More Corn Anyone?

Iowa… is a flat state. Part of that long strip down the country that is not really good for entertainment but is great for growing crops, like corn. We have driven past so much corn on this road trip (I’m sure we’ll see plenty more too), and once again we saw plenty of those familiar big ol’ grains. We left from Chicago in the morning and so crossed into Iowa around noon. Des Moines was the town we were aiming for, which sits right in the middle of the state. This meant that we had a good four to five hours of driving after crossing into the state, especially since we hardly ever stay on the interstate.

You see interstates are created to get people to places as fast as possible. They cut through the environment rather than wrap around it. The state highways don’t have near as much funding though, so blasting through the environment is avoided in favor of just wrapping around the hills and rising and falling with them. It makes the drive slightly more exciting than just making sure the wheels stay straight. Not to mention you can find random places to take a break from the drive as well.

In this case both of our stops along the way were by lakes. Sadly enough I have forgotten the names of both of them. I know that the first one we stopped at had a beach called Sandy Beach that was all set up for swimming and had a dock for boats as well. There were even bathrooms. All of this might make you think that it would be a great place to take a dip, but of all the lakes we had visited up to that point, and even since, I think that this was the worst possible one to go swimming in. Partly because the water was super murky, partly because the mud seemed especially sticky, but mostly because we found a decaying pelican caught in the buoys that marked out the border of the swimming area.

Sadly enough we did not discover this little “treasure” until after we had already got in the water. I got out pretty quick after that though. After air drying we continued on down the road, not pulling off again until we reached another smaller lake as the sun was dipping below the horizon. This was where we pulled off to make some dinner. The water was better here, but the mosquitoes were thicker as well, not to mention taking a dip in water while the temperature is dropping for the night is not the most appetizing of ideas. Still dinner was great, and the water was warm, surprisingly. Still not even Eric ended up getting in for a swim, and he is usually the first one into the water.

On we pressed until we hit Des Moines. I’m still not entirely sure what possessed us to decide that we should go see Des Moines. Maybe it was because we had just gotten done touring around a city and had been rather shocked as to how much fun we had there. Or maybe because there were no national forests or grasslands to be seen in the state and so we had to come up with something. There is always the possibility that it was just a “sight to see” close to the place we had set up to sleep at (in all likelihood it was probably this final fashion, funny how life ends up revolving around where one can find a place to sleep when one has no home to return to each night). Whatever the case I’m rather happy that we got to see Des Moines that night.

After spending two full days in the city of Chicago Des Moines felt like a ghost town, especially since most of the city was entirely deserted at 10 o’clock on a Sunday night. Even downtown Colorado Springs usually has a bit more happening at that time. The deserted aspect added its own bit of romanticism to it though. It was like all the lights and buildings in the city had been put up and given a spit shine just for us, at least all of those parts of the city that were not currently under construction, which was about half of it. I don’t know exactly what is going on there, but it seems to be some kind of downtown overhaul project that will eventually interconnect all of the downtown buildings with sky bridges. It looked nifty, but we weren’t able to get inside to test out any of the completed sky bridges ourselves. What we did get to see was the skyline, some beautiful bridges, and the very nice river walk that goes right down the middle of downtown Des Moines. Now as far as the social scene in Des Moines goes I can’t offer any critique, but if you are just looking for a city that is great to wander around in at night by yourself without feeling worried about your safety and while enjoying some beautiful scenery then I would suggest going to check out Des Moines.

After we completed our aimless wanderings we drifted into Ames where Tweedy had managed to find us a yard to pitch our tent in. You read that correctly, a yard we were pitching our tent in. It gets even better though. The person whose home we pitched our tent in lived in a student trailer park, which means there really wasn’t much in the way of individual yards. On top of it the home owner was not even awake when we set up our tent at around midnight, maybe even pushing one in the morning. All of this probably sounds completely ridiculous, but it gets even better. Tweedy did not even know the person whose yard we were sleeping in. She was actually the cousin of a friend of his from college who was just willing to surrender up a corner of her yard to three guys on a cross-country road trip. Thank you random stranger out there somewhere who I never even got the chance to meet!

The next night we had Tweedy’s uncle to go see in lower Wisconsin. That meant another day with a lot of driving. We tried to stop by a house that Frank Lloyd Wright built on the way, but it was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Instead of checking out the house built by the water we ended up just getting in the river ourselves at a little park downstream that had showers and restrooms with actual running water (and there was no fee for day use at this park!). After all the driving from the day before and several hours left for the rest of the day we decided to set up our tent and take a little post-lunch nap before continuing on our way. That was one of the best low-energy afternoons of the trip yet.

After the short reprieve it was back on the road and we rolled on into lower Wisconsin around 7:00. We had officially seen Iowa. I have to say it really still puts Kansas to shame, even with all the corn.

Remember to check out the videos of the trip that Eric and Tweedy are putting together.

Big City, Big Lake (Chicago Part II)

The night in Chicago had worn on a little bit longer, into the early morning really. That’s why I thought I could push it on to the next post. We eventually made our way back to Jeff’s place and hung out in the hot tubs while looking out the window on this beautiful sight.

Jeff entertained us with stories of his shenanigans as the night wore on until we found ourselves needing to get home at around 2:00 in the morning. Eric, Tweedy, and I thought that we would just go back on the train, but Matt started freaking out and saying we could not ride the blue line at that time of night and eventually ended up just getting us a Lyft home. Remember, it was the blue line that we were told would be a bad train to ride late at night, this detail will feed into the story later on. So we got home and crashed hard once again.

The next morning, we had planned to meet up with Megan once again since the other guys hadn’t really had a chance to get to meet her. Not to mention she said she would love to go on a walk with us along the coast of Lake Michigan and Eric and Tweedy were looking to start their list of great lakes that they had swam in. This time we took the train into town by ourselves and managed to find our way to her place with a little help from the all-knowing Google. We spent some time chatting until we came to something like a swimming bay that was blocked over entirely with cement. Apparently even the beaches in cities are made of cement. Anyway, Eric and Tweedy both got their dips in the lake. I had left my swim trunks behind and something told me that skinny dipping in the middle of the city would be something of a no-no.

After our little walk with Megan we went back to Millennium Park to check out The Bean on a sunny day. The day before had been cloudy and Jeff told us that it would be wrong to get a picture of a cloudy Chicago reflected in The Bean. The day before was a whole lot less crowded. That Saturday afternoon the pavement around it was crowded with people, including two separate wedding parties. Apparently everyone gets married in Chicago on Saturday, at least that was what Megan had told us. We also had first hand evidence. We had seen four different wedding parties that very day. Yeah… I’m going to believe her. And Jeff was right about The Bean too.

Oh, in case you are wondering, that sculpture is not technically named “The Bean,” but that is the only name the locals know it by, and if you are having trouble finding it just tap one of the people who looks like a city person (see the description in the last post) and ask them which way to go to find The Bean. People in Chicago are super helpful and nice despite what their expressions while walking the streets might suggest. In fact we had to incite the assistance of three local girls in order to locate the entrance to the blue line again so that we could get back to Matt’s for some authentic Chicago style pizza that Matt’s parents were kind enough to provide for us. (The only food we had purchased in Chicago had been some McDonald’s because our budget does not in any way allow for eating out. Honestly the McDonald’s was even a little pricey for our price range.)

Yes, we were back on the blue line, heading back into town. With how well we managed to navigate the train system on the way in I was sure we would be fine just remembering to get off at the last stop, but then we found ourselves just sitting in the train at one stop for about five minutes straight before the conductor came on the intercom. She told us that everyone was to get off the train due to “police activity.” I know, government is always so good at specifics. We had no idea what to do, all we were told was that we had to get off the train and that there would be no refunds given. We’re a group of guys that like to hike so we decided we just continue to walk along the route of the rails and just watch for the trains starting back up again and then get back on once we saw that happen. As we were deciding this we caught some chatter around us that seemed to clear up “police activity.” The word circulating was that someone had been shot. All of this happening on the blue line that Matt had said we should not ride the night before-- I guess the locals do know what they are talking about. No one seemed all that phased by the idea of someone being shot at one of the stops (aside from being irritated that they had to get off the train because of it), but then again gang violence has been at an all-time high in Chicago. Since no one else seemed to pay it any mind we decided that walking would still be a perfectly fine plan of action. (We learned later on that if we had just remained at the entrance to the train stop a bus would have shown up to pick us up, but the conductors and workers on the train didn't seem incredibly inclined to let the passengers know about these buses.)

As we walked along the houses began to have a larger percentage of boarded up windows. We walked past a guy with a shopping cart full of old, rusted, long pieces of rebar. Things were starting to gain that vibe—you know, that one you get as a person born from privilege walking into a legitimate ghetto. Not too long after that we came upon a group of young black guys lingering on the sidewalk with a few cars parked right in front of them, and we even saw single cars driving by one by one, stopping for a second before driving on. I’ve seen the show The Wire, (Warning! The clip I have hyperlinked has explicit language and violence) so I had a good idea as to what was going down. Tweedy thought that they were standing there to mug people. Eric thought that it was just a gang of dudes that would leave us alone if we just kept walking on through. Whatever the case we had a decision to make: continue on our original path or find a longer way around.

We debated for a while as to what we should do and then eventually just ended up walking on through the conglomeration of young men. Upon first stepping up to them a guy in a somewhat nice white jacket approached us and started asking if we wanted to purchase any “chemicals” at least that is what I deduced because he was using some of the same slang that I had heard Jeff using while conducting his “business.” Eric told him we were just trying to get home and he turned around and told the other guys to just leave us alone and let us keep walking home. They paid heed, though the much younger boys around yelled taunts that made me think they thought we were cops. The “muscle” guys half unzipped their big coats while one guy went and stood by a wheel of one of the parked cars. If you have seen The Wire you know what all of that was about.

The good part is we were left alone and continued walking until a couple blocks later we got a call from Matt telling us that as soon as his Mom heard the area we were walking through she got in the car and now they were on their way to come pick us up. We got back to the house and stuffed our face with some delicious Chicago style pizza.

Next day we got in the cars and set the GPS for Des Moines, Iowa. We would have set it for a national forest in Iowa, but there aren’t any of those there. Anyway, Iowa is for another day. Chicago and Illinois was now officially checked off the list.

For video remember to check out Eric’s and Tweedy’s Youtube channels.

Big City, Little Drug Lords

Have you ever woken up not entirely sure where in the world you are? That was the feeling I had that first morning in Illinois. Once again we had driven late into the night, and since we had no connections in lower Illinois we had just driven into a national forest and had chosen a random turn off to set up camp. This random turn off happened to be a field full of tall grasses, and when we pulled off at night we just figured that it was a naturally occurring field in the midst of the forest. In the morning light we became keenly aware of our mistake. We had accidentally ended up on private property. Thankfully the owners of the property didn’t seem to mind since we were able to wake up late and break down our tent without ever running into another human. Of course the house we spotted was the lot over, and the farming equipment was a lot over in the other direction. In our credit we were able to find the one field on the property that was empty.

After a breakfast of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we were back on the road and heading up through the center of Illinois towards Chicago. About halfway up we stopped at Rend Lake to take a little swim. The water was a bit cloudy, but refreshing. It was still at that temperature that makes those of us from Colorado distrust it, because how can water that is outside ever be warmer than 70°F? It was delightful though.

Our diet consists of three different meals that are always nearly the same though sometimes one is rotated with another. In this case our usual breakfast of oats traded place with the usual peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, which means there by the lake I pulled out our kitchen box and made us some oats. For the first time I added peanut butter to the oats. Since then peanut butter has been an essential ingredient. (Got to get your protein somehow, right?)

After the elongated break we returned to that all familiar companion—the road. On the way up to Chicago the sun began to sink below the horizon, granting us a colorful entrance to the City and livening up the otherwise flat and fairly boring landscape (though it still outdid what we saw going along I-70 through Kansas—I’m pretty sure that is what Hell will look like).

Finally, we pulled up on Chicago, and that view was incredible! Chicago at night is like a sea of stars that is fountaining out of the ground. Most of the time I don’t really get the romance of city lights at night, but that view made me realize that there is something to it after all. That also happens to be one perfect picturesque scene that I did not get a picture of. This is probably due to the fact that driving in a caravan through the city of Chicago is just about as difficult as pushing a camel through the eye of a needle. Trying to operate a camera while doing that is border line suicidal. Despite that being the case we somehow survived and ended up finding the home of Matt, one of Eric’s and Tweedy’s roommates from their last year at UCCS.

After a long drive all we really wanted to do was go to sleep, but since Matt's family had already finished their dinner we got out our kitchen box and made some extra dinner while chatting with one of Matt’s friends. Now I’m going to have to use an alias for this friend for reasons that will become super clear soon enough. Anyway, we’re going to call him Jeff. Now Jeff is a very small dude. Tweedy, Eric, and even I towered over him, plus he was rather scrawny. He was very white and had been raised in the wealthier suburbs of Chicago. This little white guy who spoke with a bit of a lisp was about nose deep in the business of distributing “chemicals” of the unlawful sort to apparently a fairly large clientele, he also was a Chicago native that lived right in the middle of downtown and offered to show us the city the next day. Honestly his method of income took me a bit by surprise, but getting a tour of a big city like Chicago from a native was too good of an offer to pass up, so we agreed to meet up with him the next day before bidding him farewell and passing out for a long night’s sleep.

Public transit is a beautiful thing, just as a heads up to everyone out there. We were able to keep our cars parked the entire time we were in Chicago, which is a very unique situation for a group of roadtrippers. The next morning, we rode the blue line into the city center (that is one of several trains/subways that go through Chicago, which cost 2.50 for a ride—a little steep for our budget, but we also had Matt there to buzz us through that day). It moved pretty slow, but still much faster than walking and much less stressful than driving and (even more so) parking.

Popping out of a hole into the middle of a city is not something I am particularly used to. Even when I have been to cities in Europe I end up walking around rather than using the subways. As a hiker I might stray into a cave every once in a while, but when I come out of those I’m surrounded by wilderness, not a forest of steel populated with flocks of people. Now flocks is an inaccurate description. We noticed fairly early on that a true city person walks by his or her self and does not smile or look at anyone else but instead plows forward through the masses, not even stopping for red lights at cross walks.

We slunk into these teaming masses and eventually found our way to Jeff’s apartment on the fortieth floor in the new east side, or as it is known in the street slang—The Plastics. It’s called this because just to get an apartment anywhere in that square mile of the city you have to prove income and have sources from several other places. Don’t ask me how Jeff managed to obtain all of that, because I got confused while he was trying to explain it to me. I think I lost him three times total and was fuzzy on the rest of it. Part of this may have been due to the slang he was using (though part of it was just doing illegal things is way far outside of my specialties). Sometimes I was wondering if he was even speaking English. Still, he managed to get into that area and the view from his window was something else.

That night we were planning on checking out the final concert of the Chicago Symphony at the giant bandstand in Millennium Park, but before we did that Jeff had some business to take care of and so decided to invite us along for the walk. Once again I found myself shaking hands with a little white guy who also was involved with “chemicals,” though his main product was more “herbal.” I don’t know what it is about the water in white Chicago suburbs, but clearly there is something there that stunts the growth of the youth and gives them strange ideas that they turn into business opportunities. Once again though I was shocked that the quality of the view that was just outside this little man’s window as well.

I could not linger though because I was supposed to meeting Megan, one of my friends that moved to Chicago a little while ago. For this reason, I did something that I have a feeling will make mom give me a call shortly after she reads this blog post. I decided that I would go off by myself back to Millennium Park with a phone that had a dying battery just as the sun disappeared entirely for the day. That is probably breaking at least three rules of city travel, but then city people never follow any of those rules, so why should I? I eventually met up with Megan and her beautiful dog.

Sorry, that dog is just so beautiful that he deserves his own picture in the blog. Now some people may find this blasphemous, but I think he might have been just as beautiful as the nighttime skyline of Chicago-- he definitely got as much attention if not more attention than the skyline--though that was absolutely gorgeous as well.

Anyway, the plan had been to watch the concert with Megan, but that beautiful white fluff-ball of a dog was not allowed in that part of the park. It was a sad day, but we still could sit and watch the face fountains spewing water while we caught up. Then I started freaking out because the guys had not texted me in a while and were not showing up either. So we began to wander around the edge of the park, and as we did so my phone died, which freaked me out even more. Honestly I could have gotten back to my car that night by myself, but I had done my lonesome traveling and Megan had to leave soon and I didn’t really want to finish watching the concert by myself and then wander to the subway and ride it back all by myself either.

By the miraculous random nature of the world though I caught sight of them right as they walked to the green space in front of the band shell. Never have I felt so grateful to see those tall goofy idiots! (They are not idiots by the way, very smart, but my stressed out self definitely wanted to call them idiots) I introduced them to Megan and then we took a seat on the lawn and listened to the last 20 minutes of the final summer series performance of the Chicago Symphony. That was quite the sight and sound. No better way to end our first day in Chicago.

I’ll hopefully get the rest of the blogs finished and caught up over the next week. This is just part one of Chicago, I’ll have to do one more for Illinois and then it will be Iowa, lower Wisconsin, Minnesota, upper Wisconsin, and now we are in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

As always, check out here for video footage: Eric and Tweedy

Missouri... Mizory... Mizery... Misery

I don’t know what kind of spell Missouri cast over us, but for some reason as hard as I think I cannot recall anything super interesting happening the first couple days that we were there. We woke up on the fifth of September with the intention of documenting what had already happened so far on our trip. You know, get the journals written, the photos compiled, the videos edited, and of course, the blogs written. But as you will all have noticed at this point, I only posted one blog that day, and that blog was as short as could be seeing as the subject matter was Kansas. As far as productivity was going for that day we were down near zero.

“Still something must have happened” you say, and to that I nod my head a bit and try my best to recall what we did with all the time that we had that day. Here is a real streamlined approach to it (because wasting words on doing nothing seems like such a lousy thing to do, of course I suppose that is exactly what I’m doing now, how many words have I shoved in this parenthetical statement already? Okay, maybe wasting words on nothing is more up my alleyway after all).

1.         Wake up and I make the morning oatmeal out on the front porch after Katt leaves for work. (Morning oatmeal is pretty much a sweeter rendition of evening beans, for this particular oatmeal I accidentally overloaded on the amount of molasses that I included, something that I have made sure to avoid since)
2.          Sit around and try to get some work done on social media outlets while trying to ignore the rising heat and humidity.
3.         Move around to the back side of the building to get some shade and snack on some food.
4.         Realize that we really are getting nothing done plus we can’t get access to the wifi at the back of the building so maybe we should go see if we can find the Missouri river.
5.         Wander aimlessly through town with a vague idea of the direction we should be going.
6.         Run into a random wall of trees in the middle of town and try and make our way through the brush eventually finding ourselves in a heavily wooded patch of land right in the middle of the city, eventually get out and back to the road.
7.         Decide to go back and get the cars and drive to the river.
8.         Get waylaid by stumbling across a whole bunch of Monarch Butterfly Chrysalises.
9.         Run into Katt when she gets home, find out we can check out the pool and community center there at the apartment complex
10.       Check out the pool and community center at the apartment complex
11.        Do a tiny bit of writing.
12.        Have a small little party to celebrate my birthday as we slip into September 6^th

Wow, that is quite a few words I wasted on nothing. And that was even with breaking it down to bullet points. Anyway, my birthday, September 6^th, came in with everyone waking up late and then once everyone was awake Katt treated us all to my birthday lunch. It was at a popular Kansas City chain restaurant called 54^th Street Pub and Eatery. The sandwiches there were beyond delicious, and the local beer I tried was delicious—very smooth, slight hint of fruit, and only a bit of bitterness on the finish. Once again, major shout-out to Katt for being the best hostess ever.

After hanging out for a bit longer we got in our cars and drove a few hundred miles to Jefferson City where we met up with Aaron, an old roommate of Tweedy’s and Eric’s (since I had hung around those two constantly I knew him as well). He offered us a floor to crash on in a room that had enough air conditioning to keep us at a decent temperature to fall asleep at—a rare thing to find in the state of misery… I mean Missouri. Our time at Aaron’s only extended through the night, then we were up and on the road again the next day on the search to find a cave.

Missouri is known for being the cave state and so we were hoping to find some cave that did not have any of the tourist walks in it, so that we could just go spelunking in it without anyone constantly staring over our shoulders, unfortunately that was not what ended up happening. We found Meramec Caverns on the map and so decided to head towards that cave since it also appeared to be near a state park. Our reasoning was even if Meramec Caverns was a tourist trap then at least we could wander through the state park and perhaps find a cave that was free of the irritating tour guides and regulations and planned routes through easily accessible segments of cave.

We reached the outskirts of Meramec and Eric and Tweedy had the keen desire to rinse off beforehand because they had been traveling through the land of endless humid heat in a car that had no air conditioning (personally I felt great, which will surprise my family since they all think my car has a horrible air conditioning system—turns out that all you have to do for it to work at 100% is fill the car with a whole bunch of stuff and drive through states with high humidity). So we stopped off at a river and swam around for a bit before going on to the cave entrance.

Meramec Caverns was indeed a tourist trap, and the price for a single adult was high above what we agreed to turn down ($15 had been our agreed maximum, the price was $23). We tried haggling with the tour guide behind the counter along with trying to figure out caves that we could go into without paying a fee. He mentioned a few places (actually he mentioned ten different locations, though didn’t include any directions to any of them) along with some encyclopedic type knowledge about the caves and types of caves in the state of Missouri. Though despite all of his knowledge we ended up skipping finding a cave to go spelunking in and instead headed on to a nearby state park called Elephant Rock.

To sum up Elephant Rock—it looks like a little bit of Colorado in the middle of Misery, I mean Missouri.

We hiked all over the rocks and even all the way to the opposite side of the park while we were in search of one of Jesse James’ hideouts that one of the people there told us about. He was going to give us very specific directions, but Tweedy didn’t want to hear them for some reason. Because of that we never found his old hideout, but we did find two old granite quarries that had since filled with water. If it hadn’t been sitting water we probably would have jumped in.

We stayed there until the sun dipped down below the horizon, even made some food at one of the park benches, and then we were on the road for Illinois.

For video check out these channels on YouTube: Eat2Pigs and itawtidid

Living Like a Husker

Kansas—due to being rather flat and uninteresting—took just a few hours, and rather late at night we ended up crossing into Nebraska.

Eric’s Great Uncle Harry had offered us a place to camp on his property, and so we were bent on getting all the way to Burwell, Nebraska that night. Get there we did at a little past midnight and set up a super spacious five-person tent. I have just a 3 or 4 person tent so it is nowhere near as luxurious, especially with three big dudes sleeping in it. We would all run into each other and end up accidentally spooning or something. Thank goodness that Tweedy found the five-person tent. My big ol’ memory foam pad gives me all the space I need and I sleep on that like a baby. Eric and Tweedy don’t have nearly as comfortable of sleeping pads as I do, but then they’re trying to keep all of their stuff in an even smaller vehicle.

So there were pulling up to Uncle Harry’s property at nearly 12:00 in the morning. It took a moment taking care of everything in the dark, but eventually we were all in the tent and passed clean out. I mean as far as non-athletic activities go, driving ranks pretty high up there for quotient of exhaustion to time spent doing the activity. I say this to try and legitimize the fact that we did not wake up until nearly 11:00 the next day, and we were woken up by Uncle Harry.

Uncle Harry will remain one of the legends of the trip and will be spoken of with a measure of reverence by all of us for years to come. This in no way means that he was a reverent individual, almost anything but (though he did have us come to church with him on Sunday morning). He was sarcastic as could be and loved spinning tales. Picture a nearly eighty-year-old man who has spent his life working the soil—sun worn, hands callused, and entire body still strong and wiry. This was the man that shouted into our tent to get up and quit being lazy. He made a very legitimate point that we were letting the day slip away. It took a moment to drag our groggy butts out of the tent, but then we got to have the grand tour of Uncle Harry’s property and chat with him about all of the ventures that he had a hand in throughout the years.

I think most people have heard of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell—the technology that could replace the gasoline combustion motor—well he had created conversion kits for combustion engines. They only would cost the consumer $2000 with installation and managed to improve the gas mileage of a Ford SUV to 100 miles per gallon. Unfortunately, this entire venture was shut down by the government, both by legal indictments and restriction of contracting and money flow. I’m not really one to believe in conspiracy theories, but I have been wondering why in the world I have not heard anything else about Hydrogen Fuel Cells after Honda did a test of a vehicle in Sacramento, CA and a city in Japan as well. It would all make sense if the oil companies that run the government just wanted the project shut down… just throwing that idea out there.

The crowning piece of Uncle Harry’s property was the river. We spent the greater majority of the day there by the water, and for good reason. Swimmable water is hard to find outdoors in the home state. In Colorado the water is always cold because it is only supplied by snowmelt and cold mountain springs. This river was warm, at least warm in comparison. So we waded through it and rinsed in it and just hung out in it for hours.

After that Uncle Harry took us out for lunch at a fun little cowboy bar in town. That little place had more character in it than any of the commercial bars I’ve ever been to. Plaques and pictures hung all over, including snippets from local newspapers. All of the paraphernalia served to remind the attendant that he or she was indeed in the country. The burgers that we had tasted delicious as well, of course that was the first thing we had eaten aside from beans, oats, or dried fruit. Back on the farm we helped the women set up for something called the Junk Jaunt that covers over 200 miles in Nebraska. This is an annual event where people from across the country visit different properties where antique pieces are sold that were collected during the previous year. Apparently it’s a pretty big thing. The property that we stayed on had a huge yard, 4 car garage, and a two story shed that was about 900 square feet and all of that ends up getting loaded with the antiques that will be sold to the people touring through.

Of course once that work was done there was one thing left to do. Go back to the river! And the river is where we remained until about midnight, cooking up a pot of the beans which are already becoming the favorite treat of the evening. I’m the chef on the trip, and I try to do the best I can to change up what goes into the mixture every evening. That particular night we had fresh vegetables from the garden, some bits of apple from the apple trees on the property, wild herb, and a dash of hot sauce. All of that was mixed into a base mixture that included baked beans, a can of chili, and some instant potatoes (those add salt and act as a thickening agent as well as a filler). Trust me, it tasted good. Good enough that I could not stop shoveling the mixture in until there was nothing at all left in the pan. Maybe it was just that I was hungry from playing in the water all day though. Or maybe it was an affect of all the smoke off of our little fire by the river.

The next day we woke up and broke down the tent. There was a moment of joining our hosts at the church they attended (a nice catholic church there in Burwell) before we went back to say thank you and goodbye before heading on for Lincoln, Nebraska. We were going there partially because Tweedy knew someone there and partially because, hey, it’s me. It really was just a stop off on the way into Kansas City. We arrived in Lincoln at the University of Nebraska at around seven o’ clock at night just to find out that Tweedy’s friend was not feeling good and so we had no one to see. With that being the case and the sun already on its way down we decided we would book it for Kansas City so that we could sleep inside that night.

Once again we crossed a state line when it was dark out.

The drive continued until about midnight when we met up with an old friend of Tweedy’s and Eric’s.

As far as chill and hospitable people go I’m pretty sure Katt would rank in the top 100 in the world. She let three guys roll into her place after midnight and set up camp in the living room of her apartment, not to mention that she made us some bomb tacos when we arrived. Once again it was the exhaustion of a long night of driving and we found ourselves crashing pretty hard just to wake up the next morning in our third state: Missouri.  

Kansas... Yeah

I decided that the way to handle the road trip across the nation would be to give at least one blog post for each state. And our first stop was Kansas.

The day was September 2, 2016. I got up early and packed up my car then picked up David Tweedy and then met up with Eric Tedesco at his place in Parker. We said goodbye to our families in turn and snapped a photo to commemorate the beginning of the trip.

First stop was the great state of Kansas.

Now I spent a while considering just what I should say about Kansas since there is just so much in this state. I mean it’s Kansas.

So, Kansas… Yeah. It’s flat.

That’s all I’ve got for you as far as Kansas goes.

Next stop, Nebraska

Cliff Hangers

Now I don’t know how many people have ever woken up inside of a national park, but I would recommend putting it on the bucket list. Up in the mountains it had been a bit too chilly for me. Out there on the edge of the canyon I woke in weather that I felt comfortable going around in a t-shirt with. (That’s really saying something for a guy who needs four layers to go out in 32° weather.) It was a beautiful sight to see and hear in the morning as well: the crashing of the river several hundred feet below with great dark rock rising out of it.

I took the first hour of the day to admire the highly underappreciated canyon before heading on to complete my collection of the four National Parks in Colorado. This meant driving for another four and a half hours down to Mesa Verde National Park. This drive included a winding road that was one of the best drives I have ever taken. If my memory serves me correctly (which, quite honestly, is a long shot—I hardly ever trust my memory myself, so I would encourage you to approach it with the same trepidation) it was Colorado Highway 92. The curves were beautiful hairpins with hills ascending and descending. I got to really slam through all of the gears in my little Honda CR-V. This is a rarity because I am already up into fifth gear by 35 miles per hour. Honestly, there is hardly any horsepower in that little engine. Still love it though.

After the 4.5 hours of driving I managed to pull into the park around 3:30, but I had no idea how huge the park was. It was a 30 mile drive in to get to the hike that I wanted to go on. That was about an hour of driving just to get to the trailhead. Not to mention that I was only 40 miles from hitting 400 miles on my tank, which is much further than I’ve gone on a single take before, but I was not about to turn around and go back five miles down the road to fill up my tank. That would take even more time, and all the sky around the park was already looking dark and ominous. In I drove, taking advantage of every downhill—riding it with my foot on the clutch—which made my approach to some of the hair pin turns a bit faster than they should have been in an SUV. Still, I made it alive and that is all that matters.

Usually Mesa Verde is one of the more crowded parks, so I was expecting a huge crowd of people, but instead there was hardly anyone there when I arrived. One of the park rangers told me that things die down during August for some bizarre reason. Because apparently it all picks back up again in September when a whole bunch of tourist groups start coming by in bus loads. But in August things are slow. So I got two National Parks almost all too myself, at least there were no other people on the trail with me so I got to take my time reading the signs and learning about the different parts of the architecture. Most people think of the cliff dwellings when they hear about Mesa Verde National Park, but before the natives ever lived on the face of the cliffs they just lived on the top of the mesas. Which is what I saw first. The best part are the Kivas.

I can’t help but imagine Native Americans tripping out on something while holding religious rituals inside of these earthen pits. The interesting thing is that they were most common during the older generations and later generations just filled them in, sometimes even using them to dump trash in. There’s one way to really rebel against the faith of your fathers.

After touring the ruins on top of the mesa I went to check out the cliff dwellings, and honestly that is where the real excitement lies.

Look at those places! Who gets it in their head that just living on top of flat ground doesn’t sound exciting anymore. They were probably all sitting in the Kiva passing the peace pipe and one guy just said, “Ever see those holes in the cliffs around here?”

“Yeah man, those look pretty cool.”

“Wouldn’t it be awesome to put one of these Kivas in one of those holes?”

“Dude, that would be sweet! It would be like underground, but also above ground, and then there would be this epic drop right outside of the door. And then only cool people who can climb like bosses could get in there.”

“Totally! We should definitely do that man. Then we wouldn’t have to have around all the old and sick people and the women and children while we were hanging out and smoking the peace pipe.”

And then they made the kiva and then the women, children, and sick people started just busting up the party and then they just decided, “Heck, if everyone is going to keep on coming down here to bug us we might as well build the entire town into the cliff.” There, that is my story of how and why the cliff dwellings came to be. There were no wars or anything like that, just a few guys trying to get some guy time, failing, and then everyone moving in because they all thought it was pretty cool.

Personally I would not have been one of the cool people who would be capable of making it to the Kiva. Good ol’ Darwin would have snatched me out of that gene pool in a second. I preferred snapping pictures from afar. And after my pictures I managed to get my car back out of the park and to the gas pump without the fuel light coming on. Then I continued driving until I got into Durango and pulled my car over into a Walmart parking lot where I slept the night after spoiling myself and buying some doughnuts, a sandwich, and a Lunchable. That is getting spoiled when compared to just eating packets of salmon or tuna along with a can of beans occasionally.

Next morning I woke up with a text from my Mom telling me that my little sister needed to see me update my blog, so I went and spent the morning getting a blog post written and pictures uploaded at the public library (the Durango library is a bumpin' place) before going and taking a ten-mile hike. This hike started at a random pull off on the side of the road. I saw a sign that said trailhead, and the way I am with constantly craving a hike I decided to pull over and give it a look. Turned out it was supposed to be a mountain biking trail, but I went hiking on it any way. Something tells me that mountain bikers hate having people just hiking on the trails—just an extra obstacle you have to watch out for and all. Still, I didn’t much care, it was a beautiful day that was just begging me to go hiking during it. And so I wandered around for about 4 hours. Found some good lookout points too.

It was a huge system of trails, which made the sign at the foot of the trail a liar, because it claimed that it was just a single loop, but the map up the trail a ways said quite differently. The red is the route I ended up taking.

After the hike it was back to more driving. Right as the sun was setting I ended up just pulling up a random road that claimed to be National Forest access. I found a nice overlook where I could watch the sunset and then I kicked back and smoked a very nice cigar while the sun fell behind the mountains. It was the perfect end to the evening, and almost an end to all of my adventures by myself. The next day I would just end up driving home, but not before waking up and finding giant elk hoof prints going around my car. Apparently something about my car got it’s attention, or maybe I was just snoring way too loud and it showed up to see if it could shut me up. Whatever the case, those were definitely some giant hoof prints.

And so my lonesome wanderings came to an end. Stay tuned for the post going up tomorrow about the beginning of the wanderings of the 3 Men on the Bummel.

Random Things and Hot Springs

I woke up warm and comfortable AND… miracle of miracles, DRY! I cannot tell you just how happy Rachel letting me sleep on her couch made me. Not only that but the angel made me toast and eggs in the morning! That was the most gourmet meal I had during all of my lonesome ramblings, even when I let myself splurge near the end of the week. However, don’t let me get ahead of myself.

At one point I had planned to go and hike to Conundrum Hot Springs, but it was a Saturday and that trail was already known as one that got way too busy. Not to mention that I had driven down to it the night prior and at night the trailhead for a sixteen-mile roundtrip hike was already almost completely full. Sure hot springs sounded excellent after tearing my legs to pieces during the twelve-mile hike that I had done the day prior, but crowded trails weren’t really my cup of tea. I had heard though that on that particular weekend all the National Parks were free because it was the 100^th Birthday of the National Parks on August 25, 2016. Which means that everyone needs to get out to the National Parks this year to celebrate 100 years of National Parks, along with the fact that they are considering putting limits on the number of visitors each park allows in each year. Get in while you still can!

For me there was also another reason to go check out the other National Parks in Colorado. I had already gotten to Rocky Mountain National Park and The Great Sand Dunes National Park earlier this year and now I wanted to complete my collection of the four Colorado National Parks (that’s a pretty high number for a single state too, just in case you didn’t realize—Colorado for the Win!). The closest one was the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and it looked like I would be able to stop along the way at another ghost town—Marble, CO. I set the course and hit the road. 

It took me nearly thirty minutes to realize I was on the same road I had taken a couple years prior to get to Blues Recess in Paonia, Colorado. I have to throw in a little aside here about how freaking awesome it is to Blues and Fusion dance on the top of a bus in the middle of beautiful mountainous country. (if anyone wants to know what either of those types of dancing are just say in the comments and I'll find someone on my road trip to do a demo of both that I will record and I'll make a post specifically for explaining them). Unfortunately they have since stopped coming through Colorado and I would just like to make my personal plea… PLEASE COME BACK TO COLORADO, RECESS!!!! Now back from my aside—on our way to Recess that year we had stopped at some random, undeveloped hot springs that were just on the side of the road. I began to keep my eyes peeled and my windows rolled down so I could catch the scent of sulfur. Turns out neither of those things were absolutely needed since the pull off had a few cars there already (though I did smell the air for that sulfur scent just to verify that I had found the place).

I descended the little path to the side of the river that the springs fed into with the goal in mind of just soaking my feet and calves, which did still ache slightly after the excursion up the peaks the previous day. The big pool had a couple guys hanging out in it and I plopped myself down at a distance that was close enough to hold conversation but not so close as to appear creepy. (At least that was my intent, but wearing a straw fedora and purple rimmed sunglasses might have made the vicinity I had chosen still a little creepy.) Once again I had found people that were not natives and were in fact part of the great post-marijuana legalization migration, though honestly those that stick around in Colorado don’t just do so for the prime herb. As a nearly native individual (I spent the first five years of my life in California *gasp*) I understand that Colorado is just intoxicating and impossible to leave forever. My mom would disagree, but then she hates snow, wind, cold, winter, things losing leaves and dying, hail, lightning storms, and pretty much every part of the year in Colorado aside from June to July (maybe May and August can be thrown in if it is a warm and dry year). But anyway, these individuals came from the Midwest, one from Wisconsin somewhere and the other from Chicago, Illinois. So after either of those places Colorado is just about a perfect paradise. I say this before I’ve spent much time in either place so really it's just me being my generally offensive self.

I chatted with these two for a while and then a somewhat hippie looking girl joined us (my generation has done its best at reviving the hippie aesthetic, and sometimes I think we’ve even done a more complete job of it then the flower children of the seventies). But yeah, eventually the guys left and then the hippie girl asked if I was just going to just sit there and soak my feet or actually get in. It took no more goading, I was soon stripped down to my boxer briefs and into the little rock pool. (It almost always only takes that much encouragement, my older sister would know—just suggest the idea and chances are I’ll do it.) Turns out the hippie girl had a name, Christine, and then we were joined by some people from North Carolina and another hippie type boy who didn’t say much and then a snowboard “jock?” and a couple friends that were visiting him from out of town. The place was a party, beer included, I even got one from the hippie girl. It was a very good Saturday afternoon, but I had a National Park to get to before the sun went down. Eventually I got back on the road  and even maintained the intention of stopping by Marble, CO.

I did indeed get to Marble, but I did not even bother trying to locate the quarry, though I saw lots of beautiful marble sculptures that the residents had created. Still I did not even get out of the car to snap any pictures so… click here to see other people’s pictures of Marble, CO. I know, it’s just as bad as the Trump Campaign using the first picture of a Black Family they found when they Google searched the term, but you have to remember that I had a National Park to get to.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is the National Park that apparently hardly anyone knows about, especially the North Rim. So if you want to see a beautiful National Park without having to deal with those pesky things that the world knows as your fellow human beings, then you should definitely check out the Black Canyon. It was just a little after five o’clock when I parked my car and got out to go for the seven-mile round-trip hike that followed the north rim of the canyon. Some people might consider this too late for such a hike, but I’m awesome… and also rather stupid, so I set off, and got back to my car before eight o’clock. And that was with a big old backpack on my back and a big old camera hanging from my neck. I even managed to snap some great pictures for you all.

At the end of the hiking I decided to stay there at the park overnight, though I would not be camping since my tent was still soaked. Still I got to sit down at a park bench to read and do some journaling, and no one looked at me weird as I resituated my car so it could become a sleep-able space.

I did not have very many pictures for you all for this part of the trip. I hope the writing by itself was not too droll, but don’t worry, I should have more pictures for the next post. And don’t forget, not the next post, but the one after, will begin the Bummel of my friends and I.

Land of the Gods

Just in case anyone was wondering, waking up wet cold and achy in the front seat of a car is not the way you want to start off the day right before you go and hike a couple fourteeners. And of course less than an hour before I began hiking at the Missouri Gulch trailhead that was the exact state I found myself in.

It took a little while to pack up the soaking wet tent and to reorganize my car so that I would be able to find everything in it, but eventually I found myself with the car all packed up and standing at the foot of a trail that I was planning to summit three fourteeners on that very day.

The reader should know that I hate being cold. Absolutely hate it! I will be the biggest sissy and wear upwards of five layers in the winter just to keep from being cold. Add being wet into the mix and I usually then decide that it really looks like a great idea to stay inside underneath several blankets reading a book or binge watching whichever random TV show I happen to stumble across on Amazon. Well that morning I was cold and wet and facing the prospect of some major physical exertion. Thankfully if there is one thing that overpowers my hatred of physical discomfort it is my bullheadedness when faced with a difficult physical task. (Not mental task or something that will take more than a few days though, if faced with something like that I pick the couch almost immediately, as the incredible lack of completed homework assignments over the years can attest to.)

My hatred of being cold and wet is still present though. Instead of five layers I only had four (it was only August after all): T-shirt, Sweater, another sweater, and a heavy jacket. Not to mention the rain suit that I had in my pack just in case the clouds that were still lingering decided to tear asunder and let the rains (or—God please no—snow) drown me. I ran into a couple from New Mexico as I started up the trail. They were celebrating the husband’s fiftieth birthday. My goal for my fiftieth birthday is to be hiking a 14er, and they were even aiming to do all three. I don’t know if they managed to accomplish that goal because after a few minutes of chatting and hiking along with them I began to drastically out pace them. That whole bullheaded issue when it comes to physical tasks started kicking in.

I love hiking, just have to get that out there, any kind of hiking--BUT hiking a 14er puts just about every other kind of hike to shame. Any other hike I can just go out there and do. I can (and did on my little excursion) do a seven mile hike as a short little sunset hike. When you go to face a 14,000 plus foot mountain though you have to prepare mentally, physically, and (heck, why not throw it in) spiritually. Then there is the way the world changes as soon as you break tree line. The air is thin and invigorating, there is nothing standing between you and this vision of massive peaks standing all around.

This is the Land of the Gods. Those behemoth peaks are the image of divinity. The way they always have their very tops stuck in the clouds as if chatting with the heavens. When you reach the summit you get to join that conversation, and it is awe inspiring. No high compares with the high attained on the summit of a 14,000 plus foot mountain. I guess that is why it has become a bit excessive of a past-time. It’s hard to tell people to cut back though, because it really is something of a spiritual experience. It puts you at your limit in every way with a very real goal that is attained at the end of it.

The first summit I reached that day was that of Mt Belford (after passing two more individuals on the trail, both probably around their fifties as well), where I ran into three young guys from Denver who get a paid day off once a year to hike a fourteener. If I had gone into finance in school I would definitely work for that company. I can only remember one of their names, Cameron, but they were all three cool people, though they decided to start heading down after just attaining that one summit, and I felt like I had bigger fish to fry. At least they were able to snap a photo for me though.

The next peak to summit was Mt. Oxford. It was only about another two miles to reach its summit, but that two miles included dropping into a saddle and then hiking back out of it. The drop in was steep, and I just about ate it and rolled down the side of the mountain a couple times, but the ascent up to the summit of Mt Oxford was nowhere near as difficult. I mean, aside from the cold, oxygen free wind that whipped across the ridge and the reflection of the sun off of the snow that left my cheeks a beautiful bright red color for several days afterwards.

However, I did make it from the summit of Mt Belford to the summit of Mt Oxford in an hour, which was my goal in order to keep up the pace to bag Mt. Missouri as well before descending to the trail head. And my it was beautiful! Not to mention perfectly lonely. I had to set my camera to take the summit picture for me.

The hike back down to the base of the saddle was easy, like I was expecting. It was the ascent back up to the opposite ridge that scared me, and rightfully so. I reached the ridge fighting the urge to just collapse down on my hands and knees and start pulling myself down the side of the mountain. It was at this moment that I first began to question my initial decision to hike up Mt Missouri as well. According to the map I had to follow another trail that descended for about two miles before reaching the base of the 1.6 mile trail up to the summit of Mt Missouri. (For those that are not big fans of math that would be adding a total of 3.2 miles to my hike for the day, pushing it over 15 miles, and adding another nearly 2,000 feet of ascent.)

Pain as keen as what I was currently feeling in my thighs as well as the fact that my calves had almost locked up and cramped several times already is a sensation that is easy for me to recall, but now as I write this I still think I should have tried to get to that last summit. But I used the excuse that it was starting to snow (barely) and the encouragement of the group of four guys that I passed on the way down to the intersection of the trail, who all felt I should skip it. Now all I have is a picture of the peak that got away.

Something that is unfortunately one of my dominant traits is losing things. This whole trip seems to be in jeopardy every time I think of just how often I lose things, and that hike was no different. That map I was talking about that told be how many miles each part of the trail was… yeah, I lost it somewhere in the Land of the Gods, so I headed into Buena Vista to see if I could find a map to replace it (because I really did like that map, I had used it to find the trailhead and to hike up Mt Yale just a few weeks prior). After I found a couple maps that offered a half decent replacement I found myself reflecting upon the possibility of sleeping on my wet mattress pad that night and I just could not handle the idea. A friend of mine from Denver had moved out to the Aspen area a little while ago though, and the hike that I was considering to do the next day was in that area so I gave her a call. Thank the heavens, Rachel came to my rescue and let me crash on a warm dry couch that night. I will forever remain in her debt.

Once again I find myself rambling on, so I will have to call it for this post. I’ll have a couple others set to go up for the next couple days though, and tomorrow the rest of the crew will be joining me. Things are about to get epic people. Hold on to your hats!