Day 10 and 11- Nevada, Tahoe, and Crossing the Border...

Sorry for the delay folks! We stayed in our new fave regional hotel chain in Elko, Nevada (The Shilo Inn... we stayed at one in Twin Falls the night prior and it was _really_ nice and not overpriced). The town had a funny smell- I thought it smelled like pesticides but James thought it smelled like chocolate. We got ready-to-eat ribs at the grocery store, along with a side of instant mashed potatoes and a bag salad. We had a nice time chowing down back at the hotel (which thankfully had a microwave so we could prepare this delectable meal). Next morning we were up with the sun and had breakfast at the nearby greasy spoon diner, which was probably the best breakfast we'd had the whole trip, aside from Mama and Dean's eggs and beef bacon from the farmer's market of course, and also aside from the Perkins the day before in Twin Falls... the Shilo Inns give you a breakfast voucher to use at a local restaurant, which is super awesome.

We drove the four hours to Lake Tahoe- on the California side- to stay in my cousin Steve's condo in Squaw Valley. And now the moment you've all been waiting for... the big border crossing into California...!!!

The video doesn't give it any justice... Tahoe was absolutely GORGEOUS but we were so exhausted we just stayed in all night and watched tv and enjoyed the beautiful view and scenery (sorry, no photos! We were sooo tired!). We had some fantastic pizza in the village and watched several episodes of House and Law and Order until we fell asleep.

Squaw Valley hosted the 1960 winter Olympics so there is a whole village there still and cable cars to the top. In the morning, James hiked up the mountain to the terminal of the first ski lift (which was WAY up there), while I took a luxurious bath and got in my last TV-watching for a while. We have no tv anymore- we left it in MD with Bryan to donate to his summer camp.

After another great breakfast (I had the best biscuits and gravy of my life and James really enjoyed a huge plate of tasty huevos rancheros at this place called Rosie's Cafe in Tahoe City), James dropped off his last post cards to Chase and Daisy (daughters of friends on either coast who he'd been sending cards to in every state on our way across), and we hit the road for Oakland...

Day 9: Craters of the Moon National Park

Idaho. State of the Potato. But did you know it's also the home of an ancient volcano? Is it just a coincidence that the words potato and volcano almost rhyme? Or that Idaho, volcano, and potato all have three syllables and end with the letter O? We submit that these are not coincidental circumstances... they are a sign of destiny and proof of divine creation.

The same geothermal activity that makes Yellowstone's geysers and other volcanic features (officially called a "caldera" - science-geek lingo for BIG UNDERGROUND VOLCANO THAT'S GONNA BLOW-UP THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT) was active 8 to 10 million years ago in Idaho where a treacherous landscape of lava rock remains today at Craters of the Moon National Park. Giant tubes of cooled lava left behind caves, a few of which we got to explore. Amazingly, even with the heat above ground, a few caves were coated in ice. We had a blast (pardon the pun) exploring the volcanic remnants...

Days 7 & 8 - Yellowstone, Tetons, and Potatoes

Maybe we missed something, but for all the Old West imagery you get when you hear about places like Billings, Montana, it wasn't exactly what we'd expected. We were really there to try some Montana trout fishing with our fly rods, but hadn't realized that the snow melt would make the water levels too high. The whitewater rafting guides weren't running either (not until the weekend), so we hit the road and headed South towards Yellowstone, only to find out that the entrance to the park we'd hoped to take through Red Lodge was closed because of SNOW!!!

We took a really beautiful detour through the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway (known for having been the route Chief Joseph took through the park to escape the US Cavalry and flee to Canada). It was very rough terrain, the first real mountainous roadway we came to. The road signs were quite entertaining...



We came to the small mountain town of Cooke City. Excepting the gas station and snow mobile rental place, the businesses had only started to reopen after being snowed in all winter. The guy at the general store told us he had only reopened his shop the previous week. We bought a few chocolates and some beef jerky, and hit the (dirt) road. And what a mess the road was- the dirt had been washing out from the snow melt, and there was a bit of construction to get it back inorder before the season really kicks in. Entering the park, we found that there were only two campgrounds open, first come first served, so we hit the ground running, with the intention of getting registered as soon as we could... There were LOTS of things along the way to the campground though... Bison, elk, bighorn sheep, mammoth hot springs, the visitor's center, more elk, more bison, more bison...

We finally got to the campground where we had to wait in LINE to get registered for a site!!! There were 250 sites, and it was probably 80% filled by the time we got there at 8pm. We weren't too thrilled when we found out that the site they assigned us was already taken, but we got it all fixed. With so many people there I had expected some to be obnoxious, drunk, and loud, but amazingly, it was relatively quiet and peaceful!!! The folks who ran the campground really laid down the law when you first came in, so that may have had something to do with it.

In the morning, we headed to Old Faithful, which was really very neat. We had some time to kill, so we headed over to get some coffee and munchies at the cafe, where Jess spent some time trying to help an older gentleman chase a squirrel out of the great hall of the lodge (to no avail). The geyser started right on time, and we had just enough battery power in the camera to take a photo while the water sprinkled on our faces.

We finished our drive through the park, seeing some familiar faces...

Then headed down through the Tetons and Jackson Hole, stopping for lunch at Nora's Fish Creek Inn, where we'd had a great dinner our last time out here in August after the Association of NAture Center Administrator's conference at Teton Science Schools. Nora's is in Wilson, just outside of Jackson Hole at the base of the Teton Pass. Last time we were there we had some AMAZING trout for dinner, and this time around our lunch proved just as good (and relatively cheap too).

After driving through the Pass, and passing through VICTOR, Idaho (shout-out to Bryan "Hey Victor!" Gomes) , we sauntered our way to Twin Falls. Along the way we stopped at the Idaho Potato Museum, where we learned the history of Potatoes and why Idaho is a god place to grow them (thanks to the Snake River, which starts in Yellowstone and ends in the Columbia River in Washington!)...

WOOOO!!!!


Today (day 9) we're heading to Craters of the Moon National Park outside of Twin Falls Idaho, before heading down to breeze through Nevada for our last day of the big trip...

Days 5 and 6- South Dakota Territory

See six things you didn’t know about South Dakota http://www.blacktable.com/schulte040331.htm

We left Sioux Falls early in search of some breakfast and ended up driving 60 miles to Mitchell, home of the Corn Palace. We had a greasy brunch at the Country Kitchen that made James a little crabby because he ordered a tasty-looking salad and they brought him iceberg lettuce with bacon on top and two tomatoes on the side- NOT what they had advertised. We stopped in at the Corn Palace, bought some post-cards across the street and got some snacks for the road at a nice natural food store. We ventured on to 1880 Town, about 100 miles away/half way across the plains.

We passed by De Smet where Little House of the Prairie’s Laura Ingall’s Wilder lived out her childhood in the house Pa built. It was too out of the way to go see and I’ve probably read the books at least 3 times and I like the house in my imagination. At 1880 Town we paid $18.90 to walk through this living museum to the homesteader world. James learned what a Livery was and I showed off my caboose, which attracted the attention of the "sheriff "of 1880 town who asked me if I was in the military because I had my green cargo pants on. He asked me if I had kids and offered advice on how to make one when I said “not yet.” James was in the bathroom- I told him not to leave me alone again.

We rolled back out and before we hit the Badlands we took another break to have a banana split at a teeny tiny town on the prairie at a nice little stand across from the local high school. The Badlands were definitely bad-ass. We can’t imagine crossing those crazy things in a Conestoga Wagon. We had a tough time getting back up to the top of the ridge (called “the Wall”) in the Camry! It was breathtaking! We didn’t hike too much there as it was getting towards the late afternoon. We pushed on towards the Crazy Horse/Mt. Rushmore area where I had made reservations to stay in a cabin at the Custer Crazy Horse Campground. It was a cute little cabin and we slept like logs after a long driving day!

We woke up around 7 and took showers and by 8 we were driving up to the Crazy Horse Memorial gate. By the Way- EVERYONE should go here. It is the coolest place we have seen yet. This Polish guy from Boston, Korzac, was asked by the Lakota chiefs to work on this monument back in 1948. It is a private, non-federally-funded project that will probably take 150 years to finish because only as they get more money, they keep blasting away at the rock. It is really amazing to see the progress made in the last 50-odd years. This sculptor, Korzac, had 10 kids and 7 of them have been working on the project since his death in 1982. It is something like 18 times bigger than Mt. Rushmore, and the 4 President’s heads, the pyramids at Giza, and the Washington monument could all fit inside just Crazy Horse’s head. It is quite the statement! We absolutely loved it. They just finished building this beautiful Museum of the North American Indian and it rivals the Smithsonian. We actually liked it better since instead of just putting stuff on display behind glass, there is a more hands-on feel, and there is an obvious sense of the reality of what happened and is happening to the Native peoples. It is a huge lodge made entirely of Ponderosa Pine from the trees that were cleared off of the mountain. There are workshop spaces for Native American Craftsmen and a huge bazaar where people from the local reservations and sometimes far away come to sell their wares.

We were really impressed. We can’t wait to come back in another 50 years! They have a plan for the area to be the site of the University of the North American Indian, the North American Indian Medical Center, and a cultural center for the Indian community. As they raise the money, they just start building- meanwhile the sculpture is being blasted at about a million tons of rock per 10 years (with current funding). It is just amazing. We donated $5 and got a piece of the mountain (a little rock). We left there and headed towards Mt. Rushmore and decided not to go in. We did a drive-by and saw a cool Mountain Goat instead. It reminded me of Hoodwinked (the movie). Mt. Rushmore is cool but it is definitely (and rightly) dwarfed by Crazy Horse. It seems like a just way for Native Americans to stick it to the white men.

We headed over to Deadwood for lunch and I have to say it is a pretty cool cultural center (most likely and rather unfortunately due to it being a big casino town) - we had great and HEALTHY food at the local bistro and I stopped by a cute children’s consignment store that had some cute stuff but nothing summer-y enough and the right size for Will. We mailed a bunch of postcards (to those we have addresses for) and then headed out of town towards Montana. We had a beautiful drive through a little corner of Wyoming and then through the Cheyenne and Crow Reservations. The reservations are sad- lots of mobile homes and "Tennessee hillside" issues and seemingly no business/entrepreneurship. It sent me into "saving" mode and I dreamed the rest of the way through them about productive cooperatives and commonwealth states. We saw lots of Pronghorn antelope, hawks and other birds, prairie dogs at the Little Big Horn monument and tons of horses and cows.

It is definitely big sky country here. We stopped at a little hole in the wall just outside the reservations for a grilled ham and cheese and some strawberry pie. YUM! We ended up in Billings- kind of a worn-down ugly town set against a backdrop of a huge ridge. It was a railroad town named after the owner of t he train line, and now it's just like any other typical town in the US, complete with the typical chain stores. We wholed up at a cheap motel and went to the local grocery store for microwave dinners that were actually pretty yummy. Tomorrow is YELLOWSTONE!

Day 4- Mustard, the Mississippi, and the long trek across Minnesota to Sioux Falls.

We started out early from Danny and Miki’s house in Illinois about 7:00 am because the whole household had to be at work. We said goodbye and started to trek out I-90 in search of a local coffee bar with internet. We found one at Meg’s café after getting lost a couple of times because the GPS had their old address. James set up the rap video and we checked in to make sure that the cats health certificates were ready and had the right date. (Thankfully they do!) While James rendered the videos, I selected just how far we were going to drive today (8 hours), selected a B&B in Sioux Falls that looked only mildly kitschy, and made sure we stopped at the Mt. Horeb Mustard Museum… a vague childhood memory of thousands of mustard jars (HEAVEN!!) that led us on a several hour detour in Wisconsin in search of the yellowy-goodness. We made it up to Mt. Horeb with relative speed and loaded up on all kinds of mustard. The museum store lets you do tastings of whatever mustard you want. Mustards are divided up into many categories. To name a few: Spicy/hot, fruit, liquor, exotic, yellow. We learned that there is an annual Mustard Festival in Napa that we will definitely be attending next year (alas, it is in March!) Back at the museum- they let you taste as many mustards as you can handle, so we tried about 10 and probably bought about 8 for ourselves and various people. We tasted the grand champion of this year’s festival- it was a whole grain mustard with truffles- it was AWESOME. You could definitely taste the truffles but it wasn’t overpowering either way. James really liked the blue cheese mustard, so we got a bottle of that, as well as a local Wisconsin mustard that I really liked. Overall, Mt. Horeb was a town that I could have spent some more time in. There were a few cool antique shops and several interesting-sounding pubs and shops- The town was really into Trolls. There was the Grumpy Troll Pub and the Trolls Landing gift store- not sure what that is about, we didn’t see any bridges… there was also “Dick’s Meats” that looked “interesting.”

We took the scenic route out and passed a cool house at 65 mph with metal sculptures in the front yard that I had to turn the car around for. There were lots of cows. James loves the cows…hence their feature in our video below...

After Wisconsin and crossing the Mississippi, we started across Minnesota to Sioux Falls, SD. It was a long, dry road and it was around 9 pm when we rolled up to the Victorian B&B in Sioux Falls. Our hostess was already pissed that we came in so late, but she was only mildly civil when we walked in and showed us around. I sensed a little bitchiness and her kids were a little weird, popping out from behind a curtain from the third floor but not talking (the little girl was like 7). There were dresses hanging on the walls that freaked James out and I tried to forget that there was a doll sitting on the dresser. James and I went out in search of food and found the only non-fast food restaurant open at 9:30 on a Monday night was a Mexican place whose name I forget. We ate in about 20 minutes and headed back to the B&B for a lukewarm bath in the big claw-foot tub.

Day 3- Jess y James join the 21st Century

Day 3 was pretty momentous...and expensive- We finally got a car that people don't mind riding in...(THANKS MAMA!!). Yes, we know that we collected bets on how long the little Mazda would last before petering out, but that was before Mom offered her AWESOME 2000 Camry with cruise control and side airbags. She wanted to TRADE!!??? We think she just needs a reason to buy a new car when the old one kicks the bucket, so she took our older, harder-ridden POS car so she'll have an excuse to buy one sooner.......We tried to talk her out of it a few times by telling her about all of the Mazda's "features" like broken headlight covers, water in the brakelight covers, and the other various quirks of the car, but she still wanted it so we transferred all of our stuff over and installed the coolest stereo this side of the Mississippi (THANKS CRICKET!!) in the Camry. We decided that if the Camry makes it all the way, we will award the winner of the "Guess the mileage" game to Vera Reiner, who guessed 350 miles before breakdown. We made it to Cleveland and ditched the car at 435 miles out.

We also bought a GPS to prevent our marriage from falling apart on this trip due to wrong turns and lack of planning. So far, we've still had a few wrong turns, as the GPS is not always up to date or has the exact address correct, but it has helped us a lot in the cities!!

James Frank got his first bluetooth hands-free ear bud thingy- so yup-tastic! See it featured in our Ohio and Indiana rap....

We drove about 6.5 hours today to Chicago to stay with my Aunt Carol and Uncle Jeff and cousins Danny and Jonathan, who hosted us for a night at their place in Elgin, IL. I haven't seen Carol and Jeff since my Dad's funeral and I haven't seen Danny and Jonathan since our pre-teens. I think Jonathan might have been 8 or 9. CRAZY! He is 24 this year!! He and Danny are both firemen like their Dad-- big surprise!! We had a ton of laughs and played with Danny's uber-cute pit bull Maia and lady-rotweiler Dozer. I've never seen such viciously sweet big dogs!! They were like monstrous lap dogs! Danny had to get up around 5 am for his shift so we headed to bed around 11:30 and got up early this morning and started driving!! More on Day 4 in our next installment....

Day 2- Cleveland Rocks!!

Day 2...

Thankfully Mom didn't come down singing "GOOD MORNING, GOOD MORNING, GOOD MORNING TO YOU!!!...." so we slept in late and had a nice quick breakfast before Mom and Dean whisked us off to their Cleveland Farmer's Market. This place was awesome!! It had produce on the outside in an L-shape around a really cool historic building dating back to 1900 where the meats, fish, cheeses, baked goods, hot sauces, and all kinds of other tasty treats were displayed by I'd say over 30 vendors. It was a smorgasbord and we went crazy...sort of. We got a few apricots, strawberries, and blackberries, an artichoke and a mini-pineapple. Mom and Dean bought some salmon that Dean cooked on the grill for dinner- ask him to make you this dish sometime, it is definitely his specialty- DELICIOUS!!! We also got some local organic asparagus that I sing about in my rap about Ohio and Indiana (See Day 3).

We brought all of the food home and had a nice lunch and then ventured out again despite looming rainclouds to Findlay State Park. It was a really muddy hike and we had a tough time maneuvering but it was beautiful as usual and we had a nice time. It only started raining towards the end of the hike but we dried off in the car and made it over to take a quick drive-through of Oberlin College- the first college to accept women. It was pretty but it was still raining on and off, so we headed home to await the great salmon dinner, complete with Mom's great potato salad, asparagus and that huge artichoke we bought. As usual, hanging with Mom was all about the FOOD- which is fine with us! Dean and I took Baxter for a walk and then we watched the Bond movie Quantum of Solace and hit the hay!! It was a pretty exhausting day!

Day 1 - Baltimore to Cleveland

The day started out a little on the rough side. We had to take the cats to the vet and have them cleared for takeoff so that Missy and Bryan can ship them to us when we arrive in Oakland. While Jess took care of the cats, I stayed home and packed the odds and ends we'd left out the day before inside one of the "pods." After all the sentiments of the last few weeks, it was surprising (to me at least) how easy it was to lock the door and hop into the car... while it's been coming up quickly, I was pretty well prepared for the move (probably since I'd spent a whole week out there in Oakland getting to know the area and meeting so many great folks).

Jess on the other hand was a bit spaced out, her mind wandering over lots of things, as proven by her initial departure from our parallel parking space in front of the house... backing up, she kinda drifted into the truck behind us, which had been parked a good 15 feet away! Until we were a good half hour out on Route 70, we were both a bit flustered. After sharing some bites of a good gyro at a sandwich shop out by the Howard County Fair Grounds, we were a bit more settled. I took a nap, and she settled into the ride.

We drove through the Allegheny Tunnel on the PA Turnpike (1.2 miles through a mountain!), and then got a good view of some windmills before stopping for dinner.

We made a simple, but difficult pact about eating on this trip...

No fast food.

Having learned a bit about the industry from the book Fast Food Nation, we're avoiding burgers and fries. We'll see how long it lasts. So far so good. Last night's dinner was at a "Kings" restaurant, which we guess to be a Pennsylvania chain. She had a tilapia fillet and I had a salad.

We got into Cleveland, had a nice chat with Mama and Dean (Jess' mom and her husband-to-be), and hit the hay, ready for a day of relaxing with the family before hitting the road Sunday...