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Sumiki

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  1. Sumiki
    We wanted to leave our hotel room as soon as possible, so we ended up getting on the road out of Louisiana at around 9:20. Our first stop of the day was Vicksburg, Mississippi, which we arrived at around 11:00. We entered the visitor center and watched a short movie detailing the events of the Vicksburg campaign before going on the auto tour around the battlefield.
     
    Vicksburg was a stronghold along the Mississippi River and widely considered the key to holding the river by both Confederate and Union forces. The Confederates stationed at Vicksburg were led by General John Pemberton, who was one of the more incompetent generals of the war. Ulysses S. Grant, along with other Union generals, had tried various times to get to Vicksburg with no success, but Pemberton left Vicksburg eastbound and engaged Grant's forces. Grant routed Pemberton's forces until Pemberton - for some unknown reason - thought it was a good idea to retreat the entire way back to Vicksburg, which was built up with fortifications.
     
    When Grant arrived, he was anxious enough to get the campaign over with and secure the Mississippi for the Union to order frontal assaults on the nearly impregnable fortress that Vicksburg had become, but these were unsuccessful. Eventually, having more supplies than the Confederates, he outlasted them in trenches until the southern forces could no longer bear the hunger and disease through the ranks. The surrender of Vicksburg occurred almost exactly the same time as Gettysburg.
     
    The auto tour took us along various sights along Union lines and trenches. While veritable forests have grown up almost everywhere on the battlefield now, the hills are clearly unnatural and are the remnants of the Confederate stronghold. We worked our way past large stone and marble monuments set up by states to commemorate where their infantry units were located along the battlefield, and in that regard it's very similar to Gettysburg. The open spaces there were made it easy to see the eerie hilliness of the terrain, with the lines clearly distinguishable by the naked eye even today.
     
    (As far as monuments go, Illinois had the best one: a massive domed structure with the names of every known Illinois native present at the battle. They were organized by unit and within unit they were alphabetized, making it easy to spot various set of brothers who had signed up at the same time. The floor had a mosaic design depicting Illinois' seal, and at the very top of the dome was a hole the same size as the seal on the floor. I'm sure there was more symbolism in the structure there than I noticed.)
     
    The heat was ridiculously oppressive, as the dry heat we'd accustomed ourselves to in the southwest had morphed into mugginess so thick I'd venture to call it a warm airborne slush. Opportunities to walk around outside were already severely limited due to the fact that they don't want people climbing all over the battlefield and that there are no less than three species of poisonous snake in the region, so we didn't miss anything.
     
    (Not only did the siege of Vicksburg result in one of the first uses of trench warfare in history, but also featured a crater blown into Confederate lines - both tactics used at Petersburg later on in the war.)
     
    Before the road looped back around to go back along the Confederate lines, there was the USS Cairo on display as well as a small museum dedicated to it. The Cairo was one of seven steamboat warships that made up the Union's small inland navy, and was sunk by the first usage of electric torpedoes (or what we'd call "mines") as it rolled along at its max speed of a whopping nine MPH along the Yazoo River. All of the hands safely got off the ship, but the Cairo sank to the bottom of the river and was covered by silt. The ship was lost and nearly forgotten until the 1950s, when scientists ascertained its position underneath the silt on the bottom of the river. In the mid-60s, a crane - itself, ironically, known as the Cairo - helped to lift the ship out of the water. After accidentally cutting the ship in two, it was towed away for restoration which continued into the early 80s. It was then transported to Vicksburg for display under a gigantic white tent.
     
    How good a shape the ship is in cannot be overstated. While load-bearing beams that had rotted were replaced during its restoration, almost everything on the ship was still original, including the boiler area and gigantic pistons that drove the water wheel. (The ship ran on a ton of coal an hour when running at top speed.) The explosion that led to its sinking is still visible near the front of the ship, and the coolest thing about the experience is that they built a trail through the ship so you can actually look at what the sailors did while on it. The museum next to it showcases the preserved artifacts found on the ship, such as vases that look as good as new and smooth-looking, nearly unworn leather shoes. The brass firing mechanisms used on the cannons were in astounding condition and bottles of ammonia were not only still intact, but also half-full. The bell recovered from the ship had actually trapped 1863 air and, when it was recovered, burped it back out.
     
    After exploring the Cairo, we'd had enough of the mugginess and got back to the car to get around what remained of the battlefield, which mainly consisted of more monuments for Union and Confederate units alike.
     
    We left the park around 1:30 and headed on I-20 to Jackson, which is not only Mississippi's capital city but the home of the Mississippi Braves, the Atlanta Braves' double-A affiliate. Their stadium was nice and we purchased two pennants (one for the minor and major league teams alike) from a very dull lady who barely talked and reacted blankly to the things we said. We thanked her anyway and were back on the road within short order. In about an hour's time we arrived in Meridian, the last town of any repute before the Alabama border. We got gas there, and - quite hungry by this point - we went into town in a futile attempt at getting something to eat. We got a sense of the Meridian downtown in as far as we wanted to get, but we left hungry.
     
    We continued along the highway as magnolias began in the median and along the sides of the roads. The magnolias got bigger as we approached the Alabama border, which we did a little after 4:00. We stopped at a badly laid-out welcome center and learned that the double-A Birmingham Barons were not playing today, but were yesterday and would be tomorrow. This threw another wrench in the debate between stopping in Birmingham and just sucking it up to get to Atlanta, which continued in the car in various forms as I drove us into Birmingham, where we finally found a parking space at a hotel and went in to inquire about getting an Internet signal for the iPad map software and possibly a room for the night.
     
    The hotel was full, despite their severe lack of parking due to repaving of half their lot, but the stop was not a waste as we met and talked with their assistant general manager, who is originally from Wilkesboro, North Carolina. He knew a lot about the evolution of Charlotte as well as the Kannapolis/Concord area due to the fact that he'd worked in Concord hotels, and is neither a fan of racing nor the rampant Dale Earnhardt worship present in that region of the state. Hungry but fearful of eating too much, we split a club sandwich and hit the road again to a hotel an hour away, which we'd booked in Oxford on advice from the Wilkesboro fellow, who spoke highly of the hotel quality in the area.
     
    The sun began to set as we worked our way through the surprisingly upscale Birmingham. We avoided a lethal time-killing combination of road construction, backups through multiple stoplights, and a crash ripe for rubbernecking by getting on the Interstate and heading on out to Oxford. We made good time as we worked our way through more NC-like terrain at the southern end of the Appalachian chain where the mountains are no different than large hills. Despite an utterly black road that no one could possibly see - dark to the point that I was convinced it sucked light in and ate it like a ravenous wolf on steroids - and small, highly faded stop signs away from the road to the point that only I saw them - and out of the corner of my eye at that - we made it safe and sound to the hotel at 8:30, where we ordered a proper dinner of three hamburgers. While not great they were certainly serviceable enough, and we wolfed them down along with many glasses of lemonade. (We didn't go the pitcher route this time, though I think we easily could have finished one off.)
     
    Tomorrow: we return home after a month on the road. Today marks the day we go beyond the 28 of last year, but, ironically, we may just end up with fewer miles even though we could nearly encircle last year's route with this year's route. I suppose we've cut down on the meandering this time.
  3. Sumiki
    At 10:00 we left Wausau bound for Minnesota. By 10:40 we made it to Abbotsford, the first city in Wisconsin. The sky was overcast and very cloudy. We passed farms and saw various farm animals as well as various farms and silos. While different, the sameness of the road was tiresome after a while.
     
    We were surprised to see signs warning of Amish buggies, and saw a farm animal pulling a plow, but did not see any horse-and-buggy combinations then. Each small town we passed through on the route featured beautiful and customized signs with the town name and motto. Wisconsin towns are clean and have a lot of pride in themselves.
     
    Trees became a more common sight as the hills began to roll as we headed towards Chippewa Falls. The sky began to darken just a little bit more the farther we went towards Minnesota.
     
    We neared Eau Claire as my mom read to us from her back-seat nest of a massive rivalry. Apparently, Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls had a massive rivalry as they competed for dominance in the state's once-large logging industry. However, when the forests were depleted, the towns both turned to other fields. No word on whether they're still bitter with each other.
     
    Trees in Wisconsin are just starting to bloom, as the long winter has finally passed. A little before noon it began to drizzle as we merged onto Interstate 94 bound for the Twin Cities.
     
    The road became very wet very quickly as trucks churned up mist. We had to pull off the highway and stopped for gas about 30 miles east of the Minnesota border. It was pouring rain at this point. Pulling out of the gas station, we saw an Amish buggy before getting back on I-94.
     
    By 12:30 we were heading out of the storm and the rain had decreased to a steady drizzle and saw a coyote near the road. The rain stopped as we crossed the Mississippi into Minnesota (state #7). We stopped at the welcome center and saw a number of interesting characters, including a man with his shirt half-off crouched over on a picnic table, around 15 Amish men and women, and an anorexic hippy who, my mom testified, busied herself in the bathroom by washing her hair in the sink.
     
    At 1:00 we were in the Twin Cities, crossed the Mississippi again, and tried to find a place we'd seen on TV called Pizzeria Lola. The route there did not seem hard - just go on the expressway until you exit off and go on Xerxes Avenue.
     
    What we did not realize is that not only did the exit we were supposed to take nonexistent, but that there seems to be more than one Xerxes Avenue. In our attempts to get to our hotel we ran into this road a number of times, but we did not take it at any point for fear of getting even more desperately lost. At that point, all we wanted to do was get to our hotel.
     
    We had seen what we thought was our hotel from the Interstate into Minneapolis, but that one turned out to be different. Thinking that was the only one, we were confused when our GPS told us to pass it. We pulled off into a Culver's parking lot and called the hotel. After a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, everything went better than expected; our hotel was right where it was supposed to be. Our confusion was due to the fact that it can't be seen from the highway. We then ate at Culver's and sipped on some milkshakes as we went to our hotel.
     
    Heading off at around 6:45 for the stadium of the independent league St. Paul Saints, we took a detour and drove around Macalester College. The outfield fence at their field was incredibly short but also incredibly high, at they built the field into very limited space. It would have been fun to see a game there - my dad called it "arena baseball."
     
    At 7:15 we parked near the stadium in the Lions Club parking lot, where the attendants could not believe that we had driven over 1500 miles from North Carolina. One guy even ran behind the car to check our license plate out. Clearly we need to play up on our accents and throw in more "y'all"s.
     
    The game was insane, and by insane I of course mean our brand of insane. One of the highest-drawing independent teams in the country, the Saints are co-owned by the grandson of famous baseball owner Bill Veeck, the mind behind such infamous fiascos as pinch-hitting midget Eddie Gaedel, 10-cent beer night, and the infamous Disco Demolition. His grandson carries on a muted version of this bizarre tradition, with such between-inning games as the tire roll race and various contestants trying to put on a frozen t-shirt first.
     
    The Saints also have various characters who are paid to just walk around in-character to entertain (and occasionally harass) fans. One fellow alternated between French chef and train conductor, another was dressed in drag and hobbled around on a walker, and yet another was basically Elvis meets Mr. Sulu. (Oh my.)
     
    One of the most inventive traditions the Saints have is the annual pig mascot, named before Opening Day and announced with smoke signals like they're selecting a new Pope. Previous pig names included Kim Lardashian, Kris Hamphries, and Kevin Bacon.
     
    Their PA announcer wandered around the stadium and I'm still not sure if he was drunk or not. He asked fans dumb questions and made fun of the other team. During the "charge" cheer, he did the "charge" yell in a very small, sleepy voice the first time, then burped the next time and didn't say anything the third. He also told all the fans that he "hoped they all had their jumper cables." (If my dad were a PA announcer, he'd be that guy.)
     
    The food at the stadium was also excellent, as it is one of the only independent teams in the country to have a VP to run the stadium food. We sampled gyros and cheese curds - both of which were fresh and excellent. We left a bit early to get ahead of the large, drunken crowd, but when we left the Saints were beating the New Jersey Jackals 7-2. (The Jackals starter got hammered in the first two innings - he had no control and kept leaving pitches over the plate.)
     
    Tomorrow, I'll be at the Mall of America meeting Paleo at the LEGO store. We'll also go and meet Takuma Nuva later on in the day.
  4. Sumiki
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDcHnKh2Ouc
     
    Lowell Liebermann is a modern pianist-composer from New York. His music, a blend of traditional structure and profound invention, has made him one of the most popular and most often-played of modern-day classical composers. As a pianist, a good chunk of Liebermann's works have been for or include the piano, including three Sonatas, eleven Nocturnes, and his most famous piece, the epic Gargoyles.
     
    His fourth Nocturne is one of my favorites - although it takes a good while to build up, the dreamy (and polytonal) opening motifs give way to the luscious harmonies and textures of the surprisingly violent middle section (building up to a crashing fortissississimo). One of my favorite musical moments occurs at this transition, which occurs around 2:38 in the video.
  5. Sumiki

    Rest In Peace

    By Sumiki,

    My grandfather died today, four days shy of his 92nd birthday. It wasn't by any means unexpected - he had cancer that had progressed into his bones - but it's still sad.
  6. Sumiki
    Our first stop of the day was Scotts Bluff. Because of a scraping noise that we had heard emanating from somewhere within the vicinage of the front wheels, we took the shuttle up there. We saw for a long way up there, across to some small badlands that are around a portion of it, as well as all the way to Chimney Rock, which was small and barely discernible from the sky, but we saw it nonetheless. The bluff, while not the highest thing that we've seen, was stunning in the fact that it rose up out of the prairie with no warning. After getting back to ground level, we walked along a stretch of the old Oregon Trail, where the ruts where the wagons and oxen went can still be seen.
     
    We got back on the road, but the car's steering was acting a little funny and the scraping, tapping noise was getting progressively sharper. so we pulled into a small Nebraskan town named Kimball. While the dealership was slammed, the folks who worked there must have felt pity for us or something, because they worked us in. Within two hours, they'd replaced a ball bearing in one of the wheels, telling us that "we'd never have made it home if they hadn't replaced it then." My dad kept threatening to trade it in for a new one, but I reminded him that the process would take too long, for he would invest more time and money in getting a new one than he would if he just paid for the repairs, because he'd have spent twelve hours at the minimum at the dealership if he'd decided on the former, as is his car-buying custom.
     
    Back on the road, we got across a significant portion of Nebraska, past both deer and more prairie dog colonies. While the wind was bad at first, it died down soon enough. Getting back into Central Time, we got to Kearney, where we stopped at a restaurant called the USA Steak Buffet. I can't say that the food was excellent, but it was alright. One could order steaks however you liked at a counter, and while I ordered mine medium, it came out well done. The next one I got was laced with fat. However, their fried chicken was pretty decent and I learned that I liked catfish. (Also, their peanut butter pie was positively glorious.)
     
    Getting into the hotel, the lady who checked us in was surprised that we had earned so many points with our consecutive stays, and "climbing up the latter that fast." But my dad misheard the last two words, thinking that the lady said something about coming to an event known as Fat-Fest. This led to much hilarity and laughter.
     
    Tomorrow: Kansas City, Missouri.
  8. Sumiki
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L5nc_G9Gus
     
    Kaikhosru Sorabji was a composer who was known for writing long and technically demanding pieces, mostly for solo piano. His early music blended styles from well-established virtuosos. His later works use dissonant polyrhythms and vague tonalities and is generally inaccessible. Most people who have heard of him know him solely for one piece - the four-hour, twelve-movement Opus Clavicembalisticum. (Opus Clavicembalisticum is not even Sorabji's longest; his Symphonic Variations for Piano clocks in at a whopping nine hours!) The difficulty in accurately performing such monster works means that not only have many of them have not yet been premiered, but that Sorabji himself put a "ban" on unauthorized performances of his works. This has led to many of his more accessible (but still brilliant) works to fall by the wayside.
     
    This piece might well be my favorite. It was one of his earlier works and uses bar lines and consistent rhythms (something that his later music generally lacked), but filled with luscious harmonies and dreamy textures. His Piano Sonata #1 and his Nocturne Gulistān are also worth looking into if you like this. This piece was one of three pastiches published in 1922. The other two are based on Bizet's Habanera [from Carmen] and Chopin's "Minute" Waltz. One of the more interesting things about Sorabji's piano music is that it's generally written on three staves as opposed to two; generally, the topmost one is an octave treble clef to facilitate passages in the higher registers without the use of an 8va marking. The more complex the piece, the more staves Sorabji added, to the point where his piano works sometimes look like full orchestral scores.
  10. Sumiki
    We had a filling breakfast of eggs Benedict far surpassed last night's dinner in terms of flavor. The storm system that had pasted us last night was still in the area, but had moved past far enough for us to make good time west across North Dakota. Our first stop of the day was the geographical center of North America at a town called Rugby. We took US 2 all the way there.
     
    We saw a bunch of red-winged blackbirds. It was raining intermittently and gusted indefinitely. The record rains North Dakota has been getting create impromptu lakes along the sides of the road to the degree that you sometimes feel as if you're still on the Mackinac Bridge. We saw cloud cover low enough to obscure whatever windmill blade happened to be on top.
     
    At 12:30 we stopped at a rest area. A fellow in a red shirt walked by as we used the term "lunch" to describe small bird roadkill in the parking log. My dad then proceeded to tell him about our usage of the word, as well as more recent additions to our dialect such as "snack pack," "dinner party," and "buffet," which all mean different things for different kinds of roadkill. The man said "oh, good to know" and hurried away. As he walked back to his car, we were still looking at literature inside, so I decided to prank him by locking the car until it honked as he walked past.
     
    I think we disturbed him.
     
    At 1:35 we arrived in Rugby and pulled over to see the geographic center. All that was there was a small stone obelisk with a few plaques on it, along with the flags of the US, Canada, and Mexico. We got as many pictures as is was possible to take, as the wind was whipping all around us. My dad and I barely held onto our hats as we staggered back to the car.
     
    We went through downtown Rugby and saw, amongst other things, a water treatment plant. Now, water treatment plants are not usually considered interesting sights, but Rugby is a sleepy town and their only claim to fame is found in its location. The water treatment plant used a bunch of fire hydrants as decoration.
     
    From Rugby we went to the Canadian border via state route 3 and were surprised by the hilliness of the area. It was not mountainous but it was not the sheer flatness that had characterized the state up until Rugby.
     
    A little less than an hour later we got to the Canadian border, but we did not go through customs first. Instead, we went inside the Canadian border at a place called the International Peace Garden. It's the only place where you can drive into and walk around in Canada without the need for going through customs. The border was symbolized with various cool-looking monuments all around the Garden, but we barely saw anyone else there save for a few construction workers renovating the small chapel there. The border ran through the exact center of the building, through the pulpit and organ. We didn't stick around in there for long because of the constant sound of jackhammers. but they had a plethora of cool quotes carved into marble around the sides.
     
    We got a number of dumb pictures goofing off on the border, jumping over it and making faces. My mom was the resident nonplussed designated picture-taker.
     
    There was also a bell tower there and a memorial to the 9/11 victims with a mangled mass of steel and concrete from Ground Zero. Continuing with the theme of international cooperation between the US and Canada, the signs around the memorial emphasized Canada's role in the aftermath of the tragedy.
     
    Before we exited the Peace Garden area we pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot of their interpretive center, next to - of all things - a car with another North Carolina license plate. We found them inside the center's greenhouse. They were a young couple on their own road trip, though not as massive as ours is going to end up being.
     
    The greenhouse houses a large collection of cacti, of all things. Almost every species was present inside the large, humid building, and we found strange specimens ranging from furry towers to spiked melons to vines. It was apparently the private collection of a rich fellow who lived in the southwest and moved to Minot. After the Minot floods a few years back they moved the collection to the Peace Garden. There was only enough room in the center's greenhouse for about a third of the entire collection and the rest is in other greenhouses on the property waiting to be moved into the center's greenhouse when it is expanded.
     
    After talking to the musician at the gift shop for a little while we got back on the road and headed towards Canada. It took a while to get through the border but the customs guy was friendly. (In our discussion with him we learned that Americans commonly attempt to smuggle firearms across the Canadian border.) He checked out our passports and heard him say "eh," which was rather fun.
     
    We crossed into Manitoba and played "O, Canada" as we changed the car's settings to Metric. We had fun trying to figure out the temperature gauge in Celsius and fiddled with it for a while. The road up to Brandon was littered with potholes of all sizes.
     
    En route to Brandon we passed through the small town of Boissevain. The customs guard had told us to "look out for the turtle" as we drove through. The turtle was hard to miss to the the fact that it was 30 feet tall. The rural roads that intersected the highway were rarely, if ever, paved.
     
    At around 5:00 we passed a fun billboard advertising Wendy's Baconator that said "Holy Cow and Pig!" A few minutes later we rolled into Brandon and within short order found the hotel.
     
    We went out to find supper and my dad had a hankering for Mexican food so we pulled into a Qdoba. The girl who checked us out was giving him a hard time for not drinking a beer and intimated that she had connections that would prevent us from getting arrested if he drove drunk.
     
    Now we're back in the hotel trying everything we can to get the internet to speed up to a snail's pace. My mom is walking all over the room to try and get various pages to load on the iPad and I think she's found a spot in a corner that's a bit faster.
     
    Tomorrow: we head westward once again on the Trans-Canadian Highway bound for Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
  11. Sumiki
    Slowly gettin' through the pictures, over a month afterwards. As always, hover for information.

     
     
     

    Day Twenty-Two



     


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    Day Thirty








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    Well folks, that's it. Hope you've enjoyed reading these past few weeks of entries as much as I've enjoyed reliving the adventure by posting them.
  15. Sumiki

    Dawn on the Range

    By Sumiki,

    Our alarms went off at the unholy hour of 4:00 in the morning. Since we'd prepared everything the night before, it was a slightly faster process in getting out the door than usual. We hit the road at 4:40, when the sun had not yet risen, but its light was reflecting off of the cloud cover of the west.
     
    Our first destination: the Beartooth Highway, which crosses the Beartooth Pass in the Beartooth Mountains near Beartooth Peak. (A lot of different names to take in, I know.) The road climbs up to a little over 10,900 feet above sea level, a full hundred feet above our previous land altitude record at Wolf Creek Pass two years ago. (For comparison, Billings is a little over 3,000 feet above sea level. Counting in the descent from Billings before getting to the mighty Beartooth, we easily climbed 8,000 miles.)
     
    The sun rose behind us, and although its warming rays would have been appreciated, they were obstructed by the persistent clouds, which hung around the surrounding peaks in a thick fog. The verdant valley before us—part of our short pre-Beartooth descent—was set between epic curving cliffs that shot up straight through the clouds. Along the way, we saw gray jays, which are larger than blue jays and have no real color.
     
    It was not long before we began the series of epic switchbacks that mark the northeastern terminus of the Beartooth Highway, and soon enough we came into the clouds. With no one around, we felt as if we had the mountain all to ourselves—and for a long time, I think that we actually did. The snowcapped peaks around us—ones that go up to over 12,000 feet—attempted on many occasions to pop their proverbial heads in through the cover.
     
    We stopped a little over halfway up, at the first major pullout and overlook, yet still we could see little through the all-pervading clouds. The temperature—in the mid-40s when we left Billings—was now about 36º. Our attempt at getting to an overlook met with little success, and we doubled back to the car.
     
    At this point, two chipmunks approached us. One was a little more feisty than the other one and was more willing to approach us. The little fellow was not truly domesticated, but clearly associated humanity with food. He ran up to me first, barely touched my right foot, and then ran back to the stone wall from whence he had come. I called this being "anointed" by the chipmunk, and lorded it over my parents as best I could before they, too, were anointed. My dad broke a small peanut butter cracker and gave it to them, partial to see what they'd do with it, but mainly to get them away from the car so we wouldn't run over them on the way out. (They ran off with it, then ate it.)
     
    By this point, the sun was beginning to win its battle against the fog. More snowcapped peaks could be seen off around us, although we could not see the entire vista in a single glance. With the hope of seeing more at a higher altitude, we pressed on.
     
    The sun gloriously broke through the remaining clouds as we finished the upward switchbacks. Now above the tree line, the small rolling hills on top of this plateau were covered in a thin layer of tundra. Snow banks were everywhere and the temperature hovered in the mid-30s—albeit with the added chill of a brisk, biting wind.
     
    It was here that the road offered its promised views, for immense valleys opened up before us. The other peaks rose above a stark rocky landscape below. The tree line clung around the valley. The alpine lakes had not yet begun to thaw, and glaciers clung to the mountain faces. This view was all around us as we kept our ascent. Now we were steadily ascending with but a few remaining switchbacks at the peak of the mountain. We got out at many locations, but eventually it was too cold to do even that.
     
    After we crested the final hill at nearly 11,000 feet above sea level, we had to descend. The switchbacks were more gentle than anticipated and offered stunning views of the flatter terrain below, between the Beartooth and the more distant mountains. We didn't descend as much as we ascended, which helped in the matter.
     
    Alpine lakes and snow banks were everywhere, and about the only thing the Beartooth didn't have was large wildlife. Given our early start, we figured that we'd at least see some moose and perhaps a few bear. All we saw were the aforementioned chipmunks, a few squirrels, a bald eagle, and marmots, which look a bit like the unfortunate offspring of an otter and a pit bull.
     
    Snow along the sides of the road showed how recently the Beartooth was plowed and opened for the season (it's not yet been a month): the frozen snow on the side of the road was cut straight through with a depth that reached up to five feet in places.
     
    The Beartooth has every hallmark of a truly epic road and deserves Charles Kuralt's appellation of the "most beautiful road in America." My parents agreed that the road rivals or tops any drive in Alaska, but I gently reminded them that they had never driven the road to the Arctic Circle. (You always have to be working the angles.)
     
    The rest of the Beartooth could not compete with the dramatic intensity that preceded it. After the descent, we went uphill again, winding our way back into Montana before coming back into Wyoming and the gates of Yellowstone National Park. It was not yet 9:00 and we had already experienced what would otherwise be a day's worth of sights and sounds—and we were just getting started.
     
    The roads through Yellowstone make a rough figure-8. At the northeast was the western terminus of US-212 (the Beartooth), at the south the road that goes to Grand Teton and Jackson Hole, and to the west a brief cut through Montana before going to Idaho. Other entrances are located throughout this figure-8.
     
    We worked our way down the eastern side of this figure-8. Immediately, we found that the scenery, while beautiful, was not on par with the extraordinary beauties of the Beartooth Highway; Yellowstone has rolling hills with the snowcapped peaks in the distance whereas the Beartooth was the opposite.
     
    This wasn't to say that we didn't enjoy ourselves as we looped in a J-shape around the park, for what the Beartooth lacked in wildlife was more than made up for in Yellowstone. We were almost immediately greeted by deer, pronghorn, wolf, and bear. Further in, the landscape opened up into a massive valley, where a buffalo herd thousands strong could be seen roaming the plain.
     
    Our first major stop was part of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The top layer of rock on this large canyon looks like wood paneling on a fence and was made by rapidly cooling lava. We followed the river up to the brink of the upper falls, where we also got out and walked down a few steps to the overlook of the falls, which narrow before falling off into the canyon below. We got an ornament and some ice cream, then kept on moving.
     
    Of course, with any National Park, there are hordes of idiots willing to take themselves and their small children within mere yards of a buffalo, despite every sign in the park warning against such behavior. The beasts moved slow but steady with their young.
     
    Eventually we came across stopped traffic, for a small herd was crossing the road. The traffic became so gnarled due to the aforementioned idiots getting out—including the drivers—while their car was still parked on the road. The small gap in the herd's progress—one that would have otherwise allowed traffic to flow normally for at least fifteen seconds—did not alleviate the standstill due to these folks.
     
    Our frustration turned to terror when the rest of the herd came along and wanted to get past. A large male stared down at our car like we were a competitor and snorted at us. One move on his part could have send the rest of the herd—a not insignificant number—toward the line of vehicles from which we had no escape.
     
    Eventually, he settled down and began walking slowly through. The herd followed him in front of and behind the car.
     
    The rolling hills in Yellowstone were not the short rolling hills of North Carolina, but were rather long and subdued, and strewn with rocks that distance obscured into creature-shaped masses that fooled us on a number of occasions.
     
    The bison were about the only creatures of any abundance that could be found in the park borders. After seeing thousands just in the past hour, we couldn't understand the long strips of cars that would line up just so one of their passengers could snap a picture of a single beast.
     
    We worked our way down to the southeast part of the park. Now fully on top of the volcanic caldera that fuels the geysers, we saw beautiful Yellowstone Lake. With the mountains in the distance, the lake was one of the most beautiful things that we saw in the park. At this point, tourists started to fill in to the point where traffic was backed up around a sharp curve because there was a moose on the side of the road near the lake and the guy driving the RV up ahead just had to stop on the road to properly see it.
     
    This moose didn't disappoint. Two years and two days after my dad made the mecca around Grand Teton to find moose (only to find mangy specimens), this moose looked sleek and refined. With an unblemished new spring coat on a lean body, I called him the "GQ moose" for his impeccable moose stylings.
     
    Around this time, we passed Mud Volcano and Sulfur Cauldron, two areas packed with what I can only assume to be noseless tourists. These locales smelled like a skunk family ran an oil refinery that burned hunks of 300-year-old Limburger cheese.
     
    I would have enjoyed looking at these things, but all I wanted to do was hang onto the little lunch I had.
     
    The single most interesting thing about Yellowstone was not its cliffs, canyons, or critters. It was, for us, in a "mudpot," a kind of hot spring. Its surface, instead of being hot water, is a thick and muddy mush that boils and burps out sulfuric steam. I could tell that my dad was hungry at this point, because he kept mentioning how delicious the acidic puddle looked and in fact went so far as to compare it favorably to nougat.
     
    We circled around to the south side of the drive, where we got off to see Old Faithful. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the tourist season, the powers that be decided to block at least half the parking lots in this area, and with a visitor center and a number of lodges and gift shops all vying for attention at the park's most famous attraction, the traffic was horrendous and finding a parking spot almost impossible.
     
    Old Faithful is the apex of a small hill of tan rock. Even when not spewing, its surface constantly gives off the trademark Yellowstone stinky steam. At a good distance from the geyser is a boardwalk that features two rows of benches. These filled up almost immediately after the previous eruption by tourists who wanted good seats and didn't mind either the boredom or dreadful sunburn.
     
    We got there not too long after the last eruption and had many minutes to kill inside, which we did as best we could with the limited exhibits in the visitor center. Eventually we decided that we might as well go back outside, only to stay in the back under the shade and beeline to the car after it goes off.
     
    But while Old Faithful may be faithful, it's not on a timer. The park service can get it to plus or minus ten minutes in either direction from their stated time with immense accuracy, but there are aberrations and there's no way to accurately predict it. As a result, we knew that we might be standing around looking at a steam vent for perhaps twenty minutes before it did anything.
     
    A few minutes before the predicted 2:18 eruption, things started to happen. Steam increased and water rushed up ... only for there to be a few gallons in total. This happened a few more times to the increasing frustration of the crowd until, about 2:20, one of the false starts turned into a majestic 160-foot tower of water, which lasted at its full height for a very short time. Most of its eruption was spent spewing water and steam at less than half of this full height.
     
    We got to our car amidst the crowd. Our expected lead time evaporated when other enterprising tourists began leaving after Old Faithful stopped erupting at full height. We barely escaped the place.
     
    On the way up and out of the park, we passed a number of stark and steaming fields with rampant geyser activity. They didn't smell quite as bad as the other ones we'd passed, but by this point they were simply overrun with vehicles of all kinds. After my dad nearly got trapped letting my mom and me out to see the moose, we weren't going to stop at anything that we could easily see from the road.
     
    We made it out of Yellowstone and through the town of West Yellowstone, Montana (which my dad consistently called "West Jefferson"). Soon we were in Idaho, and not too long after the two-lane highway turned into four lanes. Not long after we found ourselves in Idaho Falls and to our hotel at exactly 5:00.
     
    Already a 13-hour day, we were exhausted and settled for eating in the hotel. (None of us wanted to drive and we were sick of seeing any people we didn't have to.) I got a blue cheese bacon burger, which was somewhat dry but made up for by the extra vegetables. My dad got a New York strip that he seemed to enjoy despite the fat he had to cut away. My mom got a massive salad; I don't know what all was on it but I think there was tomato, avocado, and chicken. (I would ask her but as of the time of this writing she's already asleep.)
     
    Tomorrow: we revisit Craters of the Moon National Park. There are caves we didn't complete two years ago, and this time around we brought functional flashlights.
  16. Sumiki

    L'Isle Joyeuse

    By Sumiki,

    After awakening in Charlottetown, we headed downtown to see the sights and nab some lunch. We got to a parking deck - they call them parkades in Canada - and walked around the downtown, although it was somewhat slowed by accounting for road work. We stopped in to exchange some more money at a bank since we were down to about twenty cents of hard Canadian currency.
     
    Charlottetown is a really interesting city - it's not a big city by any means, so it's basically a big small town. Charlottetown's - and Prince Edward Island's - only real historical claim to fame is the Province House, where the Charlottetown Conference, which initially outlined the terms of what would become Canada, was held back in 1864, and where the PEI assembly still meets to this very day. Interestingly, PEI didn't join Canada until some time after, as they didn't quite like the initial terms of confederation. It was initially to discuss a Maritime union, but the province of Canada - present-day Ontario and Québec - invited themselves.
     
    They've kept it up to its Victorian appearance, and it's as architecturally interesting as it is historically interesting. There wasn't a whole lot to see, but we picked the brains of the tour guides there.
     
    Charlottetown is small. For the largest city in the province, any given street feels like it'd be at home in any small town. We walked down near the harbor, avoiding even more construction vehicles, and - most interestingly - walking behind a couple who were getting their marriage pictures taken, only to have a sudden gust of wind blow the marriage certificate out of the best man's hand towards us. (The certificate was retrieved without further incident.)
     
    We walked back towards the middle of town and walked inside St. Paul Anglican Church. We were greeted by an older Newfoundlander on a scooter, with whom we chatted - not as much about the church itself, although the late 1890s structure was built with an intricate wooden ceiling that arched this way and that to resemble an upside-down ship - but about our travels and his travels.
     
    The last vestiges of regret that we had about not going to Newfoundland or the French islands off its eastern coast were assuaged by that fellow, who said that nothing in Newfoundland looked any different than the Maritimes that we've explored for the past week, and that the only reason for going to St-Pierre et Miquelon was to "get your passports stamped" because there's pretty much nothing there.
     
    After thanking him for his time (and ogling at the architecture of the church) we headed back out for lunch, just a few blocks up at Famous Peppers, a local pizza place. With no one there when we ate, we were able to take our time ordering and talking to the owner.
     
    The pizzas were just delicious. We got three nine-inch pizzas: the Doctor, which had olives and tomatoes and a generous helping of feta cheese, the Cardigan, with a little heat to it from its ground beef, pepperoni, and bacon, and the Maple Chicken, which had a maple cream base instead of the usual tomato sauce. I was initially skeptical of this, but it was delicious ... well, the one slice I had was. I think my dad ate the rest of it. It was an interesting flavor - not too sweet, not too overpowering, but just enough to give it a unique flair. The lack of tomato sauce probably did as much for the flavor as the maple cream did, although according to the owner, many customers are willing to pay to get jars of the maple cream sauce.
     
    We ate all but three slices of the Cardigan, which we packed up in a box for later with the promise that we would do what we could to open a Famous Peppers in North Carolina if they ever decide to franchise. The main problem with franchising is that they're sort of confined to Prince Edward Island as their menu is now, as they've made it so that everything that they can get fresh, they do. PEI isn't big, but it has a heck of a lot of farmland, and aside from specialty items such as the black olives, everything that goes into their pizzas is grown on the island.
     
    Oh, and I did I mention the crust was excellent? I don't usually consider myself a crust kind of guy, but the crusts were off the charts.
     
    With stomachs full and a pizza box half-full, we ambled back over to the parking de-excuse me, parkade and rolled on out, getting stuck at an intersection as a repaving team was inching - or is it centimetering? - their way along the cross street. They were causing all kinds of traffic problems because they didn't bother to put up a detour like, y'know, normal people, but we were nonetheless able to avoid them before they took a serious bite out of our time.
     
    We weren't looking to get off the island quite yet; our destination was Prince Edward Island National Park, located along the north shore. We didn't have to pay to get in, as all of their facilities were closed, but that also meant that the park was almost completely deserted.
     
    One of the first bits of the park we got to was Dalvay-by-the-Sea, a famous hotel built in the 1890s and kept up to its original appearance, including the absence of televisions. We didn't go in, but we took a look at it from the outside, which was enough to tell us why the Queen of England stays there during her visits to Prince Edward Island. Also apparently Will and Kate stayed there, but I feel like the only person in America who really doesn't care.
     
    We walked out to the beach, which has some of the strangest beach scenery I've ever seen - it's like they took a slice from the middle of North Carolina, tore a jagged edge off of it, and plopped it down on any beach in the world. The result is downright bizarre - terrain full of rolling hills that just stops suddenly, the red clay visible underneath and spilling out onto the beach.
     
    We went out and touched the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then retreated back to the regular land. With no hills, the beach features a cold wind, steady but not strong. Standing around was a little nippy.
     
    There was little to do in the park aside from look at a few beaches, but they were enjoyable for the same bizarre characteristic of the land dropping off to the sea. We exited the park on the other side and worked our way down back to the Confederation Bridge via rural provincial routes that, aside from the usage of the Metric system and some confusing road sign placement, looked exactly like rural North Carolina. I know I keep mentioning it, but the resemblance is just way too uncanny.
     
    We dumped out in Crapaud and arrived at a small community on the PEI side of the bridge, where we got out to stretch our legs, check the brakes (everything still sounds, looks, smells, and feels good), get an ornament for my mom's Collection, and try the one thing that was on my dad's PEI bucket list - eat Cow's Ice Cream, an institution in these parts. We found one with a gift shop, and got a small postcard that featured a cow dressed up like the Eleventh Doctor getting out of the TARDIS, with the logo above not as "Doctor Who," but "Doctor Moo."
     
    Their gift shop was full of puns and parodies on bits of pop culture, featuring cow parodies of Gangnam Style, Duck Dynasty, Angry Birds, and more. The ice cream was delicious - all locally produced, just like the pizza - but I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been a warm day. As it was, the chilly air blowing in from the Strait of Northumberland made me in more of a hurry to finish my ice cream than enjoy it.
     
    We then steeled ourselves for the grand drive back over the Confederation Bridge, upon which there was, thankfully, no incident. We ran over a few small potholes to loosen anything stuck in the brake, and put the hammer down to Fredericton.
     
    Other than a short precautionary brake check about eighty miles from Fredericton (everything was still good), we didn't stop, and got to our hotel before 8:00. Fredericton is a pretty old city, which means that the roads are just completely messed up - although they would be a lot easier to navigate if we were expecting half of the crazy things that popped up in our route, like a sudden massive incline in the road where all of the sudden the street went all San Francisco on us with no warning.
     
    If this had been on the highway, we could have coasted, but there was a stoplight right in the middle of this incline. The brakes performed well - not as much as a peep from any of them - but they really should put a warning to gear down before the hill begins. It's a menace to society.
     
    With a long day of driving and exploring behind us, we wanted nothing more than to sit down a while and eat at the hotel, so as to not have to drive anywhere anymore. I'd eaten the remaining slices of pizza - still good cold! - en route to Fredericton to stave off hunger, and I ended up eating nearly all of a burger that had what felt like an entire grocery store as a topping, which, rather predictably, ended up falling apart about halfway through. My parents split a club.
     
    Afterwards, we explored the hotel a little bit, eventually stumbling on a baby grand piano at the end of a long hallway near the back of the building. It was a little out of tune, but I enjoyed getting my fingers back into shape. I played for about an hour and a half, playing previous recital pieces, renditions of 80s music, and improvising.
     
    Tomorrow: We hug the Maine border up to Québec and into Québec City, completing our collection of provinces that can be accessed without ferry or unpaved road.
  17. Sumiki

    The Only Ten I See

    By Sumiki,

    -----Though many bags were packed and many items checked off many lists at the close of Tuesday, the final steps towards getting out the door still lingered as all items of importance were verified in triplicate. All said, our journey began a little before noon, and we took the road north to Wytheville, Virginia.
     
    -----But we had, since 2013, made a vow to ourselves not to go through the treacherous mountain roads of West Virginia unless absolutely necessary. It was in Wytheville that we turned southwest, bound for Knoxville—but, more importantly, for Bristol. For driving to Knoxville is a matter of simply utilizing the great corridor of Interstate 40; Bristol offered something far different.
     
    -----Our first stop was intended to be the home field of the Bristol Pirates, a small outfit in the lowest tier of the affiliated professional leagues. But as my mom followed the directions we'd printed, it seemed to take us in a big circle and we ended up in front of the downtown establishment at which we intended to partake of lunch: Burger Bar. The Burger Bar is a local institution and is little more than a hole in the wall—and yes, there is an actual bar, though we chose a table.
     
    -----The highlights were—oddly enough—not the titular burgers, as the french fries were tender and fluffy and salted just enough. The milkshakes—of which there were more options than burgers—were phenomenal; my dad had a peanut butter and banana while I opted for peanut butter and chocolate. Together, they made one Elvis milkshake, although both of us were too protective of our precious sips to attempt what was doubtless a magnificent combination.
     
    -----Bristol prides itself as being the birthplace of country music and the Burger Bar promotes itself in part on being the last place that Hank Williams Sr. was seen alive. It's got the classic down-home diner feel that makes you feel like you stepped right back into 1950. Outside, State Street—one of the main corridors through town—hugs the border between Virginia and Tennessee, with the flags on either side of the downtown area denoting which state you're in. It's these kinds of interesting locations that convince us to reroute our trip, although I couldn't shake the feeling that taxes and voter registration would be especially difficult given the border situation.
     
    -----After lunching, we went with renewed vigor towards the Bristol Pirates, and we simply completed the loop we had begun earlier as we found the park. We soon realized that the Pirates were not in town; instead, it appeared as if the municipal field had been rented by a high school team. We did learn that the field was the site of the greatest pitching performance in history, where a minor leaguer once struck out all 27 batters of the opposing side.
     
    -----We put the pedal to the metal bound for Knoxville, where it seemed as if we had an outside chance at getting to the stadium of the Double-A Tennessee Smokies, but despite our overall optimism, we misjudged the location of the delineation between the Eastern and Central time zones. By the time we got to the exit, they had been closed up nearly half an hour, and the traffic had increased to such an astounding level that we likely couldn't have gotten off if we'd tried.
     
    -----Our hunger, sated since Bristol, began to return, and we had our eyes set on an interesting establishment in the form of Full Service Barbecue. There's no interior; rather, it's a former drive-in. Patrons walk to the window, where you place your order and sit down at one of the outdoor wooden picnic tables and await someone to exit the building hawking your name while holding plastic bags up.
     
    -----We ordered pork and chicken sliders with sides of baked beans and cole slaw. The chicken sliders were decent, but the pork was where the smoky flavor and sauce really shone. The pork was cooked in a slightly decrepit steamer out in the front of the building which continually belched smoke into the twilight sky, but we had no need to search for such poetry beyond what was in our mouths. After savoring the sliders, we moved on to the sides, which were also good—especially the baked beans, where you could really taste the richness of the sauce in which they'd long been stewing.
     
    -----We had asked the fellow who had taken our order for his preference between the pecan pie and the banana pudding, and his response was that he liked to combine them. Never ones to turn down an unusual combination, we got one of each and decided to dig in, and it was easily one of the best desserts from any trip. The sweet crunch of the pie balanced out well with the more tart and savory pudding, which contained what appeared to be—and what tasted as—banana cake batter. Whatever it was, it worked very well with the rest of the expected banana pudding ingredients. Apart, they were good, but together, they were positively unstoppable.
     
    -----Tomorrow, the journey continues north.
  18. Sumiki

    Normally Corny

    By Sumiki,

    -----A requisite 7:00 wakeup meant we got out of the door at 9:00. We exited Kentucky and entered Indiana for approximately a mile before going back into Ohio, then finally going into Indiana for good.

    -----While on the way, we contacted the office of the Indianapolis Indians and inquired about the possibility of purchasing a pennant. Although they sell them, they were currently out of stock, which was alright by our itinerary. The traffic around Indianapolis was bad enough; downtown was not a relished thought. The number of trucks was outstanding, especially dump trucks, who threw up gravel whenever they hit one of the approximately 7.3 million potholes in the greater Indianapolis area. We were stuck behind a convoy of three dump trucks en route to Crawfordsville.

    -----Crawfordsville is a sleepy small town of 15,000, and our exit there a little before noon was for the purpose of seeing the Lew Wallace Museum and Study. Wallace, as we would come to learn, was a Renaissance man who was as known for his exploits as a Union General in the Civil War as he was for writing Ben-Hur. After nabbing the last location in the infinitesimally small parking lot, we went into the one-room museum and paid a nominal fee for a guided tour into Wallace's study room.

    -----The study is a self-contained building whose main purpose was as a private and secluded area for Wallace in his older years when he was known around the region as a public figure. In it, he indulged in his many passions: writing, reading, sculpting, inventing, violin making, and fishing—just to name a few. Bookshelves full of priceless tomes line the walls, with stained-glass windows and a skylight whose windows could be opened to pump in cool air from the basement.

    -----Wallace was a troublemaker and truant in his early years who loved to read and learn and go on adventures but could not stand school. As the son of the Indiana governor, his exploits did not go unrecorded, and as a child he'd regularly forage his way 80+ miles north with traveling loggers (eating squirrels along the way) or attempt to steal a boat to float to the Gulf of Mexico. When he was 16, his father abandoned the idea of schooling him—a cause to which he'd committed vast and ultimately fruitless sums—and turned him loose on the world. (On one occasion, he distracted public attention from a debate opponent by playing tunes on a violin, which led to a fistfight—only to have him and his opponent take the same stagecoach to the next town.)

    -----He attempted to become an attorney, but hated it, and ended up serving in the military. He organized absurd numbers of men and became their Colonel in the Civil War, and he ended up becoming the youngest General. His negligence for the chain of command and his tendency to think of orders as guidelines as opposed to rules may have changed the course of history when he—without orders—diverted his men to fight Confederate forces led by Jubal Early outside Washington. Though he lost the battle, he sapped enough men from Early's ranks to initiate a Confederate retreat, and when the two men met years later, Early remarked that he won the battle, but Wallace the war.

    -----Wallace would later become an attorney, and he still hated it, but had to keep up appearances. He was the first governor of New Mexico to be fluent in Spanish (which he taught himself as a boy.) He unsuccessfully ran for Senate and ended up becoming best known for his novel Ben-Hur, a story which emerged after a chance encounter with Robert Ingersoll. Wallace's research led him to form the story that would become Ben-Hur. Its sudden and enduring success startled Wallace, but he was able to use the money to construct the study.

    -----The study remains as Wallace left it, down to the deep red brick that haven't faded since it was built, as he was extremely attentive to detail. It's a beautiful structure with thousands of details, from the curtains on the bookshelves to the interior arch which frames a recessed seating area to the handles on the doors, angled just so to the point that not only does one not have to bend one's wrist to open it, but one can do so with just a single finger.

    -----After leaving the museum area, we found a local Culver's and ordered some burgers to tide us over to dinner in Rockford. The girl who took our order was entirely dull and boring and slightly screwed it up, but they were still good. We trekked on to Illinois, where we gained an hour.

    -----Gaining an hour turned out to be quite necessary, as we promptly lost it going through probably the worst-signed road work in the civilized world. Traffic was backed up to a standstill for about five miles, to the point where many locals simply peeled off, went over the grassy median, and drove back from whence they came. But we had no such option. At the end of this tedious process, we found that they'd closed only one of the two lanes, meaning that there was actually no reason for anyone to be stopped! Those of us in the left lane did not know it was closed until too late, and drivers in the right lane were trepidatious when it came to altruistic behavior. In the end, selfishness is what slowed us for so long.

    -----We made tracks to the Bloomington area, which we skirted, and then we exited in Normal, the home of the independent-league Normal CornBelters. We inquired about the pennant in their ticket office and were escorted into the stadium—which was in use by two terrible community college teams facing off against each other—where we got the pennant. The lady who procured it from the locked team shop asked us where we were from and where we were headed, and her eyes got extremely wide when she was informed of our ultimate destination.

    -----You've not seen corn-themed until you've seen the Corn Crib (and yes, their stadium is called that.) The stairs up? Their fronts are painted with a corn mural only seen from a distance. Their memorabilia? All yellow and green. Their mascots? All bad corn puns. Truly a-maize-ing.

    -----We got out of Normal and began the long and straight drive up to Rockford. Our goal was dinner at 15th and Chris in Rockford, and it's tiny—one of the tiniest places I've been to. The entire building was little more than the size of a hotel room and the actual space for customers to walk in and order was perhaps the size of a bathroom. But the smell alone is enough to drive one to pangs of hunger.

    -----As we approached the front of the line, we began to be filmed by a fellow who was making a documentary about the revitalization of Rockford, of which the establishment is an integral part. The head chef was ringing up orders at the cash register at that point, for the staff operation seems inspired by musical chairs. My dad got to talking to him about how we'd seen reviews for how good his place was, and when we told him of our North Carolinian origins, it resulted in him whipping out his driver's license to prove it. In a place dominated by locals, he seemed genuinely touched by the fact that we went out of our way to eat there.

    -----After placing our orders, we went back outside, where various tables are located, and the fellow with the camera followed us out. He explained his mission and asked us about our travels and how we came to find out about 15th and Chris. We explained our process of scouting out cheap local eateries to avoid national chains as much as possible.

    -----As it turned out, the last shot he got was one of me taking out about a fifth of my burger in one fell swoop of a bite. We all got the same thing: "the Wrecker." Grilled mushrooms, onions, lettuce, tomato, an unidentified spiciness, and blue cheese topped it off, and somehow the bun stayed on. The fries were also tremendous, salted and spiced in-house for a potato that could hold its own against dominating flavors. (The fries also gained a following amongst the local bird population, whom my dad fed on a few occasions just to see how excited they got. Fries are apparently some kind of ornithological delicacy.)

    -----The filmmaker had told us that Rockford was a big manufacturing hub, and although many of such jobs have since left the country, there were enough for it to still be a significant chunk of the economy. Their survival has been due to extreme specialization; every gear on the Mars rover Curiosity was crafted in Rockford. He also said that, while the city lacked a minor league presence (apparently a sore spot for local sports fans), Beyer Stadium—once home to the Rockford Peaches (of A League of Their Own fame)—was a few blocks away.

    -----After polishing off our burgers, we drove down to Beyer Stadium's adjoining school parking lot and walked on the field. All that remains of the original structure is the ticket booth, but the field surface itself is intact and maintained and entirely playable. Plaques honoring the field's unique history led the way to the field, where my mom attempted to get a picture of her "floating" on the base paths. Unfortunately, the rapid-fire picture-taking of our old camera is not on the new, and so to compensate she ran around the bases while I tracked her in a high-definition video.

    -----Tomorrow: St. Cloud, Minnesota.
  19. Sumiki

    Going Nuclear

    By Sumiki,

    I forgot to mention that yesterday, as we entered Yellowstone, we saw a number of people pulled off the road with their binoculars and short-range telescopes out. A nice lady let us use hers, and through it we saw a mountain goat making its way across the sheer rock face.
     
    Breakfast, not a usual meal for us on this particular trip, was necessary given the desolation we were to traverse. I had a delightful dish known as breakfast pasta, which consisted of cheese ravioli in a jalapeño sauce (with sautéed bacon, tomatoes, and other traditional omelet items), covered in a fried egg.
     
    The one hilarity of this meal was in our bill (something in which few people can find humor). There was no charge for any of the food, and upon closer inspection realized that the meals on the ticket were not the meals we had eaten. My mom attempted to wave down our waitress to no avail and eventually had to track her down in order to straighten it out.
     
    Between Boise and Idaho Falls are two routes nearly identical in speed: I-84, which curved south through the major cities, and US-20, which goes a little further north. Two years ago, we visited Craters of the Moon, but were unable to go very deep into the lava tube caves due to our flashlights burning out. This time, we vowed to return and conquer caves that we had left unexplored.
     
    Because we entered from the east this time around, we first went through the Idaho National Laboratory, home of experimental research—some highly classified, no doubt—and the site of the first functioning nuclear power plant: Experimental Breeder Reactor I, shortened to EBR-I.
     
    In December of 1951, the EBR-I facility was the first nuclear plant in history to produce enough electricity to produce a usable amount of electricity when it powered four light bulbs not too much larger than the kind used today. Its purpose, however, was not in the production of electricity on a large scale but rather to see if a "breeder" reactor was as reasonable as the theoretical models had predicted. True to form, the reactor "bred" plutonium as it consumed uranium, a process that could be refined and used until the reactor used up nearly 100% of the energy potential from a single rod.
     
    EBR-I was deactivated in 1964 by LBJ, and was opened to the public in the 1970s between Memorial and Labor Days. We had been unable to see the site two years ago and stopped in for a self-guided tour.
     
    The building is truly in the middle of nowhere, although it could be seen from US-20 from a long distance. Housed in a squat and unassuming tan building in the middle of the desert, the EBR-I site contains all the trappings of the mid-50s and early 60s; the beginning of the tour is set up like a family living room from the '50s and the bathrooms don't look to have undergone any serious upgrades since then either (although they have, thankfully, been cleaned).
     
    The equipment is massive and industrial, full of thick metal walls and pipes of epic proportion. The upper level had a control room straight out of one of the early Bond films, and from there we could walk out onto the reactor and peer down into where the reaction actually took place. Above the hole is now a layer of thick leaded glass and a warning not to go in because of leftover radiation.
     
    After helping a chemical engineer from the Netherlands get a proper picture of himself in the control room, we went past the site of the first lightbulbs. The originals have since been removed (one was on display on the ground floor), but in their place hang a series of identical bulbs, which put out an absolutely blinding amount of light. Nearby, a complex of white tubes easily a foot across at their smallest point once housed the coolant: a sodium-potassium alloy known as NaK.
     
    The ground floor featured a "farm" of spent fuel rods which went deep into the floor. Behind it was a massive contraption: a metal "manipulator" used to scrape off detritus from spent fuel cells, all while shielding its operator with about a yard of concrete and almost two dozen layers of immensely thick leaded glass, which obscured and darkened what lay beyond it.
     
    We also learned about EBR-I's successor, EBR-II. EBR-II was used until the mid-1990s and was proven to shut itself off under conditions worse than those that caused the famous meltdowns of history. The Chernobyl disaster left the public with a distaste for nuclear power that could not be assuaged by the scientists who rushed to assure the public of the EBR-II's safety.
     
    Outside the EBR-I facility are two large reactors that were once used as prototypes for nuclear-powered airplanes. The project didn't get off the ground (pun intended) and was sacked after a billion dollars went nowhere towards practical nuclear air travel.
     
    A return to Craters of the Moon was next. We went through the town of Arco (the first town to ever be powered solely by nuclear energy) and kept on towards the park.
     
    Having been to the park before, we knew the routine, and quickly got a pass to go into the caves from the visitor center. While we've seen it in the past, the rocky black terrain is still as eerie as ever. I continue to be amazed at the diversity of wildlife in the park; flowers could sprout from the tiniest slivers in the dry rocks.
     
    We hit the three hikes in the park worth doing before the caves: Devil's Orchard, Inferno Cone, and the small volcanoes known as Spatter Cones. (The second one we went into had snow at the bottom.) The Inferno Cone—not much more at a glance than a huge pile of black gravel—was a difficult uphill climb at the already mile-high altitude, but the views at the top were as stunning as I'd remembered—except better, because there were no other people at the summit.
     
    But the reason we returned was underground. We packed our flashlights and water bottles in a backpack on my back and headed out onto the trail into the lava flows.
     
    We first arrived at Boy Scout Cave, which soon became nearly impassible, for there had been a significant cave-in since we had last been there—even since our pamphlets had been printed. Slightly deterred, we knew there was one other cave to attempt: Beauty Cave.
     
    Beauty Cave did not disappoint. We carefully climbed down the black rocks to the flat cave floor and shined our flashlights into the large cave. Little by little, we made our way to the back wall. Clear and slick ice formations surrounded the few hunks of rock on the cave floor, and we could see where the unstable rocks had had previous cave-in activity.
     
    With something new accomplished, we went on to the largest cave of all: Indian Cave. After we went through the long, wide, and tall route that we'd gone through last time—one that required extensive climbing over rock piles caused by old cave-ins, we looped back around to the front. But Indian Cave doesn't just go one way; it goes no less than three directions once you descend into it. The leftmost path is the one we'd already traveled and one of the right ones dead-ended ... but the third, almost 180 degrees from the entrance steps, is the path less traveled by humanity. It was shorter but also required some significant rock pile climbing.
     
    After this, we went back to the car, passing an eclectic group of people that ended with a man with long hair and a voice that said "wassuuuuup" in a way that was so laid-back as to be barely understandable. My dad said "I bet that's a drummer for some band." Sure enough, when we got back to the car, we saw a van emblazoned with "Sol Seed." Upon closer inspection, it was a band. Later research revealed that their fusion style hails from Eugene, Oregon.
     
    Dad's hunger was ever-increasing and he began talking of spaghetti. According to him, the word "spaghetti" became stuck in his head like a catchy melody. We stopped at a rest area on US-20 outside of the park, which was uneventful except for the fact that Dad was simply convinced that, of the few people there, the teenage girls all had crushes on me.
     
    The road to Mountain Home went down. The nearly 90º turns—the really bad ones—went unmarked while the easy ones—the ones you could conceivably go the 65-MPH speed limit on—were marked extensively. Add a setting sun reflecting off a bug-splattered windshield and truck drivers going 80, and it made for a nasty experience.
     
    Mountain Home was the same as we'd remembered. We kept on the road to Smoky Mountain Pizzeria and Grill, a place where we'd eaten when we'd spent the night in Mountain Home two years ago. We sat in the same booth as last time, and I got the same thing: the black and blue burger, which had Cajun seasonings, blue cheese, and deep-fried onion straws (as well as lettuce and tomato) on a bun toasted enough to hold together under such a weight. The garlic parmesan fries were delicious. My mom got the "French Dip" sandwich, which had sliced beef, red onions, and cheese on French bread. The latter part of the name was the near-bucket of au jus gravy also on the plate. My dad got a personal supreme pizza.
     
    We nearly beat the sunset to Boise, but we failed in that and entered road construction where you couldn't possibly know what lane you were supposed to be in or which lanes had been closed. Eventually we made our way across the city and to the suburb of Meridian, where it felt very good to crash.
     
    Tomorrow: we drive to Bend, Oregon.
  20. Sumiki
    -----The weekend meant that the Beloit Snappers were closed, which eliminated our first stop of the day before we even got up. In the course of our drive, Illinois soon gave way to Wisconsin, where the drivers were an extra helping of nuts.
     
    -----It wasn't just that the drivers drove with impunity towards life and property, but the real surprise was in that there were simply so many of them. There is nothing of note for long stretches; not even occasional small towns with highway-side gas stations were present to break the monotony.
     
    -----After the border town of Beloit and its near-suburb of Janesville, there was nothing but farmland until Wisconsin Dells, which prides itself on being the water-slide capital of the world. We did not stop, but we could see enough from the highway to know that they're not kidding. It has all the makings of a town that wants to position itself as some kind of family-friendly Las Vegas of the upper Midwest. It's a testament to the monotony that even the locals throng to tourist traps.
     
    -----We had gotten several pieces of literature from the Wisconsin welcome center, not the least of which was an illustrated map showing where all the local cheese factories were. Not wanting to miss out on some local dairy goodness, we stopped in at a storefront for the Carr Valley Cheese Company in Mauston. The shop was small, but packed to nearly bursting with most any cheese you'd care to name, along with such dubious delicacies as pickled garlic. The samples we had were incredible as well, and we did purchase a few sample packages of 2-year-old cheddar and a white goat cheese called Marisa, but we would have bought more had we packed any sort of industrial-strength cooler.
     
    -----Because Mauston is a very small town, we decided to eat at the local Culver's after getting gas. In an attempt to create new and heretofore unrecorded flavors in the annals of human gastronomy, my dad smuggled our cheese samples in and ate them with our meal.
     
    -----The drive from Mauston to the border increased in traffic, but it was overall a much calmer drive than our morning experience. We skirted Eau Claire and then took the beltway around the Twin Cities before heading due northwest once again on a road whose right lane was far bumpier than it needed to be.
     
    -----Tomorrow: Minot, North Dakota.
  22. Sumiki
    We got on the road a little before noon after sleeping in a little bit. Leaving Fredericton was much easier than getting in - just a few merges and we were on the Trans-Canada Highway, first westbound and then northbound to Québec.
     
    We crossed many small brooks and paralleled the St. John River all the way up. We were never more than a few miles from the border with Maine, and made excellent time up the highway.
     
    We pulled into a gas station in Woodstock, which was, to our surprise, full-service. We got some drinks and snacks, topped off gas and oil, and - most interestingly - purchased some lobster-flavored potato chips, which were okay. They had a more general fish flavor, which got gross after three bites.
     
    Around 1:30 we saw a female moose on the side of the road. Aside from a few designated areas (so as to not interfere with migration patterns), the major routes through New Brunswick have specialized moose fences that lead them away from the highway if they get on the wrong side. This particular moose was on the other side of the fence, which was a good sign - the fences are doing their job.
     
    Around the Grand Falls area, signs - which are provincially mandated to be bilingual - began featuring French much more prominently, with the French words first and the English words second and usually smaller. We kept on rolling up the road to Edmundston, the only town of any considerable size before the Québec border. There, the French language was everywhere - most places, there was no sign in English.
     
    Though the town was kind of dirty, reminding us of Elko, Nevada - and nothing about the parts of Elko that we saw was redeeming, except the fact that there were roads out - we had to have some lunch, so we got Subway. It was the most mediocre Subway sandwich I've ever eaten, and that's the nicest thing I can say aside from the fact that it didn't make me sick.
     
    A few kilometers up the road and we entered Québec, the ninth province I've ever been in. It was then that the little English that we saw completely ran out, although we've learned enough through our Rosetta Stone lessons and from observing the bilingual signs in New Brunswick to get by.
     
    We stopped in at the welcome center and talked to the young lady at the desk. We tried out our French phrases, finding that we're not nearly as bad as we though we were. Since most everyone has become bilingual, it wasn't that far removed from our experiences in Chéticamp.
     
    It was in Québec that we crossed back over into Eastern Time, gaining an hour by going from 3:00 back to 2:00. The road also got worse, but the ruts and potholes were welcome, and although the brake was neither hot nor odd-smelling any time we checked it, it's still advisable to give them a good jostling every now and then.
     
    In addition to the obligatory Useless Road Work, the roads after the border featured the most absurd hills, wherein the speed limit would switch from 110 km/h to 70 km/h, which is pretty much impossible when you have a car carrying our kind of weight - not to mention our current brake situation. The few policemen we saw didn't seem to care even when Québécois flew past going much faster than us.
     
    A little after 3:00 we passed the village of St-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, notable for being the only place name in the world to have not one, but two exclamation marks in its name. There are conflicting theories as to how this name came to be, and even the girl at the welcome center admitted to having no idea why the name is like it is.
     
    We got our first glimpse of the St. Lawrence Seaway at around 3:45, turning westbound and paralleling it for the rest of the day as we approached Québec City. The road flattened, although mountains of considerable size were visible on the other side of the St. Lawrence. Most interestingly was the boardwalk between the highway and the Seaway, which saw use mostly from bicyclists.
     
    At 5:30 we crossed over the bridge into Québec City, which was where the fun began. Traffic was backed up coming out of the city for a considerable distance, and we thought that we'd been able to avoid such a rush hour by coming into the city. But we got stuck in traffic, often boxed in by exceptionally tall trucks in front and Québécois who wanted to get to their respective destinations seemingly as much as we did.
     
    The brakes got tested, but they came through as we inched our way through the heart of the congested city to our hotel. Dad wheeled and dealed his way through a snafu at the front desk and entertained the valet drivers outside. The result: two days in the same room at a cheaper price, with access to the executive lounge.
     
    From our perch, we had a view of the Old City - a walled, fort-like, European-esque city that hugged the shore of the St. Lawrence Seaway, often said to be one of the most beautiful cities in North America. The people looked like ants from our altitude, so it was a good overview of the city.
     
    After eating, we walked across the street to the Québec Parliament Building, modeled after the Louvre and extremely intricate and detailed. Statues and gardens abound outside of the building itself, and the statues that could be Yoderized were Yoderized.
     
    We tried our best to avoid the school groups, but there were too many of them, and we kept lagging behind and catching up to a few of them. We walked down into the Old City, passing under the sally port into the heart of Old Québec.
     
    It's basically like walking under a bridge in Canada and coming out in Europe. The difference is striking, as every building is unique, architecturally interesting, and old. Horse-drawn carriages clopped up and down the streets, and everything was just really interesting to look at. Nothing is boring in the Old City.
     
    While somewhat long, it's not a wide city, and we were able to walk from the sally port to an area fairly close to the water in not a long time at all. We passed extraordinarily intricate statues and overly elaborate fountains, but for all its gaudiness, it fits together. It feels like you're actually in France as opposed to Québec.
     
    After scoping out the sites we want to see tomorrow - including a funicular that takes folks right down the steep slope to the waterfront itself for only a nominal fee - we went back up the way we came. It was then that one of the most bizarre things happened: my dad greeted a maître d'hôtel outside a restaurant with a wave and a jovial "bon soir!" only to have her put out her hand out and give him an enthusiastic high-five. With her hand still held out, I received a high-five as well.
     
    I'm still not sure why that happened, but she seemed happy enough, so we just sort of went with it.
     
    We walked around back up to the sally port, only this time we walked up the steps and on top of the walls, which still are traversable around the city. We took the wall around and made it back to the hotel as the sun set, sampling the coffee maker in the lounge. It was good, but mine was quite tart, requiring four sugar packets of reasonable size to make it palatable. We even had an entire conversation in French, asking the friendly fellow who was in charge of closing the lounge down what time breakfast began and ended. It was short and likely not grammatically correct, but it was successful.
     
    Tomorrow: a day on the town, with a thorough tour of Old Québec.
  23. Sumiki
    We slept in a bit more today and headed out at 11:00 in rain. We were going up the Bow Valley Parkway, which parallels the Trans-Canada Highway to Lake Louise northwest of Banff. Instead of trying to go on the fast-paced highway, given the amount of precipitation, we decided to take the Parkway for a smoother, more wildlife-filled ride.
     
     
    By 11:15 we'd seen an elk eating and walking over large downed branches on the side of a steep hill. We still could not see the tops of the mountains due to the cloud cover and rain, but we were nonetheless still awed by what scenery we could see.
     
    At 11:40 we could see more elk lying down in an open field. All of the trailheads were closed due to the number of bears seen in the area, but even if they were open we still would have opted out of walking on them due to the rain. We kept being fooled by various stumps and rocks in fields, as we kept thinking that they were elk, deer, or moose.
     
    A little after noon we pulled off the road to look at a few signs which told the story of World War I-era Canadian citizens who didn't sign up for duty and were rounded up and put in internment camps during the war. (However, most of those that were rounded up were homeless.) They targeted those of the same nationalities as they were fighting, assuming that those that didn't want to fight were actually enemies.
     
    It was 2 degrees Celsius and snow began to mix in with the rain. The snow increased and the temperature dropped to 0 - freezing - as we shifted to third gear going down hills. By 12:30 rain had taken over again as the temperature had risen to 2 again. We saw a large black wolf trotting in the woods with some lunch flopping around in his mouth.
     
    Then, a little after 12:30, we saw a large female grizzly bear along the side of the road, looking up at the stopped vehicles and finally walking away into the woods. She was a big one.
     
    We reached the end of the Bow Valley Parkway by 12:45 and headed up to the famous Lake Louise area. It was one degree and snowing very hard, coming down thick with large flakes. It dropped to 0 again as we crossed the Continental Divide and soon we found ourselves parked and getting out to see Lake Louise.
     
    It seemed like a good idea at the time.
     
    The temperature stayed at freezing for the entire time, and the snow that had fallen had melted just enough to make the walk down to Lake Louise slippery and dangerous. The snow was still coming down on top of us, piling on our hoods and backs and soaking through our shoes.
     
    Then we looked out onto majestic Lake Louise and saw a bunch of fog. It was beautiful in its own right but I was too cold to appreciate it very well. We took out the camera underneath my mom's opened coat and got a few good shots. (She really took one for the team.)
     
    We trudged back up the slippery slope and got back into the slightly warmer car. It was still freezing and the snow had compacted itself into ice along the bottom of the windshield. Bits of this ice would be flung off as the windshield wipers went on.
     
    Our next stop was going to be Moraine Lake, but we were stopped by a Mountie with possibly the thickest Canadian accent one can have. (It still wasn't all that thick.) He told us that the snow was too thick up there and it'd take an hour to clear it with the snowplow. Considering that we're in a land used to getting through lots of snow the fact that they decided to close it off said it all. With no other places to stop we decided to go back to Banff via the Parkway in an attempt to see more critters.
     
    We saw more critters - specifically a grizzly cub. He decided to walk along the road for a while until looking right at us as he cut across. After exploring the other side of the road, he presumably didn't know what all the fuss was about and, glad he was not a chicken, he ambled back to the other side of the road and scampered off into the woods.
     
    We saw more mule deer as the temperature rose to 1, but it soon began to snow fully again when the temperature dropped to freezing again. The snow was the predominant precipitation, interspersed with rain when the temperature rose.
     
    More mule deer ate along the side of the road, then soon we saw more elk munching away. As we pulled into Banff we saw more deer along the railroad tracks.
     
    It was almost 3:00 and our breakfast wasn't holding us any longer. We found some free parking and ate a late lunch at Coyote's - which serves southwest-style food, the last thing one would expect in the Canadian Rockies. The meals were good but hardly filling, as I left the establishment with the same hunger headache I had entered with. We headed back to the hotel and lounged around for a bit before heading out for dinner at a famous Banff restaurant called Bumpers.
     
    It was delicious. My dad and I both got some of the most tender prime rib on the face of the planet, complete with loaded baked potatoes and some puny token veggies. Our waitress was from Brisbane, Australia, and we entertained her by playing up on our southernness and drawled on about mint juleps when we saw that they had stuck a sprig of mint in the tea glasses.
     
    (My dad and I ended up getting very, very punchy and decided to badly re-enact Romeo and Juliet with napkins folded around utensils. Also, I was offered a cocktail by the Aussie waitress, who was under the impression that I was twenty.)
     
    Tomorrow: Jasper, Alberta, via the Bow Valley Parkway once again. We'll then walk onto a glacier.
     
    (While I expect our hotel will have Internet, we're out in the middle of nowhere, so there may not be an entry for a few days.)
  24. Sumiki

    North of the Border

    By Sumiki,

    -----Though Minot is remote, our day's journey was to take us even further afield. Our first stop of the day, after a brief currency exchange, was to the Scandinavian Heritage Park. The Minot area was settled by many Scandinavians, and the park contains statues and buildings erected to honor them. In front of the welcome center—shaped like a large log cabin—was a marble design sprawled across the landscape, showing the five Scandinavian countries and their capitals. Statues of Hans Christian Andersen, Leif Erikson, and several famous skiing champions led the way to a massive replica Norwegian church which looked more or less like a pagoda when glimpsed from afar. Behind this church was a wooden horse, painted a bright red and standing thirty feet tall. This was a Dala horse, a recognizable Swedish symbol.
     
    -----A park such as that is not something that one would expect in many places, but much less so when in the middle of nowhere like Minot. The only unfortunate thing about it was that it proved to be the only get-out-and-walk-around part of our day's journey, something that ideally would be evenly spread throughout.
     
    -----We topped off the tank in Minot and then left the city northbound on US-52, which took us over hills and prairies all the way up to Portal, North Dakota, a town situated around the border crossing. (We were later to learn that many of the border patrol agents do not live in Portal, but rather commute up from Minot or points further south.) Our journey across the border—marking our fourth time in Canada—was a bit more complicated given the road work at the crossing and the need to stop by U.S. Customs first so as to get a shotgun approved. Since we are traveling to extremely remote areas in Alaska, we had decided to procure one should we break down and subsequently are accosted by a bear. The agent came by the car and soon thereafter we were approved.
     
    -----The second step was to actually go through Canadian customs, which would have taken about five minutes had not the shotgun thrown a wrinkle into things. Declaring it involved parking and going inside the border office, where a fellow asked us basic questions and had my dad fill out a form. One $25 (Canadian) fee later, and all that was left was for a Canadian agent to actually see the shotgun.
     
    -----The quiet man who was assisting us got a phone call, and so a lady came by and took over the process. She said that she needed to see the shotgun while we watched from the building, but we explained that it was hidden very well and the only way she'd find it would be a brute-force method of expunging the car of its Tetris-esque packed contents. She asked, somewhat warily, of how much we actually had in the car. Once we said "we're driving from North Carolina to Alaska and back," she understood the trepidation that an entire re-packing would involve, and promptly had us go to something called the Exam Bay.
     
    -----The Exam Bay sounds a lot more official than it is. It was like a large car wash, with two industrial-strength garage doors at either end and tables for travelers to wait at. The tables are replete with taped-on papers in a plethora of languages exhorting those at said tables to stay calm and to cooperate with authorities. Throughout the process, we got her to loosen up from the super-serious attitude that plagues many border patrol officers. We described, in brief detail, our misadventures and exploits from past trips and assured her of our preparation, most notably when my dad mentioned our upcoming oil-changing appointments in points still farther afield.
     
    -----Though nothing was fully unpacked, it still took us a while to get everything situated again, but when we did, we rolled north into Canada. The hour we'd gained by entering a province exempt from the misnamed and irritating tyranny of Daylight Savings had been negated by the hour spent at the border, making for a very Newtonian equal and opposite reaction.
     
    -----The road north led to Regina, and the barrenness was nothing less than profound. The last of the North Dakotan hills fell away and led to utter flatness for miles and miles in any direction you'd care to look, although the terrain still exhibited that curious, constantly uphill tilt. The entire province, I'm convinced, is slanted; our journeys westward and northward have exhibited the same phenomenon. Either the terrain defies the laws of physics and goes uphill in every direction, or everything in the province rolls inexorably to the southeast.
     
    -----The clouds overhead began to intermittently drizzle, and the toughest part of the drive—aside from the psychological adjustment to kilometers—was in adjusting the windshield wipers to accommodate the ever-changing precipitation. Towns whose populations had to have been in the low double digits and whose main claims to fame were their slowly decaying grain elevators dotted the northwesterly route at extremely regular intervals, occasionally necessitating a slowing. Aside from these, we stayed at 100 KM/H, which equates to a little over 60 MPH.
     
    -----We had planned to fill our half-empty gas tank and our entirely empty stomachs in Regina, a full two and a half hours south of our ultimate destination in Saskatoon. Yet as we scanned around for a suitable location, before we knew it, we were out of the city heading north. I'd been driving since Minot and was eager to switch off at the first opportunity, and such an opportunity presented itself in the form of a small town at the bottom of a large hill: Lumsden. We peeled off at a gas station, where we learned that the penny was rounded down, and we got a full two-dollar coin—known as a "toonie"—in change.
     
    -----The road from Regina to Saskatoon was a full four lanes most of the way, although traffic was still as barren as ever despite being on the main artery between the two largest cities in the province. The sky became of such a vast expanse that one could see entire storm systems rumbling in the distance, lending weight to Saskatchewan's tourist motto as the "Land of Living Skies." We attempted to reconstruct, from memory, as much as we could about the routes of our first four trips, which was an activity that took us all the way to Saskatoon, the largest city in the province.
     
    -----My mom, when not driving, fulfills the crucial role of primary route navigator, juggling maps, printouts, and her phone, and she does an admirable job of it save for the times when what she reads has no bearing on what can be seen from the driver's perspective. We'd nibbled on snacks in the car throughout the day and neglected a formal lunch entirely, and though hunger gnawed at us, the closer we came to a hearty Saskatonian dinner, the more we decided to press on. This is when her navigational ability struck a mighty discord: she attempted to get us to a Canadian Brewhouse—a regional chain seen only in large cities across the Canadian prairies—only to put us on a road that did not have anything but houses after the promised half-kilometer. We turned around and went back to the main intersection, doubled back around, pulled several U-turns, and even went down the road the other direction in an attempt to find it by street address, but all to no avail. Frustration ran high.
     
    -----Though distraught at Google taking us astray, we still had directions to our hotel, and though we had no confidence in their accuracy, we nonetheless still attempted to get there by going much further down along the very same street. Just as we crossed over the highway and all hope seemed lost ... there lay the Canadian Brewhouse. We decided to eat and orient ourselves towards our hotel as best we could.
     
    -----The Canadian Brewhouse, simply put, is a cross between the dark, sports TV-dominated lighting of a Buffalo Wild Wings and the general waitressing aesthetic of a Hooter's. Neither of those chains seem to have a foothold in the Great North, and if they ever did, they'd find themselves sorely beaten to the punch. Their food is also quite good, although its flavor may have been augmented by how famished our stomachs were.
     
    -----My dad got a stir-fry with a thick and savory sauce, with chunky vegetables and an ideal rice ratio. He also reported tender beef chunks. My mom and I, in remembrance of the third Great American Road Trip, felt as if we had to go for a donair, which came wrapped in a pita much like a gyro. The only difference between their donair and a gyro was a special, slightly spicy donair sauce (as opposed to the tart tzatziki found on gyros) and the melted cheese that helped bind the meat and vegetables—few and far between as they were—together. It's one of those things that is only in Canada now, but we can only wonder when it'll make its way to the States. They always seem to be on the cutting edge of things above the 49th parallel.
     
    -----I wolfed down my donair in short order, even taking out the cucumbers in my side salad and downing two lemonades in quick succession. We were re-introduced to the uniquely Canuck practice of bringing a small credit card machine to the table, and while that process was ongoing, we asked our waitress about the possible location of our hotel, which we felt just had to be nearby after all we'd been through. She knew immediately that we'd used Google; apparently, the location of their shopping center tricks the algorithms into thinking it's somewhere else.
     
    -----While we braced for the possibility that our hotel would also go through a magical and mysterious technological vanishing act, no such thing occurred; we found where we were spending the night within five minutes.
     
    -----Tomorrow: Whitecourt, Alberta, the furthest north I will have ever theretofore been.
  25. Sumiki
    I have recently been informed that people have been PMing various people about the current state of BIONICLE: Year One. I'd like to clarify a few things:
     
    1) It's still going.
    2) My acquisition of more memory or a better computer is the only thing stopping me from starting the actual game work.
    3) If you have any questions or concerns, PM me. I'm more likely to know what it is you want to know about Year One.
     
    That is all.
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