Costa Rica

They call it Rich Coast for a reason.  ´´This is the expensive country, so just skip it and keep traveling in Nicaragua.´´  That's what we heard from EVVVVVVVERYone.  It's not that bad and the beauty should not be missed.  We make it cheap by cooking a lot and renting a house for $100/week.

First, we have a proper 7-course Turkey Day meal in Alajuela, outside of San Jose.  (San Jose feels and looks like neighborhoods in eastern Brooklyn.  It is extremely affluent and westernized in terms of restaurants, shops, and advertisements.)  The meal is 7 courses because we only have one propane burner.  Pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, fresh bread (from a bakery down the street), stuffing, green bean casserole (this is nowhere close to the correct recipe, but still satisfies), oreo creme pie, and banana pudding.  Mostly firsts for Hilary, the food blows her Kiwi mind.  Banana pudding is her favorite, and being from the deep south of her country, leads me to believe that southerners are similar in lots of countries (I know this works for Germany).  Good choice, Hills.

At the last second, I decide to go with Hilary to Montezuma for silent treatment on the south shore of Costa Rica.  Every six weeks or so she has a completely silent weekend where she does as little as possible.  Since I was born, the only time I stop moving and doing stuff is when I am unconscious.  Even then I am quite talkative and have had a couple of adventures around the house.  On the ferry to the Nicoya Peninsula, Hilary has a cheap-boxed-wine connection (called Clos. It's not wine, but it's Clos) with Maisie and Michelle.  We follow them to Santa Teresa for a night.  I play bodyguard with a big stick on the supposedly dangerous beach while the girls play in the moonlit ocean.  No banditos in sight so I play a little bit, too.  We meet Gregory around 2am on the shore, and he invites us to his Bungalow.  The next night we take him up on his offer.  I was concerned he might be interested in the chicks because they are hot and much younger than him but he makes not one creepy move and is just a cool, fun loving guy.  He lives in Switzerland, originally from upstate NY, and works around his skiing schedule.  We walk down to the semi-rave club by the water, shoot pool, and quote the good Jimmy Buffet songs.  I have to add the following detail because some reader will recognize the genius in it.  He travels everywhere with a little stuffed monkey named Afika or Afi for short.  After his 365th photo with Afi, he´s gonna start a second calendar with Big Mama, Afi´s mom.  He found them in thrift stores in two different European countries about 5 years apart.  Afi has a basket, sleeping bag, and surfboard.  Hilary asks Gregory, ¨Does he have some little skis?¨  Gregory replies, ¨Of course, but we´re in Central America!¨  Afi was made in 1920, which makes him over 90 years old.  Gregory gives us a ride to the adjacent town of Mal Pais where we will rent the house.

It´s quiet with the exception of some dirt bikes and a family of howling monkeys that live in the surrounding trees.  You can vaguely hear the surf.  For the next two days, Hilary and I interact as little as possible, using hand gestures and writing notes to communicate.  The first day, I take it pretty well and stay still in the hammock on our porch from about 8am until noon.  It´s interesting watching plants reach up to the morning sun.  I spend the rest of the day lying around, sitting in a chair, and looking out the window.  Occasionally I cook.  I thought about conflicts that haven´t crossed my mind for well over 10 years.  On the second day, I am not happy and become very restless.  I discover that over the last couple of years I have become angry with people that I am close with because I have developed a habit of making excuses.  I didn´t always do this, but towards the end of college, I started to undergo psychological changes.  It´s a wonder I had enough momentum to make it through grad school.  Anyway, I realized that I need to stop making excuses and re-assume responsibility for my disposition and life.

After silent time, Hilary and I explore secret beaches, a tiny fish market, and cooking bread without an oven. A bakery quality loaf resulted from a fragment of cinder block we found in the yard, which was heated inside of a foil-lined pot atop the propane stove.  If you do ever create an oven from these materials, use a smooth stone or line it with foil, otherwise the bottom of your loaf will be gritty.  Trial and error taught us bagels should only be flash-boiled for a couple of minutes.  The longer we cooked them, the more they shrank and the more they seemed uncooked.  Like all ¨arts¨ cooking remains profitable through fear mongering and the general public's lack of confidence.  The vast majority of eaters are afraid it is overly complex to make meals.  Add things that you know you like the taste of.  Heat is often optional.  For bread, mix flour and water until you can shape it.   Yeast and heat are for texture.  Other ingredients are for flavor.  If you add an ingredient with a really strong flavor or pH imbalance, such as baking soda, you have to balance it with something like vinegar or another acid in this case.  You´ll know by the flavor.  Ten bucks at the grocery store and a couple of hours of trial and error will teach you the basics.  After some struggling and some ´Ahhhh, I see!´ moments, then it would be effective to look at recipes and continue experimenting.  The reason there are so many variations of the same dishes is that most of the ingredients aren´t crucial.  Grow some balls and cook.  There´s not a person on Earth who doesn´t want to know how to feed themselves.

Final notes on Costa Rican beaches, de Pacifico.  Big rocks, frozen lava looks really cool and is everywhere, great seashells, pick your wave size, and walk on completely undeveloped postcard beaches until you die of starvation.  If you are too cheap to stay in $10 hostels, walk for 20 min and build a campfire with the abundance of dry driftwood.

Instead of going back to Montezuma to ride horses to waterfalls on the beach, we decide to walk 90k´s along the beach to Samara.  There are no buses  not even a dotted line on the map.  There is a road, and we get lucky with two hitches, one of which takes us though the country for about 3 hours all the way to Samara.  I wonder how much hitching karma I have left.  The couple that picks us up are from Detroit and run a composite-veneer furniture company called Context Furniture.  We drive on the beach, through tidal creeks and waist deep rivers, off and on roads, and see various facets of CR countryside, occasionally stopping to enjoy fresh coconuts and beer at world renowned beaches.  Thank you Brice and Keryn!

The first person we meet in Samara is the mayor, who moved to CR 18 years ago and likes that he doesn´t have to wear shoes to work.  I may return to open a dive company.  Smooth intoxicating energy in this town.  

We wake up in the sand at daybreak, and, after a brisk morning swim, grab our stuff and take a morning bus to Liberia (lee-berry-uh).

In the heart of the cowboy district, Hills and I are greeted by old cattle ropers sporting boots and rodeo hats.  The bustling, yet quaint, streets forming a grid system are adorned with rustic saddles and ropes (not the polished, stained decor at Longhorn Steakhouse), jumbo electronics and grocery stores, and is the 3rd largest city in the country.  Hilary didn´t sleep on the beach, and sweaty, sandy, bug-bitten, with a sinus aggravation wants a swimming pool for our last night in CR.  I´m on board.  Steak and red wine at the hotel restaurant.  WacArnold´s for breakfast.  I mention the night before it would be cool to arrive at the desayuno-almorzado (breakfast-lunch) cusp.  I walk next door and order consado (rice y beans) con huevos and a coffee.  Before the meal is served, the menus flip and I order a Big Mac and a coke.  The orders come out at the same time.  Einstein said, ¨There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.¨

--Controversial Tangent:  Anyone who disses McD´s can suck an egg.  Affordable food, millions of jobs worldwide, and go wikipedia "Ronald McDonald House Charities".  After you get past the sad, failed attempt of hippies trying to find faults with the article, you can read how big the benefactor ballers at WacArnolds are.  EVERYONE has craved some greasy hangover food at some point.  I´m not too worried about the battle between the arches and their arch nemesis though.  Some claim that people have a right to eat healthy.  I say people have a right to choose.  I like to enjoy some ¨poison¨ every once and again.  I´ll do some extra pushups today to make up for it.  I´m not real big on people telling other people what they can and can´t have.  Furthermore, the fuel we consume is insignificant compared to what we do to burn it.  I have not come across any form of food that gives you a cardio or skeletal muscle workout.  Proof of this theory is in Usain Bolt´s interview after setting the new world record for 100m in 2009.  ¨I woke around 11am and decided to watch some TV and had some nuggets.  Then I slept for a couple of hours more.  Then I got some more nuggets and came to the track.¨  He is a legend and doesn´t need the endorsement.  Briefly study  how the guy lives and you´ll realize he wasn´t bribed to say this.  The ¨unpopular¨ giants don´t need my defense, but I like to hit folks in the face with a bucket of reason sometimes.--

The bus for the border town of Peñas Blancas is exceptionally nice.

Connect the dots - Panama

People come and go in life.  Listening as often as possible to the little voice inside (Mama would say, 'deiner stimme') has taken me here.  Some say fate, some say luck.  It doesn't matter; I'm here now.  Here's how I got here:

In a new country without the funds to make it to my return flight (I came with around $1300 in November and my flight leaves in late April) I was nervous.  My plan was to really chill and stay put for a while.  That plan lasted about 5 days.  I'm not diggin' Panama City and start rationalizing why I need to stay here and learn to like it.  Liam (rock star) and Hilary (bamf) help me to realize that it doesn't make sense to stay somewhere I'm not excited about.  I have some money, Central America is cheap, so back on the road I go.

I take a night bus to Bocas del Toro with Hilary.  She's a sweet New Zealand chick that's worked in more countries than I've stepped foot in.  Bocas is a fun, loud party town on the north coast of Panama.  Lots of cool day trips and activities available by water taxi.  Hundreds of backpackers coming and going kill the local vibe, but a 2-day festival/parade for the city's foundation give us a chance to feel the culture a bit.  We saw children practicing late into the afternoon as we walked past schools upon arriving to the town.  Kids as young as 6, in groups of 30 or 40, are wailing on snare drums with the timing and intensity of a Tool concert.  OK, Tool cover band.  The conductor signals for the rest and not a single off-beat.  I can see him grinning a foot wide on the inside.  The obnoxious drumming we have been hearing from our hostel is now an entrancing spectacle which we indulge along with some kickass street food.  This is the first time I feel a pride connection (and a little less confused) with a Hispanic culture.
--Being from the United States of America (only saying 'America' aggravates most people down here because it references 2 continents and 36 countries), I am greatly distanced from the idea that there are other people with passions comparable to US citizens and college football or classic rock.--
Bocas is great.  Avoid the wet season.

We jump on a bus for the mountains.  La Fortuna has a hostel all by itself in a cloud forest (like a rain forest, but higher).  Serene, but empty vibe.  Hilary gets the scoop and it seems some of the volunteers are dying to get out of their one month contract.  I meet the owner one night, who gets extremely drunk and reveals his bigoted, shallow insides to everyone.  Since everything in the hostel has a sexual innuendo I can deduce his motives for opening a hostel.  Creepy.  He leaves the next day and some cool backpackers arrive.  Full day of hiking jungle trails, fording wide, waist-deep rivers and walking through cold waterfalls feels like you are wearing a lead backpack.  I cook some weird stuff.  The critics seem happy and encourage my experimentation.  Rocky Cloud Pie (named after a white-faced capuchin and a kinkajou that also live here) is made of cornbread minus baking soda, Vienna sausage, topped with spaghetti sauce and red beans.  Sounds gross.  It's in a standard 10" rectangular baking pan and disappears faster than a plate of Outback cheese fries.  We watch The Watch (great slapstick, left-field humor).  Shane, ex-lobbyist who instigated the waterfall excursion, has a moustache that Sean Connery would commend and we even have matching heart tattoos.  Instant bros (just add beer).  We DOMINATE foosball all night.  In case you missed the emphasis, we won 15 straight games, while barely maintaining balance from laughing so hard.  And I'm barely average at this game.  Our opponents are laughing just as hard at the phenomenon that is taking place.  GREAT night.

Four days in the cloud and we gain Elyna and hitch a ride toward the border.  Some central american guys have eyes that look like they are wearing makeup.  The dude that picks us up has eyes like this.  With high-heels on the passenger floorboard, I have to check the Buffalo Bill possibility.  My Spanish sucks, and he speaks no English, so I struggle to keep up polite conversation and find out if this guy is cool.  (There's always a few moments of tension on the onset.  If you think about it in terms of incentives, only cool people stop for hitch-hikers, so you're probably fine, but I try to be smart and do my best to read people, situations, and formulate a plan B.) They are his wife's shoes.  He's 31 years old and has been a priest for the last 13 years.  We drop off his car at his church and take a bus to the border.  He gets off the bus and helps us get on the correct bus and then quickly pays the fare and says bye.  We are a little stunned and joke about how badly he wanted us out of his country.  Really cool dude.

To bum or not to bum - San Diego and beyond

We drive across CA, do LA and Malibu, and then head south to San Diego.  After about a week of living my childhood dream of being a legitimate beach bum, Scott, Tim, and I start getting antsy.  If you're traveling, you can wear tattered clothes, omit deodorant, and eat anything your enzymes will digest.  The moment you stop moving, you immediately feel like, are treated like, because you actually are a bum.

"Hobo becomes you!" is the threat that haunts Scott and Tim as they are often slinging a hammock where they might not be supposed to.  Scott walks to the bathroom one morning to clean peanut butter off of his pocket knife before he closes it.  With a 2 month beard, hair past his shoulders, and pretty rough clothes, a stereotypical California housewife sees him and freaks.  She sends a guy over to check us out and make sure we are mentally stable.  He tells us that we might want to change locations because she just called the cops.  Thanks dude, later.  I temporarily sympathize with the mother (there are plenty of children at the beach this morning) until I see the blade is all of two and a half inches long.  Maybe if it had ketchup on it, I would understand drawing conclusions.  It's peanut butter.  The next time I see someone carrying a bottle, I'm just going to assume it's a Molotov cocktail and shoot them on site.  Amazing how influential hair can be.

We hang out with bums a lot at night, partially because we like the fire pits the city has provided on the beach and partially because we are also bums.  They aren't scary when you dress like them, use the beach showers for bathing and drinking water, and eat Ramen noodles every night.  After our usual nightcap by the fire, I take my sleeping bag down by the waves.  I can't sleep.  Instead, I rack my brain and run through my self-help playbook.  I start putting together a plan to learn 5 languages at the same time using the gifted Rosetta Stones on my laptop.  I start getting excited and remember it was learning that made me want to quit my job and start traveling in the first place.  As Tim Ferris explains in The 4-hour Work Week, it's not about trying to be happy, it's about doing things that get you excited.  You just have to ask the right questions.  Where do I want to go?  Brazil.  I'm stoked, tell Jeff and Scott, and we all run butt-ass naked through the moonlight into the freezing Pacific.  I feel alive again.

After looking through the Visa requirements, it seems I can't do it this year and basically puss out.

We take a bus to L.A. and then to Santa Barbara, all the while feeling trapped because deep down I know I don't want to live in the States right now.  The A/C goes out on the bus shortly after leaving the L.A. downtown station.  The bus turns around, as do the wheels in my head.  This is my chance.  "Tim, Scott, it was fun.  Here's the ticket to get my guitar under the bus.  I'm taking a cab to the airport and moving to Panama."  I'm scared shitless.  After being conned into buying a return flight by the airline (you can just show them a bus ticket out of the country), I withdraw the last 80 bones from my account.  I still have 40 silver coins, so I hope they exchange.  

They do and I have $ for about 6 weeks, living on $25/day.

The rest of the desert

GRAND CANYON
(for great pictures, check out Jeff´s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/undercountry?fref=ts)

We ride up to the big hole in the ground from the east.  East Rim Drive.  It’s the middle of the night and we are wired.  This has been a big X on our map since the get-go.  We drink beer and play guitar until day break because my buddy Scott told us that is the best time to see it.  We find a cool spot to walk out to the edge, which is an obstacle course in itself and just keeps going down.  There really isn’t a distinct edge at all.  Sleep deprived and drunk, this is not a real wise move, but here I am to tell the tale.  The first time you look at the canyon (the only word I can find to accurately name it) it looks like a cheesy post card.  Then you blink a few times and say well there it is. Next.  Then you realize that you can’t look away.  For hours.  It feels like it is the biggest thing I have ever looked at.  Maybe because the ocean is somewhat uniform in texture and color, or maybe because I’ve seen it so many times.  Either way, the Grand Canyon is one of those over-played scenes that loses all meaning until you are standing in front of it.

After a few hours and the light is evenly distributed from the sun’s tall angle, we go back to the van.  The breakfast crowd is flooding the village as we draw the black curtains.
The rest of the day and next are spent struggling with wifi to post pictures and story.  At night on the second day, I am finishing up my blog post when one of two dudes 16 feet away from me reads from a grocery bag, “Don’t take rides from strangers.”  Then he says, “Strangers are sometimes the nicest people you’ve ever met.”  I looked up and said, “Hell yea!”  Two hours later, Tim and Scott grab their backpacks and jump in the van with us Vegas bound.

The Hoover Dam is not worth seeing in the middle of the night.  Mega weak sauce.  We park in the garage at Treasure Island around 4am.  With little time to spare, Tim (red) and I (blue) each down a bottle of MD 20/20 for $3 a pop as a means to save money.  After all it’s Vegas.  If I get out of here without spending $400 it’s a win.  If you want to understand how a bum thinks, chug malt liquor.  It seemed perfectly reasonable to join the group of morning runners in blue jeans and flip-flops while holding a cigarette and spilling my coffee all over my shaman looking Thai shirt.  It wasn’t our idea.  The runners egged us on and cheered the whole half mile down the strip.

After some more hunting for the illusive $5 black-jack table and an almost endless search for our parking garage, we finally got to sleep around bright:30.  Tim got some rest during the drive from GC to LV, which must have been the enabling factor for him to not go to sleep at all.  When the 3 of us rose at almost the same time, Tim is walking to the van.  Food.  The four of us now walk and think as one on our quest to find a buffet.  After talking to some locals, the buffet turns into China Town with such simple directions as, “Next light, turn right.”  Not simple.  The road turns into a freeway which ties the streets into knots, runs out of side walk, drops 4 levels via stairs, and stars off into at least 4 different directions.  Two miles later with damp jeans from a crisp sun, we find an oriental looking multi-tiered shogun roof.  It’s Quizno’s.  Luckily, across the street is Kung Fu, a Thai-Chinese restaurant.  It is LEGIT.  It’s even built the same way as my buddy James’ house in Bangkok.  We tell the waiter to just leave the water pitcher on the table.  Pot-stickers, Thai iced coffee, and all kinds of num-nums.  We walk quickly after paying to avoid becoming epoxied to the leather booth.  During the walking conversation I realized we picked up the right backpackers.

You know how sometimes new groups of people meet and naturally break off into mini-herds where the conversation is so intense you look forward to listening to the other person chime in just so you can take a breath?  It was like that.  Scott and I couldn’t wait to hear what was going to be said next.  Hive minding vocalized.  (Hive minding is the subconscious interaction that I think is always going on between people.)  We talked about traveling and living in the U.S. versus abroad and whatnot.  In America, we kind of grow up believing that this is the only place to live.  People have been living in various locations around the globe for a long time.  It’s possible that there is a place more pleasant to live in than where each of us grow up.  I can get my teeth cleaned in Thailand for $40.  I don’t have to apply for an insurance policy, make monthly payments, and add tension to my shoulders and dreams about who is gonna jerk their lawsuit pistol first.  I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, I’m just saying this is the reality of today’s world.  And guess what, Thai people read the same dental hygiene books as us.  One thing that I really appreciated him saying was, “When I get to my place, my home, I’ll know as soon as I feel the dirt.”

The dirt in Death Valley has a strange energy.  It feels empty.  Nothing lives here.  Nothing can.  We weren’t worried about scorpions or snakes because there weren’t even plants and it was hot at night, so they wouldn’t need to get warm in our sleeping bags.  We parked at Golden Canyon and walked neatly through the dark between the closely spaced oven-dried clay hills.  The air is still hot, blowing through the narrow valley at 9PM.  After a mile and a half of weaving between these life-sized ant hills, we reach the end of the wash, which is also the foot of a giant dirt mountain.  The ground is faintly lit by the bright stars and for the most part it is dead silent.  The tops of the hills occasionally crumble and it sounds like something is following us.

The first time I try to climb a low cliff, the “rock” I’m holding onto comes off the wall in a chunk about the size of a trash can.  I fall a foot onto an incline and slide 5 or 6 feet to the bottom again.  This stuff is crumbling all around us.  We are basically in a huge kiln climbing on nature’s fired clay statues.  Scott and I decide we are going to camp on top of a big hill so we’ll have a good first desert sunrise.  We climb to the top of our hill and then seeing that it’s connected to a taller hill.  This repeats for about an hour, balancing on the collapsing ridge of the never-ending dirt mountain range.  We finally reach a peak, that is clearly too steep and fragile to climb.  We name this place The End of the Earth and get make our beds.  Our beds are slight bowls scraped into the ridge with our feet so we won’t tend to roll off into the abyss so easily .  We are very comfortable and wake up at first light.  The air is still warm, but not hot so we hit our own snooze buttons a few times.  A couple hours later it starts warming up and we finally get up to join meet up with the others who look like ants at the bottom of the next hill.  A few war bird cries are echoed back and forth through the cracks.  The panorama view is sick.

Most of the day is spent driving around the desert and hanging out at an oasis.  At before driving to deeper into California (gas prices are $6.20/gal) we drive 30 miles east to fill up ($3.79/gal) in the small, old gold mining town of Beatty (pronounced Bait-ee).  The wings at Sour Dough Saloon were almost too tender to pick up.  I walked up to 3 strangers next to us to find out what the locals like and dislike about their part of the country.  They are all seasonal workers at the park from various reaches of the country.  Almost everyone in the town is from somewhere else.  We finish a game of pool and follow our new friends to the town brothel.  They aren’t regular customers, it’s just a small town dive that’s entertaining to tour.

On the way out the door of Sour Dough’s, a skinny man, appearing to be in his early 60’s, with a Canadian tuxedo, suspenders, cowboy hat, white beard and twinkly eyes marches in.  There’s a warm vibe emitting from The Prospector and he says, “Everyday is a holiday and every meal’s a feast!” Jeff tells him he’s coming with us to the strip club.  Without hesitation he says, “Ok, but I’m bringing my truck because I don’t want to get stuck there.”  The Prospector is a cartoon character.  He has a catch phrase for every situation and we are folded in half laughing most of the night.  I bought shots, Moxy gave us a tour of the facilities, Scott did his spot-on Mikey Jackson dance moves on stage and showed Moxy a couple moves on the pole.  We go to leave the bar and The Prospector invites us for an after party at his place.  After 20 years of working in the National Parks system, he retired and moved to the ghost town of Ryolite, NV.  He’s the only resident.  Our other friends told us not to go, but how many chances do we get to hang out with a real prospector?

Nothing too strange happens, but we all have the feeling we´ll wake up in the middle of the road and there will only be a placard of ¨The Prospector¨ from the 1860´s.  This guy can´t be real.  After The Prospector shows us around the ghost town and with a flashlight and fails to summon his neighbor through the floorboards, we sing around the fire for a couple hours.  We wake up and he and his house are still there.  After breakfast, we clean up and take off before we wear out our welcome.  A couple of confused tourists visiting the ghost town ask us questions to which we can only say, ¨You gotta ask The Prospector.¨

WY, UT & CO

GRAND TETONS (pictures on Facebook - Thomas Michael Foote.  Instead of taking 2 hours to upload 21 pictures, Facebook can do 39 in about 10 minutes)

Monday.  We just drive down and out of Yellowstone all day.  The Tetons are a National Park, and everything is closed except Signal Mountain, so we don’t have to pay to get in.  The views begin changing as we approach the jagged, snow covered peaks of the Teton Range.  Dark teal colored lakes dip down in the valleys between the forest of barren, white Lodge Pole Pines.  They look like pickup sticks up and down the sides of mountains, perfect size and straightness for teepee poles.  It’s $20 to park and have a fire, which kind of sucks, but it was our only option.  The area had a convenience store for beer, a gas pump, and a bar with a sick view for more beer.  The bartender tells us some free places to camp and has an epic beard. 

After a big spaghetti dinner, I search for a bathroom, where we also heard lots of laughing and singing.  From the looks of it, there was a camp up the hill on the other side.  I wander through the bushes and yearlings in the dark towards the exterior orange light of the building.  The first door is unlocked.  The second door is unlocked.  I access a hallway to my surprise that looks like a college dorm.  One gaunt snowboarder looking guy with a really good Indian face paintjob tells me this is where the camp employees live and laughs hysterically.  I get directions for a bathroom back at our campsite and tell Jeff about my findings.  Armed with only 4 beers, we charge the hill looking for cool people.  The first dude we see outside tells us to go inside to the first dorm on the left.  Stu, the crazy face paint kid is in there and laughs some more.

We end up listening to music and playing a Midwest drinking game which is a bit like beer pong except you use only four cups in each corner and bounce a dice.  The residents are really excited about us being able to have a fire, because the entire season was on too high of a fire risk.  Stu comes back to the fire and we laugh all night about the ridiculous beauty of the area.  Stu spent only 20 nights sleeping indoors from now back to May, when the season started.  At the end of the night, he took off into the dark wearing only Chockas (sp?) on his feet.  It was about 38 degrees.  He goes to a place in the woods by a lake a few miles away where his hammock and sleeping bag are.  The only times he met some wildlife was one day in the early summer when he woke up to a couple of teenager black bears.  It freaked him out a little, but he clapped them away and went back to sleep.  This dude has got it going on.  A little misunderstood by his outrageous, drawn out laugh, but if you can pick the words out of his strong surfer accent and nomenclature, his descriptions of the mountains is brilliant poetry.  “Your standin by a lake, alright, and you look to the left and this slab of shale just shoots up right next to you, seven thousand feet into the sky.  You turn to your right and boom!  Another straight up ramp of rock just launches straight the f^@& up.   AAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAA!”

Tuesday.  Jeff destroyed his shin on a wooden, knee-high piling that was driven into the ground next to the parking space.  They have these all over the park.  Jeff wakes up in a bad mood after finding a warning for leaving one beer can out and not fully extinguishing the fire.  I feel blessed that the dude didn’t give us a ticket, but also proud that we cleaned up that well after as long a night as we had.  Jeff decides to get even by posting a note telling the staff that they need to cut down the stumps and that he could have broken his ankle.  This creates a bad element in our relationship that needs to be addressed.  I don’t ever want to be a contributor to our already ridiculous over-regulation.  I believe this is what made our country weak.  

Lawsuits for burning yourself on a cup of coffee.  I like the fact that if I’m stupid at these parks, I can actually kill myself.  That is what makes it an intense experience.  That’s what I liked about living in New York.  They have naked steel bridge columns in the middle of the roads in Brooklyn.  It makes people think and therefore there are no accidents.   I don’t want to wake up in a bubble-wrapped world covered in warning labels.  But I digress.  So I talk to Jeff about my thoughts and he says that he is not the type of person that participates in the frivolous lawsuits.  He just wanted to let them know, and he is probably not the first person to have that problem.  Being a surfer, he is used to taking responsibility for his safety and feels bad about the note.  We go to take it down, but it has already been taken by the campsite attendant.  I’m just happy that Jeff doesn’t follow the safety over freedom ideology.  We hash out the differences and are back on an even keel.  I tell him, anytime he wants to kick me out of the van, I hold no objections and will give him my share of gas money for the rest of the trip.  We laugh about the nature of confrontation and drive to the Teton National 

Forest where camping is free.

Sweet lakes, sweet peaks, and we look at both from our ranch-side highway leading us east.  Between campsites (some wouldn’t allow fires) there is a pull-off for a glacier view.  There is no glacier and the information sign is scratched off.  I think, “Maybe because I’m not influenced by melting ice caps, I don’t feel like climate change is a big deal.  If I had a glacier in my backyard, it might be more alarming.”  Our destination for the day becomes a lakeside campsite off Gros Ventre Road that is closed, but only for collecting payment.  There are a few campers here and there, and we pretty much have the shore to ourselves.  After some Kung Fu and a freezing cold bath in the lake, we invite some neighbors for a drink and some music.  Brian is a dude with a cool black lab named Harley, and we hang out at the fire playing music and looking at the stars.  This will be the first time we’ve stayed somewhere for a day since Kentucky.

Wednesday.   This is our third week on the road. Pancakes in the morning and we wash clothes and dishes by the lake.  I climb the big hill behind our camp, to get a better view of the lake.  Jeff thinks it is a dumb idea, but I’ve been talking about climbing something since South Dakota.  I want to inspire more off the beaten path activities, too.  We did good Kung Fu while the clothes dried.  Brian and Harley came back over for dinner and chill sessions by the fire. 

More gathering wood and burning wood the next day.  That night we go to Jackson Hole, WY.

Friday morning.  The van gets an oil change and tires rotated after hittiing 5,000 miles for the trip.  While we wait for the van, we find a mom’n’pop pizza shop that tastes just like the Hut.  Afterwards, I get my dreads started at a lady hair salon (they started naturally a month and a half ago on the sailboat) and then we drive to Salt Lake City.  Jeff jumped down from the Idaho state border sign and sprained his ankle.  It’s late by the time we get to Salt Lake, so we pass out in a Walmart parking lot.

Saturday.  Jeff grabs a couple ankle braces in the morning.  He tells me people tend to stare when someone in their 20’s scoots around in a Walmart Rascal power chair.  I go downtown and sell some silver coins.  This is how I keep from spending all of my money too fast, otherwise it would have been gone by the end of week 2.  Jeff is having a tough time hobbling around with his bamboo cane, so we jump on Salt Lake trolley lines while Jeff helps me finish my dreads.  Eva’s, a tapas restaurant, was recommended and did not disappoint.  I don’t like Brussels Sprouts (sp?), but they were damn good.  At night we hung out with some wise, young locals at Twilite bar and drank a few Mexican Restaurant sized mugs.  With the van parallel parked right in front of the bar, it was funny to wake up confused yet convenient.

Sunday.  We tried driving to the super salty lake so I could dip my dreads and accelerate the process.  Much of the shoreline is covered by farmland, so I make salt water in a bucket.  We take Utah 191 through Arches Nat’l Park, past Canyonlands Nat’l Park, to Mesa Verde Nat’l Park.  There’s lots and lots of parks out west.  It’s dark when we arrive and we make ramen on the fire.

Monday morning.  Kung Fu and crazy views at Mesa Verde.  There are also ancient ruins from the Pueblos.  I think they sound dumb and am in a bad mood this morning because of how far behind I am on the blog.  (Seriously, I take this thing seriously.  Thanks for reading J)  Alas, they are freaking sweet.  We want to take a closer look, so go to buy tour tickets for 3 bucks a pop.  A young dude with a golden retriever walks into the ticket office.  The lady says, “All dogs must remain in vehicles in the parking lot.”  The dude tells her it’s a therapy dog.  She cuts him off by saying, “All dogs must remain in vehicles in the parking lot” with robot-tone repetitive precision.  Great.  One of these people.  It’s like her logic is so strong, she can’t move forward with new information or processes if something doesn’t line up with her programming.  I can’t take it and buy the dude’s ticket for him.  Aaron is a cool, cool dude and we hang out for the next couple days.  He’s on his way back to Denver to start several grow houses.  Colorado is a little different than Georgia when it comes to the general image of marijuana.  He tells us if he gets an edibles license, his grow capacity increases from 5 plants to 99.  We have an awesome dinner at a Japanese Steakhouse in Durango, CO.  Aaron buys a couple rounds of sake.  It’s a constant game to be more generous than our guest.

After dinner, we head to a nearby campsite where we meet more cool people.  Jenny and Nick are our new camp neighbors.  Jenny is training to become a Shaman.  Nick grew up in Argentina, spoke Russian his whole life and then finally moved to the states and has absolutely no accent.  He’s around 35, works at a ski resort and brewery in the winter and spends the rest of the year bartending, travelling and camping.  Even with his hockey player haircut, he’s so clean-cut, you wonder if he just stepped out of an American Eagle poster.  It’s hard to believe he’s been camping since March.  His power is only exceeded by his mystery-kind of guy.  Doesn’t share anything but good energy and a level demeanor.  Between all of our new friends, I have a waterfall of inspiration and information to work with.  After all, I’m shopping for some lifestyle design changes out west.

Tuesday.  Pancakes on the fire.  Aaron and I talk philosophy and physics until the middle of the afternoon and then he takes off for Denver.  The dude is like my partner in crime from a different time. 

Jeff and I talk about leaving all day and night.  We give the van a thorough cleaning and I teach Jenny some guitar stuff.  Jeff is exhausted and crashes before the sun falls.  I chill with Jenny til Nick gets off work at the brewery.

Wednesday.  Jeff and I finally leave Durango and Colorado.  The state is cool, at least the part we saw.  The residents have got style.  Every house and mailbox is customized, but not in the tacky East Jersey kind of way.  Lots of solar panels, lots of greenhouses.  You don’t have to cut the grass in southwestern CO.  It just doesn’t grow like back east.  My brother, Steve, and I have discussed many times the folly of maintaining grass.  Why would you spend money, time, and anguish on a crop that doesn’t benefit you in any way?  - Back to the story.  Colorado is truly a colorful place.  Blue lakes, glaring leaves (we are moving with the foliage now), and silver mountains jutting and rolling up the walls.  Not to mention all of the hippie inhabitants and classic cars.  It looks like Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder started a brawl in finger painting class. 

The landscape changes steadily to the desert as we head through the 4-corners.  I am not a fan of imaginary lines and see no reason to stand in four imaginary places at once unless I’m doing something noteworthy.  I think borders caused by the natural separation of people due to the landscape are cool.  I think straight lines drawn in the sand to say that sales tax is 7.3% here and 9.4% here is silly.  We don’t have to send troups to fight Santa Anna’s army for silly, meaningless straight line borders.  I guess that’s the West.  Used to cost a nickel an acre out here.  Probably talking out of my ass, but I think I’m on the right track. 

We are back in Indian Country and alcohol is a bit scarce.  We have been told by several people along the journey that Indian reservations are always dry, meaning no alcohol.  Aaron’s deduction is that they were only first introduced to alcohol when the white man came and have not yet adapted.  Europeans have been drinking for millennia.  Jeff is googling whether anyone has ever seen an Indian with facial hair that could hold his liquor.

Yellowstone

YELLOWSTONE

It’s Friday morning.  We wake up on the scenic pull-off on I-90W in Buffalo, WY.  Through the open double doors of the van, I peak out of my sleeping bag at the thin snow-covered, gently sloping hills.  Jeff grabs the kid’s snowboard that we picked up at a garage sale in Kentucky and starts bombing hills.  He is much more adept on a board than I am, so while he has a little more fun sliding down the small hill, I have a little more terror.  Afterwards we practice rolling the wheel (kung fu technique), we drive toward Montana.

I told Jeff a couple days ago that if we make it to Montana (weather being the deciding factor), I’m buying a big steak dinner.   Less than 30 miles to the border.  The mountains we are looking at in a complete 360 degree panorama are further away.  The cities in Montana are pretty small and we need to get more memory for Jeff’s smart phone, so we aim for Bozeman, a sizable town about 100 miles west with a highway leading to Yellowstone’s west gate.  At a grocery store downtown, we grab two filet mignons, 2lb of London broil, and bacon before heading south.  Another 80 miles or so to the entrance, and he drives us between the winding evergreen walled road in the dark looking for a place to camp.  A rather large female moose trots out into the road and Jeff hits the brakes hard and swerves to barely miss it.  The animal’s back went about midway up the windshield of the van and we approximate the weight to be around 400lb.

At Madison Junction, we found a campsite and stopped to grab firewood from some down trees on the side of the road.  We didn’t know the rules, so tried to be covert until a Ranger stopped and asked if we were alright.  Yep, just getting firewood.  He says goodnight and we drive back to the camping registration lot with arm sized sticks piled a foot and a half tall in the back of the van.  The sign tells us to pay for the campsite in the morning and checkout time is 11AM.  Jeff parks the van on a gravel shoulder between some saplings and RV’s.

Fire, beer, food.  Jeff sets up the bedding and organizes the van.  I build a 2-ply moat of bacon around each of the beef castles, holding them together with metal skewers and toss them on the iron fold-down grill each fire pit is equipped with.  The giant rectangular London broil accompanies them next forming a laughing robot smiley face.  The filets are pretty rare, borderline raw, when pull them off, and the bacon is perfect.  The broil stays on for a while because it’s so huge.  Imagine a buffalo getting hit in the midsection by a snowplow going 90.  Ok, maybe not that gnarly, but it was pretty big.  This was our first steak meal.

For breakfast, Jeff cooks eggs with steak and bacon.  This is or second steak meal in a row.  We clean up the camp site and hang the van floor coverings in the sunlight on a rope tied between the bright red baby pines surrounding our camp site.  Jeff notices it’s already noon, so we pack up and head out.  I tell the lady at the front that we are very late in leaving and would like to pay.  She only charges us for one night which is $23.13, and we head to the canyon.

Not long after we hit the road, we come across a snaking stream.  Candy colored rocks, green-green Christmas trees, and a mountain backdrop.  I had to remind myself to breathe.  A mile after that, there is a sign for a Gibbons Falls by a 20’ x 100’ shoulder for us to park.  Rolling calendar falls, mist shined boulders, blah, blah, blah.  We help a middle aged man hold his handicapped son, about our age, and then let him go so he is standing in front of the view.  Solid dude.  We continue onward to Yellowstone Grand Canyon, which is about 25 miles away.  It’s getting close to 4 now and time again for some steak.  No heating necessary, it’s like cold pizza, and nothing intimidates other tourists like using your teeth to rip off a hunk of dripping dead animal from your bare hand.  Just remember to flex your neck muscles and hold eye contact. 

A half hour down the road (speed limit is between 25 and 45, which is perfect) we start seeing steam coming out of the ground.  We are at the Norris Geyser Basin.  I always though geysers were natures assholes, but they are quite beautiful.  Crystal blue water and colors I did not know existed in nature.  Jeff and I decide there has to be a place where the boiling hot water from a geyser meets the freezing cold water of the lakes and rivers.  We’ll continue searching for this later.  The falls are spectacular and there is a mega huge canyon with a river about 900 feet down.  We can’t see the falls clearly, but can hear it and almost feel the mist. Back in the van and 50 feet up the road is another pull off for Lookout View.  Now we can see the falls.  Back in the van and we see a sign for Grand View.  This is the recurring theme for the rest of the park.  Just one continuous, unique, literally breathtaking view for about 3,400 square miles.  It’s about 5:00 now, so we skip Artist Point and Inspiration Point, otherwise we won’t make it to camp before dark.

After dark we pull into camp at Mammoth Hot Springs.  We spent the rest of the evening driving around and looking at badass stuff until we couldn’t see anymore.  Yellowstone is a hell of a drug.  Jeff and I do the cook clean routine again and guess what is on the menu.  Double Bacon double cheese steaks motha #()@&a!  Extra steak and some mayo on the fire butter-toasted bread, ya dig?  So much meat it should have been two sandwiches, but we woofed em down like a couple hungry hostages.

After dinner, we looked for further entertainment.  Up the hill of the campsite, was a fire with several people laughing and singing.  Music.  We prepare for the crusade.  Bottle of wine, bag of tobacco, guitar, G and D flutes, lantern, and we ride.  Or walk.  I ask if they want some guitar to go with their singing as we approach the light.  Unanimously welcomed, we pop a squat and my frozen fingers do their best to find chords.  They are pretty lit already (about 8 of them) so the requests are constant.  Great, except I only know a bunch of really old songs, most of which have southern rock influence, and the group we are with are mostly international students attending the university of Montana and we are on the Montana-Wyoming border at this point.  One really cool dude, Brandon, is also from Georgia, so I have something to work with.

They are generous with drinks and we are getting along famously when the Ranger pulls up and tells us there’s been a noise complaint.  That is a win and a loss.  Jeff and I are usually by ourselves and don’t have the opportunity to get rowdy enough to cause a disturbance, but at the same time, we have to put away the guitar and we are supposed to be in the great outdoors.  Lame, but we calm down a bit and carry on at a dull roar.  I make the mistake of pulling out the guitar for some instrumental solo songs, which quickly turn into a sing-song fest and the Ranger returns.  Now we are told to go to bed and get to relive the feeling that a 9-year-old has at a slumber party.  Bed time.  Most of the group goes to sleep except Brandon and Bryan, an Irish exchange student, equally cool.  We are all immediately bros and go back to our fire pit for more drinks and conversation.  At around 4AM, we all decide reluctantly that we’d better call it quits because we are getting up around 8.  Ok, one more beer.  One more cigarette.  The fire just lit back up, let’s have another beer.  We felt the other side of a 9-year-old at a slumber party, which is: we don’t want this night to end.  Great talks and great guys.  Bed time.

Sunday.  We get up at about 7:45am.  I run up the hill with a percolator and some Denny’s coffee.  The cloudy pains swelling our brains are occasionally broken by casual conversation.  It is a quiet morning and we head to some sights with our new friends before the take the 5 hour drive back to Missoula.  The first attraction is the Golden Staircase, near our campsite.  This naturally formed terrace is made of sulfur deposits from the geyser on the hill and is pretty cool.  Shiny in the morning sun with vibrant greens and whatnot.  The steak diet has finally caught up to me, so I don’t really feel like climbing the side of a mountain.  I chill by the van and wait for the group to return.  Afterwards, we drive around and find a remote stream to do a little nature walk.  It’s pretty relaxing and after an hour, we end up back at the parking lot.  Brandon and the Indian dude (not native American) take off their socks to do some cold water walking.  Rassimus, I think from Sweden, says you either go in all the way or you don’t and keeps his shoes on.  After a few moments of debate, I look at him and say, “you ready?”  I get down to my skibbies, walk into the middle of the calf-deep stream and lay down.  Cold is what I feel, but after getting back in the grass and sun, I feel great.  Either my nerves were shocked or adrenaline was flowing.  I dried off and felt great the whole time.  Rassimus was next, followed by another really cool chick.  She cut her foot, but not bad, so after a little first aid, I say goodbye and we part ways.  I will be back to visit at least some of them in Missoula.

Jeff had been sleeping the whole time and I took advantage of this to see if a girl was still working at a gift shop in Mammoth that mentioned something about hot springs the night before.  She was and I found out exactly where we had to go.  I spent some time in a dining hall catching up on the blog and then went back to the van.  Jeff just woke up and we watched the elk, who just roam around all over the parking lots and roads.  There are first only 2, and a guy with an orange vest is controlling the crowd to make sure no one gets too close.  It’s a full time job and I take my hat off to the dude that looked like he was the real life version of the redhead from Metalocalyspe.  Soon there were dozens of elk (each about 6’6”, 350) wandering around their yard.  We go up the road 2 miles to the holy grail.

The Gardner River meets the Boiling River.  Not a lot of people are supposed to know about this, because they have become too popular in the past and damages were incurred.  It isn’t on any of the maps and people we told didn’t believe it existed.  This was my favorite moment of the road trip so far.  You park and walk a half a mile along the Gardner River to a stair-sloped bank where you leave your belongings.  The first few steps on the slippery river rocks are freezing cold.  After 20 feet or so, the small waterfalls to your left bring the steaming hot water of the Boiling River.  For the next 30 feet, it is almost unbearably hot.  After climbing a rock ledge, you are in the river.  There is a balance point, where a few inches to the right and you are an ice cube, a few to the left, you are on fire.  Walk this shifty line to the bath where everyone is relaxing.  The hot tub takes me a while to get acclimated, but finally I can sit underneath the waterfall from the Boiling River.  Absolutely amazing.  Best night of my life, again.  We are going back in the morning to enjoy this some more.

n   I’ve seen some amazing things like the Himalayas in Nepal, but I kind of forget after a while.  Pictures remind me, but the lesson I’m trying to learn is have a good time today.  It doesn’t matter if you are waiting at the DMV drinking complimentary burnt coffee, or hang gliding off of the mountains in Tasmania, have a good time.  Have the best time of your life.  Don’t do things that you think are going to be memorable.  Do what you want at that moment.  Live now.  Every day is the best day of your life.  Try to argue that. Beeyuch. J

It is very dark when we leave the hot river (big surprise) and we talk about the Big Dipper on the walk back to the van, hoping that a bear doesn’t make us his pre-hibernation meal.  Coyote howls are a little nerve racking, but I think I’m a little big for their menu.  We go back to Mammoth to camp at the same spot as last night.  There’s hardly anyone there because it’s Sunday night at the end of the season.  As Jeff is parking to go slip the envelope in the late registration box with our fee inside, I ask, “why don’t we just head south?”  Plan change!  We throw all of our plans out the window and turn the van around.  Down we go.

On our way to the Tetons, we pass Old Faithful.  Brandon told us this is a check-it-off-the-list spot, but not really amazing.  Maybe it’s better at night.  I insist we get really, really warm because it could be a 30-100 minute wait and it’s cold out.  We grab a six-pack and some blankets and try to find it in the dark.  The wooden viewing platform is huge and really far away from the geyser, so it must be pretty serious.  I want to walk up to it.  We decide not to, because walking on thermal ground isn’t a great idea, and you can be in a hot tub before you know it. 

The geyser does its thing for about 4 minutes and we just chill looking at the Big Dipper again, which is behind it.  It’s like the architect of the park researched my brain before erupting that volcano half a million years ago.  I’m still itching to see it up close, and stumble up the rocky hill in the dark for about 50 yards.  I dodge some warm water puddles the size of our van and hear the big hollow sound of Darth Vader inhaling.  There’s some slight vibration in the ground and a faint orange glow on the inside rim of the geyser opening.  I use my adolescent Georgia spitting skills to land in the hole while still keeping an 8 foot distance.  I whisper yell to Jeff and convince him to come up and spit in it, too, then we skedaddle.  We sleep in the Old Faithful parking lot and head for the Tetons in the morning.

Post 3 - Great Plains

I want to apologize for being so sporadic and sparse lately on my updates.  Ask Jeff, Steve, Femi, Dubi, or anyone else that has traveled with me and they will tell you I am fanatical about getting the blog updated.  It kills me everyday that I feel it's overdue.  It's been 3 weeks since my last update.  The reason it has taken so long is mainly because we suck at relaxing and are always on the go.  The few times we stop somewhere with wifi, it is usually bogged down with 30 laptops all streaming music and uploading photos.  Which means nobody gets anything done because the internet is so slow.  I've conferred with strangers and they too couldn't run AOL 95 on their machines.  Frustrating.  It will be nice when data transfer speed catches up with the applications or programs or whatever.  I feel better now that we've cleared things up.


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I almost ran over a zombie.

I forgot to mention this in the last post.  We were heading into Indiana for the night (this is before the all-nighter in Denny’s) and driving through an urban area in the southern part of the state.  It’s about 11pm and we just left a Laundromat, where I slept and Jeff washed some clothes.  I’m still a little groggy as I wind the van under bridges on the three lane highway in the industrial part of downtown.  I catch something moving from the left, toward my lane through the headlight periphery.  What I think were white sneakers, blue jeans, a sweat shirt, and a 5-oclock shadow strided across the van’s path, about 45 feet in front.  I was doing about 55 and jerked the wheel to the left, missing the pedestrian by about a chair length.  He had a really good bigfoot arm swing going and didn’t look up from the road for a second.  Now I was a awake, but still forgot to write about this at Denny’s from focusing on the blog and conversation with the waitress.  I was on terminator mode, half asleep, on a mission to finish the next post.




IOWA



Des Moines is a really, really cool town.  Really clean and what looked like a good sized young crowd.  Lot's of microbrewing (El Bait Shop had like 84 local beers on tap) and the bridges reminded me of northern Europe.  If you are into cities, the indie scene, beer, or bridges at all, you'll appreciate a visit.

So stoked I got to hang out with my uncle.  I finally got in touch with him an hour after we'd passed the turn to Cedar Rapids, IA.  He was in South Dakota heading to Sioux Falls for a drop off.  After going back and forth with him about a meetup scheme, I decided to just haul ass to Sioux Falls.  I might have driven a bit over the speed limit, but when's the next time I'll be in Iowa to see him.  Besides, it's Iowa.  There's hardly anyone on the road here.

SOUTH DAKOTA

The prices are pretty sweet in SD.

Weak food, weak attitude.

Humans might just eat to nourish our emotions.  We have big brains and looking at other animals, we eat a lot of really intensely flavored food.  When I am craving a particular flavor, it haunts me until I satisfy it.  I’ve just spoiled myself, that’s all.  They have some awesome comfort food in this part of the country.  Food has become a serious passion of mine.I’m gonna be fat as hell after I hit 30 J  

The Black Hills (dark green)

MODERN INDIANS

A cool chick at a gas station refers us to Wanblee, an Indian reservation because we want some culture shock.  She gave a brief introduction of the people, which basically said they are living off of the government and because of strong traditionalism, are not adapting well to the “real world”.  This is one side of the story and the only information we had at the time.  With limited information, we as humans develop strong preconceptions. 

We stopped at the first store we saw in the land of the red man.  I wanted to talk to some of the locals and ask some questions or something.  I was confused and sheepish.  I think what I really wanted to do was interview some intelligent people of a different culture, but in the pinnacle of my culture shock, I just ended up making a jackass out of myself.  I walked into this store and couldn’t keep eye contact with anyone.  I’ve never been in a grocery store completely filled with native Americans.  They wore the same clothes as me, spoke English with an Indian accent, and just carried on like normal people.  With the ugly behavioral descriptions planted in my brain by the chick from that morning, I attempted to explain to the young girl working the register that we were traveling and talking to people all over the country to show that people think the same.  I’m not sure what rambling came out, but it must have been entertaining because she just laughed and laughed at me.  I deserved it for sure.  I got back in the van and said, “go.”

They love walking. Maybe they don’t, but they casually walk 10 or 15 miles.  We picked up an older native American lady walking down a really long stretch between towns when we went to check out the Indian reservation in southern South Dakota.  I think it is the Nakota tribe down there, but can’t be certain.  There was at least 5 miles of pure nothingness in each direction of the woman who was walking on the shoulder of the highway.  At around 4:30PM, with the wind steadily blowing 20-25 mph, we knew it was gonna get cold soon and she was wearing a t-shirt.  I think we baffled her at first and possibly terrified her when we randomly stopped in the middle of the road to talk to her.   After 20 seconds or so of trying to explain that we were offering a ride, she got in.  She was overly sweet and quiet.  I couldn’t hear a word she was saying to Jeff from the back of the truck, so just played guitar softly to let her know I wasn’t doing something conniving.  It is a blank white van with no windows on the side.  A little sketchy, especially for a couple white devils in red land.   She was walking to get gas for her son who ran out a few miles back.  Jeff talked to her about family and asked if she concerned herself with national or global politics.  As a stay at home mom of nine kids, she said she didn’t focus on much outside of her home.  Probably an awesome mother.  We dropped her off in the next town, where she said she would get gas for her son and walk back to his truck.  She smiled at our offer to chauffeur her back to the truck, and said she would take care of some things in town first.

About  15 miles further, on our way to the town Wanblee, we see a young native American couple walking with a small dog, again on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere.  They did not hesitate to jump in the van baring those bright native smiles.  They liked our van and mission and we gave them a couple beers.  They said we were cool, which we thought was really cool.  Never been told I was cool by an Indian before.  We talked about music and whatnot and dropped them off at the next town.  All in all we saved a total of about 30 miles of walking today.  5 hitch hikers so far.

 the west is with the times

MONTANA

The whole goal of the trip so far has been to make it as far Northwest as possible before the weather fell apart.  The main reason we shot through IN, IL, and IA so fast was because locals kept telling us it usually doesn't stay nice this long.  We cross the Montana border in the middle of the night and sleep on a scenic pull off.  It's pitch black outside.  In the morning we open the side doors.

We got there just in time.

The views just never get old.

I am annoyed by my unrelenting tendency to gawk at and photograph the views in this part of the country.  It’s just big.  Big fields.  Big sky.  Big hills.  And it keeps getting bigger and more interesting.  I’m glad we saw the gradual change from east to west, because flying in or going the opposite direction would be more temporary and disappointing, respectively.  I say whoooooooaaaaa, and then take a picture.  I look away for A SECOND and then look back and say whooooooaaaaaa, and take the same picture.  I noticed how frequent I do this after going through my pictures and deleting all of the duplicates.

Like I've said a hundred times, I'm gonna get better about updating more frequently.  I have 2 more posts in queue already.  Just gotta get some more solid wifi.  It's late now, an we're about to leave for Vegas.  Haha yeah, think about what's happened between the snow and now!