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Published: June 20th 2006
This leg of our journey began with a quick trip to Chicago followed by many, many miles on the road. I was so darn excited to visit Chicago for the first time—couldn’t wait to get there. And then it dawned on me that I really didn’t have a clue about what there actually was to see or do in Chicago. After some quick thinking, we sent off an email to our friend, Lisa, an ex-Chicagoan, to get some helpful tips on what exactly was so exciting about Chicago after all. Then, we dug right in.
After securing a campsite just south of the city, we drove through miles and miles of smelly steel mills and condemned buildings. We arrived just in time for dinner and then decided to check out Navy Pier, a shopping center/amusement park on a pier in the heart of the city. And what better way to get a feel for the city, but from the air in one of the biggest, tallest Ferris wheels I’ve ever seen—it made me just a wee bit skittish. To be honest, it made me really, very nervous to the point of sphincter pucker, but I tried to play it off
a bit for Paul since I’m the one who’s all about roller coasters and thrill rides. Perhaps I’m getting tamer in my old age.
The next morning we headed back into the city where we quickly realized why we were having such a hard time putting a finger on what was so special about Chicago. The thing about the city is that it’s so darn great not for what there is to see or do, but rather for the overall feel of the place. Yes, the architecture is beautiful. Yes, the people are friendly. Yes, the city is chockablock full with wonderful museums. But what we loved was just wandering around, grabbing bites to eat, watching people, and lounging in the many beautiful parks around the city. We loved spotting the water tower that was the only thing left standing after the famous Chicago fire, and we loved window shopping down the Miracle Mile, and we loved frolicking on the beach and having drinks at the top of the John Hancock building (the #2 tallest building in the city).
Our favorite spot though was Millennium Park, the new park with an impressive amphitheatre and walkway designed by Frank
Gehry. Even better than these though, are two innovative sculptures in the park. I really loved the video fountain, two tall rectangular structures that appear to be constructed from glass bricks. Huge images are projected onto the glass while water streams down from the top of these structures (five or six stories up) and onto the ground where children play and splash around.
The other sculpture is the bean, one of the simplest and most elegant sculptures I have ever seen. It is simply one gigantic chrome jelly bean. What makes it so neat is the way the buildings, the sky, and your buddies are reflected off its seamless shiny finish. Paul and I could have spent hours watching people make faces into the bean (or pulling faces ourselves) and taking many, many pictures of all the pretty ways the sky and buildings were reflected.
Before continuing with our story, Paul and I would like to send a great big thanks to all the Mid-Western wackos who thought up and constructed all the crazy roadside attractions that broke up our long days on the road. On behalf of all the many families that have visited over the years,
thank you for giving us a reason to pull off the interstate, stretch our legs, and have some comic relief. I’m sure things would have become pretty ugly had Paul and I driven straight through. And while we’re at it, thanks too to the inventor of audio books for giving us something to listen to when our MP3 batteries ran out and when for several states the only radio stations available played bad country and religious inspiration.
Okay, I’ll get back on track now. After Chicago, we continued westward along Interstate 90 anxious to see a highly recommended roadside stop (according to our handy dandy “Lonely Planet-USA” that we picked up in Boston). In the heart of Wisconsin lies Dr. Evermore’s, Forevertron, the world’s largest sculpture made from scrap metal. As nifty as this enormous piece of art was, the really amazing thing about Tom Every’s (aka Dr. Evermore) work is the sheer volume of it. This guy started a scrap metal business in his teens and has been building and sculpting ever since. There are hundreds upon hundreds of sculptures to peruse built out of everything from musical instruments to military debris, from speakers to spanners, from cable
cars to carburetors. Okay, you get the idea. If you’re ever near Baraboo, Wisconsin you’d be dumb to drive by without stopping.
The Spam Museum was our next zany stop. I love the idea of an entire museum dedicated to canned meat. Unfortunately, we arrived 20 minutes before closing and were unable to fully explore all of the wonders of Spam. Paul and I did take part in a friendly Spam-canning competition, and once again I was triumphant. But come to think of it, maybe Paul came out better in the end. After all, the life of a Spam canner is surely pretty bleak, and the whole town did smell a lot like pig poo.
Several miles later, I introduced Paul to the Taj Mahal of the Midwest, the Corn Palace. I was pretty blown away by the Corn Palace on my way out to North Carolina three years ago, and was sure that Paul would be equally awed. Let’s just say that he was underwhelmed. How he can be unimpressed by a building that has been decorated by hundreds of thousands of ears of corn each year since 1892 is something I guess I will never understand.
It’s amazing what you learn about a person on a road trip.
Understandably, I had low expectations for Paul’s level of enthusiasm at the final roadside delight of this leg of the trip. As such, when we began to observe all the billboards advertising Wall Drug multiply alongside the highway until they nearly blotted out the sun (I’m pretty sure we saw the first one way back in Pennsylvania), I began to seriously talk down the place to Paul. Frankly, I thought it was a bit of a disappointment myself my previous time through—it’s hard not to be let down a bit after seeing a hundred billboards advertising the joint. (And when I say a hundred, I’m not exaggerating; there quite possibly could have been many more than that.) Imagine my surprise when Paul found the place to be a sheer delight. Maybe Paul should say a few words about the place:
It was good. . . . Ok it was very good, or maybe it was after the Corn Palace disappointment and the endless rolling prairie plains, my expectations were never really going to be that high. I can’t really remember what was so good, but maybe
if you’re going to have a tacky T-Rex in a cage to scare people who walk by, the middle of bum nowhere is the place to do it. You get free ice water and 5 cent cups of coffee too.
I bet you’re just dying to make a trip to Wall, South Dakota after that testimonial.
The really great thing about Wall is that it is one of the gateways into the surreal landscape of the Badlands National Park. What a crazy bit of the world this is. I’ll let Paul’s pictures do the talking as I probably lack the words to properly describe the beauty of these unearthly, sharp ridges, spires, and valleys. What I can say is that it took an amazing series of events to form the place, including a massive volcanic eruption millions of years ago (perhaps the one that formed Yellowstone) and the subsequent millions of years of erosion by melting glaciers, rivers and the fierce wind of the plains.
Paul and I spent two days hiking around and exploring the place. I felt so free and invincible scrambling around the tops of the ridges and wandering through the steep and narrow
valleys. And then it hit us, what was so weird about the place is the scale. It’s all off. Looking at the shape of the formations, one would imagine that they were enormous, rugged mountains. But everything was like one-tenth the size you would expect it to be. It made us feel superhuman the way we could scale humongous mountains in a single bound and then leap from ridge to ridge. It’s like a gigantic Fun Land, and I for one couldn’t get enough of it.
The other really nifty things in the Badlands are the prairie dog towns where thousands of prairie dogs stand at attention across the horizon. Paul was fascinated as he’d never seen such an animal and became slightly obsessed with snapping a close-up of one of these critters. Too bad that every time he got close to one, the little fellow popped back down into his hole and went running through the towns’ miles of underground tunnels, probably to pop up of some other hole and chatter out ridicules to Paul.
Next up was Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills National Forest. This little corner of South Dakota has been seriously built up
for tourism, and I’m sure a young family could have hours of fun with all the cave tours, water parks, bumper boats, and gold panning attractions. We, however, weren’t inspired. In fact, there were only two things Paul and I were really interested in seeing, Mount Rushmore itself and some buffalo. We took a scenic drive that was supposed to afford us the opportunity to see both. And while we were very impressed by how the road wrapped back around on itself in order to line up its numerous tunnels so that they would frame the view of the monument, we saw not a single buffalo despite our desperate calls out the windows “Buffaaallloooo”.
We had heard that the night time show of Mount Rushmore was quite spectacular with a light show and everything, so we decided to hold out to visit the actual monument until after we had found camping and had a bite to eat. We shouldn’t have done that. The night “show” was honestly one of scariest displays of American propaganda that I had ever seen. Paul was astonished to say the least. And I don’t say this to bash my country, but this sort of
demonstration of twisted history and painting ourselves as the holy saviors of the free world is scary and embarrassing. (The video they showed actually had a line about friendly agreements with Native Americans and even called my fine country the greatest peace keepers in the world—I chortled aloud, and I got the impression our seatmates did not appreciate it.) Thankfully, we left before any sort of scary Heil Hitleresque type rituals took place. (Note to my fellow Americans: Please do not misinterpret my words. I love many, many things about the U.S., but this sort of propaganda saddens and frightens me.)
After Mount Rushmore we visited two famous Old West towns, Deadwood, South Dakota and Cody, Wyoming. We wandered the streets of Deadwood looking for the saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was gunned down while playing cards and taking pictures of the old store fronts. Unfortunately, we missed the gunfight reenactments in the street, but we did put a couple of bucks in video poker machines and imagined we were outlaws in the Wild Wild West.
In Cody, we passed on the famous Buffalo Bill Cody museum but did make it to the famous Cody Night Rodeo where
we learned that we were sitting in the Rodeo Capital of the World. Those who know me well, know that a good rodeo is one of my most brazen guilty pleasures. And while I was going gaga over the gorgeous horses and how fit the rodeo clowns are, Paul was discovering his tremendous talents as a rodeo photographer.
Then it was on to Yellowstone National Park, where we were on a mission to find us some animals. Bravely, we entered the park on 6/6/06. We figured if the end of the world was fated, what better place to be than sitting on top of one of the world’s largest and most active super volcanoes. Gosh, this is a really cool park. There’s something for everyone. If you like scenery, there is an amazing amount of diverse forests, valleys, waterfalls, and canyons, If you like animals, this is the place with moose, elk, buffalos, coyotes, wolves, cougars, and bears, both the black and grizzly varieties. If you’re into crazy, bubbling, stinky pots of mud and sporadic gushes of water bursting from the earth, then this is heaven. And finally if you’re into gore, this is hands down the best place
to see a silly tourist impaled by a buffalo or mauled by a bear. We had fun.
As I said before, we were anxious to see us some animals, especially after the disappointing show of buffalos in the Black Hills. And as if the buffalos had sensed our desperation, they were out in full force. We were greeted mere minutes after entering the park by their welcoming committee, a lone beast sauntering down the road in our direction. Imagine our glee. This would be the first of thousands that we would see. In fact, we were held up for more than thirty minutes by a large herd that decided to make use of the roadway and bridge to cross a small stream. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the same luck with some of the carnivores we were hoping to see. We did see a straggly coyote pawing down the roadside, but that was it. No wolves, no cougars, and gosh darnit, no bears. I think I may have offended them with my bad Yogi Bear impersonations.
I think we’ll wrap it up here for now. We’re a little behind on this blogging, but hopefully more time at home in
Washington will allow us to get caught up again.
Next time, you can hear all about our misadventures in Glacier National Park, our run in with the Border Patrol, some fun visits with old friends and family, and our upcoming trip to Seattle and Bellingham.
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Scrap metal heaven
Once again a great read - Hope you bring back lots of photo's of Dr. Evermore's Forevertron and we might be able to turn all the 'stuff' in Keith's shed into some wonderful and weird works of art. Love from the Byford Mob