Vacation Blog #2

As I mentioned in my previous blog, my husband and I just returned from a 12-day trip through Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Idaho. We chose to make a loop through these states for several reasons. First of all, we have family in Utah and Idaho that we wanted to visit. Second, we wanted to see some iconic parts of the United States that we’d never seen before, particularly Yosemite, the redwoods, and the northern California coast. And thirdly, this was a research trip.

Since last summer, I have been working on a three-part novel that takes place (in part) along the Oregon and California Trails. While I was able to visit Fort Laramie during the summer of 2021, I was forced to rely on reference books and several cool websites to describe what my characters went through. Till now.

I was ridiculously happy when I got within photo-taking distance of the Humboldt Sink in Nevada. (My character suffers mightily crossing the Forty Mile Desert that lies beyond the Humboldt Sink.) I want to give a shout-out to my ever-supportive husband for insisting that we take the time to get as close to the sink as possible, even if that meant driving on a meandering dirt road late in the afternoon and getting to our motel in Reno at ten at night.

This is the area around the Humboldt Sink, where the Humboldt River disappears into a dry lake bed. This shot was taken from the eastern side of the sink.

Another shot of the Humboldt Sink (where all the dust is blowing in the air). This shot was taken from the west side of the sink, from Interstate 80. To give you a sense of scale, that’s a cargo train on the left side of the photo. In the foreground, you can see a sample of the bleak terrain my character had to ride through to get to the Truckee River (about two days’ journey away).

I was thrilled to pieces when we reached the Truckee River—and then crisscrossed it multiple times, just like my ‘49er gold miners had to. It SNOWED on Donner Pass as we were crossing it, giving us a profound sympathy for the Donner Party and my protagonist, who worried about getting caught in the mountains if his pace was too slow. In one portion of the novel, I described how the protagonist and his best friend dropped down out of the pine trees of Sierra Nevada Mountains into a landscape of rolling hills and oak trees—and there the hills and oak trees were, just like my sources had said.

Golden hills and oak trees

Later, we visited the Old Sacramento Waterfront and saw some of the historical brick buildings lining the streets. “Titus (my protagonist) could have stood here!” I exclaimed to my husband in awe. “He would have helped deliver goods that arrived on ships coming up the Sacramento River!” It was extremely cool to see things that I’d only read about previously.

Riverboat on the Sacramento River

Old buildings in Sacramento

We stopped one last time, at Fort Bridger in southwestern Wyoming.

Fort Bridger, Wyoming

And this is where I have to admit that I got a couple details wrong in my story. I mention Fort Laramie and Fort Hall in my story but didn’t mention the existence of Fort Bridger at all. (Why? Well, it never came up in any of the reading I did—and I did a LOT of reading. Maybe it was less important than the other forts? I’m not sure.) I also goofed up and made it sound like Sacramento was right on the coast when in fact freight had to be shipped up the Sacramento River from San Francisco. So I have to fix that as well. I acquired two new books on the trip: Fort Bridger: a brief history and The World Rushed In: the California Gold Rush experience, and I have to set aside time to read several pertinent portions to check myself for accuracy before I tackle rewrites and edits one last time.

Anyway, it was a great trip. We saw a lot of America that we’d never seen before—most of it absolutely gorgeous. It made me proud to be a citizen of such a beautiful country.