Leopards aren't all that bad

Portland to Roseburg, OR (9/28):

Portland Oregon and Stumptown Russian*

Mt Rainier to Portland (9/27):

Today Brad and I took a break from our busy vacationing schedules to behave like normal adults might behave on a weekend afternoon, flitting around the city, in and out of places with no particular destination in mind. We left Mt. Rainier, arriving in Portland by noon. All of Lonely Planet's budget recommendations were booked up, so we found a generic motel in SW Portland and headed out for the city. Portland doesn't have any major landmarks to visit, per se; it's more a city to live in than to visit, but we luckily were armed with great recommendations from Megan of where to go.

We started out with brunch at Gravy...I normally don't like brunch in general, but all this camping plus homesickness for New York has left me really craving it. The street reminded me of Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, and with the hour-plus wait for a table, it was just like being back home (and it was delicious). We followed that with a trip to the famous Powell's Books, which I'd been anticipating and dreading the whole trip--anticipating because of all the great things I've heard about it, and dreading it because I figured it couldn't possibly live up to expectations. But I'm a total convert, and I could happily spend weeks there. The prices are great (even on new books), and it far surpasses the Strand in ease and organization. Also, they do a great job of recommendations and lists of various prizes and awards to help you figure out what you're looking for when you don't really know. I left with 5 books (about $30 total!!) and had to restrain myself from buying more since I've already bought a bazillion books since finishing grad school now that I have the time to read fiction.



If bookstores are one of my all-time favorite things, so are movies in the afternoon, and Portland has this incredible thing where there are several movie theaters where fairly recent movies are $3, and they will serve you decently-priced microbrews and pizza while you watch the movie, which is pretty much my idea of heaven. I could barely walk from eating too much at brunch, so pizza was out of the question, but it was nice to have the option. We saw Paper Heart, which was decent and certainly much better than either of us thought it would be. Portland had won me over completely by then, but we also made time for a quick walk around the park, tacos at Por Que No, Connect Four and a beer at a bar, and fancy dessert at a down-to-earth patisserie.

Portland's vibe has a hint of Park Slope, with the sort of self-satisfaction that goes along with being into biking and organic food, and Portlanders are clearly into their city (understandably). More than any other place we've been to so far on the trip, it's a place to experience rather than visit, and it was a really nice break to be in such a relaxing, low-key environment with so many choices to spend a great day (or year).
-M

*They were out of sloe gin.
-B

The Elusive Mountain

Olympic to Mt Rainier (9/26):

We finished our drive around the peninsula and did a short hike around a temperate rainforest. We then drove through a lot of small logging towns on our way to Mt. Rainier. Even the tiniest towns that we’ve passed through have some sort of espresso shack. Today was a free day at national parks (at least in Washington state), so it was really crowded at Rainier. Signs going into the park warned us that the parking lot at the main visitors center with panoramic views of the mountain (and where the trailhead of our preferred hike was located) was full and that we wouldn’t be able to stop. A park ranger at the visitor’s center near our campsite recommended a couple hikes in that area, so we saw some more waterfalls and then some giant trees that are over 1000 years old. They’re located on an island, so they’ve been spared from the fires that periodically wipe out the other areas of the park. Relocating our activities to this section of the park meant we actually only got a few fleeting glances of the mountain itself, but it looked suitably formidable.



The hikers in Olympic and especially Mt Rainier are less friendly than the other parks we’ve been in. Normally, whenever you pass people on the trails, everyone says hi and makes some comment about the weather or hike or park or general well-being, whereas everyone just seems to ignore each other in the Washington parks. Our theory is that hiking and camping is a normal activity for everyone in the Northwest, so they’re a bit more blasé about the whole thing. Most of the people we saw on the trails at Rainier were carrying or leading around little kids, and the campground was full of well-behaved little kids running around and riding bikes and playing with dogs.

We're starting to notice the leaves starting to change a bit, so that should be exciting for our drive back east.
-M

The Pacific

Seattle to Olympic (9/25):

We took an early morning, quick walk through Seattle's sculpture park by the Puget Sound with views of Mt Olympus. Walking along a trail through the park, we were yelled at through a loudspeaker that we were in a restricted area. We couldn’t tell if that was just another art installation, but we left nonetheless. We took a car ferry across Puget Sound, where I had a hot dog for breakfast and made a little girl extremely jealous and her grandparents a bit defensive. On the other side of the sound, we made our way around the peninsula going in and out of Olympic National Park and stopping at Hurricane Ridge for a great view of the sound and Canada. On the advice of a park ranger, we did a hike to some waterfalls and found a campsite on the western side of the Peninsula. The campsite was right beside Rialto Beach, so we watched the sunset from there. It was a pebbly beach, with lots of jagged rocks sticking up from the water, and it’s probably my favorite place of the trip so far. It’s all east from here.

In addition to the hallmark of reaching the Pacific Ocean at roughly the halfway point of this leg of our journey, we also went net positive on our parks pass. A couple weeks ago we paid $80 for unlimited access for a year to all national parks and forests, and with our entry to Olympic, we would have paid $91 in entrance fees by now. (Beauty and fiscal prudence, the perfect road trip -B).
-M

Come as You Are

North Cascades to Seattle (9/24):

So the morning hike proved a bit harder than expected, but, we eventually made it into North Cascades. Then, turned around, found KEXP and headed into Seattle. A lovely enough day, we did a few Seattle things, like eating at Salumi and going to Pike Place Market, where we’d read that people toss fish around but they seem to just drop them into boxes, pretty normally, though people took pictures nonetheless, and we walked along the waterfront. We were lucky enough to stay in the Moore Hotel the same night that alice in chains was playing a show downstairs in the Moore Theatre, so there were a lot of darkly clad people milling about the street. We watched a bit of tv and ate tacos, then, a drink at Shorty’s, and thus Thursday.
-B

Into the Northwest

Spokane to North Cascades, WA (9/23):

Today was a lovely apple of a day, though nothing of particular importance happened. We left Spokane in the morning, stopping at Pearrygin State Park for a picnic lunch along the way to North Cascades NP. The weather was beautiful — mid-70s, sunny, with a slight breeze. We took a wrong turn after lunch and drove almost an hour before we realized that, but that wasn’t so terrible as we don’t really have a schedule or anything. The detour was perfect road trip driving anyway—small highway winding through beautiful scenery with the windows rolled down and stereo up.

Once we got to the Cascades, we took a one mile hike to Rainy Lake and back, which was probably the most pleasant hike we’ve had. It was a stroll more than a hike—I wore my flip-flops and carried my purse. Like Iceberg Lake from yesterday, Rainy Lake sits in a glacier cirque, which is formed when glaciers carve out a bowl-ish basin from mountains. We walked through a verdant forest of huge evergreens to get there, and I learned that the reason that trees on a slope often have a curve at the base of their trunks is because in the winter, snow leans on them going downhill while they want to grow upwards. It’s called snow creep.

After our stroll, we found a nearby campground and made a pasta dinner. Brad is currently throwing kindling on a roaring fire (after purchasing an ax, on Megan's advice - between the ax and bear spray, we are now much better armed to enjoy Nature. -B), while I’m starting a new book, and that’s pretty much the plan for the rest of the evening.
-M

A trick of geography has thrown us for a loop - North Cascades National Park is actually divided in two, with the divider - which has the main road and the campsites - being a strip of land called the Ross Lake National Recreation Area. So, tomorrow we'll have to take a hike to enter the park proper and add it to the blog list.
-B

Trip of the Iceberg

Glacier National Park to Spokane (9/22):

We made a second go at Glacier today, hoping to improve upon yesterday, which had at times been alternately disappointing and scary. I was really disappointed about the closure of a large section of Going to the Sun Road, the only road that transverses the park, because Lonely Planet calls it “arguably the most spectacular drive on the planet”. Brad was disappointed about the closure because it meant we had to detour around the edge of the park to make it to the other side, meaning we did not make spectacular time. We were also a bit shaken up after our encounter with Mr. Growly, which we were eager not to repeat.

But today Glacier did not disappoint and was only briefly mildly scary. I thought the night would be difficult, what with the sub-freezing temperatures and thinking we’d wake up at every tiny noise, convinced a grizzly was seconds away from tearing up our tent and us inside, but the night passed comfortably and uneventfully, and we even slept a bit late in the morning. The morning weather was sunny and mild, also an improvement over the ominous, cloudy skies of the day before. We packed up our stuff and headed to the nearby Iceberg Lakes trail. This was by far the most ambitious hike we’d made to date—4.8 miles one way to a lake, with a 1200 ft increase in elevation. After a steep initial climb, we skirted the tree line for several miles, going in and out of forests and alpine meadows before reaching a lake at the base of a glacier-y mountain. The scenery was gorgeous—we had panoramic valley views for much of the hike, and the lake at the end had crystal-clear water that reflected the mountains and glaciers in a sort of carnival-sideshow way. It’s probably worth nothing that our parks guidebook, published in 2007, says that there are a number of iceberg chunks floating in the lake, and we saw none today. The glaciers are disappearing fast—at the current rate, all the glaciers in Glacier will be gone before 2050. (Just god giving us a big ole hug, as per tina fey -B).

Iceberg Lakes is one of the most popular hikes in the park, so we figured there would be strength in numbers against any big mammals on the path. We quickly passed everyone ahead of us on the trail, so we were the first hikers going through that day, which was probably less than ideal bear-wise, but also meant we had the lake to ourselves once we got there. Brad hikes at the pace you would walk if you were inappropriately dressed in the dead of winter and the F train made you late for a meeting. While I normally prefer a more pensive pace, it works well for me now because I’m not getting much exercise sitting in the car all day, so this makes me feel like I’m doing something.

Brad went first on the path, brandishing the bear spray, while I placed myself in charge of the clapping brigade in the rear. A couple times we heard a large animal trampling through the underbrush nearby but nothing too make us think we were in imminent danger. At the very end of the hike, we came across three white-tail deer about 20 feet ahead of us on the path, and we watched them for a few minutes before they scampered off. Given that we accidentally parked pretty far from the trailhead, all told it was about a 10 mile hike. Especially at the sections towards the lake, I was really out of breath, whether from the cumulative effects of the hike or from the altitude. Afterwards, my legs were more sore than probably they’ve ever been, even after running 10Ks, 10 milers, or the half marathon a couple years ago. My arms and hands were also pretty tender from all the clapping, and I felt compelled for hours afterwards in the car to emit more squawks and claps at appropriate intervals.

That was a big enough day by itself, but we still had a long drive ahead of us. After the hike, we headed west towards Washington. It took us three hours just to get around and out of the vicinity of the park. Also, for some reason we can’t really explain, we never really bothered to eat for the whole day, so it was 5 before we got back to Kalispell and had our first meal of the day, by which point we were slightly delirious. From there, we left Montana through the Idaho panhandle before stopping in Spokane, Washington for the night (pronounced spo-CAN not spo-CANE, which I have been pronouncing incorrectly forever). After a 10 mile hike and 7 hours of driving, we treated ourselves to a hotel night rather than camping.

I thought Yellowstone was exhausting, but Glacier was draining on an entirely different level. The first day, it seemed really ominous. It was completely overcast until the early afternoon. Since we were so high in the mountains, the clouds were barely above our heads, lending everything a gloomy tinge. There were very few people around (especially in the Two Medicine area where we had our abortive hike), which was a huge change from Yellowstone where there were always people around. The wilderness was much more rugged and untamed. I liked the hikes better in Glacier, and they seemed a lot harder than the other parks we’ve been in. Our guidebook described a couple of hikes that we did in the Tetons and Yellowstone as “moderate”, and we literally ran for portions of those. In Glacier, even the “easy” trails seemed harder than these. And the worries about bears of course made us a bit anxious, which was draining in its own way. We also added some new wildlife to our list of what we’ve seen: an elk ran beside us on the road for a bit on the first day, and we also saw a mountain goat climbing some rocks above us while driving through.

Montana seems like the kind of place where you could spend weeks or months exploring everything, so we’re pretty sad to leave after only a couple days. A couple observations: (a) They have the most intense and graphic anti-meth commercials and billboards that I’ve ever seen; and (b) like Wyoming, the on-ramps to the interstates have cattle-guards at the bottom, presumably to prevent wildlife from wandering on.

Despite Glacier’s name, the North Cascades National Park in Washington state actually has more than half of the glaciers in the US, and that’s where we’re headed now.

-M

Things take a turn

Kalispell to Glacier National Park (9/21):

A day of defeats, close calls and bloodletting awaits us as we pull into Glacier National Park at 9 am. This park had been at the top of the list of places to go when we set out, though when we got there we found out that the middle section of the one road that traverses the park had closed the night before for repairs. We can still get to the east side, though we need to take highway 2 around the perimeter. So we go to the visitor center to regroup, and we wind up breaking down and buying some bear spray based on the advice of Park Ranger Doug – a grizzly of a man! - who does a sufficient job of impressing the threat on us (a choice quote: "Those alpine meadows you'll be hiking through are like summer camp for bears!" -M). We tried to pin him down on just how likely a Bear encounter would be, but he was cagey, and the closest we could get was when he said “it’s just a damned gamble” with a bit of a resigned sigh. It was clear, at least, that the east side of the park was the one to worry about, especially in late September, since there are fewer people about and the bears apparently like their odds a bit better (per Doug: "It's a quiet time, so the bears come out and think they have the run of the place. I always say, if there's gonna be an attack, it will happen in September" -M). That’s also the side with most of the hikes we wanted to do. We plan on two hikes today, one on the west, then around the park to one on the east, then camp on the east and do a longer one near the campsite tomorrow. The first is about 4 mi/500 ft incline, which is not nothing but along the lines of what we’ve done before, and passes uneventfully.

We then left the park to travel to the east side, stopping along the way for a picnic, where I somehow ran into a tree that gave me a scar on the forehead that makes me look like I had a brush with voldemort.

But moving on, we get to the trailhead for the next hike at about 3 pm, which means we’ll have to be a bit careful to be done before dark. We start off, and a number of things are quickly against us. Unlike the hike this morning, there are no people on the trail and no cars near the trailhead. It’s also very dense, such that visibility is only a few feet to either side. And most damning, we had to walk into a very strong headwind. As probably mentioned earlier, Bear theory states that one should make a lot of noise while hiking so the Bears will both hear and smell you coming and get out of your way. I personally think the opposite, that it is better to surprise the Bears than allow them to surprise you, but, we deferred to the rangers on this. So with the headwind, any noise or stink we were producing was quickly stifled. But we set off nonetheless, passed the obligatory signs warning of recent Bear sightings and asking us not to approach them, and us hoping they would extend us the same courtesy. (There are similar signs in Yellowstone and the Tetons, but the Glacier ones are more hard-core. Whereas Yellowstone and Tetons say that there are bears in the area and take precautions like locking up your food, the Glacier signs basically say: Bears come here all the time, people have been mauled and killed, and we can't guarantee your safety. -M)

By this point I’d developed a bit of a Bear threat level system, Tom Ridge-style, to wit:
Level 1 - no bear spray necessary
Level 2 - bear spray in holster
Level 3 - bear spray in holster, hand on handle ready to draw
Level 4 - bear spray drawn, finger on safety
Level 5 - bear spray drawn, safety off, finger on trigger

Yellowstone and Grand Teton were all level 1 as far as we were concerned, the morning hike was usually a 2 with bouts of 3, and this one was clearly a minimum 4, though it escalated to 5 at times. We passed a small open space and then into the woods again, where less than half a mile in Mandy and I both heard a growl off to our right. We couldn’t see anything beyond about 5 feet because of the underbrush, which is about how far away this sounded. Though we’ve both spent the last five years living in the city, we at least have the good sense to know that when the forest growls at you, it’s time to leave. Which we did, backtracking to the trailhead, and that was that. In retrospect, I’m a bit skeptical that it was an actual Bear growling at us, though Mandy gives 3:1 odds that it was, and in fairness to her I’m not sure what else it would have been, probably nothing good (it was not a chipmunk -M). So be it. (Bears: 1, Brad and Mandy: 0 -M)

The hike shortened, we drive along the other end of the road that’s closed in the middle, doing a small hike off that - Level 2 - then set up camp, a bit more nervous than we were before, but there were at least a few other people at the campsite, and we set up in the middle, using our fellow campers as a first alert system (or appetizers -M).
-B

I need a camera to my eye...

Site note! We've added links to web albums on the right hand side, above the list of states, and we'll be adding to these as we go along.
-B

On Highway 93

Yellowstone to Kalispell, MT (9/20):

Today was a travel day as we left Yellowstone for Glacier National Park in northern Montana. On the way out of Yellowstone, we stopped at the Mammoth Hot Springs area and saw these crazy steppe terraces that are continually being carved by hot spring water that flows in constantly shifting patterns down the hill.

In the whole twelve hours that we've been in Montana, this is probably my favorite state so far. Yes, the sky is big (huge, even). We stopped in Missoula for a couple hours so that Brad could watch the Browns-Broncos game in a sports bar near the University of Montana. (Which went as expected, give Quinn some more time and he could become the next Tim Couch. -B) I'd love to spend a lot more time there--it reminds me a bit of Portland. The downtown area seems to be really active, and there are lots of people walking around instead of driving and tons of bikers. Now we're in Kalispell on the outskirts of Glacier. It also has a really nice, historic, walkable downtown area, though it's pretty touristy and filled with people like us getting ready to head into the park. We have some grand plans for some long hikes to glaciers, and the park is supposed to have some of the most spectacular views in the US. Until later...
-M

Yellowstone, Reprise

Grand Teton to Yellowstone (9/19):

Another day of beautiful hiking and camping. Today we hiked around Yellowstone Canyon, which is a couple of really incredible waterfalls leading to a beautiful blue river surrounded by white lava-y rock walls. We meant to do both the North and South rims, but after hiking the North rim for a few hours, we felt satisfied with our efforts and called it a day. We saw lots more bison today, which are quickly becoming my favorite form of wildlife. They're kind of like cows, except dopier and hairier, and they're just kind of silly. They play around in the mud and flop over in dust patches, and I couldn't be happier (though this didn't stop me from eating a bison burger for dinner). Much of Yellowstone park sits inside the caldera of a still active volcano. This volcano used to be one of the largest and most active in the world. There's still a lot of magma beneath the surface, which explains much of the features of Yellowstone such as all the geysers, hot springs, and boiling pits of sulphur. I thought it was really crazy to look at these giant expanses of boiling earth that sit right beside pretty grassy hills with animals grazing on them, because it seems like those things shouldn't exist right beside each other. But then it turns out that a lot of these hills have formed because there is actually magma beneath them pushing them upwards, which fascinates me even more.

Yellowstone is full of beautiful scenery and crazy geological acts of nature, I could stare at just the skies all day--they're filled with the most beautiful cotton ball clouds, and I must have taken a zillion pictures that were some variant of golden grassland, rich green pine forest, and brilliant blue skies with fluffy white clouds. The wildlife is phenomenal--we've seen mule deer, pronghorns, white-tail deer, hundreds of buffalo, and even the head of a moose from a distance.

That said, I'm happy to be moving on from Yellowstone. It's pretty crowded with people (I can't even imagine what the summer is like when you have to make lodging reservations a year in advance). Also, the park is GIANT, and it takes forever to drive between places, which is time I'd rather spend outdoors. There are still other things I'd love to see, but we hit the highlights, and we'd need years to see everything else.

We're camping again tonight, this time in Tower campground in northern Yellowstone. Our guidebook cheerfully informed us that Tower is smack dab in the epicenter of grizzly activity in Yellowstone. Also, entering the campground, you pass a crushed RV that was the victim of a falling tree on Monday night. Our tent is directly beneath a couple of very large trees, and we are watching lightning storms surrounding our campsite. So if this posts ends up on the internet, it means we survived the trees and grizzlies and made it to Montana, where we will be visiting Glacier National Park in the coming days.

Speaking of campsites, having visited several over the past few days, I've noticed the number of tent sites at a campsite is directly proportional to the number of campers wearing headlamps.
-M

Teton camping

Driggs to Grand Teton, WY (9/18)

After sleeping late in our plush hotel (Super Eight), taking multiple showers and doing our laundry, we set back out to Grand Teton, sad to be leaving Driggs, ID. After grabbing a campsite and setting up our tent, we headed out on an easy hike around the lake. Unfortunately, the map was really poorly done, we ended up hopelessly lost, and our short hike became closer to 7 miles. We wandered around lost for about an hour or two, which doesn't sound like a long time, but when everything looks the same, you realize you don't have a flashlight and are imagining a Blair Witch-style scenario while beating off nocturnal bears with a stick, it's a little scary. Luckily, we kept our cool and found our way back. We headed straight for the general store, bought some meat and beer, and headed back to our campsite to use our camp stove for the first time (we've been subsisting on deli meat so far). So between the camping, cooking for ourselves, trying to build a fire, and hanging out around the campsite during the daylight hours, we feel like real honest-to-god campers (never mind the fact that I'm writing this on my laptop beside the fire pit so I can post this the next time we have internet.)
Grand Teton has probably been my favorite park so far. There are no foothills on the Wyoming side, so the mountains seem to rise out of nowhere. According to the park guide, the Tetons were formed because they sit on tectonic plates, and back in the day, the plates shifted with the mountains being pushed up while the valley dropped, which explains the lack of foothills. Then the mountains themselves were carved out by glaciers, leaving jagged tops. (Alternate explanation: god said, 'let there be Tetons!', and there were, sometime around day 5. -B) The scenery is beautiful, and there are less people around than in Yellowstone, which is directly above the Tetons.
-M

Who da ho?

Rapid City to Wind Cave, SD (9/14)
Wind Cave to Bighorn Mountains, WY (9/15)
Bighorn Mountains to Yellowstone (9/16)
Yellowstone to Driggs, ID (9/17)

So, today we woke up in yellowstone, did a 3.5 mile hike in the Grand Tetons and then booked it to Driggs, Idaho to watch the season premiers of the office and parks and rec, which were worth it! We had planned to stay in Jackson, just south of the Grand Tetons, but it turned out to only be for rich old people and not assholes like us. So, rhetorically, how did we get here? As per the last post, we stayed in EconoLodge Rapid City last Sunday - the NFL, in return for $40, has agreed to let me watch all 16 Browns losses online, at a slight time delay of a few hours, though that means I need internet access on Sunday nights. So Monday morning we hit up the Minuteman Missile Silo near the Badlands and were told to go away, so then we went to the Badlands themselves, hiked around a bit, and then left, because while they were large jagged rocks as expected, by 2 pm we were ready to move on. So we decided to camp back in Wind Cave, where we had passed through the day before. We got lost a bit in the black hills, though that is essentially what the black hills are for, and set up camp well enough in the dark.

Tuesday was black hills day, we headed up to rushmore but stopped first at the crazy horse memorial, which robbed us of $20 to view a monument that seems 80-100 years away from completion. Thus robbed, we decided to drive by rushmore rather than park and pay whatever it was they were asking, but really, you can see it well enough from the street to get the general idea. In the interest of making spectacular time, we planned to camp in the wyoming black hills but then pushed it through Devil's Tower to the Bighorn Mountains, which is about midway through the state. We set up again in the dark, this time in a quasi lightning storm, though we seem to have missed the most of it.

Then: highway 16 leads us through Cody into yellowstone, which apparently takes several days just to drive around the main park loop. We grabbed one of the last camping sites and really, that was Wednesday. Wednesday was the fourth night camping on the trip, and the first in which the Bear threat started to be real. It turns out that while camping at yellowstone, a very small subset of the sounds you hear at night that sound like Bears are, in fact, Bears. We passed up the $42 bear spray in Cody, because we didn't want to a) spend $42 and b) look like jackasses, because it is only sold in large canisters that have to be worn in holsters. If one/both of us are eaten or mauled, then a) will seem like a silly reason in retrospect, though I'll still be glad we didn't look like jackasses. No Bears so far, though we saw a few more buffalo in yellowstone as well as some mule deer, which are essentially deer, but larger.

Thursday morning, we went to see old faithful, which is pretty good. We then drove down to Grand Tetons for the hike, clapping rhythmically all the while to scare away the Bears, though really they may have thought of it as akin to those theme restaurants where the waiters put on a show as they serve your food, but anyway, not eaten yet (They also recommend talking in a loud voice to alert the bears of your presence, but after a couple attempts of my attempts at reciting Shakespeare and the periodic table, Brad insinuated that he might rather be eaten by a bear -M). And then, as stated earlier, from Jackson through Wilson and Victor - and through Teton Village, where a robot tried to kill us, but I bested it - to Driggs, Idaho, which had the first hotel we could find that would let us watch tv and plug in our phones. By this point, it's worth noting that we, and mandy in particular, smell terrible. Tomorrow, back to either Grand Tetons or yellowstone.

-B

Oddities (cont) and Burros

North Platte to Rapid City, SD (9/13):
It's our last major driving day for a bit. We drove north through the Sand Hills of Nebraska, passing few people and towns but lots of corn, cows and trains. Just outside of the Sand Hills is Carhenge, old cars painted grey and set up as a replica of Stonehenge. We thought that would be the day's highlight (and it was pretty great), but South Dakota trumped it. We were going to skip Wind Cave National Park since we'd just been in a cave in Kentucky a couple days ago, but we decided to drive through and were rewarded with buffalo!!! We saw several grazing by the road only a few feet away and others off in the distance, along with some funny little antelope-things which we later discovered were pronghorns. In Custer State Park, we met the "begging burros" who stick their heads in your car and were just about the best thing ever. They're looking for food, but once they realize you don't have it, they're happy to just hang out and let you pet them and to use your car's side mirrors to scratch their nose.

After lots of driving and hotels, tomorrow we start a camping segment in the Badlands then the Black Hills.
-M

Crossing a time zone going West is like stealing an hour from God. We used our extra hour to have a late McDonalds breakfast.
-B

Corn Fields and Oddities

Topeka to North Platte, NE (9/12):
Today was another long day of driving punctuated by short side stops. We woke up in Topeka, Kansas, home of the Brown v. Board lawsuit and a museum dedicated to it. Brown v. Board was one of 6 lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court at the same time and were combined into a single decision overturning the Plessy v. Ferguson separate but equal tenet. According to the friendly park ranger, unlike the other 5 cases that were rolled into the Brown decision, the original Brown case was not a question of access or quality. While the districts involved in the other cases had measurably worse quality of education for minority students, the Topeka system was apparently equal for all students, just separate. (Or so the Kansans would have us believe -B). In striking down school segregation, the Supreme Court opened the door for desegregation in other areas. The Civil Rights Movement, along with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, followed in the 1960s. Later legislation about access, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, stemmed from the Brown case. The museum traced Brown and the other cases and the protests against integration that followed when schools were integrated. (And, props to Kansas for including Matthew Shepard in their timeline of the struggle for civil rights -B).

After Topeka, we sampled Maimie Eisenhower's famous (?) sugar cookies in Abilene, KS (awful -B), birthplace of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and site of his presidential library before taking highways to Cawker City, KS, which is the home of the world's largest ball of twine. From there it was a short hop to the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states (Which, it turns out, is guarded by a terrifying Rooster. The souvenirs are oddly enough kept in Lebanon -B). We made it into Nebraska, where strange, scary noises emanating from our car made us think it was about to break down or fly off the road. Mystery solved, however, when we passed a sign that informed us the previous stretch of road had been built with 41,000 recycled tires, which had caused our car to vibrate strangely.

We have one more day of long driving before we make it to South Dakota and camp for a few days. We've driven well over 1,000 miles in the past 4 days, but I'm pretty excited by all the places we've been able to drop by on the way.
-M

Missouri, or, Standing on the corner of 12th street and Vine

St. Louis to Topeka (9/11):
Because of the boring intricacies of rental car contracts and the terms of insurance, we can only have our rental car for 31 days at a time before it costs us a lot of extra money. Therefore, we have to return to Knoxville, TN every 31 days to exchange cars. Before we started, that sounded like a lot of time. We're realizing now, however, that the US is giant, and to hit all the things we want to visit in South Dakota, Wyoming and the northwest, we're having to hurry across the middle of the US to get there. Thus, today's whirlwind tour of Missouri.

We spent the morning in St. Louis at the Gateway Arch and Courthouse. As I mentioned yesterday, the Arch is even better than expected, and we spent a lovely morning at the park at the base of the arch, standing in the Mississippi River, and going up to the observation deck at the top in these futuristic space-pods that rotate so they stay upright the whole way up the arch.

At the base of the arch is the Museum of Westward Expansion, which has a ton of details about early American explorers, US territorial expansion, and the Native Americans murdered and displaced by all of this. Across from the arch is the courthouse where the Dred Scott case was originally tried here before it made its way to the Supreme Court in the years before the Civil War.

St. Louis was a nice place of symbolism for our west-bound trip--in addition the Gateway Arch and sticking our feet in the Mississippi, we also made a wrong turn and happily found ourselves on Route 66 and later had our first meal of the trip at Jack and the Box.

After St. Louis, we made a brief stop in Jefferson City, capital of Missouri, and saw their giant state capital building that is modeled on the U.S. capital in Washington. We followed this with an even briefer drive-by of the downtown of Independence, MO where Harry Truman was from. We stopped in Kansas City long enough for BBQ and ended the day in Topeka, Kansas.
-M

Finally--The Open Road

Knoxville to Mammoth Cave, KY (9/9)
Mammoth Cave to St Louis (9/10):
After spending time with family and friends in Cleveland and Knoxville and after a couple days where everything seemed to be conspiring against our trip, we finally hit the highways and headed northwest. We stuck mainly on state highways and back roads, hoping this would be a more interesting and scenic drive than interstates. These roads went through rolling hills of wildflowers and farms. Federal stimulus dollars are hard at work, as we drove through a bunch of road paving and construction projects marked with Recovery.gov signs. We also passed a number of Missionary and Free Will Baptist churches, though we weren't really sure what those were. We took a side trip to the burial site and museum of WW1 hero Alvin York's. Everything described him as a WWI war hero but didn't really go into detail, which left us confused. Some Wikipedia research shows that he single-handedly killed 28 German soldiers (The Jerries aren't so bad - they're just being led by a rotten apple. -B) and captured 132. (He single-handedly captured 132 Germans? Was he a giant? This is likely not true. -B)

Our first "official" stop was Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, which is the longest cave system in the world. We checked out a tiny portion during a two-hour cave tour. While caves aren't particularly my thing, the rock formations were pretty cool, and this got me excited for all the other national parks we'll be hitting in the coming weeks. We camped overnight at the park. This was the very first time that either of us have camped, so we were both relieved that it was easy and uneventful because a good portion of our trip is relying on pitching our tent at various campsites throughout the U.S.A.

After a morning at the caves, we headed to St. Louis. The land flattened out, and we saw lots of corn. We entered St. Louis in the early evening, and they are not messing around with that Arch. It's huge, beautiful and graceful, which is nice because a lot of times things like that don't measure up to expectations. We'll be visiting it in the morning.
-M

A brother to my sister Carolina

Knoxville, TN, 9/03/09 - 9/08/09:
Will they all be Ryan Adams? Anyway, we stayed a bit short of a week in Knoxville and dropped off 41, no 40, boxes, which will hypothetically be moved the next time by the government, so, out of sight out of mind. Our remaining possessions should now fit well within the confines of a Ford Focus (or equivalent). In between our 4-5 daily meals, many of which were at CiCi's pizza, we saw Mandy's ugly old house and a vaguely racist taco.
-B

So we went on to Cleveland,

Cleveland, OH, 8/31/09 - 9/02/09:
And lightened the load a bit by dropping off Gillig and Orion. Orion took quite well to the change of scenery, including a hop around the back yard; Gillig continues to adjust at a slower pace. Other Cleveland highlights include a trip downtown and a stop at the zoo, which we hope will not prove to be foreshadowing once we get to Glacier.
-B

I'll always love you though, New York...

NYC, NY
9/1/04 - 8/30/09:
New York, New York, it's not you, it's us. Thus five years are packed into a 16' budget truck and squeezed out the lincoln tunnel. The plan, now, is a 2 to 4 month road trip covering most things west of the mississippi and, in the 4 month variant, most things east as well.

Unemployed, uninsured, homeless, at least we left before we had to go.
-B