Pics and it happened

Charlotte has been a nice, cozy dream. I've been holed up with Alex playing D&D and watching anime and doing other things that don't photograph well. So this seems like the moment for another photo post!


Among my first views of Yellowstone National Park!


Mule deer like this buck are everywhere in Yellowstone. This particular specimen was grazing right next to the visitors' center. Attention whore!


Ground squirrels!!! They're a lot like the normal kind, but without the tails. These two live near the petrified tree, which makes me wonder if they eat petrified acorns.

But what of sweeping Yellowstone geological panoramas, you ask? Well, this is a start! It's hard to capture scenic beauty, because I've come to the conclusion that "scenic" means "uninteractive and remote," but this is one of the better landscapes that came out of that expedition.


Caterpillars or worms of some sort, crawling all over the handrail of a boardwalk in west Yellowstone. The other tourists were all grossed the fuck out. I was just wondering what they metamorphose into.


BUFFALO! This bison came close enough to the pullout that I could have touched him. I didn't. He looks very sad in this picture, but in real life he looks like a decaying zombie bison.


Yellowstone is of course known for its thermal springs. Here's one of them, practically unmarked, beside the road.


And here is a more famous geothermal feature: Old Faithful in mid-eruption! I have a picture of the geyser at full mast, but it's on its side and this picture does a better job showing what the geyser actually looks like.


Last Yellowstone picture. See the horizontal line in the center of the photo? That's where incinerated forest ends and live forest begins. The transition is that stark. Controlled burns, I guess?


Obligatory Mount Rushmore photo! TR looks left out back there.


And on the way back from Mount Rushmore, I stopped at the Reptile Gardens, which host an impressive collection of gross creatures. These are death's-head cockroaches.


This snake's name has been lost because I was careless about snapping the nameplates, but isn't he pretty? Don't you just want to give him a big hug?


The Reptile Gardens had a bird exhibition, too. Action Wildlife Photographer makes his return in this startling picture of a bald eagle striving for liberty against its oppressive and probably British captor!


The Reptile Gardens cost rather a lot to run.


The Badlands were to my mind much more dramatic than Yellowstone, but they were equally hard to photograph. They're like a mountain range in miniature!


The Badlands are not at all uniform in height, shape, or composition. Every turnout offers a different view!


A pic from the Sioux Falls butterfly garden. These two were kind enough to let me get close. One butterfly landed on me and gave me a kiss!


And in other insectoid news, here is the sculpture that welcomes you to Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. Made entirely out of scrap metal, this waspish monstrosity is a sight to see.


And here is the Forevertron itself! Towering over visitors in its steampunk glory and studded with strange machines and decrepit spiral staircases, it begs to be climbed on! But you're not allowed! >.<


A velociraptor menaces visitors to the dinosaur exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo in La Grange, outside Chicago. His head, arms, and tail move periodically to startle tourists. I can't imagine why these things needed to hunt in packs.


Aleksa was terrified and fascinated by the dinosaurs. She spent that walk clinging to me and cringing whenever an animatronic reptile looked at her the wrong way. But she enjoyed herself, and I did too, partly vicariously thanks to Aleksa!


Polar bear!!! Wait, polar bear? Yes, Brookfield has two polar bears. This one was one of the more active animals at the zoo; he showboated for us a little, lumbering around the front of his cage. His back is dyed green because of the chlorine in his wading pool. I have mixed feelings about that.


And at the other temperature extreme, camels! Two humps means these guys are Bactrian camels. I'm not sure whether you sit on a hump or straddle the space between them.


At Indiana University at Bloomington, the Lilly Library collection of rare books displays this lock of Sylvia Plath's hair alongside a couple poems she wrote. Who got a hold of a lock of Sylvia Plath's hair, why, and at what point did they decide it should be put on display for the edification of the public?


John James Jingleheimer Audubon's illustrated book of birds is as large as a toddler's mattress when opened, though because not many original copies remain I don't suggest you actually use it as such. Every week they turn the page, and this week was grackles!


The proper orientation of this photo of Ogle Lake, east of Bloomington, is left as an exercise to the reader.


And at last, here I am ensconced with Ruth and Robert in Indianapolis after a Haruhi Suzumiya marathon. I'm on the right. It's late in the evening and we're all a little tired, but an Utena forum member threatened to perform certain acts on us that don't bear repetition in a family blog if we didn't post pics, so here we are! Stay away from my butt!

I haven't taken many photos since Indianapolis, and I haven't uploaded the ones I have. I may get to make one more photo post before drawing this blog to a close. Tomorrow night, God willing, I'll be in Savannah, the next night in Orlando, and the following night... well, I'll be back in a place I've been away from for both too long and just the right amount of time.

Various forms of steam

As of this day, I have achieved the Grand Isthmic Bifecta: I have visited every major United States city that is built on an isthmus! That is, both Seattle and Madison! Congratulations to me!

Today I rode on a train as a result of asking a question I already knew the answer to. Here is how that happened. Last night I was looking for something to do between St. Paul and Madison, and in my Googling I came across something called Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. In an alternate universe, the Forevertron is a device designed to propel Dr. Evermor [sic] into space on magnetic lightning bolts or something; I didn't quite follow that part. In this universe, the Forevertron is the world's largest sculpture made entirely out of scrap metal. It looks awesome. It is every steampunk novel or RPG you have ever seen, done, or eaten, like Jules Verne and Ludwig von Beethoven collaborated on a lunar rover. It is also surrounded by other scrap metal sculptures, from gigantic to tiny, of insects and birds and little tiny protestors and such. These sculptures are clearly the life's work of the couple responsible for them, and there will be ample pics eventually.

But that's not what I was trying to tell you about. I was trying to tell you about this train ride. The thing about the Forevertron is that it's located in a junkyard with no physical address in the deep rural wilds of North Freedom, Wisconsin. Nonetheless, I had managed to pull directions off Google Maps and had written them down. You'd think I'd have been happy with that, but when I stopped for lunch on my way to North Freedom I happened to pass a tourist bureau, and on a whim I decided to stop in and ask if they knew how to get to Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. This question had gotten me weird looks at the restaurant, and it got me a weird look at the tourist bureau, too. The lady working there had never heard of it but was otherwise very helpful, and I mean that sincerely; once she realized I hadn't just made up a tourist spot she was all over Google and Wikipedia trying to get me an address. I stopped her, since I'd done the same already to no effect, but not before she told me that North Freedom is really known for its railroad museum with hour-long train rides on refurbished cars from the 1910s. A train ride, you say?!? I rushed to North Freedom and arrived just in time for the last railroad expedition of the day. It was fun letting the engineer drive for a change! I also learned that -- at least in those days, no idea if it's still true -- locomotives have both forward and reverse gears. So in theory the locomotive could have pulled us forwards to the quartzite gravel quarry that was our endpoint, then pushed us backwards to bring us back to our starting place. But that's not how you actually do it, because then the engineer couldn't see where he was going on the return trip. Instead, the engineer de-couples the locomotive from the rest of the train, runs the locomotive alone backwards along a set of parallel tracks, passing the cars, then runs it forward on the original track and couples it to the caboose. Then he pulls the cars back to the starting point in reverse gear. At no point does the locomotive make a U-turn -- you can't do that on a train track; the locomotive faces forward the entire trip, even though it's pulling backward for half of it. It's designed so that the engineer has line of sight in the direction of motion either way. This is probably something some of you knew when you were six, but for this suburban boy it was a revelation. So that's how they do it!

Not much to speak of this evening. Had a quiet dinner and ice cream at the University of Madison campus; still need to plot my evil deeds tomorrow morning and hopefully see something else that makes Madison cool before I go join Jono's parents for Thai food and subsequent hospitality in La Grange, a surburb of Chicago. (Spelling matters. If you type in Lagrange, Google Maps will send you upstate.) Sadly, the Forevertron trip left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, because I talked to a woman there, a local tourist if there is such a thing, who perceived that I was in a hurry, and I am indeed worried about being in too much of a hurry. I mean, just one day in the Twin Cities? You could spend a week there and just scratch the surface. I tell myself you pass through a lot of towns on a cross-country road trip and (without a ton of time and money) you can't delve into all of them. The trip's already taken longer than I expected it to. But in some sense I am hurrying, and I don't like that, because who knows how long it will be until I'm in North Freedom, Wisconsin again, you know? It's like speed dating. You're just getting to know the town, and then whoosh, it's gone, time for the next one. Fortunately, Chicago is a city that I already know at least a little bit from my four years in college there. I know some of the good restaurants and intend to reacquaint myself with them, while also enjoying the companionship of semi-familiar faces for the first time since Seattle. Two nights in a city I already sort of know means less hurrying. Onward, upward, and southeastward -- but not too quickly!

South Dakota, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain

I survived last night's thunderstorms! No one seems to have been hurt by tornadoes, so it was a false alarm. Probably happens pretty often up here. Still, the memory of the hail and the shaking street lights is sort of unsettling.

To catch up with yesterday, I neglected to mention dinner, which I ate at a firehouse that had been converted into a microbrewery. (This provides some nice symbolic unity with my first stop of the trip, where I visited a firehouse that had been converted into a museum.) I had a microbrewed root beer! It was nice -- about halfway between grocery-store root beer and the dark, rather bitter stuff at the Fort Myers microbrewery restaurant, and better to drink than either one. I've mostly been avoiding soda this trip, but I make exceptions for unusual stuff. No other culinary adventures yesterday or today, though; getting enough calories at the right intervals in interesting restaurants has been a little problematic in Wyoming and South Dakota, so when I find a place to eat I tend to order something I know I'll like.

Also left over from yesterday are two odd phenomena about South Dakota. One is that some restaurants have smoking sections. I was taken aback to be asked "smoking or non?" when I asked for a table! The other is that in South Dakota, not only is gas very cheap compared to other states I've been to, but mid-grade "plus" gas is cheaper than low-grade gas. This bizarre inversion is present at every gas station I've seen in the state. I'm told it's because they put 10% ethanol in the mid-grade gas and get big tax breaks for it that allow them to lower the price, but then why don't they put ethanol in the low- and high-grade gas as well? An enigma the gas station attendant was not equipped to answer.

Today was mostly driving end-to-end through South Dakota. The big adventure of the day was the Badlands. For context, let me explain that South Dakota is basically four hundred miles of open prairie with one town (Rapid City) in the west and another (Sioux Falls) in the east, and today I drove from the former to the latter across all that prairie. I'm emphasizing the prairie here because the Badlands is utterly shocking, terrible and eye-boggling primarily because of the contrast it makes with the grass and scrub. The Badlands look like this:

Two hundred years from now, some mad scientist invents a tractor beam and a time machine. He travels back in time to millions of years ago, where he uses the tractor beam to capture several large asteroids full of ravines and ridges and odd jutting contours like nothing on Earth. In an attempt to destroy the world, he crashes the asteroids into what will become South Dakota; this causes the extinction of the dinosaurs. The asteroids, however, do not destroy the world as planned. Instead, the above-ground parts of the asteroids loom ominously over the Dakota prairie, emitting their odd chemicals into the soil and fouling the land and water. The grass tries to reclaim the land from the asteroids, hardy weeds cropping from the rock where they can find a foothold, but in the end this feeble growth only makes the asteroids look more unearthly.

The Badlands, of course, are not actually asteroids, but they should be. You look at them flabbergasted and say "how on Earth could that have happened?" (The answer is almost invariably "erosion," so it's better not to ask.) I liked them better than Yellowstone. Less wildlife, to be sure -- only a few brave species are well-adapted for life in the South Dakota Badlands, such as the critically endangered black-footed ferret -- but the terrain was truly different, while Yellowstone was just "things you've already seen this trip packed into a smaller space." Of course, I'm prejudiced by the sheer fun I had climbing over the ridges of the Badlands. You can pull over at any number of turnouts and trek as far as you care to into that country, every step treacherous, the dirt and clay loose under your feet. I climbed the north side of one ridge and got it into my head that I had to go down the south side, which was steeper. I went step by step as far as I could, but in the end I had no alternative but to crouch and slide down the side on my sneakers, ripping at the earth with my palms to keep from somersaulting down the rocky slope -- sneakerboarding, if you will. This could have torn my hands open but didn't, so it was a good day. Afterwards I chatted with a woman from Atlanta returning from her own West Coast road trip. She had wisely stayed on the boardwalk and suggested gloves if I should try that sort of thing again in the future. One thing I didn't think to pack...

Speaking of which, I haven't been doing badly on talking to strangers recently. I've swapped stories with this woman from Atlanta, a guy from Quebec, a Texan, a New Yorker, and some others. From our chats, I'm astonished how un-unique my journey is -- how many people share an experience like this one. My Atlantan traveled the Trans-Canada Highway, which is by some metrics the longest single road in the world, end-to-end and had a fantastic time. It seems almost everyone has driven coast-to-coast, though not too many have done it solo. Of course, my sample is biased -- I'm surveying only people I'm coming across in my own coast-to-coast trip full of places tourists go -- but it's interesting to reconcile my experience of Lover's Lanes as a personal and irreproducible journey with the ubiquity of the transcontinental road trip in the American collective consciousness.

Internal Oregons

Up from Waldport to Portland today! After the promised hike to the top of a foxglove-lined Cape Perpetua trail and the gaping at its nonpareil view of a surf-beaten Oregon coast, we piled back in the car and undertook what seemed like a short jaunt compared to yesterday's marathon. Our one stop amidst the pine forests was at the cheese factory in Tillamook, and if that doesn't sound like a good time to you then you have clearly never been to the Tillamook cheese factory. Their signature product is cheddar, and based on their samples it is by my estimation very fine. But what was even better was their ice cream -- I had two scoops of blackberry -- and what was even better than that was the production floor. So many machines and people working in tandem, executing one of the innumerable minute steps between milk and packaged extra sharp cheddar cheese! It was like something out of Adam Smith -- or Rube Goldberg. Totally worth taking the detour rather than the direct route to Portland.

We arrived in Portland before six, leaving plenty of time to explore. Isaac grew up here and Alexis lived here for a few months; between their narratives and our foray downtown, I've already had more education about the culture and characteristics of Portland than about most of the other cities on this trip. Here are some tidbits before I pass out from exhaustion.

1. From the perspective of Isaac, a musician aspiring to become professional, the distinguishing feature of Portland is its very lively indie music scene. Sometime in the last decade, downtown Portland became Mecca for both "hipsters" and "aging hipsters," to Isaac's mixed delight and disgust.

2. Portland has cable cars and light rail in the same places, often with intersecting tracks. Bicycling is also big. As a result, bicyclists commonly get stuck in the grooves of the PT rails, leading to nasty falls. There are yellow signs illustrating this road hazard.

3. One can have any kind of cuisine one can imagine in Portland, served out of a van that camps out in the same place every day like a restaurant on wheels. I had Indian food tonight. It was average in quality but cost $5 for twice as much as I could eat, so you don't hear me complaining.

4. To celebrate saving money on dinner, it is possible to go to Powell's Books to spend money on books instead. Powell's is a new and used bookstore that must be three times the size of the Barnes & Noble in Fort Myers -- three enormous floors of books of all subjects and languages and editions. I bought three, including a book that's been out of print for twenty years and is difficult to find at a good price online.

5. On the first Thursday of every month -- like today -- downtown art galleries have free exhibitions, drawing out the art crowd. Perhaps as a result, today I saw a greater density of people obviously hopped up on one illicit substance or another than I have ever seen before in my life.

6. Especially during the recession, which has hit Oregon hard, Portland's downtown businesses have a very high turnover rate. The places where Isaac hung out when he was little are gone, as is the place where his dad used to buy cookies. One porn shop literally disappeared off the face of the earth overnight, leaving a vacant lot on the corner. You have to be paying close attention to the indie scene to know where the culturally important clubs of the moment are (and generally you have to sell your own tickets to play at one and receive some fraction of the proceeds).

Tomorrow, after a nice sleep on a mattress at Isaac's dad's house, I'll explore Portland some more with him and Alexis and perhaps Aviva, who lives up here and drove separately. Then in the afternoon Alexis and I will make for Seattle, arriving neatly before Independence Day so that we can relax on the Fourth instead of fighting traffic. Till then!

Tough row Tahoe

Today I'll be relatively brief, because it's late and I'm tired. I got the hell out of Dodge (okay, Winnemucca) early this morning to give myself time for a long detour on the way to San Francisco. My target: Lake Tahoe, the well-known resort lake on the California/Nevada border south of Reno. The lake is almost lost behind an enormous hillock that you have to crest before you can reach it, an artifact of the glaciers and volcanoes that worked in concert to create Lake Tahoe as we know it. The lake is... absolutely gorgeous. It's not at all like the Great Salt Lake, where the appeal comes in part from the intellectual act of trying to come to terms with the scope of what you're seeing. Lake Tahoe is just vibrant with uncomplicated beauty, clear and blue and with mountains on all sides. I rented a kayak from a guy in a big straw hat and paddled around for half an hour, happy as a clam. Would've paddled longer but didn't have the abs for it. Took some nice pictures, which will be up when they're up. Afterwards I grabbed a quick lunch of chicken skewers and peanut sauce and packed up for Frisco.

And that -- or more specifically, Berkeley -- is where I am now. The first leg of my transcontinental trip is complete. I've driven from Florida to California. It's a momentous night, and to celebrate I kicked ass at chess and Pente against my aunt Ellen, who's hosting me for a couple nights. I also ate her girlfriend Wendy's halibut, which was mild and yummy with some lemon and ginger on it. Once again I'm the beneficiary of touching generosity. My hosts, my hotel rooms, and the road between them -- the scale of this trip has been larger than anything I've done before. And because I'm in San Francisco and the only way back home is to drive, I know the journey will grow larger still. The next leg will take me up to Seattle, but only after a layover of several days here in the Bay Area, where I will frolic with my aunt and then with my anime club friends and their relatives, all in from out of town for Sushu and Jono's wedding. Lots of (challenging, character-building) fun ahead!

The dusty Winnemucca road

I bade a fond farewell to Salt Lake City this morning, but first I set out to explore its greatest remaining mystery: the Great Salt Lake. One would think that it would be impossible to drive past the Great Salt Lake without seeing at least three billboards for boat tours of the lake, but as far as my Googling and inquiries can discover, all the lake's boat tours are either luxury or bankrupt. The best way to experience the lake seemed to be driving across a bridge to Antelope Island, where there's a road that showcases the lake on one side and native flora and fauna on the other, but it would have been two extra hours of driving with nothing to do but gawk at things from the car. I generally like activities better that let me gawk at things from outside the car, so I took a pass on Antelope Island. Instead I pulled off I-80 at a beach (yes, the Great Salt Lake has beaches) and waded out to the water. The interesting thing about the Great Salt Lake is that you experience it with all five of your senses. The other interesting thing about the Great Salt Lake is that none of those senses can distinguish the lake from the Gulf of Mexico, the coast I'm most familiar with. There is simply no way to tell that this is a lake and not an ocean. Indeed, the early explorers thought they'd reached the Pacific.

Wishful thinking on their part. They still had a ways to go. The western mountains in this country simply do not end! Whenever you crest one, there's another behind it. Sometimes they're craggy peaks, sometimes mesas, sometimes big ol' hills that look like contour maps out of an MMORPG. But there are always more of them. It's a good thing I'm driving primarily to see the country, because if I were driving primarily to reach a destination I'd be frustrated to no end. In fact, I was frustrated today. I turned off the interstate to look for a canyon they advertised. It turned out to be a forty-mile round trip, and so inadequately marked that I never did find what I was looking for. I did hit a prairie dog while looking, though. I don't think it lived. I cried a little bit on my way back to the interstate. I was going a little over the speed limit, and if I'd been going slower I might have stopped in time. It was one of the small, careless tragedies that happen every day. I'm so sorry.

Later I finally reached Winnemucca. Winnemucca is a small town that appears to be built entirely on transient tourism like mine. Small-time casinos are everywhere, poised to rake in the passing traffic. Well, I reasoned, if I want to experience Nevada I have to go to either a casino or a prostitute, and prostitutes are expensive. I got $40 turned into chips. This was my first time gambling and very nearly my first time in a casino. I didn't know the rituals. You pay for your chips in cash, no credit. No blackjack till six. Chip bucket on your lap, not the table. Only one hand on the cards. Scratch the cards on the table to hit, shove 'em under the money to stand. No touching cards other than your first two. Drinks are free while you play. I didn't know any of that stuff, but I walked in knowing there was a lot I didn't know. I still don't know how many of those rules are universal to casinos and how many are specific to Winners Hotel & Casino. What's important is that I overcame my intimidation -- and Winnemucca is an intimidating, masculine town -- for no other reason than to practice courageous living. I didn't do too bad, either! Conservatively, I kept my winnings separate from my principal and left when my $40 was gone. At that point I had $29.50. So I paid $10.50 for a drink, some entertainment, and a bracing memory. Absolutely a fair transaction.

Exhausting the list of things to do in Winnemucca was Sid's Restaurant, sort of a de-chained version of Perkins, walls decorated with everything from framed artwork to My Little Pony coloring book pages. I asked the waitress what her favorite dish on the menu was and got a chicken focaccia sandwich -- which was not at all what I'd been going to order but turned out to be very good! One thing I've learned repeatedly on this trip is that people who know more than I do about an area, or a restaurant, or a culture, are to be treasured; it's through them that I can approach that knowledge. They don't always help, but they almost never hurt. Of course, sometimes I stumble across things on my own, too, and that kind of knowledge is also sweet, like a little secret. Which I promptly blab about to all of you. :)

City on a hill

I left Grand Junction this morning without it leaving much of an impression on me. Not that I didn't try to have an adventure! -- but adventures are harder to come by on Sundays, and Grand Junction's museums and wineries aren't really my scene anyway. I settled for the Trail Through Time, just west along the interstate. The trail winds through the hills beside a mesa on the high scrubland, showcasing classical Wild West terrain to great effect, and runs past many dramatic rock formations, some with dinosaur and plant fossils embedded in them. Courtesy of the trail, I had an invigorating and nearly solo morning constitutional, then set out for Salt Lake City.

Utah's cliffs and plateaus would have seemed breathtaking back in Kansas, but seemed gentle and a little boring after yesterday's Rocky Mountain passage. They were a welcome reprieve from the constantly-one-second-away-from-death peaks of Colorado. (Though there was some snow on the road at one point!!!) To pass the time while driving I listened to an audiobook version of Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers," courtesy of Wiley. Audiobooks are much better than music as a way to kill time; they hold your attention and let your muscle memory deal with the road. Outliers is pretty good. It's a lot like The Tipping Point in that it's a book-length elaboration of a single self-evident sentence, in this case "even for the talented, success relies on being in the right place at the right time." But also like The Tipping Point, the case studies Gladwell uses to make his (foregone-conclusion) argument are fascinating in themselves. It might be better to think of Gladwell as a talented essayist who organizes his monographs around central themes rather than the social visionary he presents himself as.

But you're not here for my literary criticism, are you? Outliers was just a means to Salt Lake City. I exited the interstate at a randomly selected mile marker within the city and began exploring downtown. I soon found myself driving up a steep grade and staring directly at the Utah State Capitol, an architecturally gorgeous building very much modeled after the U.S. Capitol in Washington. I couldn't go inside because it was Sunday -- go figure -- but I got a couple pictures, plus a pamphlet about Temple Square from the tourist information center across the street. Temple Square is Salt Lake City's Loop -- a block of buildings with names at the heart of downtown. But where the Chicago Loop is very commercial, Temple Square beams Mormonism. Its centerpiece is Salt Lake Temple, which unfortunately I couldn't visit due to construction -- it figures that the one building you'd expect to be open on a Sunday was closed for a different reason! I did, however, sit in a pew inside the Salt Lake Tabernacle and snapped photos of its organ, one of the twenty biggest in the world. Just sitting in that building is a remarkable experience; the tabernacle seems bizarrely full of space for its size even though it isn't as lofty as one expects from a religious structure.

Once I was done wandering around Temple Square I got back in the car and headed for Red Iguana. This Mexican restaurant shows up in all the travel guides as a culinary center of the city. It's a pretty large place with lots of parking, yet still has a hole-in-the-wall atmosphere that makes you feel cared for even as you're stuffed into the dining rooms with a few dozen other parties. (At 4:50 it was already on a 45-minute wait! I read some Neverwhere until my name was called.) I ordered a pork shank that was served in a thick, savory sauce made from a couple different kinds of chili. It was pretty good -- which if you know how I generally feel about Mexican food you will understand is high praise!

Of course, food tastes better when you're in a good mood. I was, and still am! Salt Lake City is unflaggingly welcoming; I haven't met a person here yet who seemed jaded or standoffish. The camera around my neck earned me welcomes here rather than the benign contempt I get in other areas. The city is also very easy to navigate, either on foot or by car. This place and Eustis are the two cities I've seen so far this trip where I might actually like to live -- though every city without exception has been fun to pass through!

Tomorrow I'll tour the Great Salt Lake, then set off for the little-known town of Winnemucca, Nevada, my last waypoint before my San Francisco terminus. As usual, I don't know what to expect from Winnemucca. Making up your adventures as you go along is fun!

Life at altitude

After a second day in Aurora, Colorado, I once again greet the evening exhausted but full of life. I've stayed both days with Wiley and her family -- who, along with my previous hosts Jacob, Zach, and Alex, must be some of the best and most generous hosts in America -- and will forge west tomorrow morning with fond memories of the Mile High City.

The days here seem to blur together, as my head is fuzzy from fatigue and altitude, but I remember a lot of words. I've had plentiful and often hilarious conversations with Wiley's clan about topics ranging from tomatoes to economics to charismatic megafauna. I've heard stories about tornado chasing in Denver, President Clinton's personal troll doll in Washington, and signs informing tourists what to do if you encounter a cow in Switzerland. We had conversations over dinner last night at a charming local Persian restaurant whose combination lamb and beef patties were new to me, over Wiley's mother's koi pond this morning as she recovered from being attacked by a vicious garter snake, and over lunch today at a Boulder tea house imported piece by piece from Tajikistan.

I've also learned many things about life in the mountains -- some from the family, others from direct experience. Most of the direct-experience items have to do with the atmosphere of a town a mile in the air. For one thing, I've spent much of my time here suffering from airplane ear from climbing and descending the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. For another, the lack of air means Aurora is far cooler and less humid than Kansas City; Wiley tells me that every thousand feet of altitude means the temperature drops three degrees. Yet in spite of the cool air, it's easier to get sunburned or dehydrated here; less air between us and the sun means that everything the sun does in Florida it does better in Colorado. I learned this firsthand as Wiley and I walked a 2.5-mile path in Golden Gate Canyon State Park outside Boulder after a dizzying climb to nine thousand feet that Blackbird struggled to surmount. I'll eventually post photos, but as usual they will be a pale imitation of the wonders that are the Continental Divide and mountain creeks and aspen groves. There was a fifteen-degree difference between sunlight and shade, and my water vanished quickly as we trod the steep paths alert for mountain lions or grizzly bears. (No "charismatic megafauna" was in evidence on the trail, but we saw some awkward and cute mule deer from the car.) The hike was the defining moment of my time near Denver, the part that made me understand how everyday life here is different from life in Fort Myers.

There is of course so much more to say, but I can never say it all and I have to hit the hay now so that I can hit the road later. Tomorrow I detour from the interstate along a circuitous route recommended by Wiley's mother. I'll get a king's view of the mountains and visit the highest incorporated town in the lower 48 states. I hope to blog next from Grand Junction, Colorado, near the western border of the state. Until then!

I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore

This post comes to you from Aurora, Colorado, just outside Denver. My hostesses this evening are my college friend Wiley and her mother, who -- like all my hosts so far without exception -- have been wonderful to me and ready to help in any way they can. In fact, I'm going to stay with them tomorrow night as well. This traveling has left me breathless! I need a one-day "weekend" when I don't have to drive five hours and can just recover from my adventures so far, and tomorrow is it. I expect I'll still be blogging, though.

Today started way back in Hays. I ate a continental breakfast of oatmeal and then set out for Fort Hays to see if I could uncover the reason a town of 20,000 grew up in rural Kansas so far from a large city. My instinct was borne out on this one! It turns out the town grew up around the fort, as the wives and children of the officers and enlisted men tried to carve lives for themselves out of what was then (in the barely postbellum United States) the frontier. The fort in turn was established as a staging area to protect the railroads from Indian raids. It was named after General Alexander Hays, a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg recently dead at the Civil War's Battle of the Wilderness. The tour of the fort was itself interesting -- it was much, much better to be an officer than an enlisted man, by the way -- but the reason it will stick in my memory was that a very old stranger from the Wichita area who I hadn't even spoken to went ahead and paid my $3 admission without so much as asking first. We chatted during the tour. He's a pleasant guy who seemed like he would really rather be sitting in an armchair than taking a walking tour, but he was in good humor. He left a big stack of printed cards under my windshield wiper evangelizing the Gospel of Matthew -- a stack that I've duly put in the souvenir bin to remind me of him and the fort.

In between Hays and Aurora I was intrigued by roadway signs advertising the "world's largest prairie dog" and various other prairie animals. On their cue I pulled over in a tiny town that turned out to be Oakley, Kansas. The zoo there was full of native fauna -- coyotes, foxes, buffalo, rattlesnakes -- and the kicker was that it was built atop a live prairie dog town. The whole grounds were studded with holes that prairie dogs darted in and out of constantly. They are adorable creatures. (The "world's largest" is a six-foot plastic molding of a prairie dog in the back of the zoo.) I was a little worried about whether the animals were well cared for in this fairly primitive roadside facility, but I didn't let it stop me from enjoying my first sight of many of these animals. Afterward I went across the street and lunched at a surprisingly yummy buffet before getting back on the road.

I'm not ready to write about Aurora yet, though there's plenty to say! I'm tired and need to go to bed. What I can say is that one's first sight of the Rocky Mountains as one approaches over the eastern Colorado hills -- when you first become sure that what you're seeing are snow-capped peaks and not low-hanging clouds -- is magical and nearly traffic-stopping. This first sight was another milestone on the journey, one more reminder that I'm far from home with no way of getting back but to drive myself and with every intention of venturing further still!

Everything's up to date

Today I'm posting from Merriam, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City! I'm staying with my friend Jacob from the Utena forum, who's already shown me a good time in the form of a rose garden and lively conversation and will show me a good breakfast strata in the morning. I'll post all about KC when I've seen more of it. Today I post about the in-between space and time.

I closed my stay in Paducah by visiting the riverfront. I owed this city, which grew up around the Tennessee River, at least that much, and this is the part of the Mississippi my trip takes me across. It was... cool, if not exactly visually stunning. Actually, I found the insect life more interesting. The pier was overrun with bugs I've never seen before; they looked like large earwigs flying around on damselfly wings. I asked a passerby about them (he was on a road trip himself, from Texas to Pennsylvania) and he says the locals call them sand flies. Wikipedia's idea of a sandfly looks nothing like these bugs, unfortunately, so I can't tell you what they were.

As I drove across southern Illinois en route to Missouri, I pulled off the interstate to check out a winery advertised on the roadside. I couldn't find the winery, or indeed any other human beings at all. Instead I found a trail called Tunnel Hill -- a cliff-bordered nature walk, miniature creeks flowing on each side from recent rains, unkept and gorgeous in the heavy morning fog. After a quarter of a mile, the trail entered a tunnel which was itself probably about a quarter of a mile long. Its interior was completely dark except for the points of light at each end. Walking through it bordered on a religious experience, each step an act of faith: will this step be the one that lands on a rattlesnake or in a bottomless pit? I was afraid, but I pushed forward and exited the tunnel at the other end, very proud of myself. Sadly, I soon had to turn around again because it had started to rain.

And what a rain. It was the longest, hardest sustained deluge I have ever driven through. Lightning flared down in all directions and the winds buffeted brave Blackbird as she strove across southern Illinois. With patience we continued our mission in spite of the blinding rain. In the end we were rewarded as we pulled into sunny lands whose gas stations have quarter-operated cologne dispensers in the restrooms. (I got a teaklike fragrance that's supposed to be a knockoff of something called Aramis.)

In St. Louis I had to use a parking garage by myself for the first time. My city friends and most of my suburban friends are cracking up right now, but it's true! I had to find a parking garage and keep track of where it was all by myself, even as I ate at Einstein Bros. Bagels and toured Forest Park afterward. I didn't get to see much of Forest Park, a very large place where the World's Fair was once hosted; what I saw was verdant and pretty but not memorable. The seemingly endless straight drive across Missouri along I-70 afterwards was more memorable, if only because I had finally joined the artery that will carry me most of the way to the West Coast.

When I finally arrived in Kansas City, I checked out the Mormons' Independence Temple (the future site of the Second Coming of Christ according to their church), which has an architecturally gorgeous spire that I took a good picture of. This aesthetic experience, however, was far overshadowed by the artistry that was Korma Sutra, an Indian restaurant in Highland Park that Jacob recommended to me. The A/C was busted and they hardly spoke English, but the food was by far the best Indian food I've ever eaten, and probably the best food of any kind I've had since Balthazar in New York City last year. I ordered lamb marsala and chai; instead I got lamb marsala made from Aries' own daughter, chai spiced with clove and cinnamon and ginger, and many foods I didn't ask for, such as garlic naan, a toothpick of creme bruleeish ice cream, some kind of pita that I very much liked with the spicy dipping sauce, something Jacob tells me was called "gulab jamun" that consisted of caramelized who-knows-what whose sweetness concentration was so high that my mouth nearly melted, and some kind of milk/melon concoction that Jacob can't identify from my inadequate description of it. The whole culinary masterpiece was topped off with an actual hand-bath administered with warm water poured from a pitcher by my waitress while I squeezed a piece of lime between my fingers. Six stars out of five, if you want my Zagat rating.

And that was today, pretty much! Now to find out what tomorrow is like!

Days like this, part 3

This is the third and last part of a three-part post. Please read part 1 first; it's two posts below this one. Blogs aren't like novels; you have to read them in reverse order. It's like the movie Memento, except not actually intended to be viewed that way. Bizarre.

Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, was my next stop after Eustis. I rushed to Decatur to meet my host Zach, who was generous enough to wait for me before heading to a biweekly get-together at his friend's house to play tabletop games. I was looking forward to getting to know Zach (a friend's friend who I'd never met before) and his cohort over a board game -- but things didn't quite work out that way! Zach's friend was MIA, and through a series of increasingly frantic phone calls Zach eventually discovered that game night was canceled. He didn't even hesitate before dialing yet another number, then several more, organizing an impromptu meet-up at a local Thai place. The ginger chicken was nice and savory, and the conversation was a real challenge; I navigated a sea of unfamiliar names and relationships that emerged among the four of us there. Unfortunately, amidst the general rush of the evening I didn't have my camera with me, and the Slug Incident back in Zach's apartment was a sucker punch that knocked any will I might have had to photograph anything out of me. I feel very much like Bilbo Baggins -- someone not naturally proactive or good with exigencies who nonetheless finds himself on an adventure and doesn't always know how to cope with it.

I mentioned in the last post that the three towns I've stayed in have been completely different, and Decatur is the polar opposite of spacious Eustis -- ultra-urban, with everything crammed into as little space as possible, bending streets and buildings in the process. It's not a pretty place -- is what I thought driving in on Sunday evening. But this morning (was it only this morning?!?), driving out, I saw the way the skyscrapers vanished into the dawn fog as though their tops were rubbed out with an eraser the color of the sky... and I decided maybe Decatur wasn't so bad.

I did get a picture from Decatur, but it's not the skyscraper one. It's the side of Zach's apartment building, a poor picture that could have been taken anywhere. I wish I had pulled over and snapped the shot of the skyscrapers.

As I passed through southern Tennessee on the way to Paducah, I saw several signs for some tourist spot named Ruby Falls. I was on track to get into Paducah very early and had some time to kill, so I figured, what the hell, waterfalls are pretty. Right decision. Turns out Ruby Falls is an underground waterfall at the end of a half-mile cave a thousand feet beneath Lookout Mountain, just outside Chattanooga. Twenty bucks bought me a gorgeous tour -- and one that I do have pictures of.

A tourist-oriented cave tour is not photography-friendly. Though everything is lit just right, you're never at rest for long, and when you are there are heads or hands between you and the thing you want to photograph. Nevertheless, I got some fantastic shots, which I present here without further comment, except to say that they are all much more beautiful in person. If you're ever near Chattanooga, go.





And now is the part where I want to regale you with tales of the wonders of Paducah... only writing these posts has ended up taking most of my spare time this evening, so I haven't seen much of the town. Actually, I'm glad. The last few days have been full of sensory overload, and so for once it's probably better for me to sit inside staring at an electronic screen than to be outside getting fresh air and discovering things. I'm sorry, Paducah. You seem like a nice town. You are two hundred years old and full of river lore. If I ever come back I promise I'll give you the exploration you deserve.