Road Trip day 4, Wednesday: The word of the day seemed to be “wow,” as both Amy and I said it a lot. I couldn’t possibly do justice to everything I saw today in words, and quite frankly, even when the pictures are finally posted, even they won’t really be able to do it justice. But a quick overview of everything I did today…

• Woke up in Denver
• Visited Buffalo Bill’s grave
• Hiked a mile from the aforementioned grave to the top of Lookout Mountain
• Ate a picnic on the shores of Lake Dillon while surrounded by snow capped mountains
• Had a one-sided snowball fight
• Drove through Glenwood Canyon
• Swam in the World’s Largest Hot Springs Pool and went down the water slides
• Took a detour in Utah on highway 128
• Waded in the Colorado River while on said detour
• Visited Arches National Park
• Watched the sunset over the arches and canyons
• Saw a shooting star over the mountains
• Finally crashed in Provo, UT

All in all, a pretty amazing day.

Road trip day 3, Tuesday, 11:30 pm (Mountain time): You all said there’d be nothing to do in Kansas. You weren’t necessarily wrong, but we did try to test that. We consulted the Roadside America and decided to visit Prairie Dog Town and The World’s Largest Easel. Prairie Dog Town was moderately fun, though it was a little depressing to see all the caged animals — the foxes in particular did not look healthy. According to Larry, the owner, a buffalo calf had been born the day before, but the buffalo were in a large fenced in area and they were smart enough to stay far away from the fences were we couldn’t see them (or the calf). The easel was… big. That’s about all that’s worth saying about that. Before leaving Kansas, we decided to have lunch at a steak house, where I had buffalo steak. Then it was on to Colorado.
Just over the border, we visited the Kit Carson Carousel in Burlington. For 25¢, we rode on the oldest carousel in the world which still has its original paint. (Follow what that means?) For $1, we toured the carousel museum. Honestly, the museum wasn’t really worth it, but the ride was worth $1.25. Apparently, since it predated “jumper carousels” (where the animals go up and down), it was designed to spin faster than most modern carousels.
Once we were done spinning in circles, we got back on the freeway and shortly thereafter hit a thunderstorm on our way into Denver. The wind was crazy and according to the radio, they had had massive amounts of hail earlier in the afternoon. I was a little worried about our plans to see a baseball game and the radio was only talking about the weather that had happened earlier, and not giving us a forecast, so I called my dad and had him give us a report. The report was promising, and even better, it held true. We got to the stadium about an hour before game time, paid more for parking than for the total of our two tickets, and watched the home team win.
Once again, there are pictures, but they’ll have to wait…

Road trip day 2, Monday, 11:45 pm (central time): We drove 710 miles today and are currently in a Days Inn in Hays, KS. Kansas is as boring as you all told me it would be, but more on that in a bit.
We started out the morning with a quick detour to see the largest waterfalls in Indiana — Cataract Falls, just outside of Cloverdale. They were all right, but nothing like Tahquamenon in the upper peninsula of Michigan. However, there was a covered bridge spanning the top of the falls, so that bumped up its coolness factor a notch. I took some pictures, but I have to wait until I have a faster internet connection before I post them.
From Indiana, we drove westward through Illinois where we toyed with the idea of seeing Lincoln’s log cabin birthplace until we realized it was a 17 mile detour off the freeway and we had too much driving to do, so instead we continued on to St. Louis. This was our major break for the day, as I rode the little tram to the top of the Gateway Arch. I was surprised just how claustrophobic the little tram cars are. The Arch, which I now think of as a giant space age ferris wheel with a stop at the top, looks right over Busch Stadium on one side and the Mississippi on the other… again, pictures forthcoming.
Following St. Louis, we got back on the road and drove… and drove. Brian Wilson’s album, Smile, a concept album themed around the history of the United States from East to West accompanied us, followed by a Judy Blume book on CD. We stopped in Kansas City (MO) for some barbecue at Arthur Bryant’s, which was recommended by a friend and now I recommend it to you. Have the ribs. I also snapped a shot of Kauffman Stadium from the freeway. We didn’t stop for a game, as I’ve changed my mind and decided to see my allotted-only-one game in Denver tomorrow night.
Then more driving through Kansas, complete with rain and construction — but no tornadoes to take us to Oz. We did have the BBC radio version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the only thing that made Kansas semi-bearable. Tomorrow… more Kansas! And then the St. Louis Cardinals take on the Colorado Rockies. I expect to see lots of homeruns.

Road trip day 1, Sunday (Monday) 12:30 AM (or 1:30 AM? Frickin’ Indiana with their inconsistent time zones): Had to wait for Amy to get back from North Carolina before we could leave, so we didn’t get on the road until 7:30 pm. We planned on stopping in Indianapolis (about 4-5 hours from Ann Arbor), but then a friend reminded us that the Indy 500 is this weekend. Thus, we went a little farther and are now in Cloverdale, IN at an America’s Best Value Inn. The “free Internet” is not working, so I’m not sure when I’ll post this.
No real highlights to speak of, other than our quick stop outside Fort Wayne to eat at a Waffle House. I haven’t been to a Waffle House since spring break junior year, when we ate at something like five different Waffle Houses on our way down and back to Florida. I forgot how cheap it is — dinner for under $5!
Tomorrow, St. Louis and Kansas City… maybe we’ll stop somewhere interesting and I’ll have pictures.

I need advice. Starting next Monday I’ll be on a roadtrip from Ann Arbor to San Francisco, where my friend Amy has an internship for the summer. (She wanted her car out there and didn’t want to drive out alone, so I agreed to go with her.) We already have plans to stop in Kansas City, where I will complete my tour of AL Central stadiums and catch a baseball game. Other than that, we’re pretty much plan-less.
Anyone have ideas of things to do in either Kansas or Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, or Nevada?

Tomorrow I’ll post about the two baseball games I went to in the last week and other tidbits from my travels to and during the wedding. In the meantime, satisfy yourself with these pictures:

• Pirates 6, Rockies 5
• Antietam National Battlefield
• Nationals 7, Cubs 6 plus random hotel photos

I have no photos of the wedding, reception or after goings-on. For that you’ll have to check out Breath’s pictures.

I just showed an Amish family how to use an elevator.
Also, coming either later tonight or maybe tomorrow morning, pictures from my day in Pittsburgh and a baseball game report. It depends on how soon I decide to crash, given that I was on the road at 6:30 this morning.
Edit: I just saw myself on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight during the Pirates/Rockies recap. I mean, you had to know exactly where I was sitting and be looking for it and just sort of know that that one figure was me… but still. That was cool.
And speaking of seeing me in moving pictures (sort of)… I just figured out I could post this here. Even though there’s still a few days until the wedding, I give you part two of my wedding gift to Jenn, which will probably entertain anyone who lived on or near Putz while Jerin did… (Part one is a slightly more traditional wedding gift which will not likely be posted here.)

Read the rest of this entry →

The University of Michigan is, for inexplicable reasons, very proud that it has four month summers (and as a result, very little time off around the holidays). Since “summer” starts at the end of April here, “spring break” is pushed back to the end of February. Given that I have no plans or obligations until Martine comes to visit tomorrow, this Saturday I decided to get in my car and take off with my camera. I wasn’t really sure where I was going to go, so I just went north. I didn’t have to get far out of Ann Arbor before I saw the billboard for the windshield repair center offering the “Deer Hit Special — Free loaner while we fix your car.”
Looking at the map, I decided to get off the freeway just north of Saginaw* and onto Highway 23, which hugs the coast of Lake Huron. I stopped to take my first set of pictures and use the facilities at the Au Sable River Park. After snapping some shots of driftwood on the snowy shores, I headed over to the little outhouse to relieve myself. And instead, I walked in on a hunter in full camouflage, popping a squat to take a dump. I apologized, walked to my car as fast as I could, and drove another twenty miles to a gas station to fill up my tank and empty my bladder.
At that point I kept driving until I saw a sign for the Sturgeon Point lighthouse and museum. I drove off the plowed highway onto a snowy road, only to discover that the lighthouse and museum was closed for the winter. (In hindsight, this should have been obvious.) On the plus side, I took my favorite picture of the trip and saw a number of deer. Unfortunately, I didn’t get my camera out fast enough to digitally capture the deer. And so I got back on the highway and drove to my final destination for the day — Cheboygan, MI, where I ate some delicious parmesan encrusted whitefish and stayed at a Best Western on the Black River.
For day 2 of my trip, I learned from my experience with the lighthouse and used the free hotel internet connection to look for something that would be both interesting and open in the winter. And that’s when I found out about the second largest waterfalls on the eastern side of the Mississippi, Tahquamenon. I got in the car, stopped for some gas and some fudge in Mackinaw City, drove over the Mackinaw Bridge into the upper peninsula, and headed to the falls.
The upper peninsula really is a different world — in the winter, snowmobiles far outnumber cars and trucks. The closer I got to the falls, the less plowed the roads got and the farther apart the gas stations were separated. The vehicle permit for the park was obtained on the honor system — put your money in the drop box and grab a permit for your car. And then there were the falls themselves… absolutely gorgeous. My one complaint was the brown water, but the information plaque informed me that it was neither rust nor mud, but tannins from the trees that grew in the swamps at the head of the river.
I was feeling ambitious, and sick of sitting, so after looking at the falls for a while, I started out on the unplowed four mile trail to the lower falls. Other than the wind blowing through the trees and the sound of the rushing falls, which got softer and softer the farther I walked, it was serenely quiet. I haven’t gone hiking in the snow since sixth grade during my elementary school class trip to Wolf Ridge, so I had forgotten how tiring wading through knee high snow really is. About halfway through the hike I opted to rest against a tree before turning around. I never did get to the lower falls.
Worn out from the hike, I drove to the nearest city, Sault Ste Marie, and spent a second night in a motel where I watched the Olympic closing ceremonies on Canadian television. The next day I headed back on the freeway, slowed down slightly by some food poisoning obtained at a Big Boy in West Branch, before returning back to my life in the civilization known as Ann Arbor. (I spent some quality time in the bathroom of three different rest areas, but I’ll save that story for another time…)

* – Yes, I listened to Simon and Garfunkel’s America as I drove through, just for the line “It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw.”

I bought my car at the end of last May and I find that I don’t use it that often (one tank of gas from Labor Day to Thanksgiving), but when I do use it, it’s on long road trips (yesterday: 15 hours, thanks to the traffic trap that is Chicago). In having 15 hours to myself in the car, I’ve come up with the following tips that others may find useful in their travels.

• Gas: Prices are going to fluctuate from exit to exit and town to town, but the biggest fluctuations will come across state borders, due to differing state gas taxes. In the midwest, Minnesota is generally the cheapest, with Ohio and Indiana being only slightly more expensive. Wisconsin and Illinois are the most expensive, especially the closer you get to Chicago. Try to avoid filling up near Chicago at all costs.
• Food: Avoid McDonald’s. If you’re travelling across wide distances, don’t be afraid to get off the freeway and try the local favorites. (Josh will argue with me on that — it does slow down your forward momentum.) If you see a sign that says “Voted Best Pies in the Country,” pull off and you may just have a slice of the best pecan fudge pie you’ve ever had (Norske Nook in Osseo, WI). Listen to friends who have lived in the area — if someone tells you that the Courier Cafe in Urbana, IL has the best potato skins ever, he’s probably not lying and he may even be leaving out the fact that they have delicious chocolate phosphates as well. If you must go for fast food, go for the local chains. In Ohio, this means Skyline (have a three-way) and in Wisconsin and surrounding states, this means Culvers (have a butter burger and a cement shake). If you’re really lucky, you’ll have friends that live along your route who might be up for making you some delicious soup.
• Audio entertainment: Books on CD/tape are your friends. Try to find ones that are approximately the same length as your trip (or shorter), and will hold your interest. Yesterday I listened to The Stupidest Angel and it turned out to be too short. If and when that runs out, pick music that’s got a good driving beat. I love A Charlie Brown Christmas, but it’s not the best stuff for keeping me awake. And if you have a friend who likes to make mix CDs, make sure they know your travel plans.
• Chicago: If Chicago is on your way, reroute your trip, especially if you’re going to be driving on one of the busiest driving days of the year (like the Sunday after Thanksgiving). If you can’t, because there is no bridge over Lake Michigan, re-think the road trip and fly instead. Stop-and-go traffic starting in Wisconsin is not enjoyable.