Badlands National Park

It took me nearly 3 hours to get through the park because I was constantly getting in and out of the car. The park truly took my breath away. I have never seen anything like it before and the cool, misty light that shrouded everything made it even more like a dreamy, moonscape, hallucination. I will say I lost my footing a few times just from the sheer expanse of the badlands.

Here’s a link for more information: http://www3.northern.edu/natsource/HABITATS/Sdbadl1.htm

Chris

Badlands and Grasslands

Lusk, WY
Elevation: 5,020 ft.

I am definitely posting much more regularly than I anticipated. I owe it all to the cold, lonely camp grounds that “forced” me to bite the bullet and stay in warm, wifi-filled hotel rooms haha. With a few bites of powdered eggs and a stick of french toast in my stomach I hit the road with as much momentum I could muster - today was going to be a driving day. It took several hours to reach Badlands National Park from Sioux Falls but it was well worth it. To do the park any justice I will do a separate post with just high res photos. The long drive gave me a chance to practice some in-car back exercises. By lifting my legs and curling my abs forward (think a v-sit while sitting) and then applying opposite pressure with my arms against my knees I was able to engage the painful area in my lower back. I’m not really sure what the problem is but I want to think I have a pinched nerve in my lower lumbar. The amount of pain isn’t proportional to the amount of movement or strain I’m putting on it. Anyways, it made it a lot less painful to get out of the car to refill gas or to use the restroom - progress. 

The plan after Badlands was to visit Wall Drug (a supposedly famous store), Mount Rushmore and then rendezvous with Ellen in Laramie, WY. But by the time I was able to finally peel myself away from Badlands hypnotizing landscapes it was already nearly 1700 hours. The drive to Laramie would be at least 5 hours and I really didn’t want to drive at night. Long story short I ended up visiting Wall Drug, skipping Mount Rushmore and checking into a hotel in Lusk, WY. Falling in and out of cellphone signal as the roads got longer and darker was giving me a bad feeling and I decided that an early morning start would be safer and wiser. 

If there is one thing that I gained from driving as late as I did it would be that  got to see my first sunset. Southwest South Dakota is markedly different from the rest of the southern part of the state. Instead of flat farm lands expanding endlessly around the highway it gives way to rolling hills with smatterings of cattle and pines. With the sun starting to set the hillsides were illuminated in a way that I imagined ancient Greece must have looked like. I’m not crazy - I read a lot of mythology books growing up. As I crossed the state line into Wyoming the sunset turned golden. I have to admit I was getting scared as I became the only one on the road and thousands of potential accident scenarios started playing through my head. I quickly grabbed my favorite Turnpike Troubadours album and blasted it as I watched my first Wyoming sun set. It brought me a lot of comfort and was, arguably,  my most country moment till date. 

Tomorrow is Wyoming and shortly after it will be Colorado and then, finally, Oregon. It’s hard to believe I have made it this far already. As much as all this driving has been wearing me down I already miss the simplicity of being on the road. All you worry about it gas, miles, food and finding somewhere to sleep at the end of the day. It is both a carefree, spontaneous feeling and a stressful, anxious feeling. But I will miss it. But I think that experiences like this, or any for that matter, don’t just end when they end. I think that they chisel away at us and create something new with less. I don’t if that makes any sense but, for me, I feel like I am shedding more and more of the extraneous parts of me as I drive…Alas, life is short but also long, I look forward to it.

Chris

Goodbye Great Lakes, Westward Progress

Sioux Falls, SD
Elevation: 1,470 ft.

Rolling out of bed I felt deflated and overwhelmed by the thought of more driving. Pulling on my trusty carhartts and nano puff hoody (yes product placement) I was greeted outside by the cold, windy, misty air I had come to associate with the Great Lakes. It energized me right away, jolting me alive and awake. The first destination was Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The lakeshore lay at the end of a long, unplowed road and, unsuprisingly, I was the only one there. Arriving at popular sites like this alone has started growing on me. They are like ghost towns. Empty of people and noise and extraneous distractions, it makes me feel like this was how they were meant to be enjoyed. The wind was especially vicious that morning, within minutes I lost feeling in my hands and I had to concede lest I dropped by DSLR into the frozen waters below. 

Back in Rhyhorn I warmed my hands and set off for Marquette, MI. I couldn’t help but try some of the gift shops first - I still hadn’t managed to find a sticker worthy of my “adventure window”. Starting with a hiker sticker I picked up at Mountain Trails in Winchester, VA, I have been adding stickers to the back, right window of my trunk to commemorate the wonderful places Rhyhorn has taken me. So far I have stickers from Virginia Beach, The Blue Ridge Parkway, Shenandoah National Park and now the Great Lakes. All the gift shops being seasonally closed I took a leap of faith on a coffee shop I had heard good things about. Having woken up late, I was now passing by while it was open and figured it was meant to be (something that I would find to be very true about many things during this trip). Falling Rock Cafe and Bookstore could easily have become my all-time favorite coffeeshop if I stayed in Munising longer than I had. The shop is easily 1/3 coffee and 2/3 books. And not just any books, old books. Old, new, stories, religious, outdoor guides you name it and it was there. I purchased a few stickers, 16 oz. of coffee and made a new friend, Leanne. She had moved down from Alaska with her husband because he had recently gotten a job as a park ranger out at Pictured Rocks. I told her I had just made friends with a man name Justin at the information center but it just so happened he was filling in for her husband. Either way, as I applied the sticker onto my window, I began to think about how funny it was that things seemed to line up on their own in life. For example, I was discussing with my brother en route to Great Falls last week that chance is a wonderful, interesting and yet terrifying notion. It all depended on how you looked at it. He mentioned how interesting it was that, at the very moment we were talking, a specific number of people were all heading towards Great Falls as well. People we don’t even know. I took it a step further and told him to now imagine that a very finite number of people all woke up this morning, went about a series of intentional and unintentional macro and micro actions, all interlaced with even more micro decisions (i.e. retying a shoe lace, taking that extra sip of coffee, letting the dog pee an extra time) that set into motion a series of steps that would culminate in them closing their car door, turning around, looking up and making eye contact with us as we closed our own car doors. Think about it. On the surface it’s completely harmless, its nothing. Who even thinks about things like that? I do. And my baffled brother does now. My point being, I am trying to live with an open mind and have learned that the best way to look at life and it’s decisions is to simply roll with the punches. Coming from me, a logistics and planning Nazi, it is a mark of great progress. Anyways, getting tipsy last night and waking up late this morning earned me two new friends and a sticker.

En route to Marquette I must have pulled over, turned around or just slammed the brakes a dozen times. Channeling my inner Foster Huntington I made sure I didn’t let anything that caught my eye slip through my fingers. If there is one thing that these short 24 years has taught me its that regret is the most painful, horrible thing to have to live with. Something that has permanently changed my perspective on the world as well as increased my appreciation for the natural world are these Great Lakes, specifically, Lake Superior. I don’t know what it is one would think that I would prefer Lake Michigan because of my Laurie complex or Lake Huron because of my Lord Huron obsession but no. It was the vast, frozen expanse of Lake Superior that held me in the daze. Many times I would just pull over to gaze across its cold waters and I would get lost in it. 

Marquette had to be cutest, friendliest town in the U.P. I visited. Right off the bat the town was alive, sunny and full of activity. The port town was home to a famous port in which docked some of the world’s largest freight liners. There weren’t that many while I was there but I did manage to get a picture of one loading coal into a large ore dock. Re-entering town I decided to yelp a late lunch. It was going to be a long long drive to Duluth, MN and I knew that I was already fading. I chose a simple bagel place called Third Street Bagel that I had read about earlier. I was considering just getting fast food due to time constraints but in the spirit of being mind blown I decided to just roll with it - who knows who I could meet? I was right. As soon as I parked Rhyhorn I started freaking out. Right in front of the store leashed to a post was a large, grey, completely dread locked dog! I greeted him and walked into the shop quickly scanning for the owner. I pictured a large, dreaded, groovy kind of guy but instead it was a short-haired, young attractive lady with a faux-fur purse and leopard leggings. Her name was Heidi (I think) and her dog was Soul Dog. Soul Dog - how amazing is that? I barely finished ordering my bagel when I blurted out to her if I could take a picture with Soul Dog. She happily obliged and my life was made complete. As it would turn out she had lived out west for a number of years. Soul Dog was from Seattle, WA and she and her had travelled all the way back to the U.P. She talked of hippies and living expenses and people that made their living at rest stops. She said it was a weird weird place and that she loved it more here but wished me all the best saying that she could see me out west. I thanked her for the kind words and the awesome picture an set out for Duluth, MN. 

The drive to Duluth offered some amazing views. Wisconsin and Minnesota have an outrageous number of lakes and not just any lakes. Lakes of the deepest blue you can imagine. I have often associated the Great Lakes with just Michigan, but this drive changed a lot of that. Granted the amounts of farmland increased tenfold the two states truly had a lot of beauty to offer. As I approached the bridge between Wisconsin and Minnesota I would I could literally see the built up town from the Wisconsin side. Driving into Duluth I was overcome by the amount of industrialization. I thought that Marquette was a port town but no, Duluth was a port town. Or rather a port city! From the city limits to my hotel I saw at least three huge ore docks, countless ships and a number of large freight liners. It was terrifying to see so much smoke and steel. As much of an outdoor person as I am, there is something deep and dark within me that is attracted to that strange kind of overwhelming industrialization. The people were friendly, the beer was cold and strong and the steak was superb. I wish I had more time to spend in that collegy, port city and will certainly return one day to do it justice. 

Today was the most driving I have done since the Indianapolis leg of the trip. From about 1000 to 1900 hours I was never out of the car for more than 10 minutes. The exception being when I stopped at the Mall of America in Minneapolis to get lost looking for coffee and coolant. Why was I looking for coolant there? I don’t know the mall is so massive that it literally has an amusement park as well as a couple of hotels under its roof! Just traveling the outer ring I felt like I was in Attack on Titan - it freaked me out. By evening I pulled into Sioux Falls, SD. Exhausted, hungry and increasingly disabled (my lower back has really started flaring up again. And old injury from NEON. I can barely get up from sitting without holding my breath now) I checked into a hotel and gunned it for Falls Park before the sunset. I am aggressively going to enjoy this road trip to the max. The waterfalls were really breathtaking and so out of place. I had to idea how something this intense could have formed when it was surrounded by such uniform land. I’m no geologist but it didn’t seem to add up. Reading a panel at the park I learned that it was a result of a glacier that couldn’t completely overtake the flat plateau but did manage to redirect a river for a long long time. After it melted the river had already created two distinct branches. That plus erosion and BAM, exposed bedrock! Hungry and tired I yelped the pasta place the concierge had referred to me and was pleasantly surprised to find a Khmer restaurant just 5 minutes away! Phnom Penh Restaurant is a small, family owned restaurant right in town and the food was amazing. The family treated me like family checking up on me often. The father even came out to ask where I was from and where I was traveling and made it a point to tell me to really enjoy the meal. The son would come out and ask if I was sure I didn’t want a free refill of rice (I don’t eat much rice for a Cambodian). But the real treat was when a man sitting at the opposite side of the restaurant overhead me talking about my trip and asked to sit down with me. Me being extremely lonely and quickly falling into depression about how much I missed my ex, family and home-cooked meals I welcomed him whole-heartedly. His name was Jack. He was from the area but had done the same trip I had but in the other direction. A radiologist, he picked up his life and moved to West Virginia to pursue work and to finish med school. We talked of life, taking chances, being scared, diets, juicing, mold, family, having a dark side and how orderly the roads are designed in the mid-west. We talked about how, during our respective trips, we both had moments of sudden clarity and realization where we would suddenly ask ourselves, “what the fuck am I doing”. Mine had actually happened earlier today as I drove through yet another Minnesota wind farm. Honestly it was thanks to my excellent supply of music (I’m not kidding my taste is impeccable and my DJing skills are unparalleled), taking pictures and constant flows of texts from friends and family that I hadn’t noticed how alone I was yet. But as I drove past those windmills it just settled into my bones. I am, at least physically, completely alone out here. Far from any family or friends, really anything bad could happen. And yet here I am in South Dakota blogging in a hotel room. It’s been an eye opening trip so far that’s for sure. And I have become so automatic at driving that I really have lost any concept of how far I’ve actually made it. Not until looking at a map did I realize that I covered all of Minnesota today (I am exactly half way!)…Up next is Badland National Park, Mt. Rushmore and rendezvousing with my first friend of the trip, Ellen in Wyoming. The moral that I have learned today is to really appreciate the little coincidences in life. Take chances sometimes and be spontaneous - it will always get you somewhere you weren’t before. 

Till next time,

Chris