Day 2 of the trip had us heading straight west on I-90 across South Dakota. When leaving Minnesota by car and heading to the southwest, for any way you go, the front end of the journey always has to include the Vast and Open Spaces of the Dakotas, Iowa, Kansas or Nebraska. For an urban guy, it's really breathtaking, like looking at the ocean everyday. It takes a while for your eyes to get used to not having much to settle on. In some areas, it's so wide open that a billboard, distant windmills or even roadkill are cause for a little excitement. On this day, we had pale blue sky, cool dry air, good road, and for most of the trip, golden fields of corn or the wide open prairies of South Dakota.
In honor of all this open space and car time, I thought I'd take a break from the scenery reporting and share just a little about us as road warriors. I'll tell you about the Badlands and Custer State Park in the next post. With this being trip thirty-four across the country, we've paid some serious road dues and learned some things you might find interesting and maybe even useful. For us, like the wagon train pioneers, it's mostly about the vehicle, the sights, and then a good night's sleep.
The Vehicle: Our highway cars have been upgraded over the years. A four-cylinder Subaru didn't do it in the mountains so we went to a six. After 10 years of that, this year we went to a much bigger SUV. This guy floats down the road, doesn't mind the big winds, loves mountains, and even has a Bluetooth connection that lets us swear at a human voice when things don't work. The Bluetooth also makes for hands free phone calls and access to Pandora, Public Radio, and TED talks in the middle of "Come to Jezz-us Contrie" radio. Big, floaty, and entertaining is best on the open road.
Because it's mostly fast-food places at the gas stops during the day, we provision the car with healthy snacks. I also like beef jerky for protein and sunflower seeds to help pass the time. Along with our digital toys, we carry a real laptop with a car charger. We have a dreaming/planning document that we work on along the way. The open spaces are the perfect time for talking about how the last season went, and how we want to live together, with others, and where to go in the next few years. Being us, we connect that document to a budget, so we have the opportunity for heated discussions about priorities. Yup, 5-8 hours a day, day after day, sitting side by side and talking about the sometimes hard stuff IS asking for some heat, even if it's a big floaty car.
For gas stops, we like the freeway truck stops, like the Flying Js, Love's, and the poorly named Kum and Go. They are lively places with everything the over-the-road person could ever need. I love the diesel smell outside, the vibrations of all the big trucks at idle, all the vehicle gear in the shops, the graffiti in the bathrooms, and hearing the numbers being called for trucker showers. Plenty of bad snacks, too. Seeing a trucker carrying a burrito, a bag of doughnuts, and a quart of coke to the cab of his gazillion pound truck gives me pause knowing this guy is driving the same highway!
The Sights: Simply stated, I'm blessed with a partner who loves car trips. I swear she's like a reincarnated dog, which, if it was possible, would have her face out the window, ears and hair blowing back, and wet nose into the wind. I can honestly say that on each of our crossings, along with coaching from a friend who works at AAA and about 5 pounds of AAA Tour Guides, she has managed to find lots of interesting places along the way to visit. I've been to countless pioneer museums, pony express stations, Mormon trail exhibits, Oregon Trail sites, and lots of State and National Parks, just for starters. We always plan to be landed by three in the afternoon to stretch out, have time to see the sights, and let the temperature in the car come down a little. At least one 2-day stop some place interesting helps, too. Everyone should see the country this way, at least once, or thirty-four times if you have Gwen planning the trip.
A Good Night's Sleep: Accommodations can be a little tricky, and early on we were burned a few times with interesting sounding B&B ads and even good reviews. On arrival, we'd find the pictures often didn't match the ad, the hosts were lonely and needed to talk, and the promised breakfast to be flat out creepy. We suspect they did their own reviews or had their relatives do the deed. There have been some good ones, too, but mostly now, we go for the bland but predictable.
Predictable means places near the freeway with words like Americ, Lodge, Inn, Suites, or even Grand, as in last night's Grandstay Hotel. They are safe, boring, equipped with WiFi, a good bed, a chair and table, couch, flat-screen TV, small refrigerator, and usually a free breakfast, all for around $100. Even at this price, you have to be careful though. We've been rudely awakened at 5 AM by howling dogs in one hotel. We later realized we were in a pet (vs human) friendly hotel. Nothing like the idea that your bedspread has been the bedroom of a countless string of cats, dogs, lizards, snakes, or gawd knows whatever creatures people want to travel with these days. Always ask, especially if the room smells funny!
Then there is the matter of the alarm clock that glows red at night, and whose controls no one has ever figured out. That means it will likely go off in the middle of your deep sleep cycle, raising you abruptly from the dead. Add to that all the digital stuff in the room these days. Seems like everything electrical in a hotel room has a little LED indicator light. At night, a dozen of those little blinking eyes cast a rainbow of colors to softly light the room. Add to the disco ball lighting the nighttime conversation between the off and on running of the heating/cooling unit under the window that is randomly talking to the motor driving the little refrigerator! It can be a real party in there. I say unplug almost everything before bed, effectively sleeping in the 1950s.
Our trip through the Badlands was a beautiful end to a long driving day and we're settled into the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park. More about all that in the next post. We've had a nice meal, most everything is shut off or unplugged, and we're turning in early to be rested for a day of sight-seeing and hiking tomorrow.
Thanks for the use of your eyeballs and more soon...
Earl and Gwen
No comments:
Post a Comment