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Sumiki

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  1. Sumiki

    Land of 10,000 Hats

    By Sumiki,

    -----Upon awakening in Fort Saint John, we knew an exciting day of adventure was ahead. Our first full day on the Alaska Highway took us northbound, and once we were clear of the outskirts of Fort Saint John, it was utter wilderness as far as the eye could see. Trees were cleared for many meters around each side of the two-lane blacktop in order to give us a clear sightline towards potential critters.
     
    -----As we went ever north, the temperature did not reach above the high 40s in Fahrenheit, and the rain came in small short spurts as we rolled over forested hills. It was still so cold that snow was piled up to half a foot on the banks of the highway.
     
    -----The Alaska Highway travels north through the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to Fort Nelson, BC, before turning west and going through the mountains much of the rest of the way. As such, our drive to Fort Nelson was quite monotonous; the driver would adjust for road conditions (which were mostly good) and oncoming trucks (who were almost universally cordial) while the front-seat navigator, Milepost in hand, would track along with the signposts every five kilometers and warn of upcoming road conditions and points of interest. My mom, who manned the backseat, kept us informed of turns ahead. We all watched out for wildlife.
     
    -----The only item of considerable interest in the journey to Fort Nelson was our first glimpses of the snowcapped peaks of the Rocky Mountains. They were at such a distance that we could see mountains up and down to the west, and we satisfied ourselves with the knowledge that we’d enter their domain after we reached Fort Nelson.
     
    -----Fort Nelson is the last outpost of civilization; beyond its limits, the next time one gets a proper city is Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon Territory. It began to rain once again as we rolled into Fort Nelson, and we topped off the gas tank before eating a late lunch at a nearby Tim Horton’s. We’d not been into a proper Tim Horton’s before, though it is a Canadian staple found from coast to coast. The food—sandwiches and wraps—were surprisingly good, but it’s more known as a place for coffee and sweets. We didn’t get any coffee, but were pleased to report that their doughnuts are as good as anything Krispy Kreme has to offer. (Maple glaze with custard filling—need I say more?)
     
    -----The drive from Fort Nelson to our day’s stop in Toad River took us on a meandering westward route up and into the Rocky Mountains. We geared down when necessary and took in the stunning vistas that the road offered, as we were now well ensconced amongst the snowcapped peaks and rocky outcroppings that stretched thousands of feet above our heads. The creeks and rivers and lakes and waterfalls were all frozen solid, with only the lower elevations seeing the effects of the thaw.
     
    -----Road conditions began to be a bit more on the hairy side, with rougher patches necessitating a lower (but still impossible to attain) speed limit. Our keen wildlife watch, which we’d maintained since the beginning of our journey, came to fruition with the sighting of no less than three massive black bear, minding their own business on the sides of the road. Mostly, the barren road lay at the doorsteps of the snowcapped granite monoliths. Every time the road would curve, a new outcropping or an even whiter mountaintop came into view.
     
    -----Summit Lake was the most icy and barren area; all but the road and its immediate surroundings were frosted over. Aside from the bears, seen on the way in, the only wildlife we saw came in the form of a small pack of three deer. The mountain scenery was more than enough to keep us enthralled.
     
    -----We wound down out of the mountaintop amidst a random assortment of precipitation that felt like rain but looked like snow flurries. Whether we were snowed on, I know not, but it was a surreal experience, as the temperature remained well above freezing and even wound near 60 Fahrenheit. While we were still surrounded by epic peaks, they were clearly smaller by comparison, as now, only the very tallest poke at the snow line.
     
    -----One of the more nerve-wracking things about the Alaska Highway is its propensity for metal-grate-surface bridges, but even these were negated when traversed at slow speeds. Two of them took us to the community of Toad River, which pretty much consists of Toad River Lodge.
     
    -----Toad River Lodge has a main office/restaurant, a gas station, an RV Park, and many cabins. Our initial cabin, while nice on the inside, was unfinished on the outside, so my dad inquired about changing cabins to one on the lakefront, which affords a breathtaking expanse of mountains, with snowcapped peaks far afield to the west and ducks aplenty on the lake itself. The cool mountain air only truly becomes cold when the wind blows through. The Lodge staff even wrapped the bases of trees near the water with thick transparent plastic in order to keep off the beavers, who managed to gnaw away at many of them before their covering.
     
    -----The Lodge is home to what they espouse to be the world’s single largest collection of hats, and I am fully inclined to believe their claim, as 10,782 hats covered the ceiling and began inching down the walls when passersby ran out of space in which to take their headgear. Most of the hats are beat-up and well-worn, hung up as a final resting place after perhaps several unwashed decades atop some dingy head. We’d taken an unused hat from my high school baseball team and brought it along for the express purpose of adding it to the collection, and when I stood atop a chair and affixed it to an unclaimed territory on the wall, it made for hat 10,783.
     
    -----The WiFi connection was all but nonexistent in our cabin, and when we went back to the lodge office to take a picture of our hat with trip mascot Yoder the Duck and to top off on gas before tomorrow, they asked if the connection was good in the new cabins in which we’re staying. We answered in the negative and they directed us to a different network, which worked. However, on the way back, I saw this big meaty thing trotting along the gravel in front of the half-dozen or so lakefront cabins and managed to say “moose!”
     
    -----My dad and I followed the bull moose a ways back and we ended up seeing it cross the road away from the lodge area. He also spotted a female caribou on a far hill away from the lodge, and we wandered around the cabin area until around 9:30, when we came back to our cabin—not because it’s dark (because it isn’t,) but because it’s quite cold.
     
    -----Tomorrow: the longest drive of the trip to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory.
  2. Sumiki
    -----Our phones, unable to get reception throughout Canada, did not understand that we had effectively entered a different time zone yesterday upon our arrival in Saskatchewan. When setting our alarms for this morning, I remembered to set it an hour ahead of when we actually wanted to get up ... but my mom didn't, and hers went off at half-past six ... so I'm told. (I was still out.)
     
    -----What lay ahead of us was one of our longest drives yet, and it began northwest out of Saskatoon. Prairies continued for miles as the terrain once again became the Saskatchewanian nothingness to which we had long since become accustomed.
     
    -----Fortunately, this day was replete with the occasional stops we'd sought after yesterday, allowing for stretching and driver switches, and it was not too long until we came to the city of North Battleford. Though the signs say "The Battlefords," only North Battleford is of any size, dwarfing Battleford by comparison. This is not to say that it's a big city by any stretch; it's a population center, and it had what we were looking for: gas station and a Wal-Mart.
     
    -----The gas station was unexpectedly full-service and those who worked there seemed to look at us askance for not knowing offhand their Canadian business customs. The thought that we might be from points elsewhere did not occur to them, although the gap between our accents and theirs grow by the kilometer. Foreigners must not roll through the Battlefords very often. After this, we bought a car wash and drove through before going to Wal-Mart.
     
    -----Why on Earth, you might ask, were we in a Wal-Mart? Supplies. Cheap supplies for the Alaska Highway needed to be acquired, and we didn't want closer locations to have higher prices. We got bottled water, non-perishable food items, and windshield-wiper fluid, and looked for a squeegee to no avail. Squeegees notwithstanding, we pressed on, as we didn't want to spend any more time in a Wal-Mart than we absolutely had to.
     
    -----From North Battleford there were nothing but small farming towns as Trans-Canada Highway 16 led northwest towards Alberta, and as we approached the town of Lloydminster, it became officially the furthest north I've ever been. Lloydminster straddles the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta, and we attempted to get information at the Alberta welcome center outside its borders, but to no avail, as the welcome center doesn't open until Friday.
     
    -----We ate lunch at the Canadian Brewhouse in Lloydminster, where we dined on club sandwiches before continuing on the road. The road out took us on a nearly straight shot to Edmonton, where we picked up an increasing amount of traffic as we swung out in a beltway around the distant cluster of skyscrapers that constitute the Edmonton downtown.
     
    -----We rejoined Trans-Canada 16 on the other side, stopping for gas in an Edmonton suburb before striking back out for the last hour and a half to Whitecourt. As the last of the suburbs fell away, we approached the interchange with Alberta Route 43, and its sign read, in part, "to Alaska Highway." The first sign is under our belts.
     
    -----As Route 43 snaked further up and into the forested wilderness, it soon was just us and a few enterprising truckers on a four-lane highway. Potholes were a minor problem, as was dust kicked up by the aforementioned trucks and the occasional local rancher. Mostly, the drive was pleasant, if a tad monotonous. The sky went on forever as we went ever further north.
     
    -----Our northward journey came to a conclusion in Whitecourt. It's mostly an industrial town and thus somewhat rough around the edges, but it's full of classic Canadian friendliness. It's bisected by a hill; half the town lives on top of the hill and half on the bottom, with two road arteries connecting the halves.
     
    -----After checking into our hotel, we went back out, up the hill and to Liberty Donair, a prized local hole-in-the-wall specializing in donairs so large that their smalls would pass for larges in the minds of any rational person. We entertained the friendly cashier with our lighthearted demeanor and got three "small" donairs. I got something called the Inferno, which had—atop the slow-roasted meat and sweet sauce found on all donairs—a special spicy sauce as well as hot peppers and banana peppers, all of which contributed to a mild warmth about halfway through. My mom got more of a basic donair, while my dad got one that was basically a gyro in all but sauce and meat spice.
     
    -----A particular feature of Liberty Donairs is that they have an extensive and highly versatile milkshake menu where two flavors can be combined ad libitum. This was, of course, a highly exciting revelation, and we settled on my maple caramel, my dad's maple french vanilla (which was to be maple coffee, but they were out of the latter), and my mom's maple coconut. All of them, by our individual assessment, began with the maple flavor that left an aftertaste of the other.
     
    -----Tomorrow: we trek across what remains of Alberta and into British Columbia. The Alaska Highway begins.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Sumiki

    recent events

    By Sumiki,

    I have had a great many thoughts about what has happened to my country, and disappointment is but the tip of my emotional iceberg. Here is not the place for my full thoughts.
     
    I will say this, though:
     
    Good things have happened, and good things will continue to happen. That is the one thing that must not, for our own good, ever be forgotten, and our commitment to remembering the good mustn't be abandoned. Hope must always spring eternal, for the good of humanity, and our collective hope must be loud and strong and insistent enough to drown out any resounding overtones of fear and disillusionment and unease. We have gone through difficult times, and we have emerged stronger at the other end. They say those that are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, but those who know history may also be reassured by our ability as a species to get through any crisis we may unfold upon ourselves.
     
    We may be divided, but we cannot allow that division to completely tear us apart. It will take time and it will take effort and it may well take generations and it may well be there in some form for the rest of my natural life, but we must never let division win. We must believe in a greater good and we must believe in the power of our efforts to make sure what is done is what is right, and I will be doing what I can to help move forward, for the sake of my family and of my friends. Time keeps on moving, and we will live to see a time and place where this era of deep division and endless mudslinging is but a bitter distant memory—but only if we heal and hope and work hard at creating the future that we want to see. Hope is here, if we wish to take hold of it. It is a powerful tool, and it is available to all.
     
    Fellow Americans, we are in this together, for better or for worse. It's up to us to make sure it's for the better.
  8. Sumiki
    So! I've not been active in the blogs for a while. Things are good with life and such, but they've been busy. Fortunately I've been able to keep up with BZP still, and BrickFair VA 2016 beckons, as BrickFairs always do.
     
    In any event, here's a new epic that this time I'll definitely finish. No sarcasm. I have chapters all planned out and I just want to complete an epic instead of just leaving them half-baked and forgetting about them.

     




  12. Sumiki

    Full Circle

    By Sumiki,

    We awoke in Memphis at 10:00 and began the process of leaving the hotel, which took until an hour later because of the chronically understaffed valet service. Having determined a much better hotel route should we ever go across I-40 that far again, we left Memphis and navigated its traffic through the suburbs and across Tennessee.
     
    Our route today is pretty much the exact reverse of our first two days of the first Great American Road Trip, so in many ways our day today—and our overall I-40 route back—have wrapped up these four trips in a way that indeed comes full circle.
     
    The traffic patterns moved like an accordion across many sections, where traffic going 0 one minute would be flying at 80 the next and then back again. We stopped for lunch at an Arby's outside of Cookeville, where we got things we knew—save for me, who had curly fries (I'd only ever gone for their potato cakes in the past) and an orange cream milkshake, which was so thick and so cold that it stayed chilly until I finished it off past the North Carolina border.
     
    The traffic thinned out and aside from some bits of road construction and a little rubbernecking, we made excellent time as we went along with the wall-to-wall traffic at a clip steadily five over the speed limit. Sunset darkened the sky after we passed Asheville.
     
    We stopped at a Food Lion for midnight snack and breakfast supplies, but we had gotten there a few minutes too late and they had just closed. We made our way to a Harris Teeter and were the only other customers in there save for a tattooed, yet very mild-mannered young couple and a convoy of three highly efficient couponing black women.
     
    We got home after 24 days, 20 states, 7,215.7 miles and 23.8 average MPG.
     
    Tomorrow: we sleep in after a long (and physically exhausting) trip. The past three long days back from Utah have been especially hard.
  13. Sumiki

    Belly-Dancing Ninjas

    By Sumiki,

    Another long day took us out from Amarillo, along one of Texas’s unique but no less navigationally infuriating one-way frontage roads to gas and then onto the Interstate. We made good time to Oklahoma City, where we stopped for a Subway to meet Portalfig.
     
    I briefly met Protalgif last BrickFair when he showed up for one of the public days, and I encouraged him to attend this year as well if at all possible. My dad regaled us with non sequiturs that nearly had Tagolrip choking on some lettuce, although I didn’t help matters when I did my vocal imitations and described the childhood incident where my uncle caused me to snort a piece of spaghetti up the back of my nose. Torgalpif and I discussed the finer points of getting hotel staff to think you’re an inspector as well as various Sumiki’s Dad-isms such as “at Sub-Zero, bears fall from the ceiling” and the enduring favorite topic of “belly-dancing ninjas.”
     
    Ifgtalrop met Yoder the Duck, and we taught him our “Yoder Salute” which he imitated instinctively. On the way out, a crow began to scream at us. Protalgift, aware but having not lived through the Cteve saga, was a little less terrified than were we.
     
    But once again we found ourselves in Oklahoma City on the weekend and Memphis, while still a ways away, was now within our sights. We got through the other side of the city, and thus out of the plains as the land morphed into the rolling hills of Arkansas and points east.
     
    We soon found ourselves in Arkansas, where we stopped at the welcome center and got gas. My parents broke their streak of not eating at national fast food chains on these big trips, as they, despite my objections, had me roll through a Wendy’s and order them hamburgers. I did not partake and have remained pure in my personal road trip mantra of abstaining from such locations in favor of what I like to call “actual food.” (Plus, I was still full from my six-inch sub earlier in the day.)
     
    I kept on from Oklahoma City to somewhere outside of Little Rock, where my dad took over and took us the rest of the way. But while on the road between Little Rock and Memphis, we passed many truckers. One of them stuck her hand out the window while we passed, and then another one pulled behind us and flashed his lights at us and honked his horn. Disturbed that there might be something amiss with the vehicle, we pulled off and then found absolutely nothing amiss with the car inside or out—save for that crack in the windshield, but it hasn’t changed an inch since Albuquerque. We chalked the truckers’ actions up to coincidence on the one’s part and mindless vitriol on the other’s, then kept on going.
     
    When we crossed the Mississippi River and got to our hotel, we found that there were too many vehicles with guests trying to check in, leaving us stuck on the road in the middle of Memphis. This being an absurd safety hazard, Mom and I rushed inside to figure out what was going on. The valets were conspicuous in their absence as cars piled up behind us into the intersection.
     
    My dad managed to get the car to safety and tried to figure out why the remaining valet staff appeared to be quitting en masse. The security guards and front desk were laissez-faire about the slow-motion traffic jam until I pointed out that the potential guests behind us had left for the competition—at which point everyone in sight hopped on the ball and figured their mess out.
     
    With the car unloaded and valeted away to safety, we dumped our bags in the room and went across the street to the stadium of the Memphis Redbirds, the Triple-A affiliate of the Cardinals whose pennant we were unable to obtain three years ago. The fast-paced game was already into the eighth inning, and folks were still buying tickets for the postgame fireworks show. Nonetheless, we didn’t need to get a ticket to get a pennant, as a few were left for sale from an unenthusiastic vendor just outside the ticket office.
     
    They generally allow the public in without tickets in the last innings, but for the weekend fireworks the security was doubled down, so we settled for a few pictures inside the courtyard area within the gates. We went back to the room to assess our dinner options, only for me to look at the tiles on the ceiling in the room’s foyer area and realize that they were sagging.
     
    A call to the front desk later, the repairman showed up. After poking on the slanted bunch of tiles, he assured us that while it certainly shouldn’t look like it did, it was the result of a rowdy bunch who had inhabited the room some time before us combined with a slack job by the housekeeping staff. From the looks of the room, the sheets and surfaces are clean but all other general tidiness items such as the warped ceiling tiles have been thrown under the proverbial rug.
     
    Delayed a bit, we finally looked at our food options. There was about a five-item room service menu, an adjoining T.G.I. Friday’s, or a walk out into the streets of downtown Memphis after dark directly into the Beale Street party scene, where the fireworks were going off after the game and the lights of police cars, positioned to guide the exiting Redbirds fans, blinded those unfortunate enough to so much as look out the window. T.G.I. Friday’s it was. The place had been all but empty when walking back from the Redbirds stadium but had since been packed and now featured a waitlist of at least thirty minutes. However, we were able to grab some seats earlier than that … at the bar.
     
    I have never sat at a bar before and fortunately it was not too loud of an experience. The bartender, a gregarious live-in-the-moment party animal with a slicked-back mohawk, lobe-stretching earrings, and a penchant for delivering profanity-laced bits of wisdom, put on an absolute show with the way he’d flip glasses around behind his back and refill three drinks at once. It was a twisted incarnation of a hibachi-grill show and somehow, while racing around in a state of looking perpetually fast-forwarded, he found the time to give us and the other patrons a hard time about pretty much anything. The food (we all got three burgers) paled in its inherent interest to the guy behind the bar.
     
    I ate all of mine, then what remained of my parents’ fries, and I’m still not completely full … but it’s sure better than nothing.
     
    The party scene is heating up inside and out as I write, but we have earplugs to insert and pillows to stack atop our heads. Our exhaustion and eagerness to get back will fuel our sleep tonight.
     
    Tomorrow: we get home.
  14. Sumiki

    Non-Sweet Suite

    By Sumiki,

    We prepared ourselves for an enormous day on the road. We struck out from Moab and cut across what remained of Utah and into Colorado, where we meandered around the strangest bits of road work down to Cortez. We topped off the tank there and refilled our meager snacking supplies before continuing to roll out.
     
    Southbound to Shiprock took us into an area of New Mexico to which we have never before been before we swung in a rough arc across the Continental Divide and to Albuquerque, where we intersected with I-25 and then I-40.
     
    Now, we had checked every radar and forecast that we could find prior to leaving Moab and had seen clear skies across the plains. But dark clouds brewed over the traffic of Albuquerque and we were soon pelted. Usually a downpour in traffic would be bad enough, but our windshield crack is especially susceptible to widening because of the cold water on a hot surface. Trying to find cover proved fruitless, but as we came out from under the cloud cover we realized that it had only grown minimally.
     
    Pressing on across the New Mexico plains was about as dull a drive as you can get. The cities of significance along this route were unavailable as late lunch options because they were all located on Business 40 well off the road. We were making good time and so we kept on the straightaway to Amarillo.
     
    Reaching the Texas border and thus the Central Time Zone. When we reached Amarillo, the hotel saga began.
     
    We checked in and then went up to our room, which we were unable to enter due to our key not working. After getting a new key, the stench of day-old cigarette smoke immediately assaulted our nostrils. My dad talked to the front desk and we went back down to exchange room keys, and in the process got a free upgrade to a suite.
     
    Thinking our adventures completed for the day, we hit the button for the third floor only to have the elevator vibrate along the last third of the trip. After stumbling out, we breathlessly swore to one another that we would only take the stairs.
     
    The suite is their best room, but the wall-protecting door stopper fell off the wall as soon as my dad so much as looked at it and the door doesn't even open from the outside unless you pull up with the handle. I distinctly remembered this being a lot better three years ago.
     
    Exhausted from the all-day drive, we went downstairs to eat ... but at this point, we expected a snafu and the hotel did not disappoint. One guy was the bartender, server, and cook, and was in well over his head trying to get to the existing customers. We walked down the frontage road a ways to a Red Robin and went inside.
     
    We had eaten at a Red Robin along with the rest of the ball team after our final game this year, and we anticipated even bigger burgers than the hunks we had then, because things are ostensibly bigger in Texas. But this time, the burgers were small enough to wrap our mouths around, albeit still enough to fill us up. My dad, not wanting to mess with a burger after handling the tougher half of the day's drive, ordered fish and chips, which just seems kind of wrong at a place known only for its burgers.
     
    After a dessert of mud pie, which came in a massive slice, we forewent the idea of supplementing our dinner with Jimmy John's to eat in the room. Now that we're here, we're trying not to touch anything for fear that it will break, not work, or otherwise fall apart. My mom reports that the shower is, and I quote, "weird." (Apparently the shower curtain does not go far enough down to the floor.) Also, there's apparently a crack in one of the sinks (but hey, we have three) and the television is unable to change channels.
     
    Tomorrow: another long day to Memphis.
  15. Sumiki

    Cracking Up

    By Sumiki,

    Our early start today took us into Capitol Reef National Park. The park was created primarily to protect a 100-mile long barrier of rock known as the Waterpocket Fold, a unique ridge in the earth's crust. The "capitol" part of the park's name comes from a huge white dome in the park nicknamed the Capitol Dome. With the Waterpocket Fold nicknamed a "reef" by ex-sailor explorers, the two features combined to create the name of Utah's least known National Park—which is good, since they nearly named it "Wayne Wonderland National Park."
     
    But Capitol Reef does not only have these two features, for it is home to beautiful red hoodoos and Zionesque monoliths of red. Thousand-plus-year-old petroglyphs can be seen on the side of some of the rocks, with the only significant damage in recent memory being a natural rock slide.
     
    Our morning journey was delayed somewhat due to a truck going the other way in Capitol Reef. The truck's driver waved his arms out the window this way and that to get oncoming traffic to pull over for an oncoming wide load. My dad got out of the car and went up the road a ways to talk to a few folks who had been stopped up there, only to see the wide load—which took up both lanes and then some—rolling up the 8% grade on the other side. My dad pulled a North by Northwest by running back to the car.
     
    Capitol Reef is a long and thin park primarily created to protect the Waterpocket Fold, and the only through-road goes across the park, leaving the rest of the Fold, along with massive sinkholes and slot canyons, in the wilderness further south. Our singular hike in the park was to Hickman Bridge, a beautiful natural bridge about a mile's walk into the park. As the terrain went from slick rock to sinking sand and back again, we went up and then down into a valley. We saw what we think was a chukar and structures made of crystallized pack-rat urine, on which scientists use carbon-dating methods to look back into the climate of the last Ice Age. Lizards were as abundant on the trail as the gnats were around our faces.
     
    Hickman Bridge is a beautiful natural arch set into the surrounding rock. Erosion has taken more than its fair share out of this place, smoothing out the rocks into almost perfectly even scoops taken out of the walls. As we walked underneath the massive rock, we saw hummingbirds around a tree.
     
    The loop back took us mostly downhill as more groups were coming in the other direction. The only specific item of note on the hike back was a natural erosion in the rock in the form of a slanted oblong hole large enough to comfortably sit inside—albeit at an angle. When I sat inside, anything I said in a normal voice sounded like it was said in the deep tones of Morgan Freeman. It got really epic when I did my actual Morgan Freeman imitation.
     
    We continued out of the park, but whether we were technically in the park or not made no difference to the stark beauty of the scenery. Huge rock buttes, temple-like in structure, receded into the distance while badlands in gray dominated the foreground. The steep inclines of these formations had been defaced by ATV riders. Solitary hoodoos in the valley could be seen as well.
     
    After making it to the Interstate, we began weighing our options in earnest. The windshield crack is expanding and while still not a safety issue, it looks like it will soon reach over onto the passenger side of the glass as well. Our calls to the Moab dealership revealed that they did not actually do windshields, but they sent those seeking repairs to a place called Rick's Glass down the road.
     
    Unbeknownst to the guy at the dealership, Rick's Glass is closed until Monday because Rick on a family vacation. If we had decided to stay in Moab, we would have have to do so until at least next Tuesday, and that's not going to happen. (We actually are looking at being home by then.)
     
    The dealership turned out to be a bust, as more cars were parked in the lot and on the street than I thought could fit in that space. No one came out to see what we needed and so we left for the hotel.
     
    Originally slated for a two-day stay in Moab, we talked to the lady at the front desk about shortening our stay, which as it turns out will be incredibly easy. With one night in Moab, we walked down the street to a house-turned-breakfast-and-lunch place called Eklecticafé. The bustling sandwich shop had the hippie feel I had thought we'd run into in Bend, Oregon. Homemade jewelry for sale lined the walls and could also be seen underneath the glass-inset tables.
     
    We all got the same thing: a reuben. The side salad was what appeared to be a homegrown assortment of vegetables and nuts which included alfalfa sprouts. (I learned today that I hate alfalfa sprouts.) The homemade Green Goddess dressing had a load of herbs in it that made it astounding for the salad and the reuben, which itself had a homemade Thousand Island-like concoction on it. They certainly know how to make a mean sauce.
     
    (Side note: Cteve, the crow who killed himself on our car in Yosemite, is now a martyr for the crow population. Everywhere we go, we notice crows staring at us from fence posts and from the sky. They stare at us from artwork on the walls and as doodads on high shelfs in eclectic eateries. They know, and they are plotting Operation Cteve, so we must be prepared for the worst.)
     
    We walked back to our room in the sweltering heat and took a hearty nap. But with only one day in Moab and on the doorstep of one of our favorite National Parks (Arches), we felt obligated to do something there despite our remaining fatigue from all the other hikes that we've done thus far.
     
    We entered Arches and set out eyes on Double Arch, where some of the scenes for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had been filmed. We'd been to most of the big sites in Arches in our first visit two years ago, and for various reasons decided that the famous Delicate Arch hike would not be in the cards again. After a fruitless attempt at securing a park map, we went in.
     
    Arches is surreal like no other park. While Zion is, at its heart, a canyon, Arches is a meandering, sprawling, and random collection of hoodoos, cliffs, monoliths, natural bridges, holes, stand-alone arches, and scurrying lizards, which makes it unable to be described by mere analogy. Double Arch is one of my favorite parts of the park, as both arches can be seen from the back wall, which my dad and I scurried and scrambled up ahead of a group of geology students from Stephen F. Austin State University. Perched inside the second of the two arches and looking back on whence we had come, we talked briefly to the geology professor who led the students in their convoy of sprinter vans.
     
    On the way back, we made a side-tour to another arch, but I was unable to get but about halfway up this one before turning back, for the rocks became too steep and were covered with slick sand.
     
    Back into town, we got gas and ate at Moab Diner, which got our business twice before on our first Arches adventure. My parents got ribeyes, and they reported that they were the best they'd gotten on the trip, outdoing even the establishments that call themselves steakhouses. I had to go with the chicken-fried steak, which was breaded and cooked to perfection before being drowned in a creamy white sauce. Our sides were sweetwater potatoes, which I had forgotten until we went back there: thick-cut diced baked potatoes in a mixture of sautéed bacon, green peppers, and green onions, then topped with cheddar cheese.
     
    Our dinner reminded us that no matter how many times you go somewhere, there are always new things to see, for the neon sign behind the counter in Moab Diner has, in the center, a reversed clock. I don't know where they got it—let alone why—but everything in the clock that's supposed to go clockwise goes counterclockwise and vice versa. Only the 12 and 6 were in their proper places, as the surrounding numbers had switched around to reverse order. The internal mechanism worked and was also in reverse order, for it told perfect time as long as you could sufficiently twist your brain into enough of a knot in order to figure it out.
     
    Tomorrow: we begin the journey home by going south towards Interstate 40. It has been an excellent trip, but our tiredness and to-do lists, combined with the increasing windshield crack, mean that our route home will be as fast as possible. We're hoping to get as far as Oklahoma City.
  16. Sumiki

    Capitol-izing

    By Sumiki,

    We woke up in Springdale and had to decide how we would get to Torrey. Scenic Utah Route 12, considered one of the best drives in the country, was out of consideration after last night's crack research revealed a 14% grade along the route. Half of that is about all we really want to handle; while 14 isn't totally unreasonable given that vehicles apparently traverse it all the time, we'd rather skip it if given the chance. The Interstate system could have taken us most of the way there, but it went much further out. My dad and I tried talking to the lady at the front desk, but it soon became clear that she had never been outside Springdale.
     
    Opting for US-89 and then a combination of state routes further north, we first had to exit Zion through the Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel. We were slowed but not stopped through the 1.1 mile long tunnel carved along the edge of the mountain, but we knew what to expect having driven it twice three years ago. My dad spotted a set of bighorn sheep climbing the side of a mountain on the route out.
     
    The drive out of Zion wound through the rest of the park, past and between the red and white monoliths and curved natural hoodoos. The ride out of the park was mostly straight, while none of its few extant drivers passed in reasonable manners. Fortunately, they all exited to the turnoff to Bryce Canyon and we zipped down the rest of US-89 unimpeded.
     
    The further routes we took towards Torrey took us through deserted yet lush areas along waterways in the valleys underneath curving mountains on either side. The few communities were off to the side of the road underneath these mountains, and used primitive roads up the cliffs to deforest them. I presume that they used them for firewood.
     
    It was a beautiful but desolate drive through the wilderness, but since Torrey lay on the other side of the mountains, our route by necessity took us directly through them. We geared down and trudged up, then coasted much of the way back along a very hilly road. The speed limits went up and down in accordance with our proximity to various small towns, and we often were able to slow down just before passing the sole police vehicle in town. (I get the sense that a lot of these little communities derive income from being a speed trap along this highway.)
     
    Yet it was not long before the greenery gave way to cliffs of red rock, and it was from this that we knew we were close to Torrey and thus to Capitol Reef National Park. On the way into town, an evil-looking kid attempted to throw something at our car. He was too small for his stick-like projectile to hit us, but his maniacal grin and actions led us to call him the Demon Kid.
     
    We got to the motel and checked in while assuring that the Demon Kid had not followed us, and took some of our stuff to the room before going to an ice cream shop down the hill, where we got large waffle cones of homemade caramel pecan to tide us over to supper. We then went across the street and picked up information on Capitol Reef.
     
    A brief spray-wash of the car led to a further increase in the small crack in the windshield. The crack's progress had stopped a few days ago, but somehow some errant spray had lengthened it slightly. While it is still not a major issue in safety, we are concerned about any further cracking getting in the way of being able to see, so we're looking into getting it fixed during our stay in Moab, Utah.
     
    We hit the 5,000-mile mark for this trip while in and around Torrey and got back to our room, where it was discovered that the showers have almost no temperature consistency. Partially scalded and partially frozen, we went to the nearby steakhouse for a hearty dinner.
     
    Our dinner was as hilarious an experience as it was delicious, as my mom had decided to try and make my dad laugh by chomping down on her sweet potato so hard that a string of potato flew out of her mouth and smacked against her lower lip. Thankfully no one else saw this, but we found this incredibly funny. (This was after she accidentally spritzed part of her shirt with ranch dressing.)
     
    My mom had a char-grilled ribeye with two thick slices of white sweet potato. My dad and I had two bacon-wrapped filet medallions each. (One each was covered in blue cheese.) Three bacon-wrapped shrimp and a side of large green beans topped it all off. (Technically, there were mashed potatoes as well, but these were as nasty as the steaks were tender.) The homemade raspberry lemonade was the best we've ever had. My dad liked the pre-meal bread, but I found it too light and almost store-bought in flavor.
     
    For dessert, we were unable to get a second round of the caramel pecan ice cream from down the hill, as the shop had already closed and the steakhouse somehow did not have access to the same flavorings. Fortunately, our waitress modified two scoops of vanilla ice cream by covering them in candied pecans and caramel.
     
    Tomorrow: we explore Capitol Reef and travel to Moab.
  17. Sumiki

    Through the Oven

    By Sumiki,

    Our alarms went off at 4:00 in the morning and we dragged ourselves out of bed as fast as our bodies would let us. The temperature when we left at 4:40 was 73º. By 5:15, we could see the sun as it began to rise behind the clouds to the east as the temperature dropped to 60º. We went through the bottommost portion of the Sierra Nevada range.
     
    We passed an immense wind farm after 5:30 and the sun had already heated our surroundings to 81º. With the temperatures expected to get to possible record-setting levels in the desert, we knew that we had to get through it quickly.
     
    At 6:00 we passed by exits for the Edwards Air Force Base as well as "20 Mule Team Road" and a town known only as "Boron." We saw what may have been a borax mine off to our left. By 6:40 we had reached the crossroads town of Barstow and hit I-15. It was 82º when we topped off the tank there.
     
    It was then time for the sheer emptiness of the Mojave Desert.
     
    There is nothing in the Mojave except for persistent scrub brush and cactus-like Joshua trees. The traffic on I-15 was wall-to-wall southbound but better in our direction, although we still had to avoid a number of drivers a little too eager to get to Las Vegas. The road would also often go up hills for so long that the only way you'd know you were ascending would be the sound of the engine. Signs along the highway reminded travelers to turn their air conditioning systems off, which turned the drive into an absolute sweat-fest.
     
    So up we went, and then down we went, all the while taking in what little scenery that there was to be had. Before 8:30 we entered Nevada, where immediately across the border, a few solitary buildings of near-skyscraper proportion advertised their elsewhere-illegal wares. (It was 92º.)
     
    Around 8:45 we turned a corner, and before us lay Las Vegas. Going in on the road gives you a real sense of how unnatural the place is, and not even in a moral sense—the place is a full-blown city where there just shouldn't naturally be one. With no water or food source, Vegas is a city forever on the brink of extinction—and with parties to match.
     
    We felt it our sworn duty to go into Las Vegas. Now, most folks who make a point of getting off of the highway in the city do so to at least visit the famous Las Vegas Strip. We took another exit and found ourselves at the stadium of the Las Vegas 51s. As it turned out, we'd misread their site early in the morning and they were not in town, and thus we were unable to secure a pennant. We did, however, talk to a soft-spoken security guard originally from Louisiana. A big baseball fan, he talked about how the Vegas natives found ways to escape the city, especially during the blistering summers. ("We don't mess with the Strip," he told us.)
     
    We left Vegas in 100º weather, but it wasn't done heating up. We exited Nevada and got into Arizona, where it was 103º when we entered at topped out at 106 near the Virgin River Gorge. This natural phenomenon, like Zion National Park, was carved by the once-mighty Virgin River through sheer rock. Now I-15 runs through it, going back and forth through epic rock walls on either side while the Virgin River could be seen below.
     
    It was back to 100º when we reached Utah and the Mountain Time Zone again. St. George, right inside the border, was reached in little time, and we located an In-N-Out burger to eat. We had what we had had yesterday but for two changes: I got a "double-double" (the same as their cheeseburger save for the addition of a second meat patty and second slice of cheese) and we all got lemonades. We were less than impressed with their lemonades but scarfed down the burgers and fries. We got to the hotel room where we crashed for a good long while.
     
    We awoke from our naps at around 6:00. Still tired but now at least slightly more well-rested, we walked over to a place called Rib & Chop House, a small chain that prides themselves in "bringing great restaurants to exceptional small towns" across the country. With locations in Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, the building was not particularly big but seemed to seat a lot of people.
     
    Our appetizer was one of the more interesting selections from the interesting appetizer pantheon from this trip alone. Known as eggplant creole, the dish consisted of four thick slabs of panko-crumb fried eggplant, covered in a decadent combination of lump crab meat and sautéed mushrooms. On top of this was a drizzle of hollandaise sauce, and off to the side was a swirled but unmixed combination of more hollandaise and a beefy marsala-like sauce known as meuniere. It was delicious.
     
    We all had thick-cut, twelve-ounce prime ribs. I had garlic mashed potatoes on the side while my parents had decadent squash casserole. The prime ribs came with large cups of very pure horseradish. These were duly scarfed. For dessert, we split a slice of satin pie, which was basically a pie that tasted like a gigantic Reese's cup with more whipped cream than my dad—noted whipped cream connoisseur—could possibly handle.
     
    The temperature here around 9:00 has just now dipped under 100º. It turned out to be a nearly record-setting day out in the Mojave Desert.
     
    Tomorrow: a short day to Springdale, Utah in a return to Zion National Park.
  18. Sumiki

    The Down Grade

    By Sumiki,

    We walked from our hotel to the REI in the Bend just a short time after they opened at 10:00. Our quest for hiking boots ended successfully an hour later after much trying-on and consideration. Thus armed with three proper pairs of footwear and socks, we felt fully prepared to break them in at Crater Lake. We checked out of the hotel at 11:30, got gas, and headed down the road to Crater Lake.
     
    US-97 from Bend to Crater Lake was a miserable experience. Stuck behind drivers going well under the speed limit, all we could do was watch in horror as driver after driver punched the gas, attempting to pass an entire pack in the face of oncoming traffic. Again fortunate not to have witnessed an accident, we took the first turn for Crater Lake onto state route 138.
     
    The portion of this road from US-97 to the north entrance of Crater Lake was just about as straight as anything else, although it went up and over a number of hills. The Cascades far in the distance now were close enough to tower over the surrounding landscape, and we were headed straight for them.
     
    Crater Lake—an item which has been on my National Park bucket list since our first trip—is a collapsed volcano known as a caldera, which technically differs from a volcanic crater, despite the park's name. It contains almost five trillion gallons of water (all rain and snow runoff) to a depth of nearly 2,000 feet, which makes it the deepest lake in North America—and only 2% has been fully explored. Six miles wide and remarkably circular, the lake is 7,000 feet above sea level, although its rim still juts up to 8,000 feet at its highest point. The only creatures to live on the bottom are bacteria and moss, although midges hatch at the bottom and rise to the top once they reach maturity.
     
    The sonar system used to map the bottom has revealed the 1880s measurements—taken with a sounding rig made of piano wire—to be accurate within fifty feet.
     
    None of this was really on our minds once we parked and made the hike up the hill. The lake, as seen from the rim, is a rich and undisturbed blue. Pollen from the nearby trees made patterns on and underneath the water. Slightly to the right lay Wizard Island, a smaller caldera created by a smaller eruption from the same volcano. In essence, it's a mini-Crater Lake within Crater Lake ... except without the lake.
     
    Topped off with the snowcapped Cascades in the distance—and the snow still clinging like the trees to the interior rim of the lake—the view was so great that the only thing that stopped us from just sitting down and staring for hours were the incessant bugs which feasted themselves on the flesh of any creature willing to stay in one place for more than about ten seconds.
     
    The thing about Crater Lake is that the lake is pretty much all of what's there, and while the park does encompass much more than just the lake, it's all that anyone ever comes for. Also, once you've seen the lake, there really isn't all that much different that one can see from different stops and pullouts.
     
    But we had time and we had shoes to break in, so we set our eyes on a steep .8 mile hike to an old fire observation tower at about 1,000 feet above lake level (and thus 8,000 above sea level). The footwear performed extremely well, although I had to stop under the shade many times to allow my parents to catch up. (It'd be bad form to get to the summit and be napping when they caught up.)
     
    The hike felt so much longer than advertised. While the shoes kept up well, the steepness of the switchbacks up those thousand feet was potent when combined with the altitude. Finally, we got to the observation tower.
     
    It became well worth it. The extra height afforded even more stunning views of the lake below. We even ran into two college seniors from Western Carolina—both with impressive beards—who were on an epic two-month road trip packed with as many national parks as they could manage. Many of the parks to which we have not been are ones that they have already visited, and vice versa. We told them about the superiority of Grand Teton over Yellowstone, highly recommended an early morning drive over the Beartooth Highway, and encouraged them to go all the way to Acadia if they found themselves in New England. They told us about how Capitol Reef stacked up to the rest of southern Utah and how Rocky Mountain compared to Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
     
    On the hike down, my mom spotted a few deer. Getting pictures of the deer led us off of the trail slightly, which ended up being both a shortcut and a great test of our footwear.
     
    (Side note: possibly the most surreal aspect of Crater Lake is in its snow. Despite the increasing summer heat, enough snow banks still exist near walking paths that the trail up to the lookout tower had a not-insignificant section that was completely covered in a thick layer of ice. Enough hikers had trampled on the snow that the route through was visible upon closer inspection, but the idea that we'd have to do this in mid-June is hard to get my head around—and, this being our fourth rodeo, you'd think that I'd know what this month means to the rest of the country weather-wise.)
     
    After our obligatory ornament purchase, we exited the park. Almost immediately the road became treacherous, as it narrowed considerably around hairpin curves. No shoulder or guardrail blocked our lane from the sheer drop-off on the other side, and we were going down the entire way.
     
    The road eventually straightened out, but Oregon was not yet through throwing its asphalt-related absurdities in our general direction. The little town of Fort Klamath had road work that consisted of one guy holding one of those slow/stop signs. No lanes were blocked off and hardly any cones were put up. This "road work" lasted for all of maybe twenty yards.
     
    One of the last of the Oregonian passing maniacs was a white car we nicknamed the "Joker car," for its strange gash across the front resembled the Joker as portrayed by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. When the driver did their inevitable blind-hill pass, we saw that its right headlight was literally dangling from the car and hug around it, flapping around in the wind as it went past. Ironically, it still worked perfectly, and so we saw twice the turn signal as they swerved in front of us to avoid a head-on collision.
     
    Through this low country, surrounded by mountains, cows grazed on large farms and ranches. We spotted no less than five bale eagles: two families in nests and one by itself. Each one was sitting on a telephone pole.
     
    We got gas in the miserable-looking outskirts of Klamath Falls and continued on towards California. We caught sight of Mount Shasta, the second-highest peak in the Cascades, more than sixty miles distant to it (and before we'd even left Oregon). Soon we found ourselves in California, and as the mountains began to die away, Shasta was all we could see in our southernly route. We pulled off for pictures, where we learned that Shasta was very much an active volcano.
     
    We got on I-5 not too much later, after passing the hilariously named town of Weed. (Its sign: "Weed like to welcome you!") I-5 went up to about 5,000 feet above sea level ... and then went fifty miles downhill. I'm convinced that some evil genius designed the route as an instrument of maximum torture, and that the same individual calibrated the road signs to provide hope to travelers weary of the careening grades. When the mileage said it was 30 miles to somewhere, one would go what felt like an hour ... only for the next sign to say that the same distance was now only 27 miles.
     
    My dad said it was worse than the insanity that was the Coquihalla Highway two years ago. It was my first time going over a road like that and I am not keen to repeat the experience, as it was the Interstate equivalent of the road out of Crater Lake. I'm sure we went more than 5,000 feet downhill, since, when we finally hit the straightaway around Redding, the elevation signs dropped 500 feet within a few miles of us going perfectly straight.
     
    Something is up with these signs. I have no other explanation.
     
    The generally nominal hotel food was an overrated reuben for me and overcooked steaks for my parents. However, the sustenance was heavenly to my dad, who had been talking more or less nonstop about spaghetti from the time we entered Crater Lake.
     
    Tomorrow: two pennants at minor league teams and some great food in Sacramento before spending the night in Modesto.
  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

    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.
  21. Sumiki

    (Hot) Brown and Out

    By Sumiki,

    We awoke this morning to the promise of a Hot Brown from the Brown Hotel. It was a little past 8:00 when we began getting ready, and we ended up getting there well before ten. The opulent hotel, which dates from the 1920s, remains the capital of swank in the downtown Louisville area despite the miserable decline of the surrounding neighborhood.
     
    The Hot Brown: juicy slices of turkey breast covered in succulent mornay sauce and topped with bacon and tomato slices, all held up by an absorbent bread—ostensibly an open-faced sandwich, but it would remain much too sloppy to try and eat should one put another slice of bread on the top.
     
    We did not get the original original Hot Brown. It was on the menu, but we opted for the buffet, where there was the promise of endless Hot Brown in the form of the Hot Brown casserole, a huge metal dish full of Hot Brown goodness. (The only difference was that there were bacon bits on the casserole whereas the original had strips.)
     
    The richness of our relatively small plates kept us full across the state of Indiana.
     
    We had to avoid some of the more unsavory parts of the Louisville population to get back down the block, but we did so successfully and loaded up.
     
    Our two options to get to Springfield, Illinois: go along the route we went on during our first trip (albeit in another direction) or add a few minutes to the journey by heading up towards Indianapolis and cutting over from there. We chose the latter for the sake of seeing new things.
     
    Once out of the miserable and accursed state of Kentucky, we entered into the slightly less miserable and accursed state of Indiana, where our gas stop took a little too long for comfort. The 55 MPH zones would encourage the Hoosiers—already going 85 in a 70—to careen around us at an even faster clip. Going anything under fifteen over the limit was suicidal.
     
    We made it to Indianapolis, where we curved around the beltway and briefly got on I-74 before getting off on serene, flat, nearly deserted two-lane country roads, where we went due west through tiny town after tiny town. We passed two Amish buggies and many cows doing the "Yoder Salute" (they all had their butts turned to the road). The only stop we made was near the Illinois border, when we got out at a state historic site dedicated to WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle.
     
    This site has a flagpole, a monument (a replica of the one that stands on the site of his death), and a covered bridge with a warning against running through it. It was a small but touching tribute from the citizens of a small town to their hero.
     
    Throughout this long drive, my mom slept intermittently in the back (sleepily apologizing whenever she woke herself up by snoring), while my dad slowly and slowly got more hyper. He mixed up songs and their words, badly mispronounced any proper noun on the road signs, and spouted non sequiturs in real time as they occurred to him: "there were motorcycles out the wee yang yang yang," and "man, plant, food: think about it" were among the greatest.
     
    The road continued on its course through to Illinois, where our hunger first began to come back. While my dad was itching for a Culver's, an upper Midwest chain that we ate at thrice on our second trip, there were none near enough to the road. I spotted a Freddy's location, which I was only familiar with because one had opened near our house and we'd eaten there while running errands the day before we left. Comparable enough to Culver's to satisfy my dad's irrational craving, their burger patties are very thin and cooked quickly, which slightly chars them on the sides. The fresh toppings and thin-cut fries only make it better, and the chain has a Thousand Island-like dressing known only as "fry sauce."
     
    But what really makes the Culver's comparison apt is their frozen custard, which comes in containers so large that the mini size is almost too big to hold with one hand, and the serving size fills the cup to the point that sticking a spoon in it sends melted custard dripping out of the sides. My mom had the turtle while my dad and I stuck to what we loved when we'd tried it at home: a scoop covered in crumbled Reese's cups, banana slices, and about as much whipped cream as frozen custard.
     
    This being on the outskirts of Springfield, we made it to our hotel in about ten minutes. Soon after arriving, my dad and I escaped the confines of the room and went out to explore the town.
     
    Springfield is very clean and almost totally deserted this time of day—surprising for a state capital. The warm summer air was pleasant with the wind from the northern storms keeping the humidity from stagnating. We walked down to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. These twin buildings were closed for the day, but we wanted to get a lay of the land before going there tomorrow.
     
    We talked for a while to a security guard at the museum about the history of the buildings in the area and of modern-day Springfield. He approved of where we plan to eat tomorrow and told us about both the old train station across the street and the place along old Route 66 that claims the corn dog as its invention.
     
    We worked our way around the old capitol building and read various signs about Lincoln's time in Springfield. Many government offices are scattered in small office spaces between storefronts downtown, which gives you a sense of being in the capitol as opposed to just being in the same city as the capitol.
     
    Tomorrow: the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, a local diner, and then on through Peoria to Iowa.
  22. Sumiki

    Westward Ho!

    By Sumiki,

    We left home at 2:55 PM and filled up the gas tank on the way out of town. Like our first trip, we went along I-40 and made good time. Our first stop was at the stadium of the Hickory Crawdads at 4:30.
     
    The good ol' boys manning the front office informed us that they no longer sold pennants—in fact, they stopped production a few years ago because there weren't enough buyers. Nevertheless, one of them offered to take us through the empty stadium to their gift store, and we were willing to go along with the idea that there might be a good pennant substitute there. But before we could, he came around the corner again, holding an old pennant in his hands and willing to sell it to us for a flat five dollars.
     
    After our thanks, we absconded and found ourselves faced with the Herculean task of getting over The Mountain. The Mountain is a legend in our family; my great-aunt lives out that direction and traverses it often enough to refer to it by the definite article. Fortunately going west over The Mountain is easier than the other direction, and soon enough we were closing in on Tennessee.
     
    We got to Tennessee after 6:30 and stretched at the welcome center, which is an interesting looking building designed to look like an old log cabin, although the vending machines and the disturbing life-size cut-outs of Dolly Parton ruin the effect once you walk inside.
     
    Once back on the highway, we were slowed for fifteen minutes due to road construction, but then made up for it once the mountains cleared and the speed limit became more practical than suicidal.
     
    There was a bit of entertainment to be had in an otherwise bland case of road-construction inch-along-itis, and it was in the form of the two young ladies, perhaps in their mid-20s, in the beat-up blue sedan behind us. The one sitting shotgun was black-haired, with a streak of purple only visible in the few moments that she stayed still. Most of the time, she danced back and forth in her seat like an electrocuted monkey. This went on to the increasing concern of the driver and the continued catatonic state of the kid in the backseat.
     
    After refilling the gas and our stomachs in Lenoir City, we bore down on the last leg of the day. It got very dark very quickly, but the advantage of the dark is that there was very little traffic with which to contend. We went north and stopped here in Franklin, home of the only all-turf year-round horse racing track in the country. This particular location began as a place for feuding Tennessee citizens to duel with pistols, since that practice was illegal in Tennessee. Thus, we're really only in Kentucky on a technicality.
     
    Tomorrow: touring Mammoth Cave and then up to Louisville for a Hot Brown or a close imitator.
  24. Sumiki
    My grandmother's surgery meant that we had to spend a week or two in the southern portion of North Carolina, roughly an hour and fifteen minutes from where I usually live. My great aunt, who is from the mountains in the west of the state, also came to visit and help, but given her age (and her own health problems) she left earlier today. My grandmother is doing as well as can be expected and expects to be discharged tomorrow (or later today, if you want to be pedantic).
     
    My mom packed for a long stay, but my dad and I had to play things by ear and—in a move classified by leading scientists as "pretty stupid"—packed incredibly lightly. I didn't pack my retainer, which I wear every other night to keep my teeth straight after my year+ with early teen braces. I didn't even bring along another pair of pants.
     
    And so it came to pass that the surgery meant that one (or two) of us would have to stay with her more or less constantly until her discharge. With her house ten minutes from the hospital, it became obvious that we would have to move into her house for the time being.
     
    At 10:00, after watching the latest episode of Doctor Who on the TV in her hospital room (albeit on mute, so I'll still be avoiding spoilers until I can watch the repeat next week), my dad and I left and went back to her house, where he expressed the concern I'd been feeling all day but hadn't yet mentioned: we needed our things, and the round-trip drive would take over two hours.
     
    Well, my parents and I are on three different shifts: my dad is first-shift, myself, second, and my mom, third—just as she was in her days as a nurse. Usually this only leads to my dad complaining about how we all need to get on better cycles, but today, it worked to our advantage.
     
    With my dad too tired to drive and us really needing supplies from our house, we set out, driving a little over an hour up to our house, loading the car up with foodstuffs and clothes and toiletries and my electric piano (composing deadlines wait for no one), and then driving back, arriving back at my grandmother's house a little after 1:30 AM.
     
    It was, in the words of my dad, "the dumbest thing we've ever done."
     
    I respectfully disagree with him, but all the same, it was not the most well-thought-out plan we've ever put into action.
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