It was like gang warfare, it was like a state of nature, it was like the scene where Billy Zane does reprehensible things to get on a lifeboat in Titanic. I saw families about to murder other families for seats.
After a long wait, a short shuttle bus pulled up, and all hell broke loose. I parked my car dutifully, glanced at the chaotic throng standing in the hot sun waiting for a shuttle, and thought, Oh God, this is probably going to be a nightmare. But I won’t claim that when I saw the rangers telling us to ditch our cars, I started applauding and cheering and getting my fellow tourists to chant “PUB-lic TRANS-port, clap clap, clap clap clap.” Making public transportation more widespread, more convenient, and more easily accessible does seem like one of the things we can do that might actually have an impact on climate change. I’ve seen those infographics that show how many vehicles it takes to move a thousand people, and it’s like 625 cars with five acres of parking on each end, or one subway. I was barely into the park when I hit a roadblock: rangers were directing all cars to pull into the Wuksachi Lodge parking lot, leave their cars, and get on a shuttle. The swolest tree in the world as well as a big rock the ranger said was worth seeing were both to the south, in Sequoia, so I settled back into my beloved Prius to drive to them. Junior Ranger book in hand, I planned my route for the day.
Cool! You’re proving a point, I guess, for sure! They’re like those hip couples who have been together for thirty years and have kids together but who aren’t legally married. Although technically they’re two separate parks, Sequoia and Kings Canyon have been jointly administered since 1943, so they’re not fooling anyone. Roughly one-third of the world’s naturally occurring thicc boi sequoias grow in these two national parks. Sequoia and Kings Canyon protect, as you might guess, giant sequoia trees, which are the largest trees by volume: in other words, the world’s swolest trees. When I arrived at the visitor center at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, I was confused why there was a long line at 9:36 in the morning until I remembered I was in the country’s most populous state, it was summer, and- oh-it was Saturday. Which is all to say: I’ve never been that good at telling a Wednesday from a Thursday to begin with, so by this point on my trip it was completely hopeless. Every seven times the sun comes up, that’s supposed to mean something to me? Why seven? Is it because of the dwarves? And each of the seven days has a different name and theme? I’m supposed to eat tacos on Tuesday for some reason? Once a week, a cat somewhere looks up from eating its lasagna to complain about the fact that it’s “Monday”? I can’t see any particular reason why we’ve all agreed to devote our lives to enriching billionaires five days out of every seven, as long as we get to spend two days straight going to the farmers’ market. And why not? “Days” may not be a societal construct-I’ll admit that the sun does appear and disappear on a pretty consistent basis-but “weeks” seem pretty random. There comes a time on every vacation when you completely lose touch with the days of the week. We catch up with her in chapter 14, “The National Parks Suck Ass,” about halfway through her journey. Along the way, she visits national parks and seeks to commemorate each visit with a stamp in her Junior Ranger booklet. She drives west to Washington, down the Pacific coast, and through the Southwest before returning north. I n America the Beautiful? One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled, Blythe Roberson quits her job in New York, borrows her stepfather’s Prius in Wisconsin, and embarks on a summer road trip.
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