Cross-country Ride in the Car

Somehow I had the idea that, rather than put our dog Maggie on the plane to New York, it would be fun to drive from Vancouver to New York.  When Ada and Andrew expressed interest in the coming with me, the idea became a reality.   I have done it a number of times before, the first time when I was 20 years old.  I had dropped out of college (this was the year of the first draft lottery, and my high number meant I wouldn't be sent to Vietnam), and I loaded my Fender Rhodes electric piano and my Farfisa mini compact organ into my VW bug, with the idea that I would go live in San Francisco and play in a rock band.  (The sixties!)  At the last minute, my sister Rebecca (who had just graduated from high school) decided to come with me.  She came for the ride, and flew back East from San Francisco a few days after we arrived.   I have vivid memories of the trip, our first glimpse of the vast spaces of America between the coast.  We camped on the banks of both the Missouri River and the Mississippi River, in the Black Hills and in Yellowstone, and on the banks of Great Salt Lake.  Neither one of us had ever been further west than Pennsylvania (though we had been on family trips all through Europe).

So, five days after my returning from Siena, Ada, Andrew, Maggie and myself were off in the car.  (Vera wanted no part of this and was happily ensconced in New York.)   Maggie, who loves to ride in the car, spent most of the trip in her co-pilot position.

The main point of the trip is to see the landscape of the west.  We began by going through the North Cascades National Park:

Our first glimpse:

Fall colors amongst the evergreens:

After passing through the mountains, you get to the dry part of Washington State, a beautiful golden landscape, threaded by rivers (and electric transmission wires).

The next day, we drove through Idaho and Montana, on our way to Yellowstone National Park.
The copper mining town of Butte:

Our chief interest in Yellowstone was all the thermal features: geysers, mud pots, etc.  Although we did see some beautiful waterfalls and rocks

It was cold in Yellowstone the morning we were there (below freezing) and perhaps that had something to do with all the fog which shrouded the thermal features.  It made for a mysterious grey landscape, and the colorful features of the mud pots were thus muted.   But still there was an extraordinary variety of colors and textures in the landscape.

It is a strange landscape, where things are bubbling, hissing and you feel a closeness to the inner workings of the earth's geology.

More... (too much?)

We drove by Yellowstone Lake:

On the shores, more geyser activity:

Exiting Yellowstone, we drove across Wyoming.  The road between Yellowstone and the next mountain range, the Bighorn mountains, is full of beautiful rock formations.   The Bighorns themselves are as beautiful as other, more famous mountain ranges; they have a large, high elevation plateau which was so enticing we wanted to stay the night, but, alas, we needed to push on to Sheridan, Wyoming, which was not so beautiful.
More rocks and colors:

The Medici stone workers might have been happy to find this mountain:

A lot of the views above are not part of any national park or forest, but simply part of the whole landscape of the west.

The sights on this ride anticipated our next destination, the Badlands.  Again nature has arranged a feast of colors and shapes, courtesy of erosion, fossils, and minerals.   It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the park was relatively deserted.  Sometimes we were the only ones at a viewpoint.

Again, more rock pictures than you need; I really liked the yellow and reddish rocks.

After the Badlands, the rest of the trip was certainly less interesting.  South Dakota and southern Minnesota go on endlessly, being mostly flat with corn.  Wisconsin provides more picturesque forests and farms before Indiana and Ohio take over with renewed flatness.   I80 through Pennsylvania showed us lots of forested fall color, along with Exit 224 for Danville, boyhood home of the notable American musicologist David Metzer.   Alas, we had no time to stop, and before long we were crossing the George Washington Bridge in time to land in a huge traffic jam in New York City.   It was indeed a welcome sight when we pulled up in front of our building after 3,065 miles of driving.


One of the fun parts of a cross-country trip  (for us coastal types) is the various glimpses of Americana along the way.   For example, in Clinton, Montana we saw signs for an upcoming "Testicle Festival".  What can this be?   Something to do with football?   No, it's a festival that features copious consumption of bull testicles (and beer, apparently).
Speaking of things culinary, we stopped for the night in the town of Murdo, South Dakota, where our only dining option in a place that had windows was a pizza place that featured their special crust with cinnamon on it.  Yes, a cinnamon flavored crust for your pizza with pepperoni, sausage, etc.   The piece de resistance, though, was that the pizza was served along with a container of sugary icing to add to the crust.
We also saw Old Faithful geyser erupt in Yellowstone park.  Part of the fun was watching the crowd.  (The geyser itself was fairly wimpy in the eruption we saw; its main virtue being its regularity.)   I saw a very well dressed woman in a leopard skin print dress and a stylish black hat take numerous selfies with the geyser in the background.   We stopped in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, where a huge resort has been built around the natural phenomenon of the sandstone erosion formations on the river.  The town itself is filled with man-made attractions of every kind, all designed to amuse the American family on vacation.  One was "3D Blacklight Minigolf".   But I am wondering how it would be to play minigolf in two dimensions.  At least my putts would go straight .


We did see some wonderful wildlife along the way.  In Yellowstone we had a close encounter with some bison beside the car.   Maggie growled at the bison.
Photo by Andrew:

We also saw a grizzly bear (from a distance!), big horn sheep, and, in the Badlands, a huge field of prairie dogs that was a delight to watch as they made sounds and popped up and down and ran around.   (Maggie was overexcited, and had to be left in the car.  They are prey for her.)  Also in the Badlands, we were about to walk on a short boardwalk to a viewpoint when two guys told us they had just seen a rattlesnake on the boardwalk.  Some of us went back to the car.
And there was this peculiar species of mountain goat in the Badlands: