Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

Once during that Saturday night, after leaving Ogden, I looked out of the car window and in the moonlight saw a perfectly level sea of alkali without so much as a sage bush growing upon it, and then I went to sleep again more contented than ever with the way I was crossing this part of the continent.

At one of the stations were some horned toads for sale, the first I had seen, and as I asked a passenger standing near what kind of animals they were, “I think,” said he, honestly enough, “they are what they call prairie dogs.” All day Sunday it was sand, sage-bush, and a sun so hot that it would almost blister, and the same kind of a country we had already seen so much of east of Ogden. So I occupied myself most of the time writing. During the day at the different stations situated along the sandy desert the thermometer registered 102° and 104°, and yet I was not uncomfortably warm. The air would blow in at the windows as if it came direct from some furnace, and yet it was so very dry that it would not start the perspiration. Until I reached California there were only three days that were oppressively hot since the commencement of the trip, and those were in the fore part of July while crossing Iowa. In Colorado and over the plains the atmosphere was so very dry that even with the thermometer up to ninety, as it was in Iowa, one could exercise without feeling the heat nearly as much.

At Truckee we left the train at 12 o’clock at night, and as we wanted to be off early the next morning for Lake Tahoe, fifteen miles up the Truckee River, we decided not to go to bed. There were several bales of hay on the freight house platform, and one had burst open. Into that hay we crawled and slept till daylight, keeping comfortably warm till nearly morning, but I had to go behind the freight house and remove my clothes in order to shake out the innumerable spires of hay that pricked me from head to foot.

We got started soon after four, and the road was decidedly better than I had reason to think it would be, and the grade was easy, but the dust rather uncomfortable. But that is to be expected in a country that has so little rain in so many months, and where the roads are used as much as this one is the fine dust gets very deep. Going up, a couple of young deer remained in the road till I was nearly upon them, and even when I dismounted they didn’t run, but stayed within six or eight feet of where I stood. They appeared so tame I wanted to get my hands upon them and stroke their hair, but Hasley, coming up, drew his revolver, and I hallooed “Don’t shoot; they’re tame.” The sound of a human voice sent them up the hillside like a streak, and I saw it was the glistening nickel that fascinated them.

The waters of Lake Tahoe are very clear, and it never freezes over, as I was told, although the weather is sufficiently cold; but really I do not see what makes the place so celebrated. It is a beautiful lake, thirty miles long, surrounded by wooded hills, but place it in New England and it would hardly be noticed among the many there fully as beautiful. The clearness of the water is remarkable, but no more so than the water of any lake situated high up in the mountains, where there is nothing but the pure white snow to furnish a water supply, and where there is no loam, mud, or vegetable matter to discolor it. There are no other attractions, unless it be the Hot Springs, and as we did not go over there, five miles away, of course I cannot form an opinion of that place.

A steamer goes around the lake once a day, carrying mail and merchandise. We rowed and fished some, that is pulled out the same fish, the minnows, that we threw in, but the rest, lying on the pebbly beach, with the sound of the swash of the waves in my ears, was enjoyed the most of any part of the day. And perhaps that is the very reason why the lake is so noted. People from the East come to it after days of travel over the sandy plains and alkali deserts of Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, and the change from the hot, dusty ride to the clear, cold waters of the lake in the mountains, is so delightful that the lake gets its full share, and more too, of the credit for the pleasure in the change.

Both going up and coming down I must have passed hundreds of snake tracks in the road, some of them two or three inches wide. What size the snakes must have been to make such tracks I could only imagine; but the woods were surely full of snakes.

Taking the train again at midnight, I was soon asleep, but something awoke me just as we were rounding Cape Horn. The brakeman, the night before, told me it would be seven o’clock before we should pass that point of interest, so I went to sleep unconcerned about waking in time, but something startled me as a call in the morning would, and I rushed out upon the platform, rubbing my eyes open, just as we were passing around the side of the mountain. It was barely light, but the sight of two huge locomotives followed by a train of twelve cars rushing around near the edge of a precipice four or five hundred feet high will not soon be forgotten, and the manner in which the railroad twists and turns around the sides of the mountains down into Colfax is worth getting up pretty early to see. As far as the eye can see from this point down into the Sacramento valley, California is of one hue—straw-color. The ripe wheat is, of course, that color, but the common grass has dried up and changed to the same, whereas on the plains the dried grass is of nearly the same color as the soil. The morning was not clear, so the view was not very extended; but we were soon looking at objects that were of more practical value to hungry wheelmen than the prevailing color of the country. We had the best “two-bit” meal at Sacramento we had found in many a week.

The dome of the capitol, which from a distance resembles the dome at Washington, naturally draws sightseers to visit the capitol building, but the edifice looks old and out of fashion compared with many other State structures. Above the first story, which is of granite, it is built of brick plastered over and painted. The senate chamber and house of representatives are furnished simply with cushioned and cane-seated chairs, standing around promiscuously; no desks for any one excepting clerks and presiding officers. The ascent to the lantern above the dome is by winding stairs that twist about a wooden pole in the center of the upper part of the dome, and it seemed as if the whole building shook as we went up and down these stairs.

Salt Lake is a city laid out with very large blocks and built up of very small houses, and Sacramento is a city of verandas. All the sidewalks in the business portion of the city are covered and the verandas are often two stories high. These add greatly to the comfort of pedestrians, and we could fully appreciate them with the thermometer at a hundred and over. Still, notwithstanding this intense, dry heat, we started out in the middle of the afternoon and made thirty-two miles before dark over roads that were certainly excellent. The fine sand which covers the surface of the whole valley, during the rainy season packs down very hard and the wind keeps the surface of the roads in many places free of dust, so that they are as hard and smooth as concrete.