The End of the Road

That’s a lie, the road never ends, especially in this country. It’s endless. Even, usually particularly, if you’re lost, the road just keeps on going. A lot of songs have been written about the road, either its healing effects or its escapism. A lot of books on the same subject, on the way and how of the journey. And though the road doesn’t end, the journey must at some point.

So must ours, albeit a bit early. Overwhelmed exhaustion is the main culprit.

It didn’t come as a smashing revelation that woke us up in the middle of the night. It was part of the unyielding nature of our trip. It came in bits and pieces, in feelings and vibrations, as the days wore on and the miles unfolded below. There comes a point in every trip when it’s over. Simply and justifiably, over. Your mind has taken in too much and your eyes forget to see, your ears neglect sounds, smells are left ignored. If you read some of Steinbeck’s travel with his dog you’ll catch a similar passage. It’s all true.

That boiling point was reached somewhere in the Southwest about four weeks ago. This country of ours is so immense, so diverse, that we were overwhelmed just days into it. There’s just too much to see, do, taste, take in. After that we kept trudging on though, despite all quips about being tired and sleepy.

We learned some things, of course. Some we already knew, lessons only being reiterated. Some were new and scary but came to us all the same. In terms of us: Andy’s still an early bird, and Jana wouldn’t mind sleeping til ten everyday. On the flip side Jana is a partier and Andy prefers a geriatric bedtime. Andy can handle the drudgery of hours on the Interstate, while Jana weaves and honks her brilliantly aggressive way through the cities. Jana loves country music. Andy hates it.

In terms of trip: this country is a behemoth. It’s too much. To do a road trip like we’d envisioned a person, or people, would need months, not weeks. Two to three months. To see a place and to get a feel for a place are very separated. The ambitiousness of our outline didn’t allow time to get a feel, we only saw. In hindsight, the thing to do, if given say another six weeks, is to focus on a particular area or region, not the entire leviathan of a nation. If we’d put thirty+ days of exploration into say, the Pacific Northwest then we could get a definite feel and knowledge of the area. Here we are at the end of our trip, barely remembering where we started. Without pictures and blog entries we’d forget what we even did.

So it has come to this, we’re cutting it short. We made it as far west as the Pacific Ocean and then turned around and got all the way to the Atlantic. We’re missing a good deal of the northeast, but as our overawed minds currently exist, we wouldn’t really see it or remember it anyway. It must be saved for the next trip, now that we know how to better attack it.

Exhausted and overwhelmed, we’re just ready to be home.

Thank you to every single friend we saw along the way and who fed us, housed us, loved us. You allowed us to get this far. If not for your hospitality and generosity we might not have made it to this distance.

We’re rounded the trip off at 9,850 miles. In 34 days. 30 states. $1500 on gas. The highest price we saw was $4.70 in California and the lowest was $3.53 in Wyoming.

There’ve been ups and downs, and we hope you enjoyed the best snippets we could provide. We’re happy to have had this experience, and we thank you all for joining in.

Signing off.
A & J

Its Charm is in its Grunge: Observations

It’s been referred to many times, quite accurately, as the concrete jungle. The buildings climb higher and higher and close you in like a treetop canopy. The taxis are as fierce as tigers, hunting a prey to pay their next fare. Buses and delivery vans and garbage trucks charge by with the intent of angry elephants. A cacophony of noise emanates from all sides in the form of honks and squeals and cries. People move with a certainty that leaves the confused even more lost. If you don’t know the unwritten rules of the jungle, you don’t survive.

Molly got us into a taxi at sunset and we swerved our way downtown from her apartment on 90^th Street. It felt less like a stampede and more like a swarm of raging hornets, hissing and swaying, jeering and shifting, all jockeying for the best position at the next light. Our necks were craned back as far as possible out of tinted, childproof windows to see the lights come alive like stars in a darkening universe of rising steel and concrete. There is something incredible about this place. For all the disdain I now have for the gigantic shitshows we call megacities, I cannot quell my naïve and childlike affection for New York City. Being from Middle America, this is the center of the earth and its energy is magnetic, and I am sucked in and won over.

When people move here, they move with a certainty and a determination. If you don’t know where you’re going it’s very apparent. You can tell who the tourists are. Just like you can smell the greed radiating from the Wall Streeters in their fancily tailored suits. Or the apparent arrogance wafting off of the effortlessly cool and uncaring hipsters. Ear buds are in almost every head, lattes in almost every hand. Walk and Don’t walk means little, people go. Cars go. Buses and taxis go. Just keep moving forward. You can’t stop to take a picture, there is no looking around, that architecture’s not to be admired. Everyone has a place to go—you’re only getting in their way.

There’s a busy-ness that goes with those people. It’s why they move that way. The subway comes screaming to a halt and a metallic flash. Whether it’s the 2, the Q, or the red or blue. The doors open. People rush in, people rush out. There are signs and symbols, arrows and signals. Only the natives get it, or those who’ve put in the time to learn. That sub plunges on and another arrives for a different destination. A different color. A different number, a different letter. Molly points and we go and she knows and we act like we do.

The history of this place is written under all those mightily rushing footfalls. You can see it in the architecture and watch as it’s slowly consumed and yet still added to by modernity. Lady Liberty has the power to still evoke such unexplainable feelings of patriotism with her hardened face and glowing torch forever facing the world. Buildings with names like Empire and Chrysler steal your speech no matter how many times you go by. You can’t seem to take enough pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge. This is New York City. The international food vendors and smalltime shopkeepers. The squatty wooden water towers on building tops. The dapper bellhops outside hotel doors. The quaint, picturesque brownstones. The accented taxi drivers from Bulgaria. The rusting iron fire escapes. New York City.

We got the insider’s view. Molly (a recent convert to Manhattan from the surrounding area) and Maria (a NY lifer) held us by our little Hoosier hands and took us to hole-in-the-wall places that we never would’ve found on our own. They let us crash in their awesome Upper East Side and Harlem (respectively) apartments. They allowed us to take in this frightening and tremendous and overpowering city in the safest and most guided way. They allowed us to enjoy the true magic of this greatest of cities. There’s just something about this place you can’t resist.

You Can Squeeze My Orange Anytime

Chicago was a revitalizer of sorts. A reenergizer.

After thirty+ days on the road, we’re getting a bit worn down. Living out of suitcases, eating sandwiches in the back of the car, showering every few days (for some), navigating unknown cities, wearing the same clothes (for some), minding the budget, sleeping in a different place every night. It stars to grind on you. I don’t know how traveling musicians or actors or salesmen do it. You get to the point where you need a vacation from your vacation.

I think Chicago rebooted our systems to finish out the two weeks of this trip. We spent two full days in the city. One primary goal was to catch up. One sleep. After checking that off the list we attempted to take in some essential Chicago stops. We visited the still-free Lincoln Park Zoo. We moseyed down to Millennium Park and gandered at the art there. We took a stroll down the Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue. We saw a play, for free (thanks Florence!). We went to a Cubs game at Wrigley (don’t worry Mr. Stone and Keena, we swore no allegiance away from the Sox). We had delicious, world famous, Chicago style pizza at Gino’s East. We navigated the L, a first for both of us. I took a run on Lake Shore Trail, passing landmarks like Navy Pier, Soldier Field, the Schedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium, the Field Museum, Grant Park. We got to see BU alums Florence and Zuber, and we got to spend some quality time with my little nurse who could, Kimmie.

Of course, in two full days, you can barely even enjoy a smidge of Chicago. Old friends and new sites were missed, but alas, such is the nature of this drive-by-honk-and-wave journey. Never settle long enough to get attached, always move forward, keep track of what’s still left, either in front or behind, to go back and see next time. But always, look ahead, there’s too much to see and we’re only going to get one glimpse at it.

Thank you to the Windy City and the friends we saw, for boosting us through the remainder of our trip. We needed the rest and the comfort of somewhere familiar. Now we head back into the unknown. 

There’s a fine line between adventurous and dangerous

[This one is a few days late! We're actually in Chicago right now, but ENJOY!]

As you drive east through parts of Montana, into Wyoming, and finally reach South Dakota, you come across some pretty quiet and lonely stretches of road. The white-faced mountains fall away behind you and become rolling emerald hills ahead, morphing finally back into the flat terrain of the Midwest we know so well. The landscape fluctuates between the green grasses and the brown, all the while dotted with black cattle here and there. The sky is the richest blue it can be, the purest air left after man started polluting it with our machines. At times the clouds are grey and heavy and seem to suffocate the land, and at others appear to be sleeping on a glass floor, their stomachs dark and flat while their heads puff and round upward in their lazy, graceful way. Beautiful, beautiful country.

The hospitality out here has equaled, if not surpassed, what we experienced on the West Coast. Suzanne put us up in her Livingston, MT apartment for two nights, and Mr. and Mrs. Mohler housed and fed us for another two nights in Rapid City, SD.  It’s friends like that who help to make trips like this possible. Thank you to all!!!

Once in the Black Hills of South Dakota, we pulled up to the Crazy Horse monument in a bit of confusion. Neither of us really knew what to expect, only that people had told us we had to see it. But when we arrived, all we could see was half a face on a faraway mountain. This is it?! Reluctantly we entered the visitor’s center and were directed to an auditorium for a film showing. I cannot impress how much that twenty-minute video did for our appreciation of the monument. It is to the Native American tribes what Rushmore is to Americans. And when you consider that forty-year-old sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was invited by the Native American chiefs to construct the memorial and then spent the rest of his 74 years slowly carving away the mountain. And when you consider that it is over nine times bigger than Rushmore. And when you consider that seven of Korczak’s ten children are still living and working on the rock. And when you consider that Korczak was approached several times by the US Government with financial backing and refused every time because he wanted the monument to be supported by the interested public not the uninterested politicians. And when you consider that it’s taken over sixty years just to get Crazy Horse to where he is now, despite nearly round-the-clock work. We left with a redoubled admiration for the monument and a new sense of the word dedication.

In comparison to the unfinished, but still technically superior Native American monument, our great Mt. Rushmore seemed a tad small. My first comment was, “Teddy sure does seem a bit cramped back there, doesn’t he?” We were still irked by the $11 parking fee as we approached the past presidents. See, we paid $80 at the start of this trip for the Annual Interagency Pass, which so far has served us well. But the tiny lady at the welcome booth said this when I held up our National Parks Card: We don’t honor that. That covers your entrance fee, which we don’t charge. We charge a parking fee.” Semantics! It’s the same damn thing! Whatever lady, here’s your $11, now let us see those faces. In the end there was a bit of awe, seeing a thing in person, which is so often represented in other mediums.

The Badlands. Another National Park where we just say, Wow. We got a tip from our new friends about a magnificent back-roads view that would give us a different angle from which to see the territory. Pulling off the secret road, we exited the car and walked about a hundred yards up a short incline, seeing nothing so far that was very startling. Then the earth just fell away. In his book, Travels with Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck writes this: As I was not prepared for the Missouri boundary, so I was not prepared for the Bad Lands. They deserve this name. They are like the work of an evil child. Such a place the Fallen Angels might have built as a spite to Heaven, dry and sharp, desolate and dangerous, and for me filled with foreboding. A sense comes from it that it does not like or welcome humans. Well said, John.

For miles and miles along the highways of S.D. you pass signs and signs announcing the glory and grandeur of the Wall Drug Store. After so many advertisements, you get to the point where you just must see this place. Well, I was more impressed with the Gold Digger Casino and Bar across the street. The drug store was rather large, and was stocked to the brim with all those unnecessary souvenirs that are constantly being churned out at some child labor law-breaking factory in Southeast Asia. Yet with all of those signs and billboards I was expecting the facility to be complete with an arcade, bowling alley, shopping mall, mini golf course, laser tag center, ice cream parlor, roller coaster, and silver screen movie theatre. Much to our dismay, only cheap trinkets and pharmaceuticals.

What if when we get there it’s just a huge stone painted yellow?

“Stop stop stop! Look, a….thing!”

By thing, I think she meant elk.

“Look!! Another thing!!” I shouted a reply.

“Holy. Crap. What is that thing?!”

“Well Jan, I think it’s a bison.”

The Thing. Grazing calmly at the side of the road.

We were literally five miles inside of Yellowstone National Park and we were stopped in the middle of the road and there was a 2000 pound bison standing only feet from our car, just munching away at the grass, not minding us one bit.

Yellowstone has brought me the most amount of sheer, childish joy so far on the trip. Later, after we’d driven a bit further, we came upon some sort of blockade in the road. As we neared we discovered it was a herd of these bison, just trotting down the double yellow line. I literally stopped the car and put it in park. The people on the other side were inching along behind the creatures. And we sat there and watched the ten or so bison gently clomp towards us. They were so close I could’ve reached out the window and touched one. And I would’ve too, except for the giant sign we saw as we entered the park, which clearly stated: MOLESTING THE ANIMALS IS ILLEGAL. Well, I certainly don’t want to be an illegal bison molester, so I had to stifle that urge, despite my sister’s encouragement from the passenger seat.

The Sign Warning Not to Molest the Animals

The Road Blockade

A Closer Look at the Road Blockade

A ways down we noticed a guy who had parked his giant SUV in our lane and was standing in the other lane with a giant camera mounted on a tripod. Being the smart people we are, we quickly realized that he must’ve been photographing something pretty amazing. (He was breaking another park law. That being taking photos in the middle of the road. Seriously.) Come to find out it was a black bear. A real-life-in-the-wild-black-bear. It looked all cute and cuddly from where we were but man, I bet that thing could’ve torn that guy apart in about two swipes. THAT’S WHY YOU DON’T PHOTOGRAPH IN THE ROAD, STAY IN YOUR VEHICLES, THESE BEASTS ARE DEADLY. We trailed it for a few hundred feet (from our Escape) until the trees grew too thick to get any more pictures. Then we moved on.

Just those two events made us both feel giddy. In fact every time we saw bison in the street (which was plenty) I wanted to take pictures. Finally Jan was like, “I think we have enough bison pictures.”

More Bison Photos...

The rangers estimate that Old Faithful will blow its head every 93 minutes. We luckily got there with about ten minutes to wait (+/- 10 minutes either way). After about fifteen minutes of waiting the geyser started flirting with us by expelling lots of steam followed by a few little water splashes. This went on for about fifteen more minutes. People were starting to get impatient. “More like Old Teaser,” some guy said. “Yeah, Old Finicky,” a lady replied. Nice. Eventually the geyser did spurt, but after so much anticipation it seemed unimpressive. We all kept standing around waiting for more. We all wanted to be wowed, and although it was cool, it didn’t have the awe-impact we were searching for. But, I suppose on the bright side, at least the Yellowstone Volcano didn’t blow while we were standing on top of it.

We also took in a few hot springs and smelled their sulfuric, rotten egg, glory. There were some pretty amazing colors amongst the breeding bacteria in the waters there. I kept daring her to touch it but the signs warning scalding scared her off.

We both agreed that it was all just too beautiful with the rock walls and the green pines and the snow banks and the rushing blue streams and the wildlife. Can’t really argue with the fact that it’s a National Park. Although, as the first national park created, it definitely set the standard.

A list

Of awesome things

About the city of Portland:

-Public transportation (Combining use of trains, streetcars, buses, and a tram. Tickets are $2 for the day and are interchangeable between types. There’s even a free sector of town where you don’t have to pay to ride.)

-Plethora of microbreweries (Need I say more?)

-Great outdoors (Within about an hour of the city you can reach the coast, the mountains, the forest, the desert. There are so many shades of green that cover the terrain there, it’s like a box of specialty green Crayola crayons.)

-Farmers Markets (Every Saturday on the Portland State campus they set up several blocks of tents and stalls to sell various fruits and vegetables amongst the greenery and live music.)

-Layout (The city is divided into an easily accessible square of quadrants-NW, NE, SW, SE. The roads are in alphabetical order, and they intersect roads names by numbers.)

-Bike friendly (There are more bikes than cars!)

-Powell’s Used Book Store (The building covers a square city block. An entire square. Three stories tall. A better selection than any Barnes and Noble I’ve ever been in. It’s really cool when a town boasts a used bookstore as a tourist attraction.)

-Dog friendly (A lot of restaurants have canine menus. Seriously. Shops and stores keep doggie bowls for food and water just inside their doors. Seriously.)

-Tuckfields (Enough said.)

Another shout out to Kym and Cam for taking care of us during our stay, even paying for our (my) laundry and making sure the parking meter stayed full. We even got to see Daria (a recent PNW arrival) and Steve (up from Eugene). It was great to see all of you, now it’s your turn to hit the Midwest.

Shout-outs also to Jenny for letting us stay with her in Castle Rock as well as feed us a spectacular dinner, Sarah for bringing Hazel over to play and some delicious food to add to our spectacular dinner, and Mr. & Mrs. Bauska (Jenny's parents) for having us over for a wonderful breakfast accompanied with great stories of the past!

Thank you to ALL of you west coasters who made our trek up your side of the country so incredible! Words cannot explain how much we appreciate all of your hospitality!