Day in the Life of an Idiot

 A lot of our best times on road trips happen when I take a turn (either accidental or purposely) and we follow wherever it leads. 

Things looked promising when we left Lansing, Michigan for Valparaiso, Indiana (where some of our family, on Shawn's side, lives) when I missed the official turn off and ended up going through Battle Creek, Michigan. Battle Creek, it turns out, was the home (and final resting place) of none-other-than Sojourner Truth, who is most famous for her "Ain't I a Woman" speech and her role in the Underground Railway. There was a huge statue to her in the center of Battle Creek.

 
(Picture: metal, free-standing statue of Sojourner Truth giving a lecture at a podium with a tile background.)

This statue was in an amitheater and Sojourner was up on a bit of a stage and I imagine this site could be used to give all sorts of speeches or to rally. It was in a central little park, too. Very well done. Very moving. 

As we left Battle Creek, we found a bonus arboretum of "fantasy" statues. I almost didn't stop as we were driving past it because, initially, out of the corner of my eye, it looked like a forest of dead trees. Then, I realized they were all "chainsaw" art trees. I don't know a better use of your time than to make a chainsaw art of GROOT:


(Chainsaw art statue of Groot made out of a... dead tree?)

A couple of our "might be worth a detours!" after this one were definitely NOT worth the extra driving time. We followed a sign to "Rocky Gap Park," where I was hoping for a spectacular view of Lake Michigan and maybe even a gap in a rock, through which to gape, but alas, this was the entire view:


(A GREAT lake to be sure, but an otherwise uninspired lake view.)

And it, right about here, the temperatures started to climb again. This was the 4th of July, and we were also somewhat hampered by the fact that for the ONLY time (besides boarding the Badger) during this trip that we had to be anywhere by any particular time. Shawn's step-sister had graciously invited all of us to join her friends and our family at a grill-out at their house, festivities starting at 4 pm. The party turned out to be amazing fun--Karen has lovely friends--but we were a little anxious about the time and the 90+ F / 32+ C temperatures.

So, we only made one other stop, and that was to drive into the new Indiana Dunes National Park. This park is... weird and frustrating (much like we often find Indiana, frankly.) The interpretative center was within spitting distance of Valpariso, so we FOOLISHLY assumed that, you know, the interpretive center would be situated at some point very near, if not the actual trail head, for the National Park. 

No.

We we directed (when we asked for a beach and some hiking trails) to a part of the National Park called "West Beach" which was over 20 minutes away BY CAR at highway speeds (so, like, over 20 miles away). We were nearly back at the outskirts of Gary, Indiana, when we reached the area for the entrance to the park.

What the actual hell, Indiana.

I would like to be able, at this point, to tell you that is was TOTALLY worth the drive. It was decidedly NOT. Temperatures were climbing to nearly 100 F / 38 C and it was... crowded. 

This still would not have deterred Mason and I from a nature hike, BUT 2/3rds of "West Beach" was parking lots and an asphalt area for "picnicking" and another long concrete walk to an extremely narrow, deeply crowed beach you can find literally anywhere.


(Shawn's profile and an almost literal SEA of humanity).

Thank god the party at the in-laws was air-conditioned and pleasant or I might have been very depressed about how this day ended. I am, however, determined to return to the dunes of Indiana because all of the postcards make it look amazing. The nature hike we were promised included Savannah forests and rolling sand dunes. We looked at the hot, un-shaded, multiple lives of STAIRS, path leading up to the trail's head and wisely (I think) chose not to risk heat stroke. 

The rest of the trip was spent hanging out with Shawn's 91 year old step-mom, Margaret, at her house--probably for the last time. Margret herself is in AMAZING shape, but she has finally decided to make the move (at 91) into assisted living. So, we won't see that house again, very likely, unless she is very, very unlucky with the lottery (apparently, there is a wait list.)  Next year, we'll be staying in a hotel, which, at the very least, will come with wifi, which is something grandma's house lacks. IT WAS LIKE LIVING IN 1982, PEOPLE. THE HORROR.

The drive back got no photographic evidence. I think I have one "vista" shot on my camera from a scenic overlook, yet it was probably another one of the BEST detours we took. Instead of the usual route home up I-94, we took a left turn in Rockford and headed to Galena, Illinois. What a cool town! We only drove through a few streets to look at the tourist part of town, but man, oh man, was the drive there AMAZING. There were rolling hills and huge, expansive vistas and exactly what this driver needed....a break from the monotony of I-94 which I have seen more times than I can count.

We took ANOTHER wrong turn and ended up traveling up the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi through Praire-du-Chien and LaCrosse (waved in the direction of my folks as we exhaustedly continued onward) and then onward to home on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi (partly, but also intentionally because that route is pretty AND I could drive it in my sleep, which i am half convinced I did.)

Once home, we dragged in the luggage and happily slept in the company of our kitties and home.

Taidima, St. Paul.

 Normally, I try to keep up the journal while ON the road, but we had some very long driving days and spotty wifi. I will do my best to recount the days for you now.

Day ONE: A Slow Meander from Minnesota through Upper Wisconsin (with surprise parks!)



Shawn, our navigator, took us through a number of tiny Minnesota towns that seemed connected by "sister cities" in Sweden. I found this water tower rather charming and hopped out to take a picture. (Picture: a water tower in the shape of a old-fashioned coffee kettle that says 'Vitommen till Lindström" with rosemaling around the words.) If you're curious about this town, here's the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindstrom,_Minnesota.

From there we ended up stopping in the boringingly named Interstate State Park, but which is AMAZING. The section we explored was a glacial lava flow that had a ton of natural potholes and such. Our state park pass, which we got on last year's trip to Itasca State Park, is still good for one more month, so we hopped out to explore. 

Here's a shot from the interior of a feature they called "Little Oven" or some such.



Basically it was one of these potholes that had an area at the bottom of a ravine that had been broken out at some point, naturally, and the park built stairs and a platform under the stagnant water pool of the rest of the pot hole. It was a hot day, but the interior, just even a step inside, was cool and clammy. The whole place was full of these, but you could not get as good a sense of how deep they were, because they were filled with water. I'd say that this "chimney" section was twenty feet? It was impressively deep, at any rate.

The Interstate State Park is on both sides of the St. Croix river (which forms part of the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.) There were several spots that you could look down over the river at the pine forests.



It's difficult to see in this picture, but the St. Croix is a swiftly moving river, so the foam you can see is actually churning water. (Picture: muddy brown river, looking across to lava rock cliffs covered in pine trees.) 

We spent about an hour exploring this park and vowed to come back. It was extremely lovely and there was much more that we didn't do (apparently, there is a cliff hike!) because we hadn't even left Minnesota yet and we needed to arrive in Manitowac, Wisconsin that night to check into the hotel. We passed people doing rock climbing (with full gear) because some of these cliff faces were both sheer, but clearly had good hand holds. I imagine if you were the rock climbing sort, this would be a great park for you, as well.

We missed JFK's urinal in Spooner, Wisconsin--supposedly the young senator stopped to pee at the Big Dick's Buckhorn Inn--but we didn't miss the two-tailed walleye in Shell Lake, Wisconsin. 


(Picture: a fish with two tails.) The weather was starting to get really steamy at this point, which was the only problem that dogged us on this road trip. Our a/c in the car is... semi-functional? It tries. But, it can't really keep up with high humidity and anything over 89 F / 31.7 C. Mason joked about all of us swimming in our own sweat, but it wasn't much of a joke. We had to crack the windows because it was kind of crazy-hot.

Along the roads, we saw several deer, including a mama and her fawn. 

Besides, the general scenery, the star of our first day of road tripping was Wisconsin Concrete Park in Phillips, Wisconsin. This place defies description in many ways. It's a sort of, "you have to see it to believe it" roadside attraction.



(Picture: the spookiest concrete and broken beer bottle owl you have ever seen in your life.) This place was the brain child of Fred Smith, a guy with a lot of energy, a lot of concrete, and a lot of broken beer bottles. To be fair to Mr. Smith, he started working on these... er, folk art... pieces before the internet and, having driven through it, I can tell you, there's not much else happening in Phillips, Wisconsin. 



There are over 400 statues in this park. Including a life-sized Budweiser beer wagon with horses. (Picture: two bucks locking horns while creepy-a$$ statue people look on.) Mason pointed out that the most alarming part of this park--and there were a lot of alarming parts--was that Mr. Smith did not paint all of his human figures looking straight on, so every once and a while you'd look up to realize that one of these terrifying bad boys was giving you the side-eye.

It was FANTASTIC. 10/10 would again. 

Highly recommend, if you find yourself in Central Wisconsin with nothing better to do. Heck, I'd even say make a day trip of it. It's weird and wonderful and the gift shop is also a local craft shop, so what the heck, it's a twofer.

Then we drove and drove and drove--this is not that long of a trip, but we purposely chose all the backroads and whatnot to see all the small towns, etc., until we got to Manitowac, Wisconsin, where we spent the night. Basically, I posted a few pictures to Facebook and collapsed in a heap, because the next day, we'd be boarding the SS Badger to be ferried across Lake Michigan.


Day Two: The Sailing Badger

We booked passage on the historic SS Badger, a car ferry, that would sail us across a great lake from Manitowac, Wisconsin to Luddington, Michigan, but it didn't set sail until 1 pm CST. So, we got up early in the morning, crossed the street for a breakfast and coffee at Paneara and then went off, like the nerds we are, to find the spot where Sputnik IV crashed into the streets of Manitowac. It was an overcast day, but that did not dampen Shawn's enthusiasm posing at the plaque that marks the spot (sort of.)


(Picture: smiling Shawn sitting next to what looks like a grave marker. Not easily read are the words: "Sputnik IV: Satellite fragment recovered here September 6, 1962.") The plaque was put in so idiots like us wouldn't get killed standing in traffic taking a picture of the ring that marks the actual landing spot in the middle of the street.

Look, we're idiots, okay? Plus, the streets were very dead at 9 am on a Saturday morning. So, we got this nice shot of our feet touching the VERY spot.



(Picture: three sets of toes touching a ring in the middle of cracked asphalt. The stubby tennis shoes belong to me. Shawn is in the fancy brown sandals. Mason in flip flops.)

We then spent some time in the Manitowac Maritime Museum. Mason and I went on the tour of the submarine. Shawn, the claustrophobic, 6'1" woman, declined. As Shawn was later fond to recounting, it was maybe not the BEST use of our time to go to a museum mostly devoted to SHIPWRECKS ON LAKE MICHIGAN before boarding a ship crossing Lake Michigan.

The WWII submarine, on the other hand, gave us a strong counterpoint to the coal-powered steam ship, which has since had massive pollution mitigation done to it, but which used to dump tons of coal ash into the lake. Because, did you know, that when the submarines went under water they could not use their diesel fuel, of course, so RAN ON BATTERY????? I had no idea. I spent a lot of time thinking about "American exceptionalism" and wondered what the hell happened to the people who said, "mmm, let's battery power this two zillion ton warship!" since they now baulk at the idea of battery-powered cars.

But, thanks to a medical emergency--someone's knees locked up moving between the bulkheads, though not in our party--we were delayed and so we ended up having to rush back to check out of our hotel and to the SS Badger. 

(Picture: impressive-looking boat silhouetted in the sunset, because I actually took this picture when we landed in Michigan.)

When we were leaving the Wisconsin side, there was a bit of drizzle, but no waves. Even so, we were glad that Shawn thought to book us a "state room" on the ship. Getting the car on and off was kind of trippy, though, really, all we did was let a drug sniffing dog snoot up our car for contraband, and then hand our keys over to a valet. We took our carry-ons and boarded the ship.

Our "state room" was not a lot more than a closet with a couple of beds in it, but there was a private bathroom and the two most important things above the sink:


(Picture: a bright blue barf bucket and a Bible.)

There were a lot of places to buy Dramimine (sp? the motion sickness pills) and signs reminding you sternly that "If you feel AT ALL sea sick, DO NOT buy food.) There were two restaurants on board, an observation deck (with deckchairs to rearrange), and an indoor dining hall where Bingo was played. 

I will say that given all the hype about this being a historic steamship, I was expecting it to be a bit more upscale than it was. I didn't take a lot of pictures of the interior, but I can tell you there were no chandeliers. There were rows of seats that reminded me of a Greyhound Bus or maybe even an Amtrak Train. So, kind of... let's say, heavy-use, rather than high end. The other reason I was grateful for a private room? A door I could shut, a bed I could call my own, and a tiny barrier between me and the zillion and a half families and their screaming kids on the other side.

That being said, this was one of my favorite parts of the trip. It does not save time, going around Chicago. In fact, the ship travels all of 15 miles per hour and takes a good 4 hours on a clear sailing day. But, I didn't have to drive and I got to say that I've now traversed a great lake by ship, which is kind of cool, honestly. The other kind of cool fact? The route of the SS Badger is considered part of Hwy 10.The highway ends at the boat dock and picks up again on the other side. Despite part of the journey being over water, the highway is continuous. 

Plus, we got spectacular views:



(Picture: okay, so really it looks like a blank canvass where someone drew a straight line and one half is grey-blue and the other half is a kind of muddy blue, but it was LAKE freaking Michigan, one of the five GREAT LAKES and I crossed it on a BOAT!!)

This is getting long, so I'll save the rest for part II. But, the way you picked up your car on the other end was kind of chaotic. Everyone filed off the boat and the valet-persons drove out cars. When you recognized yours, you claimed it. Seems like a great way to steal a car, honestly, since the keys are left in it and the drivers' side door is left open. But, Mason spotted ours and off we started for Lansing, Michigan at 7 pm (since we'd moved into EST, and lost an hour.)

Today was day two in South Dakota. Today was the day we decided to do a lot of the typical tourist stuff. Shawn had read in the guidebooks that the very best time to go to Mount Rushmore was early in the morning, so we were on the road again around 7 am. On the other hand, the guidebooks were right. We had the place to ourselves.

Here is our postcard perfect shot of Mount Rushmore.




Turns out Shawn LOVED the museum at Mount Rushmore and we spent a lot of time looking at the exhibits. Today, over dinner, she said that Mount Rushmore was one of her favorite parts of today, in fact.



I like this shot because it highlights one of the things that first struck me about Mount Rushmore. Most of the pictures you see look like the one I took, so you never have the sense that these faces are just carved out of the top of a mountain. When Shawn and I traveled here in the 90s with Karl from Czech, that was the thing I most remembered: that Mount Rushmore was actually just a tiny fraction of the mountain. For some reason, I had somehow thought someone had carved an ENTIRE mountain.

This time I was able to be more impressed.

From Mount Rushmore we took Iron Mountain Road "backwards" towards Custer State Park. If you go the other way, several of the tunnels have been cut to perfectly frame Mount Rushmore. Having done it the right way with Karl, we didn't feel we needed to do it that way this time. Iron Mountain Road is famous for its pig-tail bridges and switchbacks. There are also one-lane tunnels cut out from rock. We stopped at one of the overlooks.



The road was really fairly beautiful, lots of tall pines and jutting rocks. We've been having amazing weather, too, the wind was actually chilly this morning. You can see that the "sky was not cloudy all day" as the song says.

After getting off 16A, we turned toward Custer State Park. There is an entry fee to the park of $20 per vehicle. We stopped at the Visitor's Center and heard the park ranger telling tourists that there was good bison viewing off Fisherman's Road. To get there we took off on Wildlife Loop. Shawn and Mason were pretty convinced we'd never see any animals because most of the view consisted of miles and miles of this:



We started making jokes about a government conspiracy to hide the wildlife, especially the elk (which we kept mispronouncing elf). However, we did turn off on Fisherman's Road, which was dirt and gravel. But, that was where a lot of the wildlife was (no elf,) but we did see a huge herd of bison (including babies) and more pronghorn.

And my favorite: PRAIRE DOGS.



I love how this one is just sitting with its feet in the air.

Then we got a classic bison blocks the road moment:



And, then, the "tourist" burros. Apparently, the burros are not native to South Dakota, but they were left in the park by workers. They are super friendly, looking for hand outs, and will stick their heads in your car.



Unlike some people, we didn't get out of the car or feed the burros.

From here we drove up Needles Highway (aka Highway 87). I... could have used a few more guardrails on this drive. The roads were super-duper narrow and there were sections where there was just a tiny bit of asphalt between me and the cliffs.




This scary-ass road culminates in this:


The "eye" is so narrow that as our car went through, Mason could stick his hand out the wind and touch the wall of the tunnel. I have no idea how some of these big-ass trucks that kept passing us on the road got through that thing without scraping off their rearview mirrors (at the very LEAST.)  
I was really sort of surprised that the rangers that took our money did not measure the width of the car.  

Even though I white-knuckle drove this, I think it was probably my favorite part of the day.

We then stopped at a Subway in Hillcity for lunch.  Subway has become a weird go-to lunch place on the road. Shawn used to hate Subway, and now she's like, "OH LOOK, A SUBWAY!" I think because the food is always consistently decent and there are vegetables.

After this we turned towards home base.  We dropped Shawn off at the hotel, and then Mason and I took in a round of mini-golf at the pirate themed mini-golf course just down the street from our hotel. From there, we tried to go back to our creek, but it had been discovered by some frat boys (and one girl) who brought pizza to the rock, so we went across the road and found a new creek to wander around.



And explore, we did:



I call this one "uh, Ima, what do leeches look like??!?"

From here, we turn towards the home fires. Probably taking I-90 through Wall Drug.

One thing we've been noticing as we've been going along is how few families seem to still do this whole road trip thing. We seem to be throwbacks, dragging our child across the country. Do people still do this?

I should say, clearly, people still do, but they all seem to be retirees, no children. There were hardly any groups that included children, unless they were Native American. We saw several Native American families all traveling together.  (Also, the majority of tourists in these places seem to be white.)

Today, however, was one of the few days I regretted this idea. We saw some pretty amazing things, which I'll get to in a moment, but we spent a lot of time on the road. Worse, we kept hitting road construction that was more than a slowdown through some orange cones. We'd come to a full stop and then have to wait for a "Follow Me: Pilot Vehicle." This was frustrating as heck, though occasionally it meant that I had time to frame a kind of lovely-in-its-starkness photo.



I call this, "Lonely Fence Post."

We also legitimately came across sections of road in Wyoming that had been sloppily paved over and a road sign that read, "Road Damage." My family and I spent some quality time trying to figure out if it was more expensive to print up the sign and mark the road or to actually fix it. Obviously, Wyoming Department of Transportation figured the signs were cheaper.

The interstate driving was really, really dull through much of the state. I kept saying, "Well, there are some horses. We must still be in Wyoming." A lot of it looked like this, only more desolate:

The nice surprise was the Big Horn Mountains. Shawn had done some research (naturally) and found us a highway that was rated safe for RVs. Shawn had found a blog and a video of people in an RV driving over one of these stretches (maybe Beartooth?) and we kept repeating what the blogger had said anytime we went down any grade as steep as 7 percent, which was, "My wife was on the floor... crying." (Their experience was apparently much steeper and their brakes were burning out.) We didn't have anything like that, but it was pretty exciting driving through this:



We would pass signs that would tell us which era of rocks were exposed. There was a lot of "Pre-Cambrian" and "Lower Cretaceous." At one point, after a particularly long and arduous "Follow Me" truck construction zone, we decided to stop at a roadside diner called "The Meadowlark Resort," just outside of the town of Ten Sleep. The diner had a poster of Robert Taylor as Walt Longmire from the TV show Longmire/books by Craig Johnson. Apparently, the nearby town of Buffalo was an inspiration for the novelist. The only reason that was particularly striking to us is that Shawn and I, who loved the show, had started thinking about the fact that the landscape must be very similar to the faux Absaroka County that Longmire is the supposed sheriff of.



It was good to sit and have a real meal, something we've been neglecting this whole trip. We've been subsisting on road food and things we've packed like trail mix, chips, beef jerky, and granola bars. A real omelet made by an actual short order cook was just the ticket. It probably added a half hour to our day, but I regret nothing.

Except all that interstate driving. The interstate was hideously boring. I kind of wanted to claw my eyes out after driving for hours and hours along the interstate. The only good thing about the interstate was that the speed limit was 80.

Eventually, we got to Devil's Tower. Or, at least the turn off for Devil's Tower. Devil's Tower was made famous for my entire generation by the mashed potato scene in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." There was, of course, another "Follow Me" truck on the way to Devil's Tower. Also, the guidebooks lie. This is not a quick jaunt off the highway, this is a legitimate detour WAY THE HECK OUT. However, it is classic:



The gift store would sell you aliens.

Also, because I could no longer take the Interstate, I insisted on a detour through "ANYTHING PRETTY." So we took off on 14-A towards the Black Hills National Forest. This also took us through Sundance, Sturgis, Leads, and Deadwood.



The Black Hills National Forest was really amazing, but Mason was starting to lose it in the back and said, "OMG, it's just more rocks and trees. Shoot me now!"



As you can see, he's not wrong. We were getting pretty punchy by this point, too, and Shawn was snapping photos by sticking the camera out of our sunroof.  We got some surprisingly good shots that way.

Then, finally, we made it to the hotel!  I was super-ready to be here. Our only concern at this point is, do we really want to spend the next several days DRIVING AROUND???!!  Ask me tonight and my answer would be: no $%!@ing way.  I'm going to guess that tomorrow, I'll be all, "Pack up the car, we're on the road!"

We have to AT LEAST see Mount Rushmore.

I totally forgot to promote my booksignings. So, uh, if you happen to be in Minneapolis at 1 PM tomorrow, you wanna come see me at Uncle Hugo's? No? How about the HarMar B&N at 2 pm?

I just got back from the woods. Mason and I took his rattata for a walk. For his birthday, he got Pokemon Heart Gold for the DS, and a feature is a pokemon pedometer, to which you can download one of your pokemon and take them for a walk. It's weirdly cool, because you see a little screen immage of her bounding along with you.


We went to Minnehaha and, now that Mason is older, we can make it all the way to the Mississippi back in about two hours. That may still seem long, but we can't walk without stopping to toss rocks or do a little wading/mucklucking. I brought along my geocach GPS, but the caches all seemed to be "off road" and labeled as rough terrian. After the steep hill of our first attempt, Mason wasn't really in the mood to leave the trail and, as he said, "come back all bruised and scratched."

I started reading HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins. It's (no surprise to naomikritzer who recommended it to me) pretty good so far. It is very dark, as the lady at Red Ballon warned me as she sold it to me, but only 50 some pages in it's really just dystopian SF more than anything truly graphic. Perhaps that's about to change as we're just getting to the games themselves. Speaking of dark, Mason and I are nearly 300 pages into THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (right about just after Ron gets accepted onto the quidditch team.) I'm still enjoying this, actually. I like reading it out loud. Mason is patient enough that I can read two or three chapters at a sitting, which is even better. Snape continues to be one of my favorite characters, and despite my determination not to be impressed by anyone so popular, I'm beginning to understand the deal. The stories are very compelling.

Okay, got to go. It's a busy life being on vacation.