I have been asked several times now whether I “camp” by sleeping in my car.  After all, Sam is a wagon, so it seems like there should be enough space, right?

The reality is that I don’t like sleeping in cars.  I tried it once a few years ago with my old Outback in a national forest in northern Minnesota, but the experience was quite unpleasant.  Condensation built up on the windows, the air inside was quite cold, and I couldn’t open any windows because of the swarming hordes of blood-sucking mosquitoes waiting to get in.  Actually, a few did manage to get in, presumably through the ventilation system.  Not a good night’s sleep.

Still, that was then, and this is now.  I decided to give it another try in a campground in Grand Teton National Park.

One of the nice undocumented things about the 2010 and newer Outbacks is that the rear seats folded down are at the same level as the front seats folded back.  One needs only to remove the headrests to create an eight-foot long, nearly flat surface.

The rear seat folded down mates perfectly with the front seat reclined back

The key word there is “nearly,” since there were still some annoying bumps to contend with.  I got out my excellent Exped UL7 air mattress and put my sleeping bag on top of it.  All of the rest of my gear got pushed off to the side.

Yes, you can sleep in an Outback

The evening started off well.  The temperature was comfortable, Sam’s cabin air filter kept the mosquitoes from entering via the ventilation system, and I had a great view of the stars through the moonroof glass.  I drifted to sleep.

A couple hours later, I jolted awake with a horrifying thought: could I suffocate by sleeping in such an enclosed space?  A bunch of frantic web searches on my smartphone turned up no reliable reports of people suffocating in cars where there had been no sources of carbon monoxide.  Lots of people have died from leaving their cars running, but it seems that nobody has ever died from sleeping a night in a non-running car.

Just to be safe, I opened a door for a while to do an air exchange before going back to sleep.

I survived (obviously), but I started to wonder: if we assume Sam’s interior is perfectly sealed, how long would I be able to survive on the air inside?

Let’s assume that Sam’s cabin volume is 102 cubic feet.  I have about 20 cubic feet of gear, and I myself occupy about 12 cubic feet.  That leaves 70 cubic feet of air.

There are two primary suffocation modes to worry about: hypoxia and CO2 poisoning.  It turns out that humans notice high CO2 levels — they are perceived as being very unpleasant or even painful — but humans are very poor at detecting low oxygen levels.  For this scenario, I’m going to assume that I’d wake up if CO2 levels got dangerously high, which leaves only low O2 levels to worry about.

For simplicity, I’m also going to gloss over the fact that I was camping at 7,000 ft of elevation.  Compensating for the lower oxygen levels at altitude is left as an exercise for the reader.

Thanks to a handy page at Oak Ridge National Labs, we see that the formula for calculating maximum residence time based on oxygen levels is:

T = (V) (21 – L) / (100 n C)

where V is the volume of air in ft^3, L is the acceptable lower limit of oxygen in percent, n is the number of people, and C is the oxygen requirement per person per minute.

I’m going to assume that I’m a healthy adult male, so L is 12% and C is 0.007 ft^3 min^-1. Recall from above that the volume of available air is 70 ft^3. Plug in the numbers:

T = 70 * (21 – 12) / (100 * 1 * 0.007)

= 900 minutes

= 15 hours

I’m not going to be sleeping in there for anywhere close to 15 hours, so I think I’m safe.

Will I be doing more back-of-the-car camping?  Doubtful.  I really, really like being able to sit up straight in my tent without hitting my head on the ceiling, something that’s impossible in the back of the Outback.

I knew that Yellowstone would have hot springs and wildlife, but would I be able to find solitude there as well? The numbers didn’t look promising: america’s first national park sees over 2.5 million visitors every summer.  Still, it’s a big place, larger in area than Rhode Island, and I thought my goal was achievable.  It would simply be a matter of figuring out where to go.

Old Faithful was not the place to get away from the unwashed masses. I had pictured the geyser being in some remote location, perhaps a half-mile hike from some dirt-lot trailhead in the wilderness.  Nope.  The reality was an enormous paved parking lot packed full of cars, trucks, and RVs.  There was enough parking there for a shopping mall, and a large one at that.

The geyser itself was in the middle of a large wood boardwalk, which was an arc set back from the aperture about 100 ft and circumscribing about 240 degrees.  Between eruptions, the boardwalk was fairly empty, but near show time, it was packed with people.  In most cases, the throngs were many rows deep.

I stuck around for two eruptions, and each time, I was amused by how many people chose to experience the event via the screens of their digital cameras instead of living it in the present.  I admit to some guilt in this regard, but I did pry myself from my technology long enough to enjoy the moment as well.

The masses of people watching Old Faithful erupt at Yellowstone

So, Old Faithful was fun to watch but in no way provided solitude.  I pressed on deeper into the park.

To the west of Old Faithful, the park road curved north.  Along the way, it passed a small parking lot at a location known as Biscuit Basin.  I decided to stop.

The namesake biscuit-shaped formations were destroyed in a fit of geothermal activity a long time ago.  Remaining were numerous pools of hot water, each one uniquely colored from minerals and microbes.

Hot pools, including Sapphire Pool, at Biscuit Basin in Yellowstone NP

An extensive network of boardwalks snaked through the area, both to protect the visitors from the hot geothermal features and  to protect the features from the visitors.  The numerous, numerous visitors.  No solitude there.  A different approach was needed.

I knew that I would be able to find solitude in the backcountry, but I wasn’t feeling much like backpacking.  Maybe it was my recent Denali experience; how could other places compare?  Part of it was also a general feeling of exhaustion, which was compounded by the fact that I had already been (car) camping for a few days.

In the end, I decided that I would regret not backpacking at least one night in Yellowstone.  I might never have another chance.  I plotted out a short out-and-back, about 11 miles round trip with just 1600 ft of total gain, got my permit, and set off.

It didn’t take long to reach my campsite for the evening in Seven Mile Hole — just a couple of hours — but in that short stretch I saw incredible beauty.  I had my DSLR along, so I was able to capture a bit of it, but I don’t think I did the sights justice.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone as seen from the trail to Seven Mile Hole. The river, center, was about 1000 feet below the point where this was taken.

I passed five other hikers on my way in. That was the extent of my contact with humanity: I saw nobody on my hike up and out of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone the next morning.

It took a while, but I found solitude in Yellowstone.

I had seen in my mind’s eye the photograph that I wanted: Sam on the white Bonneville Salt Flats with the Silver Island Mountains in the background.  I had not imagined the lady screaming at me in Spanish.

If you take the most direct freeway routes, you can get from Salt Lake City, UT to Boise, ID in a bit over five hours. The drawback to that route is that you miss one of Utah’s most impressive natural features: the enormous salt flats to the west of Great Salt Lake.  I decided to take the slightly more scenic route, which would bring me through the salt flats in general and the Bonneville Salt Flats in particular.  The only drawback would be an extra 100 miles added to my journey for the day, pushing the time behind the wheel to around seven hours. I knew it would be worth it to get that photo.

There were a variety of ways to get from the pavement of Interstate 80 onto the salt itself.  The simplest approach would have been to simply drive off the freeway and onto the salt; there were no fences, the salt was about 10 feet from the road, and the only thing between the tarmac and the salt was the gravel of the shoulder.  However, there was a lot of debris along the road, and it wasn’t clear how solid the shoulder gravel really was.  That, and it wasn’t clear if pulling off the freeway like that would have been legal.

Another alternative was to go to the Bonneville Salt Flats State Park, but that was a bit off the freeway, and I didn’t want to pay any admission fees (I later found out there weren’t any).

Thus, the third alternative: the rest area.  There was a little rest area alongside the freeway just east of the Nevada-Utah border.  It had hundreds of feet of frontage on the beautifully white salt of the Bonneville Salt Flats.  Better still, it had low (~2″) curbs along the border of the parking lot.  The kicker was that there were no signs saying not to drive over the curb and onto the salt, so… well, you can guess what I did.

Sam on the Bonneville Salt Flats, with the Silver Island Mountains in the background

The photo session went well, and I was just about to drive back over the curb the other way when a middle-aged woman came running at me, screaming in Spanish.  My escape was foiled.

Luckily, I’ve become so relaxed on this trip that encounters with such people do nothing to break my cool demeanor.  I let her ramble on in excited Spanish for a while before telling her that I had no idea what the hell she was saying.  Pro tip: don’t use profanity to tell an angry person that she is incomprehensible.  More agitated Spanish spewed forth, this time with arm waving.

Eventually, I ascertained that the lady was in charge of keeping the rest area clean, and she was pissed that Sam’s salty feet were going to spoil her supposedly salt-free curb… or something. There was salt everywhere already, not to mention dozens of tire tracks attesting to the fact that I was not a pioneer in driving over the curb.  In fact, I chose that spot to drive from the parking lot to the salt in part because there were so many salty tire tracks already there.

I like how the clouds and mountains lead to a gap to frame Sam

I figured it wasn’t going to do much good to point out the lack of signs at the rest area, the existing tracks to and from the salt, or the fact that she didn’t have the authority to stop me.  Instead, I lo siento‘ed and shoulder shrugged my way into a compromise: I would drive Sam over a section of curb about three feet to the side of my original route, and in return, she would not get run over.

I felt a bit bad for her as I sped away.  The view was great at that rest stop, but it would be a miserable spot to have to work all day, every day.  However, if she didn’t want people doing what I and many, many others before me had done, a sign would have been sufficient.

On countless occasions, I’ve seen birds flying on collision courses with cars.  Yet somehow, they always seem to swoop out of the way at the last second.  I wondered if it was even possible for a small bird to strike a car mid-flight or if perhaps the air flowing around the car would prevent that from happening.

Today I learned that birds can indeed hit cars.

I was driving Sam along I-80 in Wyoming, idly listening to Chiddy Bang’s The Preview, when I noticed a small bird flying somewhat out of control towards the freeway.  I was doing about 85 mph (er, I mean 75, natch), so the bird was closing in fast.  It seemed like it was going to move out of the way at the last second, just like all of those previous times, but then…

THWACK!

It seems that Sam jumped up and head-butted the poor little bird.

Bird feathers and bird grease on Sam's forehead after a high-speed encounter

Look closely at that photo: those aren’t bird droppings, they’re bird feathers.  There’s some white stuff, too, which I can only describe as “bird grease.”  Keep in mind that this photo was taken a few miles down the road, so what’s present endured at least a few minutes of high-velocity wind. Clearly, there was solid contact.

I admit that I didn’t confirm the kill, but I doubt a little bird could survive a collision like that.

When I lived in California, I would take occasional drives up and down the Pacific coast in my old green Subaru.  Those trips were sublime.  When I went zipping along the tarmac in those grad-school days, I felt free and untouchable.  All was right with the world.  The road seemed to stretch on forever into the distance; I could drive as far as I pleased, and the scenery never became unpleasant or boring.

A red convertible drives along the Pacific coast near Big Sur, California

I experienced only a portion of the coastal highway back then, from roughly Stinson Beach in the north to Big Sur in the south.  Those 200 miles were beautiful enough to inspire me to drive the entire coast on this trip: 2000 miles from Seattle to San Diego.

Sure, you could get between those two cities considerably faster by using I-5.  Going that way would shave almost 800 miles off the trip.  You might even be able to make it in a single (very long) day.  However, if you did that, you wouldn’t see the ocean much, and you’d blow past all manner of interesting towns and parks.

I stretched my coastal journey out to 11 days, excluding the segue to South Dakota.  There were a couple of rest days in there for Portland and San Francisco, but for the most part I was driving each day.  Some days I averaged over 50 mph, but on others I struggled to average 35 mph.  Such were the roads.

What did I see?  Beauty, quite simply.

Heceta Head Lighthouse

How can I do justice to the experience?  Sure, I could write about dodging logging trucks on the Olympic Peninsula, camping by the beach in southern Washington, and walking through the tall redwoods in California.  I could mention my amazement at finding huge sand dunes in Oregon, or my shock upon entering the Tillamook Cheese factory and seeing more tourist ice cream consumption than at a fair.  Would that then mean leaving out my enjoyment of the ferry ride with Sam across Puget Sound?  Or perhaps my giddy excitement at staying at my favorite lighthouse, Pigeon Point?

The reality is that I can’t put it to words.  Not here, not now, not yet.  Perhaps with time I’ll be able to distill the experience into something manageable, but were I to try now I would simply ramble on.  The whole stretch of road is still too new in my memory, and the pieces are all so precious that I do not yet have the will to discard any of them.

Coronado Beach

I drive the road over and over again in my mind. There, I do what I one day hope to accomplish on paper.  I filter out the noise, and I see the common thread that ties together everything else.  It’s the constant presence of the Pacific.  I hear the beating of its surf, smell the odor of its fish, taste the hint of its salt.  I feel it.  I begin to understand why the ocean has held such an allure for so many throughout history.

Will I go back to the coast? Perhaps, though doing so holds as much risk of corrupting my memories as it does potential for improving them. I got away with expanding my small preview into the entire coast, and for that I feel fortunate.  I have such a fond recollection of the complete drive that I fear the certain flaws that revisiting it will reveal.  I don’t want that loss, at least not yet.