A Good Sunday – A Real Good Sunday

Last Sunday, (not this most recent one, but the one before it) was a pretty fun day around here.

The morning started off early. We drove over to the zoo and found some free parking right outside the gate. From there, we were going to take the bus into down town, and then back to the zoo later. I drove over there, so that when we were done with the zoo, we could just come home, and not have to deal with waiting for a bus.

The instant I parked the car, our bus showed up. Running on a Sunday schedule, we figured it would be a while before another one came along. "Hurry! Bus!" I tried shouting to the child in an effort to get her to move toward the bus stop. But the words must have come out, "Take your time. Put on you fingerless gloves. Decide whether or not to bring your water bottle with you. You have all the time in the world."

Standing at the cold bus stop, we were lucky that the next bus came along in only about 8 minutes, to whisk us down town. We were heading into the city for two reasons:

• To show Gwen the opening ceremony at the Disney Store.
• To get pictures taken with Santa.

The Disney Store opened at 11:00, so we went into Macy's (henceforth called "Field's" in the rest of this post) first.

If you haven't been to Marshall Field's in Chicago at Christmas time, let me tell you, they go all out. Inside and out is done very nicely and very tastefully. They always do the animated window displays, and the whole place is decorated very nicely.

Once we got into the store, we headed up to the 8th floor? Furniture? No, silly, the 8th floor has a great spot where you can look out over their fancy dining room, The Walnut Room, while people enjoy the holiday tradition of having lunch by the beautiful tree. (FYI – It's not a walnut tree.)

After scouting out the tree in the Walnut room, we headed down stairs to see how long the line for Santa was going to be. RE-DIC-U-LOUS, and it was only 10:00!

Sigh.

We prowled around the store a bit more before heading across the street to the Disney Store to get good seats for the opening ceremony. The entrance to the store is inside a mall type building, so the 3 of us grabbed a bench and waited.

As part of the ceremony, a few "cast members" as the employees are called, ask a young member of the audience to turn a key in an oversized lock, unlocking their imagination, causing the velvet ropes to fall and the store to be declared open. Well, the cast member hoisting the oversized key above her head didn't imagine that a 5 foot long key would have any trouble going through a 4 foot wide door until "DONG!" and both ends hit their respective sides of the door frame, causing her to rebound slightly back into the store before rotating the key to fit through the opening and on to the ceremony.

Hopefully, the other cast members are still teasing her about it.

Afterwards, we went over to the Christkindlmarket in Daley Plaza. It's a traditional German style market on the plaza. We stopped in there to see if the Christmas tree that we have this year was a bad as they were suggesting mocking on the radio. (Hint: Oh yeah!) And we had some roasted cashews and while we were looking around, saw a relatively short line for a pictures with Santa.

FREE. PICTURES. WITH. SANTA.

Not the best resolution in the world, but it was a pretty nice Santa setup.

After the picture, we headed over to Field's to eat at their basement restaurant Infileds. (Note: It ain't called "Inmacys"). After a very nice meal, we bought some fudge with one of the gift cards we've had for a while, did a little shopping on State Street, then hopped the 151 (aka the "Bacardi Bus") back to the zoo.

Gwen's Biology teacher assigned her class a project where they needed to go to the zoo and observe some of the animals that were outside in the winter. With all the traveling that we'll be doing soon, we thought we'd better knock off the visit as soon as possible.

We had a blast at the zoo.

We saw my favorites, the seals…

And both types of leopards: Snow and regular.

But the real treat. Correction, the realest treat was hanging out having a great day with my family. The second realest treat was Zoo Lights. They light up the zoo, and it's pretty awesome.

As the sun set and it started getting dark, but not dark enough to enjoy the lights, we retreated to the warmth of the car, conveniently parked right outside the front gate. As we sat there, engine running, the girls changed coats and reviewed the pictures for the project while Christmas music played on the radio. And the vultures lined up for our parking space.

Free parking over there is somewhat limited, so people were lining up, one after another to see if we were pulling it. First it was annoying. Then it got funny. Then it got annoying again, so we shut down the car and headed back into the zoo for the lights.

Here are some pictures.

No, that's no one we know in silhouette. Just random person ruining the shot.

It forever for us to get this penguin picture. There was a lady who sort of wanted to get her kid's pictures taken by it, but the kid really wasn't interested, so she stood there for like 5 minutes as the line kept growing, oblivious to anything but her darling son, wandering aimlessly around the statue. Never once barking instructions to him to just stand there and look at mommy like I would have gotten. No, she was more interested in nurturing his natural curiosity about the world around him while she totally ignored the world around here. Just as I was getting ready to lose my Christmas cheer, they wandered off and we got this shot.

And we got to see a sleeping gorilla up close and personal and thankfully behind some very think glass.

And here's a little video I shot of the light show…

and it stars Dancer & Prancer.

Road Trip 2011 – Part 5 – Heading Home

Day 5 – (Alright, it's now almost December, and I'm writing about August, get over it.) Talk about a low energy day. There was one more scheduled sightseeing stop on the 702 mile par 5 with a dog leg to the right that we had remaining.

The Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. The corn palace is really just the community gym/auditorium. But every year, they decorate the outside of it with corn. It's pretty neat, actually. Unfortunately, there was some kind of street fair going on, so we couldn't really appreciate it in totality.

The front of the building looked like this. (See street fair!)

And here's Gwen with the the Corn Palace mascot. 


An example of how they do it in a "paint by numbers" sort of way. 


Yeah, those little dots are the girls. Sorry.

But my favorite picture from Mitchell is this one:

    
You see, my wife is… well… there's no way to put it… she's UNIQUE. (And I love her for it.)

The prairie sun had been wrecking havoc on her skin. She'd gotten a sunburn on her arms, and her hands had started to swell. So she was cowering from the sun between two parked cars before "dashing" to the Corn Palace for pictures. And later, she donned a hoodie and a pair of winter gloves to battle that evil glowing orb.

But seriously, isn't she the most adorable thing you've ever seen?

As the morning drive continued, we crossed into Minnesota, where they were putting those prairie winds to good use.

As the morning turned to afternoon, we passed two signs that symbolize Minnesota.

The Spam Museum! I love the stuff, but the rest of the people in the car? Not so much.  So onward we plunged until…

… we saw that the people responsible for sending Al Franken to the Senate are also prepared to roll over for our cybernetic overlords.

I kept looking at the estimated time of arrival at home on the GPS (we call him "Croc" because we chose the Australian accent), and realized a few things:

• It was possible to make it home that evening.
• That time did not factor in lunch, dinner, or stops for gas.
• I didn't have it in me to make it home THAT evening.

So at a rest stop in Minnesota (a thank you to the fine citizens of Minnesota for solving your budget crisis that had closed the rest stops earlier in the summer), Cora and I made a deal. Same deal as the day before, only this time we MEANT it. We would find a place around 6:00, get a room, have a nice dinner, and re-freakin-lax for a few hours.

Crossing the Mississippi into Wisconsin, we set our sights on Tomah, WI as our destination for the evening. It was perfect. We'd get there around 6:00, we'd have about 4 hours of driving in the morning. And we could make "Kindergarten Cop" jokes all night.  ("It's not a Tomah!")

As we drove along, I saw this old barn that reminded me of home.  From a "old red barn" point of view, not that our house was falling down or anything.

And since it was August, this guy must have be getting ready for snow or something.

At the hotel, we asked the desk clerk for her advice on a place to eat. She gave us a 10% coupon for the Ground Round. I wasn't expecting a whole lot of the Ground Round. I knew the name, but was thinking it was like the Sizzler (cheap steakhouse) or something. The food was surprisingly good.

After a relaxing night, the next morning was a snap. As we crossed the Wisconsin/Illinois border, I think the sign said, "Welcome to Illinois. Pay up." Ah, the toll road. A sure sign we are entering the Chicagoland metro area! Planning ahead, I'd taken my IPASS transponder with me, so I at least was paying the normal rate, not the double rate for cash. Every mile closer to home, things got more and more familiar, and changed from: "I drove up here once for a wedding" to "I used to go to that mega-cinema when it opened."

I know it's hard to read, but the question is, "Why are there all the hazardous material signs on a GE.COM/WATER truck?"

Our path took us past O'Hare, and Cora got a fabulous series of pictures of a plane landing right over the interstate.

And finally, we were home. 2,233 miles, 8 states, 4.5 days, and 58 gallons (or so) later: We.  Were.  Home.

After unloading the car, we did what everyone wants to do when the get home from a vacation.

We fell upon our beds and took long, solid naps.

---

Random bits from the road:

• We checked off the different license plates we saw on the road along the way. Rarest (and about the last new one we got): Rhode Island The strangest one we didn't get: North Dakota. We drove thru all the neighboring states, and were within 100 miles of the state once. 40 US states and 6 Canadian provinces.
• I wish we'd fueled up before leaving. Our stats are a little off, but basically, we got almost 39 mpg and paid an average of $3.71 a gallon, about $0.09 a mile.
• Would I do the drive again? Absolutely! Totally worth it. I would do it a little differently. Maybe plan in out as a 5.5 day trip. Taken a whole day at Yellowstone, then a travel day. Then a whole day @ Rapid City/Rushmore/Crazy Horse/Wall/Badlands. But totally worth the trip.
• Gwen, while I didn't talk about her much, was a total trooper. Can't remember one tantrum, snit, or whine-fest from the back seat the whole time. Yeah, she listened to her iPod a lot, but she was also looking out the windows, taking things in, and she really got into the license plate game.
• Cora. Was. Awesome. Cora does not like to drive in city traffic, but give her an open interstate, and the gal can drive.

The Great Road Trip 2011 – Part 4 – Rushmore. Rush Less.

Day 4 – Gillette, Wyoming – Having heard that you should see Mt. Rushmore in the morning due to the lighting, we got up early and headed out.  Surprisingly, we were in pretty good shape, considering how ragged we were the night before.

I did have to give Gwen a ride in from the car, though.
 

The free breakfast was the best of the trip.  I guess it was Wyoming's way of apologizing for the night before. They had bacon & sausage!   And mini-omelets with cheese!

And grannies with pink racing stripes in their hair!  I guess that's proof that when you reach a certain age, you don't give a rat's fat @$$ what anyone else thinks about you.

We set out across the flat Wyoming prairie heading toward Rapid City.  Rapidly.  Our path would carry us near Devils Tower.

And past Devils Tower.  At about 75 mph.

We'd talked about it, and it was about 30 miles off the highway.  That was going to add about another hour and a half or so for a 5 minute photo-op just to say we saw it.  So Devils Tower didn't make the cut.  But technically, we did SEE it on the horizon.

What we saw from the interSTATE, at speed.

What we could have see (stolen from the interNET.)

Our route took us thru Sturgis, SD.  Home of the famous/ infamous "Sturgis Motorcycle Rally".  Luckily, we missed bike week by about 10 days.  There were still plenty of people around the area riding their Harleys, but they were your typical bikers out on a sightseeing vacation ride with their wives and friends.

Now, I've been to Mt. Rushmore.  It was many years ago, but I recalled parking in a big parking lot, and walking up a pathway to a split rail wooden fence and seeing the monuments.

The place looks a little different now.  Fancier.

The parking lot has been replaced by a parking garage, and the pathway and wooden fence have been upgraded, too. Here's a little 360° shot I did.

The weather was perfect.  I don't think the sky gets anymore BLUE than that.  And the sun was baking the two fair skinned members of my little tribe.  Speaking of tribes, after we got home (don't judge), we watched an episode of "Kate + Eight" and they were there in July, and it was cloudy, and Kate kept saying it was Franklin D. Roosevelt up there (it's Teddy), and she bitched and whined about people taking their picture and Tweeting about them as they rushed through with their camera crew and entourage in tow.  So glad that freak show wasn't there when we were there.

The obligatory picture.

I couldn't resist the urge to get all artistic when I got home.

Then someone busted out her telephoto lens…

The view from atop the benches just outside the parking garage.

George in profile from the road.  He's giving Gwen the skunk-eye.

When we got to Mt. Rushmore, we did see a "Snooki-wannabee" (heretofore called "B( . )( . )B Lady").  Let's just say Rushmore didn't have an exclusive on "manmade mountains" that day.  But in the spirit of American kinship, we took her group's photo, and she took ours.  With each other's cameras.  Not with our own like she seemed to think at the beginning.  (They posed but forgot to hand over a camera!)  Then came our turn.

After Rushmore, we took the twisty turning road (where you get the profile shot of George up there) to the nearby Crazy Horse Memorial.  This work-in-progress sculpture is pretty cool.  What really helps it out are the orientation movie you can watch, and the huge Native People's craft hall.  If it were just the statue in it's current state, maybe not so much.  If they ever complete the sculpture, and since this is as far as they've gotten in 63 YEARS, it's a valid "if", I do want to come back and see it.  I just don't see how the arm and the horse's hoof are going to do that.

One thing that's hard to tell here is scale.  There are people and dump trucks up on the mountain, working, in the shot.  Luckily, Cora's telephoto lens to the rescue.

One thing about Crazy Horse, the guy, is that while they are carving a statue of him, no one really knows what he looked like.  Over there on the right is a carving based on "word pictures" that the sculptor got from some people who met him back, "in the day".

Guess they could pull up DMV records from that long ago.

In theory, this is what the mountain is going to look like.

An model of Crazy Horse's head.

A model of the Crazy Horse's horse's head.

Two models…

After Crazy Horse, we drove back to Rapid City, and ate @ Perkin's.

It's an inside joke with her father, but the food was pretty good, and we all needed to slow down a little, since it was about 3:00 in the afternoon and we'd been going all day.  Earlier, Cora and I had a talk, and we agreed that we weren't going to try to kill ourselves driving over to Souix Falls, SD (about 350 miles away).  We were thinking of calling it a day around 6:00 and finding a hotel and a nice dinner.  We knew we were wearing out, and we didn't HAVE to make the drive in 4 days.

That plan didn't play out exactly as we'd hoped, as you will see.

Right outside Rapid City a little ways is Wall, SD.  Home of the famous Wall Drug Store.  We didn't really have time for much more than a pit stop & a few quick photos.  We were losing our light, so we posed for a couple of pictures with some new friends.

And having learned our lesson from the day before, headed off for "The Badlands" well before dark.

For those of you who have never been, the Badlands are really spectacular.  You're driving along through absolutely non-descript open grasslands and then, you're faced with something not of this earth.

Suddenly, the grassland turns into this rugged and desolate landscape.

Imagine driving your covered wagon along and then hitting this canyon?

 
Seriously, what would you do?

Besides stop and admire the flowers.

 
Go around?

Try to climb down?

Or just hang your head…

and curse the Fates?

I tried to get a shot of how steep, deep and utter deadly a plop over the edge would be.

 
3D to 2D fail, but trust me, slipping over the edge would make for a very bad day.

I can safely say, Cora was not happy to be wandering around on the edge of the cliff.

But Gwen seems to be happy…

Cora didn't mind taking pictures from the side of the road.  This is one of Cora's shots.  I just love the colors in the rocks.

 
Another "Cora Special".  The woman can compose a picture.

 
Yes, we were really losing our light as the wife snapped this one.

But we had to stop once more to see what everybody was looking at in this field…

PRAIRIE DOGS!!!!

Eventually, we bid the Badlands "goodbye" and got back on I-90 heading east.

And crossed into the Central Time Zone, and lost another hour!  R@T F@RTS!

But a funny thing happened.  While it slowly became night, it stayed "dusk" for a pretty long time.  Almost as if the sun was trying to make up for the stunt it'd pulled on us the night before.

We drove on until we got to Oacoma, SD.  It wasn't super late, when we pulled in, but there was something horrifying going on:

MAYFLIES! OH!DEAR!LORD!IN!HEAVEN! MAYFLIES!!

There were swarms of thousands and thousands of them everywhere.  We don't have them around here, so I didn't know what they were until the hotel manager told me.  And then I relaxed, because I did know that:

• Mayflies don't sting or bite.
• Mayflies last about as long as Lindsay Lohan's rehabs.

We didn't get a picture of them because, well, they're still gnasty bugs flying all over and it gets a little freaky when they start landing in your hair, or flying up your untucked t-shirt and stuff, and we opted to run like the wind (Bullseye) whenever we were near them.

In the morning, one of the maids was sweeping up the piles of mayflies from in front of the entrance way.  (Picture stolen from the internet)

But better than the mystery stain from Bozeman!