Road Trip Diaries Day 10: Hittin' Chicago. (Careful, it might hit back).

     Chicago is f**king mad. Mad. Bicyclists dart out between traffic, ice cream trucks sell drugs, and the roads are both lacking in paint and determined to ruin the shocks on cars brave enough to travel them. Unprotected left turns require frequent dashes out in front of oncoming traffic, and the place is f**king mad.
     But hey, it sure has personality! Salsa music drifts into the alleys from garages as people work on their cars, downtown is full of pizza you need to eat with utensils, and there is actually a real Tastee Freeze that looks like it is straight from the 1950s. It is impossible to ever be bored in Chicago, even if it is rather rough around the edges.

In a Nutshell: Overview of Day 10
Route: Iowa City, IA to Chicago, IL
Miles Traveled: 223 today, 3,194 total.
Hours in Car: 4 today, 54.5 total.
Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 0 Today, 11 total. Cortney: 0 today, 5 total.
Food Highlight of the Day: Katie's amazing healthy homemade breakfast. She made me some trail mix, and blended up a smoothie of coconut milk, banana, peanut butter, and chia seeds, with a few ice cubes for texture.

So healthy.... and so tasty

Quote of the Day: I actually don't remember anything in particular from this day, so I'll share an earlier one that hasn't been shared yet (from Bozeman, MT): Random stranger on street: "Don't believe her! She's a vegan!" 

Chillin' in Chicago

    As I have said, Chicago is mad. So staying in my friend's apartment and watching 3 or so straight hours of 30 Rock suited us brilliantly! We'll be there soon when we fly to New York, may as well get hyped up about it. Caitlin and I are crashing with our old high school friend Amanda and her boyfriend Brian, and we've barely left the futon except for pizza. It was that famous deep dish pizza though. I got a plainer vegan version, but they all got a huge deep pan full of the kind of pizza you might need to eat with a spoon. It totally merits the use of utensils. 

     There's something nice about not being a tourist. I do know there are a lot of sights in Chicago. The waterfront is gorgeous- very different from the pothole pocked roads up in the residential areas (at least, residential for the non-wealthy). There are skyscrapers to climb and parks to stroll through along Lake Michigan. And perhaps some day I will do all that. But sometimes, sitting on a futon in a chaotic apartment with creaky old floors and watching TV with friends is an even better way to enjoy a destination. Especially if it is pouring rain outside, which happened as soon as we got here and had to leave the dry security of the car. 

     I'm going to keep this blog short, since the simplicity of friendship does not take too much explaining. It's good to see where people we care about are living. Bonding in a creaky apartment full of moving boxes is so legitimately twenty-something. It is cozy and colorful and full of both the crazy and the mundane adventures of making a life in this world. 

     I do have some pretty photos, though. See, this present tense stuff I'm writing is a lie and I've actually already moved well beyond Chicago, from which we flew to New York. And on the flight from Chicago to New York, I got to see the great mad city from above, a metropolis perched on a lake that would dwarf it if not for that city's crazy and indomitable personality. 

     Alright- this may be a short and rather boring blog, but I am about to fall asleep thanks to that whiskey chai I thoroughly enjoyed a while ago. Glad I survived you, Chicago!

Road Trip Diaries Day 9: Iowa's Coolest City

     When we finally got to Iowa after our twelve hour trip, we spent our night getting a little drunk off wine and whiskey with our friend Katie and her roommate Katy. It's tempting to call them "the Katies" or something like that, but as they discussed, pluralizing names that are spelled differently is quite a challenge, so I will refrain. Anyway, today was laid-back and full of shopping, much as Iowa City is.

In A Nutshell: Overview of Day 9
Route: Ha! We didn't have to drive anywhere today!
Miles traveled: We walked a few, but that's it.
Hours in car: None! Isn't it glorious!
Coffee consumed: Caitlin: 1 cup today, 11 total. Cortney: 0 today, 5 total. Combined: 16.

This was my lunch. 

Food highlight of the day: White-chocolate strawberry cupcake from Fair Grounds Cafe. It is a very vegan-friendly coffee shop and cafe, with a full food menu and a plethora of desserts :-) The place also has plenty of tables and chairs for working at laptops or chatting with friends, which is what I spent a lovely few hours doing.

The front room at Fair Grounds.
There is also a back room. 

Quote of the day: Random fortyish man in bar to girls in bathroom line: "Does anybody here no who Walter David Thoreau is?"
Girl 1: *shrugs*
Katy: "The writer?"
Random Man: "Well you're on the right track."
Cortney: "Yeah, he wrote Walden."
R.M: *throws hands in the air exaggeratedly* "Ah! At last! There is hope for the world!" *proceeds to complain about how his friends are shallow and uneducated*

Seriously, man? You're trying way too hard to be smart. And all of the women in that line were preoccupied with the fact they had to pee.

Iowa City: Outpost of Civilization
     After driving across so much of the wild west, where people ride motorcycles without helmets, speed limits weren't introduced until 2005, and fireworks could probably blow your house up, Iowa provides a stark contrast. Upon crossing the Iowa border, the speed limit drops (Caitlin and I had gotten very used to 75 mph speed limits), the roads get better, there are actually cops to pull people over, and in Iowa City, there is a determination to be lawful, liberal, and hip. It seems as though Iowans have made it the mission of their state to welcome people back to civilization- the be the frontier of the East Coast, in a way.
     When Katie announced that she was moving from California to Iowa City to start her engineering PhD (my friends are all smarter than me, I'll admit it), she kept insisting to the nonbelievers that it was actually a pretty cool place. And it is! As I delightfully updated my Facebook for the first time in a while, I believe I called it "an oasis of vegan food and WiFi."

Part of the main shopping district

     Iowa City is home to the University of Iowa, a huge and excellent university where both of my parents actually did their medical residencies. It therefore has both excellent hospitals, and a large and diverse student population. Along with students come coffee shops, used bookstores, vintage clothing, and a lot of cool things within walking or biking distance- you know, all the things that make a place hip. Katie, Katy, Caitlin and I (*sigh* I was the only non-Katie/Katy/Caity) spent our day ambling around the cute pedestrianized downtown area, buying vintage clothes we didn't need and admiring the beautifully painted benches that decorate the broad brick walk.

Of course we couldn't resist Revival, a cute little shop that must have come into being when a ladies' boutique and a thrift store fell in love and made beautiful, stylish babies. Shame on me, I bought more clothes when I barely have enough money to feed myself for the rest of the trip. But the prices were so good! Surely I couldn't pass them up!

Next door to Revival is an equally cute little shop called Soap Opera, a shamelessly adorable shop that sells pretty smelling things. Imagine if Bath & Body works used all natural ingredients and sold handmade items instead of mass produced ones. You can find a soap in any delightful-smelling variety, and not be too concerned that the wonderful smells come from artificial chemicals. We had to leave this place before we really did spend all our money.
     To those who do not enjoy reading of girly shopping adventures, my apologies, but perhaps you'll be relieved that our next stop was a place called The Haunted Bookshop. I did not ask the story behind the name, but this little converted house filled to the brim with books definitely seems old and interesting enough to be haunted. I spent perhaps half an hour at at a small round table reading a book from the perspective of Jack Kerouac's first wife, Edie Parker. My inner Beat Generation nerd was so happy. Iowa City students, hipsters, and booklovers- thank you.
     So, Iowa City is hip enough to feed vegans and interest Beat nerds. But it also has a certain venerability to it. The vibe is very different from a coastal city- the brick buildings remind me of gentrified country living, and the air is heavy with humidity and the sound of cicadas. It does not have the bustle and grit of a city like Portland, but rather has the grace and style of a place like Virginia. I feel like Thomas Jefferson or somebody of the sort could live here. Iowa City is trendy and fun, but without the edge that comes with being in a larger city or on the coast. Perhaps the heat and humidity slow it down a little, give it a slight midwestern drawl and even a dash of Southern charm that floated northward.
     I'm both happy and amused to see how well Katie fits in here. She's always had family in Iowa, and I can tell the place suits her. She even has an Iowa accent now. Funny to see where people end up- how being born somewhere doesn't necessarily mean that that is the best place for you. We can adopt the personality of the places we go. It's why some people love San Francisco and some people hate it. Why some people dream of New York while others dream of a place in the country. And why I now have a friend I think of more as Iowan than Californian, even though we grew up in the same town. Best of luck with the PhD, Katie, and happy shopping!

Road Trip Diaries Day 8: 750 Miles of Mostly Corn

     Hello! Today was by far the most driving of the whole road trip- glad to have survived. Driving from Hill City to Iowa City requires driving a very long, very straight route across the entirety of the state of South Dakota, about 2/3 of the way across Minnesota, and then a turn south into a whole lot of Iowa. And Minnesota has terrible roads, so we couldn't even drive faster than 75 mph. There is a lot of corn out here, along with quite a few giant windmills. We could instantly tell that Iowa was more exciting than Minnesota because the windmills here were actually turning. That's some big stuff right there.

In a Nutshell: Overview of Day 8
Route: Hill City, SD to Iowa City, IA
Miles traveled: 756 today, 2,971 total.
Hours in car: 12 today, 50.5 total.
Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 1 cup today, 11 total. Cortney: 1 cup today, 5 total. Combined: 16 cups.
Food highlight of the Day: Breakfast at Bully Blends cafe and pub in Rapid City, SD. They make a strong latte, have a large cafe selection, and they have a bar where they keep Guinness on tap. This place wins at everything, which is why after 4 years I still remembered it and made sure we stopped. I had a cinnamon raisin bagel served with peanut butter, and Caitlin got a pasty with some very carnivorous filling. I don't remember what it was, but it kept her going most of the day. This is probably the coolest place in all of South Dakota.
Quote of the Day: Cortney: "Two hours to go! Let us power through with enthusiasm born of vegetables!" A Subway sandwich can go a long way in making a 12 hour drive more manageable.

Miles and Miles of ...  uh........ 

     The Circle B singers perform a song called "Miles and Miles of Texas." We're not going to Texas, but we sure saw miles and miles of other flat parts of the country. It's interesting how places seek to distinguish themselves out here. The little things become so very important, and will have billboards for hundreds of miles. Wall Drug, for instance, has populated about 50 miles of the area immediately east of Rapid City with so many billboards that we got virtually hypnotized into going there. I have never seen so many billboards for one place- it has to get you wondering. So we pulled off I-90 and followed the signs to Wall Drug. It is so important that there are even signs to tell you there are signs ahead- "Slow! Arrow ahead!" The arrow pointed us into a parking lot- if only all attractions were this well marked. 

     Frankly, Wall Drug was worth it. It is a giant complex of stores that take up most of the tiny town of Wall, South Dakota. You can buy coffee, cowboy boots, and stickers that say "Yay cheese!" You can also buy the heads of various animals, including the rather creative jackalope. 

     Caitlin and I hypothesized that Wall Drug is kind of like that spirit village in the Hayao Miyazaki movie Spirited Away, and we soon grew concerned that we would never be able to leave. There were Stetson hats to try on, and beautiful hand-tooled boots, and carved or polished rocks of all sorts. There was even this handsome cowboy: 

     Eventually, though we did make it out of there, and I had bought nothing more than a rather useful little mortar and pestle.  We were not done with odd, hyped up attractions however. Not in the least. We still had the Corn Palace. It is a good couple hours east of Wall, but still in South Dakota. Billboards proudly proclaim that it is the world's only corn palace. What a great honor. Originally built in the late 1800s, it used to be a building made entirely of corn. It has since become modernized and somewhat less cool, as it is now a rather normal basketball arena that is decorated with corn. The corn decorations are still pretty impressive though. All the artwork on the building is done with corn cobs, while some of the other decorations are done with hay, rye, and other local crops. 

OMG! Corn! It's so exciting! 

A lot of corn on the outside.... what wonders can possibly be within? 

A basketball court... turned market

     So, the corn palace wasn't as remarkable as hoped, but it was free, and it was part of what made the 12 hour drive not feel like a 12 hour drive. When you're driving across the middle of the United States, you have to get your kicks somehow, because most of it looks like this:

 Or maybe this: 

    

     The windmills get to be pretty exciting after a while! They do make for some nice scenery, or at least they gave me something to take way too many photos of. Caitlin had a pleasant herd of windmills waiting for her on her memory card by the end of the day. 

    We did get some excitement in Waterloo, Iowa when we pulled off for gas. It seemed to be a sleepy enough little Iowa town, and we filled up and went back to get on I-380, only to find police cars blocking every onramp. We drove around, Caitlin rather miffed and me trying to convince her to ask for directions while I used my phone to look up what was going on. Were we stuck in some terrible small-town crime? Was a rural crazy coming to get us? Why could we not get back on the Interstate?

     Turns out it was President Obama. We had gotten there exactly 10 minutes before he was to give a campaign speech. 

     Oh the people you encounter on the road. We eventually did get back on 380, and had to go the speed limit the entire rest of the drive because of the police cars on every single overpass. I hope you enjoyed Iowa, President Obama!!! 

I nabbed this one from Google Images. 

Road Trip Diaries Day 7: My adoptive South Dakota family

Hey guys. Thanks to recent happenings and a nasty four-day headache I am now a week behind on my blog. Oh well! I am still on the road and this adventure is still happening. Where did I leave off? Oh yes- the Circle B. I worked there as a trail guide during the summer of 2008, and the owners of it were generous enough to let us stay there for free on our trip four years later. They fed us too! So, since I could not possibly pay them enough for their hospitality, I dedicate this blog to them.

In a Nutshell: Overview of Day 7

Route: Indian Creek Campground in Yellowstone National Park, WY to Circle B Chuckwagon, Hill City, SD.
Miles Traveled: 547 today, 2,215 total.
Hours in Car: 9 today, 38.5 total.
Coffee Consumed: Caitlin- 1 today, 10 total. Cortney- 1 today, 4 total. Combined: 14 cups.
Food Highlight of the Day: Free chuckwagon dinner at the Circle B. Beans, potatoes, biscuits, applesauce, meat for the carnivorous types, etc. I only had a few of the items since I'm vegan, and I still couldn't finish it all!
Quote of the Day: Caitlin (describing Kathy): "She's so cute! She can't be real!" Kathy Lawson is one half of the main couple running the Circle B, and she's like my adoptive South Dakotan mom.

South Dakota: My Unexpected Second Love

     People wonder why I like South Dakota. I spent a whole summer there four years ago, and when I tell people that they assume I must have been miserable. No I wasn't! The Black Hills region in South Dakota is a whole network of unfairly adorable little towns scattered amid the woods and meadows and creeks of the area, linked by roads that are way too fun to drive on and could probably be used to film great sports car advertisements. 

       Left to Right: Kathy, Dale, and Nick Lawson.

There is also a fiddle player who recently joined, not pictured here. 

     The whole region is "Old West" themed. At the Circle B, where we stayed the night, guests are treated to cowboy style food on tin plates, and a concert of old fashioned songs like "Autumn on the Trail" sung in harmony by possibly the sweetest father-mother-son band ever. 

     This is their first season at their new location just a few minutes from Hill City. When I worked there, I lived on the ranch at the old location and had to drive 40 minutes into Rapid City for high tech things like cell service and Internet. And recycling, come to think of it. 

This is part of the main building.

     I love the new place- lucky for me and Caitlin, it has several little guest cabins complete with bunk beds, bathrooms, and kitchenettes. The cabins look out over the green horse pastures, and are wonderfully cozy in the event of a raucous thunderstorm like the one we were treated to. Lighting flashes across the South Dakota sky far more often and with much more intensity than in California. The thunder rattled our whole cabin while we hunkered down for the night, giggling excitedly. I remembered the summer thunderstorms from before. They echo and crash and remind me that there are forces much bigger than people. Back in 2008 I spent many afternoons frantically trying to bring the donkeys into their pen, or rescue trail riders who got caught out in the weather.  

Our tent was still drying out from Yellowstone

Tourism is big business here- hence my former job as a trail guide (one that I may go back to next summer). What most people know about already is Mt. Rushmore. We did a quick drive-by, but it's $11 to park so we didn't stay. For me, the best attraction in the Black Hills is the area itself. It is full of hiking trails, good lakes for swimming, and lots of buffalo, bighorn sheep, elk, and other megafauna that never fail to excite the visitors into a photographic frenzy. A whole family of turkeys lived at the old ranch, along with a doe and two fawns.

A spectacular sunset at Mt. Rushmore as we drove by.
There is a pullout on the road for cheapskates like us.. 

     South Dakota is also biker territory. They come from all around for the Sturgis Rally, and a lot seem to stay. As I said earlier, the roads through the Black Hills are fantastic. Thanks to all this tourism, the area is remarkably easy to navigate and full of little attractions here and there.
     Though we had little time to see the area on this particular trip, I did quite a lot when I lived here. For anybody curious about South Dakota, I recommend visiting Custer State Park, driving the Needles Highway, and going through Bear Country wildlife park. I had so many magical experiences in South Dakota.  Getting caught in a moving herd of hundreds of buffalo was a great one. I just had to park and watch them stroll on by for half an hour. That happened in Custer State Park, which is also home to Sylvan Lake- perhaps the most unusual lake I've ever seen, and certainly the most fun one for swimming.

A South Dakotan traffic jam

     I'll stop rambling now since I'm sleep deprived, on tons of ibuprofen, and somewhat incoherent. I'll just show y'all a lot of photos instead.

And instead of people with cardboard signs,
you get these guys!

Sylvan Lake is crazy beautiful and fun for swimming, hiking, and climbing. 

    Hey guess what. I totally fell asleep while writing this blog, and just now woke up a full night's sleep later with my computer in front of my face. I guess the road is taking its toll on me. Time to jump in the shower and get on moving!

    But the lesson is this: South Dakota is awesome, and the Circle B is run by adorable sweet people who fed and housed me and my good friend even four full years after the last time I saw them in person. It is good to know I have a home there.

Road Trip Diaries Interrupted: Coping with loss from 3,000 miles away

     This is my friend Joe. If you know me, I guarantee you either know him, have heard stories of him, or have seen me do impressions of him dancing with himself. When I would describe him to people who weren't quite sure who he was, I would say, "the guy who dances like this!" and then strike a sexy pose with the look he was so famous for. It worked every time- nobody who saw him forgot him.
    My world stopped for a bit the other day because of him. Those of you who follow my blog know I've been on a three week road trip across the country, living it up and writing it down. I was out to dinner with friends in New York City, living the stories that make it into these blogs. And a quick check of Facebook revealed an invitation to a group called Memorial for Joe long.
     Memorial?
     I've been living with the notion that people as charismatic as Joe cannot possibly die. For God's sake, he didn't even notice when he fractured his neck playing soccer. That was always a popular after-dance story. Whenever I would complain that I was tired or sore or for some other reason leaving a dance venue early, he would just tell me to dance through the pain. And if I didn't show up to a dance, I'd be roused from my early slumber by a phone call- no hellos or "Hey this is Joe"- he would launch straight into a serenade, singing whatever was on the radio or on his mind. Someone willing to sing into a phone like that surely can't be mortal. The most memorable was that darn Discovery Channel song. You know, the kind of dirty one involving mammals. He and Clark sang that to me once to chastise me for staying home on a dance night. I usually responded to such things with an exasperated sigh and a cocked eyebrow, perhaps some sort of grumble.  Much of my friendship with Joe consisted of me being mildly appalled and (not so) secretly amused.
     He knew it, too. Whenever I would get that mildly appalled look on my face he ended up just grabbing and hugging and kissing me anyway. Incorrigible man, that one. (I say that with the fondest of smiles). And a man I really did not think would die on any but his own terms. It seems to me as though people like him would be exempt from things as stupid as a stray bullet fired on the streets of downtown Sacramento. I'm still surprised he didn't just talk it out of hitting him. If anybody could do that it would have been him. But no. We are all equally mortal, I guess.
    Ugh, this blog is becoming too much of a downer. He would have none of this! So, I'm going to remember that I'm wearing one of my sexy shirts (Joe helped me pick it out), and tell some stories. Kind of like when we crammed two dozen people into a hot tub, and took turns assigning each other story topics. He had some of the best ones.

     I met Joe the very first time I went out dancing, 5 years ago now. I was a new college freshman, and despite being super shy and not having ANY dancing friends, I set out salsa dancing at Sac State all on my own. Joe would have scared the crap out of me had I not been convinced he was flamboyantly gay (I learned later on he was just flamboyantly Joe). It was the scarf, definitely the scarf. We were dancing outside, and he loaned it to me because he thought I was cold.
     My most vivid memory of that night is him saying, "Well, you know how to move your hips, that's a start." Of course, he could move way better than me back in those days, but he was good at encouraging people to find their inner sexy beast. It wasn't long before I earned some notoriety for my fabulous hip action ;-) Thanks man!
    I think he is one of the main reasons I kept dancing after that first night. Later on I would make fun of how he found all the new girls and made sure to dance and flirt with them to keep them coming back. But hey, it worked on me and even though I am still sometimes mildly appalled I am glad it did. My very first perfect cha-cha was with him. Oh, the feeling of keeping the step for an entire dance!!! I was so delighted.
     It wasn't long before I fell in with the dance crowd. Post-salsa Denny's trips on Wednesdays, late nights in Lyons on Fridays, the Ballroom on Saturdays. Plus grilled cheese and Gears of War or some other video game I didn't understand at one of the guys' houses some nights, a little group of us. Sometimes we would watch zombie movies, and I'm terrified of zombies so Joe was there when I needed to cuddle with somebody who could save me from them. Or at least he physically restrained me from running to the other room out of sheer terror.
    I felt so adventurous those first few years of college. Like I was getting into just enough almost-trouble, but the wholesome kind of trouble that involves waltzing and nachos and playing Contact. We even stayed out all night and through the sunrise once- a new concept for me up until I started Lindy and Blues exchanges. Ha, those almost always go through until the dawn, but it was so grown-up and crazy for me at the time! Once, Joe, Samuel, Ben and I went out to Lyons after dancing, and talked for 12 straight hours- all the way through the night and into breakfast time. Mostly about crazy stories that made me blushingly aware of my own inexperience.

     I know my stories with Joe are just little bitty ones compared to the body of epic stories out there- and oh, there are some great ones! But he and the Sacramento dance scene have forever shaped my life. I can forgive him now for that time he dropped me in the middle of a Midtown Stomp birthday jam because he and I did not agree on that decision to flip me; or the photo that cropped up on Facebook of him kissing me on the cheek that I felt super awkward about because I was just starting up my relationship with my first boyfriend, and didn't want to look like I was fooling around with somebody else. But honestly, I was never truly mad. It was just a game I played with him, and he was privy to it even before I was. Me being mildly appalled, and him being tickled to death with himself because he knew that deep down I liked whatever mischief he was always up to.
     I am so glad to have known and danced with Joe. He encouraged me to branch out, to be confident, to own my personality and wear it proudly. And he taught me how to enjoy and appreciate other people- because what's the point of being fantastic and outgoing and sexy when you can't share it with people?!? Life is best lived with dance partners. Or an audience, audiences are nice too.

    Now that Joe is gone I feel that I under-appreciated him in the latter years of our friendship. That's the worst feeling in the world- to have had somebody and not appreciated them enough. I turned away from some of those kisses on the cheek, and I got embarrassed about some of his full-blown dance floor dramatics. Where is the part of me that was not at all ashamed to use one of those tables in the Davis Grad as a dance prop? (Boy that was a good dance!) Since when did I get so hesitant to be a crazy sexy goofball in front of everybody in a jam circle?  (That was a good one too). It's amazing that I can remember so many specific moments from dances I had with Joe, even years after they happened. That's saying something about him. I've been taking myself too seriously these days. Dancing too seriously. Remembering him has reminded me how much fun it was to not care- to dance in a way that made me feel I was waking up parts of myself that had been sleeping. To have unabashed fun and welcome people staring. Joe, I wish you were still alive so I could dance with you like that again.
     It turns out this blog is as much about me as it is about Joe. It's like he knew the outgoing and fun person I wanted to be, and helped me get over whatever fears and inhibitions were preventing me from attaining that. Anybody who knew Joe knows that inhibitions didn't last very well around him. Heck, it'a probably because of him I have the guts to take a three week road trip in the first place.
     I wish so badly that I could be in Sacramento right now, though, dancing with the community that Joe was such an integral part of. I heard news of his death while I was thousands of miles in to my own adventures, helplessly far away. And now, tonight, I am in Chicago, writing this because it is the next best thing I can do while everybody in Sacramento is at Fire House 5- a place that Joe introduced me to when it first opened. My God, if he had never taken me there my life would be so different.
   Thanks to the Internet, I love keeping up with the stories and pictures people are sharing on Facebook. The memorial page never fails to make me smile and laugh and cry and remember great moments. But I can't handle the news articles. Those are rough. They use words like "victim". I can't picture Joe as a victim- as a body in an ambulance, as a casualty of a crime. I want to hear him tell his story- I want to sit at the Lyons that doesn't even exist any more, and ask him what this crazy tale was like- just one more to add to his list. Ah, he would tell it with such gusto too, I know it. What happened, Joe, really? Tell us about that time you got shot! Any smartly delivered lines, refreshingly lucid honest thoughts? Epic actions, stoic attempts to keep on going when you shouldn't have? How manly and sexy were you, carrying on with a bullet in your chest? I want to stay up late again and laugh as he milks this tale for all it is worth. It's not going to happen though. Even the best among us die. Any one of us could have ended up that anonymous victim in the news article.
     I'm thinking now of an Ingrid Michaelson song.
     We are all just breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.
     Even Joe was breakable, though I don't want to admit it.
But boy he went out with style. I have to say, I admire his dramatic flair, even as I'm more than mildly appalled at it. Of course he would die no less epically than the way he did. And I'll bet he was dressed to the nines.

 

Road Trip Diaries Days 5 & 6: Yellowstone National Park

Good morning! (well, morning for me. I have no idea what time you're reading). I don't know how well I will write about Yellowstone, seeing as I'm now in very gritty, very urban Chicago, but it was absolutely spectacular so I certainly must try. Caitlin and I camped two nights there, so this blog is covering both days 5 and 6.

In A Nutshell: Overview of Days 5 & 6

A little poetry with breakfast was just right. 

Route: Bozeman, MT to Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park, WY.
Miles Traveled: 161 these days, 1,668 total.
Hours in Car: 3.5ish these days, 29.5 total.
Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 2 today, 9 cups total. Cortney: 1 today, 3 cups total. Combined: 12 cups.

Food highlight of the day(s): A breakfast of hot instant oatmeal and hot cider, consumed on a freezing cold morning while sitting on a little stump amid the pine trees that just happened to be perfectly in the sun's path as it rose.



Quote of the day: A couple of little girls looking at a waterfall: "Look! There's a rainbow! A real rainbow! It must be rainbow dust." "Oh, look, there's green in the water too!" "I see it! The dust must be in the water!" "Yes, the rainbow dust is in the water, then it goes out the waterfall and explodes, and then it goes around the whole world!"

 

Our route from Bozeman to the Indian Creek Campground where we stayed.

A closer look at where we drove around in the park.

Yellowstone: Exceeded even my high expectations. 

     After Caitlin and I set up camp, we drove out to Canyon Village on a ranger's recommendation to see some waterfalls in what is known as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. There is both a North Rim Road and a South Rim Road, and we took the South one. The North Rim Road is a one-way that takes you back to one of the main thoroughfares, and it is a place where a lot of people drive, park, snap a photo, and drive some more. I would have liked to make it out there, because that is how one gets to Inspiration Point, but the South Rim offered us a full dose of hiking through awe-inspiring, "Oh my God" inducing scenery. We parked near the Wapiti Bridge and took the trail to Artists' Point.

There's some of that rainbow dust at Upper Falls.

    Upper Falls is the first waterfall we encountered, named because it is upstream of *wait for it* Lower Falls. The names are somewhat uninspiring, but the falls themselves are probably just too amazing for a name anyway.

Lower Falls is over 300 feet tall. We could not even see the bottom of it.

Notice how the mist spray is enough to encourage moss growth way up the walls of the canyon. 

    The waterfalls were truly sublime - a word I use only occasionally because I am a humanities nerd referring to a particular concept in art, emphasizing the aweful, overwhelming but beautiful power of nature.     

    For quite a different experience, though, that evening I headed out to Mammoth Hot Springs, just north of our campsite at Indian Creek. It is a place where boiling water trickles and bubbles out of the ground, depositing bright white travertine in beautiful, crystal-like patterns while also killing the trees by choking their veins with calcium carbonate. Instead the landscape is decorated by extreme temperature-loving bacteria and other such life forms of various bright colors and slimy consistencies. 

     There are a lot of thermal features in Yellowstone. After driving around there for two days, I came to expect steam and geysers and brightly colored pools to surround every body of water, and the sight of them nonchalantly doing their dramatic geological thing in the middle of the woods became quite commonplace.

Travertine deposits form a multi-level waterfall at Canary Spring in Mammoth.

     We started off our second day with a visit to the Artists' Paint Pots, more thermal features that honestly seem to be from another planet. Bright blue water bubbles up in red and white mineralized soil, while thick white mud gurgles and boils like something out of Star Wars.

Like other thermal areas, the mineral crust formed by the springs is thin and brittle, and sometimes we can see holes where it caved in. According to the informational signs at Yellowstone, dozens of people have boiled to death since the area was first explored by Westerners. 

     Anyway, there was no way I could make my first ever Yellowstone trip and not see Old Faithful. We made the pilgrimage out there, ate lunch, and then 20 minutes before the predicted eruption I went out and sat with a few hundred other expectant people. Sometimes the geyser spits up a little water, just a preemptory warm-up exercise perhaps, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing all the oohs and camera clicks followed by disappointed aws. But, when it finally did erupt the show was totally worth it- and the sound of the people watching matches the geyser comically well. 

   Old Faithful is certainly the most famous geyser, but I was impressed with how many other really beautiful ones there are. The Info Center at Old Faithful lists all the predicted times for nearby geysers, so one could easily make a day of geyser chasing and have a lot to show for it. I even just stumbled upon a large erupting geyser accidentally, and got a beautiful show along with a face full of sulfur-smelling steam. 

     We spent our last evening in Yellowstone hanging out around a campfire with a couple of guys two campsites down. They could actually afford firewood. And alcohol. What excellent neighbors to have. 

     Leaving Yellowstone marked the beginning of a very long trek across Montana and South Dakota, but the smoky air made for a beautiful sunrise, and since it was early the Mammoth elk herd was out. We drove past a whole group of females with their babies. 

   

 I was driving on about 3 hours of sleep, so we stopped for coffee in the little town of Gardiner and made our way back to I-90, where we would spend much of the next three days. I don't even know which photos to pick to end out this blog, so I will just show all of them. Yellowstone is a hard place to leave.

Perhaps the most scenic coffee stop I have ever made- Gardiner, Montana. 

      

Road Trip Diaries Day 4: Dinosaurs!!!!!

Hello! I have gotten quite behind on blogging for several reasons. 1) There have been so many awesome things to do that I just have no time to write about them. 2) I spent several days camping in Yellowstone. 3) Internet is very spotty across the middle of the USA anyhow.
So, now I am in Iowa City, but I am playing a little catch-up. Here's the story of Day 4 in Bozeman, Montana.

In A Nutshell: Overview of Day Four.

Route: Spokane, WA to Bozeman, MT.
Miles Traveled: 401 today. 1,507 total.
Hours in Car: 6 today, 26 total.
Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 2 today, 7 cups total. Cortney: 1 today, 2 total. Combined: 9 cups.
Food Highlight of the Day: MacKenzie River Pizza Company in Bozeman. It has a huge pizza variety, absolutely perfect, springy soft crusts, and lots of options for customizing. I got a pizza with barbecue sauce, mushrooms, red onions, and black beans. The waitress seemed very enthusiastic about serving a real life vegan.
Quote of the Day: Jillian (our longtime friend in Bozeman): "Well, I did my Master's thesis on beards." Yes, she actually did.

Dinosaurs, Cowboys, and Hipsters: Welcome to Bozeman! 

    Bozeman is surprisingly awesome. I had genuinely never known much about it, but it happens to be a very convenient stop between Spokane and Yellowstone National Park. As it turns out, our high school friend Jillian moved to Bozeman exactly a day before our arrival. Perfect!
    Montana used to be big time dinosaur country, and is now home to loads of skeletons and a fantastic museum for those among them that have been dug up. So, after finding our comfy little Super 8, Caitlin and I headed to the Museum of the Rockies.

This is Big Mike, a T-Rex. 

     This museum is particularly awesome because it is tied to Montana State University and a lot of ongoing research. The displays are wonderfully informative, and also include the names of recently published papers about the dinosaurs exhibited- so that after several hours of gawking at giant dino skeletons, nerds can go find those papers and keep indulging their curiosity even further.

This scale-model skull is 6 feet wide and 9 feet long. 

   In addition to many actual bones on display, there are a lot of reconstructed dinosaurs in the museum. Now, I always knew that some dinosaurs were big, but nothing puts it in perspective like standing next to a scale-model Triceratops. They were bigger than elephants. Put a Triceratops in a room, and nobody will miss it.
    The dinosaurs alone make Bozeman a far more interesting place than I expected, but it is actually a thriving, hip city- something I did not expect in Montana. The downtown area has a lot to offer (including the aforementioned amazing pizza), and on Thursday nights the main street is closed to car traffic for an evening of live music and freedom from no-container laws. There's a great mix of people that you probably wouldn't find together anywhere else- hipsters eat next to hardcore cattle ranchers and French tourists and all sorts of other people. I was thoroughly occupied with people watching during the entirety of my long wait to get seated at the very popular MacKenzie River Pizza Company.

    Now, the rest of Montana is largely open and yellow. We drove across 500 miles of it. But it is definitely worth a visit.