Random Thoughts on a Road Trip Across the United States of America

I have figured out what is keeping the American economy in gear, quite literally. While most consumers seem to be cutting corners and trimming luxuries, there is a category of Americans who seem to be spending in a profligate manner, and arguably, they are keeping the rest of us afloat by way of their largesse. I am talking about the Harley-Driving Old Men of America, hereafter known as the HDOMA. These grizzled, oft-bearded folk seem to fall into a common demographic: 50 to 70 years old, and maybe a bit out of shape but with enough stamina to pilot a (may I venture) flaccid, massive motorbike across thousands of miles of blacktop. They all seem to shop from the same catalog, the ever-popular Hells Angels Boutique (okay I made that up,) and all of them seem to aspire to win either the Bruce Springsteen look-alike contest or the ZZ Top impersonator award. Apparently a red bandana wrapped around the skull works just as well as a helmet.

Maid of the Mist, Niagra Falls, Sunset

The culmination of this pursuit of the open road and the pseudo-outlaw experience terminates yearly in Sturgis, South Dakota, just up the road from a couple of our stops (west of Rapid City, east of Spearfish.) These dudes (often accompanied by their dude-ettes) have dropped tens of thousands of dollars on their cycles, usually Harleys with the random elegant Honda thrown into the mix, and every night go outside with the rags generously provided by the motels to clean their steeds and bring them back to their state of high polish. This is so they won’t be embarrassed by congregating with their brethren, all of whom dress the same, are outlaws in their own minds, and adhere to the identical value system. It’s a new, grand brotherhood; let’s call it the Heck’s Angels, because it is outlaw in form only, lacking any real substance or threatening Wild Ones physical menace. Andrea overheard a group of them talking about their grandchildren and wildlife sightings; I picked up on investment ideas and real estate gambits (none of which I will be following) from another group. The men do most, but certainly not all, of the talking, and conversation often drifts off in the direction of machinery, at which time the women folk usually fall silent but do not opt out.

It sounds an awfully lot like the boring nerd living next door who is checking off the boxes on his bucket list, and driving a big fat Harley to the Sturgis Rally is the be-all event that brings it all into focus.

That being said, these are polite, considerate people who (taken as a whole) are self-deprecating and amusing, and we’re happy to be sharing our accommodations and breakfast spots with these Nuevo-American self-styled gypsies. And man, are they ever pumping bucks into the tourist industry. I think most of these roadside motels would be two-thirds empty without them.

South Dakota Sky. Storm a-comin'

Another random thought: signage. It was moderately hilarious to traverse South Dakota on the Interstate and be assaulted by innumerable billboards. Many of them were on the ever-so-slightly crude side, and their main selling tactic seemed to be based on endless repetition (as previously discussed in another posting.) I realized what was going on: South Dakota is still rooted in the 1950’s. At that time, a huge and glaring billboard served the function that is now filled by signs illuminated by thousands of watts of electricity. Wall Drugs, or an out-of-the-way gambling town like Deadwood, make up for the lack of wattage with enormous signs that employ every graphic technique possible to punch up the message. There’s something to be said for it. It’s ecologically positive. Yet it is hard to imagine Las Vegas having the same impact with a series of fake-3D, day-glo billboards in place of the Strip.

The American Diet as exemplified by the ‘Continental’ Breakfast. First of all, what continent does this breakfast come from exactly? Antarctica, perhaps? Actually, that’s an insult to penguins. If you have any question about why there is an obesity epidemic in our fair country, I invite you to spy on us as we visit the breakfast provided gratis by most motels along our byways. First, I defy you to find the item free of sugar. OK, maybe the white bread. Most likely, not. All the cereals have sugar added. The ‘yogurt’, using the term loosely, seems to lack the defining element, namely acidophilus, yet gobs of sugar have been added to make sure to overcome any bitterness just in case some beneficial bacteria make it into the final product. Something as simple as oatmeal, which really does not need much help to be nutritious and delicious, is enhanced with no end of flavorings and, you betcha, more sugar. There’s always the fresh waffles, upon which one can heap fake-o maple syrup plus new and improved butter-like substance replete with mono- and di-glycerides; if you are lucky they might provide doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, biscuits and fat glop (oops, I mean gravy,) things shaped like bagels in flavors I never thought possible, and muffins that are just a thin excuse for combining copious amounts of fat and sugar in ever more unique configurations. It is a miracle to find anything without dozens or hundreds of carb calories, and the protein sources, when available, are polluted with nitrates or (in the case of the peanut butter) those ubiquitous and ever-delicious mono- and di-glycerides. Yum Yum Yum. This is just breakfast. Now throw in the standard fast-food lunch and by the time you hit dinner you’ve consumed enough calories for three normal people. That is why we have triple-wide Americans; they eat for three.

The colonization of America. There are two companies that have taken the bull by the horns and have built out their infrastructure to reach deeply into the heart of nearly every city that merits a dot on the map of the United States. We all know about WalMart; the bigger surprise is to find a Walgreen’s right in the center of most towns that have a crossroads that appears on your regional map. Competitors like Target, CVS, Rite-Aid, Sears, Big K-Mart and others are centuries behind.

The Phone Network. 3G is a resource that is very unevenly distributed. Maybe they focus their energies on the place where the most users are; maybe it is a random pattern determined by how easily they can put up new cell phone towers. Most of Wyoming, one of the most sparsely populated places in the nation, has decent-to-great 3G service on the ATT network. Much of rural Arkansas and Tennessee, with far more constituents, has zero to meager coverage. Go figure. Maybe them southern folk don’t use their iPhone anywhere near enough. They should teach this in schools. Or at home, where much of the learnin’ takes place now, for better or more likely for worse.

Buffalo Bill Cody. Actually William Cody, but you know how the media is. You think of him perhaps as a Wild West showman, which he was, but his influence was far greater. We drove next to the Shoshone River on the way from Cody to Yellowstone. This powerful, surging stream ran smack into the Buffalo Bill Dam. Turns out that Bill Cody owned boodles of land in the area, including that which eventually made up the reservoir behind the dam. When it was completed in 1910 it was the tallest in the world at 325 feet. In recent times they’ve added another 25 feet to it; even if it no longer breaks any records, the surging river turns into an immense lake that provides beverages and irrigation to a vast area. Buffalo Bill was a promoter and developer, and Wyoming owes much of its current viability to him.

The Mississippi in Wisconsin

Rivers are the defining element of the West, and perhaps of the entire United States. Even though we now have interstate highways and heavy-duty railroad systems to shoulder the burden of transport and distribution, the original network of commerce ran along the rivers, and it has shaped both the development of cities and the trajectories of the many routes interconnecting our myriad metropoli. Most of the two-lanes closely trace the path of a river. Travel from Missoula to Lewiston, Idaho along the Clearwater River, and watch it grow from a glorified creek to a broad, vast flow that disgorges from the heart of the mountains. We traced the footsteps of Lewis and Clark for much of our return to the West, except since we were in a car we left no footprints. They travelled from river to river, and got real lucky with the Clearwater. Turns out it runs more or less unobstructed to the Snake, and then further, without much drama, into the Columbia, which led them to their ultimate goal of reaching the Pacific. Jetskis, with their shallow draft, would have worked great for them; too bad we have a time displacement of over 100 years before their deployment. Where would they refuel?

It irks me mightily that a state like Wyoming, with about 12 people living in it, is given equal representation in the United States Senate as, say, California, with about 12,000 billion people in it. What’s up with that? I say, move to Wyoming, where your vote counts about the same as 10,000 folks in California or New York! Except you’ll have to eat elk burgers every night for the rest of your life. Alternated with bison burger. And steak.

(the following was written before the drive home:)

OK, folks. That about wraps it up. I am sure that since we still have a mere 800 or so miles to cover in the next two days I will find another topic or two to pontificate about. Or perhaps I will be so consumed by the mere task of driving that I will be driven into mute silence (aren’t they the same thing?) Either way, it has been a gas to be blogging, and I take it that we’ve provided at least a modicum of entertainment, spiked with the occasional insight, along the way. If that is not so, please conceal the truth from me, because my fragile ego may not be ready for the shock. At least until I’ve been back in Portland for a week. After which - - we head out on the road for California! Go figure. Some people never learn.

Yellowstone - 31 years later

Upper Falls, Yellowstone

Today found us traveling through much of Yellowstone Park, a place we had visited only one other time, quite long ago, when I was pregnant with Rosie. On that visit, which we did in our little red Fiat 128 Spyder, I almost fainted at the site of Old Faithful after eating too quickly, sampling a beer, and being at high altitude. This time I didn't faint, but it was unrelentingly sunny and the altitude still was high. Yellowstone is just a stunning and unbelievable place. The scale on which it is fabricated is so huge that it is hard to comprehend. You drive for miles and miles around a caldera that blew up not all that long ago, only 600,000 thousand years, and it still seems like the ground below is angry and ready to spew again. The smell of sulfur is strong in many places; fumaroles are steaming, mud ponds are bubbling, and boiling water is oozing out of rocks. It is wild. The alpine meadows go on for as far as you can see and evidence of a huge forest fire, that happened in 1988, is apparent in almost every corner of the park. In many ways it does not detract from the beauty. Stark, blackened tree trunks look quite elegant against the vast backdrops of rock walls and pine forests, and in many areas the burned out forest has re-seeded itself with thousands of young and hopeful pines. Wildflowers carpet the hillsides. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River has to be one of the most dramatic and impressive sights a person could ever see, and this followed a run-up from Sheridan, Wyoming which we did on US Route 14. Our track took us via the Bighorn Mountains to to the east entrance to Yellowstone. Our mouths were agape as we carefully maneuvered the trusty Versa up the curving road that literally marched us through every geological period via this incredible engineering job on multiple road cuts.

Mammoth Hot Springs, Upper Terrace Drive, Yellowstone

Now that our road trip is drawing to a close, after almost a full month, and close to 9,000 miles, I have to think about how it has felt.  There were many days when the driving seemed way too much and I wondered what we were thinking, but we have gotten to see so many things, many of them unexpected and therefore even more special than what we thought we knew or expected. This last stretch along the banks of the Mississippi; the Devils Tower; Spearfish Canyon and through the heart of Wyoming today; all are places we could never have seen or experienced without putting in those sometimes hard and boring miles to get there.

It has been fun to briefly and randomly encounter other people along the way. Sometimes in restaurants, or at overlooks. These are mini-visits into another person's life and then you get to jump back into your car, and drive away and never see them again. It is another form of sight seeing.
      
Andrea

  

Murdo He Wrote

Badlands Viewpoint

Murdo Motel Lobby Decorations

This morning we find ourselves in Spearfish, South Dakota, poised to end our long sojourn through this state that began not long after leaving Minneapolis. South Dakota is a state of many wonders, most of which are compressed into its western half. The eastern side is very plain, which is probably why they call it the Plains, but once you cross the Missouri River in Oacoma (right now swollen to high flood stage,) the land turns rolling, and after a bit some rock outcroppings peak their heads up. We stopped in Murdo, which is barely even a town; the highlight of the night was an intense, blustery thunderstorm that dumped torrents of rain accompanied by hail and powerful lightning. The motel's metal roof sounded like an entire Steel Band gone berserk, and the light show was second to none. We hit the interstate in the morning. After a short sprint we turned off the highway and headed south towards the aptly named Interior. This brings you into the Badlands National Park, where Andrea's nifty (senior) lifetime pass saved us a quick $15 in admission fees. The Badlands are a wall of erosion; the high plain which we had been crossing falls away to a lower plain and grassland; all along the edge of this geological event are 'sharps' and 'brules,' fantastic pointed and rounded structures with complex shapes carved along their edges and bases that suggest the decorations of a fancy cathedral. We partook in many of the overlooks while cruising the Badlands Loop Road, culminating in the Panoramic viewpoint, where the formations stretched for many miles and faded into the hazy distance. The Sage Creek Rim Road offered a couple of additional delights; after banging down five miles of gravel and dirt surface (nicely maintained and not particularly challenging) we ended up at the Prairie Dog Park, where the little critters periodically poked their heads out of their burrows, stood up on their back legs, surveyed the scene, and then plopped back down below the surface. There were quite a few of them and they chattered back and forth. A bit further down the road, free range bison were hanging out, and a couple of them crossed right in front of us, offering some decent photo opportunities.

Prairie Dog Crossing

We reversed course and headed out to Wall, SD and the eponymous 'drug store' of the same name. If you've ever driven I-90 in either direction, you are assaulted by a continuous series of billboards touting the wonders of Wall Drug. These include free ice water (big wow) and five-cent coffee, but what you have here is basically a huge gift shop and café, filled with an overwhelming variety of fundamentally useless things: geodes and polished rocks, ugly jewelry, books (mostly about the Plains and the West,) an immense selection of Minnetonka Mocassins (now made in the Dominican Republic,) cowboy boots and western wear, and of course a huge selection of gift shop items, including your very own Sturgis shot glass for just $6.95. I don't think a single object in the entire store was made in the United States. The look is Old West; the prices are high; the bathrooms are inadequate; the signs are garish. This proves that just because a company puts 2,000 billboards next to the highway, this is no guarantee of quality. Five minutes was enough. I do respect their promotional abilities, however; it is hard to go by without feeling you've missed something important. You haven't.

George in Profile

The far western sector of South Dakota holds some treasures. Least among them, but nonetheless of interest, is Mount Rushmore, followed closely by the Crazy Horse Memorial. The highway up to Mount Rushmore offers some excellent viewing simply by pulling over at the unmarked but obvious viewpoint; what is not so obvious is that although there is no admission fee for the memorial, there is a "concession fee" (read: parking shakedown)  of $11, a fact they keep from you until you are at the toll booth. However if you simply tell them you're not interested, you can exit for free. Thanks! To my way of thinking this epitomizes all that is wrong with American Capitalism and the free market; here you have a striking piece of national heritage that is arguably worth a close-up look, but thanks to privatization, someone's fat palm is out, demanding to be greased. This is a function that could easily be run by the Government, but that would deny someone the ability to insert a tier of profit into the scheme. Reminds me of health care; all that privatization has done nothing to improve anybody's health, but has made many CEOs wealthy specifically by denying services. Oh well. We did continue down the road and got the profile view of the father of our country, big George. Impressive. The next attraction was one we knew nothing about until Andrea read a postcard at one of our gas stops. It was the Iron Mountain Road and Pigtail Bridges. Apparently a Senator from South Dakota named Peter Norbeck designed a series of tunnels, blasted out of solid granite, that perfectly frame Mount Rushmore in all its patriotic glory. Then and only then did he commission a road designer to connect them up. This involved a remarkable feat of engineering called the Pigtail Bridges, where the road quite literally folds back upon itself several times while climbing up and down the side of Iron Mountain. It is slow going, but loads of fun. When we got to the top there was a rally of Shelby Cobra owners. For those not in the know, this is a famous, limited-production American sports car built around 1965 (only 17 of the original 427's were ever made, and they are all either in museums or in private collections, being worth about $300k.) These are 'kit' cars, where you buy a fiberglass body and assemble the various running gear from stock Ford parts. Even so, you can drop between 50K and 100K putting one together. Seeing more than a dozen of them in one spot was impressive. The road is called the Iron Mountain Road, part of the Peter Norbeck scenic byway. Norbeck was quite a character, born in the basement of a sod house on the prairie. He became a Senator despite his complete lack of oratorial skill, and was instrumental in preserving the best parts of South Dakota as parks and preserves. If it's a slow day, look him up on Wikipedia.

Wall Drug

As for Crazy Horse, the carving is again quite visible from a distance as you drive up. Again, an effort is made to conceal the actual charge of admission: $10 per person, or $27 for a car. No thanks. Maybe we will come back when it is finished, if it is in our lifetime. The final sculpture will have Crazy Horse on his steed, pointing to the horizon, with hair flowing behind him. Right now it is another face much like on Rushmore. I suppose the entry fee is more justifiable because this is a work in progress and is privately funded, including from admissions. I just was not feeling the love.

Spearfish Canyon. Does not do it justice

The Gash

Just a few more notes: we drove the length of Spearfish Canyon (another scenic byway) into Deadwood and Lead. This canyon is one of the most impressive sights of our whole trip, yet receives not that much advance hype in all the literature. Slighty rotten, tan-toned cliffs and pinnacles tower over the Spearfish River, which rushes and bubbles along but looks far too diminutive to have done all the carving that surrounds you. The Canyon is unique because, although there are quite a few exposed rock formations, the entire canyon is covered with pine forest, even at the higher points, where the trees are more like an accent than a carpet. This road was anything but crowded. Deadwood is a former mining town which has reinvented itself as a center for casino gambling. Even with this noble new purpose, the town is low key, and the largest casino would barely be noticed in a small city in Nevada. It's a historic Old West city and is loaded with buildings more than 100 years old. But for us it was a drive-through. We proceeded on to its sister city, Lead. The road climbs a hill into the center of town; on the right side is a sheer cliff with a fence. At one place there's a "free observation deck;" this turned out to put you right at the edge of an immense open pit mine, the Homestake, which yielded gold for decades but finally shut down in the '60s. The name came about because it was said that a man could earn enough to buy a home. Get rich quick! This is a cavernous gash in the ground, and the spoils of mining have been deposited in the hills that surround it. The scale is hard to comprehend. After this mind-boggling view the road to Spearfish was strictly ordinary, as is the town. It's a good place for a motel and solid if uninspiring food. It is also the jumping off point for our next leg, through Devil's Tower (think 'Close Encounters') and Cody, Wyoming. At about 350 to 400 miles a day, we're making our way slowly home. Today the mighty Versa will cross 8,000 miles of driving, so we're compressing nearly a year of normal driving into less than a month, and over a week of that time was spent sitting still with various friends. It will feel good to step out of the car for the last time and turn it back to Mr. Hertz, but still, it has been a pleasure.

farms and flowers, two lane driving

Today we drove from Madison, WI to St.Paul, Minnosota --- which I always like to pronounce as:  Mee-ne-so-ta, with the emphasis on the MEE.  JD and I realized that, while we lived in Madison for a number of years, we never traveled that far afield in Wisconsin. He did a bit of touring with his band, The Tayles, but I barely ventured outside of a square mile or two from the campus.  You know how it is when you are an impoverished college student or musician . . . not much mobility. So today we got to travel through Wisconsin as much as, or in fact much more then we ever did all those years ago.

Before I move on from Madison, though . . . it was pretty mind-blowing to return to that place where so much happened for us. After 42 years.  And it looked so different, yet at once so much the same. A veritable mountain of memories were clicking off in my brain . . . starting with the names of the streets and culminating in the stirring up of old feelings. It might have been too much to bear, but it was tempered, as much of this trip has been, by the searing heat.  We both feel slightly drugged all the time. Between the road numbness and the discomfort of the sweltering atmosphere, our reactions are a bit dumbed down. In this case --- revisiting that time in my life ---- dumbing down had an upside. It softened the recall of youthful angst that characterized much of the college years.

The Wisconsin farmland was lovely. The profusion of wild flowers was downright amazing. It is hard to capture the blanket-like floral expanses that we saw by the roadside. The farms were so different from the beleaguered establishments we passed by in upstate New York.  People had nice-looking spreads that were well maintained. We tried to drop in on the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff that is set in this countryside around Taliesin near Spring Green, Wisconsin, but we didn't have time for a minimum of two hours of touring, so that was a bit unsatisfying. We continued on, following Wisconsin's Great River Road, first along  the course of the Wisconsin River and then north. following the Mississippi, up to the Twin Cities. We did all two-lane driving today. The roads were wonderful, winding through hilly countryside with spectacular views of the river, once from a bluff high over the water, in Alma (thanks to JD's sister Susan!) We had a couple of bald eagle sightings and found out later that there is a preserve for them near where we were driving. I did miss our R32 a few times, since the passing power of the Versa is not too impressive and its road stability is somewhat lacking, but considering its other virtues ---  economy and a quiet ride ---- it held its own. It requires a bit more thinking ahead (read: time to accelerate) and a bit more muscle on the wheel to hold it steady at high speeds, but one could say that is all part of the challenge of driving.

Andrea

Sedimental Journey

Today we got a shockingly early start on our way out of Detroit, thanks to United Airlines. They managed to mangle our daughter Sophie’s flights so badly last night that it would likely have resulted in an overnight stay in the Denver airport (no hotel as compensation, because it was ‘weather related’ and not ‘mechanical problem.’) So she chose instead to come back to Sarah Rose’s for one more night that ended abruptly with multiple alarms sounding off at 4:20AM. This greased the way for a rapid reload of the thus far trustworthy Versa (not wise to leave stuff in the car in Detroit as a general practice) and we headed out to Detroit Wayne Airport by 4:45. After dropping Sophie off, there was little point in retracing the 22 miles from the airport back to Rosie’s house, so we continued on in light fog towards Chicago and a brief rendezvous with Andrea’s second cousin Marsha.

We shared a snack at XOCO, a torta, coffee and pastry bar started by Rick Bayless, who now has three establishments including the famous Frontera Grill on the corner of Illinois and Clark streets in the North River area of downtown Chicago. Other than a predilection for high concentrations of salt, the food was quite delicious. After a quick four-sided perusal of Millenium Park and the infamous Bean (all by car thanks to the 'dome of heat' they talk about here on the weather) we headed out to Lake Shore Drive and turned north. The combination of waves of substantial apartment buildings on one side of the drive, and the seemingly endless expanse of lake and sandy beaches on the other stretched on almost endlessly. Breaking away from the shore, we turned north, slid past elegant Evanston mansions, and got in our hour in Milwaukee (including a drive-by of their art museum, with striking nautical architecture that suggests either a sailing ship, a whale, or a bit of both,) and a quick pass through their lake front, which was equalled Chicago's in loveliness. Lunch was at a merely OK deli on the north side of Milwaukee. Since as usual we needed to cover several hundreds of miles, our visits to these two culture-rich cities (especially Chicago) were the height of superficiality. But such are the trade-offs in an enormous and ambitious nation-spanning round trip. Our next destination was Madison, Wisconsin, and we pulled in on a sultry afternoon with the temperature hovering around 95 degrees and the humidity rising. I need not dwell upon the joy Andrea experienced from the weather.

Der Rathskeller

A Piece of Old Madison

Madison holds particular significance for the two of us, since it is where we met, and also where we got married nearly 42 years ago. This was our first visit back in all those decades, and it was eye opening; actually, more like shocking. We retraced the route to our haunts, including apartments and houses we had lived in, and tried to figure out where all the old stores and restaurants had gone. Remarkably, the apartment we first lived in, and the house where Andrea was living when we met are both still standing, but that is the exception in this dynamic city. A large part of Madison has been swallowed up and covered with an enormous array of substantial university buildings, in nearly every direction. Areas that used to be filled with old houses now sport multi-story rental apartments, and it seems that every specialty now deserves its own edifice. It was almost humorous to see some of the original modest buildings, which now seem to be kept around to lend an air of authenticity and to suggest a link to the long history of the school. Walking around the city made me feel like an old dog going to mark his usual spots, except all the hydrants had been removed.

Lake Mendota
 from the Rathskeller Patio

It was humbling to think of all the changes that have taken place. When you leave a place and don’t return for quite some time, your memories are freeze-dried and suspended in time. It was almost like stepping out of a time machine, into a world that is vaguely familiar yet changed in almost every respect. Looking at all the young faces made me think that we had been completely and very effectively replaced. And there was nothing to say that a current student’s experience of the University, in all its glorious hugeness, and of the city with all its manifold updates, is any less valid than our good old memories. A comforting piece of continuity could be found in Der Rathskeller, part of the student union, that’s a pseudo beer hall in the German tradition. It remains dark and has the same heavy varnished wooden chairs that were there decades ago. The outdoor patio is a delightful place to sit and eat lunch, and although it has been enhanced a bit with an outdoor grill and a set of beer taps, the scene was a replay of our time there. In fact the entire student union was largely the same as we had left it, which may or may not be a good thing, but we liked it. Dinner was at Gino’s Pizza, which was established in 1964, just a few years before we came upon the scene. We went there not because of critical acclaim, but rather because it is the last restaurant remaining from our times in Madison. The pizza was . . .well, it was the same old pizza that we ate back then; the flavors were bright, the tomato sauce snappy, the green peppers crisp, and the sausage redolent with herbs and spices. But I think what I was really savoring was the connection to the same experience, in the same milieu, across the span of time.

Trying on Shoes, Ann Arbor

House Made Bread
Zingerman's Deli, Ann Arbor

In a Tavern, Ann Arbor

One final thought about universities. We have just visited both Madison and Ann Arbor, the home of University of Michigan. In both cases we were blown away by the immensity of these teaching establishments, in the size and scope of the buildings they occupy, in the vast array of specialty subects they cover, and the sheer expanse of the territory they fill. Our higher education institutions are impressive indeed, and they’ve obviously become a huge business. But I have to wonder about the contrast with the sometimes shoddy, oft-neglected schools that are supposed to prepare students for this upper tier of instruction. It would seem that without improvement in ‘lower education,’ the fate of higher education will be to teach the literate classes of other nations (in addition to the elite sector of our society.) While this is a noble enterprise, it does little to advance the idea of education for all, nor the concept that the key to improvement of a society is to educate and elevate its people. I found myself wondering if what I was seeing was simply the result of the Student Loan Program - - making easy money available for higher education, and fostering the rampant growth. Too bad some of that money could not find its way to the lower grades.

Hot town, summer in the city

The brunch spread

We are here in Detroit --- a strangely bucolic experience, considering we all think of Detroit as an inner-city urban blight. In the neighborhood where Rosie and JR live, it is quite quiet and peaceful and there is a lot of greenery and open space. A certain number of houses have been taken down, leaving many open lots that are grown over in the summer months with much greenery and in some cases, gardens. R & JR have put in a really impressive veggie garden in their back yard. Unlike her parents, Rosie seems to have the proverbial green thumb. They have a bounty of stuff growing out there. We are enjoying a rare gathering of part of our tiny tribe. My brother and his family are here and Sophie flew in, too. Today is the "wedding" bbq in the backyard.

Part of the Garden

So our trip has bogged down for a few days while we do the family thing, but then the road will be calling us back. On Tuesday we head west,  first to Madison (returning for the first time, since we met and married there 42 years ago), on to Minneapolis (called "Minnie" by Sophie, who visits there frequently for business), and then to the Badlands -- one of the raison d'etre of this trip. I just have to vent a bit about the f------- weather back here. Explains a lot about why once we moved to California, we never returned to the midwest or the east. It is HOT. Not to mention it is HUMID. We are big babies and complain about it all the time. Choosing summer to do this trip was perhaps not the wisest decision for us. Bring on the springs, bring on the falls, and even bring on the winters.... but keep those damn summers with the sunshine and the sweat. I would be happy to never have to endure another one here.

     Andrea

Our Trail of Two Cities

One way you can tell that you’ve been on the road for a while: the names of cities start repeating themselves. Our day started in Portland, Maine and we started this trip in Portland, Oregon. We sailed across Lake Champlain from Burlington, Vermont, but also have visited Burlington, North Carolina. And so it goes. Maybe there’s just a shortage of good city names, but we’ve already been through two Berlins, and the list expands daily. So a repetition of city names is as predictable as the recurring carpet of big-box and national-chain stores ringing every metropolis.

Portland was a refreshing stop along the way, but we ditched our plan to spend two days there. For one thing, we discovered the worst motel we’ve stayed in for years, the Howard Johnson. Trouble should have suggested itself right at check-in, where we learned that although we were in a non-smoking wing, smoking was indeed allowed in the lobby and in many of the rooms. That would not have surprised us had we noted the numerous semi tractors (the front part of trucks) that built up over the evening in the parking lot. Oh great. A truckers’ hotel! How bad was it? The mediocrity of this place can best be exemplified by the quality of the paper cups. Once you put something into one, you had about one minute to drink it; after this time your beverage began to slowly seep out through the seams! It was my fondest desire to fill a couple of these up and leave them on the check-in counter, but this potential prank remained merely a vengeful fantasy. Suffice it to say that HoJo hotels have a prominent place, right at the top, of the “No Stay” list.

We did have a lovely dining experience that evening in the old port. The city is a very industrial, working port with a lot of energy expended on the export of seafood. There also appear to be a smattering of hi-tech startup companies, and with the presence of a new and quite immense Whole Foods and a thoroughly modern Trader Joe’s, the condo boom surely is not far off. Vintage brick buildings and warehouses have been repurposed into attractive shops, breweries, restaurants and offices, and some of the wharfs have been reimagined as the bases for condos that jut into the harbor. J’s Oysters, located on a pier, delivered a great meal at a very reasonable price, starting with six oysters for $6.75. These, we learned, came from Chesapeake Bay, the reason being that Maine oysters are quite small, and are not what most people expect to see on their plate. They were incredibly fresh (apparently they go through over 1,000 of these a day.) I indulged in a steamed lobster dinner, which was described as “soft shell.” That meant something to me, having wrestled to separate the meat of Andrea’s lobster the previous night in Gloucester from the rock-hard shell. This must have something to do with the molting cycle; at any rate, rest assured that soft shell is the way to go. This also came with a passel of steamed clams that were outstanding and stole the show from the lobster. We dined outside under a canopy, and had an unbroken view of the harbor lights and a nearby floating restaurant. Portland ME seems like a city in development (Hampton Inns is putting up a substantial hotel right near the port, and I am sure more will follow.)

Andrea had dropped the Rochester, NY stay out of our trip and decided to substitute Lake Placid instead. This turned out to be a stroke of genius; after a rather jostling start on I-95 and a series of toll booths, we ended up on I-89 and streaked through the glorious emptiness and vastness of the New Hampshire and Vermont countryside, populated mostly by trees. The Green Mountains loomed up along the way, and the views migrated from merely lovely to spectacular as we sprinted towards Burlington. This town is dominated by the University of Vermont, as evidenced by a half dozen pizza places on the main drag, but we headed right to the Lake Champlain Ferry. After a wait of about 45 minutes (we sipped on a beer and a strange Bloody Mary with dehydrated garlic specks in it,) the  modest-sized, open-deck ferry pulled in and unloaded. We drove on and the boat departed, about half full. When we boarded the weather was muggy, sunny and hot, but storm clouds loomed over the lake; by the midpoint it started to rain lightly, and then gained intensity. We saw lightning strikes in the distance over the New York mountains, and had to retreat to our car for the latter half of the cruise. About an hour later our car was disgorged into the foothills of the Adirondacks.

What followed was a shockingly scenic drive that we had not anticipated. The route followed the Ausable River (originally known as the Au Sable.) It twists and flows across rocky terrain, resulting in spectacular formations (Ausable Gorge,) numerous falls and scenic vistas at every turn. It is apparently quite an angler’s paradise as well. I found myself pulling over every few miles for another photo, some of which are shown here. Keeseville is the home of the Adirondack Architectural Heritage group, and they are housed in a historic building surrounded by many others. The river runs right through the town and produces some spectacular rapids. The Hollywood Theater exemplifies the “frozen in time” look of the place. It’s right off the NY Thruway, so drop in if you are ever flying through. The pleasure of this drive only increased as we passed through Wilmington and beneath Whiteface Mountain, a substantial mountain with multiple ski runs. This town is full of resorts and quasi-rustic motels that seemed quite well maintained; if I return to this area I would likely avail myself of their attractions. The only strange thing about the route is the near-complete lack of any place to stop and look over the river and its environs. This speaks to a complete lack of imagination on the part of New York Lake Placid itself seems more like an Alpine village than a piece of Americana. We walked along the edge of Mirror Lake and then up and down most of the main drag, lined with restaurants and shops. We even bought a tchotchke (photo to follow.) Dinner was at Lake Placid Pub and Brewery, a funky establishment on a side street. The food and brew were both excellent, which can not always be said about pubs, especially when it comes to the dining fare.

What was not so nice were the screaming kids. This lead me to think about their behavior; I reached the conclusion that the youngsters were merely imitating their elders. Bring a kid into a restaurant with chaotic noise and music pounding away, and their inclination will be to do what most of us do, which is to raise our voices to be heard. I decided that it is a bit sadistic to bring a child into this setting and then expect them to ‘behave.’ Given that the service was languid, the experience was drawn out, and until the food arrived and little mouths were stuffed, the shrieks and screams were periodically emitted. Fortunately the feeding calmed them down; you’d think we’d hate the place, but the opposite is true. And this is the best beer I’ve had since leaving “the real” Portland!