Leslie’s Gulch
After a six-hour haul from Hells Canyon
we turned off Highway 94 onto what looked like a smooth dirt road, one where you could just a-rip, leaving a proud plume of dust in your wake.
Turned out the road was infested with bumps, potholes, and good old-fashioned washboard, that corrugated texture you find on the roofs of industrial farm buildings. turning that 24.6-mile stretch into two nerve-wracking hours of bone-rattling hell.
let me tell you something about washboard roads for those who don't already know, driving them suck, a true test of patience, an endurance race. There’s no way of beating them unless you got monster truck wheels or the suspension of a 1994 toyota corolla. Drive slow, you get jerked around like a ragdoll and if you drive fast, it feels like you vehicle is going to shake itself to pieces, the vibrations gnawing at every bolt and connection. A constant strain, especially if you have anything loose, like, say this…
It wasn't hard to distinguish the other “weekend warriors” or “van livers”s such as us from the few ranchers tucked into the folds of land. They came fast and hard, barreling past us from both directions, barely tapping the brakes sitting high in trucks or jacked up SUVS with large ribbed tires. I could feel their smirks through the dust clouds, caught somewhere between humor and annoyance at the slow-ass “out-of-towners” inching their way through what, to them, was just another Tuesday.
We came to Leslie Gulch because I saw this drone footage on someone's Instagram reel, aerial shots of this insane looking canyon with jagged, volcanic spires stabbing up from the earth like a row of crocodile teeth who aint never seen the dentist. I had screenshotted it, saved it somewhere among the thousand other screen shots of “cool things you never see again because they’re lost in your dogpile of photo library”.
Only this time it actually happened, i went through my 7,000 photos and found that bitch and now here we were, actually doing it.
By the time we finally got into camp, it was pushing 100°, my brain was bubbling like a boiling pot of sriracha and milk. A reasonable part of myself suggested i should drink some water, but the wild animal in me growled a viscous, unwavering “FUCK YOU” and so i quickly slammed three pints of crispy, hoppy IPAs instead. I mean goddamn, sitting in that furnace after a two-hour death march, ice-cold beer sweating in my grip. The beers practically drank themselves.
I was in hog heaven. I love being on the verge of drunk, i get a hard-on for recklessness. Sure the job may end up sloppy and chipped around the edges but goodman does it get done. I ripped out some ground beef from the cooler and smashed that ground beef in my grimy, could give-a-fuck-less fingers. Everything i touched now had a thin layer of grime and dust, the car door handle, my beer, nicoles boobies. But to hell with all of it, the only thing that matters in the world now are burgers and beer.
After a good hour riding the waves of the eternal moment and a belly full of red meat, the heat started pressing down again, only this time with a vengeance. I felt polarized in the grip of fever, nausea and a migraine.
To make matters more entertaining, some doofus rolled up, squinting at us and the vacant spot adjacent from the perch of his tricked-out Sprinter van, one of those six-figure rigs straight out of an REI catalog. The kind of van that says, I’ve escaped the system, while costing more than a small house. He eased it into the spot next to us, sunglasses glinting, looking like he was about to film a commercial for rugged minimalism.
After a ten-minute tango of unnecessary maneuvers, a full-blown choreography of incompetence, lurching forward, reversing, cranking the wheel like he was tuning the titanic. The guy, satisfied with his masterpiece of mediocrity, killed the engine, and slid open the door like he’d just conquered Everest. Out shot his dog, full throttle, full bladder, marking every tire in the campground and riling up every other mutt chilling in the shade until the place erupted in a barking symphony.
Then he came out screaming, a vein bulging on the side of his red, fevered neck, hollering, “Goddamnit, Lilly! Get back here!”, chasing her like she was the scent of his wife’s vagina. Once he finally wrangled “Lilly” onto a leash, he turned to us, all puffed up and proud, and started preaching.
“Yeah, I got these inflatable leveling pads,” he informed us, squatting down to place these bright yellow tubes in front of each tire. “Drive your rig onto them, blow ’em up to your desired inflation and voilà, got yourself a level van. Course, I guess you guys don’t need anything like these, do ya?” he said, glancing down at little Ravie sitting in the shadow of his behemoth, damn proud of those fancy blow-up levelers.
Only thing he didn’t factor in was the heat. About half an hour later, BOOM! One of them exploded like a Fourth of July finale, echoing through the valley like a warning shot from God. I felt the sound waves through my body and I nearly shit my pants. It was the one closest to us, maybe 2 meters away, i could feel the puff of air on my feet. My heart pounded as i watched heads popped out of tents all around us like prairie dogs. The bastard stood there, staring at the smoking remains of his $200 air cushion. “All good, folks!” he stammered, voice cracking. “Just one of my levelers!”
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side of us had claimed two campsites, one for himself and one with his little dingy john boat, what we hoped he was just saving it for a buddy coming in late. We watched from our picnic table as car after car rolled in, dusty and shell-shocked from the same hell road we’d crawled down, each one pulling in and looking about, trying to make eye contact with the guy with a silent what’s going on with that spot? expression. And there he sat, the fat, pompous prick, pretending not to see them. By sunset, as the last of the hopefuls had turned back down the road, there he was, stretched across both sites like he was King Tut.
Nicole thought it would be funny to take a shit in his live well tank and i couldn't have agreed more. We wandered down to the river for a dip, letting the day’s heat bleed off in the fading light and Nicole’s burger settle deep, give it some time to commence in greasy alchemy for maximum mess.
After i got out of the water, she told me she could feel it working down there, plotting something, like a small revolution brewing below the belt. I smiled and planted a big kiss on her forehead, told her i was proud to call her my partner before heading back to take care of some smelly business.
But by the time we got back, someone had already beat us to it. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a dark silhouette darting away from his boat like a rat in a kitchen. Unsure as to whether or not this mystery camper got the job done, nicole settled instead on taking a shit in his camp chair, collapsing it for good measure, just to make sure her poo would smear max surface area. I gave her a solid massage that night for a job well done and she returned the favor by giving my solid a massage ; )
