From Port Townsend, it’s a relatively quick drive (roughly 4 hours) to Portland. Like many famous cities, Portland is actually a “twin cities.” in this case Vancouver, Washington is the Jersey City to Portland’s NYC – but much more suburban. I was curious about a small National Historic Site in the area, Fort Vancouver, so that was my first stop.

Reconstruction of Fort Vancouver

I arrived with a few hours to go before the Fort closed for the night. Fort Vancouver has a pretty diverse history – initially it was a British trading post for fur traders. Then it served as an army barracks, spruce mill, airfield, training ground, and now a historic sight. I believe nearby grounds are still in use with the military. Notable soldiers stationed at the fort include Ulysses S Grant and George Marshall. It was considered a good assignment because it was near a reasonable-sized town, not in a threatening area, and has a good climate.

The original fort, fell into disuse and became infested with rats; it burned down (possibly arson to stop the rats), and a reconstruction sits on the site today. It encloses a relatively large area, but there wasn’t too much there, and the video in the visitor center was mediocre.

Reconstruction of Fort Vancouver

Far and away the highlight was a blacksmithing demonstration. There was a guy there who was very smart, and who had been smithing as a hobby for a while. It was very cool to watch the metal take shape – he made some nails for people and was making a compass (for drafting). He also had some interesting anecdotes: in the era when guilds reigned, people become super-specialized. You normally think of people in this time period as generalists, but in developed towns that wasn’t the case. It was the only way to be competitive, a bit like mass production with humans rather than machines. For instance, a nail maker (which, in German led to the last names Nagle/Nagler) would have been able to produce 2,000 nails every day. There was one father/son duo who specialized simply in assembling scissors (not making each blade, just putting them together!). I think this guy was a Russian immigrant and I suspect his day job was as an aerospace engineer or something. Metalworking is another one of those things I’d really like to do at some point (welding, casting, smithing), but it’s something that’s obviously difficult to indulge in when you live in an apartment!

That night I slept in a Walmart and watched Elysium at a nearby movie theater. This movie was directed by Neill Blomkamp, who made District 9, and starred Matt Damon. It was alright, but disappointing – a big missed opportunity.

Failed this test

The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland (the 1990s). People had piercings and tribal tattoos, and everybody was talking about saving the planet. Most people seemed content to be unambitious. Getting into the city, I had heard a few recommendations: check out Powell’s, Voodoo Donuts, a knot shop, Downtown & Pearl Districts. Luckily Voodoo Donuts is downtown and Powell’s straddles the line between the Downtown and Pearl Districts. When I think of Portland, I don’t think of any huge tourist sights: no Statue of Liberty or Pike’s Market, so these recommendations were useful.

Inside Powell’s

My first stop was Powell’s (subtitle: “City of Books”). It’s supposedly the world’s largest physical bookstore, and it really is immense: it takes up about a city block (in NYC, a street-by-street block, not an avenue block), and it’s 3 stories high – floor-to-raised ceiling lined with books. It’s mostly used books, but the prices aren’t that great – not like a normal used book store. It was amazing to browse, but in the end I finally realized how totally Amazon has dominated the book market. Three of the books I was looking for weren’t there (a history of the Napoleonic Wars and two books about the Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge), and most of the ‘classics’ I was looking for (Travels with Charley) were the same price, used, as Amazon’s new price. I still couldn’t resist and bought a few books, but I don’t know that it’s something great beyond being a tourist attraction. If I lived in Portland I’d still buy from Amazon.

The line at Voodoo Donuts

My next stop was a short walk away, Voodoo Donuts, which supposedly has crazy flavors of donuts like bacon & maple syrup or Captain Crunch. One look at the line, though, and I knew I wouldn’t be trying them. I walked along the waterfront instead, which is lined with bridges. Actually a number of them were drawbridges, something you don’t see in many cities. Then it was on to a farmer’s market (a pint of raspberries was $3 – a good deal).

Food truck embankment

I did some more wandering and knew I had to have lunch at a food truck – there’s many streets lined with these trucks in semi-permanent installations – they have seats and even fake lawns set up, in addition to lots of good food at cheap prices.

These things were all over the place. I don’t know what their intended purposes was, but they functioned as showers for homeless people.

In the end I felt really nervous driving in the city. I felt the same way in Seattle. I also think I angered the guys at the combined bike repair/coffeeshop (it’s a thing, no joke) by re-filling my parking ticket twice (good for 90 minutes at a time). Once I moved the van, I felt the overwhelming urge to leave the city. I simply don’t like city driving: parking is expensive and stressful to find, and there’s too much going on while driving, when you consider other cars, tons of pedestrians, bikes, etc. I’ll need to figure out another solution for San Francisco and Denver – some park outside the city and use transit to get in.

In the end, I really liked what I saw of Portland. It was a city I went into without many expectations and wasn’t all that familiar with the geography. But the parts I saw definitely felt livable, and there was a lot going on. Food trucks and bikes were far more prominent than in NYC and public transit seemed pretty good. The only downside, to me, was that I didn’t get to check out all the neighborhoods, so these impressions may be biased. There were also far more homeless than I’ve seen in any other city. I left in mid-afternoon and headed for the coast.

7/31/2013-8/1/2013

Supposedly an eagle, but I didn’t see it…

Over the past few years, I’ve slowly developed a method for getting to know a city. This method has been honed in Dresden, Reykjavik, Cologne, Hilo, Amsterdam, Munich – and now Seattle.

I’ve grown to realize that I have unusual interests in cities. I dislike tourist areas (just as every New Yorker hates Times Square). I like museums, but only for a couple hours a day, max. I don’t like bars or nightclubs. Cathedrals are nice, but how long can you spend looking at them? Mostly in cities, I like ruins, city parks, and seeing typical neighborhoods. Sadly, there are no ruins in the US outside of Detroit.

My method is to locate some landmark (museum, cathedral), and then wander in the direction of that landmark. I always walk, unless it’s many miles and public transit is available. There of course a variety of ways to explore a city – bus, streetcar, subway, car, train, duckmobile, boat, bike – but walking is what most agrees with me.

Usually I get lost – unless I have a street-by-street map. I remember getting incredibly lost in the middle of the night in Dresden, trying to find some landmark to recognize where I was. It was a bit stressful, but I think it’s useful to get lost sometimes. It’s good to be able to figure out where you are. No matter how lost you get, you can eventually find yourself. It just takes time. Lately I’ve started carrying a compass with me in cities. That’s not something you see much, orienteering in cities, but it’s a good deal more precise than dealing with the sun.

Don’t even think about it.

I arrived early in the day in Seattle. I had no interest in seeing Pike’s Market, the Seattle equivalent of Times Square (I’ve been there too many times already), but was considering seeing the Science Fiction museum, near the Space Needle. I parked nearby and quickly decided the area was too touristy. Instead, I headed over to the shore to see the Olympic Sculpture park… a park filled with sculpture.

A typewriter eraser rolling down a hill towards the highway, by one of my favorites – Claes Oldenburg

This park has the same refreshing post-industrial feel as the Highline in NY, but was much less crowded. I don’t have any idea how to judge modern sculpture, but I get the sense that most modern art doesn’t have a “meaning,” but rather is designed to evoke an emotion or create an experience. By this metric, there were many successful sculptures: a twisted metal ‘eagle,’ a submerged house where you could walk on the roof, a crowd of enormous rusted metal curves, swimming along the ground like a school of fish, a little wooden boat next to a wall of waves.

These things were enormous. I don’t know what they were supposed to be, but it was a cool piece

After this I walked along a bike path, through a train yard, and into the Queen Mary neighborhood, where I proceeded to get thoroughly lost. Seattle, like all major cities, has a lot of neighborhoods. But it’s a much more fragmented city than most – bisected by a major highway (I-5, always filled with traffic), with lots of lakes and bays and rivers. It’s a hilly city, too, and there’s very few high-rise buildings. It makes things diffuse.

Couple that with the fact that few of the neighborhoods I saw were mixed-use, and you end up with a city whose residential areas feel like dense suburbs rather than city streets. Queen Anne was mostly this suburban feel, tidy cottages each with their own little garden and yard. It was fun to walk through once, as a tourist, but I don’t think Seattle is a walkable city. Bikeable, maybe, but a car almost feels like a necessity. I think most residents feel the same, because the traffic is pretty bad.

This railyard is just south Queen Anne, in the middle of the city

After getting lost, I grabbed dinner at a biscuit restaurant with a childhood friend. We both had pizzas (I had pizza with Yukon Gold potatoes on it. Verdict: tasty, but the potato slices were a mess to eat). Then I headed over to a college friend’s place to finally shower (Thanks, Pia). She and her partner had a few people staying over so we all chatted for a while.

View from the water tower in Volunteer Park

The next day I decided to check out two parks: Volunteer Park and Washington Park. Both of these are east of Lake Union – they’re not far from one another. Volunteer Park is pretty small, and is famous for having been designed by Frederick Law Olmstead (who also designed Central Park). It’s a nice square park, measuring a few blocks on each side, and it contains the Seattle Asian Arts Museum, which was having a ‘free day’… so I figured I might as well check it out!

This thing is painted from the inside!

There were some cool exhibits, but what stood out the most for me were snuff bottles. There was a whole wall of them, and reading the display, it turned out the some of the bottles were painted on the inside, like a ship in a bottle. There was a variety of Indian, Chinese and Japanese art here.

A typical Seattle street

Then I headed northeast towards Washington Park. Much of the park is an arboretum, with a huge variety of trees: carefully tended rhododendron gardens, woodland forests, Australian landscapes and more. I headed north, and eventually passed underneath a highway, emerging in a wetlands area.

Seattle wetlands with the UW stadium

This section of the park was a amazing: wetlands, with lots of little nooks and some floating pathways – it was trippy walking on cement blocks which sat on bouys that shifted with each step. I’ve spent a lot of time on wooden docks that moved, but cement has always been solid under my feet. This part of the park was near scenic Union Bay, and right across the water was the University of Washington stadium. I’d really recommend checking this out.

Entrance to the Japanese garden

As I headed south, I began to see a lot of blackberries, so I grazed and ambled along until I reached the highlight of the park – a Japanese garden. Admission was $6, but for me, it was well worth it. The garden was compact but elegantly organized. Planning a Japanese garden requires deep creative thought. I remember my grandfather describing how he’d laid out his own backyard according to some of the Japanese principles. For instance, if you have a straightaway, put something interesting at the end to draw people forward. I’ve read a few books about designing these gardens, and I wouldn’t mind trying it myself.

It would be easy to look at this view all day

This garden had a koi lake, a tea house, beautiful bridges, a waterfall, and some incredibly well-tended trees, all in a compact space. The trees were all essentially human-sized bonsai trees, carefully trimmed and staked out with wire. They were meticulously maintained and aesthetically perfect.

In all, I walked about 25 miles in Seattle over two days. I like the city quite a bit – it’s literally a green city, people are friendly, and there’s a lot of cool things to do nearby, but it doesn’t seem practical to live in. I know that 600 thousand Seattlites may disagree, but if I’m going to live in a city, I don’t want to rely on a car, and the sprawl of the city means a car is critical.

After Seattle, I’d spend a week relaxing on the Olympic peninsula before continuing my journey south towards California.

7/28/2013-7/31/2013

Mount Rainier lies about 3 hours from Walla Walla, and roughly marks the start of stereotypical Washington ecology – the huge pine forests and mountains.

Mt Rainier seen from near the White River

Mount Rainier is a 14,000 foot volcanic peak in the Cascades; it’s dormant but not extinct, just like Mt St Helens. What’s interesting about it is how it dwarfs the surrounding mountains, which are in the 7-8 thousand foot range. The mountain actually changes the climate around it, creating a huge amount of precipitation, a rainshadow, and so forth. It’s typically wreathed in a layer of clouds. This mercurial weather produces a cornucopia of biomes: alpine, sub-alpine meadows, mountain forest, rainforest, box canyon, primeval forest, classic northwest forest.

The park is mostly inaccessible in the winter – it’s only in the summer that all the roads are open. The park is divided into four sections – a dirt road-only NW section, the main section in the SW, an old-growth section in the SE and a rockier section in the NE.

On my first day I arrived at 2pm and claimed a site in the Ohanapecosh campground (a fun name to say!), where I would spend two nights. Then, I headed to the visitor center at Paradise. This was the diciest driving so far on my trip, I think, as the road gains massive amounts of elevation and winds along the rocky edge of the mountain.

Along the Skyline loop, hiking in the clouds

Mount Rainier receives vast numbers of visitors, and of the parks I’ve visited so far, it’s the least able to handle the load. I arrived on a Sunday, and it was crawling with people. The Paradise visitor center, which is quite remote, had three full parking lots, and I felt lucky to find a spot in a nearby picnic area. I got a map of nearby trails and decided to try a strenuous one, the 5.5 mile Skyline loop. It was 3:30 and the average time for the trail was four and a half hours, so I figured I’d finish just as it got dark.

Rock and snow, above the woodline

As chance would have it, I chose the wrong direction for the trail – the side of the loop that went straight up. This proved to be a good challenge. I the trail gained 1700 feet of elevation over what I estimate was 1.5 miles. The grade was slightly less steep than a set of stairs, and the first half mile or so of the trail was partially paved with asphalt. As I gained elevation (the visitor center was around 5500 feet above sea level), the vegetation grew sparser and eventually nearly disappeared. Snow, packed down by the crowds, began to appear, and I entered a layer of clouds – hiking in the clouds is an awesome experience. Sometimes the trail disappeared into the snow, and I had to cautiously edge my way up the mountain. I went through this first part of the trail in about 45 minutes, without any breaks. I was breathing heavy and sweating a bit at the end, but would have felt comfortable continuing. I was really happy about this; it was a good indication that I’d finally gotten my “trail legs,” and was adjusting to the stress of hiking.

Local wildlife

At the highest part of the loop I was greeted with some surprise guests: two marmots grazing on the subalpine flowers. These woodchuck-like creatures had a neat brown/white coat and were fearless around people. So far on my trip, I’ve already seen most of the wildlife I’d hoped for: buffalo, elk, deer, marmots, heron, moose, quail, turkey, prairie dogs. No bear yet, and that’s fine with me!

The surrounding Tatoosh mountains, seen from the trail. You can see cars parked along the road.

The trail began a leisurely descent, and I passed through extensive patches of snow, some of which I had to slide down because I couldn’t get a good grip with my boots. This part of the trail was beautiful, the plants a shimmering green, and there were fields of tiny flowers. I could see why the area is known as Paradise. The sad part, though, is that although the trail is well-constructed (it’s lined with stones), there are huge tangles and braids of side-trails that mar the landscape. The park has put up signs and urges people not to be “meadow stompers,” but it doesn’t seem to do much good. And it’s tough to control people way up here on the mountain. I completed this loop in two and a half hours, which I was quite pleased about, as it was almost half the average time and would have been a decent pace along flat ground, let alone a mountain.

Burls on a fallen tree near the Grove of the Patriarchs

The next day, I decided to try something different, and stayed near the campground. This time, I hiked to the “Grove of the Patriarchs,” a small island filled with enormous ancient trees. Some of these trees are one thousand years old and 300 feet tall. I went early, and was alone with the trees as the fog lifted in the cool morning air. The trees are astonishing and humbling; now I can only wonder how the Redwoods compare. The grove is a short hike – just over a mile – but there’s a turnoff for a longer hike, the East Side Trail, which I took. This felt like a totally different park from the day before: first the raw, primeval forest, and then traditional Pacific Northwest pine forest. I did an easy 14 mile out-and-back hike.

Back at the campsite I got to test out my new stove setup. I’d been using a basic Swedish army stove, but the supports around the burner were designed to work with only a particular pot, and not normal pots and pans. In Missoula, I’d found a bracket at a hardware store that would serve as a more generic support. It worked pretty well, and I cooked up an omelet for dinner.

My final full day at Mt Rainier I moved to the White River campground in the northeast of the park. I started and finished a book (With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, a memoir of WWII on the Pacific front, which I highly recommend). I felt lethargic.

It’s amazing how simply getting on my feet now gives me a lot more energy. I ended up doing a 10 mile out-and-back hike along the Wonderland Trail, a 100 mile loop which surrounds Mt Rainier. I was interested in doing an overnight or two on this loop, but the park has encountered unprecedented interest in this trail, and it’s difficult to get a permit for backwoods camping. The scenery here was much the same as the day before, with the exception, at the beginning of the hike, of a stunning view of Mt Rainier near the White River.

This, though small, was actually the most vicious river I’ve yet encountered. It’s literally white, apparently due to some mineral runoff and probably the rapids; it’s narrow and deceptively deep, and quite rocky. There’s a primitive log with a guiderail over the river. When I completed my hike, I talked briefly with a man standing next to the bridge. “I wonder how many people cross this river without thinking about how close they are to making a mistake and ending it all,” he said. I guess we agreed on that, but it was a macabre discussion that I didn’t want to have before crossing to the other side of the river!

07/26/2013-07/28/2013
After Yellowstone, there’s a gap until reaching the next logical stopping place. You travel through parts of Idaho, Montana and Washington – nice states, to be sure – but there’s no “major” parks along the way to Seattle. Not until you hit Mt Rainier, which I made my target.

Although the major parks, like Yellowstone, are missing, there are some minor parks – all thematically connected with the turbulent relationship between whites and Native Americans. As they were kinda-sorta on the way, I decided to visit these parks. In fact, they’re loosely connected by a set of highways that form the so-called ‘Nez Perce Trail’ (this same trail frequently crosses paths with the ‘Lewis & Clark Trail.’

The Nez Perce were a group of plains Indians who historically controlled roughly 15 million acres of land across Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Already ravaged by disease, after the Civil War they were hounded and hunted down for refusing to cede 14.7 million acres of their traditional lands to the US Government. (What a legitimate treaty, where you’re forced to sign, huh?) Over 4 months they traveled 1500 miles, trying to find refuge first with the neighboring Crows and then in Canada; the bulk of the group eventually surrendered just 40 miles from Canada and then spent years in various tiny, desolate reservations in Oklahoma and Idaho. The whole event is probably most famous for Chief Joseph’s remorseful, “I will fight no more forever.”

The three parks which I selected to visit were roughly on a straight line (as the crow flies) between Rainer and Yellowstone. They were: Big Hole National Battlefield Park, Nez Perce National Historic Site, and Whitman Mission National Historic Site.

Although they lie in roughly a straight line, the non-interstate highways in this area are anything but straight; they are forced to conform to topology as they wind along various rivers and navigate huge mountains.

My first move after Yellowstone was to travel into Montana, and then up the distorted western border of the state to Missoula. Along the way, I planned on visiting two sites: Big Hole, and a state park, Bannack, which was the first capitol of Montana, and which featured a mining ghost town. Unfortunately, the state park was closed (a fact I only discovered when 10 miles away). Fortunately, Big Hole was not far away.

Montana towns, by the way, are quite nice. I felt there was a tidiness to these towns that was unlike those in other states. They always seemed well-organized, even with just a few thousand people, and I quite enjoyed my limited time in the state. The other amazing thing about Wyoming and Montana was highway repairs: on the East coast I’m used to some really botched repairs, many of which amount to globs of asphalt thrown haphazardly in the direction of potholes. But in these two states, the repairs were surgical – you could glide over them and hardly feel a bump. I don’t know whether this was due to climate peculiarities or the competence of the workers, but it was a welcome change.

There are huge parks like Grand Teton and Yellowstone, and then there are tiny, mostly unknown sites, such as Big Hole National Battlefield. This marked an early battle in the Nez Perce War, and although minor in absolute terms was historically significant.

I say minor in absolute terms because of the amount of people involved: 200 US soldiers and 800 Nez Perce (including 200 warriors). As someone most familiar with Civil War battles, which could involve 200 thousand people, I found the tiny size of the battle remarkable. Also interesting to Civil War afficionados, many Civil War officers re-appear in the Indian Wars, so you see familiar names and faces (in this case, O.O. Howard and John Gibbon). The famous Custer, incidentally, was an unlikeable Civil War cavalry officer who became an unlikeable Indian fighter before being obliterated.

Some symbolic tipis on the Big Hole battlefield

The battle itself was depressing, a night attack on the sleeping Nez Perce camp with the customary slaughter of women and children (soldiers were ordered to “shoot low, because they’ll be sleeping in their tipis.”) The Nez Perce, although initially surprised, organized a resistence, repulsed the soldiers, and then were able to continue their flight. Most curiously, the night before, many of the Nez Perce warriors apparently wanted to post sentries and were shut down by one of their leaders.

After hiking a few of the short trails around Big Hole, I hopped in my car and headed to a hotel in Missoula, about an hour and a half away.

Missoula lies near the Bitterroot Mountains, a set of mountains that lies in an unusually straight and regular line extending South from the city; you travel alongside these mountains to reach it.

It’s a small city, just 63 thousand people, and although much of it has the usual suburban blight, the core part of the town feels very much like a Pacific Northwest city, with coffeeshops, microbreweries, bicycles, and so forth. This, despite the fact that Montana is not something I typically consider Northwest. The small downtown section which I saw felt very walkable (I saw, briefly, the Missoula Celtic Festival… my tolerance for bagpipes is about 3 minutes). My biggest problem with the city was the fact that, like small midwest towns, it retained a significant amount of diagonal parking spaces, which are wonderful in one-road towns. In larger cities, they seriously obstruct the view of traffic and make driving across main streets a hazardous gamble.

After spending the night in Missoula, my next stop was the Nez Perce National Historic Site in Idaho.

You know you’re in for a fun drive when you see signs that say “Winding Road: Next 99 Miles,” and in Idaho I developed a particular abhorrence to a certain type of highway, since I was now two states removed from my lightning quick I-90 days. Let me describe these highways:

The speed limit is 50 miles per hour, but there’s no way to sustain these speeds. You are forced to reduce speed for cornering at anywhere from 20-40 mph at least 4 times every mile. However, some people will fly along these roads and tailgate you so you have to pull over at infrequent turnouts. Sometimes you will encounter an RV which will not allow you past, which you must suffer behind for tens of miles (sometimes with a tailgater pressing you to pass in rare passing zones). There’s no shoulder on the roads, and they’re claustrophobically narrow. One side of the road typically terminates in a cliff wall and the other with some river or sheer drop of hundreds of feet. The whole time you drive these roads, you worry about people coming around corners and drifting over the double yellow line, which some cars do, if they’re traveling too fast.

I’d estimate, at this point, that I’ve driven about 1000 miles on such roads, and I’ve grown to loathe them, including 200 consecutive miles through Clearwater National Forest in Idaho. I’ve discovered, with some surprise, that the single biggest predictor to how comfortable I am on a road is the width of the shoulders. No shoulder means discomfort; just 2-3 feet of shoulder and I’m typically fine.

One Nez Perce site: “Heart of the Monster” (pretty cool name at least)

Anyway, I finally reached Nez Perce National Historical Site. This ‘site’ is actually a disjoint set of sites – various pullouts along the road that form a constellation of traditional Nez Perce lands and sites where they were hounded to death by US soldiers. The administrative center was in the nothing town of Spalding, Idaho.

I would not recommend this park to anyone. There’s a small museum in the visitor center, and a 25 minute video that was assembled in the mid-eighties, to judge by the clothing. The narrators and even interviewees of this video were clearly reading from a script, stumbling over the words. Although the visitor center was tidy, it was located in an empty, sun-baked field that must have been 95 degrees.

I watched the video and then left immediately, glad to be in the cool AC of my van. Spalding is right on the border of Washington, and after stopping in Lewiston (right next to Clarkston, get it?) for lunch I continued through Washington.

The only thing notable about Lewiston was that I drove right through a forest fire – there were emergency vehicles on the road, and a helicopter dropping a bucket into the river about 100 yards from me. The smoke from the fire sprawled across the road, darkening my path and turning everything an eerie yellow. It was a unique experience.

As is so often the case, the Idaho/Washington border marked an immediate transition, and I entered a huge swath of wheat fields. I’ve never seen anything like it – these were literal mountains of wheat, the ground covered with a mono-crop even more consistent than corn in Kansas. This continues for a hundreds of miles in southeastern Washington, and is totally inconsistent with my mental image of the state.

I spent the night in a Walla Walla, Washington, Wal-Mart (population: 30k). Wall Walla felt like the husk of a mall, when the building is intact but the stores have left. There was a downtown, but it was deserted, and even the strip was depressing. The nearby college looked like a purely vocational school. But it turns out there’s a neighboring town, “College Place,” which is where I found the Wal-Mart, and chain stores that showed some semblence of life. Around the town, the monoculture subsides somewhat and there are some vinyards as well.

An overview of the grounds of Whitman Mission

The attraction near Walla Walla was Whitman Mission National Historic Site, which is notable as one of the rare locations where Indians slaughtered white people (though this slaughter of 13 was not really comparable to the 90 Indians massacred at Big Hole). Before the slaughter, the Mission had been an important stop on the Oregon Trail.

Got to walk along the Oregon Trail. Didn’t die of dysentery.

If Nez Perce was a dismal site, Whitman Mission was delightful. It’s just 96 acres, but it had a small museum, a nice view of the foundations of the mission, and an incredibly professional video. I’m not joking, it had the single best video I’ve seen at a National Park Service site. It must have been filmed within the past year, it was Hollywood quality, and it was filled with the insipid drivel some of these videos spew.

The site was quiet and cool when I visited in the early morning, and the history here – of misunderstandings between Indians and settlers that led to tragedy – was quite moving. I’d strongly recommend this as a stop for anyone traveling through southeast Washington.

7/24/2013-7/25/2013

I spent two days at Yellowstone, home of the supervolcano which will destroy humanity. Grand Teton and Yellowstone are only separated by about 20 miles, so in many respects they’re sister-parks. But they’re very different from one another. Grand Teton was filled with bikers, kayakers, and hikers. Yellowstone is mostly filled with tourists and car-drivers. Grand Teton has tremendous views and hikes, Yellowstone has lots of overlooks and small hot springs, geysers, and other features.

If I thought that Teton was crowded, Yellowstone was far worse.

As soon as I entered the park, I went to the first campground I found and got a site (there were only a few available). I think almost all the campgrounds at the park filled up (and when I left early Friday morning, there was a steady stream of cars from nearby West Yellowstone).

What was unexpected to me was the sheer size of the park. I camped about 15 miles from the entrance, in southern Lewis Lake campground. This was 40 miles from Old Faithful, and that was not even halfway through the park! Needless to say, I spent a lot of time driving around.

Old Faithful, from a distant observation point

After checking in at the campground, I was at a loss for what to do, and decided to visit Old Faithful, the classic icon of the National Park System. I’ve never seen anything like it – and I’m not talking about the natural wonder. The geyser is ringed halfway round with stadium-style seating, as well as a visitor center, lodge, and various peripheral buildings, walkways, and more. There’s at least 8 or 9 parking lots, and they were nearly all full. It felt like Disneyland.

The typical hot springs at Yellowstone

I hiked up to a nearby observation point just before the geyser erupted – it has a regular, 90-minute schedule. Then I saw some other geysers, hot springs, and so forth. There’s 3 miles of boardwalk and paved trails – here at least they serve a purpose, which is that the ground is quite fragile (and dangerous, with boiling water under the surface).

After that I was looking for a longer trail, and settled on the 7-mile Fairy Falls trail, to the largest falls in Yellowstone. The falls were pretty anemic, but the hike was interesting. There were various hot springs along the way, and it was cool to see them in comparative wilderness, away from the crowds.

Along the hike to Fairy Falls

The other strange thing about Yellowstone is that it has had some bad forest fires. Those fires left logs lying haphazardly all over the place; with the last fire in the area I walked about 10 years ago, it was eerie walking among the trees which lay, undecayed, like toothpicks across the landscape. On this hike as well, I saw a buffalo, but he seemed old and lethargic, and ignored me.

Black sand beaches, at Yellowstone. Who knew?

The following day I relaxed and did an 8-mile out-and-back hike to Shoshone Lake, the “largest backcountry lake in Yellowstone.” The cool thing about this lake was that all the beaches were black-sand style. I waded in, but it was too cold to swim.

On the way back, through marshy country, the mosquitoes attacked. I must have killed at least 30 mosquitoes, and those were the unlucky ones. My arms felt like they’d been put in those laboratory boxes they use to test bug repellents (except the repellents they were testing must not have worked…). After the hike, I returned to my tent and read for a few hours. The next day I’d be traveling again.

7/19/2013

My battery was dead for the second time in two days. I got the car jumped again – this time by a park ranger – and headed to the nearest town to get it looked at.

The only available mechanic was a small two-man place, and they both were apparently involved rebuilding an engine or something, because they couldn’t really take a look at the van. I took a look myself and replaced a fuse (though I couldn’t see how that would cause the battery to die). Just before I left the mechanic made a great suggestion: unplug the battery the next night and see if the car died. If it did, the battery had a problem. If it didn’t, but died again while connected the following night, then something was drawing power from the battery.

All this advice came free, and the total cost of my stop was $1 for the fuse, so I guess I can’t complain!

Devil’s Tower.

My destination for the day was Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. Immediately upon entering Wyoming from South Dakota, the landscape is wonderful – it has the similar rolling hills and scattered pine, but there’s also red rock and sand that give the environment some color.

Red rock of Wyoming.

Devil’s Tower is another huge tourist site, most famous as the setting of the climax of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s a huge plug of rock that’s visible for tens of miles around; from the normal perspective it looks like a cone, but from the side it looks like a shark fin. It has strange geometric columns all around, and was also the first National Monument in the country.

The tower from the side.

The park campground was about half full, but the visitor center and main part of the park was an absolute zoo. It was totally full – 3 different parking lots worth of cars. There’s a 1.1 mile paved trail around the tower, and an additional 12 miles of trails around the park. I ended up hiking all of them, and this was my favorite park for hiking, just because of the diversity of environments (not to mention the distinctive focal point). There’s forest, canyon, plains, some red rock. What was most amazing was that once I started hiking on the backcountry trails I only saw one group of 2 hikers! It was an amazing contrast to the busy parking lot atmosphere, but where did all the people go? I guess most of them drive up to Devil’s Tower and then simply drive away!

As I circled the tower I noticed that there were some climbers midway up (ominously, with birds circling in the thermals nearby). In fact, the tower is a popular climbing destination, and the park endorses climbing. However, because the tower is a sacred place for native americans, climbing is banned during the month of June. Sometimes during the hikes you see prayer flags placed in trees around the tower.

That night I got back to camp early (and had a great view), disconnected the battery, wrapped it in a paper towel, then threw a frisbee with the kids at the campsite next door for an hour and a half, until it was dark out.

The campground, exactly as I remember it as a kid.

The following morning, the battery was dead again, so I’d identified the culprit: the battery was somehow faulty and discharging itself overnight, over a 12 hour period.

7/14/2013

Van camping has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are convenience, cost & quiet; the disadvantage is heat – if it’s too hot, sleeping in a van can be smothering (hence why spring/fall trips are preferable). Luckily, the weather has been relatively mild so far; although the evening started hot & muggy in the Sioux Falls Wal-Mart parking lot, things cooled down overnight.

I set out early once more, hoping to reach Badlands National Park midday, after a planned 4 hour drive. Unfortunately for me, the weather didn’t want to cooperate, and it rained for 2 hours of that drive. I didn’t exactly feel comfortable driving at 75 mph in the rain, so I couldn’t take full advantage of South Dakota’s very generous speed limit.

South Dakota is clearly a plains state, but there are various bluffs, hills, and so forth that break up the monotony and make it more interesting than Minnesota.

As luck would have it, I got a flat tire right outside the Badlands entrance. I had to jack the van up and put on the spare, then went to the entrance of the park, to get a recommendation for a mechanic. The two rangers conferred “All the mechanics in Wall will be closed today (Sunday). But… I’m from Philip and I have a mechanic there I can call.” She placed a phone call, and I had an appointment. The only problem: driving 30 miles on the donut (which turned out to be 40 psi under recommended pressure!).

It was a stressful drive, but eventually I made it to Philip, another tiny town that really feels like the middle of nowhere. My GPS tried to take me over a dirt road, but thankfully the ranger had given me better directions.

The car repair place was an unmarked building in front of an old gas station. The mechanic was a friendly little man, who rapidly determined the problem with the tire: the valve stem was leaking. I guess the diagnostic method is the same everywhere, cover the tire in water and see where it sputters.

As I settled the bill, the mechanic looked at my license place and said “My wife & daughter drove through your state on the way to visit Boston. They really liked it.”

“Oh, they probably went on the same highway I did, I-90, in the opposite directon.”

With that, our conversation was at an end; I think we had exhausted everything we had in common, but I was grateful for his quick diagnosis and good work, which only set me back $20. Everything’s held up so far.

Finally, I returned to the Badlands to officially enter the first National Park of the trip. Badlands began as a National Park in 1978, and receives a bit under a million visitors annually. It’s most known for its weird. indescribable sedimentary rock formations, but there are actually two landscapes in the park: the relatively rare exposed rock, and a variegated grassland filled with bluffs, juniper scrub and bison.

The classic badlands look

The park itself is composed of two units, the main unit and a rarely-visited southern unit; within the main unit, there’s a paved loop as well as a dirt road.

I entered the park and headed straight for the campground. The sky was cloudy and I wanted to grab a campsite – the last thing I wanted was to keep driving around trying to find somewhere to stay. The parks here use a self-serve system, you grab an envelope and find an empty site, then tear a tag off the envelope and attach it to a pole by the site. You put your cash in the envelope and drop that in a locked container.

I found an open spot and pitched my tent – the campground was a charmless ~100 sites in an empty field – and returned to the visitor’s center. There I watched a 30-minute video (mostly banal platitudes not specific to the park) and stamped my passport, then headed to the trails designated on the park map.

Unfortunately, there’s only one small section of hiking trails in Badlands, totaling about 7.5 miles (not including boardwalk “trails”). The longest individual trail is 5 miles straight through. I was looking for something a bit longer, so I elected to hike 5 miles out and 5 miles back, with part of the return journey on a separate trail (for those interested, the Castle Trail out and back, switching to the Medicine Root trail for part of the return journey).

An example of the trail; you can see it becomes obscured in the foreground

As someone used to the forests of NY, hiking out here took some getting used to: the trail frequently disappeared on the dusty rock, and because there were no trees, the official path was designated with reflective poles (in NY, blazes are painted on trees and stones). When you reached one pole you’d sometimes be forced to stop and locate the next. It was a bit like a scavenger hunt, or playing hide-and-seek. When the trail meandered away from the traditional badlands rock into grasslands, it was easy enough to trace because it left a deep rut in the ground.

Finally I was able to do some hiking, something I’d been looking forward to for months. Although the wind was fierce (my eyes watered for most of the hike), and there was an occasional drizzle, I had a great time. 10 miles was just the right hike to get my legs back, and it was not at all strenuous.

Scruffy looking antelope

Rounding one corner, I surprised my first big game of the trip: two mangy antelope, grazing in a field. I snapped a few pictures before they vanished.

Various trails intersect at a grasslands crossroads; a man and boy are visible in the dusty area

The trails meander along the edge between grassland and the famous badlands rock formation. At either end of the trail are large overlooks filled with tourists and huge RVs, but the trail itself was quiet (no doubt because of the weather), and I saw only 5 groups of hikers the whole time. Rounding one corner I said hello to a man with two small boys. “I’m from Missouri, it was 92 and humid when I left, and this is so much better,” he said, referring to the wind.

At one point there’s a small unofficial side trail that I saw a few people using, which led up the rock formations to a wonderful panorama of the valley below, but the wind was intense. When I was in boy scouts, I once saw a fat man rolling along a rocky mountain top in the wind. I had no desire to repeat the experience here, so I quickly retreated.

View from top of a rock formation

After my hike I returned to the campground to settle into my tent, but the weather finally turned and it started to pour. I decided to switch back to the van after all.

7/13/2012

I woke up early at my rest area ‘hotel’ and pulled out around 6:30 in the morning. The rest area was about 30 miles from the Indiana border and soon I had crossed the state line.

It may just have been the hour – very early for a Saturday – but the Indiana highways were deserted, except for truckers. I don’t mind driving with truckers; I know that the height of the vehicles intimidates some people, but I’ve always found trucks to be slightly slow, uniformly good drivers, and generally considerate when passing. They’re the cows of the highway. Indiana had rolling hills & small farms bordered by trees, and fog rose from the valleys as I sped by.

I’d held off refueling in Ohio, under the theory that red states would have cheaper gasoline (lower taxes). Unfortunately, that wasn’t true for Indiana. But at least I saw something interesting at the gas station – a disassembled plane! After getting gas, Indiana passed by rapidly and soon enough I was in Illinois.

Probably faster than driving…

Chicago was a bit congested, even at 8 am, but the driving itself was straightforward: stay on I-90 through the entire city. I only covered the northeast corner of the state, near Lake Michigan, but even that tiny blip on the map proved to be nearly 100 miles of driving!

Then it was on to Wisconsin. It’s interesting, each arbitrary state line seemed to coincide with a change in scenery outside the window. The elevation changes became more severe in Wisconsin, and as I went further north the soil grew sandier. This coincided with a disappearance of farms, and I was reminded of the deserted pine barrens in southern New Jersey (but… without the pines). Wisconsin also marked the start of long-distance concrete highways.

Concrete is reputed to be a far more durable material for roads than asphalt, and there was markedly less construction on roads that were concrete compared to those that were asphalt. On the other hand, the driving feels a bit rougher and the concrete causes tires to make a high-pitched whining noise. It’s a sacrifice I’ll make to avoid construction.

The Mississippi River marks the boundary between southern Wisconsin and Minnesota/Iowa. Here the demarcation between states at least has a sensible geographic origin, and Minnesota was obviously different from Wisconsin – as if the topsoil of Wisconsin had been stripped off and deposited to the west. Farms returned… lots of farms. The bridge across the Mississippi is extremely high, and the highway rapidly gains elevation after you cross the Minnesota border. It may have been an optical illusion, but low, gathering storm clouds made me feel like I was at an extremely high elevation, as though I were somehow closer to the sky. Before, when I heard of Minnesota I had always pictured dense, shadowy forests, with voyageurs silently paddling between lakes. But near the southern border, it’s much closer to Iowan cornfields than anything else. The biggest city in this area is Rochester, with a population of 108k. The next biggest, I believe, is Mankato, with 40 thousand. The state feels deserted.

The concrete highways remain in this area, and the speed limit is 70 mph, so I made good time, but the only thing to distract me was the freakish gusts against the side of the van. In Minnesota, alone among the states I’ve visited, there were huge windfarms built to capitalize on those gusts – hundreds of slowly spinning turbines were scattered across the state, extending beyond visible range.

It’s 270 miles, 5 hours across Minnesota, and by the last two I had grown desperate enough to give up on music; I switched to audio lectures and spent the rest of the drive learning about South American pre-history.

270 miles of this

I’d set my endpoint for the day as Sioux Falls, South Dakota – the biggest city in South Dakota at 163k people and right across the border from Minnesota.

I didn’t get the full Sioux Falls experience, but the area I visited looked like every suburban center across the country, and not at all like a city. I felt just like I were in Clifton Park, except the license plates had changed and the population only looked 90% white.

I found a Wal-Mart parking lot and settled in for the night. When I woke up later I took a look out the window. Nearby two huge RVs towing jeeps were parked, as well as a truck with trailer, and various other cars. So it seems that Wal-Mart is a popular campground, and I repaid them by grabbing some food in the morning.

I also discovered that charging my laptop requires more power than the van is capable of providing, and blew out the circuit breaker on the van’s cigarette lighter. This is why updates have been less frequent than I’d hoped.

7/12/2013

I left early from Clifton Park (the archetype for upstate NY suburbs), at 8 in the morning, after an early breakfast at IHOP with my family (tiramisu pancakes…). Although I don’t anticipate my trip being an international one, I guess thinking ambitiously never hurt anyone.

I took I-90 west towards Buffalo, and although it took an hour to really settle in, I was soon making good time, with energy drink in hand. It’s funny – a sizeable percent of cars on the road were from Florida – far more than I typically see further east in the state. Perhaps also the demographic on I-90 is different from that of I-87. From Albany to Buffalo is about 5 hours, but I decided to take a small detour to visit Niagara Falls. I’d seen them once before but only as a small kid; my recollection was that I wasn’t impressed.

The stretch from I-90 to Niagara Falls was a harrowing 20 mile criss-cross of roads and expressways, filled with swerving/braking drivers.

A panorama of the Falls

Arriving in Niagara Falls, I was greeted with a full parking lot and the desperate misery of searching for a parking spot in a touristy location (luckily I found 2-hour parking; I had only planned to stay for 2 hours). Niagara Falls is a Category II tourist trap desperately trying to reach Category I. There are three Space Needle-esque towers which peer above the hotels and office buildings on the Canadian side of the falls, like prairie dogs sticking their heads out from their warrens. Not to mention the frequently grotesque prices ($15 to ride an elevator down to the base of the Falls) and the near-constant buzz of tourist helicopters circling above.

Like many tourist traps, the attraction of Niagara Falls, for me, lies primarily in observing the tourists. Given the fact that there is little else in proximity to the Falls, I assume that most of the foreign tourists are either visiting Toronto, have been mislead about just how dramatic Niagara Falls is, or are stopping by on a road trip, like myself.

I noticed the requisite German, Japanese, and husky American-flag wearing tourists, as well as a sizeable contingent of French Canadians, but there was also a new variety: the Indian tourist. I’ve never seen so many Indian tourists before, and the Falls seemed (perhaps) to cater to them, with at least 4 Indian restaurants within walking distance of the parking areas. Either more Indians are traveling than before, or they’re particularly attracted to Niagara Falls for some reason.

Tourists huddled underneath the Falls

When you get away from the crowds and the tacky tourist pavilions, the area is actually quite beautiful, with the feel of a carefully maintained park next to a roaring river. In many ways I preferred the rapids to the Falls themselves, as the raw power of the river was visible in the current – by contrast the Falls themselves dissipate into the mist. It’s true what they say, the Canadian side must be better – all the various parts where water actually falls are on the American side of the border, so the Canadians must have a wonderful view.

Niagara Falls Wildlife

Leaving Niagara Falls I realized that I hadn’t figured out where to head next (my first target is Badlands National Park in South Dakota); I tried entering Chicago in my GPS and it routed me through Ontario; not wanting to deal with customs I switched to Erie, Pennsylvania, which sits directly in the middle of the weird little tail of the state.

Traveling through Buffalo was saddening. It’s clearly a rust belt town that’s seen better days, and yet – from the vantage point of the highway, it seems like an appealing place – the tidy downtown core of many small American cities, the sweeping overpass of the highway, and plenty of water nearby. Yet the town is oriented all wrong, with the highway separating the downtown and water; closer to the water are only run-down industrial buildings. Supposedly Buffalo’s peer, Pittsburgh, has rejuvenated of late, and maybe Buffalo can do the same.

The tail of Pennsylvania was quickly traversed, and I only had about an hour to take in the classic peculiarities the state presents to the highway traveler: the frequent fireworks stands, the strange ultra-high gas-station signs with their glowing prices (much cheaper than NY – I refueled as soon as I crossed the border).

Then it was into Ohio. I both loved and hated traveling in Ohio. I believe that I traveled through about 60 miles of highway construction, during which time I saw a single solitary crew of workmen. Most of the construction took the form of additional lanes being added or repaved, and the traffic was rerouted in a novel way: three lane highways were reduced to 2 lanes, with one lane occupying the shoulder of the original highway, and the other lane traversing the median and then running against the traffic on the other side of the highway. These single lanes were enclosed by cement barriers, which gave the impression of flying down the canyon on the surface of the Death Star. This proved exhausting, nerve-wracking driving (given that I had to do 6- miles of it!)

But when the highways weren’t under construction, I loved driving in Ohio. Most of the roads were three-lane highways, and after Cleveland, the land flattened out into nearly imperceptible hills; this must have been forested land and there are still plenty of trees, but the bulk of the scenery is now corn farms. The highway (I-80) has huge sweeping curves and long straightaways: perfect for comfortable driving (the speed limit is also 70 mph). I made good time and it was with some regret that I finally pulled over in a rest area for the night: I wanted to keep driving and didn’t feel tired; rather I felt a sort of weariness. The rest areas in Ohio are wonderful too – all brand new and immaculately kept; the state must have received a lot of federal grant money.

I’m writing this in the back of the van, with curtains up and bed laid out. I can hear trucks barreling down the highway to the left of me, which I find to be a comforting sound. Tomorrow, I hope (perhaps too ambitiously) to reach the border of South Dakota. I’d like to hit the Badlands midday on Sunday, and then take a break there.

Random info:

• 3 States Driven
• 667 Miles Driven
• Funniest Sign: “State Penitentiary Nearby: Don’t Pick Up Hitchhikers