Monday, July 4, 2016

[Christina] Day 15: HOME!

After a long trip full of adventure, it felt good to finally turn our sights to home.  We left Cleveland around 6:30 AM and arrived in the Boston area approximately twelve hours later.  We traveled across the beautiful forests and mountains of New York State and rural Massachusetts, too worn out to stop and take pictures or admire the roadcuts of thinly-bedded shale and siltstone which later gave way to schist and granite. [Elizabeth sidebar: I admired a bunch, but Christina is the Director of Photography on our adventure, and I was driving...] Maybe another time; after all, it's not too far away.  I'm sure we'll feel the thirst for adventure again before too long.  In the meantime, though, here's to an excellent year at Harvard!

[Christina] Day 14: Cleveland!

Not much to report for this day.  We had a lovely day hanging out with my friend M and a couple of his friends, which culminated in another amazing sunset on the lake.




This time, however, we decided to actually test the previous day's hypothesis:  the frames for those bench swings would be perfect for climbing!  The tiny people climbed up and sat on top of the frame, the not-tiny people figured that would be a bad idea and didn't, and a good time was had by all. [Elizabeth sidebar - it's been 3 weeks since I've had circus/aerial... it was much needed, and very very fun!]

[Christina] Day 12 and 13: Midwest Road Signs

Little did we know that we would be going through Texas:

Wisconsin:  Cheese Edition





Apparently we left and re-entered Cleveland a number of times in rapid succession.  I missed the first two signs, but caught the next three:
Time stamp:  12:49:12

Time stamp:  ‏‎12:49:18

Time stamp:  12:49:24
 And, of course, the general weirdness:
I didn't know manticores were a part of Greek mythology.  The things you learn!

????

Somehow, I don't think that will be a problem.

What about that 10th Viking?  Did he sack the travel center or something?

Jolly Green Giant

Because of course those two things go together!

Turn that frown upside down!
'Adult'?  Just 'Adult'?
Division of Redundancy Division

Choices, choices!
My grandpa didn't HAVE a cheese barn!
Well, how else would you get your new washer home with you?

Saturday, July 2, 2016

[Christina] Day 12: A Tour of the Midwest

In the morning, we hung out with Elizabeth's Chicago friends for a little while to wait out the rush hour traffic, then set out on the road.  We still hit Chicago traffic.  There are no words.  D: [Elizabeth sidebar: West of the Mississippi, we'd been taking state roads, which are just as fast as the interstates, with significantly less traffic and significantly more scenery. We made a rookie mistake and thought that this would be OK for East of the Mississippi, too. Lesson learned - state roads are not nearly so nice and fast, because the population density is just *so* much higher...]

After that two-hour traffic adventure, we headed south through Indiana to visit the small town of Brazil, where my great-grandparents had lived and which I had visited several times when I was growing up.  It was wonderful to revisit my fond childhood memories of Forest Park [Elizabeth sidebar: epic playground!] and the amazing Italian restaurant Maurizio's.

Forest Park

Maurizio's has the best spaghetti and meatballs.
We left Brazil in early evening, and drove across Indiana and into Ohio to camp at Caesar Creek Campground.  I had read that there was excellent fossil hunting at the dam spillway nearby, and how wonderful would it be to wake up and go collect fossils?  Still, it was another grueling evening, and we finally arrived at the campground past 11. [Elizabeth sidebar: the campground had good signs, but our map took us the exact opposite direction - it wouldn't have been nearly so late otherwise]  Naturally, it was another one of those days where we set a new speed record for getting the tent up and sacking out.

[Christina] Day 13: Ohio Adventures

Morning came early for us at Caesar Creek State Park just east of Cincinnati.  It started raining punctually at 6 AM, and the shower lasted just long enough to wake us up and get our tent wet.  That was annoying, but at least we didn't have to eat breakfast in the rain.

The rain shower meant that fossil hunting was out, so instead, we visited Serpent Mound.  Serpent Mound is an earth monument constructed on the order of a thousand years ago by one of the early Native American cultures, but there is still a great deal of uncertainty as to which one. [Elizabeth sidebar: or *when* - there's about a 3000 year window of time which it may have been constructed]  Parts of the mound align with the locations where the sun rises and sets at the solstices and equinoxes.  It is beautiful, and it is a marvel of engineering that it has remained intact for so long.
We then set out for Cleveland to visit one of Christina's friends.  We met him at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Parking there required some ingenuity.  Elizabeth's bike has been riding on a bike rack on the back of her car.  When we would stop for the night, she would either bring it into the hotel room or cable lock it to one of the wheels of her car.  Obviously, neither of these options would work in a parking garage, and there were no bike racks to be found.  What to do?

Christina hit on an idea.  Elizabeth could back into the space and then we would cable-lock the bike to the railing of the parking garage!  Genius!  THIS sort of thinking is why we're at Harvard!  Better not forget to remove the cable lock before we tried to drive away, though... [Elizabeth sidebar: we didn't forget... and the bike, car, fence, and lock are still quite happy]
The museum was small but excellent, and my friend was a real trooper for following us around the museum while we did some hardcore nerding out.  It was also gratifying to look at the fossil exhibits and realize the number of formations which generated these important finds which we had been able to visit in their native habitat.  Cleveland is famous for its Devonian fishes and, in particular, its Dunkleosteus, so of course we spent a lot of time there.  [Elizabeth sidebar: the museum, while utterly fantastic, was severely lacking in docents, which I was surprised about. Having been to a number of museums, and even worked at some, I know that docents are an incredibly important part of the museum educational and outreach model, so I was rather surprised to have absolutely no one in uniform on the floors. There weren't even random security people wandering around.]



Later that evening, we all went down to the beach on Lake Erie for sunset.  Elizabeth gave us all a physical oceanography lesson about waves, we discovered the most amazing bench swing, and in general it was very, very pretty.

 

[Christina] Day 11: Chicago or Bust!

This was easily the most boring and least geological day of driving as we drove from Minnesota to Chicago.

In brief:  We left Minnesota and drove south into Iowa just so say that we'd been to Iowa.  Iowa was a jerk.  It briefly routed us onto a gravel road just as we were trying to re-enter Minnesota.  That was a little bit of an adventure! [Elizabeth sidebar: Iowa was my last of the lower 48 to visit, and drat it, I wanted to try... a brief jaunt through Iowa doesn't *really* count as having been to the state, but I figured since we were within a 15 minute drive, it would be worth it just for grins. Of course, once you've driven on a dirt road in a state, I think you've actually officially been there.]
On the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, we stopped along the side of the road to see the Mississippi River.  It was large and pretty.
In Wisconsin, there was a sign for glacial drumlins at the rest stop, but other than that it, was a geology dead zone.
What this day lacked in geology, though, it made up in traffic.  We got stuck in horrible construction traffic in Milwaukee.  That ate an hour or so.  We escaped the Milwaukee traffic only to get caught in Chicago rush hour traffic, which is everything you'd expect it to be. [Elizabeth sidebar: yup, that was an adventure - an ordinarily <1 hour drive was ~3 hours. But we made it, darn it!]


But, at the end of the day, we were having a lovely evening with Elizabeth's awesome friends, which made all the boredom and all the traffic totally worth it. [Elizabeth sidebar: thanks to S and R for letting us crash. I hadn't seen them in many years, and it was lovely to catch up. One of the best (and worst) parts of being an academic is that my friends are scattered all over the country. It means I rarely get to see many of them, so this was a particularly special treat.]

[Christina] Day 9 and 10: Nebraska and North and South Dakota Road Signs

Some curiosities from North and South Dakota and Nebraska.

Bowman:  Guy riding a rocket.

Rapid City:  Guy riding a bagel.
The sheer volume of kitchy tourist traps outside of Mount Rushmore was embarrassing.

Dinosaur!

Shoot a musket!

Vikings!

Christmas village and Old MacDonald's Farm!

Presidential wax museum!

The Rushmore Borglum Story

NFL Shop
Of course, there was also the normal gamut of curious signs.

This town is a real winner!


And yet, I can't remember anything about Gregory other than this sign...

Yankton, home of the Yanks?
 
This person never met a bumper sticker they didn't like!  I especially love the "God Bless Texas" sticker to go along with the North Carolina plates.