Interests:Outdoorsy stuff, writing stuff, north carolina stuff, maryland stuff, pennsylvania stuff, travel stuff, people stuff Expertise:Those PLU numbers at the grocery store... I know them all. And editing papers. Occupation:Student Industry:Media
8/6 9:54am -- I have about an hour before I have to be out of this motel and checked out, and Friends is coming on TV, so I probably won't go into too much detail about my travels today.
Yes, I am at a MOTEL, actually paying for a place to sleep in a bed that's not mine. A girl can indulge, right? I spent most of yesterday in Jackson and only got out of town once it started getting a little dark. Apparently, there are no gas stations or truck stops or Walmarts between here and the Grand Tetons, but there are signs saying you can't park overnight alongside the road, so instead of backtracking like 30 miles in the dark along a mountain road with sharp curves and no guardrails and a 10% grade that would destroy my transmission to get back to Victor for the opportunity to sleep in a parking lot, I made a few calls, plunked down a hundred bucks and spent the night in a legitimate place for sleeping. Not a luxury I'm planning on making a habit of, but ohhhh it was nice to have a bathtub. When I hit the road, I didn't really think through how awkward it would be to have people staring at you when you're brushing your teeth in the morning... because you're at Walmart...
Anyway, since leaving Bozeman, I drove west and south to a small town called Virginia City. Right before I left, I read a series of books about a girl who does the whole Oregon Trail thing and ends up homesteading there, so I had to drop in. It still had stores with the false fronts and shops like a saddlery and a dance hall, and I think there was even a Chinese bordello, so it was definitely worth stopping by. From there I went on to Dillon, a small town of 4,000 where I recently applied and interviewed for a job. I had mentioned by e-mail a few days ago that I'd be stopping in, but I didn't hear back from them, so I just wandered around the campus and drove around town, trying to get a feel for the place. It seems like a pretty sweet little town -- small, but after five years of College Park, small is what I need. I stopped in at a gas station and asked the clerk what the town was like for a potential newcomer, and she kind of hesitated and said, "well, it's kind of like... a cowboy kind of town?" Hahaha... I think I'm sold. Should hear about the job in a week or two.
I left Dillon at dusk for Idaho under a lightning-strewn sky and decided to pull off in Lima before
8/6 9:40pm -- I cut that off so I could actually get out the door on time this morning... anyway... I'll pick up where I left off in a minute.
Feel free to skip this part if you just want details on my latest adventures... I'm kind of indulging in a pity party here -- For parts of the last two or three days, I've been in somewhat of a mood. I've been applying for jobs since March to no avail, but in the past three weeks, to jobs have expressed a preliminary interest in me (oh yeah, I guess I mentioned the Dillon one earlier). One of them, a copy editing position for a science firm in DC, had me take a copy editing test last week and sent along a huge form that basically asked for all the same information I had sent them when I initially applied, only this time in their special format. To make me even happier, it couldn't be filled out by typing in the boxes; you needed to print it out, write in the information by hand, scan it and send it back by e-mail. Well, I found out about this in Wisconsin, and although I don't come equipped with a travel printer and scanner tucked in the seatback pocket, I do have a dog who barks VERY LOUDLY every time I stop at a gas station for a restroom break. Even if I could find a copy shop, going inside for an hour and a half to take care of this just wasn't an option. So my mom offered to help and fill it out if I told her what to write. Between me being busy doing all the things I've been planning to do this month, her having her regularly scheduled life filled with church events, doctor appointments and more, and the fact that my cell phone keeps dropping its signal when I'm driving on those long stretches of road between places, it took a week and a half for us to get this darn thing filled out (it needed every single job I've ever worked, my supervisor, their phone number, e-mail address and the address of the company, my starting salary, my ending salary, a description of the job and my reason for leaving, plus all the regular stuff like my name, contact info, social security number, educational background, etc... and they already had the majority of this information from my resume and reference list... ughhhhhh...). As you might imagine, trying to put it together through my mom's hands 3,000 miles away was pretty frustrating, and I snapped at her several times when she couldn't understand me because of my bad signal or something... very unfair of me, I know. Then I got mad at myself for snapping at her, which only made things worse. The HR girl knew I was traveling and said she didn't need it in any hurry, but I still didn't want to come off as a slacker and have it wait too long. Anyway, yesterday, twenty minutes after my mom sends it and five minutes before I find a gas station where I can get online, I receive a lovely e-mail from the company saying I'm apparently not good enough. After a week and a half of major hassle. Then I think I got food poisoning from Subway.
Of course this had to happen on the anniversary of a good friend of mine committing suicide four years ago, and aside from chatting with a friend for awhile about some of the things he used to do to make us laugh, memories of him and the utter loss of such a wonderful person just worsened how I felt. It was tough going through the day, thousands of miles from anyone else who missed him just as much as I did. Great, I'm wallowing. Not gonna open that can of worms right now.
To top everything off, I had car issues in Idaho (had to get my oil changed and all four tires replaced, and then my O2 sensor conked out on me) and was late getting back into Colorado, which means I missed seeing my friend who's working in the Tetons this summer because he was leaving early Wednesday morning to go climb a mountain. And then today, I got a letter back home that informed me that I did not get the job in Montana. Kind of a sucky few days.
But then today, God gave me a rainbow. Two, actually -- as I drove from Lander, Wyoming, southeast toward Cheyenne, I got caught in this terrific thunderstorm that had lightning scrambling all over the sky and torrential rain coming down so thick it had me driving half the speed limit. I love storms like that. Once the sky cleared of rain, though, the most vivid rainbow I've ever witnessed emerged. I don't know if I've ever seen a rainbow with an entire arc -- usually, I just catch little ends -- but this one had the entire semicircle and some solid end bits of a second one paralleling the first. I always loved the Noah story where after the flood, the rainbow was the symbol of hope and promises of a better future, and I'm glad I got one today after all that's been going on.
Anyway, picking up from where I left off in Dillon --
8/7 12:36pm So I pulled off in Lima, Montana, and spent the night in the parking lot of a Bates-style motel, with the lightning crashing and the thunder pounding and the whole experience just asking for a killer with a knife to be waiting outside my window, only to appear as a silhouette in a flash of lightning... it was great! I couldn't stop grinning... weird of me, I know. No cloaked strangers with murderous intent appeared in the darkness, but my campershell did start leaking just a little right next to my pillow, so I set up an army of papercups to catch the drips. Worked out pretty well. I slept like a baby.
Lima is just a few miles from the Idaho line, so I drove in the next morning (Monday, August 3rd) and took the route toward Craters of the Moon National Monument. I read about this one awhile back and was pretty psyched to go there -- apparently, some of the Apollo astronauts did their pre-lunar mission training there, which made it seem pretty legitimate, so I was expecting, I don't know, craters like one might find on the moon. There were no craters. There was nothing that looked remotely like anything you'd seen on the moon. I've seen the moon -- it's that big white cratered thing hanging out in the sky at night. Craters of the Moon National Monument was an enormous rockfield of black igneous rocks spread thick across the landscape. It basically looked like a field covered with broken-up bits of pavement strewn about. I was not impressed. I mean, it was strange, all right, but if you're gonna call something Craters of the Moon, it should live up to that reputation. In my humble opinion.
I got my oil changed in Jerome, Idaho, that evening, which launched a few fun car issues. All four of my tires were balding, so I stopped at a nearby KOA campground so I could get a much-needed shower, do some laundry and be close to the Walmart so I could take care of the tires in the morning. My lovely dog barks sometimes if I leave him tied up for a few minutes, and when I got back from my shower, an old lady from a very expensive-looking RV was writing down my license plate number so she could call the police on me. Real nice neighbors. I was only gone for maybe 10 or 15 minutes max, and I know he wasn't barking that whole time because he was fine when I got to the bathroom, and again when I went to the laundry room. I apologized up and down, but she clearly did not approve of my situation. Jerk. Why do I let these things still bug me?
I got the tires on in the morning (8/4) and headed toward Twin Falls, which had a gorgeous view of the Snake River and the only bridge in the US that allows BASE jumping without a permit. And sure enough, four jumpers showed up just as I was about the leave. For the uninformed, BASE jumping (building, antenna, span, earth) means launching yourself off a high point of something that is still attached to the earth, freefalling and trying to safely deploy your parachute before you smash into the ground. You don't have very long to take care of all of these vital details, unlike in skydiving, but I saw four people successfully jump from the bridge and make it to the canyon bottom alive. Not something I would ever do, but it was pretty exciting to watch.
Paxton and I also stopped in at the Shoshone Falls, but it was clear his feet weren't feeling so good on the hot pavement, so we only stopped for a few minutes and stayed mostly on the grass, which doesn't have a great view of the falls. They said it was higher than Niagara, but I think they totaled all the drops that staggered down instead of just the one big one, because once again, I really wasn't all that impressed. Idaho in general failed to astound me... what can I say? No offense to you potato folk. We left, and my "check engine" light came on... great. I stopped at a mechanic, and he just laughed at me and turned it off. Okay... no big surprise when it came back on a few miles later, jerk. I stopped at a Toyota dealership in Pocatello, and they told me what the problem was (a busted O2 sensor, which they did not have in stock), but also told me that it wouldn't affect my driveability. So I'm planning on getting that fixed in Colorado or Kansas or something.
I kept driving and ended up in Idaho Falls for the night. Since I had gotten off the interstate and was on a 35mph road, I let Paxton stick his head out the window to let the wind flow through his hair (he loves that). Then some idiot teenager ran right in front of my car, jumped up and clicked his heels in the air and ran off laughing to the other side of the road. I had to absolutely slam on my brakes to not hit him, causing Paxton to crash into the dashboard. I almost had to swerve into oncoming traffic... idiot! So I turned around and found the little group of punks walking along some neighborhood street and chewed them out for being reckless and nearly breaking my dog's neck and almost causing a major accident. I was particularly chewing out the one kid in the teal shirt, because that's about all I could see as I was screeching to a halt, and he said it was probably his friend Coda (who conveniently wasn't with them anymore) who ran in front of my car, because he was also wearing a shirt that color. Whatever -- I saw them all running across the road just behind my car... pissed me off. Didn't help my mood. I am totally a crotchety old lady, you know, at 23. I spent the night in a Walmart lot in Idaho Falls, and woke up the next morning to head toward Jackson.
Jackson Hole really is a gem of a town -- definitely stop in if you're ever within a few hundred miles. It's like the motherland for outdoor adventure types like myself, plus it's got classy stores and sushi... ohhhh, after 4,500 miles of reconstituted oatmeal and canned soup, California rolls really hit the spot. Anyway, Paxton and I walked around for awhile and checked out the sights, including a town park with four entranceways built from elk antlers. For whatever reason, there was a real taxidermified lion outside one of the stores, which understandably terrified my puppy (it was pretty hilarious though :) ), and a stuffed buffalo outside another (same reaction). At a cool little shop that allowed my pooch to come in, I got a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, plus a few postcards and a magnet, and sat in my car for awhile, talking on the phone with my friends about our old friend Mole. It was getting dark when I was ready to pull out, and I figured I'd find a gas station in between Jackson and the Tetons, but the two are a little closer than I realized and so I turned around and found a motel for the night (which I wrote about at the top of this entry, so I won't repeat myself).
Yesterday morning(8/6), I hit the road and pretty much immediately was in the Tetons... these mountains are like the stereotypical craggy peaks capped with snow, and they were absolutely breathtaking. As you leave Jackson Hole, there are some hills to your left, and soon you pass a little sign that says "Now entering Garand Teton National Park" or something to indicate you've crossed the boundary. And you look to your left and... whoa. The far-off mountains had just been obscured by the closer hills, and they were absolutely the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen in my life. I couldn't take enough pictures of them. Side by side, the chain of peaks soared above the surrounding plains, and several times, I had to stop my car before even getting to the entrance gates to just marvel at them. I'll get some pictures up maybe when I get home.
One of the funniest things I've seen in awhile was one of those big programmable highways signs you ususally see as you're approaching a construction zone. This one was placed at the southern end of the park and was programmed to read "HITTING A 2000LB BUFFALO WILL RUIN YOUR CAR. IT WILL RUIN YOUR DAY. PLEASE SLOW DOWN!" HAHAHAHA! Point taken :). I love a good joke about a bison-car collision...
Anyway, like in Yellowstone, the Teton folks don't allow dogs on the trails, so I was basically limited to what I could reach by the road. We stopped by the lake for lunch and then kept on toward Lander, a small town in central Wyoming that's home to the National Outdoor Leadership School. I had applied for a job here too, and probably will continue to apply for others, so I felt like at least checking out the premises. For such a far-reaching empire, the building itself is surprisingly small and unassuming. I had thought there was somewhat of a campus, but it was really just a single building on a street corner. Huh. We kept on going southeast toward Cheyenne and soon got caught up in a major storm that painted half the sky a foreboding dark blue and the other half a light cerulean dotted with a few light clouds. Never before had I seen such a stark line between weather patterns, and I got a few shots of the distinction. Soon, the rain came down in such droves that I found myself driving only half the posted speed limit and was still somewhat nervous in that. My wipers were going full tilt, but if I was closing in on a flash flood, I wouldn't have known until I got swept away in the torrent. Again, this had me grinning inside the safety of my truck while the world fell to pieces outside my windows, and I wondered once again about my sanity. Eh... I like storms. In half an hour or so, the sky cleared up some, and I was presented with the most spectacular double rainbow I've ever seen. You know how rainbows aren't grounded anywhere -- they're just tricks of the light? This one landed in front of a mountain range I was driving next to, and I got some good shots of it dropping in front of the hills. Absolutely beautiful. Even after the rainbow faded, the sky was painted all manner of intense colors, and I pulled into Rawlins just as the last bits of it were leaving the sky.
So I woke up today in Rawlins, downwind from some very smelly refinery or something, and have driven east on I-80 since then until now, where I've reached Cheyenne. Today, I'm headed south into the Denver suburbs to visit a few people and drop by the office of another place where I applied for a job, so I oughta get on that.
Two weeks ago, I bought a cap for my dad's truck, parked a narrow mattress and a dog bed in the bed, packed up a bunch of clothes and dry food, transferred most of my savings over to checking and left my grandpa's house in Pennsylvania for a month-long roadtrip with my dog. Traveling across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, I've racked up 3285.7 miles on the odometer so far, and I still have two weeks left before I get home. Love my life.
Sam Walton (of Walmart fame) thought that traveling by car or RV was one of the best ways to see the country, so he made a rule that you can park overnight in Walmart parking lots when you're traveling. So far, I've only come across one lot that prohibits overnight parking, and every night on the asphalt and under the security lights, a temporary city pops up in front of Walmarts all over the country. People pull out their charcoal grills, folding chairs, card tables and propane stoves and make friends with fellow travelers from all over the country. It's the craziest thing -- I don't know why I've never heard of this before. Even rest stops on the highway don't allow you to sleep overnight in case of litigation or something, I don't know, and as a result, the Walmarts of America have become the traveler's oasis.
Last night, after two and a half days in Yellowstone, I headed north to Bozeman and found a Walmart just off I-90. Most of the lots I've camped out in so far have been pretty non-descript, and a lot of them have been void of too many RVs because I've stayed somewhat off the regular tourist routes, but last night's home base was actually pretty interesting. It's the closest Walmart north of Yellowstone and very likely in a few other directions as well, and after circling the parking lot and trying to find a space not totally alone but not too close to anyone else, not entirely in the dark but not completely bathed in light either, and not facing east (waking up with a faceful of early morning sunshine is a mistake I'll only make once), I'd say there were at least 50 RVs sprinkled across the pavement. This is to say nothing about the vans, VW minibuses and pickup trucks with camper shells that can more easily camoflage themselves amongst the actual Walmart patrons who drive to do their midnight shopping in vehicles less than 50 feet long.
Anyway, I found a good spot on the south end of the lot, walked the dog, moved my stuff from the bed of the truck to the cab, pulled out a chair, leashed Paxton to a tree next to the car and sat down to eat my dinner and read a book. Shortly thereafter, some old dude in a van pulled up a few spots away, probably after scoping out the lot and coming to the same conclusion I did about the benefits of this corner. At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but after a few minutes, he had stripped down to just his boxers and a pair of flipflops and wandered around the parking lot, brushing his teeth and roaring on his phone at midnight to some friend of his about how someone he knew got an f-ing zebra and named it f-ing Obama and how he doesn't need to play f-ing $3000 keno because of his f-ing VA benefits or something... it was pretty clear he wasn't just vacationing on the cheap like I am. I would have moved the truck if I didn't have to haul all my stuff from the cab to the bed and back out again after I found a better spot. Paxton stayed alert for a long time after we piled into the back of the truck and locked up, and I don't think he settled down and got comfortable for a good half hour after the guy crawled into his van. Actually, the worse problem of the night was when some security/grounds maintenance guy with a VERY loud truck and flashing yellow lights started doing donuts around the parking lot islands, blasting his music, and seeing just how fast and close he could get to everyone's trucks and RVs without crashing... I've been up since 4:30am... but every other night so far has been uneventful.
Recounting my adventures... I left Brookville at 6:30pm on Tuesday, July 21, and drove straight across most of Ohio on I-80 before pulling into a rest stop (that luckily had no "No Overnight Parking" signs posted) for the night. As I parked and got the dog out, I noticed a family of Orthodox Jewish people pulled up near a wall on the edge of the store. One of the men was praying, and the family stayed there for quite awhile doing what they needed to do before packing it all back in and continuing on their merry way. It's interesting to see how other people adapt their lives to traveling. I saw my old roommate, Julie, go through the same nighttime ritual many times in the two years we lived together (one and a half of which we shared a room), and if I remember correctly, she would change clothes and do a few other things to prepare for her prayers. It'd be interesting to learn what accommodations have to be made while on the road, for this family and for so many others with customs different from my own.
Anyway, day two took us across Indiana, up into Michigan for a few miles because I-80 runs so close to its southern border, across northern Illinois and just over the border into Wisconsin for the night. Indiana wasn't particularly interesting, but Paxton and I did stop at the Indiana Dunes State Park (or National Recreation Area or something). If I make a scrapbook of this trip, I'm going to insert photos of Harrison Ford swinging in on vines and outrunning primitive tribes across the beaches of Lake Michigan... every time I saw a sign for the park, I automatically began humming the Indiana Jones theme song. Weird, I know. Welcome to my brain. Lake Michigan in SO BIG! I would have thought I was on an oceanside beach if I didn't know better -- you literally cannot see any of the other sides. From there, we drove across to north of Chicago, where my Semester at Sea roommate, Jena, lives in Grayslake. We got some food at a drive-in and walked our dogs for awhile, and her dad gave me some good travel materials from their recent RV adventure. They only live a few miles from the Wisconsin border, so I drove up there and spent the night in Delavan just to say I've been to Wisconsin. Didn't do anything interesting.
Day three consisted of driving south to Starved Rock State Park in Illinois and west to Iowa. Passed the World's Largest Truckstop and stopped to take a picture but didn't get out. I had heard that Mark Twain had touted the sunsets in Muscatine as the best in the world, so I stopped, but was too early. A friend with family in Iowa advised me to drive to Kalona, an Amish community in southeastern Iowa, and get some cheese curds from a factory there, so I stopped, but was too late. Regardless, it was a nice detour. I got back on 80, slept in a Walmart lot in Newton, and visited the covered bridges of Madison County (yes, those ones) in Winterset before heading north to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
In Sioux Falls (evening of day four), I stopped at a Petco and got Paxton's nails trimmed because they were getting unruly and he doesn't let me get near them. The groomer told me I should check out Falls Park while I was in town, and it really was a beautiful chunk of landscape. The Big Sioux river cascades and drops about a hundred feet over the course of a mile or so (from what I heard), and there was a nicely kept park surrounding the falls. Paxton and I ate dinner while sitting on a rock in the middle of it all, and we stayed for the 45-minute light and sound show that told the history of the river and the town since the Lewis and Clark expedition 200 years ago. It was pretty cool! Paxton kept flipping over and scratching his back in the grass, so I think the fascinated little kids seated behind me didn't get the history lesson their parents had anticipated, but it was a good time all around. Slept in a parking lot under a Barnes and Noble sign, and headed up to De Smet.
Laura Ingalls Wilder's family finally homesteaded in De Smet (remember how her dad never seemed to settle down for good anywhere?), and their land has been restored into a living prairie with a replica barn, sod house, claim shanty, one-room schoolhouse and all the rest. I always loved frontier literature, so walking around her family's land, learning about her life from the different displays and getting a tangible experience to back up everything I've ever read was really very interesting. I'm a nerd, I know. Paxton was allowed in all the buildings, which was fine until we got barricaded in the top floor of the barn by a trio of very nasty kittens who parked themselves on the stairs and terrified my 80-pound dog. The people outside probably thought I was crazy, giggling like a maniac at the absurdity of the situation, but no one else came to gawk or come to my rescue. Eventually, two of the kittens made their way up to the rafters, and I plucked the third off the steps and dropped it a few feet down to the floor, and then took a few minutes coaxing my anxious puppy back down to the ground.
From De Smet, I headed west along US 14, which meanders through Pierre and culminates in Wall, as in Wall Drug. I passed about a gazillion billboards for the store all across South Dakota and had to stop in, so I got a few postcards and a magnet before parking for the night. Apparently, if you ask for a sign, they'll give you one for free as long as you promise to display it and send a picture back to them, and I'm co mpletely kicking myself for forgetting to ask for one. Oh well...
After waking up in Wall on day six, I drove through Badlands National Park before heading to Keystone and Mount Rushmore. The Badlands are unlike anything I had ever seen before -- basically, it looked like all the other fields I had been passing for the last thousand miles except enormous chunks of it had been carved out and redeposited in crazy formations all across the park. The drive through the park stretches for 31 miles, which took me several hours to get through because I had to keep stopping for pictures. You just can't capture the enormity of something like this on film, though -- I need to look through my album to see how it all turned out.
Exiting the Badlands, I drove west to Keystone, a little town two miles from Mount Rushmore where my friend Van got a summer job doing housekeeping for a hotel. Semester at Sea flew both a student and a professor from almost every country to the previous port so they could travel with us to the next one and give us a chance to ask questions and get to know someone our own age from the upcoming country, and Van was the interport student from Vietnam. She was a lot of fun on the ship and shared a really hilarious presentation about what to do and expect in Vietnam the night before our arrival, and she mentioned to me that had a job singing at a nightclub and that she'd be singing there during our last night in Ho Chi Minh City. Well, I had to go see that. My friend Rachel's mom had traveled to Vietnam while we were there, and the three of us went to the club and watched her sing before we headed to Hong Kong. I never thought I'd see her again, but she e-mailed me a few months back and told me about this job she got in South Dakota, and everything just fell into place. She has a trailer that she shares with one other girl from Vietnam, one girl from Lithuania and two from China, and they very graciously took Paxton and I in for two nights while we explored Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse and Custer State Park. A friend of hers was having a get-together at her house in Rapid City, so we hung out there and played volleyball before heading back to Keystone. On the ride home, we stopped in at McDonald's because Van had never been there before. Apparently, McDonald's isn't in Vietnam -- go figure. Thought it was everywhere. I guess I didn't pay attention to the availability of American fast food while in her country (although I did notice a preponderance of KFCs just about everywhere we went). Anyway, it was pretty hilarious that she totally did not believe me that McDonald's didn't have Sriracha chili sauce as a staple condiment. I don't think she thought I was telling the truth...
During my second day in Keystone, I had to do a copy editing test for a job in DC, so it took awhile to coordinate the dog and Van's roommate and a stable an internet connection to make that happen in time. Got it together, though -- don't know how I did yet. After Van got out of work, the two of us and two of her roommates went to see Mount Rushmore, which was NUTS! It was raining, and I was kind of jumping all over the place: "You don't understand -- this is MY mountain, these are MY presidents, I've seen pictures of this place my whole life!" They were not quite as enthralled as I was, because if it wasn't for this mountain, they may have gotten better job assignments for their long-awaited summer in America than housekeeping jobs in remote Keystone, South Dakota, but they thought I was pretty entertaining :). We all thought it was funny that in the rain, it looked like TJ's nose was running... much laughter.
I had had to kennel Paxton that day so I could do the editing test and go to the monument, so we drove to Rapid City and picked him up, along with some KFC, and ate dinner at a picnic table in front of some historic building. We drove to Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed, and walked around the streets before driving back to Keystone. Van and I stayed up really late talking about American universities and her plans for traveling across the U.S. after working for a month in her uncle's restaurant in Denver, and I really hope I see her again. Her roommates were really great, too, and I let them all know that they were more than welcome to stay at my home if they come anywhere nearby on their travels across the country.
In the morning (day eight), I left Keystone and drove to see Crazy Horse Memorial, and to be honest, I kind of wish I hadn't paid to go in. A video at Mount Rushmore showed FDR dedicating the monument and saying that although he didn't know what the featured presidents or the future generations swould say about the sculpture, he hoped they would give the benefit of the doubt to the people who commissioned and carved the faces of four immortal American figures into the rock. Crazy Horse somehow seems very different than Mount Rushmore did. The U.S. government hasn't backed up the monument with any kind of federal protection or significance, and for good reason -- Crazy Horse himself would have been horrified at the thought of carving natural rock from what was once a beautiful mountain into an enormous carving of himself. If it was intended to be a tribute to Native Americans persecuted by those of us who took their land and massacred them by the thousands, I think it was really poorly thought out. I'd be curious to hear the general consensus of tribal opinion regarding the mountain -- it just seems like there are so many much better ways to memorialize this important figure. After looking at the mountain for awhile and walking Paxton into the only building I could take him into, we went back out to the parking lot and I bought a red Sno-cone from a vendor there. When I got back in the car, I ate with the door open and accidentally spilled some of my Sno-cone onto the gravel lot. It seeped into the ground, and, looking up at Crazy Horse's face, it really hit home just how terrible of an idea this all was. There I was, sitting in my air-conditioned, fossil fuel-burning vehicle, accompanied by my leashed, collared, vaccinated, housebroken dog, eating an artificially colored ice treat in July, a month when no ice can naturally be had, and staring up at the revered face of a mountain scarred by fifty years of dynamite and chiseling. Maybe I think too much into things... I wished I hadn't contributed money toward this effort.
From there, I went on to Custer State Park, which has ridiculous rock formations called the needles which really look like enormous thin needles jutting toward the sky. It also is home to Sylvan Lake, one of the most gorgeous lakes I've ever seen, as well as a large wildlife preserve full of bison, pronghorns, and a whole lot of other animals. This one herd of bison was up on this hill, and I hd trouble seeing them at all from the main road, so I took one of the side roads up to see them and got trapped between a whole lot of other cars doing the same thing. The signs say "Buffalo Are Dangerous -- Do Not Approach" and I hadn't intended to get anywhere near as close as I did. The slow parade of cars shuffled through the herd, coming within feet of the beasts before I could break back out and get back to the main road. It was a little terrifying, but I got some good pictures! Paxton was very good, quiet and still as we got close to the bison, and I rewarded him with a standard road treat of beef jerky, which I realized was a little ironic and maybe self-defeating as he licked it out of my hand.
I drove north to Sturgis, home of the infamous Harley Davidson motorcycle rally, but since I was a week too early, I just got a postcard for my biker uncle and kept on west to Sundance, Wyoming. My head was splitting, and I pulled into a gas station parking lot that night, very glad to be done with driving for the time being.
In the morning (day nine), I realized that I had somehow misplaced my Idaho/Wyoming/Montana AAA book with all the places I wanted to go marked out, and I had to drive 30 miles back east into South Dakota to get another book from the travel agency. It was okay, though, because the agent gave me a tip to drive north and west to get to Devils Tower, my next destination, instead of west and then north, and her route indeed gave me a really beautiful drive. If you're reading this and have never seen a picture of Devils Tower, go look it up -- this thing is immense. It looks like a giant tree stump that rises 800 feet high on top of a 400 foot tall hill, and is the hardened core of a volcano that was once here and has long gone dormant, the outer cone eroded away. I got a few postcards and a magnet of a jackalope before driving west through the Bighorn Mountains.
People talk about driving across the plains of Kansas or Nebraska or whatever and seeing the Rockies looming int he distance, rising straight up, thousands of feet high in front of completely flat plains, and that's what it was like to approach the Bighorns. For an hour and a half or so, I drove up, switchbacked, swung around sharp curves with no guardrails and basically climbed about 4,000 feet before getting to the summit, which had a small sign that read "Cutler Hill -- 8347 feet." Hill?!? Maybe it was one of those things where you just had to be there, but it was the biggest mountain I had ever ascended and here is this sign calling it a hill. It was getting dark as I descended, and by about 10pm, I reached the town of Shell on the other side of the range. Shell consists of one bar, one post office, and one general store, plus I guess enough homes to house its population of 50, and after scoping out the too-dark bar parking lot and the too-bright post office one, I turned around and headed back to the general store, where as I pulled into the parking lot, I realized there were a few people sitting on the front porch. I swung around and they all waved, and when I asked if I could park there overnight, the one guy who came up to the truck said sure, this was his parents' store and that would be no problem. He also invited me up for a drink and some conversation on the porch, so I joined them and sat chatting for awhile. The guy whose parents run the place was named Josh, and he was 33 and had a 10-year-old daughter. We talked for awhile, and while Paxton ran around off-leash, he showed me the store and the sheep wagons outside that ranchers would drive up on the range when their herd was grazing too far from home to come back for the night. He also offered to show Paxton and I the fossil deposits and dinosaur tracks that give Shell its name, and in the morning, Josh, his daughter Anna, Paxton and I drove out to see them. Paxton, again off-leash, was one happy puppy. After combing the ground for half an hour or so, I had a cartridge box full of (legal) fossils, and went on my way toward Cody.
Cody was like the Bighorns -- flat plains bordered by an immense mountainr ange on one side. There were lots of things I would have loved to see and do in Cody, but none of them were dog-friendly, so I drove on through, wound through the mountains and found myself atop this huge dam that I didn't catch the name of. I literally got dizzy when I looked over the edge, so Paxton and I walked along the river for awhile before getting back into the truck. If you ever get the chance, the drive from Cody to Yellowstone is magnificent. All those pictures of sweeping valleys marked by meandering rivers and rimmed by soaring mountain chains don't do this road justice. For fifty-odd miles, I juggled the steering wheel and my camera, trying to record it all and knowing I wasn't going to be able to get my pictures to capture it at all. We stopped at a picnic area along some river for lunch. And then there was Yellowstone.
I wasn't prepared for the jaw-dropping sights I encountered when first coming into the park. When it's broad daylight and you can't see the sky because the mountains on all sides extend beyond your vision's range to the tops of your windows, you know you're in some spectaclar country. The first day, I just drove in the east entrance, stopped at a few points and made my way down south to a campground two miles outside the park border. They're not kidding about bears here -- the guy at the check-in cabin gave me a long list of rules about not leaving anything remotely food related out of the car unless it was in immediate use, and the picnic table at each campsite had the same list of warnings. A guy in a golf cart circled the grounds, looking out for violators. It was a little scary! As night fell, I was a little afraid that I might be half-eaten in the morning if I slept in a tent, so as usual, Pax and I just slept in the truck. Got a few funny looks from people when we crawled out in the morning. Whatever. I helped two people jumpstart their batteries and went around the southeastern side of the park throughout the day. Old Faithful was not as cool as I wanted it to be. Eh. Apparently it's killed a whole slew of people (a ranger recommended that I buy the book "Death in Yellowstone," and it's full of absorbing, if morbid reading), so maybe I just caught it on a weak eruption. Paxton and I camped at the west entrance two nights ago and did the rest of the park yesterday. It's spectacular, but I don't really feel like typing any more about it right now. I've been sitting in a Target parking lot for three hours, and I haven't even checked my e-mail.
Last night, I left the park and drove to Bozeman's Walmart, which I already recounted at the beginning. Paxton and I are going into Petsmart to get some more dog food, and then if we can find it, there's apparently an off-leash dog park one exit back, so I'll let him stretch his legs before we drive more around Montana. I had an interview for a job in Dillon, not too far south of here, so I'm going to check out that town today and maybe be in Idaho tomorrow. I'm not exactly working on a plan, so who knows?
I've got a little over a week before I need to hightail it back east, and there's a lot to see in Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah. Will follow up with more later ;).
(PS -- If any potential employers have stumbled across this page somehow, please excuse the fact that I haven't gone back and edited this after typing it. Normally I would, and do, but right now, I REALLY have to pee.)
The countdown is on... A minus 43 days until I get to turn my tassel (again). A minus 53 days before my lease expires, and I can be rid of College Park for good, if I so please. I so please. I want to be in Colorado, or Wyoming, or Montana, or Alaska, somewhere with huge amounts of rolling land that's not cluttered by three McDonald's in a two-mile stretch, or grungy liquor store after grungy liquor store, or sidewalks covered in broken glass.
But at the same time, it's completely weird to be graduating. I know everyone says that, because they've spent the last 17 years of their lives centering their everything around the school year and the pursuit of higher education, but there's more to it than that. I know I say things about the girls who apparently only go to college to get their MRS degree and party for four years, but to be honest... I really thought I'd find my husband in college. A lot of my friends are similarly preparing to graduate, and they're getting engaged and looking for jobs in the same places and beginning to make real plans for a life spent together, and that's an incredible thing. I guess I just always thought that by the time I had a diploma in my hot little hand that I'd have someone beside me to make the next series of life decisions with. And I don't. On one hand, it's incredibly freeing to have a world full of opportunities at my disposal without constraint (well, I guess I'm ruling out moving to any countries that wouldn't allow me to bring my furry sidekick), but on the other hand, for the first time in my life, everything really is up to me and I don't have much in the way of guidance for the next stage of things. I thought that college was a big decision, but at least with that, I still have some structure that gives order to my life. I'm relishing the freedom, but a small part of me really wishes that I had someone at my side, that I was part of an "us," a "we" that would help figure out just exactly what to do with the next step in life.
I'm not really sure why I'm writing about this tonight. It's on my mind a fair bit, but I don't know. I guess this year, and really this semester in particular, I've somewhat closed myself off from a lot of "college life" and am just biding my time until graduation. So it kind of jolted me out of my... reverie? I don't know, when someone unexpected seemed pretty interested in me earlier today. At least I think he was hitting on me. Like I said, I've kind of taken myself off the market and (voluntarily) haven't had a date in over a year, so I'm a little rusty. It's not something I'm going to pursue -- he's got more school left, and like I said, I'm getting out of CP as fast as I get that degree and slam the door shut on the Uhaul -- but it made me, once again, look at the big picture and wonder where I fit into the whole cosmos of everything, and what's to come.
I don't know. I'm applying for a few jobs specific to what I've been studying for the past five years, but unless something I'm really really excited about pans out (i.e. Smithsonian magazine internship, or being a writer/editor for the National Park Service, or something like that), I'm pretty sure I'm going to pack up me and the pup and get a job mucking horse stalls in Podunk, Montana, or something. You think I'm joking, but that would make me incredibly happy. I've got three and a half professional internships under my belt, and unless I'm jumping out of my chair excited about the opportunity, I don't think I want to subject myself to a nine-to-five, pressed skirt and painful shoes, fake laughter at the water cooler, wake up before sunrise and get home after sunset, subject my dog to "day care" and never spend time with him, curse the commute stuck in traffic, headaches daily from staring at a computer screen all day CAREER that sounds impressive at the high school reunion but in the day-to-day reality of it sucks up my life, locks my soul in a filing cabinet, and leaves me too tired to enjoy the little spare time I get on the weekends. My favorite things to do have always been writing and spending time outdoors, which is why I majored in everything I did, but now that graduation is upon me, I don't know how to apply my education to a job that allows me to do what I wanted to do in the first place. Somewhere along the way, it all got messed up. I don't want to spend the vast majority of my time and my life working on stuff that makes me unhappy and sucks up the time that I could use to do the things that leave me truly fulfilled. But I feel like if I don't pay my parents back for their constant support through five years of very expensive out-of-state college (and, I don't know, the 18 years of support before that) by getting an impressive position that uses every credit of that hard-earned college education, I'm a total ungrateful let-down or something.
I don't know. I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I always thought I'd have a road similar to the one my mom took. Her birthday was Tuesday, and on her birthday of her senior year in college, my dad proposed and they got engaged and she followed him up to upstate New York and got a job there, even before they got married. They had been going out since ninth grade, and by that point, they were an inseparable team. After they got married, she kept working for a few years as a home ec teacher before my older brother was born, and then she completely pulled herself out of the job market until my younger brother went off to kindergarten. Since then, she's worked part-time at the YMCA's nursery and as a preschool teacher, but has mostly spent her time being a darn good mom, and I guess I always thought that'd pretty much be what I'd do too. Sorry, fifty years of feminism -- I grew up in a middle-class family who afforded me the best opportunities, I've been successful in every job I've ever had, I'm six weeks away from having two college degrees under my belt, and after it all, I really think I just want to be a stay-at-home mom with a lot of land and a wraparound porch on an old farmhouse or big log cabin somewhere and a whole mess of kids slamming the screen doors and a couple of lazy dogs and a big garden and a corner room just for me where I can write and a man who makes my toes curl when he looks at me and wraps his arms around my shoulders to make me feel protected and thinks he's the the most blessed guy in the world when he thinks that every night, he gets to come home to me. Probably the reason I'm single at 23 when all my friends are getting hitched is because I'm okay with waiting until the guy who still gives me butterflies when he smiles at me long after the puppy love stage is over wanders into my life, and I into his. I'm not settling -- I want everything.
So I'm not giving up all hope for ever finding someone or anything, but I guess I thought I'd have this all squared away by now... and I don't. And that thought that's been hiding in the back of my mind has foisted itself on the front of my brain, even though, for now at least, the road that my parents took and that so many of my friends are now taking their first steps on together apparently isn't an option for me at the moment. And it's okay -- it's just not where I always kind of thought I'd be 43 days before graduation. And I don't really know where to go from here when it's just me.
Excuse the way too personal insight into my thoughts, but this is something I think about, and it's not anything new on my mind. I was cleaning my room this weekend and found this poem I scribbled in my notebook from an English lit class I took in June.
I wonder By myself, and no one seems to wonder with me I think Alone, because I've been told to stop thinking so much I wander Solitaire, toward destinations I don't know yet, but with the drive and purpose to reject all that won't take me there And I don't have anyone to accompany me, but maybe If I continue along this path Taking the right roads and Ending up deeper and deeper in the wild In myself Off the beaten path and along a neglected trail Far from almost all others I will hear footsteps on the trail, and there's someone Taking the same turns as me Walking the same pace as me Going the same place as me And maybe, when we come to a difficult fork and have to think and wonder what might be the best path for our wanderings We will turn to each other and choose a path because the other is taking it And we can walk together And one day I'll realize That the road I took to find myself has led me to You
EasyBib is now doing autocitations for web sites. THANK YOU LORD! Tonight's six-page homework assignment had 32 footnotes which took up the bottom several inches of every page
Just contemplating the ridiculousness of my life... it’s 11pm on a Monday over my winter break, five days before I turn 23, seven months after all my high school classmates graduated college without me, two weeks after I got a diploma of my own, and I’m walking around barefoot but with my coat on in the engineering building, a building I’ve never taken a class in, because it’s the closest campus building to my house that’s not locked and the internet at home is down. For three and a half hours, I’ve been sitting here looking up demographic data on the population patterns of Russia and Japan, and I took my boots off because my feet started swelling from sitting for too long. My butt has grooves now from the slatted bench I’ve been sitting on, and Coke bottle glasses type people (you know, the kind of people you’d actually expect to see in an engineering building at 11pm over winter break) wander by about every half hour and look quizzically at the girl pounding away furiously on her keyboard with the calculator function pulled up so I can do some basic arithmetic math. It’s effing cold in here too, and I want to be home with my dog. Actually, I want to be somewhere warm where I don’t need this coat that gets so smelly from my daily uphill bike commute and I can just bask in the sunshine. Instead, I’m spending my break learning about population data that’s waaay past its expiration date on countries I’m not particularly interested in, and they’re predicting freezing rain for tomorrow. No worries, I’ll still sweat uphill in the coat, and then freeze in the reduced-heat classroom for which they cut the energy down because everyone’s supposed to be home over winter break... yayyy higher education... and what sucks is the work force is probably worse... whooo life...
"We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." -- Isaiah 53:6
I watched a Law & Order episode a few nights ago featuring Robin Williams as Merritt Rook, a criminal manipulator who generated a large crowd of followers following a highly publicized trial in which he defended himself after "allegedly" calling a fast food restaurant and convincing the manager to strip search a teenage employee. He was masterful in his defense, coming across as extremely confident and focused, and he frankly blew the ADA out of the water. His closing argument, in which he implored the jury to defy the authority of the state prosecution ("don't be a sheep") in what he said was an unfair and unsubtantiated attack on him, gained himself an acquittal and a quick popularity amongst a disgruntled counterculture of "alternative thinkers." The day after his trial ended, he brought a sheep with him onto a morning talk show and said so many Americans go day to day without thinking, doing what they're told, like sheep, without ever questioning the reasons why. Rook and his idea got a lot of attention, and soon afterward, people trying to defy societal expectations began having pillow fights in Central Park and freezing in place in Grand Central station at Rook's prompting. Discouraged by the lack of fulfillment they felt from their jobs, their relationships, their lives, these people were desperate for an answer and a ticket out of their buttonholed existences, and they found a leader in Rook.
I've felt that way -- limited in my pursuit of happiness by the options in this world and feeling like a non-questioning sheep for following a path in life more or less laid out for me by my parents' expectations. I've felt, to be a "good Christian," I should just unblinkingly (and sheepily) accept everything that comes out of a preacher's mouth and follow for the sake of following. That doesn't so much work for me. I have to ask questions; I have to test the waters; I have to try something time and again in an attempt to get what I think will make me happy but is actually just a repeated exercise of banging my head against a wall. I've felt like I'm surrounded by people for whom faith and biblical compliance come easily and without question, whereas with me it's not always that simple. Apparently I'm stubborn (who knew?) and have to screw it all up time and again, "turning my own way," before I figure out that the answer's been right in front of me all along. Instead of looking to God, I've wasted time looking to the world for fulfillment and answers. Putting faith in things that I don't have the answers for is not an act of blind sheep-like devotion for me; given that I so desperately need proof before trusting anything, having faith in what doesn't come easily is pretty significant for me, and a testament to the rest of it which has so far proven worth trusting the rest. Without that, though, in my quest to not be an unthinking sheep stumbling after a blind faith, I've become a worse sheep scrambling after an unattainable world.
The funny thing was, the thing those L&O characters were so desperately trying to not be was exactly what they were exposed as: sheep. What was the purpose or the benefit in having a pillow fight in Central Park, or freezing in place like hundreds of others at the sound of a whistle in Grand Central station just because someone cool said it'd be a good idea? Williams's character had sleight-of-handedly turned the focus from his guilt to a false solution to the nagging that people felt in their souls. In their clamor to be individuals, stand out from the crowd, not be sheep, that's exactly what they became.
So I still don't want to be a sheep (metaphorically or literally), but I know that I have, time and again, sheep-like, gone astray when I've known I was wrong and known that exactly what I was doing had in the past caused me to deal with the resultant anguish, only to force my sin upon His shoulders. Unquestioning, I don't want to be. I wouldn't be able to grasp the enormity of sin and the profundity of forgiveness if I was.
At the conclusion of the show, Rook ended up drowning in a river, handcuffed, while running from the cops after kidnapping Det. Benson and subsequently trying to blow both her and Det. Stabler up after they arrested him.
Like those people on the show, I want to be my own person. But knowing that I've fallen victim to some ingrained sheeplike tendencies in the past, my best bet is to follow a Shepherd who will shoulder my iniquity, forgive my mistakes, reward my devotion and lead me to pastures of peace.
