Road Tripping

Conclusion

2009-08-02T01:46:00.004-04:00

We’ve learned a lot on this adventure. We’ve seen so many things that we didn’t know were possible in this country. This nation, its history, its people, its geology, its economy, its societies, its ideas, its WEATHER are all fascinating! Amazing. The whole country is not just like Durham. It is not just like the South. It is not just like the east coast.

We saw how economies try to destroy people in Lubbock and Detroit. We saw how people pull themselves up by their bootstraps in Detroit. We saw how people lived 1,000 years ago in Arizona. We saw the deserts of the Southwest and the beautiful fields of the Great Plains. We saw the Grand Tetons and the Alleghenies. We saw LA recovering from the loss of a controversial superstar. We saw people relax and have fun at the Cody Rodeo in Wyoming and Beale Street in Memphis. We saw laser shows in Atlanta and the Black Hills of South Dakota, one honoring the South and the other honoring Native Americans. We saw buffalo and bears, and we saw burned trucks on the shoulders of highways. We touched the cool waters of the Pacific and the warm waters of the Atlantic.

We stayed in 130-year-old row houses, 70-year-old apartments, 30-year-old motels, and an 8- year-old Toyota. We met tourists from all over the country and the world. We had people offer to take our pictures, and we took other people’s pictures. We saw ancient mesas and cliff dwellings in Arizona and amazing feats of modern architecture at Fallingwater and the Ledge at Sears Tower. We saw homeless people in LA, San Francisco, Chicago, and Atlanta.

We learned how calming a beautiful scene can be. We stopped in the middle of the desert to hear absolute silence. We heard true echoes in the Grand Canyon. We listened to wild life at night in Montana. We heard the trains driving immediately behind our hotel in Arizona in the middle of the night. We felt the rains of the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. We looked into the San Francisco Bay from the Golden Gate Bridge, and we looked into the face of the moon from Yellowstone. We drove through low elevations and extremely high elevations. We saw a crater formed by a meteor and canyons formed by ancient rivers. We saw old-ass cars everywhere we went.

We saw the locations of the murders of Wild Bill Hickok and Martin Luther King, Jr. We learned about the lives of Buddy Holly and Andy Warhol. We saw the graves of Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Calamity Jane, and Wild Bill Hickok.

And, my God, we ate every thing we could find at every awesome restaurant on our route. We had Mexican food all over the country, Thai food in SF, Korean food in LA, BBQ in Memphis, pizza in Chicago, and steak salad in Pittsburgh.

We learned that most Americans are terrible spellers and that they make hysterical signs. At nearly every city where we stopped, I hit my head on the door frame of the car at least once. I learned about the importance of organization in my life. At every camping stop, we had to pack up all of our stuff to put it all in the front seat so we could sleep in the back of the van. Everything had to be in the right, most convenient place at all times. I cultivated new habits: after I brushed my teeth, I packed my toothbrush again. We've been home a week now, and the house is quite tidy. I challenge you to drop by our tidy home without calling. I hope I can keep this up after school starts again.

We drove 8,440 miles through half of the states of our Union in six weeks. We spent time with our relatives around the country. We bought postcards everywhere we went: one to keep and a couple to send. We spent time with friends and spent time alone together. We’re still in love and closer than ever. There’s no one in the world I would have rather spent this time with than Dave.

And so, my friends, our long trip of a lifetime is finally over. Thus, the Cantwell Roadtrip blog has come to an end. Thanks for reading and following along in our journey across the US. We’ve been given an amazing opportunity here. Special thanks go to Dave’s folks for helping to make this trip possible for us. Thanks also go out to Jane and Michael Stern for writing amazing books that guided us to the best food in the country. Thanks also to our friends for their amazing recommendations and well-noted advice about everything from camping gear to restaurants. We love you all and are grateful for all you do for us. Please feel free to come over for the slide show anytime.

Addendum: Day 44: Savannah

2009-08-01T18:48:00.008-04:00

Sunday, July 26, was the last day. The real last day. After this day, we’d be at home. For good. Six weeks (with a three-day layover at home) was coming to an end. Our first stop was in Georgia (Atlanta), and our last stop was in Georgia. We left Hilton Head Island, and all four of us headed for Savannah. I’d never been there, and Dave hadn’t been there since he was a little kid. Patrick had picked out two restaurants that we thought we could go to for lunch, but both were closed, so we drove downtown and parked near this Savannah College of Art and Design theater.

When I spotted this old tile work on the ground outside a store that was once a pawn shop, I realized that I was never able to pay up on my agreement with Dave to let him go into one pawn shop on our trip. So sad. Moving along.

The four of us walked about for a little while and came upon this gorgeous house called the Davenport House.

The Davenport House was built in 1820 and has a ghost cat. That’s right. A ghost cat. Dave and I decided not to take the tour, so we didn’t get to hear more about it.

As always, we found the old-ass cars in the neighborhood. These were in front of the Savannah police station.

I immediately fell in love with the old houses in the city.

We came upon the Firefly Café, where we had Sunday brunch. It was terrific. I had the Southwestern omelette, and Dave had the Italian sausage omelette. Dave was really torn about whether or not to get the pancakes, but we were both pleasantly surprised when our meals came with a little pancake that they called a “hoecake.”

In the park outside the Firefly was this sign commemorating the composition of my favorite song of all time.

The gent who wrote the song was music director at this church.

After lunch, we said “goodbye” to Jen and Patrick and continued to explore the city on our own. We passed the lovely Cathedral of St. John the Baptist,

Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home,

And the elegant Savannah Cotton Exchange.

We drove to the riverfront area as well and found ourselves on a painfully bumpy cobblestone road.

I believe this wall and building were near the Riverfront, but I’m having trouble finding information about it. Any ideas what this is? Please let me know.

In order to leave town, we passed the awesome Talmadge Memorial Bridge, built in 1990, which, I have read, is stunning at night.

On our way out of town, we also passed the Great Dane Trailer Company with this awesome statue in the front yard.

We drove straight home from Savannah and arrived around 11 pm, I think. It was great to come home to a clean house again and to be home for good this time.

Addendum: Day 43: Hilton Head Island

2009-08-01T17:53:00.004-04:00

Saturday, July 25 was our last full day at Hilton Head, so we tried to really enjoy it as much as we could. We spent the early afternoon at the beach but then headed in to another pool on the grounds. This pool had a little area called the Morning Star Fountain, which was just a part of the pool deck that had about 2 dozen orchestrated fountains of water for kids and adults to play in.

The pool itself had a series of jets in a line that created a little rush of water that reminded Dave and me of the hot springs at Yellowstone.

After enjoying the pool, we headed to the immense hot tub beside the pool. The hot tub was big enough to seat about 18 people comfortably. It was fabulous. You could actually swim in it.

After our pool fun, we headed over to the ping pong tables. There was a large plastic storage bin filled with paddles and balls, so we had plenty of fun, at one point even trying to play doubles table tennis with the actual rules that no team member could hit the ball twice in a row. That made for a lot of confusion and tripping over each other, so we gave that up quickly.

While we were playing, a 7-year-old girl, Chelsea (she says some people call her Kelsea, so I called her Chelseakelsea ), joined us.

I played her for a while because everyone else found her presence irritating. She told me she has a boyfriend who is 8, but he has 20 girlfriends. Jen was horrified that, even at 7, Chelseakelsea was ok with this. After about 10 minutes, I had to go to the bathroom, and while I was gone, the game quickly dispersed.

At about 5:30, we headed back over the boardwalk to our building. Dave paused to take some pictures of the marshes, which were really quite lovely.

vThis is the view of the Atlantic from our second-floor room. It was really nice to sit out there in the evening and listen to the ocean. So dreamy. It was hard to process that I had touched the Pacific Ocean just three weeks before. It seemed like an eternity ago.

Here is the boardwalk we crossed to get the pool and then the beach.

For dinner, I found a restaurant called the Boathouse II that looked delightful. Luckily, this time, my research paid off. This place was awesome.

We started off with different cocktails. I had a frou-frou drink that was a combination between a margarita and a pina colada. Patrick had something fruity. Jen had some kid of apple martini. Dave had a pina colada-type drink that he thinks was made with amaretto. Delicious!

We had the delicious blue cheese risotto fritters to start. For dinner, Patrick and I both had the summer vegetable gnocchi. Dave had garlic-marinated London broil, and Jen had the garlic shrimp with penne. We were all very happy with our dishes. I scored big time on this dinner choice.

As expected, the restaurant had a fabulous nautical theme.

It included a huge pirate statue outside. Beneath the statue, a guy was playing Jimmy Buffett songs on his guitar for the patio crowd. We had mocked the patio people from our table inside because we knew that they couldn’t possibly be enjoying their dinners in the sticky heat outside. Suckers. As we were leaving, I sneaked onto the patio to get some snaps of the singer.

While we were out there, we realized that there were large platters of desserts on side tables. This was clearly some kind of reception or private party. Dave wanted to steal cake since no one seemed to be eating it. I was incredibly tempted, but I’m 35 and I own a home; stealing cake isn’t in the cards for me.

The restaurant was next to a marina, so we ventured out on the pier for a few minutes. On the way back, we passed a little building with this sign on it.

A cobia is a fish. I’m not sure what these fisherpersons need cobia “carcusses” for, but I’ll be it’s something awesome.

After our delicious dinner, it was back home for some relaxing and then bed. We would have to be out of the resort by 10 am, so we had to be in bed at a reasonable time.

Addendum: Day 42: Hilton Head Island

2009-08-01T16:10:00.005-04:00

We spent Friday, July 24, 2009, just goofing off. Dave and I started off in the early afternoon by heading down to the beach, which was wonderful. To get to the beach, we walked down a long boadwalk that crossed over the marshes that separated the Resort from the pool and ocean. The beach was one of the widest I’d ever seen with very fine, hard sand that you could ride your bike on, though we didn’t. Being fair skinned, I was willing to rent an umbrella and chairs on the beach. It was dreamy. The wind was blowing, the sun was shining—for a little while, at least, and I was in seventh heaven.

Jen’s family was also at the resort, and they had rented out a cabana. The cabanas were lined up one beside the other by the pool closest to the ocean, and Jen’s folks had rented the last cabana on the end. The cabanas are big private tents by the pool, and each one has different furniture in it. Theirs had two couches and a couple of lawn chairs. After her family went back up to their place, Dave and I joined Patrick and Jen in the cabana for cocktails...

...and a dip in the pool.

Dave spent about 10 minutes enjoying the fan/water sprayer.

It started to rain lightly at one point, so we were able to close the flaps of the cabana and zip them closed.

Jen’s family was having a little dinner get-together that evening, so Dave and I entertained ourselves. Though I spent about an hour and a half researching restaurants on the island, we somehow still ended up at a brass rail restaurant. Boo. It was in a strange strip mall complex that was so heavily populated with families that you would think it was the boardwalk at Ocean City. Most of the stores were gift/souvenir stores and kite shops and the like. There was a guy out in one of the courtyards with a guitar and a PA playing Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” to a huge crowd of middle-aged parents. I was digging it, but Dave wasn’t, so we had to keep moving. While we were on the move, we spotted this store with a super creepy name:

After wandering around a bit, we drove around the island only to discover that it is mile after mile of resorts. There’s no downtown area at all. I was a little disappointed by that, but I was still happy to hang out in the resort.

Addendum: Day 41: South of the Border and Hilton Head

2009-08-01T15:24:00.008-04:00

On July 23, we decided to extend our road trip a little bit. Yes, we had been home for three days, but never mind that. We got in the car and headed south to Hilton Head Island, SC, where we would spend the weekend with our friends from Atlanta, Patrick and Jen. We started the trip the same way we ended it.

On the way from Durham to Hilton Head, we came upon South of the Border, in Dillon, SC, and just HAD to stop. I had never been there and was curious about it. I’d seen the awful day-glo bumper stickers growing up but never had a real understanding of what it was. Frankly, I’m not sure I entirely understand it now. Technically, I suppose it is what one would call a “roadside attraction” featuring themed restaurants, souvenir shops, games, and rides.

The first thing one must understand is how culturally offensive this place is. South of the Border revolves around “Pedro,” a poncho-wearing, sombrero-topped, mustachioed Mexican character for whom everything in the complex is named. Billboards line Interstate 95 up and down the coast boasting the available fun at South of the Border with such quips as “You Never Sausage a Place! (You’re always a wiener at Pedro’s)” and “Pedro's Weather Forecast: Chili today, hot tamale!” Truly groan-worthy. They have gotten rid of the signs that existed when I was a kid that usually began with “Pedro seez” followed by a campy quote written phonetically with a Spanish accent. Ugh.

We arrived there around 4 pm on a hot July Thursday, and the place was more or less deserted. The amusement rides were shut down; the shops were open but there was hardly a car in the parking lot.

South of the Border is mostly populated with these weird statues of animals.

I’m not clear on what all of the apes are all about, I’m just happy they’re there.

The shops are filled with souvenirs that make very little sense.

Dave was willing to put on a poncho and hat for this one.

We ate at the Sombrero Restaurant, which was the original beer stand opened by SotB’s owner in 1950. We had a thoroughly unremarkable, if not disappointing, lunch. The burrito was a Patio burrito from the frozen-food section of the local Food Lion. The taco was in a stale Old El Paso taco shell. The chips were Tostitos. The salsa was picante sauce from the grocery store. The enchilada was fine, as were the beans. Sad, really, but not surprising. When I expressed my disappointment, Dave asked what I had been expecting. I guess I should have expected what I got.

This ad was on our table. Note the times the restaurant is open.

We found this strange store there as well.

Pedro’s Africa Shop was actually filled with nice wooden figurines and sculptures, not the tacky souvenirs in every other building in the area.

This was my favorite sign of the day since it was so poorly laid out.

How many people try to bring their cats into stores with them? Apparently, enough to warrant a sign.

I finally got fed up with the shtick and had to get out of there. I’d had my fill of South of the Border. We got back in the car and headed to Hilton Head, which is the absolute opposite of South of the Border. We arrived at the Marriott Surf Watch resort where Patrick and Jen were waiting for us. Hooray!

Patrick and Jen had agreed to sit in on a 90-minute timeshare pitch in return for getting this great timeshare for $100/night. It was a two bedroom, two full bath apartment with full kitchen, dining room, family room, and patio overlooking the ocean. The cupboards were full of dishes, cups, glasses, and cookware, so you could cook there, but then there was maid service as well. It was very confusing and awesome.

The resort had three pools, a couple of gigantic hot tubs, and a beach bar. More on that tomorrow. In general, this place was fabulous and totally decadent.

Day 37: Falling Water

2009-07-29T23:10:00.008-04:00

On Sunday, July 19, 2009, Dave and I were ready to come home...for a while at least. After a delicious chard frittata that Breakfast Master Will built for us, we packed up our things, said goodbye to our Pittsburgh hosts,

And headed south.

We made a slight deviation from our route in order to hit Frank Lloyd Wright’s piece de resistance Fallingwater which lies in western Pennsylvania.

Wright designed and built Fallingwater from 1936-1939 for the Kaufmann family as their mountain vacation home away from Pittsburgh where they owned a successful department store. The house sits atop a 30’ waterfall on Bear Run. Wright’s idea was to make the house blend in seamlessly with the surrounding nature.

Its design was intended to mimic the flow of water over the falls as well as the stone that creates the falls.

We took a great tour of the house in which our guide explained a great deal about the architecture and theories involved. In many places, the house beams and even walls are built directly into the rock of the mountain.

As a result, there are plenty of hidden GPS markers in the house to make sure that the rocks are not shifting significantly.

Our terrific tour guide told us that during the building process, there were times when the water from the rain and melting snow would come through the rocks of the house. Instead of blocking it up and resisting it (which could cause later problems and damage), Wright would incorporate the water into the home in the form of a fountain.

These outdoor stone stairs led to a cement “plunge pool” fed by Bear Run where the family could take a dip without walking on the river rocks.

Most of the corners of the house are designed with windows that open revealing no vertical frame at the corner to allow the people inside to feel more connected with the outside.

Unfortunately, we were not permitted to take pictures inside the house, but we could take pictures on two of the terraces. Dave used that opportunity to take some photos through the windows.

Most of the furniture was designed by Wright and is built into the walls. The couches on the left and back right of this photo are intended to double as beds for unexpected guests.

More built-ins.

The chair you see above is one of a set that were purchased by the Kaufmanns for the home. They are the only furniture in the home that Wright did not design. They are, however, Tuscan country chairs from the 16th century. Still very cool.

This photo includes some of the only blinds in the home.

Wright objected to the use of blinds in the home because they disconnected the inhabitants from the surrounding nature, but the Kaufmanns insisted on the blinds in this guest room.

The family and their visitors reached the house by crossing this stone and cement bridge over Bear Run. The bridge was being patched and painted while we were there.

This is a view of the terrace from outside the home.

Notice that those white flowers are in an indoor flower bed. Just beyond that bed are some red stairs. These are the indoor stairs that go down beneath the house into Bear Run. By that, I mean that one could open the glass doors and walk down a stone staircase directly into the creek, which is a consistent 55 degrees.

Here is a better view of the stairs. The tour guide informed us that in the spring, when the snow melts, the water sometimes flows as high as the second or third step from the bottom.

If you look carefully at this picture, you can see that in the back right is a staircase with bookshelves built into the wall. Brilliant!

Here, we can see a beam of the house built on a curve to go around this tree. This tree looks fairly young to me, so I doubt the tree has been there 80 years, but some tree was there.

Only as we were leaving Fallingwater were we able to see that classic view of the house that has become famous. Approaching the house, one does not see the waterfall but hears it.

After leaving Fallingwater, we steered toward the highway for the 7-hour drive home. It was nice to see the trees and hills I am used to.

When we arrived in our driveway a little after 2 am Monday morning, we discovered just how much ground we had covered.

I cried a little when I got home because I was so happy to see my cats. On top of it all, our house was IMMACULATE, courtesy of the most amazing house sitter in the world. ShaLeigh had taken fantastic care of our house and our cats. It was such a relief to come home to a clean house. We thought our trip was over.

After about a day, we made a final decision to join our friends Patrick and Jen (from Atlanta) in Hilton Head, SC, on Thursday, so the story continues.

Day 36: Pittsburgh

2009-07-28T02:13:00.007-04:00

On July 18, our friend Will gave us the most fabulous tour of Pittsburgh! We began with *oh, God* the steps. Pittsburgh, you understand, is the city that lies at the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers converge to become the Ohio River. The Allegheny Mountains surround this area; thus, the city is built into the sides of these great mountains. When the city was first digging into the mining industry, there weren’t nearly as many cars as there are now, so there weren’t as many roads. Instead, workers would use stairs to get up and down the mountains. They’d go down the mountain for work, up the mountain for lunch, down the mountain to go back to work, up the mountain to come home in the evening. Will tells us that older maps of the city show some of the staircases being named with street names. Technically, streets were just thoroughfares that allowed people to get from one place to another regardless of vehicle; thus, a paved road would be named as would a staircase. According to a gent named Bob Regan who published a book about the stair, there are 712 sets of steps in Pittsburgh. Well, just a little while on these stairs and I was ready to throttle Will for even thinking this was a good idea. However, the awesomeness of what we saw from the tops of these staircases made it all worthwhile. This is the view from the top of the first set of stairs we climbed (I’m afraid that I have no idea where we were).

Note that the power lines follow the stairs. That’s how important they are.

Two hundred years ago, the steps would have been constructed of wood, but most were replaced with concrete by the WPA.

We also loved the different styles of homes around the city. We found these delightful single family homes

...as well as the row-style houses, which are typically three stories and a basement. We found this poor guy standing by himself out there.

Pittsburgh also has more than its fair share of cobblestone streets.

They were very lovely but murder on the suspension of the tan van.

After walking so many steps that I thought my legs might fall off, we headed to Polish Hill where we found an estate sale. These old row houses often have little alleys between them that lead to a common courtyard in the back.

Some old lady had passed away, and her friend was selling off all of her belongings as well as those of the dead lady’s dead sisters. Too bad for them, awesome for me. We checked out the basement floor of the lady’s house to found some serious 1800s construction: arched doorways, huge fireplaces, the whole deal. It was so awesomely decrepit that I was not surprised to find that the house was going to be demolished.

After the estate sale, we headed down the street to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Festival. This was a street fair featuring bingo, games, baked goods, Polish t-shirts and souvenirs, and lots of other fun stuff. They offered their own version of Frito chili pie, but they called it "Taco in a Bag."

Fritos, taco meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. It was really quite delicious. It only cost $1.50. Now, here’s something I noticed at the festival that I then noticed everywhere. A dollar fifty. This was supposed to be a fundraiser. They should have charged at least $4 for that little treat. The contents alone were worth about $2 when you include the work of cutting all the veggies and cooking the meat. As I started to look around, I realized that EVERYTHING in Pittsburgh was less expensive than it could have been. What a wonderful city! I love it here!

From Polish Hill, we headed to Schenley Park for the Vintage Grand Prix.

Schenley Park is in the Oakland neighborhood in Pittsburgh right near where Carnegie Mellon and Pitt seem to collide. The park was beautiful and green with some rolling hills. It was a very cool site for an antique car race. We found a nice little place on the grass where the cars come around a corner. I thought it was a lovely place to sit until the cars started coming around the corner and we could see them fishtailing a bit. Some even seemed to want to come up on two wheels. One false move and I’d have to run for cover.

After a few heats, we decided to keep on moving. As we walked back to the car, we saw what Will referred to as “radical knitting” on the Schenley Bridge.

I found it quite lovely that someone would spend the time to do that.

We then headed to Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh’s Jewish neighborhood, to hit an awesome record store.

Almost as a rule, I am not impressed by record stores. However, Jerry’s Records was an AWESOME store. It is a huge building with more records than I thought I’d ever see in one place. It’s all vinyl—not a CD in the joint. Jerry’s boasts more than a million records, and I believe that. Jerry himself is there to help you out if you need him. He’s an older guy who clearly left something behind with the backing from his acid tabs in the 1960s, but he runs an amazing store. The records were all priced reasonably and were generally of excellent quality. The records are all categorized, too, into the normal genres one might expect: jazz, rock, hip-hop, classical, etc. But then they also have weird genres like sermons, Celtic Christmas, “good stuff,” country radio shows, and horror. I even found this little gem.

Were it not for a spoken word/poetry section, I would have been pretty miserable. I left with four records, as did Dave. I think we got out of there for a total of $40. Nice. Jerry’s is a must-see.

From there, it was on to the grocery store and then home for a nice quiet dinner with Will and Kirsten’s friends Joe and Lisel. They were delightful, and dinner was delicious. Dave treated us to his favorite Italian dish: spaghetti with olive oil, fresh garlic, Greek olives, toasted pine nuts, and raisins. It was wonderful. Will grilled up some hot dogs, brats, and veggie dogs, and Joe and Lisel brought a salad with pine nuts and raisins. I can’t recall what else we had, but it was delicious!

We finished the evening with a trip to Nico’s Recovery Room, which is a bar that features Saturday night karaoke. We took full advantage of that, as one might expect. Dave sang “She-Bop” and I sang Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” Some short little kid, likely a CMU student, got up and sang the Andrew WK song “Party Hard.”

This kid was INTO IT! He knew every little flourish on that song. Lots of air guitar and air drums. It was pretty great.

After about 2 hours of this, we just had to go home. It had been a long day, and we were beat. What a great day it had been!

Day 35: Pittsburgh

2009-07-26T00:52:00.007-04:00

Since our friends and hosts Kirstin and Will were working on Friday, Dave and I had to entertain ourselves in Pittsburgh. We drove around for a little while just looking. We ended up in the Strip District, which is where lots of shops and restaurants are located. We began by getting some lunch at Primanti Brothers, which is a legendary sandwich place. They sell the original "Pittsburgh-style sandwich" which is two slices of crusty bread that they cut right there, lots of meat, a few slices of cheese, a handful of their homemade cole slaw, and a gigantic handful of french fries. That's right. French fries right there on my sandwich. It was fantastic!

After lunch, we continued to roam around the Strip District and found an awesome Italian supermarket called the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company (“Penn Mac”). It was a huge market with lots of pastas, fresh produce, fresh meats, handmade sausages of all kinds, and weird little regional staples. We decided that Dave would make one of his signature dishes (spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, raisins, and olives) for dinner the next night, and this was the perfect place to shop for it.

We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Andy Warhol Museum.

While I was not permitted to take pictures inside the museum, rest assured that it was a great museum. We learned about his life as well as his art. We also learned about who his influences were and who he influenced. One room in the museum featured silver helium-filled mylar pillows that would float around the room directed by strategically placed fans. It was quite nifty. The museum also presented some pretty great multimedia presentations that Warhol had made in conjunction with the Velvet Underground.

By the time we finished and headed back to the house, Kirstin and Will had returned home from work. We decided that instead of cooking dinner, we’d head to the Church Brew Works.

This place was wacky. It was a 1902 church that was converted to a restaurant in 1996.

Having been raised Catholic, I was definitely feeling weird about this. It was a bizarre experience for me. When I looked up toward where the altar should be, there stood the steel and copper brewery tanks.

For dinner, Dave and I chose the Pittsburgh salad, which is a green salad with about a half pound of hot Steak-um-style meat on top smothered in cheese. Oh, that's right. There's french fries. ON the salad. You read correctly, my people. There are french fries on the crazy Steak-um salad. It was amazing, and I think I almost had a coronary right there on the spot.

At one point during dinner, Kirstin got the hiccoughs and showed us her method for getting rid of them.

Hmm.

The outside of the building was quite lovely.

But there was a disturbing view as well.

After dinner, Will took us all on his evening tour of the city. We headed up Mount Washington to a terrific scenic lookout. The first thing I spotted was this cool statue of a Seneca warrior named Guyasuta meeting with George Washington.

The statue is called “Point of View” but it looks more like there is about to be a historically disturbing intimate moment here. I’m just saying.

We also got to see the beautiful night skyline of Pittsburgh.

Oh, it was just gorgeous. At this point, I think I was halfway to being in love with this city. There was a Pirates home game in play at PNC Park and we could see it a little bit from where we were. That was neat.

Here’s a little something for Peter Geddes.

Here’s Pittsburgh’s entry in the Theater of Weird Signs.

This one was a symbol on a paper towel dispenser. It was actually recommending that one use one’s forearm, not one’s fingertips, to press down on the bar that releases the paper towels. Wow.

We wandered about a bit more before heading back to the house and crashing.

Day 34: Detroit

2009-07-25T23:28:00.004-04:00

On July 16, we got the Phil Baily tour of Detroit. Phil is a friend of ours who went to high school with Dave in Wilmington, NC and moved to Detroit about 10 years ago. We met up with Phil at a bbq place near downtown Detroit. On our way there, Dave and I passed this establishment.

We know as much about it as you do.

After our lunch, Phil took us to an old train station called the Michigan Central Depot, which is now abandoned. I read that it has had a very tumultuous life. The top floor was never even finished being built. It was built in the early part of the 20th century and was closed in 1988. Unfortunately, because it remained “open” into the 1990s, the entire building is vandalized and most of the windows are broken out. Phil says that the razor wire around the property was only installed in the last ten years. It was very sad to see this beautiful building standing vacant and battered. For more info about the building, check out this awesome website: http://www.forgottendetroit.com/mcs/index.html.

After the depot, Phil gave us a great tour of the area. We got to check out the famous sculpture of Joe Louis’s fist.

We took a brief ride to lovely Belle Isle, which is really just a tiny little island park in the Detroit River.

It's quite green and lush. I'm sure I must have spent some time there as a child. I was also informed that Bob-Lo Island amusement park had closed back in 1993. I remember visiting there when I went to see my friend Shana in Grosse Pointe in 1986.

This is the beautiful 19th century Wayne County Courthouse at the end of Michigan Avenue.

Henry Ford worked here. Clarence Darrow argued a case here. It’s a great old building. Beautiful.

This is Comerica Park, the new home of the Detroit Tigers now that Tiger Stadium is being demolished.

Phil showed us his charming neighborhood in Mexican Town, and we drove through Corktown, the oldest neighborhood in Detroit. It was a really great tour because he had learned a LOT about the city in the handful of years he’d lived here. It was a great tour.

And, yes, Detroit has its own entry into the Theater of Weird Signs.

This was in the window of some anonymous business.

After an hour or so, it was time for Dave and me to get on the road for Pittsburgh, so we bade Phil adieu and headed east.

After a couple of hours, we arrived in fair Pittsburgh to the wonderful home of our friends Kirsten and Will. We kept them up talking for a while before finally crashing in the awesome guest room they had set up on the second floor. We were in a huge room with windows that opened out over Main Street. It was nice to sleep with the windows open and just a ceiling fan. We slept well that night.

Day 33: Detroit

2009-07-25T12:58:00.004-04:00

We woke up in Detroit on a beautiful, clear day. Aunt Yvonne had gone to work, so Uncle John was going to entertain us. He drove us to nearby Dearborn to Greenfield Village, which is part of the Henry Ford Museum complex (jauntily called "The Henry Ford" in all of the literature).

Greenfield Village is an 80-acre complex of buildings, cars, machinery, and exhibits that Henry Ford intended as museum of history. He had lots of buildings moved there to be preserved on site, like Daniel Webster’s house and Thomas Edison’s laboratory from Menlo Park. It’s very cool. Dave and I went there early on in our “courtship.”

When we arrived at the ticketing window, we realized that it’s super expensive to visit ($22 each), so we opted for something we had NOT done before: tour the Ford Rouge Factory. The Rouge is a fully-operational Ford factory on the Rouge River that currently produces F-150s. Apparently, the building was begun in 1917 and was fully operational by 1928. Ford wanted the Rouge factory to encompass the complete production process from raw materials to completed product. The Rouge has its own docks on the Rouge River where it receives raw materials like steel and iron. Then it makes the parts for the vehicle on site and assembles them on the line, rolling out one truck each minute.

Unfortunately, we were not permitted to take pictures during the factory tour. This seems reasonable because I am in someone’s workplace after all. I would freak out if people were taking pictures of me all day while I was teaching. You’ll have to just trust my description of the factory.

There is a second-story overlook around the inside of about half the factory. We were able to watch workers put the doors together, see the giant robots put the windshield on each truck, watch the cabs of the trucks assembled to the beds, and see the doors being put on. It was super cool. Then we saw them being inspected to drive off to the parking lot. We were not able to see any of the engine assembly or installation, which sort of sucked, but it was still super cool.

Part of the tour was to the top floor of the building overlooking the entire Rouge plant facility. The Rouge’s latest feature is its sustainability and environmental friendliness. This place is all about some LEED certification. They’ve got a “green” roof on one of the factory buildings. It contains something like a bajillion different sedum plants that keep the building warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

There are also lots of solar panels.

We also heard about the paint plant in which they gather the noxious fumes from the paint and use them to somehow make energy. I didn’t understand what kind of Harry Potter magic that was. Of course, they collect all of their rainwater for use in the plant. It was very interesting.

When we were finished with that, we headed back to the Greenfield Village ticket building and roamed around to all of the places we could go into without paying. We found a display of awesome old lunch boxes.

As well, we saw a display previewing exhibits. This one was my favorite little bit.

We had a little snack at the snack bar and then called Uncle John to come back and pick us up.

When we got home, Aunt Yvonne had prepped a ton of food for dinner and had invited folks over for dinner to visit with us. Since we pretty much sprung our visit on her at the last minute, not many of her 9 kids and 17 grandkids were available to come over. Most of the fam was off camping in the Upper Peninsula (UP), but my cousin Veronica’s husband Kevin came over with two of their three adorable kids, the third having gone camping in the UP. Poor little Liam, age 5, was in a soft leg cast because, as he told me, he’d bruised his growth plate. What the hell? Totally adorable. He was shipped around in my Grandma’s wheelchair, too. Tiny child sitting in a huge adult wheelchair is, for the record, totally precious.
Cousin Joe came over after dinner as did Marianne and her two daughters, who are really growing up. They were very charming as well.

While we were there that evening, a tanker truck exploded under a highway overpass at Interstate 75 and 9 Mile. It was quite an ordeal. Apparently, it was a half mile from Marianne’s house, so she was understandably distressed. Word on the street is that the highway is going to be closed there for months to rebuild the overpass, which collapsed.

Somehow, because I’m a total jackass, I made it to bed without having taken a single picture of any of my relatives. What the hell, Kerry? I’ve taken between 100 and 300 pictures a day for a month and I can’t remember to get pictures of my family. Sucks. Well, we had a very good time regardless. You’ll just have to trust me.

Day 32: Chicago

2009-07-25T01:37:00.006-04:00

On July 14, 2009, I spent my sister’s birthday in Chicago with my sister-in-law and her family. Dave, Robert, Edgar, Kathleen, and I all went to downtown Chicago to take a gander at the Sears Tower (yes, now the Willis Tower) and its new “Ledge.”

This was our ragtag group heading toward the Sears Tower. Note the ubiquitous propeller hat.

Once we got there, we had to stand in line for about 45 minutes just to get to the elevator that went to the lower level of the Tower. Once there, we waited another 40 minutes to go through security before catching the elevator to the 103rd flower of the 108-story tower. We walked around the observation deck looking out on the city. Robert asked me to take a number of pictures for him that he had to have.

This one is of the DART trains, which he loves.

This is Lake Michigan, the Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, and the Field Museum of Natural History.

From the Tower, we could also see the Alexander Calder sculpture called the “Flamingo” down in Federal Center.

My favorite view was this one:

This is the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

Notice the dudes on top in their orange suits playing ball. Awesome. This building was designed in 1975 by Harry Weese, who also designed Arena Stage in DC and the Time-Life Building in Chicago.

This image shows the John Hancock Building on the left and the Trump Tower on the right. Oversight of the Trump Tower’s construction was the grand prize for the first winner of The Apprentice.

This is the view northward. I love the skyline of this city.

At this point, we decided that it was time to check out the Ledge. The Ledge is a series of three recently-opened glass boxes that jut out from the 103rd floor of the Willis (Sears) Tower. The line was quite long. We waited about a half hour while a bunch of ninnies took copious pictures of their friends and kids on the Ledge. Kathleen and I wondered if Dave would get on the Ledge. He stood in the line with us and was ready to go out there with us…until it came to be our turn. Then, he chickened out.

It was pretty neat, but I was never alarmed by the height above the street (1353 feet). That’s never been one of my phobias. If it wasn’t going to collapse two inches off the street, then there’s no reason it would collapse 103 stories in the sky. We all found it pretty nifty.

In the lobby of the Sears Tower, we found yet another Calder, but this one was one of his famous mobiles, called "Universe."

Since we had seen the amazing view from the top down, we needed to spend some time looking up from the bottom.

At that point, it was really time for Dave and me to get back to the house and pack up all our cares and woes to head to Detroit. My Aunt Yvonne and Uncle John awaited us there. We arrived a little after 10 pm having forgotten that Detroit is NOT on Central Time. D’oh! My poor aunt and uncle stayed up really late to meet with us and catch up. It was quite delightful.

Dave and I finally went to bed on the pull-out in the living room around 2am.

Day 31: Chicago

2009-07-25T00:34:00.003-04:00

It was nice to finally be in Chicago with family. Dave and I woke up late, and we spent the day out with Dave’s sister, Kathleen, and her sons, Edgar and Robert. We began by going to an awesomely ridiculous store called Uncle Fun. While we were there, Robert bought a plastic propeller beanie that he ended up wearing all day long. Unfortunately, I failed to get a picture of it on him. I don’t know what I was thinking.

The five of us decided to go to the beach at Lake Michigan for the day. When we got there, Robert, age 7, recommended that we take the pedal car around the park. Unfortunately for them, the tinies had to wear helmets.

Notice that Edgar is holding Robert's propeller hat in his tiny hands.

Edgar wasn’t very fond of his helmet.

We switched drivers a few times, road around the park, and did a little accidental off-roading on my watch. Whoops.

After our bike ride, we headed to the snack bar where we received two free hotdogs for being in the right place at the right time (which is right behind people who don’t know how to order their hotdogs in Chicago).

After delicious hotdogs, we went to the beach for a while.

The water was pretty cold, but it was honestly warmer than I’d expected. The place was pretty crowded for a Monday. We also discovered that Chicagoans, as a rule, are not able to swim.

You may be able to see on the right side of the above photo that there are a couple of folks in row boats guarding the public from the scary waters of the big ol' lake.

Dave and I walked into the water just above our waists and were told that we had gone too far. The lifeguard told us that if we wanted to stay in that deep, we’d have to move over about 15 yards so that we were within the scope of a lifeguard in a rowboat. What the hell is wrong with these people? This was a total bummer.

I stuck around for about a half hour before going back up to my towel. Edgar (age 1) and I hung out for a while on the blanket waiting for Dave, Kathleen, and Robert to finish up in the lake.

Afterward, we simply headed back to Kathleen’s house for Chicago-style deep dish pizza and a few rounds of Scene-It, the X-Box film trivia game. That’s a perennial favorite when we go to Chicago. It was a nice easy day.

Day 30: Minnesota

2009-07-24T12:48:00.008-04:00

On July 12, 2009, I took what might be the cutest picture ever taken by a human.

I think I was seeing some dreams fulfilled here. You will also notice that the beard is gone. Dave couldn’t hang with the beard anymore. He claims it was too scratchy.

I got to have the same experience, and there’s just something about sitting on Yogi’s lap that makes one feel like a five-year-old.

On my wrist is NOT a wristband from a bar or amusement park but rather the wristband that Jellystone guests must wear at all times.

We spent a good bit of time in the gift shop as well. Dave found this shirt and debated heavily about buying but opted out at the last minute.

This is the one that I wanted, but when am I going to wear a hot pink sweatshirt in NC? Almost never.

Shortly after this, Dave and I decided NOT to go to Minneapolis. We had been looking forward to it, but we realized that we just didn’t have the time. Instead, we would hit Chicago to see Dave’s sister, Detroit to see my relatives, and Pittsburgh to hang with Will Simmons. It was also around this time that I learned that I was not going to be able to go to Honduras this summer. My nine-day trip had been cancelled because of the Honduran coup. Boo hiss.

On our way through Minnesota, we spotted this weird statue in Blue Earth, MN.

(That’s David there between the Jolly Green Giant’s legs to give an idea of scale.) There was no sign anywhere explaining what was going on here either. I have since discovered that there was a Green Giant packing plant nearby. The 55-foot-high statue was erected as a way to memorialize the joining of the two sides of Interstate 90.

Even though we ditched Minneapolis, we were still able to stop in Austin, Minnesota, to enjoy the Spam museum. That’s right, Spam.

The museum was pretty spectacular, too. It is attached to the Hormel plant, so there is a good deal of Hormel paraphernalia around as well.

Outside the Spam Museum is this statue of a hog farmer and his wards.

Dave actually burned his hand on the statue because it was so hot that day.

When we entered the lobby, we first saw this gigantic display of Spam cans.

The gentleman who greeted us said that it was made up of 3,390. We were then ushered toward these doors, which lead to the theater where we watched a 15-minute movie about Spam.

Upon leaving the theater, we entered a room with displays about the history of Spam and Hormel that included this disgusting specimen.

At this point, I think I noticed Dave started to drool a bit. We also spent some time watching a pretty creepy mechanical puppet show featuring Burns and Allen doing a Spam version of This Is Your Life. It was really unsettling to me for some reason. Apparently, Hormel was a big sponsor of the Burns and Allen Show.

We already knew that Spam had been a staple for soldiers during World War II, but the museum gave a LOT more information about that. For example, this is a 1966 letter from Eisenhower to the president of Hormel forgiving him for sending so much Spam during WWII.

Apparently, the Hormel Company had its own internal magazine in the 1930s and ‘40s. I find the name a bit disturbing, though.

The museum also featured this great display honoring WWII vets who had worked for the Hormel Company.

The museum featured many interactive exhibits as well. Most were about Spam trivia.

This is the process for making one can of Spam.

This make-believe grocery store features all of the products currently produced by Hormel and its subsidiaries. It was a stunning display.

Many of our friends will also be pleased to learn that the museum had a great display honoring the Monty Python skits about Spam. After looking at all of these exhaustive displays, we headed to the equally exhaustive gift shop whose ceiling was lined with this constantly moving line of Spam cans that circulated through the entire building.

This is a sampling of the huge array of products available.

After purchasing some necessary souvenirs, which surprisingly did NOT include any Spam, we headed back to the road and pointed ourselves toward Chicago. The road took us through Wisconsin where we stopped for gas at a station that offered a wide range of cheese products as well. Strange cheese products.

We purchased about $20 of cheese and headed on to Chicago. We arrived at Dave’s sister’s house in Chicago at about 11:00 pm and crashed after a long, weird day.

Day 29: Wall Drug and Corn Palace

2009-07-24T02:05:00.010-04:00

Day 29 was July 11, 2009. We began in Mount Rushmore and headed for Wall, SD, home of the infamous Wall Drug. You may have seen bumper stickers that say things like “Where the heck is Wall Drug?” or perhaps “Wall Drug: America’s Favorite Roadside Attraction.” Wall Drug is actually most famous for being a haven for travelers in the 1930s on the way from Mount Rushmore to Minnesota. The drug store offered travelers free ice water. It also runs a pretty enormous billboard campaign similar to the old Burma Shave signs, but not only in the Wall or even South Dakota area, but nationally and INTERnationally. Here are a few of the ones we saw on the way there.

Wall Drug was founded by Dorothy and Ted Hustead in 1931. It is one square block of tacky souvenir shops, restaurants, boot stores, books, and super weird attractions. For example, there were an inordinate number of animatronic cowboy musicians. I don’t remember what this guy was all about, but he was really creepy.

This was a cowboy band that Dave loved.

He especially noted that this guy was playing a relatively nice Harmony guitar.

The stores are mostly connected to each other by doorways and a few hallways run through the center of the building.

At one point, we found this great jukebox that, instead of playing a recording of a song, actually played the song on instruments. We scrolled through a digital listing of songs and chose a couple that we thought would be fun. The first one was a childhood favorite of mine called "The Battle of New Orleans." Unfortunately, the banjo and the guitar were painfully out of tune, so the song was almost unrecognizable. The second one we chose was Benny Goodman’s "Sing, Sing, Sing." That used a much wider variety of instruments, so it was much better.

As we were wandering outside looking in the windows, we found this weird little display of wildlife dressed in cowboy outfits.

Wall Drug also provided a fairly nice chapel for travelers.

I was pleased to find the gigantic jackalope statue in Wall Drug’s big backyard.

This is David with his papoose.

This is me on my tiny white horse.

Wall Drug also features an animatronic T-Rex that does very little but blink.

Every twelve minutes, smoke would shoot out, his eyes would flair up, and he would roar loudly for about 30 seconds. Small children started to cry, but older children would laugh hysterically at the ridiculousness.

David found a new friend.

We had a delicious lunch while we were at Wall Drug, too. Dave had a hot roast beef sandwich and a homemade donut. I had a hamburger. Dave raved about the donut. I thought it looked like a week-old hockey puck, but Dave claimed it was a delicious cake donut.

This was the second animatronic cowboy band.

It could not have been creepier than this.

Wall Drug’s entry in the Poor Punctuation Hall of Fame.

After about an hour and a half of this nonsense, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to go. As we left, we spotted this giant dinosaur which greets visitors coming from the east to Wall Drug.

After driving for several hours, we reached lovely Mitchell, South Dakota, which is considered to be in the Great Plains, rather than the Black Hills. Mitchell is a small town that boasts, among other things, the Corn Palace.

Built in 1892 as a place to showcase the corn growing industry, the Corn Palace features huge murals made of corn and prairie grasses on its outer walls. Every year, a different theme is presented on the Corn Palace’s walls.

This year (2008-2009), the theme is America’s Destinations.

Many of the locations featured have been highlighted in this very blog.

Across the street, we found a Corn Palace gift shop that was guarded by Zeke:

This model shows how the corn designs are created. A template is drawn with codes that correlate to different colors and types of corn and grasses. Then, the design gets filled in like a color-by-numbers painting.

Inside the Corn Palace is a convention center that also offers a gift shop. Around the room are other corn decorations that are permanent installations.

Bearded Dave was impressed by the incredible number of corn-themed items available in the gift shop.

We had to get a little silly here. Just a little.

Inside the halls of the Corn Palace was a terrific display of original artwork designed by native American artist Oscar Howe over his 28-year career with the Corn Palace.

As we drove out of Mitchell, we spotted this sign on the side of a generic building.

We drove one more hour to Sioux Falls, SD, where we ditched the KOA in favor of Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park. Yes, you read correctly. When we arrived, it was about 11:00 and the joint was jumping. So much for quiet hours after 10 pm. There were lots of groups of loud, drunk people sitting around campfires. One group near us was listening to their super-bassy car stereo with the doors open until close to 1 am. This was particularly irritating because there’s no one on site who works there after 10 pm, so who can you call about this? No one. Apparently, the cops came through at one point, but that’s all I know.

Early the next morning, at about 5 am, there was a most spectacular thunderstorm. Rain poured down and lightning lit up the sky. We were safe in our van with the diaper on the back, so we could look out at the storm without getting wet.

At around 6 am, once the storm had ended, I got up to go to the bathroom and found the drunk people severely upset because they had left all their shit outside. The girl was throwing all of their food in the firepit and all their blankets in the car. She was quite put out. I giggled quietly to myself—kharma is such a great thing.

Day 28: Deadwood to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial

2009-07-23T01:49:00.013-04:00

Day 28 began in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Even though he was only there for 3 weeks, Deadwood relies heavily on the history of Wild Bill Hickok and his murder. Without that, I fear that there would be little else to see. Not to mention the success of the HBO series. It is clear that many businesses are capitalizing on the HBO series Deadwood. It IS an amazing series, but it’s creepy to see the souvenir shops selling t-shirts bearing the logo from the show.

Apparently, in 1879, a fire broke out that reached a gunpowder storehouse, blowing up a few buildings and leaving thousands homeless.

As a result, most of the older buildings are post-1879. Here is a picture of the town from up on a nearby hill.

This store, the Utter Place, is named after Wild Bill’s best friend, Charlie Utter.

Beyond the Utter Place, you may be able to make out a sign reading Saloon #10. This is NOT the same Saloon #10 in which Wild Bill was murdered. Apparently, the business moved to the other side of the street in 1938.

Deadwood was lousy with bikers. It’s not far from Sturgis, which hosts an insane bike rally every year, so every t-shirt shop is at least half-filled with biker paraphernalia. This is Deadwood’s entry into the Theater of Weird Signs:

In case you can’t read the print, it states, "No Motorcycle Colors: Wearing apparel which is likely to provoke a disturbance or embroil other groups or the general public in open conflict will not be allowed." This sign was posted on the door of a casino/hotel. Where do I start? Do bikers even know the word "embroil"? What type of clothing were people wearing to necessitate the posting of this sign?

We bought tickets for the 1 pm bus tour of Deadwood. Along with the tickets came coupons for the associated restaurant called Diamond Lil’s. This sports bar and grill is located inside the Midnight Star Casino. Oh, I’m sorry; it’s actually called KEVIN COSTNER’S Midnight Star. Yeah, you heard me. Kevin Costner. Apparently, Costner filmed "Dances with Wolves" nearby and liked the area so much that he bought a large building and is filling it with businesses glorifying himself. The walls of the restaurant were covered with Costner’s movie paraphernalia: costumes, film stills, posters, etc. For example, these costumes are from his role as Crash Davis in "Bull Durham," which was filmed in my beloved Bull City.

This uniform was worn by Costner in his role as Billy Chapel in "For the Love of the Game."

Everywhere I looked, I was overwhelmed with Costner memorabilia. It’s a good thing that the food was really good.

After lunch, we walked around a little bit and saw this sign hanging outside a saloon.

Equally amusing was this quartet

Please explain to me how these guys came to be wearing matching outfits. I hope there was at least money or something waiting for them at the end of the day.

At this point, we got on an Original Deadwood Tour bus driven by a hilarious old codger.

He had been driving this tour bus for 30 years and had perfected his bad jokes and excellent stories. We began by driving by the Fairmont Hotel, formerly known as Mansion House.

Being in the more northerly part of Main Street, it stood in Deadwood’s "Badlands," where most of the illegal activities took place.

This is the Wild West Winners Casino, featuring scantily-clad mannequins in the upper windows to remind us of its history as a whore house.

For the record, brothels still functioned on Main Street until 1980 when the Feds came in and cleaned house.

This statue of Wild Bill Hickok sits at the outskirts of the Deadwood downtown area.

We also found this weird statue of Wild Bill that makes him look something like a Viking.

The bus driver took us to Mount Moriah Cemetery where Wild Bill and Calamity Jane are buried.

This is a pretty fascinating story. Wild Bill died at age 39 and was buried in Ingleside Cemetery in 1876, but when the planners decided to use the cemetery land for town expansion, Hickok was moved to Mount Moriah Cemetery where he is in a fenced-in plot.

Hickok is buried beside Calamity Jane.

Apparently, Jane was a pretty horrible character. She cussed like a sailor and was, in general, an intolerable drunk who just so happened to help people recuperate during a smallpox outbreak in Deadwood. Apparently, her only dying wish was to be buried beside Hickok.

This is the view of the town of Deadwood from the cemetery.

Lovely!

Chinese immigrants played a big role in the life of the town (as you will see shortly). They were critical to some of the food and service industries but were still considered inferior. As a result, they were buried in their own private section of the cemetery.

Later, their bodies were dug up and shipped back to their hometowns in China.

After the tour was over, Dave and I headed to a weird little place called Old Town China Tours.

The door to the business was at the top of a staircase that led down into the dark. We were really intrigued. We headed down the stairs to find a large concrete room sparsely decorated with creepy Old West mannequins and bizarre Chinese tchotchkes.

It was run by a guy who was about our age. He was very weird. It seemed like he had taken too much of his meds that morning, leaving him a little foggy and slow. His son, who was about 6, was running around the place with a rifle and some kind of Civil War cavalry cap.

The kid would lurk around corners looking for bad guys as though he were ready to blow them away when he saw the whites of their eyes.

We quickly discovered what this place was all about. Apparently, in the early days, Deadwood had a series of tunnels running under the city. Some say that Deadwood used to flood and so was raised one story to help avoid the flooding. Others say that the tunnels are actually for the Chinese to move around the city. They were not permitted on the streets after 10 pm, so they used the tunnels o maneuver around the city.

At Old Town China Tours, for $8 each, we could walk through a series of 16 stations with audio tracks explaining what we were looking at. So you begin by entering a dark room and heading to the sign with the number one on it while the owner turns on the CD player. A cheap system of speakers around the dark room blare a bad, cobbled-together, unrehearsed recording of the weird owner reading a poorly written script of what we were seeing . “Go the Station Number One. These figures [mannequins] show Chinese people playing Go.” So what? Why is this significant? This guy clearly did NOT take my English 112 class. This was Station Number Four.

Stunning, isn’t it? I have no idea what it is.

This photo was a station showing how the Chinese would wash laundry in the late 1800s. Or perhaps it’s yoga. I’m not really sure.

This Chinese dragon was made for the museum and sent from China in the mid-1980s. It was probably 20-feet long and very cool to see.

This Buddha sculpture is Station Nine.

His hair is decorated with rose quartz. Notice how the Station Nine placard is placed so carefully IN HIS LAP! Around the room were small signs printing out the animals of the Chinese calendar and their meanings. Apparently, because of their worship of the heavens and stars, folks in Deadwood would refer to them as "celestials."

This is one of the tunnels through which the Chinese would move after curfew.

After this bizarre tour, we fled the underground museum and high-tailed it out of there for Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore is only about an hour or so from Deadwood. As I had been told by a teenaged girl in the bathroom of the Deadwood KOA, Mount Rushmore was one of those artistic structures that you look at for a little while, and then you’re ready to move on. David, on the other hand, was enraptured by the whole thing. I admit it was stunning.

Mount Rushmore was designed and sculpted by Gutson Borglum to show future generations colossal images of the greatest men involved in the founding of this great nation.

Borglum, incidentally, was the original sculptor of Stone Mountain in Atlanta, Georgia. Unfortunately, Borglum had a disagreement with the financiers and was relieved of his duties. Before leaving, Borglum blasted the first completed head off the site of the mountain and destroyed all of his models for the sculpture. Youch! By the time he was fired from the Stone Mountain project, he had already started working on Mount Rushmore.

Borglum made many models of Mount Rushmore before and during its construction. The most famous is in his studio on site.

This model shows that Borglum’s original plan was to show these four great men--Washington, Jackson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln—from the waist up. Unfortunately, he died before construction could be completed, and his son chose not to continue the work. He finished up the faces but did not complete their chests.

Borglum had also intended to have a Hall of Records that would contain a series of plaques explaining the greatest of the men portrayed for future generations. Unfortunately, this was not completed either. The National Park Service has gone ahead and constructed a Hall of Records, which is still under construction and is unavailable to the public.

After our visit to Mount Rushmore, we headed 8 miles west to the Crazy Horse Monument. However, on our way, we had yet another wildlife jam. This time, it was mountain goats: a mommy and a baby.

How cute is that?

Crazy Horse is a privately-owned monument that is still under construction and will be for at least twenty more years, funding permitting.

The designer and sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was asked by Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear to build a monument for Native Americans. Korczak jumped at the opportunity. He chose to sculpt Crazy Horse because Crazy Horse never signed a treaty with the American government. Incidentally, Crazy Horse was never photographed (proven by the episode of History Detectives on PBS that I saw last night), so Korczak chose an image that appeared strong and determined. Crazy Horse is pictured atop his horse and pointing in answer to the question, “Where are your lands now?” Crazy Horse answered, “My lands are where my dead lay buried.”

Korczak died in 1982, at which time his wife took over the construction of the memorial. Korczak and his wife, Ruth, had ten children, most of whom continue his work today. They are completely dedicated to their father’s dream. Yes, that’s crazy. If I were dedicated to my dad’s dream, I’d spend all of my days trying to grill the perfect hamburger. Wait, that’s not such a bad idea.

Anyhow, the sculpture is only a fraction of the way finished, but is reportedly going to be ten times the size of Mount Rushmore. Wow! Being the dream of the Lakota, the Ziolkowski family continues to refuse government support for the memorial’s construction. The government has offered millions to assist, but the family refuses it every time.

These images show the classic picture of the model on the deck of the visitor center in the foreground and the actual mountain sculpture in the background.

In the Visitor Center, we found several other models that Kolczak made of Crazy Horse.

This sculpture is an image of Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mount Rushmore.

Apparently, Ray Kroc, founder of the McDonald’s powerhouse, and his giant hand were contributors to the Crazy Horse Monument, so Korczak made this sculpture.

We also found the Crazy Horse submission for the Theater of Weird Signs.

OK, so it’s not a sign, but it was framed and hung on the wall.

At 9:30, we watched from the parking lot as laser images of the history of Native Americans in the Black Hills were projected on the Crazy Horse monument itself. The show covered Crazy Horse’s life as well as the construction of the monument. It was wacky, for sure. Almost as good as Stone Mountain, but it lacked the incredible numbers of visitors. We were watching from the parking lot with about 20 other cars. There were likely more people watching from the deck of the Visitor Center.

When the show was over, we headed east to the Mount Rushmore KOA for the night. Tomorrow would be Wall Drug in Wall, SD, and the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.

Day 27: Greybull, WY, to Deadwood, SD

2009-07-22T01:02:00.010-04:00

On this day, we left Greybull, WY, and headed east for Deadwood, SD. We had some more wildlife jams on our route that were almost as stunning as those in Yellowstone.

Our first stop was at a sheep farm we passed.

There were so many sheep that we just had to stop. We pulled in and turned the car off to see what we could hear.

There was so much bleating; I couldn’t believe it.

It was shortly followed by our first natural moose sighting. One little guy just ran out onto the highway from the woods. He stopped in the middle of the road, looked at us, and then kept on moving. Weird.

Shortly after that, we saw a HUGE bull moose and his lady out in a little creek valley by the side of the highway. A few cars of folks had pulled over to the side to watch them. They were really quite beautiful!

We stopped for lunch at a place called Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. It was way off the beaten path, and signs for it indicated that it had picnic areas. So we pulled off and found it down a gravel road. When we reached the Fort, we saw signs saying that there was a $2 admission price. We decided to ignore that and eat at the picnic tables anyhow.

The picnic tables were placed away from the Fort’s visitor center closer to the horse paddock. There was one horse there that had a weird blindfold on. His little fenced-off pen was fairly small compared to the huge pasture surrounding it. The weather was warm and clear with a slight breeze that apparently blew through the horse shit and right toward our picnic table. Nice.

Here was our next wildlife jam. This little guy came just steps from our table, ate some clover, and then scampered away.

After lunch, Dave went to use the bathroom which was housed in a small building near the horse paddock. When he returned, he had a weird look on his face. I asked what was going on, and he responded that I needed to check out those bathrooms before we left. I asked why and if it was a latrine. He said, “No, it’s a contemporary response to the latrine.” This sounded frightening to me.

A few minutes later, four cowboys showed up to let the blindfolded horse out of the paddock into the pasture with the other horses. Well, three of the cowboys headed out to the pasture, but one young gent headed to the bathroom. I happened to be going into the ladies’ room while this young man was going into the men’s room. The entire time I was in the ladies’ room, this young man made barfing noises in the men’s room. I think I understand why. When I walked into the women’s room, I discovered that there was (drum roll please) NO PLUMBING. This was a composting bathroom. The toilet was a set with a big brown hole in the middle. Not the black pit of a latrine, just a brown hole. I have no idea where that hole led, and I was ok with that. When I was finished, there was a sanitizing lotion dispenser for the hand washing. Ugh. It’s a good thing that I only had to pee. No, I took NO pictures of this.

We quickly packed up our picnic and got back on the road. This Fort Phil Kearny was too strange. I needed to get out of here.

At about 5:30 pm, we reached Deadwood, SD.

Like the rest of the tourists, we only knew about Deadwood from the HBO show of the same name. We arrived just in time for the 6 pm display of a street shootout, called Deadwood Gunslingers, in the middle of Main Street.

They block off the streets with this sign:

The sheriff shows up with his boys...

...and shoots at some lawbreakers. The whole thing takes about 15 minutes.

After the shootout, we wandered the streets of downtown Deadwood, which are designed to look like they did in the late 1800s when Deadwood was a thriving gold mining camp/town. Our choices were souvenir shops, hotels, casinos, bars, and restaurants. That’s all we could find.

For those who don’t know, Deadwood is where Wild Bill Hickok was killed and where Calamity Jane died. This place is the original location of the Saloon #10, where Wild Bill was shot during a card game by Jack McCall.

We decided that we would hit a little show at 8 pm that showed the trial of Jack McCall, but before that, we needed to find a place to stay. I was lobbying for a hotel since I was tired of being in the car and camping so far from bathrooms. In our search for a hotel, we saw these buckets outside an inn.

SD was jumping with bikers, especially in Deadwood. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a reasonably priced room in town, so we made reservations at the damn KOA again.

At 8, we headed to the Deadwood Masonic Hall.

There we saw the trial of Jack McCall as performed by the Deadwood Alive Players.

The performance was pretty cute. It began with some old-timey music as performed by the judge, the prosecutor, and the court reporter.

During his trial, McCall, guarded by a young sheriff’s deputy, was tried and acquitted due to his well-woven lies.

True story, except the deputy bit. He then fled to Wyoming where he bragged about Hickok’s murder and was retried because the WY authorities did not accept the verdict of the SD trial, SD being Injun Territ’ry and all. WY authorities found McCall guilty and he was “hanged until dead.”

After the performance, we went to the Gem Steakhouse and Saloon (Al Swearengen’s place) for dinner. It was ok, not great. We were told by a gentleman at a casino that this place was the best steakhouse in town. It was reasonably priced, but nothing to write home about. Thus, no photos.

This sign was posted in the ladies’ room of the Gem lobby.

We then headed to the KOA, which we thought we had identified earlier. When we arrived, we were very impressed by the facilities. The office was a huge, huge store with a café and a gift shop and a reservation desk resembling the front desk at the Trump Hotel in Vegas. It had a great pool, putt-putt golf, beautiful grounds, the whole thing. We were, of course, at the wrong KOA. We figured out that we were about 15 minutes from the one where we had reservations. I was so bummed. So we headed to our standard, non-deluxe, plain old KOA and ended another day.

Day 26: Yellowstone to Greybull, WY

2009-07-20T21:47:00.023-04:00

For July 8, 2009, we decided to stay in Yellowstone and hit a couple of the things we had missed the day before. We drove back through West Yellowstone to get to the Park. West Yellowstone was very cool. It looks like what I would imagine a ski resort town would look like. Lots of log-cabin-style buildings with names like the Ho-Hum Motel,

Totem Café,

Buckaroo Bill’s Stew and Soup,

Dairy Queen.

It was very quaint.

We went back in the west entrance and headed north to the Mammoth Hot Springs. On the way, we passed a spot we’d seen the night before in the dark that Dave wanted to take a better look at. This was a boiling hot spring that had vents that release under the bridge that we drove over. When we were scurrying to leave the park before the road closed the night before, we came upon this bridge. Since it was after sundown and the temperature had dropped significantly, the steam was even more intense. It billowed out from under the bridge and spilled over the road in a stinky mist that startled us both. We were glad to see that we hadn’t imagined it.

From there, we came upon the Artists’ Paintpots, a series of hot springs and gurgling mud pits that reveal different colors of mud, water, and bacteria. Several looked like bowls of water in which one might have rinsed a paintbrush—that milky, watery look.

This one looked like boiling white clay that would dry and crack and then get pulled back into the mixture to start again.

This one was part of the Artists’ Paintpots as well. In the summer months, it spits little spouts of clay into the air.

From the picture, you can see where the pot will send a large blurp of hot mud high into the air and the wind will blow it over onto the wooden bridge the tourists walk on. This little hill I am looking at was probably about four feet high at its highest point—entirely built from little blurps of mud coming out of the earth. Incredible!

Here was a very iron-heavy paint pot that created this rust color.

This is also around the time that I had to finally admit to myself that Dave has a MUCH better eye for photographic composition that I. I am much too impatient for that. I want to run along and see the next sight. Here is some of his handiwork.

This was a place that either had clearly been a small Paintpot at one time but through some change in the earth stopped being one or had not been one until recently and was about ready to spill above the surface. It was truly difficult to tell.

The Paintpots were set in the side of a large hill. This is the view from the top looking down.

Another beautiful hot spring.

Another amazing little geyser that was just boiling out of the earth. Does that make it a hot spring? We didn’t stick around long enough to figure it out.

As we drove around a mountain, we came across a beautiful waterfall that we had seen in the shadows the previous night.

It was accompanied by this lovely view.

This time, when we stopped, there were only three other cars there: two tan vans (just like ours) and a giant Korean church van filled with people. We were behind the Korean church passengers for a good while that day, but they never all got out of the van. They would pull up beside a beautiful vista, take pictures from inside the van (or one person would jump out and take pictures), and then struggle to get that behemoth to continue on up the hill.

On our way to Mammoth Hot Springs, we found this crazy place which was like nothing we’d seen yet. It’s called Orange Spring Mound.

Apparently, water gets heated by the lava underground. Then, that water pushes up through a layer of limestone where it picks up particles of calcium carbonate. As it flows out of the earth, it deposits the calcium carbonate, called “travertine,” creating this giant mound.

Once again, many trees perished in the building of this mound.

Poor little trees. They couldn’t stop it. Actually, what happens is that the tree soaks up the mineral-rich water into its little tree veins blocking it from getting any food or water and it hardens. Essentially, the tree is petrified there, and it could stand like that forever. It will not likely disintegrate like a normal dead tree would.

Here, you can see the TINY little fount of water coming out of the top of this mound that must be at least 12 or 15 feet high.

We then came across a series of terraces that may have been created the same way as Orange Spring Mound; however, through some process of nature, they looked like layers of ice with places where it had broken clean off like a shelf.

Another mound with its victim still attached.

By the time we reached the upper level of the Mammoth Hot Springs, it was starting to rain. Dave wasn’t really digging the scene because his allergies had started acting up the night before. He was a trooper, though.

Here are some of the many amazing scenes that we saw at the Mammoth Hot Springs area. All of these terraces are built from that travertine build-up caused by cascades of water flowing out of the calcium-rich rock.

We went into the Visitor Center near Mammoth Hot Springs to sit down and relax. While we were there, we found the weather forecast. Compare THAT to Durham in July! In your FACE, Bull City!

Again, this is the little village in the Park where the employee dorms are. It was a beautiful little place.

After a National Park-priced lunch, we decided to start heading out of the park and on to our next destination: South Dakota. As we drove through the mountains, we saw these great rainbows.

The rain stopped, and we FINALLY had our first "bear jam." It was a baby black bear that I could hardly see at all. Somewhere in this photo are some tiny bear ears.

More important is the traffic jam that ensued.

Before long, we came across Bear Jam 2009, part 2. The traffic stopped, and no cars were coming in the other direction. I didn’t think it could be because of construction because there had been no warning signs. This was some sort of wildlife jam. The guy in the car in front of ours got out of his car and started walking ahead in traffic with his camera, so I did the same. After we passed about six cars in the stopped traffic line, the guy in front of me started running forward and so did the guy in front of him. Always afraid to miss something exciting, I, too, began running. That’s right: I ran. OK, I jogged. But I jogged fast for a long tine. I must have passed 25 stopped cars in the lane before getting to the source of the commotion. There was a little brook that ran parallel to the road about 40 yards out. Between the road and the brook was a different baby black bear who was completely unfazed by the people standing around. I, however, was quite nervous because the rangers tell you to stay a football field away, and I don’t think we were more than 20 yards away. When we came upon it, it was scratching into the tree for bugs. He would scratch into the tree a little with his claws (it’s a SIGN people—back up), then lick the tree a little, then scratch again. After finding very little, he started looking around in the grass for something to eat. Then, he really showed off.

He climbed this tree only for a second, then slid back down and walked into the woods toward the brook. I took a million bad pictures of his backside and then ran back to find Dave. By now, I had been out of the car for about 10 minutes, and I wasn’t quite sure where the car would be. Had the traffic crept by fast enough that he had passed me? Was he still way in the back of the line? Why does everyone have a tan minivan?! I finally found him still in the back of the line, and he decided he wanted to check it out, too, so I sent him up there with the camera and I drove the car for the first time on the whole trip. Unfortunately, I was only able to go about 30 feet. Oh, well. Other than that, I haven’t even moved the car in a parking lot.

Anyhow, these are some of the snaps Dave was able to get.

It was so invigorating to see that little bear out there. I’ve never seen a bear that wasn’t in a fake cave in captivity. It was fantastic.

So we moved along and traffic dispersed enough that we could pick up a pretty good clip on the road. After a while, we had another very small buffalo jam. We spotted a huge herd of them in the distance.

Up to this point, we had only seen them in groups of one or two, so this was a bit of a revelation. Dave counted them and estimated that this herd held somewhere around 150 head of buffalo.

Then, we hit another Visitor’s Center. I guess I should explain that, last year, I purchased a National Parks Passport, in which one gets rubber stamp “cancellations” from the National Parks around the country. So every time we have gone to a National Park, I’ve hunted down the Visitor Centers to get my stamps. Usually, I see children getting them, but I enjoy the challenge and I LOVE stamping the paper. It’s almost as fun as pushing buttons.

Anyhow, this was part of our Visitor Center adventure.

As the sky cleared from the earlier rain showers, we passed Yellowstone Lake, which, for the record, is pretty enormous. There were legitimate waves on this coastline. It is certainly not as big as Lake Michigan, but it had true waves that crashed on the rocks and it was very lovely. We marveled at it for about 5 minutes and moved on.

Then came Bear Jam 2009, part 3. This time, it was a baby grizzly bear romping around looking for lunch on the side of a huge grassy hill.

A park ranger was on the scene quickly to keep traffic moving and tell the gawkers to move their cars completely off the road. She informed us that this grizzly was a “sub-adult” and was likely about 2 or 3 years old. She clearly wanted to keep people from running up the hill because its mother was likely not far away. The little bear kept looking behind him in a little thicket of bushes and dead trees, and some surmised that the mother might have actually been in there.

In this photo, he’s doing a little shake-shake-shake.

After about 20 minutes, I was starting to lose interest, so we kept moving. We came across this amazing sight:

The side of this mountain was almost completely covered with dead trees. I don’t know how that came to be, but it made for a terrific picture.

Next, we had our first moose jam. We had not seen a moose the day before, but we had been told that they were out there somewhere. We’re not sure if this is a female moose or a juvenile moose, but he was pretty to watch. He was just wandering around eating grasses enjoying his day.

After all of those wildlife jams, we were ready to move on. After leaving the park, we headed west through Wyoming toward South Dakota. However, at around 9:30 pm, we happened on Cody, WY. This meant nothing to me, but Dave was quite excited when he saw this:

It was time for the Cody Nite Rodeo. They held a rodeo every single night in Cody. We parked as fast as we could and headed to the box office. However, there was a sign on the box office window that read “Sold Out.” That’s not possible, I thought. We noticed an open gate, looked at each other, and went for it. We strolled right on in, walked up the bleachers, and sat our little selves down for an evening at the Rodeo. I had never been to a rodeo, so this was entirely new to me.

The segment that was beginning when we walked in was the girls’ barrel races. Teenaged girls would attempt to race their horses around a series of barrels and back in the shortest time to win some kind of prize or recognition. This got the crowd roaring! It was great fun. Next were the little girls’ barrel races. Little girls between 6 and 12 would race ponies around a smaller series of barrels. Many were disqualified because they couldn’t get their horses to go around the barrels in the right direction, if at all.

I noticed that the crowd could tolerate only so much quiet when the girls screwed up; at that point, they would begin cheering very loudly to give the little girl encouragement. It was very sweet. After that was the tiny tots barrel race, which was a little 5-year-old boy “racing” his pony around the barrels. First, there was no racing here for the five-year-old. Second, that horse didn’t know what the hell that kid wanted him to do. The kid might as well have been commanding that horse to take a letter or name the states in alphabetical order. He was going to go wherever he darn well pleased.

Next came the actual bull-riding. I’m not very fond of this on an animal rights level, but I was already at the Rodeo, which was weird enough, and I certainly didn’t pay any money for it…until I went to the gift shop at the end and bought a t-shirt, but still, it was really a bit disturbing. There were about 10 contestants from all over the country. Each one is in a little paddock sponsored by some local business. He mounts a bull that has a rope wrapped around him in significant areas that clearly piss him off. Then, when the gate is opened, the bull comes out bucking trying to get himself free of the rope, and the young man has to remain on the bucking bull for a minimum period of time, like 8 seconds or something, in order to qualify for a score. If he gets bucked off, there are some creepy rodeo clowns (“bull fighters”) who try to distract the bull, so that it doesn’t trample its thrown rider, and guide it into a tunnel where it disappears into a steakhouse or something. If the clowns can’t do that, there are three guys on horses with ropes at the ready hoping to lasso the bull.

I took lots of video clips, but I’ll only present two here. The first is a ride in which the young man was bucked off almost immediately.

This second video is of the only young man to qualify that night.

After these 8 or 10 guys rode their bulls, the Rodeo was over. Dave and I went to the gift shop for a little while, and then we headed out to where the rodeo clowns were signing autographs. They had these cheap black and white 8x10 collages of pictures of them. We had one made out to our nephew Robert in Chicago who has a recent fascination with cowboys. We were also able to get a signature from a little 7-year-old girl who is some kind of a barrel racing champ and was the rodeo flag-bearer at the beginning of the night. Here she is with two of the “bull fighters.”

Cody, WY, entry in the Theater of Weird Signs:

After the rodeo, we headed into Cody for dinner. We were starving. The only place that we found open was a late-night diner called Granny’s.

The food was…diner food, but the rodeo clowns were there being loud and creepy. Everyone in the place was dressed like a cowboy. It seemed almost like a joke of some kind. Was Alan Funt going to jump out from the corner somewhere and tell me I was on Candid Camera? Nope, this was the real deal, y’all. When we left the restaurant, we spotted the rodeo clown’s car in the parking lot. We tried to be stealthy about these photos so that they wouldn’t come out and yell at us.

We then headed to Greybull, WY, for another KOA night. This particular KOA was very weird because it was in the middle of a neighborhood. I guess there’s not much choice when Greybull is only about 5 blocks long. It was a tiny, TINY town. Tomorrow, we would head to Deadwood, SD, to see what new things they could offer us.

Day 25: Yellowstone

2009-07-14T01:08:00.016-04:00

On this day, we tried to wake up early, but we didn’t really get moving until about 11. We headed about 7 miles west from our KOA in Montana to the west entrance of Yellowstone in Wyoming.

The only thing we knew about Yellowstone was Old Faithful (and the Jellystone is a take-off on Yellowstone—which will come into the story in a week). We were not prepared for the animal life OR the scenery OR the hydrothermal activity we were about the encounter.

First of all, the park is HUGE! I thought the Grand Canyon was big, but this place is enormous, too. As we drove, we saw such a wonderful variety of scenery. I immediately fell in love. (I tried not to mention to Dave the fact that a ranger friend of a friend was killed by a serial killer in the park about 8 years back. That would just be bad juju.)

Like before, we would see the Grand Tetons in the distance with snow on them, there were pine trees all around us, and every once in a while, there would be a strange outcropping of rock. (Is that the right term, Julie?)

As we drove from the west entrance to Old Faithful, we had what the guidebooks call a “wildlife jam.” We saw a few mule deer hanging out by the road.

As it happened, we ultimately saw so many mule deer that they became unremarkably—like seeing a squirrel at home. It was amusing, though, because lots of people would have pulled their cars over to the side of the road and would be standing in the middle of the street with their cameras stopping traffic and pointing.

After our first mule deer jam, we came upon the part of the park where steam rises up out of cracks in the earth’s surface. Apparently, this is an active volcanic area, though it hasn’t erupted in 600,000 years (that still qualifies as active). Magma has risen up close to the earth’s surface heating up water underground that begins to boil and vents as steam, hot springs, or geysers. Whenever there is an earthquake in the area, the chambers of water and magma below the earth are likely to change either creating a geyser, hot spring, or steam vent where there had not been one before, or shutting off a geyser, hot spring, or steam vent that had been there. Fascinating stuff!

Before we reached Old Faithful, we found the Fountain Paint Pots.

The Paint Pots are pools of boiling, wet mud that gurgle with gases and steam rising from below the earth’s surface.

This one just looked like a giant mud hole with steam coming out of it. For the record, the venting of the steam was very loud. The sound resembled one of those super vacuums at the car wash.

Also on this property was this beautiful hot spring. The pool was filled with crystal clear water. We could see the water was boiling up from a hole that went really deep down.

While the water was a deep blue in the center of the pool and green near the shallower parts, the edges of it were these amazing yellows, oranges, and reds.

These colors were made of bacteria that thrive in the hot water and the gases that come up from the ground. The layer of bacteria was referred to as a "bacteria mat," but we were warned not to touch it because the oils on our hands would harm the ecosystem by making it difficult for bacteria to adhere to these surfaces.

This area was the first indication that Yellowstone might be a pretty stinky place. The sulfur smell was pretty strong!

Here are some more pictures of other steam vents we saw on our way to Old Faithful.

Spasm Geyser seemed to erupt constantly, but we could have just reached it at an appropriate time.

One of the wacky things we learned almost immediately is that the forest fires in the area cause some pretty amazing things to happen. First of all, many people know that there are controlled burn projects that happen in forests pretty regularly. These are designed to remove underbrush to make complete destruction of the forests less likely in the event of wild fire. However, we also learned that the pine trees that populate this forest have pine cones way up on top that are actually glued shut with pine sap. In its natural environment, only a forest fire will melt the sap allowing the tree to spread its seeds across the freshly burned forest floor. The forest essentially reseeds itself! Fascinating! How does nature DO that?!

A by-product of these fires and the National Park Service’s theories of forestry is that these burned trees are often allowed to remain where they are so that they can decay naturally.

Well, another thing that kills these trees is the eruption of mud, gas, and boiling water from within the earth. Those trees just stand there, too, until they are naturally felled. That’s what’s going on with these awesome tree trunks.

Theater of Weird Signs, Yellowstone Edition:

Here’s the whole of this sign. Its purpose is to tell us not to walk off the designated paths because the earth can be thin, and boiling water or gases could be very close to the surface waiting to burn the skin off your legs.

My two favorite hot springs were the Excelsior Geyser Crater and the Grand Prismatic Spring.

The Excelsior Geyser Crater flowed into the Firehole River that ran through the park. It was very cool to watch the boiling water flow into the cool rushing river.

The Excelsior also had the most amazing blue water. It was hard to believe that this water was somewhere around the boiling point. Yipes!

At Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in the US, we were able to see places where the moose and elk would walk through the bacteria mat, leaving their footprints behind.

That was fascinating.

Notice the beautiful blue steam rising up off the spring into the summer air.

We moved to another point and were able to see this amazing view.

Notice how the steam takes on the color of the water or bacteria beneath it, creating a rainbow. It was truly stunning.

These pictures demonstrate the PLETHORA of weird, dead trees in the Park.

This photo shows Dave at a steam vent that we found right beside the road in the Park.

This photo shows Dave at a steam vent that we found right beside the road in the Park.

We could hear the rushing steam (and smell the sulfur).

I wish this photo, taken near Old Faithful, had come out better.

It reads, "WARNING: Many visitors have been gored by buffalo. Buffalo can weigh 2,000 pounds and sprint at 30 miles per hour, three times faster than you can run."

I, for one, have geeked out many times before and watched Old Faithful via webcam on my computer. I do this with volcanoes, too, and even hurricanes. (Evan calls it a disaster fetish.) Thus, I had an idea about what we were about to encounter with Old Faithful.

It was still quite impressive.

Consider these the "Before" pictures.

We decided NOT to sit with the hundreds of people on benches, and instead, we opted for a view from the exact opposite side, which was physically closer than the benches. Old Faithful erupts roughly every 90 minutes. Apparently, ever since an earthquake a year or two ago, it has been less predictable, but it was spot on for us.

This video shows Old Faithful’s eruption as we sat there. The end of the video shows the water flowing from the geyser to the place where we sat. Luckily, we sat on a bridge that rose about 24 inches off the ground.

After leaving the Geyser, we witnessed our first “buffalo jam.” This buffalo, near the end of his shedding, was happily eating grass and flowers as tourists surrounded him.

As we watched this guy, he assumed what Dave called the “buffalo stance” and took a big dump to show us what the Wild West is really like. I think it was a comment on consumerism myself. ;)

Fields of dead birch trees like these were a common sight.

This was the smallest wildlife we saw. Dave kept calling it a squirrel, so I had to keep correcting him: chipmunk. These guys were super cute, frighteningly quick and erratic, and not at all afraid of people.

The Yellowstone River flows through the Park, and there are several spots where one can look at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

We chose to see the Canyon from the brink of the lower falls.

This waterfall was 300 feet high, and had a little place of snow to the left of it. This came to be a common sight, but it was still quite weird to me.

We got to the Canyon in the late afternoon, so the sun made some really wonderful shadows on the walls.

Off in the distance on our drive, we could see the snow-covered Grand Tetons. Fantastic!

Another great entry into the Theater of Weird Signs.

At Dunraven Pass, Dave and I noticed a bunch of folks pulled over to the side. We couldn't see what the commotion was until we got out of the car and noticed a small snowball fight in progress. Snow in July.

Notice Dave’s 4-week old beard. Looking good, Mr. Cantwell.

More fantastic scenery.

Another entry in the Yellowstone Edition of the Theater of Weird Signs:

At sunset, we were racing against the clock in order to get out of the park before a 10 pm road closure. The sun didn’t go down until after 9, so I was able to take photos well into the evening.

Here, we are driving through the village at Yellowstone where the employee housing is. The village featured a great little town square that was populated by mule deer!

Having seen buffalo and mule deer, Dave and I were still on the hunt for a bear sighting, and we committed to stopping for a bear jam should we encounter one. If the road closed before we could get there, we would just suffer and take the long way back to West Yellowstone, MT, where we were staying. Luckily, there was no bear jam. We reached the road closure point at 10:05 behind two other cars in the same predicament. When we stopped, the ranger came to our window and told us that the “authorities” had been “extra generous” and were going to allow us to pass. While she was talking to us, another ranger came behind her and pointed to our car, hollering, “Last one! Last car through. No more!” We made it! Woohoo! We were very lucky. Someone has truly been watching out for us on this trip.

We ate dinner at a bar and grille in West Yellowstone that was populated by tired tourists like us and…yes…bikers. Tons of bikers were everywhere in Yellowstone. It was at this point that we decided we would go back to Yellowstone for another day to see more sights.

Day 24: Salt Lake City to Idaho to West Yellowstone, MT

2009-07-13T01:20:00.010-04:00

On Monday, we woke up ready to take on the SLC! We drove right downtown to the Temple Square and noticed two square blocks of construction going on. This one's for Gabby.

I spotted this sign on a corner, but we were never able to actually locate this store.

The Mormon Temple was stunning! It gleamed white in the desert sun.

As did the office building next door, which, I might add, bore a vague resemblance to the Department of Transportation in downtown DC. Hmm...maybe there's something to that.

There were several sculptures on the grounds around the Temple, but none had any indication of the image being presented. As a result, I had to guess at some of these.

Here we have (I'm pretty sure) Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The importance of family and children, I suppose.

The hardship of traveling from the east to the Wild West.

I'm not sure what this means.

This was one of the buildings on the grounds of the Temple. I know the Relief Society was a women's group, but I don’t know any more than that. Any input would be appreciated.

A little something interesting:

This library apparently holds the largest stockpile of genealogical information in the world.

This logo was on the construction posters and walls protecting us from construction zones. Dave found it particularly amusing.

It sure is.

Theater of Weird Signs entry for Salt Lake City:

Stop for what? To watch birds? To yield to bird watchers? I don’t get it.

We also made sure to go to the Utah state capitol in Salt Lake City.

It stood directly across from the Visitor Center, which presented us with this little goody:

I, myself, found the street signs to be quite confusing.

This is not indicating that this is 300th Street or even E Street. I believe it is indicating the 300-block of East Temple, but I really cannot be sure.

For lunch, we hit a restaurant we’d seen the night before that had, yes, been recommended by Jane and Michael Stern.

Hires Big H was a restaurant that offered dine-in, take-out,

...and drive-in service.

The food was all the standard hamburger, chicken sandwich fare, but I did take particular notice that they offered caffeine-free Coke and caffeine-free Diet Coke. It took us a while to realize that this is because Mormons aren’t supposed to drink caffeine. Being a person who CAN’T drink caffeine, I was in seventh heaven. It was awesome!

After lunch, we got back on the road and headed to Idaho on our way to Yellowstone in Wyoming. Idaho was GORGEOUS! Everything suddenly turned so green!

We also noticed this strange convention.

Every once in a while, we'd come across a hill that had a letter or letters mowed or painted into it. We came to assume that this was a way of branding one's tract of land, but I have no way of knowing if that's true.

And once again, planes in someone's yard.

What is up with American's and their personal displays of war vehicles?!

I found this sign particularly cute in a Winnie-the-Pooh kind of way.

Idaho's submission for the Theater of Weird Signs:

We soon came upon Blackfoot, Idaho,

It was quite proud to be the home of the Idaho Potato Museum.

Dave and I stopped to investigate, but we were, apparently, 15 minutes too late; they had closed. Dave was very sad.

Oh, look! Idaho has a Mormon Temple, too.

The KOA at which we chose to stay for Yellowstone was actually in Montana instead of Wyoming. As we crossed into Montana, I witnessed a most horrifying sight.

This face can only be the result of looking at a heard of cows along the side of the road and seeing one "mount" another. This was NOT on our agenda. I did not need to witness that element of nature, did I? Now, I thought I had seen everything.

We went to our campsite in Montana and prepared for the next day's adventure in Yellowstone!

Day 23: Reno to Salt Lake City

2009-07-12T01:17:00.006-04:00

On July 5th, we left Reno, NV, headed for Salt Lake City, UT. This meant driving through the Bonneville Salt Flats, which was pretty impressive. We could see the mountains maybe 60 miles away, and between us and the mountains were just these huge expanses of white salt.

This particular mirage made the mountains look like they were partially floating in space.

When the salt reached right up to the road, we could see that people had stopped all along the way and used rocks to write their names or little cute messages on the salt. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get any good pictures of this because I didn’t want Dave to stop the car.

This lasted for at least 100 miles; it was the strangest little ritual.

As one might expect, we spotted a Morton’s salt factory out there, too.

Then, just as quickly as they had popped up out of nowhere, the scenery changed again, and we were coming up on these gorgeous green mountains.

On the other side was Salt Lake City. We arrived around dinner time on Sunday, and did a wee bit of sightseeing—just enough to give us an idea of what we were in for on Monday.

We got to peek at the Mormon Temple...

And its accompanying office building across the street that featured a HUGE relief map of the world on the outside.

As well as the LDS Church History building. HUGE.

At that point, I was starving and needed some dinner. We had some trouble finding an open restaurant for dinner, it being Sunday in the SLC and all. So we, of course, went to the Panda Buffet.

It was as mediocre as it could have been, but as we ate, the place filled up pretty quickly. Nothing remarkable to note here.

We finished our dinner, headed to the KOA, and went to bed dreaming of a big day in Salt Lake City tomorrow.

Day 22: Oakland to Tahoe to Reno

2009-07-10T03:20:00.006-04:00

Day 22, Saturday, was the Fourth of July, which found us going from Oakland, California, to Reno, Nevada. We began the Fourth with a great lunch at some place near Chronica’s where we went to get fried chicken sandwiches and strawberry shortcake. This place was fabulous. It had no indoor seating, but it did offer a series of steel ironing boards outside as tables with little wooden stools for sitting. The line was out the door, but it moved very quickly. Once inside, some very friendly person would ask you what you wanted. Your choices were fried chicken sandwich, fried chicken salad, or egg salad sandwich. The fried chicken sandwich was essentially a little crusty hoagie roll with several huge pieces of spicy fried chicken breast and a whopping helping of a homemade cole slaw product made of cabbage, oil, red onion, cucumber, and spices. It was a huge, delicious mess. I didn’t have my camera, so I took pictures with Monica’s camera, but I forgot to get those from her.

The strawberry shortcake was equally outrageous. It was a small salad-sized plastic container filled with delicious, dense shortcake, strawberries, and whipped cream. Dave and I ordered two, but we only ate one, and saved the other for breakfast on Sunday (it was still delicious).

After lunch, we went to a hat store, but it was closed for the Fourth, and then we headed to a guitar store called Fat Dog’s Subway Guitars. It was a tiny little story filled from floor-to-ceiling with guitars of all sizes and tunings. Many of them had clearly been there longer than I’ve been alive, but it was still a pretty cool place. The ceiling was papered will unique Obama posters and posters supporting the FMLN rebels in El Salvador—quite an unusual combination. We also saw an acoustic guitar with a bizarre scene of cowgirls and flowers on the top. Wacky! The guy who worked there was very nice but VERY, how do you say… “laid back.”

We headed back to Chris and Monica’s, packed our wares, and headed out.

From their place, we headed north to Muir Woods at the recommendation of Chris, Anita, and several others.

It’s a forest north of San Francisco that has lots of giant trees in it. We were duly impressed. This tree trunk indicates that at the time it fell in 1930, it was already 1,000 years old.

This photo is deceptive as it looks like we are standing before an enormous gigantic tree when really it’s three or four trees growing together. Still stunning.

This photo gives a pretty good example of what we’re dealing with here.

This tree was alive but had a weird hollowed out place in the trunk.

Yes, I actually counted these rings on this other tree trunk, and I’m indicating about 100 years of growth.

As we were leaving the park, I spotted a little place by the fence with this sign.

No one was using the corner for this purpose, and I’m not sure who would, but it was noteworthy nonetheless.

As we left for Lake Tahoe and Fourth of July fireworks, we stopped for some drinks and ice for the cooler. Dave came out with this:

It’s It is an ice cream sandwich made with oatmeal cookies and vanilla ice cream and then covered with chocolate. He claims that it’s like the U(nidentified) F(rozen) O(bject)s that he used to get with his dad as a child. Thus, I had to take these photos.

Well, we put them on ice in the cooler and ate them later that day. Yes, they had melted. Yes, it was pretty disgusting. No, we did not keep the third one. It was sad for everyone involved.

We received an offer the day before to join Chad and Whitney in Sonoma to spend the Fourth with his folks, and we debated it for many hours, but we finally decided that we needed to be moving on to Tahoe. It was a sad decision, but sometimes we need to make some tough decisions.

We got to Lake Tahoe just in time to settle in for the fireworks. We pulled in where the GPS sent us and parked about 4 blocks from the El Dorado Beach at Lake Tahoe, grabbed our picnic blanket, and followed the herds headed lakeward.

When we got to the lake, there was a wide, steep beach that was filled with wall-to-wall people. We saw the tail end of the sunset.

We settled in for what we were promised as “the largest pyro show in the West.” I think they meant West Tahoe because it was not show-stopping in our estimations. Frankly, while we waited for our show to start, we were able to see fireworks from three other towns on the other side of the lake. That was impressive.

There were some cool shapes in the fireworks. A few of the works were smiley faces in yellow with red eyes and mouths. I’d never seen that, so I got a kick out of it. All my attempts at pictures of fireworks—even on the fireworks SETTING—yielded nothing but blurry messes. Boo hiss.

When the show ended, we had not had dinner yet, so we each ordered a chili dog from the hot dog stand parked there at the beach. We each got chili and mustard on our dogs, which, as it turns out, might have been a bad idea. I’m not sure who taught those folks about hot dog chili but it wasn’t my mother-in-law. These people had the soupiest, messiest chili. While it was delicious, it was not intended to be eaten in the dark.

Once we washed the chili off ourselves, we headed to our final destination for the night: the KOA in Reno. Our KOA was in the process of being bought by a casino next door. We didn’t visit the casino because we were afraid of going broke so far from home. Sad.

For those who went to Vegas with us over Memorial Day, we did notice that there’s a Circus Circus in Reno, too! You’re never too far from disturbing icons of consumption! YAY!

After a long day in the car and out of the car, we crashed. Nite nite.

Day 21: The Bay Area

2009-07-07T00:33:00.007-04:00

Friday was a busy day even though we didn’t go many places. We took Susan over to Amy’s new studio apartment, and then we headed out to explore her Berkeley neighborhood and find some lunch. Instead of heading toward the area where we KNEW all the typical restaurants were, we headed in the opposite direction to see what we could find. We found plenty.

We began with this needle exchange truck that claimed to not have needles. I’m not quite sure what was being exchanged, then.

We have been quite impressed by California’s murals everywhere, but this one beats all.

It actually had a 3-D aspect to it.

I was told that I needed to take a picture of this place because of its similarity to a place in Durham that I am not aware off. Bull City, you figure it out.

We ended up at Dorsey’s Locker, which is a soul food restaurant about 15 blocks from Amy’s apartment. We had been on the search for it ever since Dave had seen it the night before, but we thought it was about ten blocks closer. When we got there, we were the only people in the place, there was one waitress, and there was one cook. We received our water after our dinners, and we got our tea and sodas with dessert. The waitress also got my order completely wrong. I order a bbq chicken sandwich, but she changed my order to a bbq chicken leg because it would be cheaper. I didn’t eat it, but I didn’t complain either. She was a very sweet lady and was trying to do me a favor. She also gave me greens when I had order green beans. I can see the confusion there, too.

While we were there, another customer came in for take-out and was complaining about how slow the place was. She needed to get to work on time and didn’t want to cook to “lie to [her] about how long it would take.” Yipes.

This picture is intended to vaguely recreate the prom since Dave and Susan went to their junior proms together. (Note the vase of flowers standing in for a wrist corsage.)

I not only enjoyed this sign in someone’s apartment window, but I also liked how much tape was on there to hold it up.

One yard we passed had particularly enormous plants in it.

As soon as we got home, we had to pack up to go to see Chris Karlof and his NEW WIFE, Monica. Here we are saying goodbye to the cutest little boys in the world.

Fletcher and his fishy toys are on Dave’s lap, and Sebastian is eating his goldfish crackers with me.

We got to Chris and Monica’s at about 5:45. They made us an amazing dinner. Here’s Chris making lamb and sausage burgers for us. Oh, wait, or is he prepping for the exam?

We had a few delicious cocktails before dinner. Chris made a round of Sazeracs and a round of Aviations. Then, we had a delicious salad with greens, radish, onions, and avocado with the awesome honey-mustard salad dressing that my mother-in-law taught me to make. We followed our salad course with the awesome lamb burgers topped with a mint-yogurt-cucumber sauce and a side of roasted potatoes. After resting a bit, we had some fresh watermelon for dessert. It was terrific!

We got to really top off the evening with a couple rounds of games. Chris and Monica (affectionately dubbed "Chronica") love to play strategy games that usually revolve around special cards for building, buying, and selling property or goods. We had a good time!

We went to bed much earlier than I had expected, but Monica was the first one brave enough to call it a night, and I followed closely behind. We each slept on a different couch. I got to have my own room, and I have to say, that couch was AWESOME! It was really wide and long so I could stretch out. It was also really firm, which kept my back from going all spazzy on me the next day. Nice stuff. It sounds like we didn’t do much that day, but we did plenty, and we were pooped.

Day 20: San Francisco Bay Area

2009-07-06T12:06:00.010-04:00

We’re way behind on the bloggage front due to poor Internet connections and too little energy to write at the end of the day. I apologize for being so far behind.

On Thursday, July 2, 2009, Dave and I met up with Chad and Whitney in Oakland to get their perspective of the Bay Area. Chad is a San Fran native, so he had great input on what we were seeing. He was even able to give us some bits of Byrne family history as he pointed out things his folks had done around the town. It was pretty great.

We picked Chad and Whit up at the place where they are currently staying with some friends. We were in our van with no back seats and they have no car, so don’t tell Mom, but they sat in the back on our mattress with NO SEATBELTS! AAAAHHHHHHHHH! There was no way to go more than 4 mph in the city anyhow and they were surrounded by pillows and blankets, so they were fairly safe.

We began by heading down toward Haight-Ashbury so we could see what spendy places had moved into the area to capitalize on America’s fascination with the '60s. We began with Whit pointing out Phuket Thai. Always good for a joke.

Then, we were off to Haight-Ashbury. There it is.

And there it goes.

The Red Vic Movie House on Haight Street had a pretty great photo board out front.

That’s Chad with a moustache tattoo covering up his real moustache.

As we went by Golden Gate Park, we spotted this little bit of weirdness:

What’s up, Buffalo Paddock in San Fran?! HEEEEYYYY! Chad was so excited about it that he said we could use this experience as a bit of trivia: "When someone asks, 'Are there buffalo in San Francisco?' you can say 'Yes.'" Whit pointed out that no one is likely to just jump out and ask me a question like that. It was worth a pretty good laugh, though.

Then, as we headed to Cliff House, the point where the bay meets the ocean, we found this little Dutch windmill tucked away in the park.

A plaque at the site indicates that the presence of this windmill on the property was only possible through the generous contributions of a gal named Eleanor Ross Crabtree.

Below such a lofty statement is the quote "Her dream has become a reality." I thought this was a pretty weak dream, and then Chad found that there were some weird holes in the walls of the windmill which had been bricked up. This, of course, led to the realization of there being a hole in Ms. Crabtree’s dream. Again, a good laugh was had by all. An unreasonably good laugh. You had to be there.

From Cliff House, we found ourselves looking down on the "ruins" of the Sutro Baths that had existed there on the coast fed by ocean water that had, essentially, just been bricked in from the beach.

They were first opened in 1896 as some lunatic idea of the mayor at the time. We gathered that the containment of these waters in a shallow pool would have likely made them much warmer than just swimming in the ocean.

Cliff House itself was not quite as impressive. The upper level was just a ritzy-schmitzy, tourist-trap restaurant, and the lower level was the Musee Mecanique, a private collection of coin-operated toys and games from amusement facilities of yore. Unfortunately, it had been moved to one of the piers at Fisherman’s Wharf a few weeks before.

We also found this old Camera Obscura novelty stand which offered to show us the view of Seal Rock inside a darkened room for $3 a person. I pointed out that I was already looking at Seal Rock and could not afford to see indoors what I was already seeing outdoors. For the record, Seal Rock was seal-less that day. Nothing but boids. Dirty, stinkin', flea-ridden boids.

From Cliff House, we headed to the Golden Gate Bridge for the adventure we didn’t get to have with Susan and the boys. It was still fun, though. I can’t get over what an incredibly beautiful structure it is. The color of the bridge is called “International Orange,” and it is in the process of being painted 365 days a year. As soon as painters are done painting the whole thing, it’s time to start over because of the harshness of the wind and salt.

This is our latest entry in the Theater of Weird Signs.

This guy was paddle boarding down in the bay below the bridge. It looked terribly boring until we finally saw him catch a wave out there.

This qualifies as the creepiest thing I saw on the bridge.

The sign to the right of the Emergency Phone reads , “Crisis Counseling: There is hope. The consequences of jumping from this bridge are fatal and tragic.” Whitney said that about 35 or 40 people jump off the bridge per year. We noticed that, strangely, there is only a high fence over the part of the bridge that is over land but not over water. There is a current plan to put a steel and plastic net under the bridge to save jumpers.

We only walked as far as the first tower. It was very windy and pretty chilly, and there were TONS of pedestrians and cyclists on the bridge.

These are the two big chickens of our quartet. Notice how they stand against the tower, away from the railing.

After I pointed out how amazing the view up to the top of the tower was...

I saw Dave white-knuckling the walls as he looked up. I’m impressed he even walked out on the bridge at all. He was really brave. The situation, however, was not ameliorated for him when I cavalierly pointed out that, every few feet, there was a drainage hole in the concrete about the size of a Kennedy half-dollar that was open to the bay below:

We found this delightful gardening display at the entrance to the Bridge.

After we oohed and ahhed about the bridge for a while, we then, I think, headed to Amoeba Records so Dave could get a taste of the most enormous record store we’d been to in a long time. We could only stay for about 40 minutes, so Dave couldn’t even begin to investigate the vinyl. Poor thing.

We also, at some point, went to Aquarius Records for fun. It was much smaller, but was like CD Alley in Chapel Hill in its tastes. Nifty.

We drove through the Castro for a quick minute. We were all starving, so we headed to the Mission for lunch at one of Whitney and Chad’s favorite restaurants: Puerto Alegre.

Here, I ate a carne asada burrito the size of my head and Dave had some kind of combo platter.

I think I had one too many margaritas, so I spent the next hour a little giggly. (Apparently, I was not alone.)

I talked about Lombard Street and how steep it is in a previous post. Well, we found another example of a street that has stairs instead of a sidewalk:

We didn’t go over to it, but it was still pretty easy to tell that I was glad I didn’t live there.

Dave was curious when he saw this place, the Hungry I Club.

Apparently, this is one of those places where folks like Bob Newhart, Mort Saul, Lenny Bruce, and folk and jazz groups used to perform in the 1950s. Now, it’s apparently a strip club. Good job, guys.

We took a quick pass by China Town, which was pretty cool, but we didn’t get to see any ducks hanging in shop windows or anything like that. We pretty much stayed on the perimeter.

My photo of the China Town gates turned out quite poorly as well because the vehicle was moving.

At the end of the afternoon, we went to City Lights Books, which is the leftist book store/publishing company started by Lawrence Ferlinghetti back in the 1950s. It was wonderful. I was in book heaven! I bought a few things that I thought were best bought there including a book documenting the freedom of speech trial over Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (to add to my collection of books about "Howl") and one of Ferlinghetti’s books about Poetry as an art form. He’s still out there publishing and editing as far as I know. This was quite a treat for me. I could have sat in there reading books for the rest of my life. I hated to leave. It just smelled so good in there--like old books and knowledge!

After that, we headed to a place in San Fran called "The Lab" where our friend Chuck Johnson was going to be doing a public performance of his Master’s Thesis in Music Composition. When we got there, we ran into our friend Amy who had just moved to Berkeley from Durham four days before. It was very weird to be in a room with Chuck, Amy, Whit, and Chad and NOT be in Durham or Chapel Hill. Very strange.

Chad and Whit headed home before the set began—their loss. :) Chuck’s set was pretty great. He had a young woman playing violin, a fellow student playing a pitched metal bar attached to a hollow box built by one of Chuck’s friends, another young lady playing the “long stringed instrument” built by the same gent, and Chuck with his bleeps and blips. It was pretty fantastic to see Chuck’s work come to fruition there, even if it was an encore presentation.

The next set was the pitched bar guy with his twin brother, both on laptops playing what sounded like a composition entirely composed of individual sounds from early Atari video games.

It was wacky. I wish we could have seen what was happening on their screens. Every once in a while, one of them would snicker, then the other would snicker, and we had no idea what was going on.

The final set was performed by one of Chuck’s professors on keyboard and laptop, another gentleman on an instrument he invented called a "Scatch Box," and a drummer who played with Sonic Youth at some point. It was pretty cool. The drummer was doing a lot of experimental “hairy eyeball” stuff (extended technique), as we call it in the SOC Rovers. He was fun to watch.

I talked to the Scatch Box guy after the show. He had built these boxes out of leftover keyboard boxes from a computer upgrade in his office.

He glued all of these combs, pieces of plastic and metal, and strips of grip tape and sandpaper to the box, put a small sound hole in the top, and placed a contact mic underneath. Then, he played it with a comb that he dragged over the textures like he was combing his hair. That technique he calls "scatching" as opposed to “scratching” which is what you do when you make a part in your hair. Very interesting. He was happy to let the music nerds in the house test it out. What a nice guy!

We said goodbye to Chuck,

dropped Amy off at her place, and headed back to Susan’s for a much needed rest.

Day 19: San Francisco Bay area

2009-07-03T04:33:00.009-04:00

On Wednesday, Susan, Roy, Fletcher, and Sebastian gave us their tour of the Bay Area. We had a great time.

We started our day with delicious omelettes that Susan made for us. This woman can COOK! Every morning she makes something wonderful for breakfast. I don’t know how she finds the time, but she does, and it was spectacular.

After breakfast, we all piled in the minivan and headed out. Now, because I don’t know the area, some of these pictures aren’t going to make much sense because I don’t know where we were when I took them, but I’ll do my best to give an accurate description.

We began by heading down toward the water on the Oakland side. There were lovely sights to see. We could see the San Francisco skyline quite well on this gorgeous day.

We wanted to go to Alcatraz, but we discovered that, because it’s Fourth of July weekend, the tours were all booked up until next Monday. Boooooo. Instead, I just took some blurry, crooked pictures.

That was plenty fine with me.

Susan took this picture with the SF skyline and the Bay Bridge behind us.

Then, we headed to Ghirardelli Square. We refrained from getting any chocolate because the place was packed. The Ghirardelli factory has been in this location since 1852 or so. Mom would love it!

From there, we went to Fisherman’s Wharf and took a gander at the sights there

which included this little row of boats straight out of Sweethaven.

There was some weird stuff down there by the wharf. In one bread shop, the bakers create alligators and turtles out of bread dough. Wacky.

Of course, Ra was present.

What kind of a day would it be without Ra?

We also saw the place where the sea lions have taken over the floating docks.

Dave, Susan, Sebastian, and I took a turn on the double-decker merry-go-round. That was a lot of fun!

I found my first left-handed store.

You laugh, but you have no idea the trials we lefties experience in our day-to-day lives. Why must your ladles pour on the right-handed side? Why must you only print measurements on one side of the measuring cup? People! Get with the program. Equal opportunity pouring!

For lunch, we completed our burger chain trifecta by hitting the In-n-Out Burger.

Since we didn’t know about the "secret menu," we weren’t prepared to order our burgers "animal style" or "protein style," so we just got plain old cheeseburgers.

Regardless, it was a pretty good burger. Fries, not so great in my opinion, and the shake was too thick to drink through the straw (no spoon provided) and it wasn’t cold enough. So far, the Fatburger and Jack-in-the-Box are way ahead.

We next went to see Lombard Street, the famously curvy block in San Francisco.

Susan tells us that the hilly roads were all this curvy once in order to protect the animals from having to go straight up or down the hills, but all of the roads, save this one, have been repaved to go straight.

You know you’re going to be in trouble when the sidewalk is just a staircase.

I wonder how the people who live here feel about all of these tourists in front of their homes. Receiving deliveries must be a pain, too.

We found that there is still at least one Swensen’s still open in the US.

And we saw some pretty fabulous architecture in the city.

I was a little alarmed to see, not just one nerd on a Segway scooter, but a whole TOUR of them. They all went rolling by while we were at a stoplight. Most were wearing their little nerd helmets and totally nerding up the streets.

We went to see the Golden Gate Bridge next. We did not, however, walk across it (see Thursday’s upcoming entry for those hijinx), but I got some pretty great pictures of the bridge and environs.

On the way home, we drove by San Quentin. I was all excited for its sheer "Johnny Cashet" (I made that up myself; see what I did there?). I took some photos but they don’t make any sense because I have no idea what I was looking at.

After that we headed back to Susan and Roy’s house for a little rest before our next adventure.

For dinner, we met my friend Greg and his gal Anita at a great Indian restaurant in Oakland called Breads of India.

It was delicious! Dave, Greg, and I all enjoy spicy food, but Anita was trying to avoid it, so she ordered my favorite dish, Chicken Tikka Massala, and asked the waitress if it was spicy. The waitress, of course, said “no,” but within a few minutes of being served, poor Anita was dying from the spiciness of the dish. I think she might have been the only one of us to get a dish that was spicy at all! She was quite a trooper about it, though, and took it with a really great sense of humor.

After dinner, we headed to a place called iFly, which is an indoor skydiving facility.

This just means there is a giant vertical wind tunnel, and people hop into skydiving suits and try to figure out how to free fall and do tricks in a controlled environment. No, Dave and I did NOT do it because we hadn’t made a reservation (and it’s a little too rich for our blood anyway. Do you hear me, Bev Perdue?). We watched a group of people who clearly came as a team building activity for work. Only one of them seemed to have done it before, and all the rest were novices. It looked like so much fun. By the time it was Greg and Anita’s turn, we were completely enthralled.

They were learning to do certain tricks like back flips and walking up and down the walls of the tunnel. It was really fun to watch. I made a few videos to give an idea of what was going on in there, but I’m not sure how much sense it will make.

This is Anita working with the trainer on back flips.

This is Greg with the trainer working on walking on the walls.

After about a half hour, it was all over. By this time, it was about 10:45, and there was still another group getting ready to take their turn. They must run that thing all night, I swear.

We headed home afterwards to finally call it a day. It was nice to see Greg after a few years, and it was great to meet Anita. She was a lot of fun! The biggest mistake I made was not getting a proper photo of the two of them. Boooo, Kerry.

Day 18: San Francisco Bay area

2009-07-03T04:17:00.006-04:00

Tuesday was our first full day in the Bay area. We began by packing up Susan’s twin 2 ½-year-old boys Fletcher and Sebastian, and we went to the Oakland Mormon temple. It was quite a grand building reminiscent of the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. The lawns were impeccably manicured with gorgeous flowers, and the building was gorgeous with its five spires in the sky.

Visitors are permitted to go in to the building but only a certain part. When Dave, Susan, and I walked in with the two boys, there were several people there to greet us with shining faces. They asked us if we’d been there before, where we were from, etc., and if we wanted to see the program they had for us. To the boys, this meant seeing a movie, so we had to go for it, plus it was a bizarre proposition. The program was a multi-stationed film/diorama thing about committing ourselves to our families so we can all be together in the afterlife. Yep, that’s all I’m saying about that. See me after school for more details.

For the record, the temple had an amazing view of Oakland. It was quite lovely.

From there, Susan took us to a fortune cookie that was one of the few in the US.

Note my use of the word “was.” When we arrived, we found an eviction notice on the door stating that the premises and their contents were now in the custody of the building’s owner. Oh, well. No fortune cookies for us.

We then headed to Jack London Square in Oakland.

I guess our boy, the author of such gems as The Call of the Wild and White Fang, used to hang out round these parts. Oakland was clearly quite proud of this fact because there were statues and plaques and more statues and plaques.

There was even half of a cabin he had lived in during fishing season in Alaska one year. ????

We then went to a park in Oakland to look at giant redwood trees and let the boys run around a bit. The trees were pretty amazing in size. Dave got some pretty amazing shots here.

Can you see me with Sebastian? This will give you some perspective.

They're not the biggest of the redwoods, but they sure are big.

For dinner, we got AWESOME take-out from Uncle Willie’s BBQ & Fish.

We ordered a few orders of bbq brisket, mac and cheese, baked beans, and collards. It was fantastic! We also ordered a few of their peach cobblers which were like large tarts or very small pies. They were delicious with vanilla ice cream.

We decided to take it easy in the evening and play this great board game called Compatibility. Basically, it’s an Australian game in which you try to match your partner’s answers to certain questions. Quite fun. Then to bed to get some rest before some serious SF sightseeing.