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Sumiki

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  1. Sumiki
    I've had a few days to recover from the second Great American Road Trip, and in that time I've combed through my 4,396 pictures. Thirty days is a little more than four weeks, so I think a four-part series of pictures - the best of the best - might just be in order. (Day one did not have any decent pictures, so I'm starting on day two.)
     
    ALL PICTURES HAVE BACKGROUND INFORMATION. HOVER OVER PICTURES TO READ.

     

    Day Two
     
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    Day Four








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    Day Five








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    Day Six








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    Day Seven








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  2. Sumiki
    We got the call from the dealership around 11:00 and had the same older gentlemen who dropped us off pick us up and drive us over. The car's oil was changed and the water cooling system belt had been replaced. We cautiously got onto the freeway, but all systems were nominal as we took it up to speed.
     
    With a fully functioning car - the first time since Utah - we headed east on I-20 bound for the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Our previous route would have taken us to minor league teams in San Antonio and Round Rock, but this route takes us to the Texas Rangers in Arlington and the independent AirHogs in Grand Prairie.
     
    The landscape became more grassy, with mesquite trees replacing the scrub brush of previous days. The flat prairies were replaced by hills that rolled increasingly, to the point that I now fully understand why they call that region "Texas hill country." The rolling hills built up our elevation until we lost all of it going down a 6% grade on a curve, a section that the usually laissez-faire Texas government actually put up signs about. North Carolina warns you of every little thing on the road whereas Texas - like most western states - only put signs up on the worst of the worst parts of the road.
     
    (At this point my dad said "look at the grass - it's like a plant!" This, we assume, referred to the fact that the grass was not uniformly growing but instead mostly grew in small clumps akin to exceptionally furry scrub brush. That, or he's just being crazy again.)
     
    Before 1:30 we had made it to the outskirts of Fort Worth where we split off on the western terminus of Interstate 30 which took us through the center of Fort Worth - but not before we passed under perhaps eight or nine bridges simultaneously. The traffic was not as bad as anticipated so we quickly passed through Fort Worth and entered Arlington, a suburb situated roughly between the two major cities.
     
    (Side note: If you're in the middle of nowhere, good luck finding a Texas policeman, because there are none. However, in the Fort Worth city limits alone, we saw no less than four policemen with cars they pulled over. People still drove crazy, but it was significantly less crazy.)
     
    We meandered off the highway and finally found parking after about two dozen marked-off entrances to a large parking lot. We finally worked our way in and headed across the street to the gift shop, where we found the pennant section and selected one. Soon we were checked out and headed back to I-30.
     
    A lot of independent league teams are situated next to or near larger metropolitan areas that have major league teams, but cannot have two due to strange and slightly arbitrary zones set up by MLB. While larger cities such as Los Angeles or New York can support two teams, areas such as Dallas/Fort Worth or Minneapolis/St. Paul can only support one team apiece. As such, both St. Paul and Grand Prairie (right next to Arlington) have independent-league teams - both in the American Association, one of the larger and more respectable independent leagues. We'd called the Grand Prairie team office earlier and were promised a tour before we could get a word in edgewise. We got to the stadium and the lady we'd called did not disappoint in terms of friendliness and excitability.
     
    Our tour guide did not have access to various keys that would have been helpful in getting around the stadium - which is exceptionally nice considering it's an independent league team - but she was a staff member who doubled as an usher and one of the few who didn't have a business card. Her excitability cannot be overstated - she reminded me of you when you're hyped up on a high predisone dose.
     
    The Grand Prairie team won the American Association championship in 2011, but their attendance has shrunk to the point that, if all the fans of an average game sat together, they could only fill up perhaps three sections. Apparently the previous general manager had a tendency to give tickets away, and when the current GM stopped the giveaways, attendance plummeted. We gave her some ideas accumulated from our experiences in Sacramento and Vancouver as to possible ways of getting the attendance back up, and she promised to pass them on, but at the same time she expressed opinions intimating that the higher-ups in the AirHogs staff didn't always value her opinions because she was an usher. (She knew more about what needed to be done than anyone else did, though.)
     
    She took us through the parts of the stadium that she could, which included the suite areas which were nicer than the triple-A digs we toured in Sacramento. To get us to a larger suite she climbed over the small rails that divided the suite seats outside and let us in from the outside.
     
    The hallways are decorated with pigs crawling on or flying various vehicles, including rockets, airplanes, and - my personal favorite - a WWII bomber with baseballs for ammunition and bats for rockets. The stadium is filled with little touches, such as baseball seams on stairs. Also, the field is completely made of AstroTurf save for the circles of dirt making up the pitcher's mound and the area around the batter's box. Since independent teams have to make do with whatever money they get from attendance and souvenirs, AstroTurf for everything cuts down costs. (Plus it eliminates bad hops - a definite plus.)
     
    We got a picture of our tour guide holding Yoder the Duck, and she took us back to get us copies of a picture of the team right after it won the 2011 championship, among other pictures. She then took us downstairs to see the kid's playground area before taking us to the gift shop, where we got a pennant along with a hat and a t-shirt for dad. After thanking them profusely, we got back on the road at 3:30, and had no more destinations for the day save for one: a restaurant called Ponchatoulas in the middle of Ruston, LA, halfway between the Texas border and the Mississippi border.
     
    We got back on I-30 through Dallas until the traffic slowed to a halt, but we were able to exit and worked our way to I-35E which took us down to I-20, where we ran into a bunch of Texans with bad cases of road rage. One guy came within about six inches of sideswiping us while other folks raced around trucks without turn signals. Texans are nice to a fault if you talk to them but you wouldn't get that impression if your experience was defined by the drivers. Perhaps they get all of their frustrations out on the road leading to their mellowness in other endeavors.
     
    Traffic thinned out as we bolted for the border. At around 6:30 we stopped for gas in Waskom, the last town of any size before the Louisiana border - and they do not make it clear where the gas station is or how to get to it without ripping your axles in two. After running over a gigantic pothole that I'm amazed didn't do any damage, we crossed over the highway and tried accessing the gas station via an adjacent shop, but there was no connector, so we had to get back on the frontage road to get to the gas - which was badly needed as we had landed on the big red "E" and only had perhaps a half-gallon left in the tank. We filled up and washed the windshield with the help of little hotel shampoo bottles while under the gaze of a bunch of rednecks who practically emanated the sound of banjos.
     
    We got back on the road and within just a few minutes we'd made it to Louisiana, a state I've never been to before today. My mom told us about the history of Shreveport, named for a certain Captain Shreve that, over a period of many years, un-jammed the Red River and the bustling area that became Shreveport honored the man in their name.
     
    I'm convinced that if you take out the casinos, there would be no Shreveport.
     
    We successfully avoided a random bottle of Gatorade that fell out of the UPS truck in front of us as well as plenty of potholes. Unnecessary road construction has been my pet peeve on this trip, but I will say that Louisiana is a state that could use a heapin' helpin' of road work.
     
    (The Frenchness of the state was apparent when we entered: their welcome sign had French in addition to English and they had what I think was some sort of radio antenna shaped like a tall, thin Eiffel Tower.)
     
    Aside from these oddities, Louisiana's scenery is barely distinguishable from rural areas of North Carolina. The only discrepancy between the two is that Louisiana's trees are rather taller and occasionally curve over the highway to the point that it feels like you're driving through a tunnel. There was little wildlife but a lot of roadkill - the most we've seen since the veritable menagerie of Michigan. We mainly saw armadillo and dog roadkill.
     
    We exited in Ruston and navigated the one-way streets and road construction through its quaint downtown and found the restaurant where we saw a large group of people standing outside. Thinking that this was the line to get in, we figured it must be good. As it turned out, they were a party of eleven and we were seated when we walked in.
     
    The food was an odd combination of delicious and nearly unpalatable. I found the gumbo to be ridiculously atrocious, but the fried crawfish and fried pickles were absolutely amazing. We're finally back to the land of proper sweet tea, and although it was not the flavored sugar water I'm accustomed to, it was a good change of pace from the lemonade that's been our standard order throughout the trip.
     
    Tomorrow: Jackson, MS, or Birmingham, AL. We're going to get as far as we feel is possible after we tour the Civil War history in Vicksburg.
  3. Sumiki
    After breakfast, we re-packed our bags and headed out of Santa Fe bound for Lubbock at 10:35. We gassed up before exiting Santa Fe and took I-25 northbound (but the section we were on confusingly took us southwest) before exiting on US-285.
     
    This drive was the epitome of boring. While one lane in both directions, passing other vehicles was incredibly rare due to the deserted nature of the route. We've gotten to the foothills of the Rockies now, with the mountains of previous days turning into hills that slowly roll along until there's nothing but flatness.
     
    Everything we saw from Santa Fe to the Texas border consisted of mostly the same scenery: ever-so-slight hills covered in scrub brush. Similar to facial hair in an odd way, I dubbed one of the flatter areas as we descended "the Valley of the Five O'Clock Shadow."
     
    As the hills stopped the brush became much less prevalent, due either to lots of grazing or the overall aridity of the region. We then merged on I-40 - the road we practically lived on for the first half of last year's trip - for a little ways. The section of I-40 was designated as "Historic Route 66" but I'm pretty sure the rapidly deteriorating frontage road that paralleled the highway was 66. (I can't be sure, though.)
     
    After the I-40 jaunt, we exited onto US-84 which took us all the way to Lubbock. The nothingness continued, but somehow it turned into more intense nothingness. After going through that section of New Mexico I'm pretty sure I now think of nothingness as a tangible thing - something that one might even be able to package and sell. ("Look, honey, it's pure New Mexico nothingness!")
     
    This bleakness was broken up by tiny little towns that generally consisted of a church, grain silo for the train, and a few houses that looked to be on the verge of collapse. We eventually made it to the small town of Fort Sumner, the site of Billy the Kid's death and grave. We didn't visit the grave - it was too far off the road - but we heard that they had a cage around it after the Kid's footstone was stolen (and safely recovered) twice. I'm not sure of what a footstone is, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with his status as a criminal.
     
    After a few tens of miles more of nothingness we arrived at the last town before the Texas border - Clovis.
     
    I pity those who live there. It's so bad that the windmills don't even bother moving, and the good part of town is indistinguishable from the bad part to the point that I'm not sure if there even is a good part.
     
    We entered Texas with little fanfare, and then - a little before 3:30 - we saw an image that embodies the United States of America more than anything else we've ever seen: two McDonald's located on the same side of the road no more than perhaps 100 yards from each other. As it turned out, they were actually building a new one, but the image of two McDonald's in this tiny town near Lariat was priceless. (And also probably tasteless, but that's just my opinion.)
     
    The road - which was four lanes (but not an Interstate) all the way to Lubbock - was rutted very badly in the right lane - but they wanted you to stick to the right lane except to pass and to do 75 MPH there. We ended up in the left lane, as that was the only way to prevent our bodies from being vaporized by the intense shaking that the right lane provided.
     
    Little towns were dotted along the farming landscape as we called you. The landscape did not change much but there were huge - and I mean huge - swaths of land where cattle would be grazing in massive stall banks and enclosed areas. They stood somewhat proudly atop massive piles of a substance I didn't want to identify, and the smell did not disappoint. I don't think it's in my shirt, but how it avoided embedding itself into everything within a ten-mile radius is a miracle in and of itself.
     
    After navigating the worst of the stink, we saw pecan tree orchards and soon entered Lubbock, which has the dubious distinction of having the single most messed-up road system of any city in the entire world. Obviously I have not been to all of the cities in the world, but I do not have to, as nothing - and I mean nothing - can be more confusing than the sheer labyrinth that is Lubbock.
     
    It's not like other cities. Other cities have messes of one-way roads due to their old systems being overtaken by faster roads as their metropolitan areas expand. Lubbock, I firmly believe, was intentionally designed by a team of sadistic traffic scientists who broke out of their padded cells and teamed up to create its road system.
     
    A lot of cities have loops around them - usually an even three-number Interstate spur. The loop around Lubbock is not an Interstate but hangs off of the end of Interstate 27 as, technically, state highway loop 289.
     
    Let's just say that this is a circle evocative of Dante's Inferno.
     
    The loop is split into an inner and outer loop - the inner loop is an Interstate-quality limited-access highway, while the outer loop (technically also a part of loop 289) parallels it, but has stoplights and serves as a frontage road for the inner loop.
     
    The problem lies in the fact that the frontage road is one-way. You can only go one direction while on either ring of loop 289, and if you miss your exit - as we did - you have to get on the one-way frontage road and try to work your way back via other roads. In addition to this bizarre road setup, throw on lanes that merge without warning, a distinct lack of accurate road signs, and ever-changing directional signs for the loop, and you've got a good idea of the terror that is the Lubbock road system.
     
    We finally got to our hotel, where the manager greeted us at the front door. All of the employees wear ear-sets which evoked my dad's now-running joke about them being Secret Service agents assigned to put him under house arrest. After the haul to Lubbock and surviving the Lubbock roads, we were none too keen on getting back in the car. We went downstairs to eat at the hotel ... it seemed nice, we could not get served and waited around for fifteen minutes for the one and only waitress to come over and get our menus.
     
    The bottleneck was due to the fact that the bar was open and the only waitress was also the only bartender, and her attention was focused on making the drinking crowd happy. Realizing how slammed the place was, we left and went back to our room to figure out something. My mom went to the guest laundry to do a few loads while we decided to scout some food out on the town. As it turned out, the folks at the front desk - who are incredibly helpful and may or may not be under the impression that we're incognito hotel inspectors - recognized us from earlier but soon found out that we hadn't eaten. The kitchen was not busy at all, as no orders were getting through to the chef, and really not wanting to go out, we acquiesced to their pleas to order room service. (They even called before the room service even got here to see how it was and thought it was "unacceptable" that it hadn't yet arrived.)
     
    Tomorrow: we try to escape Lubbock for San Antonio to see the Alamo and the famous River Walk.
  4. Sumiki
    After a series of long days and not getting enough sleep, we slept about ten and a half hours last night. My dad had gotten up about 5:00 and walked around the hotel and down the street a bit, where he noted a little restaurant called Sweet Cravings. We'd passed this en route to the hotel but we'd assumed that it was some kind of bakery, but it turned out to be a breakfast-and-lunch place run by an older couple. After his excursion, he returned to the room and continued sleeping.
     
    A little ways into the afternoon we walked over to Sweet Cravings for lunch. The service was a bit discombobulated, and it was packed with the weirdest of folks, but the sandwiches they served were downright excellent. I got something called the Capone Sub (as homage to the Moose Jaw tunnels) - which was basically a mix of a bunch of slightly spicy Italian meats, but it was quite fresh. Mom and dad split two sandwiches - one a turkey bacon sandwich with olives and bacon aioli, and the other was a ham-and-cheese concoction that was, for some reason, called "the Great Escape."
     
    We walked back to our hotel, planning to leave to Arches National Park as soon as we'd done a load of laundry, but the heat - while dry - was absolutely brutal. We'd planned on leaving at 2:00 at the earliest, but the heat reached up to 105 degrees, so we waited at the hotel and got our start a little after 4:00 when the heat was around 90 or so - but there was a bit of cloud cover and the heat was dry, so we were fine.
     
    After stopping at the visitor center and asking a few questions about the nature/time of some of the trails that looked interesting to us, we got back on the road that traverses the park. While we got a somewhat protracted start because of the heat, we were able to get around and do everything that we had originally planned on doing.
     
    The first few stops were nothing more than small pullouts to get good views of some famous rock structures within the park - of which most, ironically, are not arches at all, but more akin to spindles or long thin faces of red rock which rise up disjointedly from the scrub brush below. Some of the names bequeathed to these strange formations are obvious when considering their appearance - "The Organ," "Three Gossips," and "Sheep Rock" all look like what they sound like - upward stripes, three head-shaped rocks side-by-side, and ... well, a sheep-looking thing. Some names, however, made little sense - like "Courthouse Towers" or "Garden of Eden" - the latter was one of the most desolate and non-vegetated pieces of land we saw, leaving a decidedly unapt ring to the name. It was pretty for other reasons, however - rocks jutted up in a series of spires, some interspersed with others. It was not the best scenery in the park, however - we had more places to get to.
     
    A lot of the scenery on the first part of the drive is taken by vast petrified sand dunes, with thin rock layers jutting up at odd angles. They were not the same height as some sand dunes I've seen, but they still had a distinct sand-dune shape to them.
     
    Our first hike was a short one around a famous rock called Balanced Rock - and I'll be darned if that thing's not precariously balanced. The formations around the area have clearly defined geological layers. The layer on the bottom, which goes perhaps halfway up the rock, is not as eroded as the smaller layer above it, which in turn supports the remaining rock which does not erode as fast as either of the two layers below. It looks a bit like a large petrified ice cream cone, with the ice cream on the verge of falling off and splattering on the ground. (However, due to the rate at which even the fastest layer erodes, folks won't have to worry about being crushed by the rock for a long, long time to come.) The rock formations around there have the same general geological structure as Balanced Rock and will, given enough time, erode away to the point where they, too, will be balanced rocks in their own right,
     
    (Balanced rocks are not an uncommon sight around the park, but Balanced Rock itself it the most famous and the largest of any of them, hence the name. However, it was interesting in its largeness and its closeness to the road, not its uniqueness within the park.)
     
    Our next stop was rather long - not a long hike, per se, but we did a lot of climbing around. We had arrived in a portion of the park with many more arches and large coves in the red rocks. Three of them could be accessed by one loop trail. Our first stop on this trail was the North Window, a massive arch etched out of the rock face. The climb up into the arch, so as to be underneath it, was steep but not strenuous, and the views of the epic scenery beyond was well worth any and all expended effort. We climbed down on the other side, which blocked both the sun (which was quickly being shrouded by clouds) and the rain, which was not hard but was sprinkled into our faces by the occasional gust. We climbed up, over, and around huge fallen rocks on the other side until we could climb no more - but the views going out the other way were worth the effort, as we could see into the Turret Arch, which was the third stop of three on the loop.
     
    But before we could get to the Turret Arch, we went to the South Window, which is quite like the North Window - the only difference is that it's impossible to get up under the North Window due to the almost sheer rock face below it. We could get about halfway up, but there were no path possibilities on any of the slippery rocks above, so we aborted the mission and continued on to the Turret Arch.
     
    The Turret Arch was the least strenuous of the three and turned out to be basically a smaller version of the North Window. The relative smallness of the arch made it a wind tunnel, and I barely held on to my hat as I climbed through to the other side and then back again.
     
    We drove just a little farther before traversing our penultimate trail: the Double Arch, one of the most famous pieces of scenery in the park and one of the classic Western backgrounds which has made the vicinity well-known for filming movies. In fact, the Double Arch was where they filmed part of the opening scenes for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where the young Indiana escapes from a treasure-hunting gang with some of their loot. We clambered up the rocks underneath the first of the two arches, and dad and I crawled up to look out through the second. The views of the rocks in the distance with sand dunes in the foreground along with rain and sun rays on the horizon was very beautiful, and I could have stayed there for a long time had we not had another trail to get to.
     
    At this point, light was becoming a bit more scarce, as the mountains heightened the horizon and the clouds obscured the sun - but the shade was welcome and surprising. It was also just barely still early enough to start in on the 3-mile (round-trip) hike to see the most famous arch in the entirety of Arches and one of the most evocative pieces of southwestern beauty: Delicate Arch, an arch that is not part of a larger rock wall but instead stands by its own, thinning out on one side to a smaller circumference.
     
    It was the hardest, best, and most gorgeous hike I've ever been on, and going up and down presented its own distinct series of challenges.
     
    Going up was literally all uphill. The trail was not paved and was only dirt for the first little bit. The only indication that you're still on the trail are the ranger-made rock piles known as cairns, which lead you up a long and very steep rock at about a 10% grade. Going up, which ate into my feet, was much easier than going down - but that's another story. After reaching the top of this massive rock - which makes you think that you're closer to seeing Delicate Arch than you actually are - we walked along rocky but relatively flat ground, going from cairn to cairn with little difficulty. (The worst part about this section was stopping and waiting for my parents to catch up. They were rather winded, I think - but still in better shape than anyone else at their age.)
     
    The last leg of the hike was the craziest of all: a walk along a 200-yard narrow cliff. The rock face to our right went straight up, while the rock face to our left went straight down. The trail had been sliced right out of the rock - and slanted inwards so that, should someone fall, that person would bang against the rock instead of tumble off the cliff - but it was by no means an easy walk, as the path had a number of potholes in it, which made it more precarious travel.
     
    But then we rounded the corner and saw Delicate Arch, and it was worth it.
     
    While the trail stopped at the rocky overlook, this did not stop anyone from walking in a clockwise motion on the rather steep curve over to the Arch itself. A few foreign folks actually walked underneath the Arch - but there was a steep drop-off on both sides, the ground looked ridiculously slick, and the wind had just enough of a kick to it to make a trek out there unsteady. I touched the side of it and got some really cool pictures (the redness of the rock increases hue to a fiery red as it reflects sunset light, making it a popular spot at that time), but we had to head back, as the sun was rapidly setting and we had a 1.5-mile walk - mostly downhill - to our car.
     
    Oh, and did I mention that it got very windy and began to rain a bit on us?
     
    The rain wasn't that bad - not any worse than the rain that squirted us earlier, anyway - but the wind was blowing into our faces and occasionally carried sand from places farther down the trail. We made the fastest time that we could, considering the steep downhill treks and the diminishing light, and made it back to our car at 9:00, right when we could no longer have seen much of anything on the trail.
     
    Well, we'd walked, climbed, and meandered around six miles total - at high altitudes and temperatures - so we were very hungry. We had our sights set on a restaurant in Moab that had an excellent menu and good reviews, so we got out of the park as fast as we could (while still being safe) and got into Moab even though we were stuck behind dimwits who went 30 in a 45-MPH zone. (We'd called the restaurant earlier today to inquire about their hours, so we were trying to get there before their 9:30 closing time.) We got there at 9:20 and ran inside, but the lady we talked to was very rude and told us that they "closed early because our servers are sick." (Basically, they closed at 9:00 because no one else was walking in the door - and without changing their window sign.)
     
    Miffed at the lack of pleasantness - amplified by our hunger - we rolled down the street past closed restaurants. However, Moab Diner was still open, so we ate there. I had the chicken-fried steak they ran out of yesterday, and nabbed the last of the white gravy. (I also got a refill of their lemonade for free, which isn't supposed to happen.) I cleaned off my plate, and we all got ice creams.
     
    I suspect we'll sleep well tonight.
     
    Tomorrow: we visit Four Corners - the only place in the U.S. where you can be in four states at the same time - and hit Mesa Verde National Park - the biggest archaeological site in the U.S. - en route to Durango, Colorado.
  5. Sumiki
    The day started out with an adventure in getting across the street.
     
    We had originally planned to stay in Provo, which is on the southern edge of the Salt Lake metropolitan area. However, since Orem has a minor-league team known as the Owlz, we switched the reservations just ten minutes north to that city. As it turned out, our hotel was literally across the street from the stadium.
     
    Which, of course, you can't just get to normally.
     
    We had to take a myriad of turns and navigate a seemingly impassible series of bizarre traffic circles and meaningless one-way streets. It took many harrowing minutes, but we finally circled back around and found the stadium parking lot.
     
    Then we couldn't get a pennant - they were moving in to the stadium after the college season (they share the field) was over. We caught them about ten minutes after they had all gotten into the offices, and boxes were literally everywhere. Most of the Owlz merchandise - including hats and pennants - were in a large moving truck and inaccessible. They were nice and scrambled around to find something to give us - so we walked out of there with a red Owlz bag, free of charge.
     
    We reluctantly rolled back onto the road and were caught back in the labyrinth of the dreaded Salt Lake roads, which featured unreasonably hard-to-see stoplights and very few road signs. We eventually were able to escape Salt Lake and traversed I-15 southbound before forking off on US 6/89 in Spanish Fork. We got exceptionally close to some windmills as the red rocky outcroppings stereotypical of Utah started to become more prevalent.
     
    Then came the road work.
     
    There were miles upon miles of marked-off lanes when there was no reason to mark the lanes off - and in fact the lane that was marked off looked rather better than the one we were driving in. Of course, these lanes were marked off with barrels that intruded into our lane to the point that we were concerned that the car would clip them - and no one was working on road construction in the marked-off lane!
     
    Between intermittent and entirely pointless road work, getting stuck behind slowpokes who sped when you tried to pass them in a passing lane, and watching morons fly past RVs in oncoming traffic when a passing lane is about two seconds ahead of them, the scenery slowly morphed into the kind of reddish landscapes one thinks about when considering southern Utah - basically like Mars but with sagebrush, cattle, and a breathable atmosphere. In addition to cows, sheep, and occasional horses, we saw a small llama herd.
     
    Considering the unforeseen circumstances on the road, we made decent time. We kept going up and down more hills and wound through passes both natural and man-made. Mesas - flat as pancakes on top - became much more prevalent. We passed over Soldier Summit and then Helper, so named because the town would provide extra engines to help trains ascend Soldier Summit. We exited in Price - the last town of any real size before Moab - for gas, but then began trucking along again.
     
    The amount of traffic going both directions on that road is staggering - mainly, I would imagine, due to the route being the most direct from the Moab region and its National Parks up to Salt Lake. For many stretches - especially the last stretch before the merge with I-70 - the road is ridiculously flat. There is also no civilization out there - for about 20 or 30 miles there were no towns, and I don't even recall seeing ranches. It's utter nothingness, and the only sign that you're still on Earth is the fact that there's some driver in front of you about to do something nutty.
     
    Over this time the temperature steadily rose through the 80s and finally to 90. I drove for a bit on I-70 as the temperature got up to a 94-degree high, but it soon leveled off to high 80s-low 90s temperatures.
     
    Soon enough we found ourselves off the Interstate and, after a while on US 191, followed the signs for Canyonlands National Park. We turned on Utah 313 and wound our way into the vast series of red canyons which constitute Canyonlands and its vast outskirts.
     
    Canyonlands, made a National Park in 1964, was formerly part of vast ranch land. The overlooks and trails in the park's vast domain afford spectacular views of gorgeous scenery. Canyons are inside larger canyons which in turn are inside even larger canyons, all of which can be seen from the top of a large ridge known as the Island in the Sky.
     
    (Before we even got to the official park entrance, there was a pullout for two rocks nicknamed the Monitor and Merrimac - and I'll be darned if they weren't the petrified images of the famous ironclads themselves. The two natural mesas - one larger than the other - is exceptionally similar to a famous photograph of the two warships.)
     
    Canyonlands has a lot of much longer trails, but we did not pack the equipment required to hike them. We did quite a few of them, though, and stopped at nearly every lookout point for more views of the layered canyons below us. Surprisingly, there is, at one point, prairie - right on top of the Island in the Sky. Ranchers used to use steep dirt trails that wound their way up the sides of the sheer rock cliffs to get their herds up and down from pastureland to water. Mining operations in the region were halted when the National Park was established, but the pathways they cut though the bottom of the canyon has left scars across the surprisingly fragile land. (Certain types of soil are extremely delicate and can take up to 20 years to regenerate fully after being stepped on.)
     
    Our next major stop was Mesa Arch, a popular location for sunrise pictures. The low-lying arch is still distinguishably an arch, and it looks quite like a natural bridge. I could have looked at the scenery - with the canyon layers and snowcapped peaks off in the distance framed by the gentle curve of the Arch - longer than I did, but the midges through there are awful. Instead of just banging into us like the midges at Lake Huron tried to do, these midges had some sort of pre-game meeting and arranged an attack plan: crawl into our ears.
     
    I felt things crawling around as we got back to the car. I think I got all of them out, though ... if not, they're probably stuck on the inordinate amount of wax I excrete daily.
     
    The main difference between these midges and the Huron brand is that these will not attack you if you move around fast enough - but as soon as you slow down or stop they're there, just waiting to nab you.
     
    The dry heat of Canyonlands meant that mom and I - chronic sweaters - did not sweat our usual gallon and a half. In fact, I barely sweated at all, which was an entirely new experience. (Good thing, too - though we brought lots of water bottles, we didn't bring enough. The water conservation was a welcome surprise.)
     
    Our next stop after Mesa Arch was a spur road that took us out to a controversial geological formation - a great big crater-like hole in the ground with greenish badlands on the bottom. Its bizarre shape and nature makes the massive formation - called Upheaval Dome, for some reason - a point of contention among geologists, who don't have a real idea of how the place came to be. It was a rather steep haul up there, but the view of the Dome is worth it, with the rock face we were standing on top of extending out in almost a complete circle - the only thing that would prevent a hypothetical hike around the entire rim is a significant gap in one side.
     
    We got back on the main road and within short order reached the end: Grand View Point, an overlook resting on the southern end of the Island in the Sky. It was the most spectacular overlook we'd stopped at up until that point, offering a vast view of most of the rest of the Canyonlands backcountry, an uninhabited territory with no roads and few trails. Though the old mine roads could still be seen - and will still be there for a good long while to come - they afforded a nice scale to the vastness that was before us. We would have stayed there longer and hiked around a little bit, but the midges were multiplying and were beginning their ear canal excursions even while we were on the move.
     
    On the way back we saw the same scenery, but in a different light as the sun began to set. While not at sunset itself - which I hear is quite dramatic - it cast the canyons and their jutting formations in a new light, including making a large mesa behind a smaller mesa way out in the distance look like a shadow instead of just a larger mesa.
     
    After meandering our way along the curvy route back through the park, we found ourselves at the exit within short order. Our last stop of the day was not in Canyonlands, but was due to be in Dead Horse Point State Park, so named for a possibly apocryphal tale of an abandoned corral. The view from Dead Horse Point itself is quite possibly more stunning than any overlook in Canyonlands itself. From the overlook we could see the entirety of the Island in the Sky - which is what the fellow North Carolinian at Grand Teton told us we could see. The midges were less prevalent at Dead Horse Point but there were still enough of them to warrant a brisk walk back to the car.
     
    Tired and hungry, we hit the road to Moab and ate at Moab Diner. I had a burger with green chili sauce while my parents got steaks with an interesting side called sweetwater potatoes - basically sliced-up, cooked potatoes with cheese and bacon bits on them. Since our waitress blanked on giving us our salads, we made up for it by getting free ice cream, which we ate on the way back to the hotel.
     
    We arrived at the hotel where I spied a large hill behind it. I climbed it for a great view of the sunset behind the mountains. My dad climbed up after me and we considered climbing all the way up the hill and seeing if we could see a bit of Arches National Park, but we only got about halfway up until we turned back due to the increasing darkness.
     
    Tomorrow: we spend a day in Arches National Park before doubling back and spending another night in Moab.
  9. Sumiki

    The World Ended

    By Sumiki,

    guys
     
    guys, this is serious
     
    we don't have much time left
     
    guys
     
    guys really
     
    the end is upon us
     
    and do you know why?
     
    my dad just referenced gangnam style
     
    we're doomed
  10. Sumiki
    The New Year might be well on its way, but that doesn't mean that I'll let any more Christmas songs off the hook. So it's time for another objective analysis. This time, I'm taking on Frosty the Snowman.
     
    Let's get to work.
     
    Frosty the Snowman was a jolly happy soul,
    With a corncob pipe and button nose
    And two eyes made out of coal.
     
    Right off the bat we can identify a few disturbing implications. Frosty is a soul, which means that Frosty is disembodied. A soul without a body is commonly referred to as a ghost. We're not even out of the first stanza and we've already figured out Frosty is a ghost - this has potential
     
    But wait ... a ghost with physical features doesn't make too much sense. Clearly, there's more to this Frosty business than meets the eye. After all, he is always referred to as a snowman. Maybe the next few lines will provide some clues.
     
    Frosty the Snowman is a fairytale, they say.
    He was made of snow but the children know
    That he came to life one day.
     
    Perhaps Frosty is a soul which reanimates snowmen. But ... how come only the chil​dren know him? Why not any adults? Does Frosty never reveal himself to them? Maybe Frosty wants something from the kids, and stalks them.
     
    More like Frosty the Slenderman, am I right?
     

     
    In any case, let's continue with the lyrics.
     
    There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found,
    For when they placed it on his head, he began to dance around!
     
    Clearly the silk hat is imbued with a certain amount of magic - black magic. There are no hard and fast rules about souls possessing objects, but we can infer that Frosty can only inhabit a snowman body if said body has a corncob pipe, a button nose, two coal eyes, and has a silk hat placed on its head last. These are the only conditions wherein Frosty can inhabit a snowman body.
     
    Frosty the Snowman was alive as he could be,
    And the children say he could laugh and play
    Just the same as you and me.
     
    Again with the children. Only the children say that he could laugh and play, so this is hearsay. The children can say anything. This is different from the children knowing that he came to life, as stated in the earlier stanza. We can't know for certain that Frosty can laugh and play. It's possible that Frosty is using this to cover up something. But what would a snowman do with a bunch of children?
     
    Thumpety thump thump, thumpety thump thump
    Look at Frosty go.
    Thumpety thump thump, thumpety thump thump
    Over the hills of snow.
     
    There's not much here to go on, but Frosty is going somewhere over snow. Can he only travel over snow? And he must be going fast enough to be worthy of pointing out. Why is he running? Are the kids' parents chasing him, or are the cops on his tail?
     
    Frosty the Snowman knew the sun was hot that day,
    So he said "Let's run, and we have have some fun
    Now before I melt away."
     
    Well, the sun's hot, no kidding. It's hot all the time, to the tune of 10 million degrees. Frosty's scientific knowledge is simplistic.
     
    Down to the village with a broomstick in his hand,
    Running here and there all around the square saying
    "Catch me if you can!"
     
    So Frosty is not just a creepy ghost who thinks he's a snowman, but is also a witch to boot? After all, no respectable snowman would ever be caught near a broomstick. To catch him, the children will most likely have to run recklessly, putting them in harm's way. Is this what Frosty wants?
     
    He led them down the streets of town right to the traffic cop.
    And he only paused a moment when he heard him holler "Stop!"
     
    Frosty the Felon, then, is it? And what's he doing leading kids through streets? They could get run over!
     
    For Frosty the Snowman had to hurry on his way,
    But he waved goodbye saying, "Don't you cry,
    I'll be back again some day."
     
    Yeah, back again ... from jail. Endangering children is no joke.
     
    But hold on ... we appear to have a contradiction. Up until that point, it is implied that only children know of Frosty and that Frosty's existence is a secret to adults. But the traffic cop must be an adult. This is the first time that an adult knows of Frosty. Does the cop have special powers? Is he the only one who can see Frosty? Has Frosty lost his power to stay hidden from adults? Unfortunately, that's where the song ends, and I can infer no more without descending into speculation.
     

    Thus, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, this song, when paired with simple deductions, reveals highly disturbing things about the Christmas season. I submit to you that Frosty the Snowman is a creepy supernatural figure that enthralls children and leads them down busy streets to their doom.
     
    NEXT TIME: SUMIKI IS CHASED BY FROSTY AFTER HE ABDUCTS HIS HAT.
  13. Sumiki
    This tablescrap has a bit of a backstory.
     
    In 2007, I created a series of terrible noobish Doctor Who-based stopmotion films. To film these, I built the TARDIS exterior and interior. The exterior, which I still have around someplace, is terrible. But the interior, which accrued dust over the years, was sort of okay. This week, I rebuilt the portions of it that had fallen into disarray, mostly by patching up places where I'd cannibalized pieces.
     

     
    | | | | |

  14. Sumiki
    After waking up and making ourselves look at least somewhat presentable, we steeled ourselves for going out and getting a hotel breakfast. After the burned toast debacle of last night, we were concerned that whatever breakfast we got would be inedible.
     
    It was not inedible - it was undrinkable! We all got coffee and modified it with a number of creamers and sugars, but upon sampling it we all nearly puked due to its extreme bitterness - sort of like what I imagine liquified anthrax would taste like. I put seven packs of sugar and about ten tiny cups of creamers in mine and it still was quite tart. They did not provide enough creamers, so we ended up stealing a bowl off of another table. (I got an omelet with pretty much everything in it, and upon the reaction of apprehension by our waitress, I looked at her and said "when it comes to omelets, I do not mess around.")
     
    After 11:30 we left the hotel and got gas amongst a great number of thugs, something I did not anticipate from Idaho Falls - although we do have a peculiar habit of getting into the bad side of town. After a few jolts courtesy of the curb-like apparatus they claimed to be an exit, we found the stadium of the Idaho Falls Chukars. They're a short-season A team as well, but are in the Pioneer League as opposed to the Northwest League which we've been visiting in recent days. To our surprise, they were playing an American Legion game there (the city owns the field), but the Chukars store was not open.
     
    But all hope was not lost, as the teenage girl who sold game tickets at a fold-out table near the front entrance called her dad over, and he took us up the stairs to the bleacher level. The Chukars General Manager worked the scoreboard and was the PA announcer for the Legion game, but the aforementioned dad filled in for him and the GM led us back down to the store. We discussed our experiences at previous Pioneer League stadiums such as Missoula - which he agreed was an organizational mess on every level. We ended up getting a hat and pennant for seven dollars, as they were both on sale. (The pennant, ironically, cost more than the hat.)
     
    (My dad's idol, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, managed the Idaho Falls squad in 1981. This, of course, immediately made them awesome.)
     
    On the road again, we got out of Idaho Falls and saw some of the same scenery we'd seen yesterday, albeit a little more verdant. We took Idaho state routes which took us through Teton Pass to the Wyoming border.
     
    This road is terrifying.
     
    Grades were steeped at a consistent 10% as we descended Teton Pass towards Jackson Hole - which is not as much a hole as it is a valley - for about five miles. Add near-hairpin turns and motorcyclists who pass while traveling on them going mush too fast for their own good and you get a scary - but thrilling - ride. The views of the Tetons around and the valley ahead make for some of the most spectacular scenery of the trip.
     
    To help the car lose speed, the brakes were held down almost constantly and all the windows were rolled down. Amidst the din of the wind rushing in, the passing of the cars, and the pointing out of scenery, I plugged in the iPod and played epic orchestral music. It was barely audible but it fit what we were seeing,
     
    The road was much better when we got down into the valley, and we breathed a collective sign of relief when we did so. We worked our way into Jackson and tried to find our hotel.
     
    This was not an easy proposition.
     
    The phone number we had for the hotel was misprinted in our booklet and led to some daycare somewhere, which we'd discovered in the Idaho Falls room. We wound our way up and down the street it was supposedly on until we were at our wit's end trying to find it. We ended up rolling into a residential district until we asked for directions from an excitable female citizen. She informed us that we'd been going in the wrong direction, and that it was near the middle of town.
     
    Unfortunately, this took us to a different hotel. Aggravated, we pulled into another hotel, and my dad went inside to get directions to ours. He emerged with an enormous map, which - properly unfolded - would probably have filled up half the car. I managed to fold it back down into a reasonable size to give directions, and we soon found the hotel - hidden on the other side of town. (We'd have found it sooner had we taken a right off of the Teton Pass highway.)
     
    We checked into the hotel room and relaxed for a few minutes before heading out for Grand Teton National Park a little after 4:00. We rolled north and, soon after officially entering Grand Teton, the hills to our left dropped away and we saw the Teton range in all its glory.
     
    They're quite like the Canadian Rockies in the sense that they're very large, very rocky, very jagged, and, of course, snowcapped. In a way, though, they're prettier, as prairie-like flatness extended all the way to the base of the sheer rock cliffs. Sagebrush was the predominant plant, but there were quite a number of trees and groves, especially as we continued north.
     
    Wildlife is also prevalent within the park; scenery is only half the fun. We spotted some buffalo out in a field, complete with calves, but we didn't spot anything else before the visitor center, which affords a stunning view of Grand Teton, as well as Mount Owen and Middle Teton, which flank it. The peaks look different from different angles, but from every angle, they somehow continue to be distinguishable.
     
    While in the visitor center (which has awesome architecture designed to evoke the shape of the Tetons themselves), we purchased a new annual park pass from a fellow at the desk who had the personality of lye soap. He was so boring I felt personality seeping away from me as I stood across the counter from him. (The park passes pay for themselves while on the road. Our last pass was purchased in Zion last May, and Craters of the Moon was the last day on which it was still valid.)
     
    We continued on the road to search for wildlife and ogle at the insanely gorgeous scenery. While the peaks around Jasper were epic, we were almost too close to them to fully appreciate their majestic grandeur. From a distance, we could see most of the chain in one fell swoop, from hilliness on both ends to increasing levels of jaggedness in the middle. My mom and I relaxed and enjoyed the scenery, but my dad was bent on the idea of seeing a moose. (I don't know why he was so anxious; my parents lived in Alaska for two years before I was born and, while there, saw two moose commonly enough to name them Charlie and Euell.)
     
    Within the park's flat areas there were a number of ranches - mostly private, with a dude ranch stuffed somewhere in there. We pulled off at nearly every overlook to marvel at the delicious scenery. There was a valley in the flat ground leading up to the Tetons, and within this valley lies the meandering Snake River, which we've crossed a number of times including at the Oregon-Idaho state line. (Its name neither come from its winding pathway nor is an indicator of its wildlife, but in fact comes from a term the Shoshone Indians use to describe themselves.)
     
    We could have spent the whole day at some of these pullouts, but we had more of the park to get to and so we drove onwards. In addition to more Teton beauty we caught sight of more small buffalo herds and groups of pronghorn. The main corridor through the park is a large loop which, upon looping around and rejoining itself at the visitor center, comes rather close to Grand Teton and its neighboring peaks.
     
    Finally, as we'd gone about halfway around the loop, we got to the pay area which we bypassed with our park pass, but we used the opportunity to ask the guy there about places to see moose. He suggested a few good places which we appropriately marked on the map. (He was from Virginia but admitted to being "one of those guys" - i.e. a Yankee transplant.)
     
    We passed by large Jackson Lake and continued on, stopping at turnout after turnout for epic picture after epic picture. The turnout at Mount Moran pointed out its distinct "black dike" - which is a 150-foot vertical lava flow caused by the lifting of the mountain plate and lowering of the valley plate. Moran also has five of the park's eleven glaciers.
     
    As we continued on towards Jenny Lake we saw what may have been four female moose. We're not sure - they may have easily been elk - but there's a good chance that they were moose. I was quite pleased at this, but my dad remained relatively unfazed and was focused on seeing a bull moose.
     
    We saw some elk and pronghorn as we continued to loop back around and entered a place called Moose. As is the tradition with places with "moose" in their name, there were no moose to be found - rather, the area is filled with a number of tiny little prairie dogs. (I'd seen one earlier in the day, but it got scared, went into his hole, and filled it up from the inside.) These prairie dogs are smaller than the ones we'd seen near Devils Tower last year but were still distinctly prairie dogs, rushing around and madly stuffing their faces with various plants. They hid when we got too close but popped right back out when they believed us to be gone.
     
    It was around 7:00 by this point, but this day was not going to end until we'd seen a bull moose - and by golly, we were going to find us a bull moose even if it was the last thing we'd ever do. Both the guy with the soap personality and the Virginia transplant recommended a spur road off to the right of the main loop called Antelope Flats Road. This was essentially a road to access private ranches, small communities, and unpaved roads that service the adjacent Bridger-Teton National Forest. We stuck to the paved loop and saw even more buffalo before looping back around. In addition to the buffalo, we saw more pronghorn, and then some sort of bird of prey mid-flight, but we still did not see a moose.
     
    Then, as we rounded a corner, we saw a bunch of cars parked along the side of the road and a bunch of people out in the field taking pictures. We asked a guy who was getting back to his car what was going on down there, and he told us that there were two male moose.
     
    That's all we needed to hear.
     
    The field drops off almost a sheer dirt cliff down to a creek, which split off from the Snake River which was further into the valley a little farther ahead. The first moose we saw was a rather large specimen, lumbering his way through the trees and sampling nearly every one he ran into. The world was his salad bar, and he was taking full advantage of it. A fellow tourist pointed out an even larger moose with a bigger rack, but he was barely visible as he was laying down behind some tall grasses. We followed the moving moose for a good while, but soon traveled back to watch the larger one in the hope that he'd eventually get up. A number of families - some with smaller children - came out into the field, but the more interesting moving one provided us with a way to get them out of our hair.
     
    We stared at the larger moose for a good half-hour, waiting on him to do something except flop his ears and look around. I got a tad bit bored and did the Gangnam Style dance for the moose, who proceeded to get up and walk along the same path as the previous moose.
     
    I must be the Moose Whisperer.
     
    We followed the bigger moose for a while until he was obscured by a large clump of trees, at which point we were contented and got back to the car.
     
    No more than a mile up, we saw more parked cars, and got out to see an even larger moose, this time only perhaps a hundred feet away from us in the valley. He ambled over in our general direction and appeared to have allergies, as he scratched his nose with his hind leg and sneezed twice, which my mom mistook for a grunt. He walked a good halfway up the side of the valley, enough for us to think that he might walk across the road, but he doubled back and went back into the valley.
     
    While we were watching the moose, we ended up talking to a fellow from North Carolina, in the area on a vacation with his family. He'd been down in Moab, Utah - where we're going - and recommended Dead Horse State Park, which is near Arches and Canyonlands, two National Parks we're going to see.
     
    After bidding each other good travels, we continued on the road and arrived in Jackson around 9:00. Hungry, we found a local place called MacPhail's Burgers. The business was a lifelong dream of the owner's grandmother, and the business was opened by her grandson just a few years ago. As it turns out, the owner/chef was born in Greensboro, and one of his servers is from Charlotte. (The amount of NC folks we've run into on this trip is staggering.)
     
    With only a short drive back to the hotel, we decided that it would be a messy proposition to eat our burgers in the room, so we ate them in a patio area outside the front door of the hotel. While cold outside, the burgers and gas-fueled fire warmed us up, and the smell of our burgers was enough to get a couple to walk over and ask us what we were eating. We described the place to them and gave it our full recommendation. (I got the bleu cheese burger and it was even better than the bleu cheese burger I got just a few days ago. The custom dipping sauce for the hand-cut fries was good enough to drink, and everything was fresh and juicy.)
     
    Tomorrow: we zig-zag our way down to Orem, Utah, just a little south of Salt Lake City.
  15. Sumiki
    At around 9:30 this morning we heard a loud tapping sound outside our fifteenth-floor window. Startled and curious, we opened the curtains to reveal a gigantic seagull which had perched himself on the ledge. We saw a close-up gull yawn as well as a good look at how gulls prune themselves.
     
    It was raining - one of the many themes of our journey - so we left the hotel around 11:00. Our first stop of the day was Vancouver's famous Stanley Park, which would have been a very nice place to spend a day had we had a day to spend and had it not been ridiculously rainy. Due to the conditions we found the notion of parking and walking around horrid, and so we contented ourselves with the many views afforded from the car seats.
     
    The only thing that we thought was worth possibly getting out for was a section of the park that includes a sample of all the plants mentioned in Shakespeare's plays with appropriate quotes alongside. However, none of our maps designated the location of this area and no one we talked to seemed to know exactly where it is. My mom and I got out at one point to see if we could see something inside a section, but it turned out to be a section with benches and plaques dedicated to members of the Canadian Air Force. We were wet, but not miserably so, so we decided to forget finding the Shakespeare quotes and move on to our next stop of the day.
     
    Our goal: reach Nat Bailey Stadium, home of the minor league Vancouver Canadians, alive.
     
    I'm proud to say that we succeeded - but only barely.
     
    Like many cities, Vancouver has a mess of one-way streets, lanes that people just randomly decide to park in, and nutty bicyclists. However, no one told us that they were going to throw ridiculous amounts of traffic on top of that. It felt like rush hour but it wasn't even lunchtime - I suppose it's just always like that.
     
    A little after noon we arrived at Nat Bailey Stadium, where we gave the folks there the standard introduction of us being minor-league pennant collectors. We ended up talking to their community relations manager, who gave us free pennants and gave us a tour around the ballpark. Our knowledge of baseball history and our previous experiences at stadiums around the country pleasantly surprised him, and he intimated that he gives tours to a lot of people that have little-to-no knowledge about baseball.
     
    The tour took us about an hour but we learned quite a bit about how the Vancouver operation works. Originally a triple-A team, that team skipped town a few years ago to move to Sacramento. Short-season A ball moved in, which is better for the city considering its consistently damp climate. The new management poured a lot of TLC into the old stadium and, while its age shows, it does not have a very run-down feel.
     
    The popularity of baseball in Canada, at all levels, rises and falls with the successes, real or perceived, of the Blue Jays. Little League enrollment was at an all-time high in the 90s when the Jays won the World Series on Joe Carter's famous home run, and has increased within the past year due to the amount of money the Jays have spent to acquire good players. Within British Columbia, baseball has become just as popular as hockey, which was highly surprising to hear.
     
    We left "the Nat" shortly before 1:00 and finally - thankfully - escaped from Vancouver's traffic southbound to the US border. A little after 1:30 we had made it to the border, where there is something called the "duty free shop" - a surprisingly upscale establishment right along the border that has some sort of tax exemption. We bought enough things to burn up our remaining Canadian currency while there, but we nearly didn't go in due to what appeared to be tire shredders blocking the entrance. Fortunately for us this was an incognito vehicle counter and we did not have to get new tires.
     
    Just after 2:00 we re-entered the Uniter States at the northern terminus of Interstate 5. (Our passports made it easier than the debacle of getting back from Toronto two years ago.) We got to new scenery almost immediately, with beautiful yellow bushes in full bloom along the highway as well as more than a little bit of fog. We made good time, but unfortunately that meant we got to the detoured portion of the road due to the recent bridge collapse.
     
    We spent the better part of an hour stuck behind a smelly truck on a two-lane road through Mount Vernon. The main culprit behind our slow speed was an incredibly short stoplight in the middle of town. We crossed over the Skagit River on a very rickety bridge similar to the one that had collapsed, but we made it over sans plunge and within short order found ourselves on I-5 again.
     
    By 4:00 we had arrived at our next destination amid increasing traffic: the city of Everett, home to the Everett Aquasox, which are in the same league as the Canadians. They only had small pennants even thought they advertised large ones, but we bought one anyway. (The folks there seemed nonplussed by the tale of our road trip and, overall, weren't very friendly.)
     
    A little after the pennant chase we got gas and a few tacos (I did not have any but my dad reported mediocrity). The traffic through the middle of Everett is horrendous and we barely got back on I-5. The southbound traffic was not as thick as the near-standstill northbound, but about as soon as we caught sight of the Space Needle, it slowed considerably. We inched our way through the city like a sloth bathed in molasses, but we eventually were able to get into Seattle and parked opposite the Space Needle.
     
    Our trip up into the Needle was quite fast - faster than Toronto's CN tower. They took our pictures (which they then tried to sell to us), but we posed by holding our hands up around Yoder the Duck. We got the most we could have gotten out of the photographer lady: a small grin. Within minutes we were up inside the Needle - which is 50 years old this year - and looking down on the beautiful Seattle skyline and landscape.
     
    The main viewing area is carpeted and includes a small wine bar and a few interactive screens. You can go down a few steps along the outside rim, which leads down to a circular viewing area outside and, while reinforced with steel bars so you can't fall out, affords some great views. We walked all the way around before the wind got us really cold, so we decided to head back down. (We might have stayed for a few minutes longer but there were a couple of shrieking babies in the vicinity.)
     
    On the way down we asked our elevator operator about an interesting greenhouse with what appeared to be a large piece of artwork inside, right next to the Needle. She told us that it was an art gallery for a fellow who does sculptures in glass. Curious, and with some time to kill as the traffic cleared out, we headed on over. Our tickets from the Needle netted us a discount and we spent a number of minutes gazing in wonder at the intricate sculptures. I don't think I can explain it very well, so basically think about thousands of blue glass tentacles sprouting out of a pole that's well over ten feet tall, flared out at the bottom and a little on the top, with glass sea creatures on the bottom. This was one of the more interesting sculptures - until we got to the one in the greenhouse, which we'd seen from the Needle. This one was a vast network of flowers reenforced by steel and anchored into the ceiling by poles and strong, thin threads.
     
    A little before 7:00 we rolled out of the parking lot and had a fairly easy time navigating out of Seattle, which, due to its inhabitants, bay-based geographical location, climate, and unexpectedly steep hills, reminded us a lot of San Francisco. Our route took us directly by Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, but they were playing a game and the parking prices were exorbitant. (The fact that they were playing a game accounted for the amount of southbound traffic we ran into and the relative emptiness of the Space Needle.) We decided that, since we were there, we'd just save some money and order the pennant online upon our return home.
     
    I-90 begins just outside the stadium, so we had the distinct pleasure of being on the beginnings of not one, but two different Interstates in one day. The eastbound traffic was light as we crossed onto and then off of Mercer Island. We soon entered into the Cascade Mountains which featured, near their peaks, wispy clouds. We eventually ran right into a cloud ourselves and had to engage the wipers when the mist hit us.
     
    We then saw flashing lights on a road sign and tuned in to the DOT's AM radio station. We listened and learned that they were going to do some rock blasting along the side of the road from 7:30 to 9:30. We were under the impression that this was not a guarantee - that this was only a possibility - but we rounded a corner near a lake and with moments found ourselves in a dead stop.
     
    No - this was not a dead stop. This was the deadest of stops. The kind of stop where people turn their engines off and get of their cars.
     
    Well, we needed the exercise, so we hopped out and started walking around. My dad and I heard from a group of truckers that we'd be stopped until 9:30, so we planned on a long night. We called the hotel to make sure they knew of our predicament, and they seemed very familiar with the blasting delays along the road. With nothing else to do, we walked along the shoulder about halfway up the line from our car to the first car in line.
     
    We talked with a lady from Boise, who told us about her neck of the woods and told us that Craters of the Moon was "very creepy." (Sounds like our kind of place.) After that, we kept on walking up past some unsavory-looking characters until we got about a half-mile from the car.
     
    At which point, of course, the cars at the front of the line turned their engines on.
     
    Then they began to move.
     
    It was a race against time trying to get back to the car before it was rear-ended as the traffic began to roll. I ran at a pretty good clip without being bothered by the altitude, but we still almost didn't make it. We barely all got in before we had to crank the engine on and put the hammer down to keep up with the truckers who wanted to make up for lost time.
     
    So I suppose I can mark "race to a car that's parked on an Interstate a half-mile away" off my bucket list.
     
    A few minutes before 9:00 we got out of the heart of the Cascades as we traveled into Washington's more arid eastern portion. The terrain was like a prairie that hadn't been stretched out - while significantly flatter than the Cascades they were by no means flat and continued their lumpiness alongside the road.
     
    At 9:13 we got to Ellensberg and pulled into an IHOP for dinner. IHOPs are, of course, not our first choice for food, but given the time of day and the fact that we only wanted something edible, it tasted delicious.
     
    After a very filling meal we waddled back to the car and got to the hotel, where we checked in as my dad told the tale of the I-90 backup with the kind of humorous embellishment only he could come up with.
     
    Tomorrow: We sleep in after a ridiculously long day. We won't stay in Ellensberg another night, but the next leg of the trip won't consist of the kinds of long days we've recently had to endure.
  16. Sumiki
    After a good night's sleep we got on the road at noon, rested up and anticipating a drive to Boise. It was 55 degrees and, of course, it was raining. It was not a hard rain, so we were able to make good time. We saw orchards along with semi-arid hills and mountains covered in dust and sagebrush. I forgot how much of Washington was like this.
     
    We stopped on the Yakima outskirts for gas and car snacks, then hit the road again. We crossed the Yakima and the Naches rivers and continued on the highway. We passed many apple orchards as well as warehouses. White barns along the side of the road would advertise "FRUIT - ANTIQUES" and below it "APPLES - CHERRIES - WINE - ASPARAGUS."
     
    The sun finally came out at 1:17 in Grandview - but five minutes later the rains started up again. Vineyards were mixed with orchards, surrounding vast homes. (It's surprising to see these large houses in the middle of nowhere.)
     
    Soon enough we began to climb again, with arid hills to our right and a vast valley to our left, filled with farmland. We saw mounds of basalt, fresh from the mine, as well as bits of the mineral poking through from beneath the hills. (Good thing it's so common, as it's a key ingredient in the production of asphalt.) My dad dubbed the electric lines we passed under "spaghetti spinners."
     
    Rain clouds began to look increasingly more ominous in the distance, but we continued to run into only light amounts in spotty patches. We passed the entrance to an old mine shaft around 2:00. We entered areas reminiscent of the Badlands as we descended towards the Columbia River and entered Oregon.
     
    A little ways into Oregon we stopped at a rest area and read a little about the Oregon Trail in a small outdoor exhibit. It wasn't too much more than we were already aware of but it felt good to move around a bit.
     
    We climbed up a large hill that, in size, was somewhere between a hill and a mountain. We pulled off into a scenic overlook where we could see flat farmland for miles around. After getting pictures we pulled out and continued to climb up as high as the clouds in the distance. Eventually we ran into a cloud, which looked quite like steam coming up off the road.
     
    We were within the Blue Mountains and climbed over in horrid road conditions. The road was rutted and bumpy with a great number of water-filled holes. It was barely raining at this point so we pulled off to visit a place in a national forest where you can still see the ruts from the wagons. Pulling out our umbrellas, we walked along the paved trail and read about the trail's history through the region. Travelers described the area as worse than the Rockies, which was surprising.
     
    Needing some more exercise, we walked the trail again, which turned out to be a bad idea, because the sky immediately darkened and it absolutely burst. As soon as we got into the car, the rain turned to small bits of hail - noisy, but not dangerous.
     
    Unfortunately, we needed to get back onto the highway for ten miles, and the highway conditions were atrocious. The right lane grooves where the trucks travel were filled up with water and made the car hydroplane constantly. The left lane had random lakes in it, which wasn't much better. On top of this, there was a river between the lanes. It was all we could do to navigate the scary miles, but we eventually got to the hotel. While we wanted to get farther on down the road, to either Baker City or to Boise, the reservoir-like conditions of the highway made travel all but impossible.
     
    (The scary thing is that the Oregonians thought nothing of this weather and sped past us going well over the speed limit with no lights on. They hydroplaned but didn't seem to care, which was scary for us. We pulled over to the side of the road a few times to let them pass.)
     
    Now, at a little after 8:00, it's no longer raining, and it looks like it will be a beautiful day tomorrow. We need one of those, I think.
     
    Tomorrow: We travel through Boise to Mountain Home, Idaho, the jumping-off point for the Craters of the Moon National Monument.
  17. Sumiki

    Ode to Dental Floss

    By Sumiki,

    "It's iconic. It's platonic. It's absolutely supersonic. I just love dental floss - don't you?"
    -Sumiki's Dad, 2013
     
    Use it for laundry to hold up wet pants
    Use it in salad to clear out the plants
    Use it with music to help yourself dance
    Dental floss.
     
    Use it with Windex to clean your garage
    Use it on sidewalks and make a mirage
    Use it on muscles to help them massage
    Dental floss?
     
    Use it with lawnmowers to hold up the blade
    Use it on tonsils with your eggplant maid
    Use it with ducklings while in a parade
    Dental floss!
     
    Use it on crows to help rip out their eyes
    Use it with fire and fuel it with flies
    Use in on trash cans for crazy surprise
    (Dental floss)
     
    Use it with cacti, rub it on a beard
    Use it for bow ties and they'll think you're weird
    Use it on chicken when you order it seared
    DENTAL. FLOSS.
     
    Use it to tickle to make someone goosy
    Use it to cut through a large roll of sushi
    Use it as a gift to a girl who's named Lucy
    ... dental floss.
     
    Use it on marmots that wear many girdles
    Use it on farm animals; maybe some turtles
    Use it to lasso three crazy crepe myrtles
    ˙ssolℲ lɐʇuǝp
     
    Use it for decor and create a nice wreath
    Use it for a nice hamster name Keith
    Use it on something that's stuck in your teeth
    Dental floss.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    next time, we write about waffle cones
  18. Sumiki
    We left Brandon a little after ten-thirty after a filling breakfast. We were outside of the city - Manitoba's second largest - within no time, and by eleven we were seeing vast, wide-open expanses of sheer nothingness where we could see forever.
     
    Nearly noon, we found ourselves in Saskatchewan (province #2) at their welcome center, where we met two upbeat ladies who showed us interesting pamphlets for and lively descriptions of Saskatchewan attractions. While we did not end up getting to many of the things they showed us, we learned about the province. Their flag is highly interesting and their tourism ad campaign centers around the phrase "hard to spell, easy to draw."
     
    I inquired as to the origin of the name of Diefenbaker Lake, mentioning that it sounded German, and was told that it was named after a former Prime Minister way back when, to which I said "I guess that was back when they had names like Diefenbaker."
     
    Saskatchewan, in addition to its profound rectangularity, has the world's largest Kimberlite fields and is a major source of the world's potash and uranium. It does not follow daylight saving time and thus we moved an hour backwards a province earlier than we had anticipated, which was as welcome as it was unexpected.
     
    A little before 11:30 we pulled into the first bank we saw in Moosomin (pronounced MOOSE-mon), Saskatchewan's first major city after the border crossing, to exchange a hundred dollars into Canadian currency. (Canada, we figured, was too large to get across by credit card alone.) As our luck would have it the exchange rate is at an unprecedented 1-to-1 ratio after days of fluctuation. Hopefully it tilts back in our favor if we have any cash left before we get back to the States.
     
    I forgot just how interesting Canadian currency is, or perhaps I never studied it while in Toronto. One of the bills I got a good look at was purple and had a scene of boys playing hockey on the back. Next to this is an interesting quote which I can't remember at the moment. (All of the bills I looked at were very pretty and interesting to look at. [sure beats a creepy one-eyed floating pyramid, I know that much. No wonder conspiracy theorists think something's up; no currency could possibly be as dull as ours without some deeper meaning.])
     
    Back on the road, we spotted white smoke in the distance and figured it was a forest fire. About a half-hour later we caught up to where the smoke was and it smelled exquisite, almost like a gigantic hickory-smoke barbecue was going on somewhere up north. This was the deciding factor in not going north to the valley area we'd heard about from the welcome center.
     
    The scenery is beautiful, to be sure, but there comes a point where it gets dull and one begins to notice smaller and smaller details to alleviate the boredom. Between Whitewood and Broadview we began a barely noticeable climb that lasted for most of the province east of Regina. We would never go downhill; we would only plateau for a while before we went uphill again.
     
    (Side note: the Trans-Canada highway is Canada's major and only coast-to-coast highway. It is their equivalent of the US Interstate system. One would think that, being the fastest route from the ports of British Columbia to the major population centers of Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes, there would be traffic, but it is deserted to the point where we wondered why there were two lanes in both directions.)
     
    Signs for cities were three-dimensional and interesting, such as a gigantic G with something inside it (I didn't get a good look) for the town of Grenfell. We passed a number of these tiny towns before we found ourselves, suddenly, in Regina.
     
    We got gas in Regina and attempted to find some distinctly Canadian place to get some late lunch, but most places were slammed even though it was nearly 2:00. We ate Nutter Butters in an attempt to tide us over to Moose Jaw, which is the only major city between Regina and Swift Current.
     
    By 2:30 we had made it to Moose Jaw and a gigantic moose statue at the welcome center. We entertained the ladies at the welcome center and they gave us plenty of information about Moose Jaw.
     
    Back around the turn of the century, Moose Jaw was notorious for its rampant vices. Law enforcement looked the other way as long as gang activity was confined to the thriving red light district. As a vestige of their past, the tunnels underneath the city - which were used as hideouts for bootlegging operations during Prohibition and were used extensively by Al Capone - have been maintained, and themed guided tours run daily.
     
    We heard of these when we had first crossed over the Saskatchewan border but things got more interesting the more we heard about them. It's one of the more distinctive things about Moose Jaw (aside from its many murals randomly placed around downtown) and something that seemed right up our alley, so we went on a tour.
     
    The guides on the tour are entirely in-character - one a 30s showgirl and the other Capone's right-hand man. The both took half of the tour. I must applaud them for staying in-character, as we did all we could to get them to crack up and break character. (The one guy nearly lost it when my dad mentioned deep-frying possums, but he held it together nicely.) During the tour we also received nicknames - I was "Mr. Touchy," my dad was "Joe," and my mom was "honey." While a tad corny, I soon learned to enjoy the banter when they asked questions. (When they asked us where we were going, we told them "the north pole," and when they asked why we told them "because Santa needs a drink too.")
     
    The tour was more informative than simply showing you around telling you what went on, which would have gotten old.
     
    After this we stopped at a local place called the Deja Vu Cafe, which came highly recommended by the Moose Jaw visitor's center and featured on a show called "You Gotta Eat Here," which is the Canadian version of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Their menu featured well over fifty sauces and well over fifty milkshakes. We got six of the most popular sauces for our wings and chicken strips as recommended to us by our waitress (who picked up on our accents right off the bat).
     
    While there, I got the chance to try something I'd been itching to try ever since getting into Canada: a poutine. For those unaware, a poutine is a disgusting-looking side item made by taking french fries, putting a vast amount of cheese on top of them, and then, as if that wasn't enough, pouring hot, sticky gravy over the whole thing. It was somewhat more appetizing than it looked (and tasted better with sauce) but I couldn't eat it all.
     
    A little after 5:30 we were back on the Trans-Canada Highway and got into some different scenery. The eastbound and westbound portions of the highway split off from each other with over a mile between them on occasion. The reason for these splits are unclear but it seems to have to do with farmland and to accommodate some of the region's many small lakes.
     
    We went over a hill and found ourselves looking down into a vast white valley filled with flat sheets of an indeterminate white mineral we later determined was sodium sulfate accumulated from the nine-mile-long, three-mile-wide Lake Chaplin, one of the largest salt lakes on the continent outside of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. (I was first alerted to its mineral content because it smelled atrocious as we drove through.) The same white stuff had accumulated along the banks of the lake and cows did not drink from it. Ducks loved both it and the small briny lakes around it, and we saw them with their heads underwater more often than not as they were searched for shrimp to snack on. Also on the lake was a dirt road on a culver that went all the way across the lake to facilitate transportation without going around the lake.
     
    By 7:00 we were nearing Swift Current and saw tunnels that cut underneath the highway. I assume that these are for farmers and animals to be able to cross the highway without the danger of getting run over, but I'm pretty sure someone could suntan for an hour on most stretches without being in a great amount of danger. (I certainly wouldn't try it, though; my skin is too fair.)
     
    A little after 7:15 we made it to our hotel and got to our room, which is spacious if a little odd-smelling. You can still see a bit of the sun and it's 9:41.
     
    Tomorrow: we trek even further north to Banff National Park in Alberta.
  19. Sumiki
    We got on the road before 10:00 and headed west on Trans-Canadian Highway 1. The first stop of the day was Medicine Hat, which, aside from its strange and awesome name, is the first major city after crossing into Alberta. We saw a donut-shaped cloud and large eastbound trucks - probably the most traffic we've seen on Highway 1 since we got on it in Brandon. We continued the pattern of gaining altitude and plateauing. This became much more pronounced today; we were most definitely in the foothills of the Rockies.
     
    We saw groups of cows angled in the same direction as we drove past - we're not sure if it was in salute of my dad or of Yoder the duck. We passed a great many lakes - we're not sure if all of them have names. There are so many up here it'd only be useful to name the larger ones. Flags, few and far between as they were, flapped every which way but east. The clouds kept rolling around ominously as we headed into the impending onslaught of rain.
     
    Then the rains began. It was not much at first but it continued to increase steadily as the day wore on.
     
    Before 11:30 we were in Alberta and stopped at the visitor's center for information. Alberta is the only province where they sell you their maps instead of saying "eh" a few times and giving them to you. We skipped buying this in favor of a possibly lethal combination of our '96 road atlas and our homicidal GPS we've christened "Hal." Fortunately for us the road did not differ from our expectations.
     
    It wasn't raining when we got out of the visitor's center but within a few minutes back on Highway 1 we got back into steady rain. The rain stopped briefly before we rolled into Medicine Hat for a late brunch at Subway. (The tomatoes may not have been fresh but the pickles were excellent.) We saw something that touts itself as the "world's largest teepee" but is little more than a gigantic steel frame with Indian shields all around as decoration.
     
    After brief road work on the Medicine Hat outskirts it began raining again. After a gas - sorry, petrol - stop, we headed towards Calgary as I played appropriate music on the iPod.
     
    (Side note: Alberta is the first province we've gotten to that has counties. While all states have either counties or county equivalents as a level of government, few provinces have them. The population is so sparse, apparently, that it's not worth setting up an extra level of government and most things are controlled at the provincial level. Alberta, however, has counties, and I think British Columbia does too. We'll see if that's true in a few days.)
     
    The temperature began a steady decline as we rolled towards Calgary. Around this time we saw a wolf dart along the road and various canals to help irrigate the many vast farms along the highway. We saw even more cows standing in our direction as we went past, so we decided on the name "Yoder Salute." I waved the little duck at them as we passed, to which the cows seemed happy enough.
     
    (The only other explanation for this action would be if the cows were about to do a gigantic Harlem Shake, but that's something one would expect more in a Far Side cartoon.)
     
    A little after 3:00 we were in Strathmore and within the half-hour we'd made it to the Calgary city limit.
     
    Three things happened in Calgary that were unexpected. The first was the rain. It absolutely burst as we made our way through the province's largest city. The second was the sheer amount of stoplights, the equivalent of running an Interstate through a city and putting stoplights on it. The third was the traffic, which backed up through multiple intersections. Drivers weaved in and out and no one used their signals. Cars squeezed through nearly nonexistent gaps and ran red lights with nonchalance. Combined with the intensity of the rain we were lucky to not have witnessed or been involved in an accident.
     
    At 4:00 we were towards the other side of Calgary and saw Olympic Park as the rain kept up and the temperature kept falling. It was 5 degrees C (41F) at 4:00 and dropped to 3 (37) by 4:08. The trees and evergreens we saw along the sides of the road were reminiscent of the Sierra Nevada range.
     
    And then it got scary.
     
    We had climbed up far enough for some of the lower clouds to be below us in valleys. The temperature hovered at 1 (34) as half the rain became slushy and the other half was snow. Around this time we began to catch glimpses of the awesome Canadian Rockies jutting up around us, sheer rock faces that began in the shrouded valleys and went all the way up to an equally shrouded sky. Snow was visible not just near the tops of mountains, but weighing down the evergreens and whitening up the sides of the road.
     
    Our concern was that the temperature would drop to 0 and we would lose traction on what would be an icy road, especially around a section with many bridges. Fortunately this did not happen, as the precipitation slowed to a more moderate pace and the temperature warmed to a balmy 2 degrees as we passed Lac Des Arcs.
     
    It was nearly five o'clock as we rolled towards Canmore, the last town before Banff itself. A little before the entrance to Banff National Park it dropped back down to 1 as the rains increased slightly. After paying to get into the park we got to Banff within short order - but not before seeing two herds of majestic elk and a good number of mule deer. A little after 5:00 we got to our hotel.
     
    After lounging in our hotel room for about an hour and a half, we decided it was time to head out and satisfy our ravenous hunger with some famous Alberta beef. Research was attempted but limited, as everywhere we looked seemed absolutely delicious. All we knew when we walked out is that we wanted some Alberta beef.
     
    We could not find the place we were looking for. Bundled up in our parkas, we still got cold after a while and ducked into a small mall where we asked two ladies at a clothing store where the place was. The next thing we know, one of them was drawing fervently on our town map and rapidly described all kinds of restaurants, half of which she said that she'd worked at. (Apparently there's a Greek place somewhere around here whose owner speaks in a thick accent and was described as a "real-life Soup Nazi.")
     
    We thanked them profusely before ducking back out into the cold. After almost getting turned around we found the steak place. I came very close to ordering escargot but ended up getting a steak. (I now know what all the fuss is about when it comes to Alberta beef - as well as why we heard it described as "Canada's Texas." Continuing from that analogy, I suppose that the Yukon is "Canada's Idaho.") Aside from the steaks, the salads and bread both had enough garlic to be delicious and make us stink for a good while to come.
     
    They also had delicious sweet iced tea which had a hint of some sort of strawberry or something? I don't know what it was but I sucked down two glasses and it was good.
     
    It was then that the next adventure began: the search for something to drink. The coffee machines in the lobby were out of coffee so we opted for getting some water at the vending machine near our room. But the vending machine, for some inexplicable reason, spewed out a disgusting drink called a Five Alive which tastes like old, watered-down, carbonated orange juice - except somehow worse. Eventually waters were retrieved from the car which is in a tiny parking garage underneath the building. (Seriously, this thing is so small a bicyclist would have trouble navigating. Getting out is going to take some serious work.)
     
    Tomorrow: We explore Banff more. It's expected to snow tomorrow, actually - hope it doesn't block any views.
  20. Sumiki
    As one of the final steps in my quest for reorganization and restructuring of this blog, I have reformed the old "Bring Back Teal Club" into a new club: The Unused Colors Society. The mission of the UCS is to promote the use of underutilized and/or discontinued LEGO colors, such as teal, old purple, or metallic blue.
     
    All of the 130 members of the old BBTC are automatically members of the UCS - and anyone who wishes to join can do so in this entry!
  21. Sumiki
    Does anyone even read these?



     
    Our first stop of the day was in Northfield, a short drive from Minneapolis and a cute college town, home to crosstown rivals Carleton and St. Olaf.
     
    What should have taken thirty minutes took instead about fifty, as the Interstate down was closed.
     
    Every state has its own type of road construction, but Minnesota has its own special brand of messed up. The signs that should have denoted the complete and utter closing of the Interstate were cryptic, and we were forced to detour along a county road out into the middle of nowhere. We made our way down back roads to Northfield and poked around the St. Olaf and Carleton campuses - but mainly Carleton's, as the architecture is more interesting and diverse.
     
    In addition to housing the two colleges (whose rivalry traditions include a massive annual snowball fight), Northfield is on the 45th parallel which we crossed in Michigan on the second day of the trip, and is the site of the near-capture of Jesse James and the start of a cascade of events leading up to his assassination. The place has annual Jesse James days where they do a re-enactment of that day's events.
     
    It was pouring rain by the time we'd finished looking around, and found a small cafe to have some lunch. Their sandwiches and wraps were nominal, but the real treats were in their ice creams. My dad got some coconut almond while my mom and I split praline pecan.
     
    (While poking around in an adjoining shop, I found what was possibly the most innately wrong book on the entire continent: a bizarre picture book about Finland which featured, on its cover, a naked family in a sauna. Leaves were placed in convenient locations but this did not make the scene any easier to deal with; if anything, the foliage made it even creepier.)
     
    The rains had gone, so we left Northfield and headed back up to Fargo via Minneapolis. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper going 75 miles an hour and the rains were intermittent. Eventually the traffic peeled off into the suburbs and we were left on I-94 bound for the North Dakota border. The terrain had begun to flatten considerably, and any low areas were filled with standing waters. I could not tell if some were outright lakes or simply glorified puddles from the record days of rain in this section of the country.
     
    A little after 6:00 we crossed over into North Dakota (state #8) into Fargo and continued on past the I-29 interchange to get to the deserted welcome center, which featured sinks that jutted far enough out to wash a small farm animal and a lady behind the desk who had the personality of a sedated anteater. Not knowing where the independent Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks might sell a pennant for the collection, she directed us to a place down the street called Scheel's, which is apparently a local chain of stores.
     
    This place was a shrunken-down Mall of America, except it was all one store - kind of like a multi-story combination of Wal-Mart and Bass Pro Shops sprinkled with uncanny mannequin doppelgängers of various US Presidents and a ferris wheel inside.
     
    Clearly, when it comes to attractions, these folks prefer the great indoors.
     
    We found many cool items and more than a few RedHawks-related hats and t-shirts, but we did not find a pennant. The employees told us that they might have something inside the mall a little farther into the city, but after walking around a few levels of the store and getting progressively more disturbed with each disturbing fake President we passed, we decided to head on up to Grand Forks. One look at the weather solidified this notion for us.
     
    We could not outrun this weather.
     
    North Dakotans are possibly the craziest of all drivers when out in the elements, as they flew past us going 85 or 90 when 65 was pushing it in the torrential downpour and gusting winds. While completely flat out there, the road construction did not help matters. Occasional reprieves from the rains made for a somewhat faster drive but we could not make ideal time because we'd just run back into another wall of rain.
     
    After eight we were out of the road work and nearly to the hotel, and before 8:30 we made it. The madness of today combined with leftover tiredness from yesterday made the decision to eat at the hotel easy, especially because the hotel chain we're at usually has pretty good food.
     
    They had one waitress, one cook, and about thirty people to serve. How very badly this particular hotel is staffed cannot be overemphasized. Food came out from the kitchen at a snail's pace and was delivered even slower. With no one to clean the tables, the lone waitress cleaned them on a need-only basis and did so five minutes after we had sat down.
     
    Our food showed up after what felt like an hour, and the flavor was absolutely nonexistent. The bread I had with my chicken parmesan was the most flavorful part of the entire experience, as the chicken was not only nearly burnt but tasted like it had been reheated twenty-nine different times over the course of a week and a half, and I'm pretty sure what little sauce was present on my pasta was scraped from the bottom of an old bottle of Ragù.
     
    I cleaned this plate off because it was sustenance. Under circumstances where my hunger was not nearly so dire I would have probably only gone as far as to sniff it.
     
    Tomorrow: the exact center of North America in Rugby, ND, then north to Manitoba.
  22. Sumiki
    We left for the Mall of America at 12:20 and arrived a few minutes later. It's strange seeing the place - there's really nothing quite like it.
     
    It's not because of the shops. It's because they have roller coasters inside.
     
    Roller coasters.
     
    Inside.
     
    We walked through this gigantic area en route to the LEGO store, but had enough time to get all-day wristband passes to (nearly) all the rides. The kiddie rides are mixed in with the larger ones and the larger ones were built over, around, and occasionally inside each other. The one we rode first was sponsored by Pepsi and had no real theme to it save for a gigantic Pepsi logo.
     
    We got to the LEGO store which we poked around a bit, discussing the modular series with employees and admiring their three-story Pick-A-Brick wall. (There was no way to get to the top levels of parts which were repeats of parts found down below; the wall is mostly for show.)
     
    This is where we met Paleo and, briefly, his mother. (I asked him if he dreamed about farm animals.) Paleo and I went to get a wristband, but the machine proceeded to break on him as soon as he swiped his credit card and did not print out a wristband. Fortunately various employees came over, voided the transaction, and supplied him with a wristband.
     
    As this point we all put Spongebob-themed hats on our heads for some reason and took insane pictures.
     
    The next stop was one of the more fun rides - I forget the name of the thing, but is carries four people and spins you around as you go down hills and around tight turns. Each time we rode it was different because each car they have spins just a wee bit differently. (The second-to-last time we rode it, the car was very loose and spun around at an alarming and possibly dangerous rate. We got the same car the last time around but they had apparently tightened it up.)
     
    While in the line for this ride Paleo found a small pile of pennies barely within reach along a small ledge on a wall. I don't know whose they were but whoever they are, they're out roughly eleven cents.
     
    Paleo and I attempted to get on a ride where you get harnessed in and walk a series of planks and ropes up three stories. However, this ride was not included on our wristband and neither of us felt like paying more for 45 minutes of tedious walking around three stories high.
     
    Having not eaten breakfast at this point, we got ice cream (a dairy product and thus acceptable for breakfast) and meandered around the theme park area for a while talking about various dumb things that I can't really remember at this point. Somewhere in here we met back up with my mom and dad and we headed over to do another ride themed around the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is just about the single dumbest concept for a show in the recent history of ever.
     
    This ride was interesting because of its uniqueness - you get locked down into seats that have wings on them. The seats can be rotated left and right by moving the wings, but the seats could neither lean forward nor spin. Each seat was attached to a large pole, which was controlled by a massive spinning hand which was set at an angle. The large counterweight would have kept the ride spinning indefinitely, as you climbed up three floors and then flew back down to your feet nearly touching the ground. To stop it, the brakes had to be engaged at the apex of the flight.
     
    Somewhere in here we went to a Peeps store and looked around at all manner of Peeps-related items including large plushies, small hats, and mouse pads. We found a reincarnation of Toxic Waste Bunny amidst all this which we all rubbed our faces on for posterity.
     
    Also in this store was a Mike & Ike candy dispenser. I found no difference between Mike & Ike and regular jelly beans, aside from the shape of the candy. Present in one section of the store was a display where you placed your hand with a gigantic stylized thermometer next to it to tell you how hot your hand was. I rubbed the palmprint icon like there was no tomorrow and achieved the highest level possible on the thermometer. (My dad was next, followed by Paleo and my mom at about half what I got.) I won nothing for this endeavor save for an enormous amount of disbelief in my own sanity.
     
    (Some time before this we wore baby-sized hats and made the dumbest of faces at each other. These moments were recorded for the sake of posterity, and for emergency use if I ever begin to take myself seriously.)
     
    After this (I think?) Paleo and I went over a bridge (over part of the water slide ride) doing Gangnam Style. We taught him my dad's "Hamster Dance" as we walked back over to the spinning ride.
     
    Nestled within these events was a trip back to the LEGO store, where I acquired three collectible minifigures, one of which is likely the 10th series baseball player. Paleo also got a few, and we were both helped in our endeavors by a highly knowledgeable pair of enthusiastic six-year-olds.
     
    I stopped Paleo on a number of occasions from telling me the plot of the Doctor Who season finale. All he was able to say was that "everything finally makes sense." (Please keep me away from spoilers for the next few weeks, will you?)
     
    I know other things happened but I'm incredibly tired while writing this and I'm only remembering some bits, like when Paleo told me that the way I said something sounded British. (I wish I remember what it is that I apparently say British-like.) Also he kept telling me that I had to see the new Star Trek movie, even though it was packed with references and I have seen very little Star Trek in my life. (Two episodes of the original series, one and a half movies, an understanding of phrases that have made it into the vernacular, and the plotline to the Tribbles episode is literally all I know.)
     
    Around 5:30, Paleo and I hopped on the Pepsi ride for the last time. This is where we somehow became interested in what US Patent No. 1 is - apparently it was given to some Senator who invented something for steam locomotives.
     
    After departing the ride, we walked over to the LEGO store where my parents had just finished off some banana milkshakes from Orange Julius. With a little bit of time left, Paleo and I went on the spinning ride one last time before he had to leave.
     
    On the way out we got more pictures of the place's sheer vastness. We also got a good look at a project where a bunch of people were painting old pianos to apparently get young people interested in music.
     
    We took the shuttle back to the hotel and, being drained from being up and on our feet all day, we rested up. At 8:30 we left the hotel bound for Culver's to see Takuma Nuva. I ran in a few minutes after 9:00 and saw him (and Tom, his incredibly tall cousin) for the first time since last BrickFair. We hung out at a table, and I ate something called the S-Mizzle, a variation on the M-Drizzle (or something like that; I can't remember the exact name) that Takuma invented. It had chicken with bacon and of lettuce and pickles and mayonnaise on some toasted sourdough bread and was delicious.
     
    Takuma could be a comedian with his sense of comedic timing. Stories of his family's trips and his experiences working at a drive-thru were made even funnier by his descriptions. (For example, he described his dad's snoring as "so loud it would vibrate you and digest things in your belly even if you were dead" and the seasons in Minnesota as "almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction.")
     
    Takuma was also generous enough to pay for our meal, and we promised that if we ever were within 500 miles of Minneapolis we'd make a detour. We had the first ever Cheese Curd Ceremony where I gave him a cheese curd and he ate it, in recognition of his generosity. My dad retrieved the hot dog hat from the trunk and sandwiched it in a small hatpile between Takuma's hat and Tom's hat. After this was over I donned the hot dog hat, and no sooner did I do this than a fellow who looked like a teenage Bob Costas walk of the bathroom and said "dude! I love your hat!"
     
    (We also made a ton of puns about fire, which explains half of the entry title.)
     
    But it was 10:30 by this time, Culver's was closing, and we had to get back to the hotel as it began to rain.
     
    Tomorrow: Grand Forks, North Dakota. The second leg of the road trip is about to begin.
  23. Sumiki
    The day began in Mackinaw City at around seven o'clock in the morning. We hadn't planned on getting such an early start, but the northern latitude of the city meant more daylight hours and earlier waking. We checked out, gassed up, and began the day crossing the epic Mackinac Bridge.
     
    It's a gigantic bridge. There's nothing special about it other than that it's just massive. You think it's going to start dipping down to the other side but it just keeps on going. Of course, we made it to the upper peninsula with no issue and hit highway 123 en route to Lake Superior, the only Great Lake we have not seen on any road trip.
     
    We saw deer eating, incredibly straight roads, lots and lots of trees, and what may or may not have been a black bear bounding across the road. By 9:09 it was 52 degrees, and we saw very skinny trees. We were bound for Lake Superior, and the closest point to us was Whitefish Bay, mentioned in Gordon Lightfoot's ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." It was creepy listening to the song as we caught glimpses of Superior beyond the trees.
     
    After our Superior sighting, we had our sights set on Tahquamenon (rhymes with "phenomenon") Falls State Park. The park is divided into the lower and upper falls, which we visited in that order. The lower falls featured a couple of waterfalls around a small island and did not have many visitors. The water that feeds the falls is colored by tannins, leaving it a rich brown-orange hue. When the water stops, the tannins congeal on top to create a white foam that flows by and looks not unlike snow-colored lava. I poked my finger in it and it came out covered in brown silt.
     
    By 10:10 we were on the way to the upper falls, which is much more picturesque. In terms of sheer volume, the upper Tahquamenon falls is the second-largest waterfall east of the Mississippi. (The first is, of course, Niagara Falls.) This water is also colored orange-brown. You can walk out on a wooden deck almost right up to the waterfall down 94 steps, with the ominous sign "94 Steps to Brink." My dad, of course, rubbed his nascent beard on it.
     
    (Side note: Michigan drivers often fly past you on two-lane roads going seventy miles an hour, then get right in front of you going ever so slightly slower than the posted speed limit. In addition to the terms "California roll" and "Texas turn" coined on other trips, I think I'm going to add "Michigan pass" to the lexicon.)
     
    Around 11:00 we were back on route 123 bound for Newberry. We passed swampy areas and turned onto routes 28 and 117 through farmland and pastures ready to plant crops. (Just last Saturday, we were informed, the U.P. got snowed on.) Before noon, we were heading west on US 2.
     
    The scenery, while pretty, was nothing that we hadn't seen before, but was markedly different from what I expected from the U.P. We'd gone back down and skirted along the edge of Lake Michigan and made bad puns.
     
    We saw old road signs in Escanaba after crossing the Rapid River and got lunch at a Culver's, which, being a more local chain, I have never been to (though I hear there's one in Charlotte). My dad got a peanut-butter-and-chocolate milkshake as dessert and looked like a little kid when sipping on it.
     
    (Somewhere in here we unknowingly crossed over into Central time. This is the first time I've crossed over time zone borders and not seen a sign - perhaps because we did not cross on a major road.)
     
    We entered Wisconsin just south of Menominee - the southernmost town in the U.P. - at a town called Marinette. Our route to Wausau took us through secondary roads and a ton of cute downtown areas evocative of Norman Rockwell. The landscape was lumpy; what you see on dairy products is not unrealistic or romanticized. (It does, however, smell incredibly bad.)
     
    Passing Shawano Lake, we took route 29 west. Barns along the road have diamond-shaped designs on their massive silos almost like pieces of a Paul Bunyan-sized quilt.
     
    By 4:18 we had gone 1300 miles and saw large hills in the distance towards Wausau. The rain, which had been drizzling for hours, began to come down steadier as we pulled off the road to our hotel.
     
    We got food at a local chain called Hudson's, which is kind of like Applebee's with a car theme. We tried cheese curds and liked them. My dad put an orange rubber duck that came with the hotel room on top of an old gas pump which was inside the restaurant. We have named this duck Yoder, after the surname ever-present in Amish country, and will take pictures of Yoder everywhere we go from here on out.
     
    Tomorrow: a shorter driving day as we work our way to Minneapolis, where we're due to stay for a few days.
  24. Sumiki

    Paleo

    By Sumiki,

    Possibly a seven-foot-tall man with a handlebar mustache and the voice of James Earl Jones and the ability to carry on an in-depth discussion about the US Patent Office.
     
    (Only one of these is actually true.)
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