Day Twelve
We woke up on Day Twelve at Buffalo Bill’s Antler Inn, packed our things and ran out the door, eager to see what was waiting for us at Yellowstone. The sun, at this point, was high in the sky and the weather was warm with a slight breeze. It was a perfect way to spend a day at a National Park, especially considering that it was my birthday. I couldn’t ask for much better than being at the country’s largest and oldest National Park on my birthday. No amount of barhopping or cake can compete with that.
Our drive to Yellowstone was incredible. The West Entrance to the park was about an hour from the town that we’d been staying in, and it consisted mainly of a winding roads through a state forest, and along a vibrantly-colored lake. Again, it was another drive full of “whoa”-ing and other astonished noises.
We weren’t driving for long within the park when we encountered a few traffic stops. The first of which was a dead stop for about 20 minutes, to hold for some construction that had been going on, on the road. The second was a more brief stop for some buffalo who were standing in the road, apparently pretending to be cars. It’s hard to be angry about an enormous animal standing in front of you, especially one as hairy as a Yellowstone buffalo. Eventually, they moved along and we were free to do what people in cars do best.
Yellowstone is enormous. In fact, the word “enormous” really doesn’t convey the sense of hugeness that overcomes you as you drive through it’s winding roads and paths. About when we came upon Yellowstone Lake (another enormous feature) we noticed the sky beginning to darken, and the clouds starting to close out our beautiful day. And then the rain started to fall, and it didn’t really completely stop for a day or so. Nevertheless, we managed to see a ton of the park, including Old Faithful.
Now, most people travelling to Yellowstone for the first time might stop and wait for the geyser to erupt. Unfortunately, we had to high-tail it to the other side of the park, so that we could find some sort of accomodations for the evening. To anyone planning to go to Yellowstone, even after the summer is over: make reservations someplace, or else you’ll end up like us, driving for hours through the park (yes, hours, it’s that big) just to make sure that our accommodations were still available in the next town over, in Montana. Not Wyoming.
So, unfortunately, we couldn’t wait for Old Faithful to erupt, so we took a picture in front of it and had an artist (Brian) render what it might have looked like if we had been there at the point of eruption. You’ll notice I’m playing air guitar in the photo. This is because it rocked so hard.
Ah, I don’t know either.
We ended up spending the night in West Yellowstone, a town which is not in Wyoming like its’ namesake, but rather in Montana. The town of West Yellowstone, Montana is kind of a weird half-dilapidated fake-wild-west tourist town with a hundred different Saloon-style restaurants and stores selling things with leather fringe. While it might’ve been nice to look the part of the cowboy-tourists, we agreed that the rain might’ve ruined our new leather accoutrements, and opted to instead spend the money on some birthday beer at the Wolf Pack Microbrewery.
There is not much to complain about from here on out. We had a few pints of excellent local brews, and I got mocked by the Brewmaster for being a Red Sox fan from Southern Connecticut. Lo and behold, he was from Northern Connecticut, but wasn’t quite stating any particular Major League allegiances. Hey, I’m used to the mockery back home, I can take it here, too.
Happy and full, we went back to our little cabin and went to sleep. Despite the rain, it was a pretty cool birthday.
Day Thirteen
We woke up around ten o’clock, threw our things into the car, and decided that today would be yet another day of insane driving hours. Not only did we decide to drive all the way to Missoula, Montana (a good five or six hours of road time), but we decided to drive through Yellowstone, so we could see a bit more of the park. Despite the continued rain, we came across some more endlessly incredible features.
The problem with Yellowstone is that when you really want to get back to I-90 to continue your travels, you get stuck behind a line of cars driven by the oldest people possible, turning an hour at the speed limit into two hours at half of it. I guess we shouldn’t complain — we were actually seeing Yellowstone at the beginning of the slow season, and it could’ve been worse. But the park just seems to go on, and on, and on. Soon enough you’ve had enough pretty views and rain and just want to see some more 70 mph speed limits. Don’t get me wrong, at some point we’re going to want to see Yellowstone again, and we’ll each probably go back some time in our lives, and spend the week necessary to hike and check it all out first-hand. For example, we had a personal mission to see a bear (from a distance, of course) and failed that mission miserably. Someday we’ll see that bear.
The road to Missoula was pretty similar to the road to Yellowstone; lots of mountains and hills and up-and-down driving. Prudence, our ever-faithful car, got a little fed up now and then and shut off the cruise control when the driving became too much. This made the uphill driving a bit more of a challenge, but we got through it together and found our way to the town, booked a night in the Bel Aire Motel, lost a few dollars in a casino machine in a bar, had a couple of beers, and went to bed.
Day Fourteen
Very little happened on day fourteen, as it was just another driving day.
For the most part, Missoula was only a stop on our trip because it was a halfway point between Yellowstone and Seattle. So, today we checked out of our motel around eleven, and found our way to the biggest cafe that we’ve ever seen. Literally, you could fit six or seven Starbucks locations inside of this one place. Fortunately, they had wi-fi, and I was able to edit the Badlands video while drinking one of the best hot Chais that I’d ever had.
Brian and I later agreed that if we were ever forced at gunpoint to move to Montana, we’d probably be okay with going to Missoula. Aside from there being an enormous college population, the town is pretty young and hip. One of our travel guides lists it as a “liberal city inside of a largely conservative state”. It isn’t so much the political agenda of the town that draws us, either (though it helps), but a weird cooincidence that we’ve noticed where we get stared at in any place that our guidebook considers to be “largely conservative”. I’m not placing judgement, but I guess we just look too obviously Northeastern or Urban. Oh well. In any case, Missoula was pretty great for the short time that we were there.
There isn’t much say about the rest of the day, other than that we then made the 9 hour drive from Missoula to Seattle, in which we crossed the snowy Continental Divide (yes, snowy) and arrived at night. We had booked an Econolodge room while driving, and then proceeded to get lost trying to find it. An hour later, we found it, ate some Taco Bell, and packed it in for the night. Two days of mostly driving are not the best for your mind or body, and we were getting irritable, so sleep came easy.
It really hit me just how far we’d come when I looked down at the odometer yesterday and realized that my car had crossed 90,000 miles. This, of course, means that we’ve driven nearly 5,000 miles so far — we’ll be getting an oil change fairly soon. On the way to Seattle we got our (inevitable) speeding ticket for doing 12 over the limit on a 70 mph road. It was unfortunate, but the cop wasn’t screaming his head off or anything, so we just kind of took the ticket and went on our way. Money kind of becomes a weird concept, when you’re out on the road like this. Brian and I have been taking turns filling up the gas tank, and you never really realize how much you’re spending until you inevitably check your bank account on the computer. Mine has taken quite the hit so far, and I thought we were being generally frugal about the whole thing. Oh well. We only really get one chance at this thing — might as well make it worth it.
Right now I’m sitting on the bottom bunk of our bed at the Vancouver Hostelling International in downtown Vancouver. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough footage for a video for this update, and there probably won’t be one for this city either. However, we’ll probably have much to say about this, our little Canadian detour. Vancouver has been a really interesting experience. More on that later. Right now I need to get away from this computer. Yikes.
Day Eight
It felt weird to leave Wisconsin, as we’d spent a few days there, and were really just starting to get to know the place. However, it felt good to back on the road, and so get back on the road we did.
Day Eight ended up becoming one of those days where nothing really happens. We elected, in an effort to gain some ground, to drive clear across the state of Minnesota into South Dakota. Really, there wasn’t a whole lot in Minnesota that we were particularly interested in checking out. Minneapolis and St. Paul were intriguing, but not enough to try and find lodging and parking. At some point I’m going to see what the state of Minnesota is all about, as The Prairie Home Companion has somewhat built up an intense curiosity about the place, but not this year.
The drive through Minnesota was very long, and very rainy. It poured on us from the Eastern edge of the state, all the way to the West. Oddly, when we met up with South Dakota, we were greeted by parting clouds and potentially the best sunset we’d seen yet. We found a place to camp at the KOA in Sioux Falls, and hit the hay pretty early.
Day Nine
We woke up to to one of the camp employees letting us know that we’d missed checkout, and were now about an hour late. Fortunately, she seemed relatively kind about the situation, and we packed up quickly, grabbed some breakfast at a bagel joint, and got back on I-90. It’s hard to believe that it’s the same 90 that becomes the Mass Pike once you get back east. The scenery is completely different, replacing the narrow corridors of trees with farmland stretching from one horizon to the other. Also, it helps that the speed limit is around 75 the entire way — it certainly hastens those long drives across the state.
Today, we resolved to drive clear across South Dakota to the Badlands National Park, on the opposite side of the state. After a good six hours or so, we arrived at the park completely floored by what we were seeing.
The Badlands National Park is absolutely breathtaking. This, of course, is not a word that I use often, or lightly, but it certainly fits the bill. You roll up on the park only seeing some mountains far off in the distance, when suddenly you encounter enormous gorges of layered rock. They seem to go on forever in every direction, miles and miles of painted cliffs and valleys.
I remember an episode of the Nickelodeon cartoon Doug, in which Doug’s Dad takes his family on a long car trip that is plagued with bad weather, car trouble, and irritation. But he keeps promising that when they get there, it will all be worth it, so they stick together and eventually they get to the promised destination — a place called “painted gorge”. The Badlands are what I remember that fictional destination looking like, and I couldn’t help but feel that same sort of jaw-dropping amazement that makes every long hour of highway-driving worth it. It was certainly one of the most bizarre and unearthly places we’d seen thus far. We couldn’t stop “whoa”-ing the whole time.
As the sun went down, we found another “Kabin” at the Badlands KOA, made some campfire spaghetti after giving up on our broken camp stove, and went to bed. The next day would be an exploration day.
Day Ten
Today, we switched from our forty-dollar “Kabin” into a twenty-dollar campsite, as the weather seemed like it’d be clear enough, and the wind calm enough. We set out quickly for the park, stopping to buy an annual pass for all of the Nation Parks in the country, and to grab a few buffalo burgers at the park’s lodge restaurant.
While the idea of eating buffalo had never occurred to me before, the results were delicious. Brian stated that he still prefers regular beef, but I disagree.
We set out for what the guide listed as the most ‘strenuous’ trail at the park — a half-mile upward climb called ‘Saddle Pass’, which lived up to its strenuous claims. Only a few minutes in and the two of us were already breathing hard and sweating our faces off. It was obvious that we were a bit out of physical shape, despite collectively weighing about five pounds. My water bottle was a godsend, though the water inside was hot like tea from the blazing sun.
We persevered, however, and eventually reached a high peak which made for an incredible viewpoint. Brian, who had been intensely lugging his view camera and tripod on his back, set up his things and snapped off some landscape photographs, while I stood around and tried to catch my breath. The views that we were experiencing just kept getting more and more intense.
While climbing down the slope I managed to take a bit of a fall and, trying to protect Brian’s DSLR which I had been holding, managed to jam my thumb pretty hard into a rock. It hurt like hell, but a quick trip to the First Aid station fixed me up quickly, and we set back out to try to find some Bighorn Sheep out on the Badlands loop road.
Long story short, we never found the sheep, but the long stretches of prairie and cliffs made the drive worth it. At one point, while Brian and I were each photographing out on some of the ledges, I noticed that two men with an HD video camera were filming the scenery, pointing their cameras almost directly at us. It felt a bit weird, but I continued on my pursuit of photographs. Upon arriving back near the car, Brian shouted out, “Hey, want to be on TV?”
Now, “want to be on TV” is one of those questions that hardly anyone responds negatively to, and so I met up with him was informed that the men filming were from the Travel channel, working on a special called “Mt. Rushmore and Beyond”. We had been filmed by the crew while photographing. A gentleman with the group had me sign a release form, and informed us that the special would be airing around mid-April. I guess we’ll have to keep an eye on it? We felt like such celebrities. Sweaty, awkward celebrities.
The night was finished off with a long drive on the loop road, and then back to camp for some campfire hotdogs and sweet sleep.
Day Eleven
We actually woke up early today, believe it or not, packed up our campsite and hit the road. Our plan for the day was to stop in nearby Rapid City (which, as it turns out, was less than enthralling — even the microbrewery/restaurant that we ate at was disappointing), then out to Mt. Rushmore, and from there, making the long trek out to Yellowstone, deep in Wyoming.
Now, some people might be irritated by my saying this, but Mount Rushmore was generally a disappointment. With no disrespect to our forefathers, the monument is exactly how you might anticipate it, if not less incredible, and they charge eight dollars for parking. You can forego the parking, of course, but the park has a garage near the best vantage point which obscures most of your vision of the monument. The woman working at the booth tried to hustle us into paying by asking, “Well, have you ever SEEN it?”
It’s Mount Rushmore! It’s one of the most iconic pieces of memorial art in our country! Not only had we just seen it from the road, but as American-born citizens, we’ve seen it at least once a year every year since our births. She didn’t seem to believe me when I said that we had, in fact, seen it, and so we just made our way to the exit and snapped off a few pictures. That enormous garage sort of ruins the view, doesn’t it?
The rest of the drive was incredibly long. The distance from Rapid City to Yellowstone is about 8 hours, plus the two hours spent in Rapid City, leaves us with about 10 hours road time. We pulled into Yellowstone (about an hour from the nearest town) expecting some sort of nearby accomodations. Lesson: there aren’t. So, we headed back to nearby Cody, Wyoming, and went door-to-door trying to find a place to stay. We eventually found cheap room at the ‘prestigious’ Buffalo Bill’s Antler Inn, and collapsed into sleep.
If you’re going to one of the country’s largest national parks, even in the fall, make sure that you make room reservations first. Instead of just assuming that we’d find campgrounds just outside of the park, we could’ve just called someplace ahead and saved an hour off of our road-time. Oh well, lessons learned.
We have to take this opportunity to apologize for the lack of updates lately, as we’ve been kind of running around Yellowstone and now, Missoula, Montana. There just wasn’t enough easy-accesible wireless internet in most of Wyoming or Montana, and so the updates have been kind of coming out slowly. We’ll be back up to stat pretty soon though — I’ll be writing the entry (sadly, sans-video) for Yellowstone while we drive over to Seattle later today.
My good friend Chris asked what sort of camera we were using for all of these travel-pictures. For those curious, Brian is shooting with a Canon 20D for all of the digital photographs, though our more serious photo-work has been on 4″x5″ sheet film (and probably won’t be visible for awhile after we’re done). All of the video is being shot with a little Sony Handycam that I bought before the trip, for the trip. We’re doing all of our editing on an Apple Powerbook G4 that never seems to have enough disk-space.
It’s another driving day today, as I’m updating from an enormous Cafe in Missoula. We’ll be in Seattle by the end of the day, making a brief stop before heading to Vancouver, BC, for our short Canadian stint. It’s hard to believe that we’re almost out of the long, wide landscapes that we’ve been seeing for the past week. West Coast, here we come.
PS: Don’t forget to check out our ever-changing photo album. There are tons of pictures for your perusal, even from things like Yellowstone, that we haven’t made updates about yet. Enjoy!
Day Five
We left Chicago in a slow crawl, not exactly eager to leave a place that we’d enjoyed so much. We figured that the drive from Illinois to Eau Claire, Wisconsin would take us about four hours and change, depending on traffic. Unfortunately, having yet to replace the atlas that we left at home, we were forced to do some guesswork once I-90 split off from I-94. The Google Maps directions that we’d copied down weren’t exactly helpful, either, and so in a split-second decision, we chose I-94, which supposedly went to Eau Claire.
While this was true, we eventually learned that 90 would’ve cut off about two hours of driving, and that the drive would’ve taken the four hours that we’d anticipated. Instead, we had the pleasure of driving for six hours through Wisconsin. While it wasn’t exactly a welcome change, the drive wasn’t terrible, and we arrived in Eau Claire to a homecooked meal and cold Wisconsin beer, care of our good friend Meredith. We also had the chance to head over to the local bar that Meredith and her friends often frequent, called “The Joynt”. It was a pleasant surprise to see a packed bar in a little town, full of good people and with a neon sign on the wall that read “No Light Beer”. It was our kind of place — not to mention 75 cent drafts and 5 dollar pitchers of local brews. After tossing back a few drinks, we headed back to the apartment and went to bed.
Day Six
We woke up relatively late, as we have been making an awful habit of doing nearly every morning. Living out of a car is somehow incredibly exhausting, and so we’ve been waking up to eachothers’ snoring every day. After some coffee, breakfast, and planning, we hopped into Meredith’s car to drive up to La Crosse, where the mouth of the Mississippi is. It was a lengthy drive, but the long fields and scenic views made it all worth it.
Before getting on the road, however, we made a quick pit-stop at the Savers thrift store in Eau Claire, to stock up on some more cold-weather clothing. Brian found a flannel (see video) that seemed to suit his needs, and I bought a couple of cheap sweatshirts.
There is something interesting about driving along backroads in Wisconsin, where you become sort-of hypnotized by the seemingly endless fields. There isn’t much to listen to on the radio, as we soon discovered, but there is plenty of time to talk and think. Amidst all of the pretty empty space, we stopped into a Norwegian restaurant called the Norske Nook (pronounced ‘nor-skee’). After a big helping of what was essentially Norwegian meatballs, potatoes, and gravy in a wrap, we had some of the best pie we’ve ever tasted, and got back on the road.
As the sun began to go down, we arrived at the Mississippi in La Crosse, and went for a quick walk up and down the water. Determined to make it to the La Crosse Bluffs by nightfall, we packed into the car and drove a detoured road up to the top, for a great view of the city at night.
After a long day, we drove back to Eau Claire, and went to sleep.
Day Seven
We woke up late again, and elected to stay in-town for the day, to photograph and, essentially, stay away from long drives.
Meredith showed us around her town, taking us over to some parts of the Chippewa River. We rolled up our pant-legs and took off our shoes to go for a walk in the shallows, which were ripe for photographing. It was a generally cool day outside, and there was a cool breeze, making for comfortable walking. I brought my view camera out into the river with me to take some pictures and I realized how good it felt to be out on the road, experiencing all of these places for the first time, soaking up everything that we could with good friends. The United States looks a whole lot different from the ground, that’s for sure. The people in the midwest have been some of the most kind and hospitable folks that we’ve met so far. Certainly leaps and bounds from the bitter moods of the Northeast.
Don’t get me wrong, I love New England like none other, but it’s sure nice to gain a sense of understanding of the rest of your fellow people. People are a whole lot more kind than we’re led to believe these days — far more likely to offer a smile in passing than a scowl. While we’ve certainly felt our share of judgement here and there, our trip on a whole has been a comfortable experience, like eating a big meal, or having a good conversation.
After wandering about, we headed back to the apartment to settle in, electing that on Day Eight, we’d be driving across the entirety of Minnesota and into South Dakota, the state where I’m currently typing from. We’re now two timezones away from home, and it’s hard to believe that we’ve come this far (over 2,000 miles to date.) We certainly have a lot of road left, but morale is very high, and this landscape just keeps getting more and more amazing.
Some people have been asking about why we don’t update more frequently, and the simple answer is that we can’t. Now and then we find some wi-fi to leech off of, or our place of residence has it, but we’re doing most of our typing, image editing, and video editing from the road. Having a laptop on your lap while piecing together video from the passenger seat of a small car is always interesting. Feel free to send us any other questions, and we’ll be sure to respond to you as soon as we are able. The updates regarding our South Dakota should be up in a few days — we’ve got the Badlands National Park to explore today, which has been the most incredible thing we’ve seen yet. It just keeps getting better.
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Kyle and I have just created a web album so that you all can see the pretty places were experiencing out here on the road. We are taking entirely too many pictures to be able to put them up on the blog without it looking just plain ugly.
So for a more visual diary of our trip you can visit our Google web album at www.picasaweb.google.com/big.country2007
Enjoy.
Day Three
It takes about seven hours to drive from Gambier, Ohio to Chicago, Illinois. There really isn’t much to look at on the way, either. Mostly you see a lot of grain silos and big, open fields of various crops. It’s pretty for all of five minutes, but then you really just want to finish driving and end up where you belong.
Fortunately, the seven hours was well worth it. We arrived at our friends’ Stacey and Stepher’s apartment in Boystown, Chicago, around 9 pm, and quickly settled to hit a few bars in Wrigleyville, minutes from Wrigley Stadium. Immediately we found ourselves feeling far more welcome and impressed than any of the places we’d slept or stopped-over in thus far. Chicago is a bustling city — big like New York but intimate like Boston. It caught us pretty well off-guard when we realized that there were ashtrays on the tables at our bars of choice. It’s pretty strange to think that some parts of this country still allow smoking in public places. Apparently, though, the laws are changing for Illinois pretty soon, and the ashtrays are going to be long gone.
Tired from nearly endless driving, we went back to Stacey and Stepher’s apartment and crashed for the night. Fortunately, Day Four would be our first day without driving since the start of our trip. We looked forward to some serious exploring.
Day Four
The two of us slept like man-shaped rocks, on an unoccupied queen-sized bed and an equally comfortable queen-sized air mattress. Waking up at around noon wasn’t quite in the cards, but it still left a good portion of the day to check out what Chicago had to offer.
We took the El downtown to check out the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, Millenium Park, and some of the waterfront.
At the Museum, we were able to see firsthand the classic piece of Americana,American Gothic as well as the Jeff Wall exhibit that Brian had seen at MoMA last winter. Had we been looking at the Museum yesterday, instead, we would’ve gotten the pleasure of checking out the new Richard Misrach exhibit. At the very least, we were able to walk along the gallery and see much of the work from far off.
Millenium Park turned out to be something that I’d always wished Boston had — an interesting and cost-free public space. There, we came across a few things, the first of which being the Crown Fountain, and interaction sculpture/installation of two enormous glass towers that illuminate with videos of faces, sometimes spitting water into the reflecting pool below.
Also at the park is a large sculpture called the Cloud Gate, but known more affectionately as “The Bean.” Essentially, the Bean is an enormous, mirrored sculpture that is meant to resemble Mercury (the element). Walking up to it is a pretty humbling experience, as the mirrored surface reflects you and everything behind you at an angle that makes everything look gargantuan. Apparently, it is immensely popular in the city, as you can see tons of tourists taking pictures of their reflections from all sides of the piece. (Naturally, we followed suit.) Walking under the sculpture presents you with a completely different perspective, as the concave center warps and distorts reflections from all angles. It’s really quite an experience, and so good of Chicago to place so publicly. This is one of the reasons why we liked the city so much — it didn’t feel like we had to throw around piles of money to enjoy ourselves.
We finished off our day by taking a walk along the waterfront and talking to Stacey about her new home in the city, and about how we all miss Boston in our individual ways. When we arrived back at the apartment, Brian went off to spend the night with his girlfriend, Megan, who was visiting her sister in the city. Myself and Stacey hung around the apartment and watched an enormously disappointing 4.5 hour Red Sox/Yankees game that ended in us sadly going out for ‘dinner’ around midnight.
Being so loyal to New Haven pizza, I felt it necessary to experience the fuss that Midwesterners make about Chicago-style-pizza. So, we went back downtown to meet up with Stepher Pizzeria Due (the sister location of the original Pizzeria Uno, a block away). After a forty-five (!) minute wait, we finally got our dinner and dove into it.
Now, native Chicagoans would probably kill me for saying this, but I felt largely disappointed. Deep-dish pizza isn’t really pizza, so much as it’s a quiche/cake sort of thing, minus eggs. You eat it with a fork and a knife, the sauce is on top, and one slice leaves you completely full. We ended up packing up the rest for leftovers into a box that might’ve weighed in excess of 20 pounds. I don’t really get it — Chicago doesn’t have anything on New Haven’s Modern or Pepe’s, that’s for sure. I could see it being pretty good, if only it wasn’t trying to be called “pizza”. It’s an interesting sort of meal of it’s own, I suppose. Oh well, maybe I just hit the wrong restaurant on a bad day, or something. Who knows.
After a long ride home on the El, I hit the hay, and the next morning, Brian and I departed for Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where we’re currently staying — more on that later, this place is really great.
Chicago was a really neat place to stay. I’d really wanted to go to a Cubs game, but only the White Sox were in town, who I felt far less interested in. Maybe some other time. It was good, however, to stay in a place that we really liked, especially after the travesties that were Days One and Two. Our car, who we’ve affectionally named Prudence after a Beatles song, is doing well and riding smoothly. I haven’t taken a single photograph yet, and we didn’t do much video-work in the city. Fortunately, Brian is always snapping away with his DSLR.
Brian and I had a conversation the other night, sort of recapping our planned journey, and we realized just how much driving we have left to do. We passed by a car on the way to Eau Claire, that had a sign posted on the back saying “VA to MN – 1,500 miles!!”. We got their attention with our New England license plates, and ended up showing them hastily-written sign that read “NY to CA and BACK, 8,500 miles!”
They stopped communicating with us after that. Oh well. Is what we’re doing so insane? I kind of hope it is, we like it that way.
Day One
The day started off sort of dark and gloomy. There isn’t much that one can do about weather, unfortunately, and so all that we could do was pack up our little car to the brim and get out onto the open highway. The plan, as it was originally conceived, was to drive out to Western Pennsylvania, set up camp, and figure out what to do the next day. What happened, of course, was entirely different.
A couple of hours into Pennsylvania, we noticed that my “Check Engine” light had gone on. No change in driving pattern, no precarious sounds from the under the hood, just a bright orange light burning it’s way into my brain. We pulled off of the highway and, under the advice of my parents, decided to check the fluid levels. Deciding that it might be the anti-freeze/coolant mixture, it was deemed best to pull off at a service station that we had just left behind, and find some of the solution to top off the reservoir.
In the meantime, we found a place to set up camp at Clearview Camping in Du Bois, PA. In the middle of nowhere. On the edge of a hill. At eleven p.m. We were like Rambo(s), setting up the tent.
Now, as you can imagine, the unfortunate thing about setting up a tent on the edge of a grassy valley is that the wind tends to intensify and whip against the walls after scooping up from said valley. The wind blew so hard that the canvas walls were touching our faces while we were lying in our sleeping bags. In a sleepy stupor, I decided it best to pass out in the car, and after the wind died down, Brian moved back into the tent to catch a few hours of sleep. Needless to say, neither of us were either comfortable or well-rested.
With little rest, and a mysteriously broken car, it became apparent that we were either cursed or doomed — neither of which being a very good option. Not the best start for any trip. Hopefully things will look up, fast.
A part of me honestly believed that we were going to fly away in the tent, like a huge kite. Fortunately, we didn’t.
Day Two
Today, we decided to take some initiative, and woke up early in various stages of discomfort. We hit a Lowe’s to pick up some needed hardware, and WalMart for some new tent stakes — the weather would not be getting the best of us, again.
After finding some greasy breakfast at the Du Bois Diner, we decided to head towards Pittsburgh, on the advice of a Nissan mechanic who assured us that, “a non-flashing ‘check engine’ light was nothing to worry about.” This seemed to be true until, there came a intermittent dull bucking from the engine on the while en route to Pittsburgh, culminating in a more-intense bucking about twenty minutes out from the city. Deciding it best to stop into a Nissan Dealership, we gave in to our little car and put her in for repairs. Four-hundred dollars later, our car had been fitted with a new fuel-injector and four new spark-plugs, to replace the broken parts that our dashboard was trying to tell us about.
Two days in, and we had already faced enough bad-luck for an entire trip. Go figure. Is it officially bad luck to start a road-trip on September 11th?
As I write this, I’m sitting in my friend Mike’s dorm room at Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio. It’s very quiet here — most of the ride felt like driving through a large, black cloud. A good four hours later, we were happy to see civilization again, and happier to get a night’s sleep on a soft, flat surface. I’ve been thinking about how the rest of the videos are going to go, and I don’t think I’m going to decide on any sort of format. Everything will be a little different.
Lessons so far? Well, over five-hundred miles in, we’ve realized that this country is big. Really, really big. So, tomorrow — Chicago?
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So, we (Kyle and Brian) are setting out for the open road, this week. Keep an eye on this blog for photographs, journals, and musings from the highway. Here we go.
The United States is going to be so cool to hang out with for a month. More coming very soon!
