About three miles out of town, a guy stopped across the road and offered me a ride to Soap Lake, which I happily accepted. When I'd let Ephrata I still wasn't sure o my plan for the day; should I continue east on route 28 to Davenport, or should I head north up Grant County 17 toward Grand Coulee and maybe go up there? Soap Lake was where I'd planned to make up my mind. Getting a ride there thrust the moment of decision upon me before I had adequately prepared, but in deciding, based on the scenery, on the north-bound route, I think I handled the decision well.
As I headed north out of town, the actual Soap Lake was on my left, with reddish brown rock cliffs perhaps 20 or 30 feet tall on my right. About two miles up the road I reached the end of the lake and a mile or so later the cliffs lost themselves somewhere off to the right and before me the road ran away, long, flat, and straight, going for distance. It was so flat for several miles that I could spot the mileage markers from nearly a half mile away, whereas I had been used to seeing them when I was nearly upon them. This ability to see so far made the following hour and a half drag on, as the time between spotting a milepost and actually reaching it was about three times longer than previously.
Gradually the landscape closed in on me again in the form of Lake Lenore on the left and sage-lined hills on the right. In the distance I could see that the road took a significant turn in an uphill direction. Since there was a park to the left, I decided it would be a good idea to take a lunch break before heading up the hill. When my hour was just about up, a big blue diesel pickup that I had seen leaving Soap Lake a while earlier drove into the park from the direction I was about to head off in. I was concerned about whether there would be a place to hitchhike up ahead, because immediately upon turning left out of the park the rocks closed in on the right-hand side of the road. I approached the pickup, and the regarded me suspiciously, actually trying to drive off until I waved at them; they stopped, but I could tell they wanted nothing to do with me. They were relieved when all I wanted was information, and from what they said it sounded like beyond our current location hitchhiking would be out of the question until the area just before Dry Falls, which was just on the opposite side os Sun Lakes State Park, where I had decided to spend the night. That settled it; I would start hitchhiking now.It took me about 25 minutes to get a ride, probably attributable to the lack of traffic in the direction in which I was headed. I had given myself a half hour deadline for catching a ride, and that time had almost passed. When an older Mazda RX-7 pulled up to a stop for me, I was a little relieved. The driver's name was Jonathan. He was wearing a white T-shirt with ripped off sleeves. He was listening to some diva belting out songs at full volume. He had a rainbow colored lei hanging rom his rear-view mirror. He didn't know where Sun Lakes was, but when we found it, just six miles up the road, he dropped me off there.
What I found a Sun Lakes was a little perplexing. The park was like an oasis, a little piece of the nineteen-fifties' idea of a park, juxtaposed on the natural beauty of the desert. Instead of taking advantage of the natural beauty of the area, the park's designers had thought it necessary to import grass, trees that didn't belong, outrageous prices for tent camping, and stupid rules, such as this one from a sign just outside the office, "do not set your tent up on the grass." Strange, I thought. If I don't set my tent up on the grass, where was I supposed to set it up? I found the answer as soon as I arrived at my park. It came in the form of a parking barrier that lay on the ground between the gravel and the grass (there was a gravel area between the paved road and the grass, which I found odd). On the parking barrier were stenciled the words, "NO TENTS BEYOND THIS POINT." Okay, then where was I supposed to set up my tent? I looked around. "Oh, I get it, ON THE GRAVEL."
This was just plain stupid. It was nearly impossible to drive my stakes in, and the only way I could be comfortable in the tent was to remain on my sleeping pad at all costs. Just so the park could preserve the nice grass that had been imported so people could feel like a park here was just like a park everywhere else. I wandered around, wondering what my 19 dollars per night was paying for, since there didn't seem to be free concessions or anything, and then I found the shower. "That's okay, included showers," I thought, until I saw the coin slot. But went I went to use the restroom I discovered what my 19 bucks was buying me: self-flushing toilets.
Feeling better with that knowledge, I went back to my site and started to throw together some dinner, including a little fruit I'd bought at the neighboring resort's general store. As I was eating, a couple guys pulled up in a car and started unloading two sites down; I was no longer neighborless here. These guys commenced to set up a comically huge tent whose size even they marveled at; apparently they had just purchased this eight-person tent without any real concept of how large it was. They were't too loud though, and sounded like decent guys -- maybe I'd actually have someone to talk to later on.
Later on (about 11:30, to be exact), I was rudely awakened by drunken laughter shouting from their camp site. I quickly realized that the population of the neighboring site had doubled, and the stupidity increased exponentially. I also realized something a bit more disturbing: I had awakened with a fever. I tossed an turned throughout the night, even after the assholes next door went to sleep around three o'clock, and I made a decision: no more campgrounds of this type. 19 dollars to camp out next to the idiot brigade was just too much.
I awoke the next day still feverish, and decided I wasn't going anywhere. I spent all of Saturday lying down, sometimes in my tent, sometimes on the grass (I'd decided I was going to use it for something). Saturday night the fever started to go away, and I was able to get to sleep with no problem. For some reason the neighbors were quiet, too.
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