The Deadly Duo

My struggle with New York City driving had not even begun once we had dropped Eric off at the airport. It was now time to face traffic in the city during evening rush hour. Honestly, I had no idea which roads to take, so I was just listening to the instructions provided by Tweedy’s phone. Before we knew it we were in the dead center of the city. We even drove right by Times Square! Unfortunately, I have no pictures of that moment. It took all my concentration just to navigate those roads and the heavy traffic. But no need to worry, you'll get to see pictures from NYC once I get to that part of the trip.

We did end up surviving the horns, crowds, and deadly traffic maneuvers, arriving at Jaclyn's residence in the state of New Jersey a bit earlier then I might have thought it would take. Jaclyn was another person that we found via the couch surfing app. She runs a music business that sells instruments and (even more awesome in my own opinion) plays music for events. Her particular instrument of choice is flute, but she is well versed with the piano as well. She was super nice to us and provided a floor to sleep on and the next day allowed Tweedy and I to do some catching up on our social media before we took off and hit the road to return once again to Pennsylvania. 

When we reached Pennsylvania it was already dark. With this being the case we chose a nearest state games land on the map (that’s the open space for hunting that people aren't techinically allowed to camp in) and set up the tent. We made a batch of beans with the deathly peppers provided by the girl at Kafe Kerouac that was far beyond the spicy level that most average U.S. citizens would ever subject themselves to. Thankfully we survived the self-inflicted torture (both Tweedy and I thought it was delicious in all honesty). After our bellies were full we retired to bed and fell asleep to the sound of guns being fired deeper in the woods.

Morning arrived and we pointed ourselves towards Hershey. For those of you saying “No way! Hershey isn’t a town, that’s a chocolate company!” turns out it’s both. Not only that, but the chocolate is made there in that town. The Hershey company has also thrown up a lot of tourist attractions in the area. Most of it a person has to pay for, such as the museum that Tweedy and I walked into first. After learning that there was an admission fee for all of the attractions in the building we just snapped a few pictures of the waiting area and headed out again to go down to Hershey’s Chocolate World where the internet said we could find a free tour. The following mural was painted on the wall of the museum that we went into first.

At Hershey’s Chocolate World we were floored by the amount of candy that was available for purchase. The majority of the place was more of a candy store than anything else.

What Tweedy and I had come to see was tucked in the back corner of the building. It was a free ride. That magic word "Free." We had to give it a go. My personal opinion is that the very beginning and very end of the ride are the best parts, this is because you have to walk across a floor that is constantly rotating into or out of the seats for the ride which are also in constant motion. The rest of the ride is a tour through the chocolate making process narrated by a cow and various pieces of chocolate candy. It was hokey to say the least, but a fun little ride, especially considering the price. Afterwards you even get a little piece of chocolate. Tweedy made the observation that this free candy was probably offered as a way to induce the desire to buy more chocolate once we returned to the candy shop that made up most of Hershey’s Chocolate World. Not going to lie—I almost fell for the trap. But it soon became clear that the prices for chocolate there were even more expensive than prices at normal grocery stores. So if you want to eat Hershey chocolate in Hershey, buy it at a Walmart beforehand.

After that little taste of amusement park rides, I wanted more. We went to go take a look at Hershey Park right across the street, but to my chagrin it was closed that day. It didn’t keep us from walking all the way around the park and seeing what we could. This included some little statues that could be posed with for some good photo ops.

We also managed to find a giant ice arena that we wandered around for a few minutes. Tweedy even found a hockey puck that he held on to as a souvenir. Ultimately we decided there was nothing else to see there, so we got back on the road to get to the next tourist area we had skipped on our first pass through the state—Gettysburg. But first we had to stop at Rita’s. Anyone who has experienced the perfection of Rita’s custard and ice knows that it can’t be passed up, especially while in the state where it was born. There’s no way to describe it, just know that if the concept of a fluffy cloud-like heaven could be translated into a cold food it would be a Rita’s Gelati.

After the taste of heaven, we went to the place where America experienced its taste of hell. When you pull into Gettysburg it’s hard to believe that it was the location of the bloodiest battle to ever take place on U.S. soil. It is such a small, quiet, and quaint little town. But there are quite a lot of tourists, so that does make it a bit more packed.

Our first stop was the museum. It’s remarkable how much is present solely to detail one war that involved two halves of a single country. The museum size-wise is about two thirds the size of the giant war memorial/museum in Indianapolis, while the information contained there (such as written placards or informational films) might actually be greater than what was contained in the Indianapolis War Memorial. Here is just a little taste of what a visitor may find there.

After the tour of the museum we decided to wander out into the fields nearby to take a look at the terrain those involved in the civil war faced there at Gettysburg. All along the roads are monuments representing every unit of cavalry, foot soldiers, cannoneers, etcetera. And most of them look quite exquisite. Most majestic of all was the State of Pennsylvania Monument that has Winged Victory standing atop it and President Lincoln standing at one of the corners. You can take a staircase up to an overlook, though it’s much shorter than the Indianapolis Civil War Memorial. Still—since the surrounding area is rather flat—you can get quite the view.

That night we stayed with Ben, whom we found on couch surfer. Ben lives on a beautiful piece of property that has been in his family for several generations. His experience with the couch surfers before us was a bit negative. Tweedy and I wanted to change that around, so we got his kitchen cleaned up and made him some of our famous beans, we toned down the heat this time so it wasn’t quite as violent on the taste buds. Over dinner Ben shared with us stories of some of his travels, including a bike ride that he had made from there in Pennsylvania all the way across the country to Portland, Oregon. It made me feel like we were cheating by using cars for our travels. Still nothing would ever make me leave my beautiful Ophelia behind and opt for a bike instead (Ophelia is my car, just in case I haven’t let her name slip before). After chatting for a bit we sat down and did a small amount of work on our social media before going to bed.

The next morning we said goodbye to Ben and got back on the road again. We were driving all the way to the north end of Pennsylvania that day to see Penn’s Cave.  Penn’s Cave is one of the few caves in the U.S. that you tour by boat! Not only is it not good for people who have issues with claustrophobia or nyctophobia, but they even found a way to keep people who are afraid of the water at bay. Tweedy and I don’t have issues with any of those fears, which I suppose made us the perfect candidates for that short tour. The cave itself wasn’t all that long, but the tour took a full hour since the boat couldn’t go all that fast, plus the only way out was the same way that you went in. At the end of the cave was a decent sized pond to turn around in though, which sat in the middle of a wildlife refuge. That’s where we saw a giant bull elk, who looked at the boat full of tourists with a judgmental look for disturbing his peace. All in all I’d say Penn’s Cave is definitely worth the twelve dollars it costs for the tour.

That night Tweedy and I drove back across the state to sleep in another Pennsylvania Game Lands (Number 58 to be exact). There were no gun shots to be heard that night or even people to be seen, so we felt safe building up a fire to keep us warm while we made and ate our beans. I went to bed a bit before Tweedy, and then woke up thirty minutes to an hour later to him asking me to step out of the tent. I was very tired and disoriented so I was rather unwilling to get out of the tent. Instead I sat up and unzipped the tent partially to ask him what was going on. Apparently Tweedy had yet another encounter with wildlife. We’re not sure what it was this time (I’d hazard a guess that it was deer), but what we do know is that he saw four sets of green glowing eyes. Thankfully nothing happened and we escaped without any dings and I was able to fall right back to sleep a few minutes later.

The next morning we got up and drove towards Knoebels—a very old-school amusement park that I had celebrated my twenty-first birthday at. I was super excited to go back, but my heart fell when we arrived just to find that the park was closed. So instead of spending money at Knoebels we decided to spend money on a big lunch because we skipped breakfast and had the all-you-can-eat wings at Quaker Steak and Lube. One of my favorite restaurants from my year in the state. We definitely got our money’s worth seeing as both Tweedy and I put away more than thirty wings. That’s over sixty wings total between two guys. 

There was a dance that night in Philly and my dancing clothes were still dirty so I decided that it might be a good idea to stop by the laundromat and Tweedy agreed. Once the clothes were clean we had just enough time to drive down to Philly in order to get to the dance in time. It was easy enough to find the building, but figuring out where the dance was inside took a few minutes. There was a comedy show happening there, which had the entire lobby packed full of people. The top level had a yoga and meditation class, and then we found a door off the landing between these two floors and inside was the dancing!

Philly has been one of my favorite places to dance so far, even though the city itself is not one of my favorite cities (I apologize to all those Philly lovers, it does have some great architecture, I'll give it that, and it is quite possible that I just didn't get a full Philly experience). I met several great dancers, including one by the name of Julia. We had no place to stay that night and needed to pick up Eric in the morning from the airport in Philadelphia, so when Julia offered to let us stay at her place an hour or so away. We jumped at the offer. Halfway there we got a call from Eric saying that he would not be able to make the flight that he had originally planned on, so that meant when we got back to Julia’s we were in no rush to go to bed. We put on some music and danced while we fixed a late-night snack and eventually fell asleep just before the sun came up.

Upon waking up in the early afternoon we came to the realization that we had ended up in a beautiful house near the shore of New Jersey. Once we had all dragged our sleepy bodies out of bed the next day and got some food in our bellies we went to check out the ocean where we all did a little boogie boarding. 

Daylight didn’t last too long (since we had been up so late), and when the night moved in we went out to check out the night life. We ended up in a little joint called Johnny Mac’s House of Spirits. The place was full of fun little signage and little antique toys and books. There was so much to look at that it was hard to stay focused on the conversations. One of the best parts was that with every drink you got a free cheese pizza—not a free slice of pizza, a whole pizza (sure it was still sized for individuals, but it was a whole pie!). It was quite delicious too.

As the night continued to wane we walked out to the shore again and stood by the water before wandering back to the car. We stayed awake almost the entire night since we had to pick up Eric from the airport early the next morning. I fell asleep for a short nap, but then it was time to go and reunite with the third member of our group.  

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. 

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.

Big City, Big Lake (Chicago Part II)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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