Bea and Mark’s Excellent Adventure

Friday, July 13, 2007:

As I said, we really hated the Petaluma KOA. When we woke up there Friday (July 13) morning, we realized our site was wet because KOA waters them with sprinklers. Who in the hell waters their campsites, especially the tent ones? So even though we had reservations to stay there Friday night also, we packed up with the intention of only going back there as a last resort.

So we left there and headed toward Napa and Sonoma valleys — wine country. This was also a defining moment because we went on Route 166 East. It was the first time since leaving Massachusetts that we had actually gone on a road going east.

As we were driving, we both decided that there was no way we were going back to that Petaluma KOA. So Bea called the place and told them our thoughts about their miserable campground, and we got a refund for that night so we could go elsewhere.

The original Taylor’s

To make things a little lighter, I told Bea that I had a surprise for her as we were traveling toward wine country. We had gotten a bit of a late start and it was nearing lunchtime. I was traveling up Route 29 in Napa Valley toward Calistoga and then we came upon it — the original Taylor’s Refresher in St. Helena. I wasn’t sure Bea would like the surprise because after all, we were inNapa. But she loved it, and we ordered lunch and, of course, milkshakes, and then started our wine country tour.

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We got up early on Thursday morning. Bea had had a rough night with her eyes and sinuses. She felt like she was getting a sinus infection and we decided that she needed to see a doctor soon, meaning that day.

Before we left the site, we walked on a path to Lake Tahoe. After pondering how cold the water is, I eventually went in and cooled off. The lake is so clear — supposedly there are areas where you can see 67 feet down the lake — and it’s the second deepest lake in the U.S. behind Crater Lake in Oregon. Nice.

Finding a hospital

We left and drove up the west shore of Lake Tahoe, and eventually came to Tahoe City. We found a place called Syd’s Bagelry in the town that had free WiFi, so we ordered some breakfast and settled in to search the Internet for a doctor for Bea. Eventually we decided to just go to the hospital, and ended up at the Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee.

As Bea suspected, she had a sinus infection. I can’t believe that she’s been able to keep traveling and sleep in tents this whole way with how she’s been feeling. I probably would have ended this trip long ago if I was the one who was sick. So the doctor prescribed her some medicine and we were off again, headed for San Francisco and Petaluma. Along the way, we stopped in Sacramento to pick up Bea’s prescription. We saw the State House and were hoping to catch a glimpse of Ahhnold but no luck there.

If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair (and go to Taylor’s), on the jump…

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Wednesday was a long, long day for us. We had to drive from Kaysville, UT to South Lake Tahoe, CA. More than eight hours of driving, with most of it in northern Nevada on Route 80, one of the most boring drives that has ever existed. But oh well, we got there, eventually.

The Great Salt Lake

So our first stop was the “Great” Salt Lake. We say it like that because I don’t think we got the full experience. I think it was a mix of not seeing what we expected and not going to the lake in the right spot to go swimming. We got onto Route 80 and got off at what we thought was the Salt Lake State Park. Well, we arrived at about 9:30 a.m. and it wasn’t open yet. So we drove down the street and found an opening to a walk toward the lake.

First of all, the first 100 yards of the lake is all marsh. It’s not something you can or want to dip your feet into. Then as we walked closer and closer to the lake, these huge flies started buzzing around our heads and trying to bite us. It was insane and neither of us wanted to hang around.

Here are a couple pictures of me in front of it. The second one is a close-up of my face so you can see how much I disliked the lake and the flies buzzing around it. Again, I think much of our problem was a lack of time to explore this huge body of water and not knowing where the best place was to go swimming (we now think Antelope Island would have been good).

The Bonneville Salt Flats

As we continued on Route 80 in Utah, there were some cool sights. At one point we were driving through the Great Salt Lake, with water on our right, our left, and on either side of the traffic going the other way. As we got farther west, we saw a few industrial plants with mountains of salt that it looked like they were processing. And we saw long stretches on the side of the road that looked like snow but was salt.

Then we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats, which is where they have a measured mile to record all of those land speed records. It was pretty cool — you could walk out onto the flats. With the salt being so white and the sun being so bright and reflecting, it felt like we were on another planet. Kind of creepy, actually.

Here’s Bea pretending that she’s running.

Smoke but no fire, up-and-coming Reno? and ah…Lake Tahoe, on the jump…

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The next morning, Tuesday, we got up and went back to see Old Faithful one more time. Then we headed south into the Grand Teton National Park. We both could see why “Mr. Vice President” Dick Cheney likes to hang out here in his free time. This is definitely a nice relaxing place to go (read: undisclosed location), especially if you’ve just had your 15th angioplasty. But I kid the V.P.

Jackson Hole

Jackson Hole is another favorite of Cheney’s; it’s also a bastion of wealth and cute little stores and places to eat. The main park has these arches at all four corners. The arches are made from elk antlers. Seems kind of morbid at first, thinking about all the poor animals shot to make a neat little arch for a local park, but then we read that elk naturally shed their antlers each year, so it’s all good.

They should shoot the elk anyway, just for the heck of it, because what are elk really good for anyway, aside from providing parks with archway material? I can’t think of anything. There probably is a reason that elk still exists as a species, but I’m too lazy to look it up right now, so let’s just kill ‘em.

Rude dog urination and phony camping, on the jump…

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On Monday we didn’t have to travel far to our destination — Cody, Wyo. to Yellowstone National Park. But once we settled into our campsite, we still did quite a bit of driving around this large park.

Getting there

Getting to our site wasn’t too bad, although there was some traffic at the east entrance to the park. Looks like they’re putting up a stone wall to slow erosion. As you can see, our campsite was gorgeous. The lady that checked us in was so sweet. She was going to put us in a tent-only area but then saw a site right next to Yellowstone Lake. So that’s where we settled in.

On to Old Faithful and the unimpressed

We set up our site and took a half-hour nap — we were exhausted from the long drive the day before. Then Bea made some butter and tomato sandwiches, we chowed them down, and took off. First destination was Old Faithful. We got there and found parking, and about two minutes after we got to the site, it started spurting.

The hole steams constantly and the geyser erupts about every 90 minutes. There were benches set up around the site with people just lined up waiting to see it. The spurts start off low and slow, and then all the sudden, the hot water erupts, steam billowing high into the air, and everyone gasps in amazement.

The eruption doesn’t last too long — maybe a minute and a half. But it is great.

Not everyone is as in awe as the rest of us, though. At Mt. Rushmore, I overhead one guy telling his wife: “I wasn’t that impressed.” And then at Yellowstone, a father and son were watching the geyser, and while people were snapping photos of the eruption, the father said to the son, “They’ll be getting 100 pictures of the same thing.” As soon as the spurts got lower, they turned and left. I was like, What? This didn’t impress you? What impresses you then, watching Sunday Night Football on HDTV? Being able to watch cable in your RV? Geez. I didn’t actually say this, of course. This was all interior monologue.

Bubbling mud, waterfalls and buffalo daredevils on the jump…

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So it’s been a couple days since we posted. It was a combination of no WiFi access and low battery on the computer.

Mount Rushmore

We spent much of the morning at Mt. Rushmore. We drove up and Bea took pictures, and then we parked and walked out onto the Grand Terrace and took more pictures. Then we walked out onto the Presidential Trail closer to the monument and took more pictures. The photo here is of me trying to pick George Washington’s nose, something I’m sure thousands of 13-year-olds do every year. Really, if you think about, it’s what the founding fathers would want.

Quick cool facts: Granite erodes at about one inch every 10,000 years, so this monument should be here awhile. Also, the eyes are about 11 feet wide each.

Crazy Horse Memorial

Though it’s not done, this memorial was unbelievable. Once finished, it’s going to dwarf Mt. Rushmore. Crazy Horse’s head is 87 feet high; the presidents’ heads on Rushmore are only 60 feet high each. Plus, Crazy Horse will be riding a horse and whatnot. You can get an idea of what it will look like when it’s done here. Looks like we’ve got an excuse to return to the area — we’ll have to see this when it’s complete.
Custer State Park

This park is in the Black Hills also, and we got to see some great wildlife here.

We didn’t see much during the first half of the park, but then we hit an area with a lot of animals: buffalo, deer, prairie dogs, elk. At one point a herd of buffalo were on the right side of the road, close the edge, and I was able to take a pretty good close-up.

Later on, a donkey was half-blocking the road and Bea drove up beside it and took this cool photo. The donkey was about two feet from the camera when she snapped it.

We both loved the Black Hills and think we could have spent a week just there, hiking and biking and camping and sleeping. There was a wildfire there the night we stayed there, though, and I guess one person lost their life. There was some thunder and lightning that night — not much rain — and a lot of wind. So far we’ve been lucky that these crazy forest fires haven’t affected our trip.

Driving to Cody, Wy. via Walgreens and Bighorn National Forest, and the dog show conversation, on the jump…

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So we left Austin, MN around 8:30 a.m yesterday. Saw a Hormel plant on the side of the highway but no Spam Museum. We must have missed it. Darn. Our trip today took us from Austin, MN to Rapid City, SD with a detour through the Badlands. We’re now at the Rapid City KOA.

The Corn Palace

Our first stop was in Mitchell, S.D. at The Corn Palace. Free admission. Much of the outside walls, as well as the walls inside, are full of murals made from different colored ears of corn. It kind of reminded me of the scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when Cameron looks at the impressionist painting and it keeps switching from his face to a closer and closer view of the painting until all you see are the dots in the painting. I imagined a similar scene with me looking at one of these murals, and then at the end, they show a close-up of the kernels of the ears of corn, and then they switch to me putting butter and salt on a piece of corn and eating it.

Crossing the Missouri River

Just as we crossed the Mississippi the evening before, today we crossed the Missouri River in Chamberlain, S.D. If I’m not mistaken, the Missouri is actually longer than the Mississippi but is still a tributary of it.

We both agreed that the Missouri is just as beautiful as the Mississippi. We also had a great view of it, as the road kind of descended upon the bridge crossing.

The Petrified Gardens, the Badlands and Wall Drug on the jump…

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So yesterday we traveled from Chicago to Austin, MN and are now at the Beaver Trails Campground. Took us about six hours with a stop.

Traffic

There was quite a bit of traffic getting out of Chicago yesterday. We got kind of a late start as it was — we wanted to leave at 2pm and didn’t get going until after 3:30pm — and so we hit Friday afternoon rush hour traffic in Chicago proper and the suburbs. Actually, pretty much until the Wisconsin line.

Any skinny motorcyclists out there?

For about an hour we drove in the vicinity of an obnoxious guy on his motorcycle who liked to rev his engine and bob in between lanes like he was some Motocross racer. T-shirt, shorts, no helmet. A small accident and he would have looked like he went through a meat grinder. Bea and I have also noticed over the past years that there aren’t many fit people riding motorcycles anymore. Maybe because of our preconceived notions, we don’t notice the fit and skinny motorcyclists, but all we see are overweight people on their motorcycles, often with their T-shirts untucked so they’re hanging out for the world to see. Maybe they should remove the engines on their Harleys and install some pedals on those bad boys.

Crossing the Mississippi, lightning bugs, and the little red cart, on the jump…

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In accordance with our timeline, we drove from Dedham to Michigan this past weekend, and now we’re in Chicago for a week looking for apartments. The weather is nice and Chicago is such a great town — we can’t wait to settle down and build a life here. Anyway, here are a few thoughts on our Dedham-to-Michigan trip.

Is it a dolly or a hand truck?

On Thursday we picked up our Penske rental truck. The thing was great — clean, plenty of space, about 40,000 miles on it, rode smooth. No cruise control and only an AM/FM radio, which was a downside, but it actually wasn’t too bad.

The guy who rented us the truck, Neil Quigley or something like that, was a nice guy, but he had a hangup. When I asked him where the dolly was that we had reserved, he brought it out and told us that it was a hand truck. He explained that a dolly has four wheels, like this, while a hand truck has two, like this. Ok, fair enough.

A few minutes later, as we were leaving, I said something to Bea about the device (I can’t remember what) and I called it a dolly. Good ol’ Neil Quigley , in this under-the-breath kind of voice, says, “Hand truck.” Just like that, too. No sentence formation or anything. Just: “hand truck.” Bea and I looked at each other and almost started laughing. The rest of the time we were packing and unpacking, I would say something like, “Hey, we should use the dolly for that,” and Bea would say, “Hand truck,” and I would say, “Oh yeah, sorry, hand truck.”

People who look at you when they’re passing you, and where the Midwest begins, on the jump…

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After having lived here for many years, saying goodbye is the hardest thing about this trip and our move to Chicago. After all, how could you not miss these two faces (Charlie, our nephew and my godson, and Gabriella, our niece)?

The good thing is that I was definitely able to say my goodbyes. Our dinner with my parents on Friday night was nice and ditto on the breakfast with Gramps on Saturday morning as we were leaving. Friends and coworkers threw us great parties at Tavern on the Water and Brandy Pete’s, and at TechTarget offices on Friday. Still, I’m very sad that I’m gone.

That being said, here’s a list of things that I’ll miss. Even though I’ll still be able to do and visit most of them, it won’t be as often as I’d like:

• I’ll miss playing tag with Charlie and Gabriella in the backyard, and watching them jump off the big rock. I’ll also miss being the Tickle Monster and Mark the Shark.
• I’ll miss watching my mom watch the Red Sox and talking with her in the kitchen while she’s cooking.
• I’ll miss playing cards and talking politics with my dad.
• I’ll miss playing Trivial Pursuit with my parents, especially when the answer involves tigers and the Detroit Red Wings.
• I’ll miss hearing Tina laugh at jokes of mine that aren’t really that funny.
• I’ll miss trying to talk about hockey with Chas even though I don’t keep up with the sport like I used to.
• I’ll miss having breakfast with Grampy.
• I’ll miss Cathleen, one of the kindest friends a person could have.
• I’ll miss Friday night poker at the Collins All-in Lounge.
• I’ll miss lunch at TechTarget High School.
• I’ll miss double dates with Geoff and Deana.
• I’ll miss playing tennis with Greg, Geoff and Adam.
• I’ll miss Good Harbor Beach, Hampton Beach, Tremonte, Bedford Farms, Kimball’s, J.P. Licks, The Real Deal, Cafe Fresh Bagel, Anna’s, the Dedham Community Theater, and a bunch of other places I can’t think of off the top of my head right now.
• Most of all, to reiterate, I’m going to miss my family. A lot.

-Mark