Road trip notes, week 1

[chanaleh]

Greetings from the Epic Roadtrip Honeymoon!

I'm posting this from just outside Nashville, on June 30 (backdated)... so we are in the home stretch, but not quite home yet. We've started to see Indiana license plates again, though. :-)

I'm organizing the trip loosely into "weeks" based on when I uploaded photos.
Week 1 photos are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/93788108@N00/sets/72157644898605416/
Full trip photos (all in one album) are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/93788108@N00/sets/72157644898605426/


Day 0: Thursday, May 22
• Spent the morning (and part of yesterday) frantically making reservations for the first 5 nights once it occurred to me that it was Memorial Day weekend and we might have trouble walking in anywhere.
• Sent etrace's nephew out with the car to get the oil changed.
• Packed our bags.
• Finally did the test assembly of the tent in the front yard.
• Packed our food.
• Loaded the car.
• Got out of the driveway around 6:00 PM.
• Five hours and a whopping $17.50 in tolls later, got through Illinois (state #2) to our destination in Wisconsin (state #3).
• Had a picnic in our room for a late supper.
Overnight: Usonian Inn, Spring Green, WI (a small but pleasant motel just at the highway turnoff for HOTR; its theme, as the architecturally aware will guess, is Frank Lloyd Wright, who is apparently the other thing Spring Green is famous for besides HOTR)

Day 1: Friday, May 23
• Got up, had another picnic in the room for breakfast, checked out.
• First official road trip stop: The House on the Rock. What can I say about this? As Slate put it, "It's difficult to describe the bizarre fever dream that is the House on the Rock."
• The first section (the actual house) was pleasant to explore, though might have been more interesting with a guided tour; the notable feature is the Infinity Room (HOTR's iconic structure that juts out unsupported over a thousand feet of empty space). The second section was amazing, what with the Streets of Yesterday (Disney-style pretend shops housing impressive collections of the most arcane and random sets of artifacts: dental tools, typewriters...) and the automated orchestras (sadly almost all now prerecorded), and the Heritage of the Sea collection including the LIFE-SIZE DIORAMA of the BLUE WHALE FIGHTING A GIANT SQUID (this alone would be worth the price of admission), and ending with the World's Largest Carousel (as featured in American Gods, which I now have to reread), covered in eight bazillion lightbulbs and surrounded by hundreds of creepy female mannequin angels in evening gowns and huge fluffy wings suspended from the ceiling. But then you get to the third section, and you cannot possibly omit the third section, because it contains the entirely inadequately named Organ Room which is like an unearthly steampunk night forest of walkways and lanterns and trees and pipes and vats and dials and vaulted ceilings and stuffed ravens and, yes, organs, three enormous "theater-style" pipe organs ensconced in various places around the forest... my jaw did not actually drop at the carousel, but it did at this. After that, you only walk through the (presumably) world's largest collection of dollhouses and then of circus miniatures, and oh yeah several more corridors of Asian art and arms and armor, and another entire three-level carousel of doll-sized horses just for kicks, and out through the Japanese gardens, and then finally the legally mandated gift shops. The sheer abundance alone is unreal.
• Got in the car about 5:15pm and drove straight up to Plymouth (Minnesota = state #4). I had thought we might drive through Minneapolis if there was time, but it was pretty dark by the time we got up near there.
• Found (gratefully) a Ruby Tuesday still open shortly after 9pm that would feed us dinner.
Overnight: Red Roof Inn Minneapolis Plymouth, Plymouth, MN

Day 2: Saturday, May 24
• Got up, checked out, got our pick of a fresh tray of donuts from the nice folks in the lobby at the Red Roof Inn.
• Today's agenda included not one but TWO classic kitschy roadside stops. First stop: Darwin, MN, to see the World's Biggest Ball of Twine (Rolled By One Man). It is... what it says on the tin: a giant dusty ball of twine (about 11 feet in diameter), sitting serenely in a little glass-enclosed hut on the side of the quiet main street of this quiet little prairie town. There is a little museum in the house behind it, so when you tire of gawking at the actual twine ball (which takes about 30 seconds), you can go in and learn the history of the town and the ball and the guy who rolled it. He was, apparently, more than a little eccentric; one of his other hobbies was woodcarving, and someone taught him to carve a working pair of pliers out of a single piece of wood... so then he started to carve the handles of his pliers into OTHER pliers, and so on until he capped his career with a fractal pair of pliers that is 6 feet long and no less than 9 recursions deep. Pliers within pliers. Cosmic, man.
• Anyway... when the Twine Ball Inn next door appeared to be closed for lunch, went across the street for beer and burgers at a bar called A Blue Moose (not *The* Blue Moose, apparently there might be more than one).
• Struck out from there for Mitchell, SD (state #5), home of the fabled Corn Palace.
• However, due to our leisurely timing earlier in the afternoon, didn't get there until 5:30pm... and the building had closed at 5pm. Still, apparently the cool part to see is the outside, so we took a few pictures (until all our picture-taking batteries promptly died -- camera, phone, and tablet).
• The town was sort of grungy-feeling overall, but there was a Dairy Queen to stop at, so it wasn't a total loss.
• Drove on across South Dakota to our campground reservation for the night.
• Had to drive *through* Badlands National Park in order to reach the place (which I hadn't realized from the maps), so we had an incredibly beautiful and surreal twilight drive through the Badlands landscape (all the while going "OMG can't wait to see this in the daylight!").
• Checked in, set up our tent, and had another cold picnic dinner before going to sleep.
Overnight: Badlands Budget Host Interior Campground, Interior, SD

Day 3: Sunday, May 25
This was an incredibly, not to say stupidly, full day.
• Got up, made coffee in the French press, broke camp.
• Bought our National Parks annual pass on the way into the
• Spent a good five hours in the park, stopping at every single vista point, marveling at the completely unearthly landscape, making friends with the prairie dogs at one stop, and getting within visual range of bison at another.
• Saw one last bison on our way out of the park and got close enough to walk up and touch (although we didn't!).
• Stopped at the fabled Wall Drug, just north of the park; had lunch in the cafeteria (including the famous 5-cent coffee) and took pictures in the back yard (including the famous Free Ice Water which scored only 2 out of 3).
• Drove on to Mount Rushmore, which was... needful to see, but sort of underwhelming when you got up to it. We think this may have been an illusion of scale; with all the infrastructure and pavilions and amphitheater they've installed underneath it, you get up to the viewing deck and it's like, "That's it?? We paid $11 just to park and this is it?"
• Got back on the road and drove ACROSS THE ENTIRE STATE OF WYOMING (state #6). Probably should have taken the Rte. 16 exit with the big billboards that said "Easiest Route to Yellowstone", but followed instead Vader's directions to take Rte. 14, looping us up through Sheridan almost to the Montana border.
• Stopped for gas and then dinner in Dayton, WY, at the only little bar still serving food (two choices: burgers or pizza. We took the burgers). Called the resort where I had reserved our room, to let them know that we were still a few hours out. "OK," they said, "just pick up your keys at the bar if it's after midnight."
• Realized, somewhere in the gathering dusk, that to get to Yellowstone we of course had to CROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS and that was exactly where Rte. 14 was taking us. Proceeded on a harrowing few hours of insane mountain driving (thank you etrace for being such an amazing driver), up and down twisting little hairpin curves in the dark, hoping to God that we didn't go off the side of a mountain or hit any animals (we did see a few deer and eventually a mountain lion), and counting off the quarter-miles until we got to the end and the road straightened out to something resembling a highway again.
• Drove on for YET ANOTHER HOUR even after that point because, although the resort was technically "in" Cody WY according to its mailing address, in physical reality there are 50 miles between the town of Cody and the edge of Yellowstone Park, where the resort is.
• Finally pulled into the resort around 1:30am... to find absolutely everything pitch black and locked up tight, including the bar where we had been instructed to pick up keys. Of course, we also had zero (and I mean zero) cell signal, and the temperature had dropped into the low 40s.
• Parked the car and ventured into the resort toward the nearest lighted room, which turned out to be a game room where some college-age kids were shooting pool. Knocked and pleaded for some kind of manager on duty. Kid(s) shooting pool turned out to be on staff and loath to awaken the night manager for the mere convenience of wayward guests, but when I said that we HAD called ahead about our late arrival, he said "oh, well, the usual protocol is to tape an envelope to the main door with your keys in it," so he walked us back to the front door and LO, THERE IT WAS, with our name right on it! Never so happy in my life to see the inside of a cabin and a hot shower.
Overnight: Pahaska Tepee, Cody, WY

Day 4: Monday, May 26 (Memorial Day)
• Slept in as late as we could (after the ordeal of the night before).
• Saw some moose right outside our cabin, and marveled at the mountain scenery all around us.
• Lunch (too late for breakfast) in the resort restaurant at noon.
• Headed into Yellowstone Park (just 3 miles off) around 1pm.
• Marveled at Yellowstone Lake (mostly still frozen over).
• Drove westward around the loop road to the West Thumb Geyser Basin and toured around there. Loved this. Also saw four or five wapiti elk come right up onto the pathways (close enough that the rangers were warning people away).
• Continued on toward Old Faithful. Noticed that the car's front brakes were starting to make noises too hideous to ignore and that we'd better stop at one of the (several) car repair places inside the park, but when we got to the one at Old Faithful Lodge, it was about 5:20pm and they had of course closed up shop at 5pm.
• Sat for about 20 minutes waiting to see Old Faithful erupt, which it duly did. Awesome.
• Pondered trying to eat dinner at one of the lodge restaurants, but decided it was going to take too long.
• Drove all the way back out the East Entrance.
• Got back to the resort just before they stopped serving dinner at 9pm.
• Turned in early.
Overnight: Pahaska Tepee, Cody, WY

Day 5: Tuesday, May 27
• Got up, checked out, had breakfast, and gassed up before heading into the park
• First stop: auto repair place at Fishing Bridge, where the guy took one look at our front wheels and said "Oh yeah, I can see the grooves in your rotors from here. I can order those parts for you today and have them by 2pm tomorrow... how's that for you?" Not like we had much choice, but it was a good excuse to camp over another night in the park, anyway!
• Drove (carefully) over to Canyon Campground. No campsites available -- area is still *closed* for another week due to snow conditions (!).
• Drove further along the loop to Norris Campground. Yes, sites available: "choose your site and come back to self-register".
• Picked out likely-looking site. While still pondering what to do, cheerful ranger lady in golf cart arrived to assist -- and advise us (excitedly) of bear, wolf and elk sightings in immediate vicinity.
• Decided not to set up tent on site.
• Drove over to Norris Geyser Basin. Took walking tour of lower and then upper geyser loop. Awesome, bizarre... and stinky!
• Drove BACK to Canyon to obtain groceries (just before store closed) and pay for an hour of WiFi in order to phone parents and credit card company.
• Drove BACK to Norris, only to find that some other tent had been pitched in OUR reserved space! Hunted up the "campground host", who turned out to be our ranger friend from before plus her husband, who were appropriately incensed and helped us find another suitable empty site (right across the road from the first one, so really no big).
• Set up camp, built fire, cooked steaks and roasted marshmallows.
Overnight: Norris Campground, Yellowstone National Park

Day 6: Wednesday, May 28
• Got up, broke camp.
• Drove to Canyon Lodge area.
• Had breakfast.
• Toured the South Rim of the canyon and had a lovely walk involving an awesome waterfall (always my favorite).
• Drove back to Fishing Bridge.
• Got car fixed.
• Bought t-shirts and goodies in the gift shop while waiting for car.
• Stopped at a picnic area (for peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches) only to have our closest bison encounter yet.
• Stopped at more freaky geysers on the way out to the West Entrance.
• Sweated it out through Vader's insistent instructions to take the South Entrance -- recalculated appropriately the instant we hit the western border of the park and drove out through the West Entrance, where we emerged at the happy little tourist town of West Yellowstone, MT (state #7).
• Drove through the tiniest corner of MT and proceeded into ID (state #8).
• Drove to Idaho Falls.
• Found hotel room "nearby and available for tonight" on Orbitz (this roadtrip has been made possible by Orbitz); checked in.
• Showered.
• Came back down to the hotel lobby around 10:30pm, only to find that the hotel restaurant (supposed to be open until "11 or sometimes later") had already closed.
• Drove two doors down instead for dinner at the Denny's (this roadtrip has been brought to you by Denny's).
Overnight: Guesthouse Inn & Suites, Idaho Falls, ID