Champagne Velvet

Mostly from various side trips from Cody, I only put on about 400 miles during week four but got back into moving across the country with about 1,600 miles during week five bringing the total to 8,000 miles.  This was easily the most beautiful part of the country to drive through, rivaled only by the Blue Ridge Parkway which I was only on for an hour or so.  Unfortunately my crappy solder job broke so no in-car pictures until I can fix it (I just picked up supplies).

• Jackson, Wyoming, has a great center of town with a park surrounded by retail and office buildings.  For some reason they don’t want any apartments above the commercial so the service employees working in the restaurants and stores keep moving further and further from town… it’s a good thing it’s so beautiful and desirable or I’m not sure it would work.  The mountains surrounding the city don’t help the commute times either.  Roy and I did some great hiking through Grand Teton National Park and kayaking in Slide Lake while I was there.  Obviously most famous for the skiing at Jackson Hole, it’s no wonder people live and vacation here all year.

• I headed north from Jackson back through Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, seeing the west side of the figure-8 of Yellowstone this time, including Old Faithful and most of the thermal activity of the park.  Old Faithful is pretty much what I expected, which is to say I’m glad I went but I don’t need to go back anytime soon.  I couldn’t believe how many people waited in the rain to see it.

• I had heard early this year that Bozeman, Montana, was voted the best city in America to live so I had to see it.  It’s a beautiful area of the country, close to Yellowstone, mountains, rivers and I’m sure there’s more but I guess I’d have to stay a while to get reasons it’s number one.
• After Bozeman I headed to the place I’d heard the most incredible things about: Glacier National Park.  It exceeded all possible expectations.  Unlike Yellowstone in which you can easily see a lot from the car or hike to see more (and almost no people), Glacier is very much about hiking.  Going-to-the-Sun Road was amazing as expected but it gets much better once you leave the car.  Hidden Lake is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.  Chuck, a retired National Forest Service civil engineer, had driven an hour and a half plus the two hour hike just to eat lunch next to it which he does at least once a week.  A mountain goat sat next time while he ate and then walked down to the edge of the cliff for a better view (below, the goat is in the bottom right).  I got in one more hike to Ginnell Lake which was great but Hidden Lake definitely took the prize.

• Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, as I had read in Cadillac Desert, really is paradise.  Tourism is apparently the bulk of the economy but something tells me that will change as people move to where the water is in the next 50 years.  Unfortunately (or not) I spent most of the time here out on the lake so I don’t have any pictures of its beauty.  It was especially great to meet the Giesens who were great hosts and great people. 

From CdA I continued west (for the last time!) through Mt. Rainier National Park to Seattle where I started week six… I can’t believe how much I’ve seen and that I’m finally on the west coast!

At the beginning of week 4, I did this:

Besides the accident, Kirwin, an abandoned mining town, was a great trip.

Thanks to the great hospitality of the Van Deusens, I was able to recover quickly and comfortably in Cody, Wyoming, and I really felt like part of their family.  A few days later I was back on an ATV on Sheep Mountain. 

I highly recommend the Five Museums of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody.  For a town of less than 9,000 people, it’s extremely impressive.

Cody claims, and I’m not saying they’re wrong, to be the rodeo capital of the world so of course we had to go to the rodeo, which was a ton of fun.  They do it every night during the summer so if you’re in the area, definitely check it out.  I love the look on this horse’s face.

Nearing the end of the week, I was ready to finally try out fly fishing (’the thinking man’s fishing’).  What a great sport, especially with the number of trout and the beauty of Wyoming.

On my last day with the Van Deusens, we went to Yellowstone National Park, America’s first national park (first for any country?).  It’s not as beautiful as some of the other parks I’ve seen since, but there’s an endless amount of interesting things to do and see.  The bison and other wildlife, as well as about half of the world’s geothermal activity, are everywhere in the more than 2.2 million acres. 

From Yellowstone I went through Grand Teton National Park to start week five.

i’m off to vancouver.

Through the first 21 days I had driven 6,000 miles.  In week 3, I spent four nights with friends and three nights in hotels.

• The Pro Football Hall of Fame was pretty much what you would expect it to be: some interesting stuff but not all that exciting.  I think it’s good that they collect a lot of “artifacts” but I’ve never understood why someone would get excited to see the cleats somebody wore 25 years ago.
• Cleveland was much better than expected and Stuart gave me an excellent tour and was a fantastic host.  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was more interesting than I expected.  “The 500 Songs that Changed Rock” is an exhibit that I would love to see again.  Also, check out the beers from Great Lakes Brewery if you get the chance.

• Cedar Point.  Yes!  Everything I wanted it to be.  The new roller coaster they just opened this year, the Maverick, was practically perfect.  I rode it just before leaving the park to drive to Grand Rapids and it left me smiling for hours.  A bunch of other great rides as well.  Check out my video of the Top Thrill Dragster.
• Grand Rapids… it was great to see Jordan.  Also, Grand Haven State Park could be the best beach I’ve ever been to, shockingly.
• The Amish flea market in Shipshewana, Indiana, was huge and I picked up some cheap CDs but the highlight was definitely the soft pretzel.  The Amish sure know how to make a soft pretzel.
• I didn’t spend much time in Chicago because I’ve been there before and I feel like I’ll be back soon but I did check out some great Frank Lloyd Wright houses in both Hyde Park and Oak Park.  The home and studio tour in Oak Park was well worth the trip.  It’s the first house (in the US? anywhere? not sure) with a family room and closets!  Unfortunately they don’t allow photography inside.  This is the Robie House in Hyde Park:

• The next day was a long one driving through Minneapolis, Fargo, and Bismarck.  I obviously didn’t spend much time in any but I got to see some of the highlights of Minneapolis (no Mall of the Americas) and I got the sense that Fargo seems like a more interesting place than Bismarck despite Bismarck’s more interesting landscape.
• Deadwood, Sturgis, Rapid City and the Black Hills.  Very cool.  Didn’t want to gamble here but it looked nicer than I expected.  Rapid City seemed like it had a lot going on and would be much easier to live in than I expected of a South Dakota town (about 100,000 people). 
• The Badlands.  Wow.  By far the highlight of the trip to this point.  It’s almost like you’ve reached the edge of the earth.

• Mount Rushmore is exactly what I expected.  I had to stop there but it certainly wasn’t life changing.

I’m writing this from a campground with WiFi outside of Glacier National Park (incredible) and my laptop batter is about to die.  More to come…

Highlights from week 2 on the road:

• I stayed two nights in hotels and five nights with friends
• Onondaga Cave State Park was interesting.  It’s supposed to be the jewel of all the caves in Missouri (only Tennessee has more caves) and is fairly commercialized with paved walkways and lighting.  It made it much easier and faster but was sort of strange at the same time.
• Columbus, Indiana, was fantastic.  The city seems to have two official tourism slogans of “Different by Design” and “Unexpected. Unforgettable.”  Both are true.  With a population of under 40,000, it still ranks with the biggest cities in the country in terms of its architecture.  I. M. Pei.  Eliel and Eero Saarinen.  Robert A. M. Stern.   Cesar Pelli.   Richard Meier.   The list goes on.   My favorite was North Christian Church which was designed by Eero Saarinen (who also designed the St. Louis Arch).  Even (or especially) the public schools were incredible.

• Louisville, Kentucky, has three city parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted of Central Park and Prospect Park fame.  I spent parts of both of the days I was there in Cherokee Park, driving through or reading.  Beautiful.  Churchill Downs, after its $121 million (is there any money in horse racing? wow.), was much more impressive than I expected.  No racing going on so I only saw the outside.
• On the way from Louisville to Lexington, I stopped for the Labrot & Graham Distillery tour in Versailles (read: ver sales).  In operation since 1812, they claim to be the oldest whiskey distillery in the US and the smallest commercial distillery in the world.  Great tour.  Great gift shop.

• Special thanks to the Kesten family for their great hospitality in Lexington.  It seemed like a great city with the University of Kentucky at the center of everything.  Keeneland was jaw-dropping though.  I thought Churchill Downs was impressive until I saw Lexington’s racetrack.  I can’t wait to go back and see some races.
• Going to the Dayton Dragons minor league baseball game with Chris on the Fourth of July was great.  We got roped into doing an on-field contest called the Hula Hoop Hustle, which was fun and embarrassing.  A guy told us he would email us the pictures but I’m not holding my breath at this point.  The museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was really interesting also.  It includes an exhibit on the entire history of flight from blimps to the modern day.  There’s a few old Air Force Ones and a lot of experimental planes, built either just for research or those that never made it to full-scale production.  The most interesting experimental plane was one plane that both took off AND landed vertically by hooking itself onto a vertical platform with a wire going across.  It seems impossible to land that way but apparently the test pilot did it on the first try.  It seemed to imply that was the last try also.  The production planes were pretty incredible though.  The B-2 (Stealth Bomber) and SR-71 Blackbird were fabulous: smooth and powerful looking.  Since seeing a documentary on the F-22, I’ve always been a sucker for its vectoring exhaust.

• The second “Columbus” of my trip, Columbus, Ohio, was much more interesting than I expected.  It was great to see John and Cindy (also excellent hosts) and the Ohio State football facilities, which were recently massively renovated, were extremely impressive with an indoor practice field and hallways lined with the history of the program.  Very cool to see all those Heismans in the trophy room also.

Week 3 review coming soon…