[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.

[Christina] Day 10: Escape from the Great Plains

We awakened at our campground and finished driving through Badlands National Park.  The scenery was magnificent, as one might well expect. [Elizabeth sidebar: the morning offered a few scattered bison, but nothing like what we saw last night. That nasty thunderstorm was definitely the best part of the afternoon yesterday, since it steered us into such magnificence]

A highlight of the visit, though, was the visitor center.  I bought a teach-yourself-Lakota book which turned out to be excellent, and Elizabeth got to chat with the folks in the fossil prep lab. [Elizabeth sidebar: it's so much fun to talk to other paleo people. We traded a few tricks, and I told them my experiences with a method they were thinking about trying out. Yay for science and random one-off collaborations!]

Beyond that, however, this was easily our most grueling day of travel yet [Elizabeth sidebar: the drive was made significantly better, as I managed to turn Christina into a fan of one of my favorite authors, and we listened to an audiobook that I love].  We drove west across South Dakota, the monotonous hay fields interrupted by only a handful of crumbling towns which made places like Ozona and Sonora look like New York City.  We dipped south a few tens of miles to a state park along the Missouri river just so we could say we had gone to Nebraska and done something there. [Elizabeth sidebar: this would've been much easier if we'd not been determined to go to Nebraska. But hey, we went, and now I only have 2 more states to visit: Iowa, which might happen tomorrow, and Alaska. So that's pretty neat. Also - there's a stark difference between Western South Dakota and Eastern South Dakota - namely, in the west, they grow hay, and in the east they grow corn...]

That evening, we made a brief visit to Sioux Falls.  We gassed up the car [yay power prius!] and made a quick stop at IHOP where we selected and then consumed our favored calorie delivery vehicles.  We then drove another half-hour across the Minnesota border and stopped at a cheap hotel.  There, we did laundry, griped about the terrible wifi [which wasn't *that* terrible], and rested for the night.  But, we were happy to know that we had finally crossed from the Great Plains and into the Midwest.

[Christina] Day 9: The Glory of the Dakotas

After waiting for the tent to dry off after the previous night's thunderstorm [sidebar - it was mostly dry, and the nice warm sun took care of residual drops while we packed everything else up], we packed up and explored Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  How wonderful to have established a national park to commemorate the landscape which had shaped Theodore Roosevelt in his youth.  The park had beautiful badlands topography and the odd bison here and there.

What was really exciting, however, was the prairie dog town.

The prairie dogs were adorable, scrambling around and tussling and talking to each other.

We then drove south to Mount Rushmore. [Elizabeth sidebar: this was something I thought would be kind of fun, since we were in the area and, ya know, why not?]  This giant overpriced kitschy waste of time with actually saved us a great deal of grief.  We were standing in the parking garage near the top of the mountain, annoyed at having to pay $11 for parking and that Elizabeth's National Parks pass didn't cover it, when we noticed a particularly large and menacing thundercloud not particularly far off in the distance.

"Did you see lightning?"  I asked.

"That thing looks...purple," Elizabeth said.

We prioritized figuring out the radio on Elizabeth's ipod.  We tuned it to NPR, which was suddenly interrupted by one of those OMG YER ALL GONNA DIE emergency announcements from the National Weather Service.  We caught the names of a few towns [including where we were headed next], but it was too staticky to make out the bulk of the message.  Elizabeth's phone sighed and gave up when we tried to look up the information ourselves. [Elizabeth sidebar: this was my one concern when my radio gave up: how would we get weather warnings if we needed them? I discovered the radio feature on my ipod a while back, and it was definitely a useful discovery...]

Somewhat desperate, I asked the friend I'd been texting back and forth with the whole trip if he could please look up the National Weather Service warning for the area we were in and e-mail it to Elizabeth.  It was a really good thing we did.  Those parks to the south of us that we were going to visit next?  Fifty mile an hour winds and hail one inch in diameter.  OH HECK NO.  North was a great direction!  Let's go there!

I thanked our friend profusely.  "Protect the wonder Prius!" he replied. [Elizabeth sidebar: 1-inch hail would make me very sad. The car has been a staunch ally of mine for nearly 7 years, and I would like to keep it for many, many more. I'm all for avoiding 1" hail]

Early that evening, we rolled into Badlands National Park.  They still had sites open at one particular campground, so we set off down the long dirt road [Elizabeth sidebar: I *hate* dirt roads] to the campground, admiring the sweeping views of the badlands.  It was there that we encountered the worst and the best traffic ever.

 The worst part?  We sat in the same spot for at least ten or fifteen minutes, unable to move.

The best part?  It was because we were surrounded by a herd of bison!

They were magnificent, eating grass and tussling with each other and taking dust baths and staring off into space thinking important bison thoughts.  [Elizabeth sidebar: They also came to the car and had staring contests with me, and I carefully said "no, not driving anywhere... nope... I'll wait for you..."] They were adorable and terrifying.

Once we got to the campground, we shared a table with a couple who were doing practically the exact same trip as us, but in reverse.  We traded helpful tips and called it a night.

[Christina] Day 8: Entertaining Road Signs

Here are a selection of entertaining road signs from our drive across Montana. [Elizabeth sidebar: Montana seemed to have the most amusing selection of road signs that we encountered this trip... I thoroughly enjoyed spotting them, and poor Christina had her work cut out for her trying to take pictures of all of them as we sped by.]

There were maybe ten or twelve of these signs arranged in a semicircle.

Is there a Hungry Hungry Hippo dam?

RV Park and Yurt Village

Lake Five

Helicop-tours

Is this where you take your sick dinosaur?

Boston's, The Gourmet Pizza.  So Boston is famous for pizza?  The things you learn as a Boston resident in very rural Montana.

University of Great Falls, with a cross on the sign.  Elizabeth and I had a long debate about which of the two of us would be less likely to be hired by them.

And yet, we did not stop in historic friendly Stanford.

No shrinking violets, these folks.

Gambling analogies were pretty common in anti-drug PSAs, but I'd never seen them outside of this area.