Red Truck Road Trip – WEST Coast Team

To whomever reads this: help. Mike is trying to kill me. As you can see from the above picture, he is no longer content to simply make me miserable by placing me in uncomfortable social/environmental situations, but he is now endangering my life in order to take, what he considers, a good photograph.

Today was largely supposed to consist of a lot of driving, but the guys kept on stopping to look at things on the way from Boise to Yellowstone. God forbid they actually try to make it to their destination in some reasonable amount of time. Case in point: while driving past Craters of the Moon National Monument, the group thought the lava-induced landscape made for some fascinating views and decided to run up and spend a few minutes walking around and taking pictures. Mike, however, noticed the fact that the highway we were on was an ideal setting for a quintessential “road trip” picture and decided to include me in the shot. Cut to Mike laying down on the road for a good minute or so while snapping off as many pictures as he could; Brad stood guard watching for oncoming traffic, shouting out warnings when he spotted anything on the road. Oh, sure, he promised to warn us before the cars got too close… but he also wants to live in L.A. after this summer, so I don’t really trust his judgment.

After getting back in the car, it was revealed by Brad’s guidebook that visitors to the monument shouldn’t wander off the cleared paths because the rocks are razor sharp and can reach temperatures of over 200 degrees while sitting in the sun. What did Mike, Mikey, and Brad wear while they were climbing all over the huge piles of black rocks (and, let’s be honest: had they seen a cleared path, they probably would have avoided it with the same enthusiasm as Rush Limbaugh avoids salad bars)? That’s right, they all had flimsy flipflops attached to their feet. Fantastic, guys, just fantastic.

Of course, this wasn’t the first occurrence of near-suicide today. About an hour earlier, the trio noticed a wildfire being fought next to the road they were on in East Idaho. Originally, it looked like the fire was part of a controlled burn due to the fact that it didn’t quite reach the road and the border seemed pretty clean. However, the further along the car traveled, the more apparent it became that this fire was anything but controlled. Of course, once they could actually see the gouts of flames, Mike and Brad got out of the car and proceeded to run about fifty feet inland and take pictures of the firefighters that were already on site until they were told they had to leave because more fire engines would be showing up soon and they would be in the way of the incoming firefighters. I’m pretty certain that if Mike had been able to, he would’ve run out to the burn line and gotten some closer-up pictures of the firefighters themselves. Seriously, don’t be surprised if he wins a Darwin Award in his pursuit of the “perfect photo”… let’s just hope that he doesn’t take me out with him.