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America is being compromised. Slowly undermined at it's very heart and soul. Reduced. Fleeced. Soiled. Fucked with. We've been aware of this for some time of course but it never seemed so apparent in has in the very recent past. It's not even subtle anymore. If it was subtle, then one could argue that, like the gradual anesthetizing that occurs during a carbon monoxide leak, it overtook us all before anyone realized it. Logy and groggy we schlepped through the murk failing to act. Subtle at first perhaps but it is picking up speed now to become a blatant disregard of the principles and priorities of our fathers and their fathers. Compromise you see has been there through our lifetimes, just over the ridge, wafting through like a distant stench, not quite foul enough to make one get up and slam the window shut but mildly noisome all the same. But this stink is everywhere now apparently. In places like Universities and National Parks which should be immune or at least well set up against just such deterioration. We traveled through Grand Canyon National Park recently and found an advanced state of compromise in one of the few places in the country where there absolutely shouldn't be any. National Parks, by their very definition, should be enclaves of the past that preserve that which is being squandered and sold to the highest bidder just outside their boundaries. In stark contrast to the natural beauty that the Park was built to showcase, the compromise is in full force inside the hallowed confines which makes the situation seem much much worse. But we're ahead of ourselves. Let's set the scene.

We set out on what was to be another Back to Basics tour. An annual new year's pilgrimage to reacquaint with what is right with the country and what makes it great. A journey away from the information and advertising super highways, the internet, the networks, the commercialization and the day to day jackasses you see marching along and crowing about how things are better than they were because they have more plastic worthless shit stacked around them then they used to. Away from the canned fun and pre packaged dumbing down that asks us to measure life's fulfillment by the creature comforts one is supposed to need but slowly realizes that they didn't even want. Out into the deserts and canyons and mountains and snow. It worked for us last year and we tried to retrace our steps. In so doing, we learned that retracing is never a good idea. You can't go away from home again.

We stopped off in Telluride to retrieve some of our gear and ventured into town for the evening to drink a couple of pale ales and lay out options for the rest of the trip. Not that Telluride is back to basics in any way what with it's place to be status and trendy scene. The town was hopping of course with the week between Xmas and New Years being typically the busiest in ski resorts and the mountain had been blessed with a few feet of fresh snow for once so the natives were restless and the tourists were tromping about telling themselves that they were happy about the conditions even though your average flat land gaper can't ski fresh powder. Powder sounds great and looks pretty but for the majority of folks from Phoenix and Texas who learned to ski groomed runs on their week vacation a year are doomed if they have to actually make a turn in more than a couple inches of fresh snow. A nervous anticipation could be felt in the bars as the snow continued to fall. Cell phones and fur coats were out in force. Dinner reservations and ski clubs from Scottsdale and jittery lawyers hip hopping in snowboard gear and real estate agents drenched in perfume slipping on the ice and talking about being glad to meet you. We tried to hang in our off the beaten path haunt but even it was crammed with the overflow trying to order iced teas and Atkins friendly slop and Bud Lights while checking their PDA's for pre loaded info on where to go to look like what. We got out of town barely without serious altercation and bunked down by a fireplace crackling with aspen and oak only to wake up and find that the trusty owl had been bowled over and needed to be propped up again to ward of the peckers. We should have taken it as a sign and hunkered down for New Year's ever but instead forged on.

Out on the road a lone cow stood. Woeful and defiant perhaps at the slaughter occurring up in Washington where it was found that one of his brethren had gone mad. "That cow's gone insane. Serves her right for eating feed sluiced with bovine brains and dripping with steroids. How could the goddamned cows do this to us? Cows with Guns."

Our original plan was to head North to Elko and Winnemucca and eventually Reno but a mega storm came pounding down and pushed us south into the Utah canyon country where we brought in the New Year in Moab just like last year except this year there was a different feel to the place. Loads of four wheelers from Zona were in town for some reason whooping and hollering and trudging around in their snow suits with their hair sprayed girlfriends and cases of Bud and various penis extensions. We made attempt to return to Zax, the scene of last year but were stopped at the door by a panicking waitress who had been dealing with the off roaders all night and said "All we have is a pizza buffet! I won't be able to wait on you for at least thirty minutes. We're slammed." Slammed? How can a buffet be that slammed? It wasn't that crowded but everybody to a person seemed miserable and when we looked into the lounge a guy with gold chains was boogieing down with some skank in the middle of the room and a bunch of Eminem wannabees nodding their soul patches, scratching their Walmart clad asses, singing along with their mentor and puffing out their chests so we decided a hard rock and a gurgling creek sounded like a better choice to see in the night. The new year had arrived when we woke up and the Northern sky looked ominous so we turned south and tucked it off down the road.

Everyone has seen the panorama of Monument Valley a bunch of times before because almost every car commercial shows someone joyfully tooling through it as if that was the kind of driving anybody would actually be doing instead of sitting in gridlock on some stinking pike. There were no cars on the road at all as we rolled in and pulled off to gather it all in. Awesome scenery obviously and we thought about bunking down at the foot of one of the megaliths but had a hankering for camping on the rim of the Grand Canyon all of a sudden and set off along the South edge to the park. We were picturing a deserted and incredibly scenic winter setting at the Canyon with minimal visitors due to the icy conditions. Boy were we in for a shock.

More to come