Stuff I'm Doing: 2010

Last September, Katie and I went on a ginormous road trip. Originally we were just going to drive around and check out whatever we thought might be cool but it gradually morphed into a lets-follow-the-Lewis-and-Clark-trail kinda thing so we ended up following the Lewis and Clark trail from Kansas City, MO to Cape Disappointment State Park in Washington (the end of their route) with only two deviations: we went off the path to check out Mt. Rushmore and Glacier National Park. After we hit the Pacific we wandered down to San Francisco to visit my friend Chris and then to Las Vegas to see my grandma and finally we stopped at the Grand Canyon and then headed home. All said and done we drove about 5960 miles in 2 weeks. It was a pretty excellent adventure and while I ended up not getting as many pictures as I wanted due to time constraints I did get some highlight shots which I will now post with revealing commentary...

After driving from Austin to Topeka, KS and camping there for the night we got up early and drove to Kansas City, MO to check out this awesome (I actually wasn't sure that it was going to be awesome) statue which is located at the approximate point where Lewis and Clark started their journey in earnest. Well, the statue ended up being awesome and the picture really doesn't do it justice. It sits in a little park that overlooks the entire western part of the city and we got there just in time to see the sun rise behind it.
After we left Kansas City we headed up to Sioux City, IA to check out the Sgt. Floyd memorial which commemorates the only death of the entire expedition (Sgt. Floyd if you hadn't guessed...). The poor Sgt. is believed to have died from appendicitis. This massive obelisk was erected on his grave site and overlooks the Missouri River, which according to the images at the memorial looked quite different 200 years ago than it does now. Now would be a good time to point out that as the expedition headed west up the Missouri River they had to row against the current and on a good day would travel 10 miles, not necessarily in a straight line either. If they were going up a super curvy part of the river they essentially covered the same ground multiple times. In our car we averaged 497 miles per day.

Our next big stop was Mt. Rushmore but as we were driving through Nebraska I was caught off guard by how pretty it was. I'd never thought much of Nebraska but when we got there it was easily the most senic part of the trip up to that point. So I turned onto a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, drove to the top of a hill and we chilled out for a while and enjoyed the scenery.

On day 3 we woke up and started heading towards Mt. Rushmore. As we were driving we started seeing lonely signs on the side of the road that simply said "Wall Drug." Hours went by and the whole time we were driving we saw a steady stream of Wall Drug signs. Some of them mentioned an 80ft tall dinosaur. After a few hundred miles of mysterious Wall Drug signs we NEEDED to know what Wall Drug was all about. We finally reached the town of Wall and the amazing 80ft dinosaur was waiting for us. We checked out Wall Drug and it was alright but those signs in the middle of nowhere had allowed me to build it up way too much in my head and I was a little disappointed. So, long story short: if you're driving through South Dakota check out the 80ft dinosaur but you can probably skip Wall Drug, unless you are a fan of Americana in which case you may enjoy it more than I did.

Around 10am we arrived at Mt. Rushmore. As you drive up the mountain towards the monument you catch glimpses of it from the road through the trees and it looks absolutely amazing. And then you get there. I realized after the fact that I had always thought of Mt. Rushmore purely as a sculpture which would explain why the moment we walked into the monument proper I was blown away by how jingoistic the whole place felt. As a work of art its sheer size and level of detail was awe inspiring but the entire thing felt completely wrong headed. I would even bet that had any of the presidents whos heads are on that mountain been asked if they would want to be up there they all would have turned the offer down (cept maybe TR). I'll close this paragraph with a quote from the sculptor that has been bronzed and set into stone at the base of the memorial that sums up the weirdness:

"Let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away."

-Gutzon Borglum

On our way to Montana we had to drive through the top right corner of Wyoming which just happened to be the most deserted stretch of road I've ever been on. We drove for almost an hour at one point before seeing another car. I did have to stop and take a few minutes to appreciate the size of the land though and think about what it would have been like to cross this place on a horse.

The next stop was Pompey's Pillar. Pompey's Pillar (named after Sacagawea's baby who Clark had nicknamed Pompey) is a large rock formation set right on the side of the Yellowstone river. It also happened to be the place where William Clark stopped to survey the land and carve his initials. His initials are still there today (along with hundreds of others up through the mid 1800s). If you really want to get punched in the face by history go stand next to William Clark's name which was carved into a rock over 200 years ago and think about how much has changed since he crossed America (and not necessarily for the better). When he scaled Pompey's Tower, as he called it, he saw "Emence herds of Buffalows, Elk and wolves." When I scaled it, I saw some railroad tracks and a few roads. I missed out on the Buffalow.

Some pictures of Clark's signature (it says "Wm. Clark, July 25, 1806")and the signatures of other travellers who stopped at the tower.

A view of the Yellowstone river from the top of Pompey's Pillar and from the shore.

We continued driving across Montana and its infinite, flat grasslands until we drove around a hill and came upon Glacier National Park. The reason we decided to stop at Glacier National Park is because my friend Ali had visited it a few months earlier and talked it up as being possibly the most beautiful place he had ever seen. Well, if that was true I needed to see it so we made a detour. Sure enough, as we came upon the park I wasn't quite sure how to take it all in. There have not been many times in my life where I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the magnitude of something but this was one of them. The Sun hanging low behind the open valleys of this place coupled with a cold, thick wind gave me an experience that I had never had before and one that I will never forget. Also, there was a black bear who was chilling around our campsite and I was half sure he was gonna eat my head while I was sleeping.

Early the next morning we hiked down to St. Mary's falls and then drove through the rest of the park. I wish we had had the time to stay there for at least another week.

Driving through the Rockies in Idaho we stopped at this nice river to get a few pictures.

We got into Washington and drove past this massive tree farm. By massive I mean that it must have been thousands of acres, all covered by perfectly straight trees aligned in perfectly straight rows. We drove past it but the sight was so otherworldly to me that I had to turn around and take some pictures of it. I wanted to run deep into the mass of trees and get lost but I figured that I was already tresspassing so doing that would only make things worse.

We drove to our next campsite in Washington and unbeknownst to us were about to embark upon the most unintentionally adventurous part of our trip. You see, I had borrowed a gps navigator from one of my co-workers thinking that it would be nice to have a backup to the map book that I brought and it had been working wonderfully. Well, we woke up at our campsite (which was already absolutely in the middle of nowhere), set out for our next destination and the gps ended up taking us to the end of the paved road and told us to go down a dirt road into the middle of a forest. Now, I thought that it was kinda fishy but I had no reason to not trust the gps because it had done so well for the entire trip up until that point so we went down the road. This road ended up being a gravel path that wound itself up the side of a mountain. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was a logging road and my little Toyota sedan had no business being out in the middle of nowhere on some 6 foot wide dirt path/road on the side of a mountain. Long story short, somehow we drove the entire length of the dirt path in first gear going about 10mph and ended up at the town we needed to be at. Luckily there were no my-car-broke-down-and-now-we're-stuck-in-the-forest-oh-look-there's-a-house-over-there-in-the-woods-maybe-they-can-help-us-nevermind-they're-crazy-and-are-now-trying-to-kill-and-eat-us shenanigans but I sure felt like it could happen at any moment. I also found out something really cool about that gps device: under the settings in the gps menu there is a checkbox for "don't take me down dirt roads" and you have to check it in order for it to not send you down some godforsaken dirt road through the middle of nowhere if it's the quickest route. I did not have this box checked. If you have a gps, go check that box right now.

We drove into Oregon without incident and got to the outskirts of Portland where we got off the main highway and onto a side road which winds through the forest and passes many wonderful waterfalls. This is also where we learned that Katie gets violently car sick on winding roads so while we were stopped and she was puking her guts out I wandered into the forest a little bit to get some pictures.

This waterfall was also right off the road on the way to Portland.

Early on in the planning of the trip I realized that the end of the Lewis and Clark trail was very close to another place that holds my interest. Yes, Astoria, Oregon, the town where The Goonies was filmed was mere miles from our final Lewis and Clark destination. The first thing we did when we got into Astoria was drive to Mikey's house to check it out. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to get too creepy and sneak into someone's yard and we got lucky when we saw a sign at the bottom of the hill where the house was located welcoming any Goonies fans to come up and check it out. It was very cool to look out over the town just like at the beginning of the movie. Astoria is super awesome.

While we were checking out the Goonies house we heard some sea lions barking. This wouldn't be remarkable if we were real close to the water but we were at least a half mile from the docks. We went down to check it out and there were about a hundred sea lions hanging out and yelling at each other (the picture doesn't show them all). Let me tell you, they gots no manners.

By the time we were done with our Goonies shenanigans it was getting late and we still had to get to our campground. After we set up our camp we thought we'd have time to go check out the Lewis and Clark endpoint on the other side of the river's mouth but by the time we got there it was dark so we figured we'd come back in the morning. Well, we did and we were so early that the park center wasn't open. This was actually ok though because we were able to hang out and take in the end of the trail with no one around. In the end we ended up doing in 6 days what took the Lewis and Clark expedition over a year and a half. Still, the size of this country blew my mind.