Monday, August 18 2008
Yellowstone National Park to Mountain Home, ID

Have you ever seen the craters of the moon? I have. They’re in Idaho.

Seriously, in the middle of Idaho is a national park called Craters of the Moon. The name comes from the appearance of the rocks for miles and miles and miles around. They’re almost completely black with very little plantlife on them at all. They are remnants of volcanic ash from long, long ago. I can’t say that I would have made a day of hiking through them, but they were pretty interesting to drive through. I’ve seen a whole bunch of beautiful, interesting, and diverse landscapes in the past month of driving around the country, but I’ve never seen anything like this:

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About forty minutes north of Twin Falls, I picked up a hitchhiker. I had expected that I’d see more hitchhikers on my trip, but I think that the lack of them had to do with the fact that I was traveling primarily on big interstates instead of local highways and routes. So it was fortuitous that I was on US Route 22 when I saw Tim with his thumb sticking out:

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Twelve years! As you can imagine, Tim has racked up a story or two while on the road. As a matter of fact, he’s turned the journals he’s kept into two books, a short story, and a poem, all of which you can read at his website, Walls of Jericho.

Tim speaks with passion and enthusiasm, and it’s difficult not to get caught up in his energy. His mind works incredibly fast, too: any examples of hitchhiking I’d ask for, he wouldn’t so much as blink before starting into them. It was almost like putting a quarter in a slot and watch ‘im go:

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My favorite of Tim’s stories is an epic tale that I would have to file under the heading of Small World:

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Believe it or not, this is just one of many series of hitchhiking adventures where Tim has run into people he’s met, or who know people he has met simply by sticking his thumb out on the side of the road. As best I can tell, most of us are probably only a few degrees of separation from Tim–and if you’ve ever picked up a hitchhiker in the past 12 years, perhaps you’ve met him yourself!

I dropped Tim off at a park where he said he would spend the night before getting in touch with a friend the next day. I wish him well on his journeys.

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And with that, I am just about ready to bring this series of interviews to a close. The first interview I had on my trip was on Day 1 with a hitchhiker, and I can think of no better way to bookend the whole adventure than with Tim’s interview.

After thirty-five days on the road, tomorrow I head home.

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