Getting lost in someone else's class
I never start a real adventure quite when I expect to. Packing for a trip, even an afternoon hike, feels like I am watching all my gear go around on turbo-charged baggage carousel at an airport. Except someone on the other side is messing with me by snatching important things off and throwing on some nonessential items. So the same things never spin around every time, but there's always something new too, like when too many flights are using the same carousel. My headlamp may spin around once, and if I don't grab it, it may not spin around again until I have left the terminal. The same goes for logistics, like remembering the name of the road to turn off on, or how many cliff bands should be crossed to reach an objective. That is baggage that I should definitely claim.
The other day while looking for a trailhead, I didn't forget any gear and I didn't get physically lost, but I wound up in a completely unexpected place. I got waylaid at a winery. All I wanted was to ask for a good way to approach Whitestone Rock on the shore of Lake Roosevelt, but I wound up sampling three different wines and buying three bottles of wine. The winery wasn't officially open, but there were three guys there because they had just finished harvesting their grapes the day before. Grapes were overflowing from dozens of totes around the building, so many that the ground in some places was purple mud. The wine steward was so stoked that someone was there I just couldn't bring myself to turn down his offer of a private wine tasting. He opened up their yurt tasting room where we sniffed and swilled for an hour or so. They grow all their own grapes and bottle their own wine on site, which is pretty rare. You can see the vineyard from the tasting room. There is also a great view of my original objective, Whitestone Rock, a few hundred foot granite knob that rises straight out of the lake. After politely sipping and buying some wine, I asked if they knew how to approach the rock, and they told me that it is best approached via kayak or from the north side through the small community of Ranz. So I drove around and bushwhacked off the wine until well after dark, nearly reaching the base of the rock through a maze of basalt benches.
I took my mom, her two sisters, my grandpa, and my fiancee back yesterday, but the winery was closed. Grandpa told me about how he had worked in the vineyard ten or twelve years ago, which would mean he had been in his early seventies then. He kept telling us about how the wife of his boss didn't like him because he missed more bunches of grapes than the other workers, but the boss liked him and kept him on. I was hoping that he could experience a classy tasting where he had once worked, but they were closed this time. Everyone enjoyed the view of whitestone rock though, and agreed that it was a bit of a culture shock to find such a classy joint so close to the humble town of Creston. Then I took them around to Ranz so we could hang out on the sandy beach next to the lake there. My grandpa had never been down there in his half century of experience in the area, probably because it was more of a recreation-oriented community. After we made it back home, grandpa's friend B brought us a pig heart to fry up. We talked a bit about the multi-million dollar homes down on the lake, and how years ago B had seen that land for sale for about a hundred dollars an acre. He didn't have any money then, but he said he wouldn't have bought it anyway because it was sandy and worthless for farming or livestock. It takes all kinds.
I still want to go back and climb that rock, but I think what will stick with me is the crazy mashup of cultures around that place. Getting there involves taking a road straight out of town past the cemetery until you are forced to take a left, and then you take the first right. The unbelievably straight farm road soon starts winding as it contours along the drainage towards the lake. Soon the fields give way to ponderosa forest in a tight canyon bounded by basalt cliffs. Then the canyon opens up onto the sedimentary bench above the lake and the big houses start popping up. In the fields above there is about one house per five hundred acres or more, because a living can't be made on any less. Below there are about five houses per acre, all crowded up close to the sandy beach with big windows facing the lake, big garages, and big pleasure boats. This contrast makes for a different kind of adventure than I typically seek out, but I find it just as interesting. After a day or two outside in the mountains, the contrast of a shower and a warm bed feels almost unreal. But going from the mountains to my apartment is less of a culture shock than going from Creston to the winery or Ranz.