Chicago

Hello from Chicago! Evanston, actually, home of Northwestern University and our friend, Sokheing, who is a postdoc here now. We're leaving today, actually, and I have no pictures, but thought I'd check in. We walked around Chicago without going into any buildings or doing anything in particular - walked down the magnificent mile, through the park, saw the bean, etc. And spent a lot of time on the wireless internet connection.

Through Michigan today, then a stop in Toronto before Matt's uncle's house in Albany...

Minneapolis

We visited Matt's sister Sarah for a few very rejuvenating days, starting with a spinach salad and a Tom Stoppard play at the Guthrie and including a very adorable new kitten, Tybalt.


He becomes very sharp and pointy at night when he wants to play.


Sarah and Tybalt. 

Badlands II

You can see it's just stripes of different sediment layers, eroded into very strange shapes... miles and miles of this... (You can also see impending doom coming from above - a thunderstorm which produced no rain, but plenty of thunder and lightning strikes)


Yipes Stripes!


Impending Doom over Amelia

 

Devil's Tower, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands

So initially I had thought that Devil's Tower was Chimmney Rock, of Oregon Trail fame, but it is not...

It's much bigger, and really neat anyway.


Very, very tall.


And then we went to Mount Rushmore, which was sort of on the way - it's very accurately summed up in a picture. To get there, you have to pass through the unbelievably ticky-tacky town of Keystone, which is full of RVs, Olde-Tyme Western recreation dinner theater and photo booths, 101 ways to part a tourist with his money shops, etc.


Then we went to the Badlands, which are truly, truly bad... Very alien.

More Badlands, next post (having some trouble posting pictures) 

Wyoming and South Dakota

Hi All - we're in Chicago now, but (until I get the pictures off Matt's camera, again) here are a few thoughts to tide you over:

- Devil's Tower is not Chimmney Rock
- the Badlands are truly bad
- Mount Rushmore: the national park most accurately summed up in a postcard (Matt's phrase, not mine)
- another observation of Matt's - weeny computer nerds on the coast drink inky black coffee, while manly men in boxy states drink weakling tea-colored coffee. Discuss.
- thunderstorms that don't rain (only lightning and thunder) are very scary, especially when the lightning starts prairie fires right off the highway
- South Dakota is long

After this rousing day, we got to Minneapolis and stayed with Matt's sister Sarah, who administered restorative measures of culture and vegetables.

Montana - up to speed (or up to meth, as you prefer)

The long road through Montana... it was long. But it wasn't entirely flat - in fact, it was quite pretty. Oh, and we saw the strangest anti-meth display yet - not the government gross-out posters. We were passing through the small town of Moccasin (population under 50) - it was mostly wrecked shacks and a few trailers. And along the highway is a giant, probably 9 ft. plastic grim reaper modeled mid-gesticulation, presiding over about a dozen white crosses stuck in the ground with the motto "Meth Kills" written menacingly nearby. Very odd.


We slept last night at a Super 8 in Great Falls. Bats sleep at the Super 8, too.


Carzor the Magnificent (covered in bug splat)


And we stopped at Little Bighorn Battlefield, because what else are you going to do in southeast Montana? Here is Custer's grave. They've added a little exhibit about the Indians who died there now, too. (The Indian one is much more artful, in fact. And they've marked two of the Indian graves with tombstones, at which other visitors have left offerings of unsmoked cigarettes.)


Ready for a honky-tonk good time through Wyoming and South Dakota!

Tonight we're at a Motel 6 which obviously has high-speed internet access in Gillette, Wyoming. No good food news since we lost sight of the coast, really, though in West Falls just before Glacier we found a specialty food store which carried Sharffenburger chocolate and all our favorite CA cheeses - Red Hawk, Humbolt Fog, and the rest. We got turkey sandwiches there. We stopped at a Montana Brewing Company in Billings today for lunch - I had a wheat beer which has won lots of awards, and it was very good! We've only eaten at a McDonalds twice this trip, and have mostly stayed away from chains (though tonight we opted for the Village Inn instead of "Hong Kong Restaurant"). OK, off to bed!

Glacier II - the Continental Divide

This sheer knife-edge of rock is the continental divide...


Me, sitting precariously on the little stone ledge that separates you from ...


huge, steep, 9,000 ft. drop.


Matt was unfazed. And he was driving!


And we saw a goat. We saw lots of goats, in fact. One of them was walking on top of the stone guard rail while cars were whizzing by! (Until the stupid cars pulled over to gawk, and then it hopped down onto a lower rock.)


And there was an awesome canyon river. I'm sure it's more impressive with snowmelt, but it was low enough for Matt to do this...


The most frequent cause of visitor death at Glacier is drowning.

We popped out of Glacier at St. Mary's on the east side and started our long, long journey through Montana...

Trip Recap - Glacier!

Matt and me at Glacier National Park! (Yes, it was very out of our way... we thought that Chris might have sent us on a wild goose chase... but you'll see it was totally worth it!)


View of the lake and mountain.


The neatest thing about the lake was that the stones of the lake were all different colors of the rainbow (different metal contents or something, I guess) - but they were all polished smooth by the lake and looked like jewels. (my feet)


Matt and his view.


You can see that for being Glacier, there wasn't much snow - of course, we missed the entire east exit of the park being closed off for wildfires by about a week. So there's no snow (the glaciers are, I hear, still there) and all the rivers are very, very low. But you can see how this one usually carves out the rock at high speeds...


Pretty!

Trip Recap - Washington/Spokane

So we left lovely Seattle - we had a great time in the city, and Matt's relatives are lovely. We headed east - over the cascades, and then into farmland. For several miles the fields were labeled: alfalfa, potatoes, wheat, potatoes, corn, and then ... peppermint! A whole field of peppermint! And then we passed a tobacco field - unlabeled, but pretty unmistakable.

After farmland we hit blight (archeologists call it lava flow) - dry scrubby bushes on desert rock, pretty desolate. Around Spokane pine trees began, and we called our local Spokanian Chris for a dinner recommendation. It wasn't great food, but it was probably the most *interesting* restaurant in Spokane - the Catacombs. It's underground (a hotel's former boiler room) and they've done it up all "medieval" inside.


You can just make out the wall hangings. Oh, it was ... lovely. :) No, but we both decided that if we had been teenagers in Spokane, we would have hung out here *all* the time.

And then we went to Glacier National Park!

Trip Recap - Seattle! (with pictures!)

Me on the ferry to Bainbridge Island - Seattle!



And Matt!



We found an awesome bookstore in Pioneer Square (the historic district of Seattle) - Elliot Bay Books (and Cafe). While we were there, we took the Underground Seattle tour - when the sewer backed up, they raised the city an entire story, so all the basements of the old quarter are original street level. It was pretty cheesy, but neat.



We stayed on Bainbridge Island with Matt's great aunt Alice and Joe. Here we are overlooking Puget Sound over drinks at Gretchen's house (their daughter - Matt's ... 2nd cousin? once removed?).



Matt's extended family - the McMickens (well, actually, since it's his grandmother's sisters, all their last names are different).



Matt loves this side of the family because great-grandpa McMicken had a yacht called the Lotus, which had its own cabin boy and set of silver.

Trip Recap - with pictures!

We started going up I-5 - scrappy yellow kamikaze butterflies swarmed the highway as it ran between fields of dried sunflower stalks - we hit them at an astonishing rate and they looked like scraps of paper, or petals.

We stopped at several rest stops to stretch out.



I did my yoga.



We made it to Mount Shasta - here's me and the mountain. Then we headed to Ashland - I've already written about that...



After we found Portland, we went by Powell's books, which is impressively large (puts Moe's to shame, that's for sure... ). But the ones in Seattle were prettier...

Seattle, next post -

The M in Montana is for Meth

OK, there are also lots of nice things in Montana... But there is also a series of ads to keep kids off of meth (see npr story here - not even with the most graphic pictures) and they're really gross. What Matt and I can't figure out is... why make *this* go faster?


(I'd use my own picture, but we can't find the cord to Matt's camera.)

Aaaany way for some reason m y computer thinks I'm const natly hitting the space bar, so I'm going to quit for now - I'll writ e abou tthe nice things later. :)

Trippin' - Days 1-3

The great cross-country trip has begun!

Matt and I began our travels early Tuesday, after a final bagel and coffee at Yali's cafe... exactly 24 hours after our scheduled departure time. Driving north on I-5, lunch at McDonald's and several bathroom breaks later, we made it to Ashland, Oregon, where we stopped for dinner. My mom and aunt keep raving about it, so we thought we'd check it out. It's very, very cute. Strangely so, in fact. It's main industry is the Shakespeare Festival, which runs for about 5 months, so the entire town is funded by drama money. And you know what happens when you give yuppie Shakespeare fans a huge amount of money... well, they build a Globe Theater, have tons of cute shops, very clean streets, and heraldic flags hanging at every corner. A beautifully appointed park and dolled up creek bed make for "creekside dining" at all the local restaurants. We did find a rather exquisite restaurant - dragonfly - for dinner. Not on the creekside strip (fortunately... really, the creek needs some more water in it, and less stagnancy...), but up under the cabaret theater a few streets back. Latin-Asian fusion. We had crispy plantains with avocado, and my favorite, ahi tuna "wontons" with sweet soy sauce, sesame seeds, and wasabi sour cream. It was like tuna candy. So, so good. This was followed by their vegan "Buddha" bowl - a tasty noodle bowl in coconut milk broth with a polite smattering of shitake mushrooms. Ashland is very yummy.

After dinner we tried to make it to Eugene - that was misguided - but we ended up and a slightly less-than-comfy Comfort Inn in Roseburg. At least we got free donuts in the morning. We stopped in Eugene, Oregon for second breakfast and walked around the University of Oregon campus. (Several of Matt's history professors got their start at Eugene...) And may I say... woo-wee! Oregon has got some mad cash flowing into that university! The buildings are suitably old feeling and ivy-covered, the trees and lawns are geometrically manicured, and it has quite a New England feel.

We lunched in Portland - after we found Portland, that is. I mean, we found the ports. And the industrial area. But - for those who don't know that "Rose Quarter" or "4th Street" are the proper city exits - the actual "cute" part is very difficult to find from the highway... The whole city is contained by a highway loop which goes around it ... we missed the city 3 times. Yeah, well. When we finally made it INTO Portland, there wasn't anywhere to park, so we cruised the shopping and financial districts for another 15 minutes. Finally parking and asking for a map at the local Westin hotel (we *always* ask for restaurant recommendations and maps at swanky hotels... they're much nicer), we made it to the northerly part, saw Powell's Books (stepped inside, just so we could say so), and found a lunch place. Everett St. Bistro - I had quiche, Matt had steak tartare and a salad. It was nice to sit, and it's a nice place - not spectacular, but just what the doctor ordered for restorative measures.

Losing Portland meant that we were several hours late to Great Aunt Alice's - not too much traffic coming into Seattle but we had to wait for 40 minutes for the ferry to Bainbridge Island (the McMicken ancestral hometown). Matt waited until this moment to tell me he didn't have his great aunt's address ... just the directions. Luckily they live in a cul-de-sac and when we parked Alice walked outside (she had been watching for us).

Matt's relatives will take a whole 'nother post; I will let them be for now. Alice is very nice. Her husband's name is Joe. We also met Gretchen, Alice's daughter (Connie - Gretchen says to remind you about a bottle of sauternes and a rowboat?) and her husband John. Tonight there is a dinner with everyone plus Joanie (Great Aunt #2) and her daughter Sarah.

I guess one fun thing is that Matt and I get homecooked dinner and breakfast every day, and we're served with regular dishes on plastic placemats with paper napkins... and the ancestral monogrammed silver.

I'll probably be able to put pictures up once we're at Matt's sister's in Minneapolis. We're in Seattle now - leaving tomorrow - heading across Montana...

More later!

busy being fabulous

So. Fabulous girls had a birthday (their fabulous fiances made them dinner) and had their mothers visit, had a wedding dress fitting (!) and now are planning to move across country. Re: wedding dress fitting, there was a shoe fiasco and an underwear fiasco, and apparently I am no longer the size I was when they measured me (stupid cheeseburgers) but all is well now... The move gives me a good excuse to throw out things I've been meaning to toss (and in turn, a great excuse to buy new stuff!!) but things are a bit rushed right now... the big drive begins Monday...

Fabulous girls ... um... dye their hair orange?

It was *supposed* to be blonde... and I don't have a picture of it yet, which is why I've delayed this post. Matt says it looks blonde. But there are bits that are distinctly orange (along the roots, where the dye stayed longer). It was supposed to be a "natural" blonde color but it came out on the reddish side... kind of like a strawberry blonde, I suppose. But it wasn't supposed to be reddish! :P