Cleveland, OH to Richmond, VT

Day 42: Mon 1 Sep: Home.

I wake up to Labor Day morning rest area zoo. The fact that I slept until 10:30am means I'm in the thick of it. The place I'd parked was not off to the edge of the rest area, either, but close to the center. But it really was the darkest spot last night.

This is only my third rest area sleep of the trip. The first one was in Kansas near the Colorado line, the second was in Montana, west of Billings. I like the independent-ness of crashing at rest areas, and some of them (not this one) are set up so that it's easy to get away from the lights. Also, if you crash early (I didn't) you can get up at dawn and just continue driving (like I did in Kansas).

The driving continues. Through Erie, PA, and onto the New York State Thruway, past Buffalo (which was where traffic picked up, and then once I got to the other side, disappeared), Rochester, and Syracuse. And then I trusted the GPS again. I had glanced at the route and noticed it was taking me off the Thruway to hit the Northway. That's fine; there's a shortcut near Schenectedy that we sometimes take, since diving south into Albany isn't necessary.

Alas, I didn't look closely enough. It took me off the Thruway long before Schenectedy and on state roads to eventually get on the Northway at Saratoga Springs. That was 40 miles of slow, wasted, driving. Another data point for Garmin's customer support center, I guess.

I entered Vermont, and took Rte 30 to Middlebury, during which there was another incredible sunset. They even happen here. Thinking about that, and about all the rain folks have said they've gotten, made me realize that I have been gone for 42 days and beautiful weather has followed me for all but perhaps three of them.

I pulled into the driveway with my new car, and parked it in the garage. Home.

The GPS reads 11,656 miles, of which 7.346 were done in this car. That's a lot of bug splat.

St. Paul, MN to Cleveland, OH

Day 41: Sun 31 Aug: The Voyage Home.

I said goodbye to David and Josh and headed on the road. It's going to be Interstate all the way home (until I get close to Vermont), woohoo! I stopped at a rest area on the Wisconsin-Illinois line for a couple hours to eat, write blog entries, and generally relax. Based on Google Maps, the halfway point home would be I-90 in Ohio somewhere, so my goal for tonight is Ohio.

The GPS wants to take me through Canada (cross at Windsor and then come down from Montreal)! I know this can be done, but I don't think it's much faster. When I add a waypoint of Erie, PA to the route, it gets me home via the route I'd expect, and even though the GPS is set to find the fastest route, in less time (according to the GPS!). I've had a number of these experiences and plan on writing them all up and sending a letter to Garmin. It seems to draw a straight line from where you are to where you want to be, and never chooses a route that deviates too far from that line. Thus, to get from Rapid City, SD to Fargo, ND, it wants you to leave the I-90 in central South Dakota and take state roads north, eventually picking up I-94 to head east again. When I added an intermediate destination of Sioux City, SD, it said, fine, Interstate all the way, and look, you arrive significantly sooner too!

The drive was uneventful, aside from another GPS snafu (told me to take an exit off the I-90 toll road in IL, and then to get back on I-90). I stopped outside Toledo, and then decided I could go further.

I-90 in Cleveland: wow! It makes right angle turns. There are lots of warning signs: rumble strips, flashing lights, signs, more signs, and bigger signs, but it's pretty amazing that it happens at all. I mean, you're going 65mph, and then there's a sign about a severe 30mph curve ahead. I was awake, really!

I made it to a rest area east of Cleveland where I maneuvered the car so that street lights weren't shining in my eyes, pulled a baseball cap down over my face, and fell asleep.

Why twirling?

Why did I head this day with "Twirling, twirling, and twirling"? Because this is the route I drove today:

View Larger Map

If I had stayed in Sioux Falls last night, and gone directly to St. Paul, it would have only taken me four hours of driving, instead of eleven. Of course, I wouldn't have seen yet another sprawling plains city (Fargo), met the nice guy in the coffee shop, or seen Bemidji or any of northern Minnesota, so I'm glad I did what I did. But on a map, it looks like I was traveling in a circle.

Now that I know how to embed Google Maps, I'm going back to my old postings and adding maps at the end of them.

Brookings, SD to St. Paul, MN

Day 40: Sat 30 Aug: Twirling, twirling, and twirling.

When I initially left Glacier National Park three days ago, my plan was to take US 2 across the northern plains to Sault Ste. Marie, cross into Canada and come down into upstate New York to go to a Labor Day faerie gathering near Gouverneur. When I looked at that route, I realized I was going to be passing through Bemidji, Minnesota, a friend's home town. I called Chris and told him that and he said to be sure to get a picture of me in front of the statue of Paul Bunyan and Babe, The Blue Ox. Sounded like a plan.

The near accident in Alberta made me leery of driving long distances on two-lane highways (US 2 across all of Montana). The oil change for the Rabbit made stopping in Rapid City a requirement, but also let me see all the parks around there. But I was still planning on going to Sault Ste. Marie via Bemidji. I was going to miss the faerie gathering, and maybe get home on Tuesday instead of Monday, but so be it.

So I drove north to Fargo, where I stopped at another nice local coffee shop, wrote blog entries, and had a great conversation with the staff guy there who will for me be the image of a Fargonian. Then I headed to Bemidji, via Itasca State Park (headwaters of the Mississippi). Northern Minnesota is a lot like Vermont -- the hills are smaller, and there are more lakes and swamps, but there's a lot of greenery.

Just five miles before I got to Bemidji, the GPS odometer (which is the only mileage continuity between the two cars I've used on this trip) rolled over ten thousand. Ten thousand miles I've traveled! More, actually, since I didn't reset the trip meter on the GPS until I had been driving in Vermont about an hour. At the time, my OCD self felt it was a big letdown that it wasn't going to be perfect, but the miles I missed account for less than 1% of the total miles of the trip, so I got over it.

I got the picture I wanted. In the process I learned that Bemidji is another big BNSF railway town, since I saw and heard (mostly heard) the freight trains constantly in the brief time I was there.

I need to mention something else -- apparently Bemidji is the curling capital of the USA. I bet you didn't know that. Don't know what curling is? Think shuffleboard on ice. It seems to be a sport invented for ... insane purposes.

I then drove to Duluth, which is about a day's drive away from Sault Ste. Marie. I got there around 10pm and started looking for hotel rooms. Damn, it's Labor Day Weekend! I wasn't going to be traveling now! I was going to be camping in upstate New York! Indeed, very few hotel rooms were to be found. I found one online, booked it, and headed to the AmericInn (in Proctor, just south of Duluth).

When I got there, the front desk guy panicked. They were full. The reservation system had messed up. But wait, he had a duplicate reservation where someone had canceled one of the rooms, but not the other. He called the potential guests to see if they were coming; they weren't. I got a room!

But ... now I was wondering what the trip through Canada was going to be like -- would I be able to find places to stay? I wasn't going to be on major highways with rest areas to crash at. I'm also getting really tired of non-Interstate highway driving (Fargo to Bemidji, and parts all the way to Duluth, for example). It was going to take me three more days to get home. Maybe I should just give up and go the Chicago route that I had been avoiding because I didn't want to be in non-stop city for days. I don't know.

I turned my computer on and went online and made some friends in St. Paul, two hours away. I could stay there as long as I wanted. I headed to St. Paul, hotel room wasted (sorry), and met David and Josh. Chicago is six hours away. I can be home in two days, Monday night or Tuesday morning. I really want to be home. I mean, when I left Glacier, I thought about how close San Francisco or Vancouver were, and entertained the idea of driving back. But now I was so far east that home really is the only option. I think I may even be missing it some, actually. (How's that for an indefinite admission?).

Custer, SD to Brookings, SD

Day 39: Fri 29 Aug: A screaming comes across the plains.

I woke up, and checked out. Well, I didn't really check out because there was no one there. I just left my key in the box and left.

I drove to Jewel Cave National Monument, and took the "Scenic Tour". There are elevators down into the cave. It was pretty cool. This cave is either the second or third longest explored system in the world (Mammath Caves being the first). The cave walls are covered in calcite crystals, with some draperies and flowstones. The colors came out a lot better with the flash on the camera than it looked in person. Some of the rooms are enormous -- large enough to fit the entire Visitors Center; one large enough to contain the parking lot. Unfortunately those huge rooms are accessible only via extremely tight passageways, so we didn't see them.

They also offer (like Mammoth Caves) spelunking tours, for the adventurous and non-claustrophobic. In the Visitors Center there's a small tunnel you have to be able to crawl through in order to be able to take the tour -- so you don't get stuck while you're underground.

Then I drove around Custer State Park. The whole area is awash in publicity for National Treasure: Book of Secrets, including the afore linked web site.

But, as you can see from the picture, there's a lot of bare granite poking up, and the parts that aren't bare are covered in ponderosa pine. It's pretty, and interesting (there's a bison herd and pronghorn antelope), but it's not the Rockies.

After driving the "Wildlife Loop" and not seeing any bison (I saw one beside the road elsewhere in the park), traveling behind slow cars, I realized I didn't have a whole lot of time before my 3:30pm appointment at the VW dealer.

I headed off to Crazy Horse Memorial, watched the orientation movie, and then had to leave for Rapid City. I wish I could have stayed there longer.

The oil change was uneventful -- the staff were really friendly. They recommended a locally-owned coffee joint with wifi, which turns out to be a midwest franchise chain (Dunn Brothers Coffee), but they were friendly and had public terminals where I researched my trip to the Badlands. It appears the Visitors Center closes at 5pm this time of year (it was after 5pm). I wasn't sure if the park was open or not, but figured I check and see when I drove by.

There are multiple entrances. I headed to the northeastern entrance, furthest away from Rapid City, but closest to the highway in case it was closed. It wasn't! They have campgrounds and stuff there so, like the other big parks I went to, at some (late) point the gate staff go home, but the park is always open. I drove from east to west, at sunset, through the park. It was beautiful.

The badlands at Petrified Forest National Park are more colorful, but these are interesting in that grass is often growing on the flat tops. There are two levels of grassland, one high, and one low, and the badlands are the transition between the two levels.

It really was beautiful. I found a good spot to watch the sunset, and discovered a setting on the camera that was better for photographing sunsets than the "sunset" setting (which adds a red filter and gives it colors it didn't really have in person). Unfortunately the sun had actually set by then, but I did get some great pictures of the wispy clouds in the sky.

The picture to the left was taken with the red, sunset, filter in place.

I had only just started driving by sunset. I had a lot of plains to cross. I drove across all of South Dakota (to Sioux Falls), and up a bit of the east side before stopping for the night at a motel in Brookings, SD (at 4am). I was exhausted.

Billings, MT to Custer, SD

Day 38: Thu 28 Aug: The high plains go on and on...

Last night, before sleep, I realized that in the next day or two I was going to hit 5,000 miles on the Rabbit, which was oil change time. Since it was new, I wanted to take it to a VW dealer (silly, in hindsight). Well, the VW dealers nearest to my estimated 5,000 mile point were in Rapid City, SD; Sioux Falls, SD; and Fargo, ND. Actually, those are all the VW dealers in the northern plains. Vermont has more VW dealers than both the Dakotas, combined.

I had thought about catching I-94 to Fargo, but 5,000 miles was closer to Rapid City. Also, there are a lot of national parks near Rapid City, so I called the dealership and they had an opening on Friday afternoon. That meant I'd be spending Thursday night there and would have time to visit some of the parks. Cool.

The drive on I-90 from Billings, MT down into northeastern Wyoming and then southwestern South Dakota was a lot of brown hilly grasslands. It was very uneventful. There were some pretty steep hills along the route though.

I visited Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, which, most interestingly for me, recounted the history of the conflict between the US government and the plains Indians in the 1870s.

I went to Devils Tower National Monument. It's very cool. It was gong-show busy (I like Brian's term for very crowded tourist attractions). I did the loop around the tower, which was pretty. You can free-climb the tower, with a permit. I saw some people doing it.

There was also a prairie dog village in the park. Man, are they cute! I could watch them all day. Even better than chickens. They interact with each other, are curious, kiss and tussle and play, and generally act like little dogs while the graze the grass.

From there, I headed on towards Rapid City.

I visited Mount Rushmore National Monument just before sunset. It's pretty, but also gong show busy. And it's the definition of a patriotism park. The granite plaza leading up to the base of the monument and the arena for presentations was a bit over the top.

It was here I started learning more about the geology of the region. The Black Hills of South Dakota are an interesting granite outcrop in an otherwise vast, flat, expanse of sedimentary rock. All the peoples who have come across it have treated it specially. After hundreds and hundreds of miles of flat grassland, coming across a Ponderosa Pine forest must have been a treat. And sculptors like to carve things out of the hills.

Keystone is the town at the center of the Mount Rushmore tourist business and it was so crazy I swore I wouldn't stay there. A park ranger at Devils Tower had recommended that I go to either Jewel Cave or Wind Cave (both caves with interesting formations), but if I had time for only one, that Jewel Cave was prettier. So I ended up staying in Custer, not too far from Jewel Cave. It's the off season now and you can pretty much stay at any hotel for under $50. I found one I liked, a mom and pop rustic-style motel with really large rooms and checked in.

My plan for tomorrow is to get up early enough to do a tour at Jewel Cave, and then Crazy Horse, go to my oil change at 3:30pm in Rapid City, and then head to the Badlands. I'm a bit concerned about when the Badlands are open, since the web site implies that they close at 5pm, and I'm not sure if I'll make it or not, but I'll try.

I stay up too late reading, and then fall right asleep.

Polebridge, MT to Billings, MT

Day 37: Wed 27 Aug: Montana goes on, and on.

I woke up, broke camp, and then spent some time just sitting at the edge of Bowman Lake, in the quiet. Mist was rolling in from part of the shore, and then a small breeze would blow it back to shore. Back and forth.

A family of loons was in the lake (I assume -- two large birds and one small one who spent a lot of time between the two) and made those eerie sounds loons make.

It was enchanting. I had debated taking a hike -- there were several starting from the lake, ranging from easy to difficult -- but it was so clouded in, and sprinkling, that I decided I'd be better off going to going to Polebridge Mercantile (the only thing in Polebridge -- it's at a bend in the road, and there are no houses anywhere). On the way in yesterday evening, I saw a sign saying (miraculously) that they had wifi. I say miraculously because this is as remote as I've ever seen a store be.

They did, and the place was hopping. It's the dropping off point for all sorts of expeditions and locals, in addition to being a bakery with delicious breakfast sandwiches and sweet rolls. I hung out there for two hours writing blog entries and talking to people.

Two guys came through, visiting from Spokane, who were looking to go to Bowman Lake and were waiting for the weather to get nicer. We talked about routes across Montana. One of them is from the bay area, the other used to live on Plattsburgh Air Force Base! We reminisced for a while and generally had a good time gabbing over coffee. They said that the weather was so bad at Logan Pass that they closed the road! Snow and low visibility. Wow. The weather (here) got (slightly) better, and they headed off. My battery wore down; I didn't want to plug in the spares I had; and the store doesn't have power outlets available. So I called it quits, and decided to head on.

Here's a great picture of the burnt out forest and some of the miles of almost mud season road I had to drive on to get into and out of Polebridge.

I drove back to the Apgar Visitors Center to confirm that, and talk to more people about routes across Montana. I wanted to cross at Sault Ste. Marie, which would have made US 2 the easy way across, but it's two lanes all the way across Montana, and only becomes four, or divided, in North Dakota. After the Alberta experience I wasn't so sure I wanted to be on a two lane highway for that long. I ended up heading south, on the east shore of Flathead Lake (beautiful) to get to I-90.

While driving, I placed some calls to folks who might have suggestions (including a former Montanan), but came up for nought. I ended up side-tripping to Helena to see said former Montanans former hometown and workplace. What a beautiful place Helena is in, and such a pretty town. I hung out there for a while, actually, chatting with folks at the Myrna Loy Center and having dinner at a place the box office guy recommended. I should have taken into account that he was only just going to college, and would send me to cheap chain restaurants. Oh well. The food at Perkins was good and the staff friendly, and it was right at the exit I needed to get on to.

I drove and drove and drove. Eventually I got to a rest area outside of Billings, MT, where I decided to call it a night.