Blogging While Traveling - It's Harder Than It Looks!

Really? It's nine days later?! Yikes!

So, we'd planned to stay in West Yellowstone for two nights and explore Yellowstone National Park. However, there was an unexpected snowstorm, and we decided it was in our best interests to avoid the area and set our sights on Thermopolis - home of the world's largest mineral hot springs! It was a great consolation prize! We first treated ourselves to the free hot springs, courtesy of Hot Springs State Park, and as we decided to stay in the park, our hotel had its own hot spring as well. Twice in the hot springs! If only every stop had a hot spring to relax and restore us!

Look! There's a sign!

Thermopolis was a charming little town, with a surprisingly good Thai restaurant. It continued to feed our appreciation of Wyoming.

There were buffalo, too!

From Thermopolis we headed to Bozeman, MT. We had a hotel reservation in Missoula, and I wanted to see my old friend Carolyn, but we were still concerned about possible snow. Thankfully, it mostly bypassed both Bozeman and Missoula!

Sure, we saw some along the way -

And then there was this, in Bozeman

But by the next morning, the roads were clear, and the snow that remained was on trees and lawns.

Great sign in Bozeman

Another great bit of Bozeman

Seeing old friends is another great thing about a road trip!

In Bozeman I picked up another skein for my Find Your Fade shawl, which I'm calling the Traveling Fade since I'm trying to make it with yarns picked up on our travels. It was from Mountain Colors, a yarn company out of Corvalis, Montana. I picked up a skein of Raven Ridge yarn in Missoula. This was a yarn I was totally unfamiliar with. The shawl is coming along nicely. I think, however, that it will be on pause while we're in Fort Bragg since we're not actually traveling. Also, this will give me an opportunity to work on the other projects I have with me.

Here's the shawl in progress. I've already added the lighter colour (from Raven Ridge) and am currently wondering whether I'll stop at a yarn store in Eureka. I just had a full weekend at Knit City where I shopped for other projects; I don't know how far I can push my traveling companions' indulgence of my yarn habit...

There's a lot to see along the way, and sometimes one simply takes a picture out the car window.

I know we're only up to days 5 & 6, but that feels like a lot for one post. We'll be settled in Fort Bragg soon, and I promise to catch up then!

Wyoming! Who Knew?!

We're making tracks! From Sioux Falls we drove to Rapid City, SD. Unfortunately our hotel was horrid, designed with a pre-Glasnost Soviet frame of mind, but one should expect there to be a few dogs in the bunch. Since then we've done much better, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Despite the accommodations and the weather (drizzly/rainy), we made it to two stops in Rapid City worth seeing - The Dinosaur Park and the Chapel in the Hills.

The Dinosaur Park overlooks the city and was a Works Progress Administration project, which made me love it more. It's pretty amusing as the dinosaurs are not meant to be "realistic."

Then we made our way to the Chapel in the Hills, which is an exact replica of the Borgund stave church in Norway (hit the link and find out what that means). I wasn't sure I'd be impressed, but the all-wood structure is really beautiful, and it was easy to see why there were going to be three weddings taking place there that day.

Our goal for the day was to see Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial. We lucked out that the rain lifted, and the clouds cleared so we could actually see Mount Rushmore. Unfortunately, the Crazy Horse Memorial was blanketed in fog, so we didn't get to see that.

We like to call this "Liss with Little Edie"

We spend the night in Buffalo, WY, which we all loved! Our hotel was great (we ended up talking with the owner the next morning at breakfast; the owner, by the way, described himself as "left of Bernie," which made our hearts swell even more), and we had dinner at the Occidental Saloon where legends such as Calamity Jane and Butch Cassidy once had a drink. We were lucky to see Taylor Corum perform, and his countrified version of Purple Rain was great. Wyoming made us love it!

No Cheese Castle, But a Car on Fire (Road Trip Days 1 & 2)

Hello? Is this thing on? Yes, it's been awhile since I've posted, but now we're on a massive road trip that will last until the middle of December. Instagram is great for little posts, but if there's going to be more than just a little banter, the blog will be the place for it (because I can't stand multi-paragraphed Instagram posts). That doesn't mean every blog post will be accompanied by extensive narrative, but there will probably be more pictures.

We'd wanted to go to the Mars Cheese Castle outside of Milwaukee, but it closed before we got there. We did, however, see a car on fire on the opposite side of the highway, which felt a bit like an attraction. I've never really seen a car in flames before. Quite dramatic. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture to share with you here, just an image burned into my mind.

As Julie, the cruise director, I've been in charge of all the accommodations, and I have the feeling the bar was set high with our Milwaukee hotel - the Hyatt Regency - which I scored on Hotwire. It was quite nice and had this crazy sculpture in the center of it.

Before we left Milwaukee, we went to the Milwaukee Art Museum, which was a beautiful building. I took a couple of pictures from the interior, but you should look it up to get the full effect.

We had to do the speed tour (needed to get to the Spam Museum before closing!), but what we saw was great. We definitely want to spend more time in Milwaukee.

A Donald Judd piece based on the Fibonacci sequence

No Cheese Castle? How about Mousehouse Cheesehouse? That was our consolation prize. Filled with Wisconsin cheese (we bought some three-year old cheddar and Thai red curry cheddar), it was pretty impressive.

I've also been trying to buy beer (so surprising) and have a mixed six pack of Wisconsin beers ready to try. Unfortunately, we only have so much room in our car, so here's a picture of one of the beers I left behind (the name of my memoir?).

But our main goal was the Spam museum in Austin, Minnesota. We managed to get there with half an hour to spare, and frankly, it was worth the hustle. The museum is free and has all kinds of interactive displays. One of our collective favourites was the international section, which featured commercials for Spam in South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and more.

If a whole can is too much, you can get singles!

This Japanese version is too cute; I could've sent the recipe to myself, but I didn't

Austin was a cute town. It reminded me of Paducah, KY as well as many of the small towns in Iowa my dad and I rode through on Ragbrai last year. A pleasant surprise was the number of Mexican restaurants there. The lady at the Spam gift shop gave us a great recommendation, which was a bonus!

Not the Mexican restaurant, but a great sign

Our destination for the night was Sioux Falls, SD. Had we known we could've seen the 60' Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, MN, we could've made a meal of the day - hah! Couldn't resist that. Who knew there were so many museums dedicated to commercial foods? Who knew we'd want to see them?

On our way to Rapid City, SD tonight, with lots of stops planned along the way. Unfortunately we're also going to have to change our route due to an early snow storm right where we wanted to go. Julie the cruise director will have to get on that tonight.

Happy trails!

What This Blog Needs Is Some Food - Part 1

Since I haven't given a lot of details of the meals we've eaten (girl needs to keep her strength up, you know), I thought I'd give a brief run-down of some of the food highlights of the trip so far.

There are lots of places to eat in Boulder, but the two of note that we visited this time were The Sink and Arugula.  Two very different eateries.  The Sink is a "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" find as well as an "Obama Ate Here" place (he signed the wall).  A college dive, the food was pretty good.  I had the grass-raised burger, which was still juicy and flavourful despite coming medium instead of medium-rare (as I'd ordered it).  (No, I could not send it back; I mean c'mon, it's a college hang-out.  Plus, our waitress didn't charge me for my first beer because she'd recommended a beer they didn't have that night).  Artery clogging, sure, but a good version of that when you're in the mood for it.

Arugula is in a strip mall (which seems to be a trend...) but serves well-crafted food.  I had the special pasta - housemade fettucine with braised rabbit in a light cream-based sauce featuring a local cheese.  My only suggestion would be to use pappadelle, which stands up better to a substantial sauce.

Heading back to Canada

We're in the midst of our trip back home.  I like being on the road and, in many ways, wish we had more time so we could stop and take side trips.  But I miss my cat, my friends, my wardrobe, and my bed (not necessarily in that order), and I have to start teaching a summer course the day after I return (oh yeah, totally prepping on the road, right), so we're making our way back east.
   Who knew Washington state had this whole desert side to it (rhetorical question)?

(That's the mighty Columbia river.  Gorgeous shade of blue).

(Those are fake horses on a hilltop.  Yeah, really.)
   And then we passed through Idaho and headed into Montana...

    And as you might've seen from my earlier post about the weather, it stayed that way for awhile, and to top it off, the blower for the defrost (and heat) didn't work.  This is where I say "Thanks!" to our friends at Eccles Auto Service in Dundas, Ontario.  We've called them a couple of times about issues with our car and they've been a great help.  Sure, they probably think we're crazy, but that's okay.
    What I didn't have yesterday were these great photos from Liss that showed what Montana and North Dakota looked like after we got out from under the ass weather (totally a meteorological term).
   Montana:

    North Dakota:

   Haven't heard much about food?  Well, it's been a bit of the regular sub-par road food (Denny's was exciting yesterday).  For dinner, I made us go to Bonanza because I used to go there when I was a kid.  Liss was wearing a Carhartt vest and a bright orange knit cap (she'd been cold) that's been kicking around the floor of the car.  I was wearing camo Army pants I got from my dad (a new go-to item in my wardrobe - I'm serious) with a Patagonia hoody.  The manager, making the rounds and checking on everyone's satisfaction, stops by our table and says, "You ladies doing some hunting?"  Yes, that's what's become of my fashion sense on the road.

Cherry on top

This road trip has allowed us, and particularly me, to see family and friends, and the cherry on top of this trip has been my visit with one of my very best friends, Sereatha.  Sereatha knows me almost better than anyone and it had been six years since I'd seen her.  Since that time, she's gotten married and had two children.
    It seems that time and distance (and changing family demographics) don't affect our friendship.  We spoke with the same intimacy we shared when we lived together in San Francisco, way back when Ian was two years old, and I'm happy to accept the pain that our inevitable separation brings with it because it acknowledges that bond.  All my life I've made friends and then found a way to let them go because one or another of us moved away, and it was too difficult to maintain the connection (often we were too young to even try).  I'm tired of that defence mechanism, and I really want to keep the people I love in close contact with me.  It's worth the effort.   
   We spent two nights with her and her sweet, sweet family (shout out to Samuel, Savannah, and Secily!).  Here are some of the highlights with minimal narrative.
   Pike Place Market -

(Sanitary Public Market!  Love it!)
    Sereatha and me with a very friendly vendor.

    Again, look at the produce!  (It's becoming a fetish.)

Volunteer Park Conservatory:
    I loved the colours on this hydrangea, so not what one expects from this plant.

    Another hydrangea variation.

    There were lots of cactuses...

 and cool plants.

(That's water caught in its center.)

   And then, it was time to hit the road again with lots of promises to see each other before another six years passes.  It seems that this trip has also highlighted my desire to stay in touch - letters, e-mails, and visits.  I like the visits best.