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The Great American Road Trip - 28 - The Journey Home

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 12 2012 · 121 views

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Today, seeing that the storm system we outraced in St. Louis was catching up, we got up early and on the road quickly. Our first stop of the day was backtracking to the stadium of the Lexington Legends, the first team we met that is so disorganized as to not have a pennant. (At least the Missoula Ospreys had a pennant, except there, we just couldn't find it for a long time.) However, they did have "circular pennants" as the fellow called them. He was most likely unaware that pennants are pennants because of their shape and a circular pennant is impossible. We got one, as their mascot is a guy with a handlebar mustache, and handlebar mustaches are cool.

We got back on the road and headed all the way into Charleston, West Virginia. We made the obligatory stop-by-to-get-a-pennant deal at the stadium of the West Virginia Power.

Now, this was a funny story, and a lesson in how not to run an organization. Their team store had a sign on it, which told us to go up to the next floor to find the Power offices. We went upstairs and found the offices, where the woman there redirected us again ... back downstairs. We went down again and knocked on the door, where a lady opened the doors.

She was the textbook definition of someone who was totally and utterly spaced out. (I have no reason to believe that she was mentally impaired genetically.) The conversation went something like this:

"Hi! We'd like to purchase a pennant from your shop."

"..."

"We've been all over the country and are heading home now, but we collect these things. We must have about 15 of them in the trunk."

"..."

"Do you have any pennants here?"

"Sure ..." [turns around and points out window] "They're in storage."

"Oh, that's too bad. Do you have a key or something?"

"Yeah ..."

"Looks like there are video game consoles out there."

"I can't move them ..."

"That's alright, we can move them."

"That's not a good idea ..."

At this point, she walked out of the room, muttering something about storage. We followed her into a storage closet, where she told us in the most forceful tone we could elicit from her to get out, we weren't supposed to be in there, etc. Other strange and otherwise awkward moments occurred in the rather one-sided conversation we had with her as we checked out - but hey, we got our pennant (and a hat to boot).

While the stadiums of both the Princeton Rays and the Bluefield Jays were both along our route, Princeton was too far off of the road for us to bother with them. However, Bluefield was not, and we got into the Bluefield parking lot at 3:59, one minute before they closed up. We got in, and while they did not have a pennant, their hats were very cool. The folks there were very nice and apologized for their lack of a pennant. We shared some of our pennant collection stories with them, and they didn't seem surprised when we told them the gritty details of our experiences with the teams that are not well run. The Ospreys and the Power must have infamous reputations around the minor leagues

We stopped for a quick bite to eat in Bluefield after we walked around a tank that, for some reason, is parked outside the ball park. After that, we didn't stop until we got all the way back home. We ran into some rain on the way, but nothing that slowed us down considerably.

Our total trip distance came out to a staggering 8,355.4 miles. Going along Interstate 90 - the longest Interstate - from Seattle to Boston and then back to Seattle again is a mere 6,198 miles. Interstate 40, which runs from the North Carolina coast all the way into California, is 2,559 miles, could have been traversed three times with our distance (7,677 miles) with 678 miles left over. The discontinued but still famous Route 66, which covered 2,451 miles in its day, could have been traveled three times over as well, with 1,002 miles as a remainder.

Overall, the distance we covered is equivalent to 5.6 percent of the combined distance of all the U.S. Interstates.

Are we crazy, or what?

Tomorrow, we get to sleep in, and wake up in our own beds. Tomorrow would have started our fifth week, which might have been too much to bear.

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The Great American Road Trip - 27 - Illinois, Indiana, And Kentucky

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 11 2012 · 113 views

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When we woke up, we saw the radar and knew that hailstorms were on their way. Fortunately, they were west of St. Louis, and we were safe from the potential threat that they would so intrudingly impose. We made good time into Illinois, then Indiana. I drove all the way from somewhere in Illinois, through Indiana, and then into Louisville. In Louisville, we stopped by the stadium of the Louisville Bats. The Bats, of course, were out of town, but we were able to get into the stadium, where we got a pennant and hat. (I have officially lost count of the number of pennants we've gotten.) The lady who checked us out directed us to the Louisville Slugger museum down the street, so we went down there - and it was cool.

I never knew exactly how they made baseball bats, so the tour we got through the factory was highly interesting. We handled some game-used bats of famous players before heading into the factory, where loud machines whirr. Minor league players have to use their own money to get their bats, while the major league teams supply the money for their players to use. Bats used to take 30 minutes to carve, and now it could be done in about thirty seconds. (Major league bats take 45 seconds.) Their famous logo is burned into the sides of the bats which aren't used to hit the ball, as the grain has to be tight to get the most power. Some bats get colors while others receive a quick flame to bring out the individual grains in the wood. At the end, they gave out mini-bats to everybody.

Outside the building, we talked with a guy who was sitting in a golf cart to ask him about places he'd suggest to eat. We followed his directions and found a place called Another Place Sandwich Shop. The interior is multi-leveled and eclectic. Norman Rockwell paintings adorn the walls, the menu is made of chalk, and the stairs creak ominously as we walked on them. I learned that I'm apparently a pastrami fan now. Pastramis are cool.

It was getting later, but we wanted to get as far along the road as possible. While we wanted to get all the way to Charleston, West Virginia, we got to Lexington before our GPS started to become homicidal once again and got us off on what may or may not have been the wrong road. We exited and called the phone number for the hotel. We asked about other hotels in the area, and apparently, everyone was booked. (What is it about West Virginia that prevents them from having hotel vacancies? I mean, seriously. I've been through more than half of the states that make up the US and West Virginia is the only one that never seems to have a hotel.) We actually had to double back a bit to get to our hotel, but it wasn't too much of a stretch

Tomorrow, we get home.

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The Great American Road Trip - 26 - St. Louis And The Gateway Arch

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 10 2012 · 131 views

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We got up in Kansas City, and we thought that we might be able to hoof it over to St. Louis in time to catch the beginning of the Cardinals game. We got up too late, however, and we needed that sleep. Plus, the temperature and humidity both were going to be high. Considering these, we got a later start, eventually getting to St. Louis.

While we didn't get to see any of the game, a nice man at the gate let my dad in to get our obligatory pennant so as to further add to our already bulging collection. I had to signal to him which one was better from a distance, but we got one in the end, thanking the man who let us in for his trouble. (He thought we were kind of crazy for being on the road for so long, but I sensed that he was glad when he heard that we were heading back.)

After this, we walked over to the Gateway Arch. Its top is over 600 feet in the air, and to ascend we had to stuff ourselves into five-person balls which ascended, adjusted, and creaked its way from under the base to the very top in four minutes. In the ascension, my dad and I made various faces at a baby girl who was on the lap of one of the other folks who was in the ball with us, but we could not get any sort of reaction from her. The top, when we got out on to it, was curved along with the ceiling, so you have to walk uphill to get to the very tip-top. The windows are tiny, and everyone was leaning over onto angled railings to peer out of them. I suppose I was looking for more glass, like the CN Tower in Toronto was full of, but since it was made in the 60s, it was not. The views out, however, were stunning. You could see far into Illinois from one end and far over St. Louis and its suburbs from the other.

At the base, looking up, the view is vertigo-inducing, as is seeing the base when I leaned at the right angle when I was peering out the top. But it was getting more and more crowded as it went, and since there were no other different views to see, we headed back down.

We then went into a historic section of St. Louis, where the asphalt gives way to cobblestone, the sidewalks turn to brick, and the facades of the buildings look like old, old factory buildings. We poked around the fronts of a few restaurants before deciding on Hannegan's, where the interior was a cool change from the mugginess of the outside. We were one of the few people in there, and as such we'd get nearly immediate refills of our three lemonades as soon as we'd taken about four sips. We tried the toasted ravioli - which, apparently, is a St. Louis institution about which we were unaware - and were impressed. We had Key Lime Pie and Mud Pie after our entrees were served. The former was delicious while the latter was not nearly as big (or as good) as the massive one we got in Spokane.

Tomorrow: Lexington, KY.

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The Great American Road Trip - 25 - Archway Monument And Kansas City

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 09 2012 · 117 views

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Our first stop of the day was the Archway Monument, a building that Interstate 80 goes directly under. It is at - or at the very least, near - the geographic center of the United States. It opened in 2000 and had to be lifted over the highway in one piece, shutting down I-80 for eight hours as they used specialized equipment to place it in its proper location. Its interior is a well-done museum dedicated to the pioneers going west, from the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails, to the Pony Express, to the Transcontinental Telegraph and the later Transcontinental Railroad, all the way to the first tourists who toured the country from their cars and, finally, the creation of I-80 itself. We were greeted by a man in period costume who must have had more than his fair share of professional acting lessons, for his long, scraggly, white beard, his semi-waddling gait, and his goin'-west semi-southernish accent all added to the feeling of going back in time. (The others who were there in period costume were not as hilarious as this guy was.) We were presented with wireless headphones that changed what they were playing as you moved from room to room.

I've always considered the pioneers who went westward as being a little nutty, and this didn't change my perspective on them. However, I also knew that they had to be brave to tough it out over the vast distances which they had to cross. Their life back east was hard, and life in the wagon trains, while somewhat tougher, was not the increase in toughness that I had expected. After all, they had to have had a pretty hard life in the east to want to go west so badly.

Those who came out looking for gold often ran out of luck. The traders, who sold them supplies, were the smart and shrewd ones. While supply was low and demand was high, they still jacked up the prices of various foodstuffs to absolutely astronomical levels. The price of one egg was regularly set at fifty cents, which is about double the price that they are today - and that's not even accounting for inflation. But the 49ers had to eat, so they paid up or perished. Even the ones that found gold often were forced to use it all on necessities. Often, the ones that went to California ended up in San Francisco, which, in its day, was booming. It was mainly a city of tents and houses of ill repute. It would regularly burn, but its citizens would work the next day on building it up again, just so it'd burn down again.

Exiting the monument with more knowledge than we had entered with, we got back on the road. The wind was, once again, quite brutal, and I am unsure as to whether or not it ever dies down. We briefly went into Iowa before coming down into Missouri, where we reached Kansas City. The place we had investigated online was called Woodyard BBQ, and was on the Kansas side of Kansas City. (Kansas makes this our 20th state thus far.) Woodyard started out as - what else? - a yard full of wood, where the proprietor would sell folks various kinds of wood. Eventually, he decided to throw a piece of pork on a smoker and let it cook low and slow throughout the day so he'd have something to eat by the end of the day. He ended up giving out free food to his customers, so much so that they told him to open a restaurant.

He didn't - but his descendants did.

It's not a very nice looking place; it looks like it's been used over and over again, an indicator that it's pretty good. It is two buildings, one a home and one that appears to have been a building that housed wood. We walked around for a little bit before someone who worked there gave us some menus, and we decided what we'd get. Having never been there before, it was rather hard to figure out, especially considering that everyone assumed that we had. After the food is prepared in the back, someone comes out and calls the name that you provided to the counter. If you're not around, that person had to go outside to find you.

While I didn't particularly care for any of the sides that we got, the pork was soft and delicious. it was served piled high in what appeared to be a bizarre fusion of a hot dog bun and a hoagie roll. I finished it off in short order.

Tomorrow: On to St. Louis, where we'll see the Gateway Arch as well as maybe catch a Cardinals game.

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The Great American Road Trip - 24 - Scotts Bluff And Through Nebraska

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 08 2012 · 63 views

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Our first stop of the day was Scotts Bluff. Because of a scraping noise that we had heard emanating from somewhere within the vicinage of the front wheels, we took the shuttle up there. We saw for a long way up there, across to some small badlands that are around a portion of it, as well as all the way to Chimney Rock, which was small and barely discernible from the sky, but we saw it nonetheless. The bluff, while not the highest thing that we've seen, was stunning in the fact that it rose up out of the prairie with no warning. After getting back to ground level, we walked along a stretch of the old Oregon Trail, where the ruts where the wagons and oxen went can still be seen.

We got back on the road, but the car's steering was acting a little funny and the scraping, tapping noise was getting progressively sharper. so we pulled into a small Nebraskan town named Kimball. While the dealership was slammed, the folks who worked there must have felt pity for us or something, because they worked us in. Within two hours, they'd replaced a ball bearing in one of the wheels, telling us that "we'd never have made it home if they hadn't replaced it then." My dad kept threatening to trade it in for a new one, but I reminded him that the process would take too long, for he would invest more time and money in getting a new one than he would if he just paid for the repairs, because he'd have spent twelve hours at the minimum at the dealership if he'd decided on the former, as is his car-buying custom.

Back on the road, we got across a significant portion of Nebraska, past both deer and more prairie dog colonies. While the wind was bad at first, it died down soon enough. Getting back into Central Time, we got to Kearney, where we stopped at a restaurant called the USA Steak Buffet. I can't say that the food was excellent, but it was alright. One could order steaks however you liked at a counter, and while I ordered mine medium, it came out well done. The next one I got was laced with fat. However, their fried chicken was pretty decent and I learned that I liked catfish. (Also, their peanut butter pie was positively glorious.)

Getting into the hotel, the lady who checked us in was surprised that we had earned so many points with our consecutive stays, and "climbing up the latter that fast." But my dad misheard the last two words, thinking that the lady said something about coming to an event known as Fat-Fest. This led to much hilarity and laughter.

Tomorrow: Kansas City, Missouri.

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The Great American Road Trip - 23 - Hail, Buffalo, And Nebraska

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 07 2012 · 82 views

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After breakfast in Rapid City, our first stop of the day was at Mount Rushmore. The famous heads of the four Presidents is just there in the side of the Black Hills. We discussed the construction of the sculpture with a park ranger who didn't quite know what he was talking about, but we got a few tidbits of information anyway. The sculptor of Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum, originally wanted to build even more of the featured Presidents than what the final product turned out to be - Washington, for example, would be completed down to his waist, and Lincoln would have his hand on his lapel on the end. (I could see the lapel and a knuckle from the right angle.) Borglum died before the work could be completed, but there was no way to complete it anyway, considering that the quality of the lower-down rock was poor. I did not realize this beforehand, but Borglum intended for there to be a "Hall of Records" behind Rushmore, containing information, busts, and historic documents related to United States history. This too was left incomplete.

It really is epic to behold, though it's only about 500 feet up from the trail that skirts the base of the rubble that piled up from the dynamite blasts that carved 90 percent of the rock. The rest was smoothed away with jackhammers wielded by workers who dangled on flimsy-looking apparatuses. Work was done over 14 years, but only six years altogether if you count up the months in which they were able to work.

And yes, in real life, Teddy Roosevelt looks like he's hunching over Jefferson's shoulder, staring intently at Lincoln, just as he does in pretty much every single picture of the sculpture.

After getting turned around outside of Mount Rushmore, we headed on into Custer State Park. We got onto a wildlife scenic route and nearly immediately ran into a massive herd of buffalo. The adults were molting, eating, scratching, and occasionally grunting, while their young were staying around their mothers, feeding off of their milk or walking behind them. They crossed the road but they didn't stay there, nor did the car get surrounded. We also saw donkeys that were feeding by sticking their heads into the open windows of cars and licking those that were inside until they got food. A couple of morons got out - this is after signs warning not to do this, mind you - and put their arms around the neck one of the donkeys for the sake of a picture! While the donkeys are no doubt domesticated by now, considering how many people have fed them over the years, they're still wild creatures, and if something makes it jump ... well, those people would just wish that they weren't so idiotic.

After this, we saw pronghorn and deer mixed together, as well as a few more prairie dog colonies, before running into (almost literally) another herd of buffalo, who were taking their time getting across the street. One was on the other side of the hill and ran down across the street, nearly colliding with a car that was coming the other direction.

But a storm was a-coming, and we foolishly thought that we were going to make it out of there before it hit. We'd checked the weather predictions earlier in the day, and we'd seen that there was a high percentage of thunderstorm activity in the area.

What they didn't tell us was that there was ferocious, very-small-marble-sized hail that, when mixed in rain and dense fog, made the roads absolutely impassable and impenetrable. Desperate to protect the front windshield, we pulled off, but we then realized that we were just sitting ducks. Making progress, however slow it was, was universally better, and we did eventually run out of it with no car damage. (As we went through the rest of the Custer, we saw piles of ice on either side of the road, an indication of how thick the hail came down.)

As we exited the park, we went through a series of hairpin turns and blind one-land tunnels and somewhat less blind one-lane bridges which we had to honk in to let others know we were there. Others did not provide us the same luxury of advance warning, so we slammed on the brakes more than one time as people exited. (It was like this entering the park as well.)

Anxious to get out of the rain, we ran into more rain and hail when we got into Hot Springs. We let it subside while under cover before getting back on the road, where we ran into it once again. However, it was mostly rain, and once solidly in Nebraska it subsided. We got to Scottsbluff before checking into this kind-of-lousy-but-not-really-all-that-bad hotel, where the shower head sounds like a chainsaw, steps from other rooms can be felt through the floor in the form of small earthquake, and whose staff apparently never leave Scottsbluff for any reason whatsoever. (You can check out any time, but you can never leave ...)

However, this did not end the day's adventure. We walked over to an adjacent restaurant to eat. They give you the most menus per person of any joint in the free world. It took me a minute just to sluice out the main one and read over it. After we ordered, we started getting punchy. My mom stacked the small vials of cream they supply for coffee alterations into a pyramid, while my dad and I kept laughing heartily at the placing of wadded-up straw containers at the very edge of the table. (Upon second thoughts, I am unsure why this struck us as so inordinately funny.) My dad invented the Pie Dance after we sampled their delicious peanut butter silk pie, and my mom got the obligatory picture of the pie (her first attempt saw my dad stick a fork in the frame at the last second), as well as us doing the Pie Dance in tandem. (We also did the "Safety Dance" - as made semi-famous by the music video of the song of the same name by the 80s group Men Without Hats - in tandem. We all literally cried from laughter after this, and our waitress thought we were crazy at best.)

Tomorrow: The actual Scotts Bluff, for which the town is named, then on through Nebraska as far as we think we can go.

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The Great American Road Trip - 22 - The Badlands

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 06 2012 · 41 views

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I forgot to mention yesterday that my dad ran over a squirrel which was limping across the road. Another car, which passed by us, spooked it, and while he swerved to avoid it, the right front tire clipped it with a thud. Like many of its kind, it had a death wish, and we can only hope we served a purpose in putting it out of its misery.

Today, we did some planning over delicious omelets. Originally, we wanted to go to Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills as well as the Badlands, but since we're basically right between the two, we had to decide between them. Because we knew for certain how long Rushmore would take, we decided to see the Badlands today, stay another night, then see the other two tomorrow when we go down into Nebraska.

On the way to the Badlands, we saw sign after sign after even more hilarious sign for the most famous tourist trap in America: Wall Drug. Why any drug store needs a massive dinosaur statue in front of it, or an art collection to rival those of some museums, I will never know. It's entirely possible that Wall Drug does not even have a drug store any more, though they advertise free ice water and five-cent coffee - except to honeymooners and veterans, when it's free.

The Badlands are strange. I likened them to the Painted Desert which we saw around the Petrified Forest, but they are on a much larger and vaster scale. The prairie stops right where the Badlands begin, dropping down into massive stone curves and structures. We walked out into them, from marker to marker off of the trail. I'm glad I got as many pictures as I did, because I don't know how well I can describe it. The stone is like natural concrete, and takes a toll on your feet if you walk on it for too long. I rubbed on bits of broken-off stone and it basically came off like chalk in my hand. The ones that do not look like that look like swiss cheese concrete, as there are holes in them.

The landscape itself undulates - every bit looks the same until closer inspection reveals it to look different. Walking out onto the Badlands is easily disorienting, and if they didn't have the yellow poles cemented into the ground, we might have gotten lost out there. Canyons just drop off out of nowhere, and mesas at prairie level jut up, featuring grass on their surfaces. It's easily discernible where the surrounding Badlands have been carved away from them.

We walked around a few trails, including one that went up 200 feet in elevation around some juniper trees. I wish we could have stayed there for longer but the bugs were eating us alive. ("Look, some humans! Lunch!") The trees were beautiful, though, and kind of soft to the touch. My dad spotted a rabbit off of the trail - it might have been sleeping, since its breaths were barely discernible.

Getting back to the car, we headed on down to a small store/restaurant near the park visitor's center. We ate at the table next to the one where, on a trek my parents made with my maternal grandparents well before I was born, my late grandmother put her half-eaten buffalo burger inside her purse. (I'm sure it didn't make sense then, either.) History did not repeat itself, however; my mom had no purse on her person. (She did not purseonify that statement. I think that it's a purseonal preference.) After that, we saw some intricately made, multicolored clay sculptures of various wild animals, as well as carvings made from bone, in the gift store. We bought none, but from my pursepective, I'm still amazed that people can do such things.

As we wound our way out of the park, we noted two wild turkeys, two bighorn sheep that were unafraid of clamoring around on top of sheer cliffs, more absolutely adorable prairie dogs, and more deer and antelope. The only critter we didn't see a specimen of was the one species which we were warned about from the signs time and time again: rattlesnakes. This didn't stop us from hearing any, for as we walked along the boardwalks which some portions of the trails were made from, the grass along the sides would shudder with rattles all around. If you stopped, then the rattles would die down. If you walked again, then they'd start on up again. Despite all of this - which was very hard to miss - people still took their kids through the snake country off to the very edges of the cliffs - cliffs which are well known for occasionally giving way under pressure. It's stunning that some people are that dull.

It was a little after 5:00 that we got out of the park, conserving what very little of the camera's battery remained for the last sight of the day: a Minuteman II missile silo, situated off a dirt road off an exit off of the interstate. We had gone by the visitor's center earlier, seen some memorabilia, and a funny sign which parodied the Domino's Pizza logo, but had a rocket on the logo as well as "Delivery in 30 Minutes or Less, or Your Next One's Free" - referring, of course, to the nuclear warheads contained within. They apparently allow people in the old silo now - but we couldn't get in. The park service had posted up a sign on the fence which told us to let ourselves in, but to remember to lock the doors behind us to keep the cattle out.

This was all well and good, except for the fact that they didn't exactly provide a key. My dad and I struggled with it for a little bit, trying to see if the padlock was stuck, but alas, we could not get through. We got some good pictures from the outside before leaving, passing more signs advertising Wall Drug.

Tomorrow: we see Mount Rushmore and the surrounding Black Hills, then make our way down into Nebraska.

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The Great American Road Trip - 21 - Through Wyoming

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 06 2012 · 85 views

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We got up in Bozeman and headed on towards Billings. After getting a hat and pennant at the stadium of the Billings Mustangs of the short-season Pioneer League, we went to the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where General George Armstrong Custer and his forces were annihilated by Native American warriors defending their ancestral homeland. The battle - and the war that it was in - was prompted by the way the federal government handled the Black Hills, which were considered to be sacred. When gold was discovered in the hills - which were in Indian territory - Washington tried to appease the situation by buying the hills. The Indians didn't consider that to be a very nice move, but instead of forcing the white settlers off of the reservation, the United States realigned the reservation and ordered the Native Americans out of the Black Hills.

Custer's moves were rather idiotic, as he split his forces into three parts. His forces got intelligence from their scouts that there was a massive army of Indian warriors that would kill them if they tried to attack. Custer - perhaps sensing defeat and thus death - shaved his defining facial hair before the battle. The last of his forces were slaughtered near the top of a hill after Custer ordered them to kill their horses for breastworks. The Indians then pinned down one of the detached forces led by General Reno for around 30 hours in surrounding territory before they were relieved.

After walking around the battlefield, we went down to Gillette, Wyoming, where we ate at a taco place. The tacos were good but they messed up both my order and my dad's, giving us beef instead of chicken. Their milkshakes were rather good, though.

Our next stop was Devils Tower, a gigantic round stone monolith that rises up out of the flatness around it. It was originally the core of a volcano that solidified, and after eons, the rest of the volcano eroded away, leaving only the strange Tower behind. According to the best historical evidence, it was a mile taller than it is now, which is really something considering it's pretty tall as it stands. As we approached it, we drive through a field that had hundreds and hundreds of prairie dogs.

They are quite literally the cutest things ever. If you looked up "cute" in any dictionary, you'd likely find a picture of a prairie dog next to it. As soon as we pulled off to the side of the road and stopped the engine, scores popped up out of their holes and started scurrying around, either with their faces down to the ground to eat, upright and eating something with their paws, cuddling on each other, or looking at us warily. They'd just dart and scurry around, going back into their holes before coming back up a minute later. The baby ones were the cutest of all, as they'd scurry behind their mother down holes or out into the world to eat something.

But we couldn't stay and watch the prairie dogs forever, as we had the Tower to get to. It's really eerie from its base, looking straight up, but even more so looking around. Thousands of rocks, which were once part of the Tower's facade, broke off and tumbled down. Now they are stacked all around its base, one on top of the other on top of another, down into the ground, creating dark holes wherein snakes would probably enjoy living. I could easily have walked from rock to rock comfortably, but I did not.

After walking a little ways around the Tower, we noticed both the time of day and the storm in the distance, and while we would have liked to have walked the loop around the Tower, we decided not to. We headed further west, down towards Sundance (where Butch Cassidy's sidekick got his infamous nickname), then further along towards the South Dakota border. All along, we saw large deer and antelope, sometimes grazing alongside horses or cow. Wyoming, though famous for its sparse population, was no different than Montana or even the eastern section of Oregon. The difference with those states is that their population centers are larger.

Tomorrow: Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, and hopefully a buffalo herd or two.

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The Great American Road Trip - 20 - Big Sky Country

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 04 2012 · 85 views

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We got up in Spokane today and went to the stadium of the Spokane Indians. Being a short-season team, they were not playing, but they let us in and sold us a hat and pennant all the same. We briefly went through Idaho afterwards - but through its thin panhandle, so we weren't in the state for very long. In fact, we went through only two counties.

Getting into Montana, we had our sights set on Missoula, where we were going to get something to eat as well as see if we couldn't get a pennant from the Missoula Ospreys of the Pioneer League, also short-season. Their web site is horrid, and the parks and rec people don't know where their offices were located because, as we were told, they move them every single year. Abandoning the attempt, it was saved at the last moment by my mom, who spotted their new location on a street corner. We popped in and bought the pennant, in which we were greeted by a person who was flabbergasted their their site still listed their old offices and demanded that we prove it was on the site. We did, and she felt stupid, and thus we left.

We ate at a diner that, though built in the 90s, has the charm and atmosphere of a place that has been in existence since the 50s. The waitress call us "honey", "sweetie", and "sugar" throughout the meal. While the burgers weren't anything special, their milkshakes had been voted best Missoula shakes for 15 years in a row, so we had to try them. While not quite to the high standards set by Gatsby's, they were still pretty good. Seeing that a storm was rolling in, we headed on out.

And then we got caught in some of it.

We managed to escape the heart of the storm, but its outskirts were violent with circular clouds that looked especially eager to drop a funnel cloud on either our heads or the heads of the horses that were so peacefully grazing as if nothing was happening. Lightning was all around, and hail was interspersed with large drops of water. We got out of it in time, however, and kept going through Butte and into Bozeman. We called ahead the hotel in Billings, where we were informed that not only was the hotel completely booked, but the road from Bozeman to Billings was being pelted with hail and other symptoms of a violent storm.

Tomorrow, we are going to try to get to Gillette, Wyoming.

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The Great American Road Trip - 19 - Spokane

Posted by Sumiki , in The Great American Road Trip Jun 04 2012 · 80 views

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Last night, craziness happened. As we got onto the elevator, a man who was dressed for the haunters convention that was held in the hotel pulled up his oversized cane and shot at us. We had heard this cap gun going off earlier on, when we were eating more maple ice cream, so we knew that it wasn't real ... but if we hadn't heard it earlier, my dad and I probably would have attacked him.

We got back to our room and got to sleep ... but around 1:00 in the morning, doors slammed shut and rabid carousing could be heard from other rooms. We realized at that precise moment that our worst fear had been realized: the convention people were on our floor. It got so bad that my dad called down to the front desk and made sure that someone got up to our floor to calm them down. While the man who was sent up did indeed excoriate them, we are all in unanimous agreement that he didn't do enough, as slamming doors at irregular intervals happened throughout the night.

Eventually we managed a completely free stay out of all this, so that made up for the madness. As we exited the building, we noticed a pile of boxes outside one of the nearby rooms - the topmost of which was a box for a cast-iron skillet. What folks would have any legal use for a cast-iron skillet in a hotel room in the wee hours of the morning, I do not know - and moreover, I don't want to associate myself with them.

We got out of there as fast as possible and got to the Bonneville Dam, where salmon run upstream. They have a special fish ladder that allows them to run up along their natural course without being interfered with by the dam's activities. We saw some huge fish from the underwater viewing windows, but not too many of them. (There were apparently much more yesterday, and it varies from day to day.) A little girl kept mistaking her reflection for fish, while my dad and I messed with a small boy by making faces at him - I did the troll face at him, while my dad derped his eyes and stuck his tongue out.

We went up the Columbia River, passing along the historic routes of both the Oregon Trail and the Lewis & Clark Trail along the way. Eventually, we crossed over into Washington, where we tried someone who would let us into the Gesa Stadium, where the Pasco Tri-City Dust Devils play. Their season doesn't start until a little over a week from now, and since it was Sunday, we had no luck, but it was just a short jaunt off of the highway and we were back on it in no time.

We got to Spokane a little later and got a hotel room. We looked up where to eat and found a place called the Rusty Moose. We ordered some gorgonzola fries ... the portion was absolutely huge. We tackled it, though, and kept munching on it throughout the more modestly sized entrees that we got. My dad had seen that they had mud pie, and being the mud pie connoisseur that he is, he saved room for it.

The mud pie was literally the biggest mud pie I've ever seen. The plate it came on was nearly two feet long, and it took up nearly that width. It dwarfed the larger-than-usual spoons which we were provided. It was so big, in fact, that my mom instinctively asked the waitress if this was a single serving. After a reply in the affirmative, my mom blurted out: "that is absolutely insane!"

It was insane - but even more insane is that we managed to eat most of it. They had butterfinger and reese's pieces ice creams on either side of a veritable tower of brownie-like oreoish stuff and whipped cream.

We got back to the hotel, stopping to take a few stupid pictures around statues in the front of the Rusty Moose and to see my dad rubbing his beard on a reserved parking sign in the front of the hotel.

Tomorrow: on to Montana, as we begin the long journey back from this, the northernmost that we will venture on the Great American Road Trip.

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He's the lord of all strangeness. - Ignika: Nerd of Life

How awesome is Sumiki on a scale of 1 to 10? - Waffles
42. - Black Six

[He's] the king of wierd, the prince of practicality, the duke of durr! - Daiker

Sumiki is magic. - Cholie

Sumiki says, "Do I creeeeeeep you out?" Yes, he does. - Waffles

Sumiki is a nub. He's cool, but he's still a nub. - Ran Yakumo

"What is a Sumiki?" You may ask. But the answer to that is still unknown, even to the Sumiki itself. - Daiker

Ah, Sumiki. - Electric Turahk

LISTEN TO SUMIKI - Cholie

Sumiki is best snickerdoodle. - Takuma Nuva

BZPower = Sumiki + McSmeag + B6. And Hahli Husky. - Vorex

What's a Sumi? Does it taste good? - Janus

I would have thought Sumiki wanted to reincarnate as a farm animal. - Kraggh

EAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH - Kakaru

Sumiki: the horse_ebooks of bzp - VampireBohrok

Everything relates to Sumiki. No really, everything. - Daiker

He's in worse mental condition than I thought. - Obsessionist

I'm just wondering why I'm looking at some cat dancing ... I suppose the answer would simply be "Sumiki." - Brickeens

I was like a beast, screaming through the mind of Sumiki at the speed of sound. I.. I wasn't strong enough to stop myself. What I saw was the end of infinity, through which one can see the beginning of time, and I will never be the same. - Portalfig

My Little Content Block

Sumiki
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Every week, I post a new "Tuesday Tablescrap", a small MOC not worthy of a topic, but something to post and inspire me to build more.

10/25/11 - Duplo Flower
11/1/11 - Slender Man and Masky
11/8/11 - Bizarre Black Spaceship
11/15/11 - 2001 Monolith
11/22/11 - My Little Slizer 50
11/29/11 - Punching Bag
12/6/11 - Thunder and Escorts
12/13/11 - Three Concepts
12/20/11 - Kaxium Alternate
12/27/11 - None (Christmas Break)

1/3/12 - Daiker
1/10/12 - None
1/17/12 - Volant
1/24/12 - Nidman's Chute Shoop Shop
1/31/12 - None (Brickshelf down)
2/7/12 - None
2/14/12 - Atomic Lime
2/21/12 - Spearhead
2/28/12 - Glatorian Kahi
3/6/12 - Seeker
3/13/12 - Skyscraper
3/20/12 - Microphone
3/27/12 - Toa Vultraz
4/3/12 - Flammenwerferjüngeres
4/10/12 - Umbrella
4/17/12 - Lime Beetle
4/24/12 - Special - Flame Sculpture
5/1/12 - None (BZPower down)
5/8/12 - Purple Ninja
5/15/12 - The Original Sumiki
5/22/12 - 7/24/12 - None
7/31/12 - Tahu
8/7/12 - None (BrickFair)
8/14/12 - Special - Chess Set
8/21/12 - Heavily Armored Wasp
8/28/12 - Spaceship Drill
9/4/12 - Scuba Vehicle
9/11/12 - Orange Guy
9/18/12 - Strange Flying Thing
9/25/12 - Goblet
10/2/12 - None
10/9/12 - Aim .............................. Down
10/16/12 - Gold Bot
10/23/12 - Teal Mech
10/30/12 - Special - Teal Mech (#2)
11/6/12 - Bits and Pieces
11/13/12 - Two Spaceships
11/20/12 - TARDIS Interior
11/27/12 - Christmas Creep
12/4/12 - Toaraga
12/11/12 - Fireplace
12/18/12 - Abstract Duckling
12/25/12 - None (Christmas)
1/1/13 - Black Bot
1/8/13 - 1/22/13 - None
1/29/13 - Handheld Rhotuka Launcher

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Formerly known as the Bring Back Teal Club, the Unused Colors Society is a club that serves to promote colors that are little-used or discontinued, such as teal, old purple, or metallic blue.

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