Coming Home to Fly Apart

Ohio had felt like it was nothing but rain-- aside from the two crowded hikes we went on-- but as soon as we crossed into Pennsylvania at around five o’clock in the evening the sun suddenly burst through and we were graced by the view of the beautiful rolling hills of Pennsylvania. It felt like seeing a good friend again after being apart for much too long. You see I lived in Pennsylvania for a year and it was fantastic! I remember that I loved the fall colors, the rolling hills, and the fact that it was all just small towns. Sure there are two big cities in Pennsylvania (Pittsburg and Philadelphia), but the rest of the place is covered in nothing but small towns and open space.

We drove straight into Allegheny National Forest that evening, and since it was late we didn’t put forth much effort finding a camping spot. In fact, we were probably just barely sixty feet from the road (that’s the minimum distance for camping on National Forest property). We also happened to be right next to an old oil pump. The bonus was that we were not on church property. Though since the campsite was a rushed choice both Eric and Tweedy began to feel trepidation towards the entire state of Pennsylvania, but it was okay, because it would quickly win them over the next day.

Come morning we drove to a nearby trailhead for Minister’s Creek and made a batch of oatmeal along with hot chocolate and some “rosehip tea”—I put it in quotations because really all we were doing was boiling spruce pine needles. Don’t knock it though, it tastes delicious and strong, not to mention it’s a great source of vitamin C. Eh? Not half bad right? 

Following the gourmet breakfast, we made our way along what we thought to be the Minister’s Creek Trail. It was a beautiful stretch of forest, but we seemed to keep losing track of the trail so we found an old abandoned oil piped that we started to follow along. At points we were balancing on top of the pipeline over stretches of muddy ground. There was even a short stretch where we had to balance on the pipe and support our weight with sticks in order to bend around and avoid the trunk of a tree. The sad part is we all managed to pull off that maneuver just to find out that the oil pipe ended suddenly ten feet later. At that point we decided it was time to find another landmark to follow. This brought us over to Minister’s Creek, which we waded across and followed along the opposite bank.

It was on the return crossing of the river that we discovered the entire creek was teeming with crayfish. This led to us catching crayfish for the next couple hours before we finally made our way back to the car along with our bag full of crayfish. It was official now, everyone was in love with the Pennsylvania woods, especially right there by the creek. Upon checking the map we found out that what we thought was the trailhead was actually the part of the forest where people could camp wherever they wanted. Next thing you know we had our backpacks on and we were hiking back to an island type thing where we made camp. Here, maybe you should just take a look for yourself.

That night we had a crayfish boil, and it was delicious! Unfortunately it was not enough food for three big dudes so I made some beans for dinner as well, and after dinner we got a roaring fire going and sat around chatting until the desire for sleep won over.

As soon as we woke up the next day we got back in Minister’s Creek and began an even more intense crayfish hunt then the two hour one from the day before. If I were to guess I would say that we were wading around in the creek for nearly four hours, and our haul of crayfish was stupendous! Still we had to supplement the meal (that's what happens when you're trying to feed three big dudes) before we broke camp and headed back to the cars. It was difficult saying goodbye to that campsite, but now we were on a press for time. Eric needed to get to New York City in two days so he could fly back to Colorado in order to be at his friend Isaac’s wedding, so onto the road it was. We booked it down to central Pennsylvania that night where we ate dinner at a Burger King before once again sleeping in State Games Land. Now we found out at a later point that it is actually against regulations to camp in state game lands in Pennsylvania, but no one ever seemed to mind while we were there, so I didn’t feel bad about it. In that particular state games land campsite yielded many wild discoveries that we made during a midnight hike up a creek bed. This included several species of salamander and ever a box turtle who was our companion during our short stay there.

The morning of October 5^th it was time to be back on the road again. We were planning on being in Philadelphia that night, so we needed to start heading south. Our options for what we could do that day were fairly slim. I told Eric about some things that were worth seeing in Pennsylvania and he chose Centralia. Just a little history as to the city of Centralia. Back in the day it was a booming coal mining town with somewhere around 5000 people living there. For those of you from real cities thinking that is hardly anything… well let’s just say as far as Pennsylvania towns go that would be in the top ten percentile. The town was doomed though. Eventually the coal mine that actually stretched underneath the homes of the workers there in town caught on fire due to a freak accident. At first the flames stayed away from the boundaries of the town, but in the 1970’s it started to cause sink holes right next to the border of town and there was a federal evacuation order of the town. A few people still remain (I think the technical population is three), but for the most part it is just a ghost town now, take a look for yourself.

We spent some time hiking around the town that is now nothing more than a barren tourist attraction and set of four-wheeling trails. Four wheelers would not fit in our cars though, so we were just hiking through the four-wheeling trails. Most of the town has transformed into something of a trash dump, but if you go far enough in on the roads it’s still possible to find young woods that have reclaimed the plot of land from the people who abandoned it. It was on these deeper trails (right around sunset) while we were just hiking around, when Tweedy (he was in front of all of us) started growling and backing up past Eric and I. Apparently he had caught sight of a black bear, and once Eric and I had calmed him down we went up to the place where he had seen it in hopes of snapping a picture, unfortunately he had already disappeared so I don’t have a picture to show you. We did search for a while longer though, but we couldn’t stick around forever. There was a plane to catch the next day in NYC and we had our first couch surfing appointment to show up for. For those of you who don’t know, couch surfer is actually a website/app that pairs you with locals in an area who are willing to offer a floor or couch to crash on to travelers coming through. It’s a great way to meet people both while traveling and as a host.

That night in Philadelphia we stayed with a super nice girl who was going to school at the nearby medical university. Helaina was super sweet to us and got a place for us to sleep in the basement of the small little apartment that she lived in. It wasn’t a finished basement, but why would we care about anything like that? A place to lay our pad inside is more than anyone of us could ever ask for after a week of camping in random locations across the state.

The next day we drove straight to New York City. Now I know all of those Los Angeles types will always say their traffic is the worst, but that’s only because most people in Los Angeles haven’t tried to drive through New York City. We dropped off Eric’s car in a suburb in New Jersey and then all of our lives rested in my hands as I drove us into the city area. The good thing about that is I don’t think I was ever traveling fast enough for a wreck to cause any damage to the car, let alone the occupants. Still I thought it best not to test that hypothesis and got us to a park to cook some beans for lunch without a scratch. I think the fact that we cooked on a camping stove in a park in New York City is a fairly unique experience, and the beans were fantastic, not to mention hot as could be thanks to those peppers we got from the girl in Kafe Kerouac.

After eating it was time to say goodbye for a short time to one of the three parts of our traveling unit, so we got back on the road and I managed to maneuver us safely to the airport terminal. And so three became two. And let me tell you, the adventures did not even slow down, but more on that next time.

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!

Dancing Down through War Torn Memories

My sincere apologies for taking so long to get this next post up. It probably would have been another week wait if it had not been for the fact that my baby, Ophelia (that's my Honda CR-V), broke down and we have to wait for her to get fixed. More on that later though, for now let's pick up where we left off.

We left the home at the north of Detroit and booked it down towards Indianapolis. (Whenever we move between cities I feel a little strange because usually we prefer to stick to the forest where we can be filthy without being self-conscious, but every once and a while something comes up that makes two city days in a row happen.) The reason for the rush on this particular day was that down in Indianapolis that night was a blues dance, and I was hungry for some blues. The last time I got a chance to dance was all the way back in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and that was much too long ago. Thankfully Tweedy and Eric are understanding of my addiction and are willing to make some concessions for it as long as it doesn’t mess with the path of travel too greatly. Just so happens we needed to get to Indiana.

In Minneapolis I was amazed that the weekly dance was held in conjunction with a weekly blues jam at a local blues bar. Indianapolis was more of what I am used to seeing as far as dance venues go, though the entrance to the location was tucked away rather discreetly. Eric, Tweedy, and I wandered around the building twice before we caught sight of the door that we were supposed to go through (it also happened to be the only door on the building that was still unlocked). After hiking up the two stories of stairs—which admittedly isn’t that great a number of stairs anyway, especially compared to another staircase we would be going up a couple days later—we arrived at a fantastic dance hall. I was going to call it a “little” dance hall, but that would be an inaccurate description. In all honesty it was medium sized, but the lack of attendants made it appear as if it were giant. A feeling that was augmented by having a wall of mirrors directly across from a wall of windows. It felt like infinite dancing space. There were only a total of eleven attendees in this infinite space, and that count includes Eric, Tweedy, and I. Turns out the scene had just sprouted up within the past couple months. Blues dancing is a young dance as far as being steps that are taught—though it’s history is one of the oldest American dance forms. Being a young dance the young people have more of a thing for it, so the people who had started the scene there in Indianapolis had been introduced to blues dancing where they had gone to college in usually much smaller towns. Strangely enough, when they came into the capital of Indiana they could no longer find the blues dancing that they had found in the smaller towns where they had gone to college. In fact no one had even heard of blues before. They decided it was time to take matters into their own hands and started putting these weekly dances together. The scene is definitely still at toddler level, but I had a fantastic time and met some great dancers and people in general. My only complaint was the fact that once again all the dancers were ready to pack up and leave by 11:00 p.m. There are so many more hours that are good for dancing after 11:00! Sure it was a Tuesday, but back in Denver I’m up past 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday.

The good part about the dance ending early is that we were able to do our late night self-guided city tour. I think we have done a tour like that with nearly every single big city we have gone through so far on the trip, and it is always the best possible city tour a person could ever get. In this case we managed to find our way down to a river walk first where we passed by several other late night ramblers enjoying a quiet stroll. So for those taking notes, Indianapolis is yet another large city that any individual can feel perfectly safe wandering down the streets in the middle of the night. Along the river walk were several murals as well as some of the most fantastic little architectural flourishes. I was especially a fan of all of the little bridges crisscrossing the river.

As we reached the end of the river walk we started in towards the center of downtown. On our way we passed what has to be the friendliest police officer I have ever met in my entire life. He was a young guy, probably younger than me, but his youth did not show in the least. He gave us a short history lesson on Indianapolis and Indiana in general and told us that there were two FREE museums in the city that were attached to monuments. The monuments we could see still during that night, but the museums we would have to come back for. Not like we minded retracing our steps—anything free is worth doing some backtracking for. Still we went to check out the monuments by the illumination of the city lights. These monuments were the Indianapolis Civil War Monument/Museum

And the Indianapolis War Monument/Museum.

More information about these later. During our ramblings we bumped into a group of well-dressed young individuals sitting on the steps of the Civil War Monument. Turns out they were students at a local Christian university who were there in downtown for a conference of some sort. Indianapolis may not be as busy as bigger cities late at night, but it doesn’t seem to fall asleep entirely either. It just gets a heavy drowsiness. The drowsiness was starting to hit us as well and we still had several miles to go to reach Tweedy’s grandpa, who had offered a place to stay for the night. Thankfully so too, there was a chance of rain that night and rain is our one foe when it comes to tent camping.

Once again, it was late—I would say 2 o’clock in the morning—when we showed up on Tweedy’s grandpa’s doorstep. Thankfully we had given him a significant forewarning that we would be showing up during the young hours of the morning, still I felt a little guilty, not enough though that I would have given up my little night of dancing. He offered us a little bite of food before we descended to the basement where there were actual beds waiting to carry us off into the land of dreams.

The next day we woke up late. So late that I would consider myself a fiend if I were to refer to it as morning. This meant that it was already past the time for breakfast and we were beginning to encroach on lunchtime. Tweedy’s grandpa was kind enough to take us out for our late breakfast/lunch at a local Chinese buffet. Seeing as we had skipped about two meals before that buffet we were able to get the full money’s worth. I think I filled four plates worth, plus two or three other small plates to cleanse the pallet. We rolled out of that restaurant, had a little trouble fitting through the front door, but nothing that a little butter and some elbow grease from the wait staff couldn’t fix.

Tweedy’s father continued to spoil us by giving us a tour of Madison, Indiana (the town where he lived and where we were staying) after the lunch. We got to cross south to Kentucky even and even went into Clifty State Park where we saw a couple of waterfalls. Unfortunately I did not have my camera on me for that little excursion, so you'll have to take my word for it that it was beautiful.

Once we got back to home base Tweedy’s grandfather headed out to take care of his responsibilities as a minister and we walked down the street to a set of old railroad tracks that we began to walk up and along. Eventually we stumbled upon a set of seemingly random old concrete stairs that just ended abruptly just before the ravine that was to the side of the railroad tracks. What would you do if you randomly stumbled across cement stairs in a location where they had no right being? You have to follow them, right? That’s what we thought, and follow them we did. Ultimately they popped up at the edge of a road that ran in front of a hospital. It seemed like such a strange location for a hospital, so we decided that we better case the joint and figure out if there was a big residential development just behind it that would legitimize the hospital’s location, but instead of finding a residential community we found a different sort of community—a women’s prison was just sitting there, pretty much sharing property with the hospital. Things quickly grew awkward at this point as we just continued to walk right on by the prison. It must have been meal time or something because once we were almost past it all the sudden all of the “tenants” came pouring out of the buildings. We just continued to walk, but our presence drew some attention that eventually led to a random warden yelling at us to just keep moving. Strangely enough she yelled that while we were in the process of walking.

Eventually we completed the loop around the campus and descended the cement stairs/dirt trail in the dark and stayed another night with Tweedy’s grandpa. We couldn’t stay there forever though, so the next day we had to leave those wonderful loving people and return to Indianapolis for the FREE war museums.

First stop in Indianapolis was the Salvation Army where we parked our cars before hiking into downtown. The Civil War Museum was a fairly small set-up (especially now that I can consider it in comparison to the Civil War Museum in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania), but it was free, and provided a bit of educational review, plus we were able to walk up a giant winding staircase to the top of the Civil War Monument, which was pretty cool as well as being a great workout for the thighs. The museum really worth talking about though is the Indianapolis War Museum. This museum was constructed after World War I with the resources and money from all of the countries involved in the signing of the treaty. Why Indianapolis, Indiana of all places? You might ask. Well it turns out that Indiana has always had the greatest percentage of volunteers for all of the wars in the history of the US that Indiana was around for. In recognition of the sacrifice made by this state it was the one that got to have the multi-million-dollar monument and museum to The War that was supposed to have been the end of all wars. Unfortunately, that was not the case as the museum inside it can attest to. It chronicles the involvement of the US in all of the wars that it has ever been involved in, including the Revolutionary War on through the “War on Terror.” It is quite the monument though. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

After completing our tour of the museums we decided that we were satisfied with our time in Indiana and that it was time to move on once again. Ohio was a-calling. 

Sandy Beaches and Concrete Jungles

Just a quick heads up-- I did not have a chance to go through and edit this post before posting so hopefully you can pardon any mistakes or difficult sections to read, it's just time for us to get going now. 

We did eventually leave Justin and the two Matts and made our way down into the oven mitt part of Michigan. Sure it was several days later on the 25^th of September, but we did keep going. We left at around noon and headed down towards one of the more remarkable bridges in the entirety of the U.S. and out towards Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. Now everyone in the mitt part of Michigan refers to their location of the state by displaying their right hand palm upwards and pointing to which part of the state they lived in. Using this representation, Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore would be at the tip of the pinky. For those of you who might struggle pulling up that image in your own brain that is the most Western point on the northern shore of the main mitt of Michigan. Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore is actually considered a National Park and usually one would have to pay to get into the park, but somehow we always manage to show up after the main gate has already been abandoned, so we were able to go hiking around on these dunes (the day after we had spent a full day at the other dunes mind you) without having to pay the entrance fee. This also meant that we hiked back to our cars in the dark, but that was no issue for us. We have before and since done much later night hikes.

Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes are about twice the size of the Sable Sand Dunes, though the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes do have a lot more traffic. Even with us arriving as the sun was sinking below the horizon and the sky threatening the possibility of rain we still ran into several people on the trail out to the coast of Lake Michigan. It was a beautiful hike though, and the sunset really added to the aesthetic. The best part of all though was the color and look of the lake at the end of the hike. Somehow the water there right by the shore had taken on this turquoise glow. It was too beautiful to just look at, we had to take a dip in the water as well (for me it also meant finally bagging Lake Michigan). I mean look at it! You can’t tell me that you would not have wanted to go for a swim as well.

After hiking back to the cars we took a moment to fix some dinner there at the foot of the first dune before we went about trying to find a place to sleep. This involved quite a bit of driving around. Ultimately we realized that there was no decent National Forest nearby for us to set up camp, which meant we resorted to one of our more desperate means of setting up camp. We found a roadside pull off that had a picnic table and set up our tent right next to the picnic table and I tried to mostly block the view of our tent from the road with my car. It was not exactly the greatest location for privacy, but we were tired so we fell right to sleep.

Next morning we awoke to our tent being soaked once again. It had rained that night, and my sleeping pad had collected a decent amount of water within it since I was on the lowest part of the incline of the slight hill we had set our tent up on. This made me a little bit grumpy from the get go that morning. But thankfully Eric and Tweedy did not have to suffer through my mood since Tweedy had just switched to riding in Eric’s car the day before.

Our first stop was William Mitchell State Park where the boys made breakfast and I just continued in my moodiness. I did not manage to get out of my moody state of mind until we stopped at another little park a couple hours later. Bay City State Recreation Area was a park that butted right up to the shallowest part of Lake Eerie. We probably walked out into the lake about a hundred yards and still the water never got higher than my waist- it never even reached the waists of the other two though (darn those tall people). It was quite chilly that morning, which meant that I was happy it couldn’t get any higher than my waist, and even being waist deep was a bit too much at times. Still it was a great looking beach. During the summer I’m sure it’s packed.

After enjoying that bit of nature it was time to dive into another city. We drove into Detroit in the afternoon and parked our cars on the side of the street in Greek Town before beginning our self-guided tour through the city. For some reason Detroit gets a bad rap, and perhaps a couple years ago there was a reason for it (I remember seeing the pictures on the news of all the abandoned high rises and trashed demolition sites), but for me it ranks up there with Chicago, though it was nowhere near as bustling as Chicago. I think that will change over the next few years though as well as more people come to the realization that Detroit is really a beautiful city. We began our walk with wandering through the streets on the northern side of the city. This part of the city is full of older architecture. If I had to hazard a guess (which I do because I didn’t do any research about the city—sorry about that) I would say that most of those store fronts date back to the late 1800’s.

This was where the shopping district part of the town was located, which was not exactly up our alley as budget travelers, so after taking some time to enjoy the architecture we started to wander South towards the board walk part of town that follows along the Detroit River. This part of the city is absolutely gorgeous. It is lined with monuments and little art installments of the three-dimensional variety. Across the river you can see the southernmost part of Canada. It’s a random peninsula that dips below the rest of the country, pretty much a Canadian Florida. Believe the place looked like it was a resort town too, at least from where we stood on the other side of the river.

After that we wandered into the Renaissance Center. This is a conglomeration of five buildings that were built by GM, though they contain about fifty different companies. The buildings are set up with one center building that was taller than the rest and four satellite skyscrapers around it. We first wandered into the one owned by the Hilton and snuck into one of the elevators and rode it to the top floor of the hotel. Unfortunately, there were no windows that could be seen on that top floor. You had to have a room to get the view. We still wandered around in there for a minute with the hope of finding some way to access the view, but ultimately failing in our quest. Next we managed to get to the base of the center building. After asking several people where we could find access to find the elevator that went to the top floor we were able to find it. It was owned by Coach (a restaurant that was located on that top floor). The hostess there on the main floor was kind enough to just let us in so we could take the ride and see the view at the top. I’m pretty sure it has to be the best free elevator in the world. It is glass so you get to witness the view change and the rest of the world diminish right before your eyes before you arrive at the breathtaking view afforded there at the seventy-second floor.

Once we got to see that view the only thing left to do was get back to our cars and figure out a place to sleep. Fortunately we managed to find a walking path that goes right through what I’m pretty sure used to be the ugly looking part of Detroit that I saw those pictures of all those years ago. Now it is beautiful though, and is pretty much an outdoor art gallery for some amazing urban painters. I’m going to include a few specimens for you all to appreciate.

(I know, quite a lot of pictures in succession, but one of my little sisters was rather disgruntled with the fact that my last post did not have enough pictures, so I’m trying to make up for it this go round.)

That night Eric managed to find us a home to stay in since our tent was soaking wet and we did not feel too inclined to sleep by the side of the road again in a soaking wet tent. Helen and Steve let us into their home despite the fact that we were all complete strangers to them, they just happened to know someone that knew Eric and trusted her to not refer complete ruffians to stay with them. They were honestly some of the sweetest people I have ever met. A dinner of spaghetti and meatballs was waiting for us when we arrived along with a side salad and a desert of ice cream sundaes. That was the most satisfied my stomach has been on the trip thus far (though the Chicago style pizza that Matt’s parents provided for us is a very close second). After a delightful dinner we watched a less delightful display with the first presidential debate. It was quite the storm. Neither one of those two candidates looked good, though I enjoyed watching it because what I studied in school (rhetoric) translates perfectly to analyzing debates. Ultimately though I think that the entire country should just say “screw them” to the main political parties and instead only vote for the less well represented parties or write in a candidate. Because if we are all honest with ourselves we’ll all realize that not a single one of us wants another Republican or Democrat as a president.

Anyway, we still slept well and I managed not to have any nightmares waking me up in the middle of the night. The next day we were served pancakes for breakfast and chatted with Helen and Steve before we headed out right around noon. It was hard to say goodbye to those beautiful people. I might have to go back to Detroit just so I can see Steve and Helen again.

But it was time to head on out. That night there was a dance to be a part of in Indianapolis, so we took to the road and in a couple hours we were telling Michigan goodbye after a nice long stay.

Don’t forget to check out Tweedy’s and Eric’s Youtube channels for the video documentation of the trip. 

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.