Filed under: Camping, Cities, Good Days, Less Good Days, National Parks, Towns, Weird
Day Eighteen
We woke up on Day Eighteen at around 11, at our cabin near the coast of Oregon. We quickly threw our things together and got back on the road to San Francisco. Unfortunately, since we’d changed our plans from driving down the coast to taking the interstate, it took a bit of driving before we were truly back on our way.
The weather in Oregon was primarily rainy and cool, which made for a slow drive through the state. When we crossed over the border into California, the clouds parted and we were greeted with an excellent drive through the Sierra Nevada. When night fell upon us, however, we still had a couple of road-hours ahead.
At around 10 pm, we found our way to our friends’ apartment in Oakland, and settled in for the night. We had never felt so ready to get away from the car for a few days. With three nights planned in San Francisco, the timing couldn’t have been better. After a delicious meal prepared by our friends/hosts Heather and Tracy, we hit the sleeping bags for the night.
Day Nineteen
We slept in, of course, on Day Nineteen. After waking up as late as we did, we still sat around for a couple of hours after noon before doing anything of real interest. It felt nice to just sit around and not have to run around getting ready for a checkout, or packing up the car, or taking down the tent, et cetera. So, unabashedly, we played lazy for a bit before finally getting up and out into the city.
Tracy and Heather, knowing their way around a bit more than us, brought us to the Bay Area Rapid Transit (the BART) station, which we all took down to the Embarcadero stop, much closer to the center of everything. We walked around in the quiet Financial District for a bit before finding our way into San Francisco’s Chinatown district. Much like the Chinatown of New York or Boston, the Chinatown of San Francisco was full of the same cheap plastic garbage, knockoff designer sunglasses, and the strong smell of food. Being that it was late in the afternoon, we selected a restaurant at random and had some pretty standard Chinese food — nothing really exciting. It is always nice to eat something that isn’t fast food, however. (We’ve eaten at various Taco Bells three or four times at this point which, for me, is about two or three times too many.)
After dinner, we met up with our friend Paris, who goes to school in San Francisco. For that night, she was hired by a local club to do a live painting during one of their dance nights, and had guaranteed that Brian and I could get in without having to pay the normal cover. However, since it’d be a few hours before then, she split off from us downtown, and we decided to hang around the Apple Store for a little while. Several other stores later, we found our way over to the club which, to our dismay, we were a bit underdressed for.
Picture, if you will, the four of us debating whether or not to go in, while a number of nicely dressed people file in and out of the doors. None of us were in nightclub-friendly attire, of course, and so to avoid a potentially awkward situation, we decided to meet up with Paris later, and visit an interesting looking pub immediately across the street in the meantime.
Inside, we felt far more relaxed, surrounded by antique motorcycles, low-level music, and a decent beer selection. We sat down, had a few drinks and some conversation to pass the time, and even met the pub’s cat, a big, round, orange tabby named Mr. Higgins.
Eventually, I got a call on my cell phone from Paris who informed me that we should come into the club anyway, and that it wouldn’t be weird that we were underdressed. She managed to get all four of us in without paying any sort of cover, and as soon as we were inside we realized exactly how wrong we were about our original impressions. While one room was full of fancy-dressed nightclubbers, the room that Paris had been working in was full of a very bizarre and eclectic crowd who were dancing to an entirely separate DJ and looking far less fancy. At ease, we made our way to where Paris was working, and enjoyed the rest of the evening.
The story from here gets a bit bizarre. Essentially, as the club filed out, a group of people who had been dancing around in weird costumes led a number of the people from our room into an RV, parked on the side of the building. Apparently, since the club had closed, they were continuing the party inside of a motor home that they’d driven from San Jose.
For fun, we hung around the RV for a little bit, mostly people-watching and joking around with some very bizarre people, before leaving to head back to Paris’ apartment for the night. We took a cab back to the Mission district of the city and climbed onto a variety of mattresses that Paris had kindly put out for us to sleep on. After a very late night, I was out like a light, and everyone else followed suit.
Day Twenty
The next morning, most of us decided to go get breakfast at a diner down the street from Paris’ apartment. The mission district, where Paris lives, is primarily composed of a Hispanic demographic — presumably mostly Mexican. On the way to the diner, I was able to stop in at a Mexican bakery, where I found the most incredibly soft macaroon I’d ever had for a mere 99 cents.
At breakfast, the tiny ‘hipster diner’ was full of normal breakfast fare, but also had alternative options such as Soy Milkshakes and Vegan Sausage. In my opinion, it was very ‘California’. All in all, it was a pretty excellent breakfast, and provided me with the coffee that I needed to start the rest of my day.
Upon arriving back at Paris’ apartment, I woke up Brian who had elected to sleep through breakfast, and the two of us received some badly needed haircuts from Paris before she had to head off to work for the evening. Heather and Tracy got on the BART and went back to Oakland to shower and start their days, and Brian and I decided to walk down an enormous length of Market Street until we arrived back downtown. Mostly, we did this because we had no idea what else to do, and it provided us with an interesting look at some of the local culture in the process.
By the time we arrived back at the Apple store downtown we were exhausted and hopped the BART back to Oakland to another delicious meal with Heather and Tracy, and went to sleep for the night.
Day Twenty-One
Though we’d originally planned to do some of the more tourist-y things on Day 21, we ended up taking some more time to just take it easy before getting back into the car. Eventually, we decided that going to see Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge would’ve simply taken up too much time. Since we’d be heading to Yosemite, we also wanted to save all of the energy that we could in order to complete the drive with enough gusto remaining to set up the tent and build a fire. After I gave up my own search for a campsite, Brian took control and found us a first-come-first-serve campground in the middle of Yosemite. So, we said our goodbyes to our hosts and reluctantly got back behind the wheel.
On the way out of the San Francisco Bay Area, we decided to stop in at an In-and-Out burger, the fabled fast food stop of the West. We expected that this stop, on the recommendation of many of our West-coast friends, would be a delicious one. While the experience of going into the restaurant and ordering from a menu of maybe seven items (with a nicely-sized list of secret items too) was interesting, the food was kind of on par with most fast food we’d ever had — good for a few bites, but then disappointing until the end. After finishing about 75% of what we’d ordered, we trashed the rest and stepped back into the car.
What becomes almost shocking about road tripping out west is that everything you want to see is so far apart from the last thing that you saw. The interstates out here are enormous, and while we weren’t becoming bitter about anything, we were certainly getting anxious for some sort of relaxed, focused break. Even three days in San Francisco couldn’t help ease the tension of being out on the road. There is a certain form of comfortable stagnancy that you can only achieve by being at your home, or a place that you call home. There is no way, for example, to spend a day doing nothing out here, because each day is so costly. Truthfully, I think the both of us could still use a mid-afternoon nap in someplace that isn’t a moving car or a motel bed or a sleeping bag.
Of course, riding into Yosemite National Park around 10pm to set up camp (in the dark, mind you) is nothing even remotely like relaxation. Take this situation, and put said campsite at around 9,000 feet above sea level, and you’ve got yourself a pretty awful night. After applying layers and layers of long underwear and jackets, we were still pretty cold (we later found out that the temperature at night was under 20 degrees.) After setting up camp, we made a pot of macaroni and cheese, and climbed into our sleeping bags in a defiant effort to sleep. While sleep came to us, I found myself shivering through most of the night until morning. When I woke up around seven, I threw on my shoes and jumped in the car to warm up. Brian joined me soon after.
Miserable and sore, we dismantled the tent, packed up our camping equipment, and headed out to the nearby town to grab some breakfast at a small coffee shop. We found our way to a nearby post office to mail out some things, tried to get an oil change to no avail, and headed back into the park.
It goes without saying that Yosemite during the day at 70 degrees is far more beautiful than Yosemite at night at 20. The park, though much smaller than Yellowstone, is still quite the size. The biggest difference that we’d noticed was that the sheer amount of trees seemed far greater than that of Yellowstone. The trees at Yosemite encroach up on the road, and stand incredibly tall, turning each road into a hallway of trees. We took a long drive to the south end of the park, where we visited Glacier Point, one of the highest lookout points in the park. The view was incredible, and the two of us brought our 4×5 cameras out of the trunk to capture a bit of the cool afternoon light.
Setting up a 4×5 view camera in such a public place tends to invite a lot of attention. Most of it is just basic conversation, and assisting people’s curiosities, but such an easy icebreaker tends to attract interesting attention. For example: setting up my camera and beginning to get to work attracted an older gentleman who decided to fill me in on all of his conspiratorial theories about September 11th, the National Bank, and religion. While I don’t particularly mind listening to people’s ideas about the country that we live in and its inner-workings, making this sort of conversation loudly and in mixed company at a national landmark makes for some awkward staring. Eventually, he was able to move on and just enjoy his surroundings, like the rest of us.
Brian and I took a number of 4x5s during our stay at Yosemite, but I can’t help but admit that I feel as if I have been slacking off with the art-making. It actually becomes really difficult, to separate the “pretty pictures” from the “artful pictures” and so you either end up taking way too many pictures or you end up being far too careful about which pictures you take. Unfortunately, I think that I’ve been a bit too careful, if not lazy. We’re over halfway done with our trip at this point, and I still haven’t finished a box of fifty sheets of film. This could, of course, just be the fact that I work better when I’m out by myself. I’m not exactly sure. In any case, I do know that I’ve gotten a good amount of photos I really like thus far. If it doesn’t somehow become a conceptually legible body of work, then so be it. Really, this traveling is more about the act of traveling than photographing. Still, it bothers Me.
Anyhow, we began to pack up our equipment as the sun started to descend, and headed out to the south exit of the park, making one quick stop at the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. This one quick stop turned out to be one of my highlights of the trip thus far. I had never previously seen anything so large and incredible in person, that wasn’t man-made or composed of rocks.
Quite frankly, the experience of being in the presence of such immense living things was humbling. While we didn’t get to see any of the redwoods of California, this experience made up for it. One thing that we found most interesting about the humongous sequoias was that they were simultaneously incredibly strong and incredibly weak. While being resistant to fire, for example, the shallow roots of the trees could cause them to topple relatively easily if disturbed. Some of the trees were as old as 3500 years — officially the oldest thing that I’d ever touched with my bare hands.
After playing around and taking plenty of photographs in the grove, and having a brief conversation about photography with a couple who had recognized us from Glacier Point, we made our way back to the car and the highway. Our drive to Vegas began just as the sun had gone down, far later than we’d originally anticipated. Fortunately, we have an iPod loaded up with episodes of PRI/NPR’s This American Life to pass the hours away. I managed to hang onto waking life through some of the most awful-smelling stretches of California, and found myself fast asleep nearly as soon as Brian took over, a few hours from Las Vegas.
Thanks to Brian’s purchase of an “Energy Shot”, we rolled into our hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada at 3:30 in the morning. The fact that we didn’t have to check out the following day was a welcome relief — we drew the blinds shut tight and collapsed into our beds at the Fitzgerald Hotel and Casino.
Day Twenty-Two
We should start out this entry by saying that we decided to stop in Las Vegas because we felt that it was a necessary point of interest in our route back east. While neither of us had any particular interest in intense gambling, we figured that going to Las Vegas would still be a fun experience. Sadly, we were wrong.
You see, when I’ve been telling people about Las Vegas, I tend to refer to it as a “place to go if you have a lot of money and don’t want it anymore”. While our hotel was incredibly cheap, our efforts at gambling were fruitless, resulting in each of us losing around twenty or thirty dollars total. For lunch, we found a small pizza place where I bought a couple of hotdogs. Nothing too special. We then retreated to the casino where we each played about six dollars in nickel-slots. We lost all of our nickels (that’s a lot of nickels), and suddenly felt like old men. In suit, we proceeded upstairs to our room to relax for a little bit. I put on the Red Sox game and Brian dove into a book that he’s been reading. Eventually, I decided to go for a walk to hopefully help understand the city a little better.
All that I learned, sadly, is that Las Vegas is full of some of the saddest looking down-and-out people I’ve ever seen. I suppose this is probably due to a large drug problem in the state, as well as the obvious gambling problems. In my walk, I looked for some of the cheap food deals that we’d heard about. Frankly, they were few and far between. While we weren’t exactly on the Las Vegas Strip, I began to feel that since this mile or so of street was block-after-block of the same old freezing-cold casinos and helpless looking people, that the other side of town wouldn’t have much to offer either. I went back to the hotel and grabbed Brian, and we went out to find dinner.
Eventually, we put out some cash to dine at a casino buffet. Hungry for a full meal, we walked up and down the aisles of food until we decided what to grab. At the end of it all, I had a plate full of steak, lasagna, pulled pork, Caesar salad, and some other items that I can’t recall. The unfortunate part was that everything except the salad tasted awful, think along the lines of a Hometown Buffet or something. Brian finished a plate of lackluster food, and went back for seconds, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat another dish. Something just felt very wrong about what I was eating. I caught the glance of someone about my age a few tables over, and we looked at our plates and made the same face about what was in front of us. I can’t imagine that many people were truly enjoying the meal. Again, disappointing.
Later, Brian and I decided to make some sarcastic videos about being in Las Vegas, and each bought a plastic football (actual size) full of Miller High Life. The “champagne of beers”, for the record, doesn’t taste much better out of a plastic ball, than it does in any other form. I finished half of mine before I had to stop. Vegas had done enough already, and the experience wasn’t about to improve from any amount of drinking. Brian and I went back to our hotel room and slept like babies. Disturbed, exhausted babies.
Day Twenty-Three
After checking out of the hotel and piling back into the car, we found a Midas outside of the city to get an oil change as well as a general quick safety inspection. After this and some lunch, we drove back onto the highway towards the Grand Canyon. Fortunately, the highway leading from Las Vegas to the canyon also passes over the Hoover Dam, something I’d wanted to see since one memorable episode of Pete and Pete made it so intriguing.
Being on top of the dam, standing at the crossroads of two time zones and states, my mind began to relax, far away from the bizarre aching sadness that was Las Vegas. We took a number of pictures and looked down into the bubbling water and felt a bit more at ease with the road ahead of us. Thanks to free parking and warm sun, the both of us began to relax a bit, admittedly excited about witnessing the “grandness” of the Grand Canyon ahead of us.
The rest of the drive was long and quiet, taking turns driving and sleeping and reading until we arrived at our campsite within the park. We purchased some firewood, since park regulations prohibited gathering it, and set up our camp. Before setting into sleep, we watched through a few episodes of NBC’s ‘The Office’ in the tent, and then fell asleep. These sort of driving days seem to be short and uneventful, a necessary but unfortunate trend.
Day Twenty-Four
The funny thing about our driving record thus far is that we tend to end up at our destinations at night. This habit tends to blind us to our surroundings until we wake up the next morning — kind of a welcome surprise every time. Day twenty-four was no different. After getting some breakfast at the nearby lodge, we drove to the South Rim of the canyon, and what we found there was incredible.
The Grand Canyon, as the name would imply, is Grand. Potentially more Grand than anything you’ve ever seen before — unless you’ve seen the Grand Canyon. It’s huge. Unimaginably huge. Humbling in size and depth and just jaw-dropping.
We walked along the edge of the canyon, dodging hordes of European, Asian, and Geriatric tourists, and ended up at the shuttle that takes people to each of the major viewpoints along the rim. After boarding the first shuttle that came along, we got off every few stops to look around, take pictures, and attempt to take it all in. Our astonishment rarely ceased from point to point, and we were both doing pretty well — though still a bit sleepy.
That is until the Grand Canyon swallowed my Red Sox hat. Yes, a national park ate my hat, right in the middle of the playoffs. Basically, while waiting for a shuttle at a point called the Abyss, a huge gust of wind blew my five-week old hat off of my head and deep into the abyss itself. I stared into the abyss, and the abyss stared back into me. This sort of ruined my day, especially considering that another tram pulled up just as it happened. Not only did I lose my hat, but those same hordes of tourists got to laugh at my expense.
Oh Grand Canyon, if only you weren’t so amazing — I would probably be pretty angry with you. That sort of thing should only happen in movies.
We caught the shuttle to another stop or two, and then took it back to the parking lot where we’d left the car. The feeling of unrest between us was almost palpable, as our next stop was in Austin, Texas — 17 hours away from the Grand Canyon. Of course, we weren’t about to do all 17 hours in one shot, so we broke it up into a 9 hour drive to El Paso, and an 8 hour drive to Austin.
We checked into our Econo Lodge in El Paso around 1 am, and nursed our sore backs and butts into sleep. Only to get up the next day and do it all over again.
Days Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six
Truthfully, there isn’t much to say about these days. We woke up at our motel, packed up our things, and drove the rest of the distance to Austin. The only fortunate part of driving through the enormous state of Texas is that you can find gas for 2.50 a gallon if you wait for the right stations. Go figure.
Later in the evening (and after a hasty decision to eat at a Dairy Queen) we parked the car at our friends Caitlin and Matt’s house, who had just moved to Austin. We grabbed some dinner at a local diner and bought beer at a drive-through liquor-store called the Party Barn (not like a drive-up window, but an actual store that you drive your car through… like a car wash… I couldn’t make this up.) After drinking said beer on the porch and talking about Boston for awhile, we all went to sleep in the same bedroom due to the air-conditioning. It was like a sleepover. An adorable little sleepover.
Today, we left Austin after getting some breakfast and coffee, wishing that we could stay longer, but knowing it best to make our way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As I finish typing this sizeable entry, I am in the passenger seat of the car, on I-10 in Louisiana, and we’re about an hour from our friend Becca’s apartment. Baton Rouge is just outside of New Orleans, and so going to that area should be an interesting experience. I’ve been pretty curious about the state of the New Orleans area since Hurricane Katrina, and so hopefully this stop will satisfy some of those curiosities.
To say that our pattern of becoming tired is getting worse would be an understatement. Though we’re getting very good at staying alert through long, long drives, the two of us are getting more sleepy with every stop. Not actively tired, per say, we’re just starting to drag a little bit. Things that we see have become less and less exciting with each stop. Really, the effect is kind of unfortunate, but we’ve been driving around this country since the 11th of last month. In four days, we’ll have been on the road for a month. I’m almost completely out of money, not something I’d intended to happen, and Brian isn’t doing so hot either. Both of our budgets were a bit off, but oh well. We’re willing to put in the extra money if it’ll guarantee a better experience in the long run.
On the plus side, we’ve both had an incredible experience so far. To think of being in Ohio, or Wisconsin, or Chicago seems like months ago, rather than weeks. Living out on the road like this really makes you consider how the world around you works. After getting over the sheer immensity of this place that we thought we knew so well, we began to notice that Americans are both all very similar and all very different.
But the more tired we get, the harder it gets to be completely positive about the entire experience. We’ve gone from saying that we “miss home-cooked meals” to saying that we just “want to be home”. Most importantly, I think it really gives you a new perspective on home that traveling other countries doesn’t give you. Instead of feeling alienated, you start to just appreciate what it is that you have, be it miles and miles away. Simultaneously, it’s a good and awful feeling. Or at least I think so.
One thing I can say for sure is that we’ve really begun to hate fast-food, and that a fresh salad is looking better and better at every meal.
Our trip is nearly complete. We have just three stops after Baton Rouge: Atlanta, Raleigh, and Washington D.C. Wow. Again, sorry for the lack of updates lately. It’s been getting hard as we’ve hit a number of spots that either don’t have wi-fi, or only have spotty wi-fi that works some of the time. This also doesn’t give me much time to edit video. If this trend keeps up, then it’s possible that I’ll just edit together a bunch of recap footage when I have a nice extended period of time to do so.
That said, thanks again for reading. We’ll be home in less than a week, and it’ll be great to see all of your bright, shining faces again. Only a few entries left, so stay tuned.
Day Fifteen
Still grumbling about the new speeding ticket, we threw our things in the car, checked out of the Econolodge, and got on the trail to the American-Canadian border in Blaine, Washington. It was another rainy morning, but the weather forecast told us that we’d be arriving in British Columbia, Canada to a clearing sky and cool temperatures.
The crossing of the border was way less scary than I’d pictured it, in this post-9/11 era. We imagined a well-defined line with assault-rifled-cops and German shepherds, circling each car in a bizzare merry-go-round fashion, scowling and barking commands like the SS. Well, at least that’s what I pictured. I can’t speak for Brian.
What we eventually encountered was far more tame: just a ten-minute wait to speak for a few seconds to a very bored and stern looking guard. He asked us where we were from, why we were entering Canada, how long we’d be staying, and whether or not we had any guns, knives, or other weapons. We didn’t, so we were allowed into the country. Again, pretty painless.
I had high hopes for Canada. I’d never been before, and the way of life and social structure up there had always seemed intriguing and somewhat utopian. The idea of living in a society that is way more relaxed strictly because of a higher degree of respect for one another has always seemed both interesting and calming. We were not disappointed.
Upon arriving in Vancouver, I had immediately struck up some great conversation with the people working at the Hostel registration desk about the value of the dollar versus the value of the loonie (the Canadian semi-slang term for the Canadian dollar). Apparently, the news of the equalizing currency values is huge in Canada and relatively quiet in the US. I guess that really isn’t much of a surprise — not many people want to talk about declining economy stateside.
We checked into our room, met our roommates (a guy named Oliver from Leipzig, Germany, and a guy named Roberto from Mexico) and set out to explore the town. We began by walking the length of Granville street, noticing all of the happy Vancouverites (?) going about their days. Most of the town appeared to be exceptionally hip-looking, but that could’ve just been the area.
One interesting thing about the city of Vancouver is just how European it is. You really feel as if you’re in downtown Barcelona or Madrid, rather than North America. While the architecture doesn’t quite have the same antiquated look to it, the shops and engineering of the city are very reminiscent of Europe.
After walking up and down the street and stopping into several shops just to look around, it was getting dark and so we grabbed some Chinese food and went back to the hostel to read and went to bed.
Day Sixteen
Upon waking, we found our walking legs, again, and set out to explore the city a bit. We walked the length of it again, and down to the waterfront. The view from the harbor is really something — a combination of city skyline and enormous mountains. It’s exactly like I pictured it, a city surrounded by lush parks and natural formations.
Vancouver, like Boston, seems less like a city for tourism and more like a city for living in. There really isn’t much huge and fantastic things to pile behind tourists to gawk at, but there’s a lot that the city could offer residents — good food, good bars, late night life, and generally relaxed living.
We spent a good part of the day in Stanley Park, which is an excellent nature preserve on a peninsula on the northern side of Vancouver. What was most interesting about the park was that, unlike New York’s Central Park, Stanley Park is mostly densely wooded and full of unpaved paths. It’s odd, being able to go from dense urban life to a hilly, lush park, to the sandy beaches that surround the park, in a matter of minutes.
We also realized exactly why the Canadians choose to use the maple leaf as the emblem for their national flag. The maple leaves here are mostly around a foot in width — holding an orange leaf that is larger than your head is totally bizarre, and they’re everywhere.
On the beaches surrounding the park, I spent some time making a bizarre sculpture out of driftwood and the occasional piece of discarded trash, while Brian took pictures and wrote in the sand.
We found some Mongolian food on our way back, which we bought and ate down by the shore near our hostel. By this time, it was dark, and so we spent a great deal of time taking pictures of light-writing (which you can check out in the Picasa album). After hanging out on the beach for a few hours we went back to the hostel, took in a bit of reading, and went to bed.
The unfortunate thing about Vancouver being less-obviously beautiful, is that you’d probably need a great deal of time to really explore it. We sadly had to head out the next day, and probably missed a bunch of sights because of it. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that I’ll visit again at some point. The city of Vancouver was really amazing.
Day Seventeen
We decided to make day seventeen another driving day, taking highway five from Vancouver to outside of Portland, Oregon. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to speak of, except for a six-hour drive becoming eleven hours when we got stuck at the U.S. border for forty minutes, ended up driving in the rain for most of the day, and got lost in the dark woods of Oregon trying to find our campsite. By the time we’d settled into our KOA “Kabin”, we’d been in transit from the 11 am checkout in Vancouver until 12 am in Oregon. We’d elected to spend the night near Lincoln City, near the Pacific coastal highway, to make the driving easier. Unfortunately, the place we’d elected to stay was difficult to find.
The long trip ruined the day for us, as we’d planned to stop with Jamie of Team Northern Tier for a drink in Portland. We were, due to the restrictions on signing in before midnight, unable to do so. Jamie, if you’re reading this, I owe you a beer.
Needless to say, after the frustrating drive, sleep came very quickly for us.
Right now, we’re spending our last day in San Francisco, the subject of the next post that we’ll be assembling for the blog. We’re on a delayed schedule with posting, as there is simply too much to do, and not enough time to spend organizing photos. Sorry about that — our current hosts were caught way off guard as they thought that we were someplace in the midwest when we’d called them. Travelling is certainly exhausting, we seem to pass out without warning every night.
The west coast so far as been very welcoming and interesting, however. We’re at the halfway point of our trip, and in a few hours, we’ll be on our way to Yosemite National Park to see the redwoods and get a little more nature in our blood. We’re crossing our fingers for good weather, and the weather channel is reporting it as thus, though camping is going to be a harrowing experience tonight. The temperatures are going to be pretty cold but we’ve got layers of warm clothes and sleeping bags to keep us warm up in the California mountains. The both of us have been slacking off a bit as far as making our photos on film — the ones that are the most important, but Yosemite will probably kick us hard enough to get us back into shape. I’ve also been slacking on the video, for which I apologize, but there’ll definitely be footage from Yosemite. This I can promise.
In my last post, aside from a million typos, Brian also informed me that my original estimate of 3000 miles was incorrect, and that we’d actually put on about 5,000. My odometer crossed the 90,000 mark the other day, though I completely missed the monumental moment. Oh well. It’s really hard to pay attention to numbers when you’ve been driving for six or more hours. Sometimes, I wish I just had a big helicopter to fly around in. This trip would be much different, that’s for sure.
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.
