It seems only fitting to bookend this blog with another post about Precision Auto. Our trusty stead has been sold. 1 year, 30,000 miles (!), four trips across our broad nation, significant sojourns into Canada and Mexico, the occasional off-road escapade, and a number of nights spent curled around the steering wheel. She had quite a run.
This truly marks the end of our trip (we couldn’t hit the road again if we wanted to) which, frankly, is bittersweet. If we get motivated – or bored – we’ll return here and fill in some of the missing miles. But for now we’re calling it. The fun is over and we’re back to real life.
But Precision Auto is off on a new adventure. She was purchased by a middle-aged couple who intend to rip out her insides and convert her into an electric car. A little sad, but kind of fitting. The only problem we ever had with her was the gas mileage.
As we headed north towards Canada, Christopher and I stopped for a couple nights at Glacier National Park in Montana. It was rainy and cold, but we had a decent time and took a nice walk up a hill to see trees and stuff. And we saw two bears! They were big brown bears, and they pretty much sauntered right by us on the trail where we were walking. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a photo because we were kind of terrified and stunned. But here’s a photo to help you imagine what they looked like.
And it’s at this point in our journey where we officially enter “Bear Country,” so every time we do anything from now on, you can assume that we’re doing it while clapping our hands, talking loudly and singing bear songs, which is what the guides tell you to do in order to keep bears from attacking and/or eating you. In retrospect, I think that this is all a big hoax invented by some bored park rangers to keep themselves entertained. There’s nothing more humorous than a bunch of tourists wearing bells, clapping and singing while they hike through the woods. Even the grizzlies find it funny. And delicious.
This was probably the best burger I’ve ever had, and I can’t really tell you why. It tasted like it was cooked on a grill that hasn’t been scraped clean for fifty years. It tasted like the product of decades of greasy, beefy buildup. It was really, really good. Maybe the exceptional quality of this burger had something to do with the exceptionally small town where we purchased it. Perhaps the town’s few residents are the chosen ones – the guardians of a well-protected secret burger recipe that dates back to the invention of the cow and ketchup.
If you’re ever in Beulah, make sure to go to the only restaurant in town and get a burger. Hopefully they won’t have cleaned the grill yet.
Gwen and I have been “sharing company” for a while now. Fine… It’s been a really long time. Not important. What’s relevant is that among the hundreds (maybe thousands?) of repeated stories that any long-term couple is subjected to, there’s one Gwen (and her family) tells that has always stuck out. It’s notable primarily because it’s been so consistent – over the years, across generations, and from one teller to the next. Not to mention it’s a pretty decent story.
So when we found ourselves in South Dakota one day, walking around the Badlands, which happens to be the setting for this particular tale, I asked her to tell it again. And for good measure we got her mom to weigh in as well. That’s her disembodied voice you’re hearing. Thanks Jude, you’re a champ. This, by the way, is an abbreviated version. Next time you see Gwen feel free to ask her about her special connection to “Last of the Mohicans”.
After spending dozens of hours drifting along midwestern highways, the seemingly benign rural scenery will melt away and reveal itself to be a sinister landscape. Why? Aliens.
Just look! These photos are proof of the frightening technologies and structures that Aliens have been planting throughout America’s fruited planes. Grain silos? High-tension power lines? Power plants and refineries? I think not. These are the tools of Martian terrorists, lying in wait until the day of activation, when the alien overlords push their big red alien button and these colossal metallic beasts begin their great tour of destruction across America’s heartland.
How do I know all this? Deductive reasoning. I can’t identify these structures as valid, functional, (certainly not integral) components of America’s infrastructure, so by default they must be Alien creations, planted on US soil as part of a massive effort to destroy rural earthlings and their pets and trucks and whatnot. Beware! I’m usually right about these things.
We drove from Chicago amid dire tornado warnings. A gang of vortexes was mugging the region. Apparently the country’s weather has resorted to petty theft. But we slipped away into a dark alley and ended up in Lake Geneva, WI. The campground was littered with downed trees and glistening with fresh rain. It was pretty nice. A swim and a good night’s sleep later we had recovered from the previous day’s disappointments.
Chicago, land of heavy breezes, a losing baseball team, noteworthy architecture…. and pizza. Our knowledge of the windy city is in depth and comprehensive.
Chicago was our first real stop this time out, and because we’re skinflints, it was only for lunch – not too many places to pitch a tent on the Magnificent Mile. So… we drove through the night sustained by visions of the tasty deep dish awaiting us. We did research, found THE place to go, parked the car much too far away, ran some errands, and met up at Lou Manati’s Pizzeria to find an hour plus (!) wait.
Now before I go on you have to understand that we keep a very tight time-table. We are, after all, unemployed on an aimless road trip with absolutely zero obligations. Not to mention we were parked in an extremely sketchy spot with approximately 15 minutes left on the meter. So this wait just wouldn’t do. We’re resourceful. We’re with it. We figured we could walk back to the car and find something equally authentic on the way. And then it started to rain. Really really hard. But we got lucky, we found it – the best unknown pizza place in all of Chicago. And fortunately it happened to be in the same building under whose awning we were taking shelter from the biblical storm. So here’s to you random sports bar. Your pizza (not shown above) was just marginally better than the stuff they served us in middle school… but your waitress was nice. And we didn’t get a parking ticket.
Our journey to Alaska began on a warm June evening. We left my parents’ house in the Berkshires (western Massachusetts), and headed west on Interstate 90 – the plan was to make it to Chicago by morning. The windows were down, our eyeballs were glittering with images of polar bears and glaciers, nothing could stop us. Nothing except my uncontrollable tendency to drive at an illegal – and some would say dangerous – pace. 75 in a 55? That’s not fast, is it?
Within the first hour of our week-long voyage to Alaska, we were pulled over by a young (and I would say over-zealous) traffic cop. Getting pulled over is nerve-racking, but I wasn’t as scared of the flashing lights behind me as I should have been. You see, this was the third time I had been pulled over in as many months, and the previous two occasions (once in Kansas and another time in central Massachusetts) had turned out well, resulting in the issuance of “warnings” – the Police Department’s equivalent of a light, painless wrist-slap. And that’s all I really deserved, right? I thought so.
Apparently this cop disagreed, and after I handed him my ID, gracelessly explained that we were “driving to Alaska”, and flashed him some feminine charm (awkward smile), he gave me a ticket that I would later repay with two and a half days’ wages as a line cook in one of Alaska’s many small family restaurants.
…and it’s about time. Clearly we didn’t live up to the high expectations of that last post. It’s been 4 months, during which time we got older, made some gas money, caught sharks, lived in Sarah Palin’s home state, and watched the economy tank worse than the Exxon Valdez. Now we’re going to try to catch up. It’s a daunting task: there’s a trip west across the northern states into the wilds of Canada, a summer in Alaska, and our recent departure by sea. So climb into your internet time machine, flick the lights on and off a couple times, make some neat time travelling sound effects, and pretend it’s the middle of June…
We’d just like to issue a formal apology to our blog and its readers for our shameful neglect over the past few weeks. We spent the end of May and the beginning of June on the East Coast catching up with family and friends, and it’s taken us about a month to get these last few posts online. So we hope you enjoy them, even though they’re more historical than actual.
Also, let us take this opportunity to announce that we’re back on the road again, on our way to Alaska where we’ll be spending the summer. There are lots of stories and videos to come as we journey northwest, and we may even get them to you in a timely manner. You see, the farther north we go, the longer the days will get, which means we probably won’t start drinking and falling asleep as early. Plus, we hear that Alaska is on the cutting edge when it comes to telecommunications, so we expect to find wireless internet virtually everywhere we go.
So please tune in for more, and thanks for coming here in the first place. -Gwen and Christopher
Recession Road Trip 