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 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!
