No glitter, scary critters, and apple fritters 07/22

Today was Yellowstone and Grand Teton Day. I paid my 25 dollars for entrance that was good for both parks, and started making my way towards the geysers at Yellowstone.

The drive from the entrance to Old Faithful was pretty unimpressive. There were lots of half dead trees on either side of the road blocking your view of anything that might be interesting. There was a small part of the road where you could see a big lake, but as far as lakes go, nothing too exciting. It was a lake. I got to Old Faithful and read some of my book waiting for it to go off again. As I waited more and more people gathered around the viewing area. And then more people came. And then more people came. There were so many fanny-packed rednecks ogling at a hot pillar of water it was disgusting. I didn’t even bother to stick around and go see the rest of the geysers. It was just water shooting out of a hole in the ground. Didn’t need to see it at different heights and waste an entire day looking at the other geysers. So after my basically obligatory visit to Old Faithful and Yellowstone, I headed to the Grand Tetons.

What was really dumb about the people sitting around me at the Old Faithful was that I heard no less than 7 people make the joke “oh, that was it, let’s go home!” joke whenever the geyser started to shoot out water but stopped after a second or two. I knew it was coming the first time, but it wasn’t funny then. I know all the other people who said after were within earshot of the first guy, because I was within earshot of them all. It was very unnecessary, and I hated each person who said it more than the person who said it before.

The majestic Grand Tetons stood in stark contrast to the bland, overpopulated Yellowstone. Thousands of feet of rock bursting out of the flat ground and topped with snow, the sun setting in the background behind them. There was nothing to block your view of the mountains once you got into sight of them. I drove around the park for a few hours looking at them from various angles and places. I was planning on spending the night in the park and charging my battery, but even if all the spots weren’t full, the $54 electrical hookup spot would have kept me away. The only thing left were $19 primitive campsites, with not so much as a shower around. I said hell no to that idea and started down the road out of the park. Before I got too far though, I stopped at one of the picnic areas and had myself some dinner by the fast paced (and very cold) Snake River. It was very picturesque. A clear river flowing over round rocks at my feet, grasslands for a mile or two, and then the snowcapped Grand Tetons in the distance. Couldn’t ask for a better place to eat dinner in all of Wyoming.

After dinner I headed towards Idaho. I stopped on a mountaintop sort of close to the Idaho/Wyoming border and stargazed for about 2 hours. It was a bit chilly (60 degrees), but it was really clear and really dark. The only thing that put a damper on the spot was the intermittent passing car, but they only passed by about once every 5-10 minutes. I decided I’d had enough when a deer scared the shit out of me.

I was sitting on the hood of my car parked next to a giant wheat (or at least really high grass) field. There wasn’t so much a cricket chirping for the entire 2 hours I was stargazing, so it was totally silent (except for when a car would pass). All of a sudden I heard some rustling in the wheat field next to me, coming pretty rapidly and straight towards me. I burst into action. I hopped off my car, jumped in the driver seat, and turned on the lights as quickly as my body would allow me. Once I had the lights on, the rustler presented itself in my headlights as an average sized deer, just crossing the road. Still, it got my heart pounding, and I’d decided I’d had enough stargazing for the night. The fact that it was 2 am also attributed to my ending the session.

I drove to the nearest Wal-Mart, which was about 45 minutes away, and bought some apple fritters and milk for dinner. I ended my day by watching most of Episode I before my eyelids would have no more of being open.

The hills are alive with the sound of silence 07/21

I woke up and experienced the grandeur and mystery of the Devils Tower. Having seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the thought of aliens landing there didn’t seem to obtuse. It’s a giant rock that juts out of the valley for apparently no reason. There are no surrounding mountains, no hills, no sign that a lined monolith is about to appear as if it ruptured straight out of the bowels of the earth. It was definitely a sight to behold.

Down the road from my campsite I stopped at a prairie dog camp, or whatever you call a collection of prairie dogs. They’re much smaller than I anticipated, and their “bark” was more of a cute, excited yelp. I watched them run around and pop out of holes for about 20 minutes before I decided to get out of the park before I was recognized and forced to pay for my campsite.

Next I made my way over to the Big Horn Mountains. Unlike the Appalachians, which once you’re in them, its hard to tell that you’re actually in a mountain range aside from the high graded roads, these mountains allowed you to feel powerful. From 10,000 feet up you can see the basin floor with all of its rivers, hills, and roads. The best part about these mountains was that there were very few people passing through them, so for most of the time I had the view all to myself. The solitude it afforded me along with the simple beauty of my surroundings made me never want to leave. I could see so far, the atmosphere blurred the features of the horizon. I could see shadows on the ground from the sun falling over the clouds. Even though it was a comfortable 75 degrees, there were still patches of snow that dotted the mountainsides, separating the fields of grass and rock that otherwise populated the mountains.

At one point, towards the middle of the range, I pulled into one of the many vista points to get a better view than driving in my car would afford me. The vista point was labeled as 9430 feet above sea level. In front of me was a steep drop-off that led to a large piece of the mountain oddly shaped like a grassy Pride Rock from the Lion King. Behind me was the rest of the mountain. I decided to climb the rest of the way up, to the very summit. From the vista point, the climb didn’t look that difficult. However, once I started up the mountain, it became clear to me that my vision deceived me.

I forgot to factor in that I was almost 10,000 feet above sea level, and there wasn’t as much oxygen to be had for climbing. That on top of the nearly steady 45 degree climb for the first few hundred feet surprised my lungs. A few hundred feet above my car, someone had assembled a large pile of rocks about 4.5 feet tall. It was wide at the base and got skinnier towards the top. I heard a lot of buzzing and thought maybe some bees made the rock pile their home, so I snapped a quick pic and continued the rest of the way up the mountain.

After the rock pile, the mountain took on a more gentle slope. The rise was about 20 degrees instead of 45, but it made up for the discrepancy in length. From my car to the top of the mountain where I stopped took me about 30 minutes, with a few small 1 minute breathers along the way. I’m not entirely sure what the actual height was that I stopped at, but I like to think it was 10,000 feet. I felt like I had definitely climbed up 600 feet, plus there was a pole parking the summit. On the pole there was a rusted plate, where other travelers etched their names in to declare that they, too, conquered the mountain. I etched in “BELVEDERE”, turned around, and made my way back down the mountain towards my car.

After an accidental minor detour down the wrong face of the mountain, I walked the 300 yards down the road back to my car. I then made way over the Medicine Wheel, an old Indian sacred healing place. It’s an 80 foot diameter wheel with spokes, made entirely out of limestone from the mountains. Although not too impressive on its own, the history behind it and its location made it worth the trek. Also, I met some nice ladies from Montana on the walk from the parking area to the wheel. I say met, but we were never really properly introduced. They were in their late 40s, travelling on a day trip to the mountains with their mother from Montana. They had some fun stories to pass the time, and we even had an impromptu snowball fight on Medicine Mountain. They told me when I wrote about them to refer to them as my “sisters from Montana.” And so they are.

There were some rocks jutting up from the side of the mountain next to the medicine wheel, and I hopped out on to them (carefully, as it was a few hundred feet the next highest point below me), and tried to read some of by book. However, there were too many damn flies to allow me the peace required for concentrated reading. The flies were the biggest I’d ever seen, rivaling the size of bumblebees. At first I thought they were bumblebees, which made me freak out whenever one would land on or near me. I didn’t want to get stung and have a knee jerk reaction that would throw me off the face of the mountain, so I (carefully) hopped back to safety and walked back to my car.

I was going to spend the night in Yellowstone, but all the camping spots were taken up by 2, and it was already 6 when I called. So I stayed in Cody, Wyoming for the night, where apparently they have a nightly rodeo all summer long. I didn’t want to fork over the money for it, so I didn’t go, but the town was crowded enough with tourists that I’m guessing the one ticket I didn’t buy was bought by someone else.

Overall it was a fantastic day. The mystery of the Devils Tower and the quirky prairie dogs started the day off. I loved the solitude and serenity the Big Horn Mountains provided, and my little snowball fight with my new sisters from Montana added a fun twist to the day. Days like this were what my trip was all about.

Deadly breakfasts, giant monuments, and the police 07/20

What an eventful day. I woke up and decided to eat at the 50’s style diner next to the hotel I was at. I had the breakfast of death, consisting of chicken fried steak smothered in gravy, greasy hashbrowns, biscuits and gravy, and toast. I ate everything but the last 30 percent of my chicken fried steak, which was the biggest one I’d ever seen. I felt like my blood had turned into gravy by the time I finally stopped eating.

I noticed during my meal that my right fender on my trailer had come off. My first instinct was that someone stole it, since I didn’t remember it being loose. On top of that, the other fender wasn’t loose at all, making it curious that only one of them would rattle loose from driving and come off. I did find it weird that someone would only steal one fender though. Come to find out the next day that my right side tail light was bent a bit, as if something hit it with tremendous force. Something like a trailer fender going 55 miles an hour, for instance. So that solved that mystery.

Anyway, after my nearly heart stopping breakfast, I finally made it to Mt. Rushmore. For all of the hype surrounding it, I thought it would be more impressive. That seems to be a recurring theme on this trip. So many national monuments that have been so hyped up by years of hearing about them, there wasn’t any way that the actual monuments could ever be as great as I built them up to be in my head. That being said, Mt. Rushmore was still quite a site. I thought the busts would take up more of the mountain, but a 60 foot head is nothing to go unnoticed, especially not 4 of them in a row. I read about 60 pages of “The Holographic Universe” in the amphitheater at the bottom of the mountain before deciding to move on to Crazy Horse down the road.

Crazy Horse as of my viewing wasn’t too impressive. It was basically a giant face and a whole lot of rubble. I thought it would be more complete, seeing as how they’ve been working on it since the mid 30’s. I was unaware that it was all privately funded though, to keep with the idea of free enterprise and the idea of Native American independence from the US government. So with that in mind, it was very impressive. I’m sure carving a mountain isn’t cheap. Whenever it is complete though, it’s going to kick Mt. Rushmore’s ass as far as overall size and intensity goes. Whenever it’s complete it’ll be taller than the Washington Monument in DC. They had a picture of what it’ll look like when it’s done, and I was more excited just at the thought of seeing the complete thing than I was seeing Mt. Rushmore already being complete.

After Crazy Horse I started making my way to the Devils Tower in Wyoming. I stopped in a small town about 40 minutes from the tower to hijack an internet connection and upload about 150 pictures. To give you an idea of how small this town was, the Best Western I stopped at was right next to a double wide trailer, and the only other thing in sight was a gas station and “home style cookin” restaurant. In fact, a deer wandered out of the woods next to the parking lot I was in at one point.

Anyway, I lost track of time, thinking I had only been hanging out for about 30 minutes, when it was really more like 2 hours and 30 minutes. I guess the owners got spooked and called the cops, saying something like a greasy bearded guy had been sitting in the parking lot for a few hours. The cop hassled me about using the internet without asking and tried to give me some bullshit about not parking within the yellow stripes, whenever I obviously have a trailer on the back of my car and would poke out into the middle isle if I were to park that way. He tried to scare me by being the “badass” cop, and asked me why he shouldn’t charge me with theft for using the internet without permission. I played the scared, stupid, and innocent teenager to play into his hands. He settled on just telling me to get off the property and that he didn’t want to see me “using that damn computer” anywhere else around town.

So I left and drove the rest of the way to the Devils Tower. I happened to get the last available spot, so that was lucky. All of the sites were primitive, so I couldn’t charge my battery more or even take a shower, so I decided I wasn’t going to pay in the morning.

The country really IS made out of corn 07/18 and 07/19

Almost nothing happened on the 18^th. I just drove. I drove 520 miles from where I was in Iowa to Mitchell, South Dakota. My right side headlight burnt out and my left side headlight was working intermittently when it got to be night time, so I drove part of the way using my brights.

On the 19^th I saw the Corn Palace in Mitchell. This further affirmed my suspicion that America has an obsession with corn. The entire building was decorated with corn. Very well decorated, too. There were big frescos of wild west and Native American scenes made entirely out of corn cobs. Quirky, to say the least. Quirky, and free. Love the free stuff.

I bought a new headlight for my right side, only to find out my headlight woes were not over. Apparently there is a wiring issue on that side, so even though the bulb is new, it still won’t light up. I still haven’t figured out where the short is, and it’s the 27^th as of this writing. However, I did get my left side headlight to work all the time, so I can drive at night without too much issue.

Anyway, I hopped back on the road towards Mt. Rushmore. I stopped at a recreation of a town in 1880 so creatively entitled “1880 Town.” It would have been much cooler if it was a working representation, or even if some of the buildings weren’t run down and poorly taken care of. It was a nice place to stretch the legs, but not much more if you ask me.

Also on the 19^th I stopped at what my travel book proclaimed was the “famous Wall Drug Store in Wall, SD.” It seemed to live up to that name, for the drug store was more of a shopping center, full of cowboy gift shops and overpriced tourist trinkets and as many travelling fanny pack wearers and motorcycle gangs as it could fit. At least I can say I’ve seen it.

I made it most of the rest of the way to Mt. Rushmore, sleeping outside of a Days Inn about a 45 minute drive from the monument.

Solo castlebuilding 101: build next to lots of rocks 07/17

My gamble paid off. I woke up at 7:00 am and was out of the park by 7:15, with no ranger in sight. I looked at both of my travel books to see if there was anything to see in Ohio close to my route and the only thing that struck my fancy was the Rock Castle. I showered at a truck stop and started heading towards the castle.

Chateau Le Roche, as it’s formally called, was impressive. More so than any normal castle because 99% of it was done by one man over the course of almost 60 years. This guy started building the castle in 1930 and kept going until he died in 1989. It has 20 rooms, a big garden, a dungeon, and even a princess tower. There were lots of medieval memorabilia like suits of armor, swords, and period furniture. Pretty cool place to see if you ever get the chance.

After the castle, I kept on my way to Mt. Rushmore. I passed through the rest of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois before bunking down just on the other side of the Iowa border, right next to the Mississippi.

Use your inside voice? 07/16

I woke up about 10 30 and started making my way towards Fallingwater. It should have only taken me an hour to get there, but I got stuck behind a super slow minivan that decided to go 20 miles under the speed limit. I arrived at noon, well before my 12 30 appointment. I went to the desk to tell them I had arrived, and to see if maybe something sooner was available. They said, yes, actually, we can fit you in on the next tour that leaves in 3 minutes. I said that would be fantastic.

I walked down the pathway from the visitor center to the house, which was about a 5 minute walk. I chit chatted with the tour guide for a few minutes waiting for everyone else on the tour to make their way to the house. Once everyone was there, we got underway.

Overall I am very glad I waited the extra day to tour the house. It fits right in with its surroundings of woods and water, with intermittent plots of stone here and there. The first part of the house we viewed was the dining room/living room area. It was constructed in such a way as to make you feel like you were outside, even though you were definitely inside the house. Glass made up most of the walls, with stone quarried on site for the floor and wooden accents to match the color of the bark outside. Steps led down to a nice grotto area via a retractable horizontal glass doorway. It was all very impressive.

The rest of the house wasn’t quite as impressive as that first area, but was in no way boring. Tiny hallways burst into large rooms which burst into even larger verandas. Some of the furniture was built right into the wall and cantilevered out, so things like couches didn’t require legs. A very nice stop along my trip, to be sure.

After the tour I started heading towards Mt. Rushmore. I stopped at a state park in Ohio to sleep, shower, and charge my battery. I took a gamble and didn’t pay for my spot, thinking I would just leave early in the morning before the ranger came around and noticed I was there. I hooked up my battery, but not before noticing this particular park didn’t have showers. I let it go, feeling getting my battery at least part of the way charged for free was good enough.

Uphill both ways to recharge for movie day 07/15

I woke up with the intention of going to Advanced Auto Parts down the road from where I was, but when I went to start my car, nothing happened. No noises like the car might even be trying to start. I then noticed both my odometer and clock were off. I concluded my battery must be just completely dead. I hooked up my dinky battery charger for about 30 minutes to see if it would charge it enough just so I could start it and go get a new battery somewhere. It couldn’t. No one else was around to give me a jump, so I walked about a half a mile to a Wal-Mart, got a new battery, and carted it back to my car.

It took me a bit longer to install the battery than it should have because one of the things that holds my battery in place was being stubborn and wouldn’t go back on after I put the new battery in. It took me about 20 minutes from unhooking the first battery to finish installing the second one. I got in my car, and my clock and odometer was back on. I took this as a good sign, cranked her up, and vroom, she started! Since then I haven’t had any battery issues (I’m writing this on the 24^th).

My original plan for the day was to go see Fallingwater, one of the most architecturally beautiful and significant houses in America, early in the day and then get in a good deal of driving. However, by the end of my battery ordeal it was already 130. I called Fallingwater to see if they had any tours left for the day, but was told that they are closed to the public on Wednesdays. I was aggravated to be sure, since there wasn’t anything else to do around where I was. I decided to stick around for a day and made an appointment for the next day at 12:30.

Seeing as how there wasn’t anything else to do around where I was, I had to expand my search. I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to go see some movies. I drove for 45 minutes to a theater in the suburbs of Pittsburg and saw Ice Age, My Sister’s Keeper, Harry Potter, and I Love You Beth Cooper. I chose the most perfect theater possible for sneaking from movie to movie. The theaters all branched off of a central U shape, with the lobby at the top of the U. That means in order to get to a theater on the other side of the complex, I didn’t have to blatantly cruise through the middle where everyone was, I could just walk around behind the lobby. It was fantastic.

Ice Age, Harry Potter, and Beth Cooper were all great movies. My Sister’s Keeper was fairly mediocre. On the whole, it was a great choice of movies, and a great way to spend my day. It never ceases to amaze me how much I love spending all day at the movies.

Anyway, by the end of Beth Cooper it was 12:30 am, so I found a parking lot to crash, and did so.