The Friendly Confines

I am so excited about today! We used public transportation (which sounds lame and commonplace, but I did not grow up using it so anytime I get to do it is a thrill) and we visited a historic site. In this case we saw the Cubs of Chicago take on the Astros of Houston at historic Wrigley Field. I last came to Chicago nineteen years ago for a conference my dad had and while here we drove by Wrigley, but we were not able to see a game here. Although Mark has already been to Wrigley several times he is indulging my desire to check this landmark of baseball off of my list.

The morning was spent sleeping in, packing up the hotel room, and finding the metro station with the parking structure. We boarded the red line at the northernmost stop and were the only ones in our car unsure we were on the right train until the purple line pulled up -- apparently we were waiting for them -- and all the Cubs fans walked across the platform and flooded our car. I was now feeling a little more secure about our decision. Side note: Mark knows his way around public transportation very well and ultimately I trust his ability to navigate said system however, until we get going and I get my bearings I'm still a little nervous. So now we're on the metro en route to Wrigley Field. At this point I still like Cubs fans.

We arrive at Wrigley and it's a MOB scene. There are people everywhere -- vendors trying to sell you peanuts/water/t-shirts, scalpers trying to buy/sell tickets, fans walking to the game, and drunks just there for the scene. Near the metro station there is an entrance for the stadium, but I really want a picture of the main entrance and the sign. It was way to crowded to try and get a picture of Mark and I at the sign, but I line up to take a picture anyway and just as I go to click I am completely bowled over by a woman who has already had one to many. Before I can get my feet back her friend who was holding her hand walking along with her runs into me as well. Truly it was as if I didn't exist in that space at that time. I know I'm short, but damn people! My opinion of Chicago natives is not a good one at this point. A sour start to my Wrigley experience. Fortunately, it would improve.

Our entrance into the park was all I expected it to be from the hours of documentary footage I have seen on MLB Network. It was cozy to put it nicely, a stark contrast to the open breezeways of Target Field. Not desiring to run into our "friends" again, we make our way to our seats. They were GREAT! First base side, even with the pitcher, nine rows up from the walkway, on the good side of the isle (the side not blocked by vendors EVERY half inning). Sitting there I could see the black and white photographs of the early days of the stadium when men came in suits and women in dresses and hats (if they came). I could not imagine being dressed like that today -- it was HOT! Someone fainted in the section next to us. The fans that ended up around us didn't do much to improve my opinion of Chicago natives, but the crowd in general did. Despite the fact, or maybe due to it, that there was no jumbotron to show replays the fans were into EVERY play. They clapped without being prompted, made noise to support their team without the "MAKE SOME NOISE" meter. It was just classic baseball, with a classic crowd, in a classic park. Really just wonderful.

Random aside: the lakegulls (I refuse to call them seagulls even though that's what they are when Chicago is nowhere near the ocean) have the day games timed. They showed up for chow time right around the bottom of the 8th. Our game ended up going extra innings so they were flying around and landing on the field for a while. Apparently though they do not like it when the crowd gets excited, which we did when Pedro Feliz hit a home run. The birds scattered and didn't come back, at least not while we were still there.

Another random aside: early into our Wrigley experience Mark made the comment that he wondered if "Ronnie Woo-Woo" would be in attendance. I had NO idea what or who he was talking about, I would soon find out. Ronnie Woo-Woo is a gentleman that comes to every Cubs game in full Cubs uniform. His jersey has the nickname "Woo-Woo" emblazoned on the back and it is well deserved. Ronnie spends the entire game yelling "woo-woo." I really mean ENTIRE, he doesn't take much of a break, not even when signing autographs. This man has had a difficult life to say the least. Look him up, it's really the case of baseball saving a man's life.

One last random aside: Marv Levy was our guest leader for the seventh-inning stretch. He sped up a little, but the organist did a good job of catching up with him. Really interesting that they would have someone I would have heard of on a weekday day game in the middle of the season. Neither of us was expecting it and it turned out to be a nice surprise.

Indianapolis was our final destination today. An extension of the trip was considered. There was the possibility of adding Detroit and Pittsburgh, but we both agreed that we're tired of spending every night in a different place and are extremely anxious to start putting together our new apartment (I don't even know what it looks like). So tomorrow it's off to Chapel Hill and our new life in North Carolina...

The Twins' City

Time to leave less-populated America behind and return to big cities, big freeways, and too many people. We started the day in Fargo by giving the car a much needed service. An oil change and new air filter later and we were ready for the three hour drive  to Minneapolis.

This was my first time in Minneapolis and I’ve always loved their slogan, “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” On our drive we only counted five (if you included the flooded rest stop which looked like it used to be a rest stop next to a lake) meaning there are 9,995 more to see. Pretty daunting.

By the time we reached Minneapolis we pretty much only had time to drop our things and head over to Target Field to catch that night’s Twins Indians game. Our hotel was in ‘Dinkytown’, the neighborhood around the University of Minnesota, and it was very nice. I never appreciated that the University was so close to downtown – similar to UW in Seattle.

The new Twins stadium was marvelous. It’s in an interesting part of downtown with great modern architecture. Not sure I would place it among the elite (San Francisco, San Diego, Baltimore, etc.) but it’s certainly close. Two complaints: the sections are choppy with separate ‘neighborhoods’ (including a moat separating us from the next section up), and a closed-in centerfield.

We had a great time, though, despite the game dragging – three hours and fifty-eight minutes for a nine inning game.

The next day we did a bit more exploring of Minneapolis, driving by the Metrodome and then down to Bloomington and the famed Mall of America.

It’s the largest mall in the United States by commercial square footage. Meaning on this trip we’ve now seen the country’s largest tree, highest waterfall, deepest lake, and largest mall by commercial square footage. It was interesting, though – glad we went. According to the directory there are four Caribou Coffee’s in the mall but, alas, we only found three.

Also, I always knew that there was a rollercoaster inside but had no idea there was an entire theme park. It made our jaws drop – largest indoor theme park in the country, too.

And in the middle of that theme park madness, is a spot signifying where homeplate stood at the old Metropolitan Stadium – home of the Twins (and Vikings) before the Metrodome was built. Great Twins teams of Killebrew, Carew, Oliva, and the rest.

After the mall we hit the road for Sweet Home Chicago. Although there was a rare Cubs night game, we decided to take our time and go see the Cubs the following day. So, with no idea where best to stay for a good price, we decided to stop in my brother’s old grounds of Evanston and Northwestern University.

Tomorrow we’ll take the ‘L’ train to Wrigleyville and see the Cubs and then start working our way to Durham, North Carolina. We had originally planned to see Detroit and Cleveland, but decided we need to start winding the trip down and settling into our new home.

The Betterlands

Having loved our arrival and previous night in Medora we felt that it deserved more than the cursory glance we had given most of the other cities and towns we had stayed in. To tell the truth we were a little hungry and hoped to get a good breakfast that could sustain us most of the rest of the day since we would be on the road as soon as we were done at the park. Our hunger was satiated at a local place called the Cowboy Cafe.

If you want authentic, small town atmosphere this is definitely the place. A small space about the size of a modern college coffee house this place was completely full with a few people waiting for a table. The walls were not covered in the manufactured paraphenalia most of us are accustomed to. Each wall was floor to ceiling full of wooden framed photographs of local ranchers/cowboys. The frame had the name of the person or people in the picture and underneath had the brand associated with their ranch. The booth we were sitting in was all wood slats and the uppermost slat of the backrest was decorated in the brands of the local ranches. This was similar to the brands found on the walls of the pizza place we had had dinner at the night before. These people are fiercely proud of their own and with good reason. Two Medorans were about to be inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and not for riding a bull either. So much history, so authentic.

Our final stop in Medora was something we had driven by the night before and were very curious to know more about. In the middle of a grassy field there is a very tall brick chimney standing as a solitary sentinel of a bygone era. It turns out that the chimney was the smokestack of the Marquis de Mores failed slaughterhouse/meat processing plant. The plant was finished in 1883 and was abandoned three years after it opened when the winter of 1886 ruined not only the Marquis' foray into ranching, but Teddy's also. Near the turn of the century it burned to the ground. Today is it on the National Register of Historic Places and you can see the cornerstones of several other buildings in addition to a display containing the blueprints for the entire operation.

Teddy Roosevelt National Park was very much like the Badlands except that it was much greener. Additionally we were able to see Teddy's, very small by today's standards, cabin he had built when he bought a stake in the Maltese Cross Ranch. It does not stand in it's original location, but that is probably due to the fact that the Maltese Cross Ranch is still a working ranch in the area. The cabin itself is three small rooms -- a kitchen, sitting room, and bedroom. Most cabins of the day were one big room in an attempt to conserve heat, but apparently Teddy liked his privacy and so required that the bedroom be sectioned off. Quaint to say the least it was cool to see the simplicity which one of our former presidents preferred to his life in the big cities. There is much to admire in the life of President Theodore Roosevelt.

It has gotten to the point where the long drives are not as much fun. We're done with the national parks that we were going to visit and now we're on the home stretch. We plan on visiting a few big cities and watching some baseball. I'm excited to check some more major league stadiums off my list.

And finally, your bison of the day:

The Greatest Show in the West

We started our day by heading east from Rapid City to check-out the Badlands. But our first stop was just outside the park in Wall, South Dakota at the regionally famous Wall Drug Store.

The Wall Drug Store (which we had seen billboards for during the previous 100 or so miles) is 72,000 square feet of wacky, commercial-dripped, tourist attractions. It was like a mini-mall with every interior storefront selling tourist trinkets and Old West stuff. And everything is over the top. Take your picture with the jack-a-lope, see the animatronic dinosaur, take a seat in the cafe which has seating for 580 people. Take any Fisherman's Wharf-like tourist trap you know and extend it as far as you can. It was nuts.

From Wall to the park's east entrance, we stopped at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Place. Appartently there were dozens of these nuclear missle facilities spaced throughout the Dakotas and Montana ready on a moment's notice to launch -- they could launch within five minutes of receiving orders. They've now retired all of the facilities, but the one we saw was not available to tour. I can't imagine how the operators of a missile silo that was never used once in its forty years existence passed the time. After that Visitor's Center, we moved onto Badlands National Park.

The Badlands were staggering. The prairie just disolves, and what's left are these barren rocky outcroppings that look like they belong in Arizona. One early explorer described it as "hell with the fire put out." Just remarkable.

Taking the driving loop and stopping at a few of the overlooks was the exact right strategy. It was well over 100 degrees -- can't imagine camping there.

After the Badlands, we back-tracked to Rapid City and started driving due north towards Teddy Roosevelt National Park in Medora, North Dakota. Medora was an Old Western boomtown in the early 1880's as the Marquis de Mores (and his wife Medora) speculated on creating a cattle empire there. A young Teddy came out to hunt buffalo and so fell in love with the place that he bought a couple of ranches (Elkhorn and Maltese Cross) that he frequently visited in his early days.

So I was looking forward to seeing a bit of Roosevelt history and checking out the park, not knowing anything else about the town. We had setup a hotel reservation that afternoon (at the 'Bunkhouse Inn' after concluding that the 'Rough Riders Hotel' was too expensive) and rolled in at about 7:30pm. When checking in, the front desk asked me if I also needed tickets printed.

I returned a puzzled look.

She then asked if we were there for the Medora Musical. Apparently, the city of Medora puts on a country western, outdoor, song-and-dance event all through the summer. Seven nights a week. In an ampitheater that holds 2,800 people in a city with 900 people.

After consulting with Cristy, we decided that we had to do this. The front desk was wonderful -- instead of seating us in the back, they actually gave us unused seats from the Teddy Roosevelt Medora Foundation. Six rows from the stage on the aisle. So, after eating a quick dinner at the Medora Pizza Parlor, and went out to the Burning Hills Ampitheater for the 8:30pm show.

Our first impression was of the stage, which was a reproduction of the town of Medora. Our second impression was of the two elk that had roamed onto the hillside behind the stage and were being herded off by men on horses.

The show was spectacular -- and actually very well done! It's country songs with dancing and Teddy Roosevelt giving speeches and bringing the kids on stage and Buffalo 'Dale' talking. But the climax of the night was Teddy taking San Juan hill in Cuba. Teddy's is speaking with the soldiers and he yells 'Charge!', the soldiers take off, there are guys on horses running around, and pyrotechnics going off and we finish with replacing the Spanish flag with the American and Teddy riding along the hillside behind the stage. Probably the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Great night, all coming together because of the friendly people of Medora who encouraged us to go. Tomorrow we'll check-out the park (as well as Teddy's original cabin) before turning east towards Minneapolis.

The Fools of Fortune

Serendipity has certainly been on our side on this trip. Our best example of this was Day 18. We left Riverton with the intention of making it to the Badlands area, find a hotel, and see Wind Cave/Mt. Rushmore/Badlands the next day.

We were pleasantly surprised by the progress we were able to make despite yet another construction delay and arrived at Wind Cave National Park just in time for the second to last Natural Entrance tour of the caves. Mark was a little skeptical of having to spend one and quarter hours underground in a cave. Surely, how could a cave possibly be interesting? I reassured him that it would be great and that even if it wasn't it was only $7.00 lost [for his ticket not mine, I was definitely going to love it].

Wind cave is so named because there is a constant current of air rushing into or out of the entrance. When the atmospheric pressure outside is greater, the air rushes into the cave and vice versa. Only 130 miles of the caves have been explored. Apparently, it is also the home of 95% of the world's boxwork formations. Really pretty interesting. Oh, by the way, Mark really liked it.

We completed our tour some time around 7:15 and decided to head towards Mt. Rushmore. Our guess was that we would drive by, see it, and continue towards the Badlands. Shouldn't take too long, it's only 34 miles away right? WRONG! It's 34 miles, but 34 miles through Custer State Park -- Speed Limit 20 mph -- which was more of the windy roads we have come to love occasionally made longer by a traversing herd of bison.

So we arrived at Mt. Rushmore and ask the man at the entry gate how much later the park is open. Imagine our surprise when he tells us we're just in time for the big event of the day -- the lighting of Mt. Rushmore! It was a beautiful program describing the accomplishments of the four great men carved into the rock.

The people of the midwest are quite patriotic. A Boy Scout group led us in the Pledge of Allegiance, we sang the Star Spangled Banner, and honored all of the veterans present. It was a very moving moment, I cried.

Our final adventure of the evening was trying to find a hotel room. We had not anticipated staying in the Mt. Rushmore area very long so had not made any hotel arrangements. By the time we left Rushmore it was 10:30 and too late to drive past Rapid City towards Badlands. "No problem," we thought, "surely Rapid City will have a place." Yeah, wrong again. The only option we had was a very expensive snooty hotel. That was not going to happen. I managed to convince Mark that we should try the Rodeway Inn before giving in to the snooty place because I thought that they would not be in the hotels.com database and so we stood a chance of getting a room. Sure enough I was right and we managed to snatch up one of the last two rooms at the hotel. I think because we worked so hard to get the room and saw our options very limited [no other surrounding city had anything else either] it was probably the happiest we've been in a hotel room in a while.

Tomorrow we will see the Badlands and then go north to Medora and Teddy Roosevelt National Park.

The Hidden Falls

Day 17! We started our day by stopping for 'brunch' at Grant Village on Yellowstone Lake before driving through the South Entrance into Grand Teton National Park.

It is so arresting to see those mountains. No foothills, no lead-up, just 12,000 foot peaks out of flat land. Unbelievable.

Our plan for the the day was to stop at Jenny Lake and see the Hidden Falls. There are two ways to the falls -- either hike around the lake (about 2.5 miles from the Visitor Center) or take a boat across. We decided to take from both, hiking there and taking the boat back.

The hike itself was nice, although a little crowded. Green and lush, with that ever impossing view of the mountains.

After walking for a little over two miles we met up with the boat people and the trail got /very/ crowded. The Yellowstone guidebooks must advise people to come down and take the Hidden Falls boat ride -- everywhere else we roamed in Grand Teton was empty (even when we stopped to watch a coyote running through the plains). But we braved the crowd up to the falls which were terrific.

We decided to then go another mile up to Inspiration Point over the lake which helped us get away for a bit.

After taking the boat back, we hopped in the car for the 20 minute drive down to Jackson, Wyoming. Our original plan had been to spend the night there, but seeing as it was only 5:30pm we decided that we would be better off to begin crossing the Wyoming plains. We targeted Riverton near the middle of the state for the night.

The drive from Jackson to Riverton was gorgeous. We were impressed by Wyoming last time we drove through, and this time was even better -- there were these amazing 'painted cliffs' throughout the different canyons. Only negative was the extensive road construction we kept meeting.

Tomorrow we dash across the rest of Wyoming and reach South Dakota -- hopefully early enough in the day to see Wind Cave and Mount Rushmore.

The Canyon of the Yellowstone

After following the western piece of the Yellowstone Grand Loop yesterday (highlighted by Old Faithful), today we endevoured to follow the eastern path and see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Tower Falls.

But first, when we rolled into the park yesterday I had a goal of seeing a buffalo. That was emphatically realized when the buffalo took the crosswalk in front of our car entering the Old Faithful parking lot. But today we saw dozens of them. On their own by the river, in a herd crossing the street, even one relaxing at the Mud Volcano. Everywhere we turned was another buffalo. Pretty neat -- by the end of the day they had become so commonplace as to be a non-event.

By late morning we had made it up to the Yellowstone Falls to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, stopping at Artist Point. Spectacular.

Like everything at Yellowstone, though, the enjoyment was a bit impaired by the mob of people. It felt like we were taking the last parking space in the lot at every stop we made.

After lunch at the Canyon Village (and checking into our campground for that evening), we continued further north hoping to avoid the crowds in the Tower Roosevelt area. We had grabbed a couple of fishing rods when we stopped in Healdsburg, and were hopeful that the Slough Creek / Lamar River area would allow us to get away a little bit and catch a fresh dinner.

Not exactly. We were taking gravel roads in the far northeast of the park (on a Wednesday!) and still ran into jam-packed river access points. We finally did find a good place to stop, though, and spent a lovely couple hours fishing up and down the stream with no success. We did however find a massive bone from a buffalo, canine prints in the mud near the water's edge (wolf?), and got assaulted by every sort of insect you can imagine. And we only lost one lure to the rocks.

After fishing, we began working our way back towards the canyon, stopping along the way at the Tower Falls. The falls were spectacular, but the lower trail to the best view point had been washed out (something we unfortunately only learned after descending about 80% of the trail).

Our campsite was terrific, nestled in the woods far away from other site. Like Bridge Bay the night before, the facilities at Yellowstone are first rate -- great bathrooms, good space between sites, and strict segregation between tents and RVs. Tomorrow we head south to Jenny Lake and the Grand Tetons before stopping in Jackson, Wyoming.