Falling to the Beat of Our Own Drum

There are times in life when plans A all the way through Z don’t end up working out. It’s at those times when a person resorts to animalistic need without regard for how he or she may be judged or whether or not his or her actions are in accordance with local rules and regulations. That was how our little gang of three was feeling when we crossed into Ohio late at night. It was drizzling rain when we pulled up at a roadside rest stop to make our beans for dinner and discuss our options for the coming evening. We had hit up family and friends and turns out that even with all three of us and in particular both Tweedy’s and Eric’s knack for networking not a single one of us had a connection in Ohio. We checked the map for any nearby national forests and once again came up dry. Next we started checking all of the nearby state parks to see if any didn’t have hours of operation, but all of them were already closed. Plans A through Z, and not a single decent possibility. It was time to exercise our creativity a bit.

First idea was to set up a tent right there at that rest stop, but after some looking around we found the signs that said camping was not allowed. Seeing as it was a rest stop on the side of the interstate we were pretty sure someone would catch sight of our six-foot-tall tent if we were to pitch camp there regardless. Maybe another roadside pull-off then? No, that seemed unlikely since we were just outside of a city. The ideas kept being fired back and forth and ultimately we decided on one of the more bizarre ideas that most people would probably never consider. We decided that good Christian folk are supposed to be all about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and visiting the fatherless and the widow. We are (in technical consideration) homeless, so we thought that it would be fair to give a nearby Christian church the opportunity to practice what it preached and set up camp by a church. It was a Wesleyan church that we ultimately ended up sleeping on the grounds of. Not only was it a church, but it was also a school. Thankfully we found a random bunch of trees that obscured the view of our tent so that we slept without being disturbed despite the fact that while we were breaking camp in the rain the parking lot was full of cars.

That morning we drove into a park that we had initially considered sleeping in to make some breakfast. It was called the Batelle Darby Metro Park, and it was quite comfortable despite the fact that it rained all morning while we ate our oatmeal, and even continued to drizzle as we hiked around a bit. Ultimately though I would put it down as a good destination.

So started a long day of just constantly being soaking wet. Our next destination was Grigg’s Nature Preserve. I have no idea how Tweedy even found this on Google Maps because the park is small enough when you walk up to it. The parking lot for it is just big enough for maybe a total of six cars, and even then you think you must be in the wrong place because on one side is a busy road, on the other is a residential neighborhood, across from that is a river that is so developed the banks of it are paved. The good thing about this is every visitor can clearly tell where he or she is supposed to go—the little opening in the barbed wire topped chain link fences. Once you step in though you are transported away from the signs of humanity. Especially that day with the rain pounding down. The little stream that the boardwalk we were walking along crossed had swollen the bounds of its usual banks and the whole place was soaked, it got even heavier when we got to the falls that we had initially come to see. It was a small natural mecca amongst the ceaseless sprawl of humanity. And our next stop was to prove to be the same thing. But first we basked in the spray of these falls combined with the rain from above.

This next set of falls was known as the Indian Run Falls, and there was a surprising number of people at those falls, especially considering the state of the weather. I thought for sure that we would end up being alone there, but I was mistaken. We ran into a few students making a commercial for Ohio State University, the school they all attended. I was more in the mood to enjoy the setting then to chat so I left Tweedy and Eric to it while I wandered on ahead. After admiring the falls we took refuge under a gazebo to make some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and plan where to take refuge from the rain for the next couple of hours. Tweedy and I were feeling the hurt of not getting our respective social media platforms updated so we convinced Eric that we needed to take refuge in a local coffee shop and get some work done.

The name of this Coffeehouse/Bar/Used bookstore was Kafe Kerouac. For those of you who do not know (which I am going to assume is a decent number of people seeing as even being an English major does not guarantee you will catch this reference) Kerouac was part of a literary movement during the 1950’s known as the Beat Poets. Some think that this self-appointed title is a reference to the beat of the jazz that they tried to make their writing sound and flow like, but according to the founders of the movement it actually referred to a feeling of being beaten physically, mentally, economically, and emotionally. Anyway, the reason that it was cool that we three traveling souls should wind up there is Kerouac and his contemporaries were famous for their love of road trips. In fact Kerouac’s most famous work is called On the Road. Anyway, I loved that little place, especially since I was also able to order a cappuccino name Hemingway. Unfortunately my laptop decided to take the entire time we were there to update so I didn’t get much written at that point. Eric went about talking to people though and managed to meet a delightful young lady who had a little garden that she left the coffeehouse to go back to in order to bring us back some fresh peppers and tomatoes. Now we didn’t find this out until a couple days later but some of those peppers were prime—in other words they turned our beans into an almost impossible to eat due to heat batch of deliciousness for several nights in a row. We all loved them. Wish I remembered her name so that I could give her a shout out for growing the best peppers ever.

That night we managed to find some people willing to give us space inside of their home to sleep and dry up in. These two loving ladies would be Tony and Linda. Spry ladies that were supposedly encroaching upon the later years of life, but you would never guess it from the kind of energy they had. They treated us to the use of their stove, showers, and even provided ice cream and Oreos for us to eat. We once again ended up arriving a little late, but Tony and Linda didn’t seem to mind and we had a fantastic conversation with them until it was time to fall asleep. The next day we said goodbye to our new found friends and continued on through Ohio.

First stop was Brandywine Falls inside Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was a Saturday and the clouds had finally cleared away, which we were happy for. What we were not expecting was the huge crowd of people at the falls that resulted from it being a beautiful Saturday. We’re so used to wandering off the beaten path or visiting places at the strangest hours that we forget other people like to see the same things we do and just manage to do it at a different time and day then we are usually there. Still we had an enjoyable time and even managed to do a bit of off-trail wandering in order to get a view of the falls from the base.

On our way up from this little detour Eric bumped into what I can only assume was a couple out for perhaps their first date ever. I was able to glean this information from the guy while Eric was chatting up the girl for nearly thirty-minutes straight. As far as I can tell he was not intentionally hijacking the poor little guy’s date. In fact I think the girl was doing as much talking as Eric was if not more. But anyway, we all chatted a bit and then completed the loop around the park before continuing on to yet another set of waterfalls. (Ohio seems to have a huge assortment of waterfalls which makes little to no sense when you are me and thing the state is pretty flat. Of course as far as the Midwest goes it can almost be considered mountainous.)

Blue Hen Falls were located in that same National Park (Cuyahoga Valley), and once again we encountered an endless flow of people, but once again this didn’t keep us from wandering far off trail, but not after first checking out the two falls that all the people were there to see in the first place.

It was down past the second falls where we just kept on wandering until we happened upon a random skiing hill. This comes back to the point that I made earlier where as a Westerner I thought Ohio was just slightly better than Nebraska as far as topographical variation goes, but to the Midwesterners this was mountain country. In Colorado that skiing hill would have barely been considered steep and long enough for sledding let alone skiing and yet this hill had ski lifts that we of course had to climb around on. This included doing a bit of hand over hand swinging up and down the cable that held the seats at the bottom while just climbing on top of the entire fixture once we hiked to the top of the hill where we were able to get some fantastic pictures of the surrounding area.

Some more wandering eventually led us back to the main trail and the crowds of people, but not before I sunk up to my knees in mud (but only for a short moment since I was running—and no, I didn’t break my leg or twist my ankle when my leg suddenly dropped a foot and a half deeper than I was expecting *knock on wood*) and climbed a random vine halfway up a tree.

On our way to our next destination for the day we passed a dead deer on the side of the road, which Eric decided had been hit recently enough for us to take a slab of meat from it and save it for our beans at a later time. So ultimately we found ourselves up in Cleveland by Lake Erie in Wildwood State Park. We had started in another random lakeside park, but apparently all the rich people around that park owned it collectively and the public was not welcome. Yeah, those filthy dirty little (words that are not safe for little sisters) rich people. But the other park worked just as well for drying out our tent and skipping rocks before we continued on.

The aim was initially to get into Pennsylvania that night and stay somewhere in Allegheny National Forest, but as we were on our way Eric heard from his older sister Anne who was actually rather close to us but heading in the opposite direction back to Colorado. We decided Eric better take advantage of this opportunity to meet up with family on the road so we met up with her at a Burger King in Middlefield, Ohio where we bumped into a van full of Amish while we were waiting for her that we chatted up before they had to head home.

We chatted for a while with Annie there in the Burger King and then decided that neither of us were going to get to where we were initially planning on being that night so Annie did the daring thing and set up camp with us in the middle of a state games land that night. The next morning we drove up to Geneva State Park with Annie, once again considering getting into Lake Erie, but it was raining again, so instead we made some breakfast and just messed around while we let the tent dry once again under a giant awning. At that point it was time to say goodbye to Annie and to the state of Ohio.

I was finally going to go “home” to Pennsylvania, and my was I excited!

Up UP and Away!

As I have mentioned something around 28 times—we get to where we are going to be sleeping late, and the night we slept in northern Wisconsin was no different. We drove into Chequamegon National Forest to find a place to camp. The campsite that we had left earlier that day had been our favorite up until that point and I know that I was at least hoping that Chequamegon National Forest would be just as pretty as Superior National Forest in Minnesota. It wasn’t. There was a lot of logging going on in the area so we would drive through a section of pretty decent looking woods just to come out of it a couple minutes later into desolate fields. Not to mention the roads were a bit difficult to manage, at least for Eric in his little Civic. Unfortunately for him I was the one leading at the time and I did not even think about the road conditions because my car just rolls over everything. What I found to be a pain was the fact that we couldn’t find any decent woods that would be nice to camp in, and when we did we would follow the road back just to find that it was a logging headquarters with several cords of wood stacked up everywhere. Eventually we managed to find a little pull off road that had a tree fall across it so clearly no loggers were using it. We set up the tent just beyond the fallen tree and then pulled out another tree back behind Eric’s car since we were still fairly close to the main road and we were hoping to get a little more privacy that way. Sleep crept on easily enough as late night turned to early morning.

Since we had gotten to bed late I was expecting to get the chance to sleep in late, but that was a foolish assumption. I had forgotten the level of paranoia that Eric and Tweedy still had in regards to sleeping by the side of a dirt road in a national forest that none of us had ever been in before. (I guess I should feel trepidation over it as well, but for some reason I don’t, and since that time all of us feel much to comfortable setting up a tent and sleeping just about anywhere—stay tuned for some of our more ridiculous campsites) Their paranoia caused them to wake me up at 6:00 in the morning because a white truck had driven by us twice, and at one point the driver may or may not have stopped and looked at our little camping site more intently. Whatever the case it freaked Eric and Tweedy out so we had to break camp and roll out as soon as possible in order to calm them down.

As we drove out of the forest we passed the white pickup, along with a few other trucks and a lot of other guys. Turned out it was just a hunting party trying to find each other. The good thing about waking up early is we had time to go and goof around somewhere for a while. Honestly we were just looking for the first park we found by the side of the highway that had picnic tables so I could fix us some morning oatmeal. Luckily we happened to stumble across the City of Ashland Maslowski Beach. It had rained on us the past couple of nights while we were sleeping, so while I got breakfast ready Eric and Tweedy set up the tent on the beach right next to Lake Superior (We’ve seen four of the five Great Lakes now and I have to say Lake Superior has been my favorite in every location that we’ve seen it) so that the tent could dry out.

After breakfast we changed into our swimsuits and took a dip in the lake.

It was cold, but thankfully the sun was out and the air was warm, so a bit of cold water was no big deal (it was still warmer than most of the mountain lakes I’ve been in back in Colorado). After the swim we continued to just hang out there on the beach. Our activities included playing on the nearby playground equipment, chatting with a couple ladies that were from the main body of Michigan visiting Northern Wisconsin, and burying Tweedy in sand.

After we had finished with our antics we broke the tent down and continued into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (from now on I will solely just use the abbreviation UP, and no this will not be in reference to the movie Up!). Shortly after we passed over the border into Michigan we had to stop for gas—I know, super exciting information, but I promise I will only mention fueling up if it leads to something. At this gas station we were introduced to the friendly and talkative nature of many Michigan natives. It was one of those gas stations where you have to pay inside, and when we went in to pay there was a lady by the counter who immediately started talking with us. Once she figured out why we were in Michigan and our quest to road trip all 48 contiguous states the talking just became more profuse, because she had lived the gypsy lifestyle since she was seventeen. I’m still torn as to whether I want to have a transitory lifestyle for that long or not; it was nice to hear it was possible though.

Back outside (about fifteen or twenty minutes later) I started getting chatted up by a biker dude. He was somewhere between the ages of sixty-two and seventy-eight. When a person has that much hair on his face it makes it rather difficult to pinpoint the age. Anyway, Eric and I chatted with him for another twenty minutes or so. He lived there in the UP, but he rode his Harley across the country at least once a year. In fact, he rode so much that he had put over a million miles on Harleys and on the particular bike we saw him on he had put over 660,000 miles. After chatting for a while we got back on the road. We thought that we would never see either of those two unique individuals ever again, and then the biker dude whipped up and around us. He pulled over on the shoulder and motioned for me to roll the window down. I did so and he shouted in that if we needed a place to stay we could crash at his place. After the past several nights of sleeping in a tent with rain pounding down on us, having a roof to sleep under sounded perfect, so we followed him down a winding road to his property.

This little bearded biker dude, Allyn (I figure it’s about time I get his name in here), built every building on his property with the help of his wife. Not only that but he built it with the trees that were on his property. There are five distinct structures on the property, and most of them are two stories tall. I was blown away! He and his wife also grow and raise their own food. This includes having a giant garden and raising a few head of cattle along with several chickens. They are almost completely off the grid aside from a small amount of electricity they use. Allyn is a retired mine worker and he says that with the way they live just his social security check provides him with more income than he can even use, and most of it just goes into paying for gas for his bike. We chatted with him late into the night, getting to try the fresh cuisine from the garden and even getting to try the wood burning sauna he had built (Allyn is one hundred percent Finnish, and apparently the Fins are all about their saunas).

Unfortunately we couldn’t hang out there forever and the next morning we said goodbye to Al and headed on up the UP. First stop along the way was the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. We saw two water falls there at the park—including Chapel Falls.

Next was a stop at the Stable Sand Dunes. We have a thing for sand dunes (especially Eric), a few months back we all went to the Great Sand Dunes together with Justin as well—who we were on our way to see. This means we would be returning to those same sand dunes in order to share that experience between all four of us again, though when we returned we would be doing a lot more, so I took pictures to remember those dunes during this first visit. And goodness gracious were they beautiful, especially as we crested the final dune and looked down and out to the apparently infinite Lake Superior.

After a couple hours of exploring the dunes we drove the last leg to our first extended reprieve of the road trip at Justin’s home (that is where I was when I posted two or three blog posts in quick succession). That first night there was no working though, just chilling out with Justin and two of his roommates—the two Matts. We also got a tour of Lake Superior State University the university they all attend up there in Sault Ste Marie (pronounce S-oo Saint Marie). That town is possible the only town that crosses the border with Canada—literally it is the same place on both sides of the border, but you still have to have a passport to see the Canadian side and we did not bring ours, so we had to remain on the U.S. side, which is no big deal because we spent most of our time on our laptops anyway, at least Tweedy and I did.

From September 20^th to 23^rd we just chilled. Our non-indoor activities included disc golf, going to the sauna at the school (not near as good as Al’s), shopping, and we went shooting and I shot a gun for the first time.

It was definitely a unique experience, though not one that changes my mind about needing more strict gun laws. Sorry for all those out there that love their guns—I definitely believe in the right of the people to have guns, but after all the shootings of innocent people I think it is about time that everyone stops whining and allows for a whole lot more restrictions to be set in the hope that we can at least decrease the number of mass shootings (all of the guns used in mass shootings in the past five years in the U.S. have been attained legally). I mean it did work for Australia after all. If you disagree that’s perfectly fine, Eric definitely disagrees with my views on gun control, and we are still great friends.

Finally Saturday rolled around—September the 24^th—when Justin was finally free of school responsibilities so we could return to the Sable Sand Dunes. We ended up spending the entire day there. Sometimes wading in the lake, other times scaling the most difficult parts of the dunes, walking along the beach, eating marshmallows and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, building a small fire. All in all it was a fantastic day. That night back at the abode we had a little party since we would be departing the next day, and I fell asleep with a contented smile on my face.

That will do it for the stories from Upper Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, next up is Detroit. Hopefully I’ll get that post up tomorrow.

Blues Bars and Mega Malls

First and foremost I must apologize for my severe lack of updates over the past couple of weeks, I'll try to remedy that over the next few days, but for now here is the tale of our wanderings through Minnesota (and a bit of lower Wisconsin).

We have a knack for showing up on doorsteps late at night, and the night we rolled into lower Wisconsin was no different. It was around ten o’ clock when we knocked on the door of Tweedy’s uncle's home (getting in as many apostrophes in a single go as I can manage). I don't know how, but Tweedy seems to have family scattered all over the country. They had been there for us in previous states and we have stayed with other family members of his since. All of my family lives out West, so you probably won’t hear any mention of the three of us staying with my extended family until we end up on the other side of the country. Just had to get that out there because it will sound like I’m riding the coattails of the other two for the next couple months, but don’t worry, my family will eventually make an appearance.

Tweedy’s uncle lived in lower Wisconsin—Mt Horeb to be exact. He and Tweedy’s grandfather were kind enough to share with us the leftovers from the dinner that was prepared earlier that day while we sat around and chatted for a while before setting up our beds in the basement. The amount of driving that we had done that day left our legs a little restless, so after we set up our beds we got back up and went outside to go on a late night walk. It’s funny how a person can feel so tired and yet remain awake for several more hours just in order to take advantage of the chance to stretch out the body. And stretch we did. In all honesty we took stretching to the next level by doing a little bit of a workout routine/set of childish challenges on a playground that was built by the side of a little lake. (I don’t know if it was technically a lake, but it was one of those bodies of water that is much bigger than a Coloradan is used to seeing, in other words to me it was a lake even if the locals thought of it more like a pond.) These little challenges involved muscle-ups on the cross bar holding the swings and creating new and difficult ways to cross the playground equipment. It took nearly two hours but then the wiggles were out and we were able to fall asleep with no difficulty.

  

The next morning we awoke and were treated to a breakfast by Tweedy’s uncle. On top of the breakfast his uncle also sent us off with some more food to hold us over until we encountered another gracious family or we broke down and bought some food ourselves (as it is we’ve only had to purchase food very rarely, in fact the only food we ever “have to” buy are fresh loaves of bread—people are pretty awesome and giving). After a little bit of conversation we were back on the road.

I had heard from one of my good friends and dance partners from back in Denver that there was a good blues dancing scene in Minneapolis that had weekly blues dancing every Tuesday night, and it just so happened that it was a Tuesday and it was time for us to head into Minnesota, but not until we enjoyed a little bit of what lower Wisconsin has to offer. This meant stopping off at a little state park on our way up to Minneapolis. We found a beautiful hike at this park that culminated in a picturesque view of the Mississippi from atop a bluff that bordered it.

It was a beautiful view, but we did not linger for very long. The mosquitoes were out and were waging a war against us. I rolled down my sleeves, popped my collar, and pulled my hat down as far as I could and still they found ways in and just kept feasting on me. Tweedy and Eric also collected quite a few battle wounds. I launched an offensive against them as well, but it was not enough, even when I got over 20 swatted. Their numbers were just too great, so we retreated to the cars and drove from the swarm, next stop was Minneapolis.

There needs to be a little insert here. See I am just going to call all the city activities that we engaged in during the next couple of days as happening in Minneapolis. The truth is that Minneapolis is just one of two cities that make up a rather large and sprawling metro area. The other city is St Paul and together with Minneapolis they make up the Twin Cities area. Still I’m just going to call it Minneapolis. Hopefully the mentioning of St Paul will keep locals from getting too angry at me though. Not like everyone reading this will be able to tell that some of the places I mention are actually in the St Paul area, but I thought I would tread on the safe side just in case.

Another little note I need to make before I go into the details of the rest of the night though, otherwise the night won’t seem as incredible as it was to me. I mentioned in earlier posts that I’m a blues dancer. There is this funny thing that happens among blues dancing communities—most of the time the dancers have no idea about the local blues music scene and the local blues music scene has no idea that there is a blues dancing scene. Denver does its best to remedy this by inviting blues bands (often locals) to perform at the weekly blues dance at least once a month, but most blues dancing scenes aren't quite so lucky. I rolled up to the location where the local blues dancers meet to dance in Minneapolis expecting this scene to be separate from the blues music scene as well, but almost immediately I began to question my original assumption.

The name of the joint was Wilebski’s Blues Saloon. People standing outside the bar looked more like bar regulars than dancers (not to say bar regulars have a certain look, but dancers are usually pretty easy to make out, they usually move in groups or—after some dancing—pairs, and they have this happy glow and tendency to be laughing/singing/moving almost constantly). Inside there was a live blues band playing, people gathered around the bar in an adjacent room to the music, and then an empty floor in front of the band. I looked around with a bit of confusion. I was expecting there to be nothing but dancers inside, but instead there was no dancing even happening at the moment, and a live band playing some killer music. Turns out it was the weekly blues jam night. A jam is when visiting artists can sign up to play together with other locals. They don’t have to bring a band, just their own instrument, and then most of the songs are just improvised. For about thirty minutes we just sat and listened while I waited for the dancers to reveal themselves, and soon enough they did so. It started with them conglomerating at a booth and then after some chatting they started to take to the floor.

After getting a decent idea as to who were the dancers I began to ask different girls to dance and continued to dance until about 10:45, at which point most of the dancers left. This was a much shorter period of dancing than I am used to. Back in Colorado the shortest dance was three hours, and usually I personally try to get in four hours of dancing if I'm going out dancing for the night. But this was just a small group, and so once they had all danced with each other a couple times they would just head out and get some sleep so they could function at their jobs the next day. (Why one needs sleep more than dancing is something I will never understand) Since I was dancing I didn’t get any pictures, but Eric has already posted a video that contains a short clip of me dancing.

That night we didn’t have a place to stay. This being the case we had to do some improvising, which began with making dinner on our camping stove in the parking lot back behind the blues bar. To this day that was still the most unique situation in which I have ever prepared a dinner. After eating we headed to a nearby state park that had a campground and snuck into a campsite that one usually needs to pay for. Thankfully no one would ever think someone would roll in to a campsite at 1:00 in the morning on a Wednesday, so we managed to get away with a free night of sleep before breaking camp and driving back into town to check out The Mall of America the next day. We figured you can’t be in Minneapolis and not see The Mall of America. It lives up to the legend of being a giant mall. Though it is just a mall and none of us were in the mood to spend money since we have such a tight budget. We did spring to pay for riding one of the roller coasters though. That’s a rare enough experience that it could legitimize spending seven dollars.

After the mall it was time to get out of the city and back into nature, so we drove up to northern Minnesota to camp for the night in a national forest. We then woke up and drove into Voyageurs National Park. I have a feeling that most people have not heard of this park because I had never heard of it and it is free to get into, and only the not-so-well-known parks have free admission. Here's a brief history of the park based on the short video that we watched in the visitor's center. It is part of a water system that runs through lakes both in Canada and the United States and was part of a trade route run by French fur traders in the 16-1700’s. These fur traders were known as Voyageurs, hence the name of the park. It is best accessed by boat—the same way the Voyageurs accessed the area—most of it is either islands or the water surrounding the islands and they build no roads between the islands for land lubbers like ourselves. We had to be satisfied with hiking around on the coast while admiring the islands from afar.

Almost more remarkable than all the islands were all the mushrooms. There were so many that it would take a slideshow to show all of them rather than just post four pages worth of mushroom pictures. Thankfully Eric already has a slideshow of all the mushrooms up on his Youtube channel so I can focus on the writing. (If you clicked on the earlier link you've already seen them)

There in Voyageurs National Park was also the first time we tried foraging for food, and what we found the most of was a lichen known as rock tripe. This lichen is quite dry during the fall season, but after being boiled in water it takes on a texture like a mushroom and doesn’t have much taste, so nothing to complain about or write home about (just enough to make a mention of in a blog). We also tried out the roots of lily pads and roots and stalks of cattails. Those were not near as satisfying or easy to prepare so we didn’t use them any more afterwards, but that rock tripe we feasted on and included it in the next few editions of our dinner beans. We also came across a random trove of old buried bottles and what appeared to be charcoal based bars of soap. I’ll let you be the judge of what you think those strange black squares wrapped in red and white plastic are.

That night we went back to the same place we camped the night before. The next day we woke up and drove into another national forest where we spent the majority of the evening. We did a little bushwhacking and stumbled across some random animal skulls. One of which we are fairly certain was a beaver skull and the other most likely was a white tail deer skull. We made a strong fire that night and put on some pine needles that filled the surrounding forest with the aroma of rosemary. The next morning we made one of the more ridiculous meals we’ve made on the trip—fried pickles. After the pickles it was back on the road and on into upper Wisconsin.

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.

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.