The route that broke our car

As we were leaving Devil's Tower it occurred to us that we should probably make a reservation at Yellowstone. Admittedly, it didn't actually occur to US, it occurred to ME while I was on passenger duty and I just waited until it was my turn to drive to pawn off the duty to Angie. No such luck. She refused to leave until I had made the call. As it turns out, we had no problem reserving a spot! WITH A SHOWER!! I should note that at this point, 2 or 3 days into the trip (it all blends together), we had not showered or changed our clothes. Don't judge us. 

HOT. MESS.

If it looks like we were dirty and smelly and wearing the same clothes in all the prior pictures, it's because we were.

We left at about 4PM, and we were supposed to arrive at Yellowstone around midnight. Fun fact: when the GPS goes gray because there is no traffic information, it means that you are going to go through mountains. We would not realize this until later. 

Between Devil's tower and Yellowstone lies the great behemoth know as (maybe) Mount Bighorn. We hit it precisely as the sun went down.

It may be pretty, but you can see the line of mountains we were about to hit so it was mildly terrifying.

 I don't know how people speed around on these damn mountains, but I certainly couldn't, especially given that I was grinding my teeth, white knuckled and leaning not a little bit forward to moosh myself as close to the windshield as possible, thinking it would improve visibility enough to see the herds of deer everywhere. 

I won't go into details, but it involved a lot of screaming, a lot of going -20 mph, and a lot of near death experiences. We saw 26 deer and a skunk that stopped in the middle of the road, swung its head in our direction, and gave us a look of "WHAT." before he waddled on. I also have no idea how to drive a car up and down a mountain, but I understand the basics of no riding the brakes. It doesn't really matter when the whole goddamn thing is a 7% grade. By the end, our brakes were toast. Loss Damage waiver high five! By now, we know that a 6% grade is a piece-a-cake, but a mere percent higher means we go careening down the mountain to our doom. The brakes still work, but they make high-pitched squealing noises. All. The Time.

At around one, we started hitting signs for Yellowstone. Hooray! We're finally there! Naaaht. Yellowstone is massive. Huge. We booked a campsite at westernmost point of it, and had to drive through more mountains and twists and overhanging rocks with little signs that showed a dude being crushed by falling things. There were also signs that promised "SLIDES" but we were really disappointed/terrified to figure out it meant landslides. 

We were completely cracked out by stress and fatigue by the time we entered the park, and really couldn't handle the drive. Angie was in the passenger seat going on about LED reindeer elk and Rudolph being an asshole for inventing the laser because of some flashing sign that probably just meant that there were more friggin' deer/elk/moose/whatthehellever. Regardless, we drove for another two hours through the park that stank of rotting eggs. 

By the time we finally found the campsite, we were in hysterics. I mean really, truly gone. We flew out of the car, snapped the tent upright in about 2 seconds flat, and started humming in the sleeping gear while laughing without a single breath in between the whole time. When the tent was ready, I flopped into it and laughed so hard I had tears screaming down my face. For my coworkers that are keeping count, day 3 was when I went postal so I think I won my own bet.

I grabbed Pandarilla, snuggled up, dutch ovened us both, and fell asleep. 

Devil's Tower and Not Mount Rushmore

After leaving the badlands, we started driving the (relatively) short distance to Mount Rushmore. Just as we were about to take the exit for Rushmore, we saw a sign for Sturgis. We thought about it for all of two seconds, then kept on going for Sturgis. Seriously, a historical national monument of something or other, or a renown biker town? We grabbed a postcard of Rushmore while we were at Wall Drug, so we had all we needed. 

We made an excellent decision. We stopped at the Sturgis Coffee Company and got amazing coffee and got rung up by a little kid that yelled "I did it!!" as he finished the transaction. The shop roasted their beans onsite, so it smelled like heaven and they had gorgeous handmade jewelry that we regretfully could not afford.

I want to make sweet, sweet love to this.

We stuck around for way too long, then went to a liquor store down the street and grabbed some wine for when we arrived in Yellowstone and left for Devil's Tower.

Devil's Tower was a tower. We took pictures. There are more, but it's kind of...a tower? Of rock. A rocky tower. Whee!

Oh my God. It's a tower.

I used the opportunity of a stop to wash my face, and brush my teeth, and wash my clothes in the only sink there while other women went to the bathroom and just left without a word. THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND.

Anyway, Pandarilla also enjoyed the tower. Pandarilla is a build-a-bear that we made in attempt to emulate Nikki's picture (on the right). We couldn't find the right clothes and the dollar store wig that we purchased at the beginning of the trip had shed all over the car because Angie tried to cut it, so it went in the trash. In this picture, my cell phone is propping her up on the car. Do you see where this is going yet?

Not seen: my cell phone and lens cap behind Pandarilla

Yeep, left it on the car. But! It was still there! And so was the lens cap! High five!!

Speaking of high fives, we have this thing where we high five everything. Corn five, leaving shitcago five, survival five, awesome decision five, etc. (This is important later. Well, not to you, but to us, and this is our blog. So there.)

We pulled over as we were leaving Devil's Tower to cook Spongebob Mac' n' cheese and discovered this smoke ring thing that I guess is some kinda art installation thing. I took obligatory pictures.

Keepin' it classy.

Back to the Spongebob. We had been pining, craving, starving, absolutely couldn't concentrate on anything else besides finally making our macaroni. Then we discovered that the cable to our burner was too short to run from the car safely. After briefly considering using the burner IN the car regardless, we found some outlets! YAY! ...GODDAMMIT, they were halfway up the wall and also too short. After we made eyes at the picnic tables and thought about stacking them up, we gave up and left. 

Goodbye, Devil's tower. Thanks for the bath. You suck for having outlets halfway up the wall. 

We afraid of rocks...

It wasn't mentioned in any trip advisor or travel blog that Britt or I read, but if you ever visit the Badlands, try to arrive in the dead of night. I think that, more than anything is what etched this park upon our memories. After traveling through state after state of mostly flat plains, we began to pass short, sharp standalone peaks. Then all at once we're surrounded by what look like unreal cardboard cutouts, layers upon layers of ghostly grey shapes just placed to mess with tourists. Kinda like the distant mountains of a video game with sub-par graphics resolution.

The iPod chose that exact moment to play Vampira by Devin Townsend.

Into the niiiiight... Into the daaaarrrrkness...

Now it isn't the strangest landscape we've ever seen, but the alien world from Pitch Black. They aren't 2D constructs, they're menacing towers housing evil soul-sucking horrors of the night waiting to break free and descend upon the only the living things around. Us.

We drove around for an hour, working ourselves into a petrified frenzy that culminated with screaming in terror and speeding away at the sight of a clump of weeds moving under their own power against all logic. We might have been hallucinating at this point, but we weren't taking any chances. It turned out that the campsite we were headed for was actually 45 miles away, so we pulled into a viewpoint, set our alarms for a couple hours later to catch the sunrise, and settled down to sleep in the car. Except the blankets and pillows were in the trunk of the car.

So I bravely flung open the door, plunged into the darkness unknown, raced around to the back of the car, and wrestled the sleeping from the clutches of backpacks and grocery bags. I rushed back to the safety of the car's interior to lock the doors against the beasts outside and celebrate my victory. Huzzah! Oh, wait-- Did I close the trunk?! I could remember! But the Batmobile could tell us! As I tried to wedge myself into the backseat, Britt turned the car on to check.

HONK! HONK! HONK! WHOOOP! WHOOOP! WHOOOP! OH MY GOD, HOW DO I MAKE IT STOP?

So we slept. Cold, crammed into seats, and convinced we'd just alerted any nearby predators and park personnel to our location. Awesome.

***

We missed part of the sunrise. We woke to a sky barely clinging to the colors of dawn, and stumbled (fell) out of the car. That's when it hit us that we were actually on this road trip, far from home and halfway across the country. Maybe we hadnt realized it because we hadn't stopped to sleep before other than each of us taking a nap or two in the car while the other drove. Maybe it was because we've seen cities and we've seen corn (just not so much or for so long), but we'd NEVER seen anything like the Badlands. Even when we knew we were taking the same kind of pictures over and over, we kept pulling over and snapping away.

Surprisingly awake

Rocks.

Rocks.

Rocks.

GOAT!

Rocks.

Rocks.

GOAT!

 

We had to leave in the middle because running up and down the sloped roads sapped our gas more than we thought it would. Nearest town? Wall. Home of Wall Drug. Kitschy tourist trap, here we come!

We thought we would spare you the kitschtastic.

Breakfast was an omelet and lots of coffee at the rather sad Cactus Café, then we wandered over to the nearest souvenior store to buy some mandatory magnets and postcards. The cool looking stores weren't open yet, so we popped into a t-shirt and jewelry store, specializing in delicate pieces made of Black Hills gold. Pretty, but expensive. Wall Drug itself was only a few doors down, and it was seemed kinda neat except for the creepy mannikin people everywhere.

Then it was back to the Badlands!

Binocular win! Zoom lens win!

Photo composition brought to you by Bison-R-Us

American Bison? American Buffalo? What do we actually call these behemoths? Phil settled the matter on Facebook for everyone concerned:

Phil: How do you know they are American. Did they tell you. Did the bison say, YO!! I B A American. And on another thought, what about the Buffalo nickel, I never heard it called a Bison Nickel. What about Buffalo Bill, Nobody called him Bison Bill.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Buffalo it is. Besides, saying 'bison' makes me feel all pretentious.

I like corn

As we were planning this trip, we found out that there is a Lawler, Iowa and a Britt, Iowa. They are only an hour from eachother, and they were basically on the general route we were going to take. Done deal.

After our cursed trip through Chicago, we were eager to get off the highway and do some backroading. I called Angie's boyfriend, Matt, and asked if there was anything worth seeing on the backroads of Iowa. He said no, and laughed at us.

corncorncorncorncorncowcowcornwindmillcorn

 We took the next exit possible and began winding our way through cornfield after cornfield after cow pasture after...yeah, you get the picture. It was pretty in the beginning, but, you know, corn. First person to say "I told you so!" gets shot.

"I spy with my little eye something white." "That car?" "No." "That door?" "No." "Ummm...crap. That pole!" "...seriously?" "ohhh...the clouds."

 The only problem with these backroads is that they're too poor or cheap or like to screw with outsiders too much to put speed limit signs up, so I had to resort to ripping out two pieces of notebook paper, scribbling "SPEED LIMIT?!" on one and "PLEASE PASS" on the other and crawling in the back seat to show them to the drivers behind us. They were too busy looking at the thrilling corn fields to notice, but whatever. We tried.

We could by expensive camera filters. Or we could just use $3 sunglasses.

We passed many little towns, and they sported signs such as, "Troy Grove: 250" and had to assume it was the population of the town. We got closer to Lawler, and saw a similar sign for 400ish. We figured it would be a little hole in the wall with a single cornfield and some farmer's many children. (I'm an awful person. sue me.)

Look! Holy Crap! MORE. CORN.

Wrong. We roll into town, and it is pristine. There is a little war memorial, there were perfectly manictured lawns, not a single piece of discarded trash, a nice little playground, and a general store. We loved it. Ok, loved is a strong word, but we were thoroughly impressed at the lack of sucking.

You know, I don't really know what I'm thumbs-upping. Me? Lawler? Iowa? Ehhh, it was probably my squid hat. (whose name is Sir Calamar Shiskebabbi Rex, for the record.)

Then we realized...where the hell are the people? Then the town got creepier and creepier as we realized that there was nobody in it, and not a single sign of life. It was total Stepford Wives.

Next up was Britt. Again, I thought this would be a crappy hole in the wall, and I was right. But it was awesome, because this happened:

Yuup. Britt, Iowa is the home of the National Hobo Convention.

There is a hobo festival every year in Britt. You can be the queen of Britt. Or queen of hobos, I don't really know. There's a museum and everything.

As this was being taken, a trucker honked and waved and looked confused. It's okay, I was too. I wasn't sure if I should shade my own eye or my squid eye

I don't really have anything else to say about Iowa. Our map just has "I LIKE CORN" written across the entire page for the state.

Shitcago: Part II

Our first real stop was Chicago, Illinois. Cranky and tired, we arrived early Sunday morning to a dirty, smelly, smog-filled cesspit devoid of human life. Seriously, we saw maybe ten cars in the first half hour and fewer people. It was too early for deep dish pizza so we mapped a route to Panera Bread instead.

I think Chicago sensed Britt's disapproval as soon as we entered city limits and decided to fuck with our GPS, causing it to lag or show us as two blocks away from our actual position or claim we were magically cutting diagonally through city blocks. Add to this one way streets, road closures and subsequent lack of detours, and we ended up driving in circles in the wrong lane and being laughed at by locals.

Eventually we paid almost ten dollars to park for an hour and a half on a sketchy street next to sketchy people in that sketchy, godforsaken place. Then it all changed. One block we were between steaming sewers and under graffiti-covered train tracks, and the next we were sitting beside people with lattes and laptops. Talk about juxtaposition.

It so happened that we were across the street from Millennium Park, home of the Giant Metal Jellybean:

It's probably licorice flavored. I loathe licorice.

As well as Chicago's Shower For The Homeless:

Nothing I could possibly say would make this photo more awkward than it already is.

Leaving Chicago was just as difficult as navigating our way through it. Here is a map to illustrate our frustrated attempt to retreat.

Lake Michigan is locally known as The Giant Toilet Bowl.

Shitcago.

Dear Chicago,

Die in a fire.

Sincerely,
I hate your city,
Britt

'Hey, isn't the wrath of God signified by falling frogs?'

Allow me to introduce Harbie, short for Harbinger of Evil. He's going on the road trip with us. 

Obviously.

Clearly, I am 'too adorable' to associate with demons.

Ang sent me that picture, along with with the following explanation:

    Omg. This was in my car. I don't even understand how or where or what the fuck. I yelped. wtf. It's a mummified fucking frog. wtf. omg. HOW. Not even in the back and under shit, but near my pedals where I keep things clean. WTF. No way a frog managed to die and dry up under my feet without me squishing it. Plus I cleaned the whole car a few days ago. Plus there's no way it could have accidentally fallen inside given how tall the car is. My second or third thought really was, 'Hey, isn't the wrath of God signified by falling frogs?' 

I suggested casting Harbie in resin, but Ang got all indignant because 'HE WON'T BE ABLE TO BREATHE!'

[UPDATE from Ang: Before you start thinking I'm that much of a slob, I had just cleaned out my car several days previous. The doors were off, but the hard top was on, so it didn't just fall straight out of a tree. And the Jeep's too tall for the frog to have accidentally jumped into while it was alive, not to mention how wet the inside of my car gets and how it would have remain unsquished for so long. We figure the only possible explanation is that the frog died up in the tree at some point, and as it was falling to the ground, a magical gust of wind blew his little mummified body through the door frame, somehow avoiding the bushes less than a foot away on that side.]

There's also a story behind why we think keeping evil things in the car is a good idea logical. Kinda. Ang was given a little clay demon one Christmas named Boris. He was pot-bellied, red skinned, and permanently molded into a leisurely recline. He was adorable, in a sexual harassment kind of way. She hung him from the rearview mirror of her former Jeep, as a sort of ward from evil and because she was too scared to keep him in the dorm because 'IT WOULD HAVE BURNED DOWN.'

Except instead of absorbing all the negative vibes and mechanical failures and bad juju, he seemed to cause them. Probably because he felt unloved and ignored. Even when Boris's arms and legs started to break off, she kept the all the bits and pieces in the ashtray in an effort to appease him. Obviously, it didn't work out. (See: "former" Jeep) By the time she realized he was clearly outraged at the state of things, she was too scared of demonic retribution to throw him away. (Ang: I WAS SCARED FOR MY SOUL)

We set him on fire at the witching hour. To our horror, Matt came in right before Boris was about to disintegrate and accidentally knocked him out of the fire. Then he made fun of us for screaming and trying to gather up the still-glowing pieces. (DICK.) We burnt what we could find, but we know there was a piece or two missing, so we're pretty sure that the tiny little demon bits left in a fire pit in Wareham are causing natural disasters and definitely maybe the Apocalypse. (Sorry, Japan.)

Ang has since moved.

Anyway, Harbie is going with us in a little plastic box.

You know, for good luck.