For now we have our proverbial points of light to guide us, and we’re also scanning the horizon for the brighter, more hopeful light of a future vaccine. I’m hoping we can all stay strong and hold fast to our collective lighthouses of social distancing in the meantime, until we can navigate our way to a safe harbor—together.