Day 5: South Dakota to Torrington, WY

Day Five Begins

We started off Day 5 with a breakfast of buffalo hotdogs and fritos outside the entrance to Badlands National Park.

On the way into the park there was a prairie dog farm where you could feed and even pet the cute little guys.

Badlands National Park

Badlands was stark and beautiful...but we figured out pretty quickly that we'd made a key mistake: the best views are at sunrise or sunset and we'd stupidly entered a couple of hours after sunrise.  Oh well, still worthwhile...but don't make the same mistake.

At our first stop in the park, we ran into Catherine and her troop of bicyclists riding from NYC to SFO for cancer research.

We then hiked the Saddle Pass Trail.  

The landscape speaks for itself.

Danger lurks everywhere.

Then we headed to "Yellow Mounds Overlook."

Wall Drug

Right after leaving the park, we stopped at the famous Wall Drug (signs for hundreds if not thousands of miles...much like "South of the Border" on the East Coast).  

This place is the consummate tourist trap--it seems like they just kept adding more stores as the legend built on itself.  They've got all kinds of ways to spend your money here, and I even left with a Wall Drug branded "jackalope" for Mei-Wah.

While there we couldn't not try their famous beef sandwich smothered in gravy (Missy declared it “actually quite good”) with a chocolate malt and homemade donuts, as well as the heavily-advertised 5 cent coffee.

Mt. Rushmore

After filling up at Wall Drug, the next stop was Mt. Rushmore--which was actually cooler than we expected, as many folks had warned us it can be disappointing.  

Here's a pic we took from outside the official park (I think).

The grand entrance.

The strangest thing about the park is that that nowhere (that we could find, and we looked) do they tell you which presidents are on there.  Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt are pretty obvious, but we had to look up to confirm that the fourth is Jefferson.

Here's a statue of Gutzon Borglum, who conceived and directed the sculpting of the mountain.

And a plaque that tells us a bit about him.

Torrington, WY

After Rushmore we headed towards Denver, through Luft, and made it as far as Torrington where got one of the last rooms at the Holiday Inn.  Here we are with our traveling toaster.

We grabbed a late dinner just before the Bronco Grill closed down for the night.  Adam had a dry beef brisket sandwich; Missy had a veggie wrap because they would not make her a salad, or let her partake in the salad bar sitting out in the open because the tongs were already washed for the night.  Missy got some good practice "adulting" at the Bronco.

Day 4: MN to SD on July 4th

On the Road Again

We left Chicago by 5pm after tacos.  This was my first chance to use my Mobil gas card, a generous gift from my Uncle Mark who worked at ExxonMobil for many years.  As you might guess, we don't always see eye to eye on politics, but he's always been great to me--and I appreciate the free gas.  Thanks, Uncle Mark.

We drove about 4 hours through Wisconsin and into Minnesota and found an America’s Best Inn to stay for the night.

At America's Best we thought we'd introduce our "road toaster" to the toaster in the small free breakfast kitchen.

We woke up in MN, played tennis at a local high school court Missy found at “find a court” or some website, and then got on the road.

SPAM!

Our first stop was Austin, MN home of the world headquarters of the Hormel Company and the SPAM Museum.  This was a very fun stopover.  

At the entrance to the SPAM Museum we were greeted by the charming and enthusiastic Guenie who gave us the lay of the land and told us about two special kinds of SPAM only available here and in Hawaii (Portuguese) and the Phillipines (Tocino).  

There are lots of varieties of SPAM.



And, you can measure your height in SPAM cans, of course.  Looks like I may have Missy by about a half a can.





A big thrust of the museum was how SPAM has fed the troops during just about every war.  Here's an unrelated picture to close us out.

A Bit of Small Town Patriotism...and Loose Meat

Since it was July 4^th the whole time we were exploring the history and versatility of America’s most questionable lunchmeat there was a parade down Main Street, right outside the museum door.  

After checking out the parade, we headed over to Tendermaid Hamburgers for loose meat hamburgers and shakes.  

The staff were super friendly and told us all about the history of the Hormel company in the region—including a big union strike in the ‘80s that sharply divided the town.  Hormel maintains its world headquarters in Austin and so has thousands of employees that have been an economic lifeline for the region.  They also support a cancer research center in partnership with the nearby Mayo Clinic.  The company seems like a good corporate citizen, although the story of the strike suggests there may be more there than meets the eye.

Here are our friendly servers.

And, a shot of the actual loose meat burger, which, to be honest, wasn't that flavorful.  They scoop the steamed meat out of the center bin and it could have used some more fat or salt or something.



Sioux Falls

We left Austin after lunch and headed west on Route 90 towards Sioux Falls, where we arrived late afternoon.  The actual falls were listed in Trip Advisor as the number one thing to do in town, so we went to check them out.  When I asked Missy how to describe the falls for this blog post she said “they sucked, and you can quote me.”  She spent 20 minutes utterly confused wandering around looking for some impressive falls, but there wasn’t much to see.  Bottom line is that it’d be fine to skip these on your next cross-country road trip.

Corn Palace

Continuing on Route 90, our next stop was the somewhat-famous Corn Palace, which was constructed as a monument to prairie life, and where they build a different corn mural on the outside every year.  There's a theme every year and this year's was "Rock of Ages."  This was another disappointment—fine to skip.  [Although my roommate Jeremiah who has Midwestern roots was horrified when I said so, so perhaps this reveals our haughty East Coast bias.]  Missy piped in with “this sucked too, South Dakota is making me love Minnesota so far.”  That said, we did get to see “corn Elvis” so now I guess we can die in peace.

Corn Willie:



And, Corn Elvis:





After the Corn Palace we were ready to grab some dinner and find a place to stay.  Our goal for the day was to get close to the Badlands, and we were now just outside the park area.  Missy was craving something green but our options were limited so we settled for a family restaurant called Marlins.  

The crowd was older and all white—we were wishing we could have taken a survey and learned the percentage of Trump supporters.  Ironically Missy enjoyed her meal there whereas my burger and fries were terrible.

Days 2 & 3: On to Chicago

Saturday, July 2

In spite of the lure of a relaxing day on the lake, we awoke Saturday morning determined to cover more ground and make it to Chicago by nightfall.  Our itinerary is pretty tight--we have one or two spare days mixed in but we wanted to save them for the national parks we plan to hit out West.

We got on the road around 10:30 again and headed through the rest of OH and into IL.  With the benefit of the time change, we got to Chicago around 5pm and headed for Missy's happy place: the beach.  She was very excited to discover Chicago's urban beaches (on the shore of Lake Michigan) and we spent about an hour relaxing--which for me was laying down and texting with Mei-Wah and for Missy was searching for beach glass.  Both successful operations.

Abe and Micaela, our hosts for the night, were hosting a small BBQ for the canvass team which was perfect b/c we were starving.  So we picked up some Pipeworks beer (at Abe's suggestion) and headed over to their beautiful new house in the Logan Square neighborhood.  Here we are with Micaela in front of the house.

And, here are some shots of their backyard garden, featuring Abe and butterflies.

After relaxing on the backyard for the evening, we headed to brunch the next morning at Lula's in Logan Square with my old high school friend Jamie Geller Ayres--RHS '94 foreva...

After brunch Missy and I wandered downtown to soak in as much of Chicago as we could for half a day.  We'd each been there a few times--my last time was exactly a year ago for the Grateful Dead's Fare The Well shows--but definitely hadn't hit all the spots.  We took the Blue Line from Logan Square down to Monroe and headed to Millennium Park.

Our first stop was the "faces" fountain, a cool spot where human faces are projected onto two large tile fountains that spew water from the "mouths" of the faces at seemingly random intervals.  This is a form of paradise for little kids (and bigger ones) who run around in the water in utter delight.

After the fountains we checked out Chicago's famous "bean," which provides cool, angled reflections.

There's also a cool free amphitheater in the park.

  
Afterwards we strolled by the water for a bit, and made our way back to Abe & Micaela's to pack up and head on the road.  Before heading out, we hit L'Patron for tacos at Abe's suggestion--great call.

A great 24 hr stop in Chicago.  Thanks to Abe & Micaela for being such great hosts, and to Jamie for making the effort to meet us for brunch.  [I hope she remembers she promised to put her yenta skills to work to find Missy a beaux.]

Day 1: The road to Kamp Kaiser (Chez Bowser)

Friday, July 1

After hauling my stuff up to NY (via Philly for Phish show #1), unloading, returning the UHaul, enduring a 3+ hour ordeal at the DMV to get an "in-transit" permit for the road trip chariot, enjoying some sushi with Mom & Dad / Aunt Carol & Uncle Larry, getting a decent night's sleep, and consuming the obligatory (and delicious) NY bagels and lox, we were finally ready to get on the road around 10:30am.

Our objective was to get to my good friend Erin Bowser's lake house a bit north of Columbus, OH.  Bowser surprised me last week by showing up to my DC going away party, and when we launched this plan Google Maps told us that it was 6 hrs 20 mins from my parents' place on Long Island to her house.  Somehow when Mei-Wah expressed skepticism about that and I went to confirm the night before we were to leave, the trip was now 9-10 hrs.  And, when Missy agreed to come on this trip she had only one firm condition: she didn't want to drive more than 4-5 hours each day--understandably she wanted to spend more time out of the car than in it.

So, I had the pleasure of launching our trip by readjusting Missy's expectations about our first day's drive.  She took it in stride, and we got on the road.

About 10.5 hrs later--through NY, PA, and part of OH--we arrived at Bowser's house on Charles Mill Lake in Lucas, Ohio.  Here I am with Bowser.

Missy, Bowser, and me on the porch overlooking the lake.

Bowser shares the place with her brother Richie.  They have a boat to fish out on the lake.  We had a great time staying up until 3:30 am (well I did) with Bowser, Richie, his gf Jen, and Bowser's high school friend Janine.  We were also surrounded by delightful kids and two, Aden (Janine's son) and Riley (Richie's daughter) stayed up late hanging out with us around the bonfire.

And, here's the toaster's first appearance.

Inexcusably we didn't get pics of the rest of our crew.  We were sorry we couldn't stay longer to go out on the boat and share more food, beer, and good times...but time is short and the road beckons...

Heading West to "go see about a girl"...with a toaster

I'm restarting my long-retired travel blog to document my road trip moving from DC to Berkeley to go live with my partner Mei-Wah, who is a rising 2L at BerkeleyLaw.

The older posts on this blog are all about my 6.5 month solo trip through Latin America after I graduated from law school in 2007.  It may be the most interesting thing I've ever done, so definitely scroll through and check out some of the posts...I swear I was taking pictures of all my food before it was cool.

A bit of context for this trip.

First, I'm moving for love.  Mei-Wah and I met while we were both in DC and after dating for about 1.5 years she headed West for law school.  We did the long distance thing for a year and now it's time for me to step up, dive in, and put someone else ahead of myself for a change.  And, I'm really excited to do it.

Second, I have the great fortune of making the trip with my cousin Missy who is launching a year off with this joint adventure.  We're the same age but grew up in different cities, so we've hung out sporadically over the years but have never spent this much concentrated time together.  We both have our quirks--and opposite taste in music--but we're looking forward to catching up.  And I'm very grateful for the company.  This trip will be a ton more fun with a partner in crime.

Third, we have 13 days to make it across America.  This is because our trip is bookended by Phish shows.  On one end was the show in Philly with Kevin and the other end are two shows at the Gorge outside of Seattle (my happy place) followed by three shows in San Fran and potentially a seventh down in LA with my brother.

Fourth: the toaster.  My dear mother asked us to bring my brother a toaster oven.  Missy and I find this interesting for two main reasons.  First, a toaster oven costs about $30 these days, so it's not clear it really makes sense to lug one 3K miles across the country.  Second, we are going to Berkeley.  My brother lives in Irvine, which is south of LA.  So, either my brother will have to come up to the Bay Area to pick up the toaster or I'll have to bring it down to him at some point.  Now that may happen soon enough if I hit the Phish show with him as planned...but the whole things seems a bit excessive.  And, kind of hilarious...which is why you'll see plenty of toaster-themed pics throughout this blog.

Ok, on to the adventure.  I'm actually writing this from the car in Minnesota (the wonders of iPhone hotspots) but I'll try to catch everyone up in the next few posts.

Oh, and here's our chariot for the trip: my dad's Subaru Forrester, which he generously gifted me knowing that my prior car (a 1997 Outback) might not make it all the way to CA.  Thanks Mom & Dad--you've given me so much in life and this is only the latest example.  [They are also helpfully storing my mattress & box spring in their garage and a bunch of boxes in their attack.  I really appreciate that.]

Finally, a word about our plan.  We have just under two weeks to get from New York to Berkeley so I can spend a night or two with Mei-Wah before heading up to the Gorge.  To plan the trip I pulled up two essential tools: Google Maps and my friends Ryan and Christina's honeymoon travel blog.  They traveled for a year around the world for their honeymoon, including hitting 35 national parks here in the U.S.  Missy and I wanted to combine seeing national parks with visiting friends and finding free places to stay.  Hence the route to come...