INTO THE FUTURE: THE LAST FEW DAYS

Sorry I’ve been gone for awhile.  Busy!  (I almost wrote "busty," but you’d know that wasn’t true…. hah!!!)  But a good friend of mine, (HI MARY GARLAND!!!)  reminded me that there are people reading these blogs, and they really appreciate the break from watching Two and A Half Men (just kidding…) so could we please get on with it???  Which reminds me, we’re keeping all of your emails and responses, so keep sending them!

OH MY GOD, IT'S BEEN A MONTH ALREADY!!!!

NIAGRA FALLS

This was, hands down, the most awesome, fun, absolutely best just-like-an-amusement-park-ride thing I’ve done since I used to kayak down the Klamath.  (For those of you who don’t live in California, the Klamath is a river in northern CA…)  Today we took something called Maid of the Mist, which is a 30-minute boat trip into the mouth of Niagara Falls.  There are no words to describe it.  If I was wealthy beyond belief, I would rent all of the boats and take everyone I know and their families and the people I met standing in line on these boats, and then have a party to celebrate how much fun we just had.  Yes, we’re Americans, but I must say I think the three of us were the only people openly screaming and yelling and laughing and oh-my-godding and probably swearing, on the boat.   It was a boat of the huddled masses, although fairly well shod, and everyone, whether out loud or privately, was rejoicing in the fact that it exists!!!  I have to say, one of the questions I’ve asked myself again and again on this trip is “Why?”  Why would people choose to live here or do that or stay or leave or whatever?  Why?  Seeing the falls made me ask myself another question:

If I had a choice to be one of the following, which would it be?  (And you can only choose one.  There’s no mix and match, no second choices, only A, B, or C.)

A.      Be really (really really) wealthy in a forgotten city.

B.       Be middle class (lower, really) in a great city.

C.       Be poor in the best in the world.

(No correct answer will follow.)

PIE     

Sometimes that says it all, doesn’t it?  Claudia Schmidt does this amazing homage to pie, entitled PIE, and every time I have a bite of a really good pie, I want to hear her do this piece.  Today we stopped at a little (Erie) lake side shack called Jack’s.  It’s in Westfield, between Erie, PA and Buffalo, NY, and it was the perfect road trip spot.  Cork had a pan sautéed perch sandwich.  Lily had a”fried” salad,(lettuce with chicken and curly fries. go figure, but it was great) and I had potato pancakes with applesauce and sour cream and a big glass of fresh concord grape juice.  I was in childhood flashback heaven!  And then, of course, pie.  A not-too-big piece of fresh raspberry pie.  OMG.  Of course we had to get a piece of coconut cream pie for later, just in case….

Right now Lily is giving Cork a lesson on what underwear NOT to buy if we ever send him to buy underwear again.  (Which, believe me, we won’t.)  He’s driving, which makes this a particularly funny exchange and makes me wonder what the heck the other drivers think when they look in their rearview mirrors and see what looks like grandma panties (or auntie panties as I like to call them) being dangled from the ceiling! 

We stayed at our favorite RV site to date, for anyone planning on traveling through this region.  It’s the Erie, PA KOA, and it’s spacious, beautiful, and clean, has great bikes to rent and goats to pet and stray cats to feed.  It rained, of course (see below) but that made sleeping so much better.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

The day before yesterday we left Milwaukee after spending four wonderful, although wet, days hanging out with friends and family.  From the Friday night Fish Fry to pizza in front of the TV watching Glee (thank you, Steve and Jodie, with putting up with Lily’s “football”) we relaxed and I reminisced.  Although I haven’t lived in Milwaukee since 1986, I still consider it home.  I love returning to Shorewood, which I try to do every couple of years.  The familiarity is always welcome.  There’s sameness to these visits, which is a good thing.  We stayed with our friends Thalia and David (THANK YOU!!!) and ate custard (either Kopp’s or Culver’s,) and drove along the lakefront, walked to Atwater beach.  Lily got to see her cousins, Ryan, Mikail, and Mable, and even had the extra benefit of getting to see Sally, a friend of Mikail’s, and ours, who stayed with us in SF for a few months.  I got to see my OABFFITEW, Jodie, and her husband Steve EVERY DAY!!! which is pretty much worth the trip right there. 

We visited the Chicago Art Institute, a first for me.  I have to admit, I’m not a huge museum fan.  It’s not that I don’t like them; it’s just that unlike many other people I’m not as in awe of everything between the four walls.  This was different though.  To stand in front of some of the works that I’ve read about and/or heard and seen referenced for years in books, movies, plays, conversations, was really amazing.  Pollock, Renoir, Seurat, Hopper, O’Keefe of course were just a few.  Lily’s favorite piece was a Paul Evans metal weave/sculpture screen from the late ‘50s.  She says she now has a new idea for her bedroom, which is a little scary!!!

We visited and had lunch with my brother, Dan, and his wife, Jen, and their 2-year-old daughter, Mable.  She is smart and very sweet.  Lily and Mable had an instant bond when they first met a year ago, and it didn’t take much to rekindle that connection.  It’s important to me that Lily has some contact with her cousins as she grows up, even if it’s only once a year. 

As we left Milwaukee, we decided to stop at a new coffee place, which is something I’ve been doing quite often on this trip.  We walked through the door of Altera Coffee in Shorewood, and sitting there at a table was Tracy Phalen, a woman I went to school with.  If I remember correctly, we were in both junior high and high school together, but we could have even been younger.  Tracy is a special person.  She’s ALIVE!!!!  She has very few filters, and I’m pretty sure she’s had a fairly difficult life, but she always has a big smile on her face.  When I was in Milwaukee for my 30^th reunion, I walked into the room and Tracy was there with a big smile on her face.  “Andrea!!!!”  I avoided her the entire time.  Why?  Well, partly because she was a little inebriated and a little loud.  When I returned to SF after the reunion, the only thing I regretted was that I hadn’t spent more time with Tracy.  Of all the people I saw at the reunion, she was one of the only genuine people I saw.  Genuine in the sense that she was really happy to see me.  Not to see how I was doing or what I was doing or who I had married or if my looks had “held up,” but because I was her friend and had always treated her well and we’d had fun together.  And for whatever reason I had brushed her off.

Anyway, there was Tracy, so I walked up to her table and said “Tracy!!!” and she looked up with that great smile and jumped up and gave me a big hug, and everything was okay.  She got to meet Cork and Lily, and we all traded stories and thoughts about politics and technology.  I asked her if she was happy and she said “You know, 4 days out of the week I’m pretty happy and the other 3, I just have too much time on my hands.”  I thought that was a pretty fair answer. 

My brother, Dan, lent us his car, which was GREAT since from the moment we picked it up it was pouring.  Not just a light sprinkle, but full blown car rocking, skin soaking rain.  On Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, it rained.  It even followed us to Toledo, Ohio (yesterday) and is threatening to visit us at our campsite in Erie, Pennsylvania tonight.  We’re okay with it actually.  Yesterday’s drive felt like one of those days we all had as kids where you’re home from school for whatever reason, and it’s kind of dark and quiet and you spend all day sleeping or reading or watching TV.  Lily sat and drew and listened to music and chatted with us.  I have a terrible cold, so I just kind of sat and hung out and felt perfectly okay not feeling perfectly okay.  Today we took a trip into Toledo to see the sculpture Cork did for the Art Tatum memorial.  I think it’s my favorite sculpture that he’s done recently, and it was nice to be able to see the finished product.  I usually get to see the plans and then the sculpture in pieces, but seldom do I get to see the entire piece.  It’s beautiful. 

We got a little lost on the way to find the memorial, partly due to the fact that there were these parking signs that we just could not make sense out of.  All along the streets were metered spaces with signs that said “Parking between 8:00 – 11:00 and 2:00 – 5:00. “  We figured that meant there was no parking between 11:00 and 2:00, right?  Wrong.  I finally went into a store to ask what the signs meant, and it turns out that from 11:00-2:00 every day parking is free!!!  Go figure!  Anyway, the best thing about stopping in to ask the question is that the place I stopped in to was a showroom/art room for adults with disabilities, and their work was BEAUTIFUL!!!  We stayed and chatted with them for a while.  They were very excited that Cork was an artist, too, and they showed us around and pointed out which work was theirs.  I bought a few things (see the “groovy” pin???)  and promised to visit their website for future gifts.  It was such a great stop.  I went up to tell one guy that I liked his work and before I even got a word out he jumped up from the table and gave me quite a happy hug.  I love those moments.

I WAS GOING TO UPLOAD A BUNCH OF PICTURES, BUT THE INTERNET IS SOOOOOOO SLOOOOWWWWWW THAT I MIGHT HAVE TO WAIT.....

HEY AIN-A-HEY

Hey dere, don'tcha know, hey, that we're in the midwest!  Come and holler by my house so my mom can see who I hang by.  Throw the baby down the stairs a cookie.  Throw your mama from the train a kiss goodbye.
For people who aren't from the midwest this might sound strange, but believe me, it's how many people talk. 

We left the Twin Cities this morning, after having a WONDERFUL breakfast with my brother Clif's daughter Casey, her husband Chad and their daughter Leita.  I haven't seen Casey since before Lily was born, and it was a sweet reunion.  Leita is 3 1/2 and beautiful and smart and sassy.  Casey and Chad seem really solid.  We talked about family and life and ate breakfast and we showed them the RV just in case they decide to take a trip of their own, which we would highly recommend. 

Yesterday we spend part of the day with Kjersti, who gave us a tour of Lake of the Isles and Kenwood Loring Park.  We had lunch and then took a nice, slow walk through the sculpture garden.  Kjersti is an avid traveler and camper, and gave us all sorts of ideas of roads to travel and places to see.  I have to admit, we got a little lost at the end of today and ended up at a place called Pettibone's RV in La Crosse, Wisconsin.  Ohmygod is this place different!  Beautiful (our site is right a tributary of the Mississippi River) but definitely we're in a state of happy drinkers.  The only place the site gets internet is in the office/bar, where I'm sitting and happily sipping a Bloody Mary surrounded by people who have probably been bellied up to the bar for the better part of the day.  No one makes any excuses, just has another drink.  It's actually pretty great to see Lily 1) unaware of most of the inebriation and 2) grossed out about what she does get. 

We're happy to have a place to land since this weekend is the beginning of Octoberfest, which is big around these parts.  Even though I lived in Milwaukee for years, it's been long enough that I don't really remember the scale of the celebration, although I'm getting the idea sitting in here.  I'm more focused on the Packer/Bear game that's going to happen in Milwaukee on Sunday.  Oooohhhhh, things could get crazy! 

Thinking....

Spoon Bridge with Cherry

I know I've said it before, but this country really is beautiful.  Except for a few moments of monotony, every day and every state has offered hours of entertainment.  Okay, I just totally lost my train of thought 'cuz they're blasting Neil Diamond from the stereo and people are yelling for more beer and  kids are screaming and I'm heading back to home ... er, I mean the RV...

More Corn

The Palace

Constructing the murals

Everything is used, the husks, the silk, the kernals

Corn wall

Lily doing the Corn Dance

Lily being Corny

Corn Palace and Spyglass Coffee

One of the places we visited on our way through South Dakota was the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.  For years each year the town would build this structure from the ground up, all out of corn.  Unfortunately these structures were magnets for fire, lightening, cigarettes, and would go up in a ball of flame on a regualr basis.  I don't know what the underlying structure is, but they change murals, still all made out of corn, every year.  For some reason the theme has changed from honoring the Native American culture to focusing on the American culture in general... rather sad, really. 

Right now we're sitting in a coffee shop taking advantage of their free wireless and great croissants.  I think we're all probably catching up on our blogs.  Soon my friend KJERSTI NILSSEN from junior high years is going to meet us and take us on a bike ride and to lunch.  Can't wait to see a blast from the past!

AMAYA

AMAYA THE AMAZING

Paul and Donna

DONNA and PAUL

More Random Thoughts

Whoa, dude.  So, like, I’ve been reading this book, you know, that takes place in the late 1800s?  It’s about this pregnant woman, you know, who has had to, like, move to the middle of the prairie with her nasty husband and their four kids ‘cuz he and her father totally ripped off a bunch of people in their hometown.  So here they are in the middle of nowhere, her husband is being a jerk and she realizes how much she detests him, but there’s nowhere to go.  (Believe me, after driving 7 hours through South Dakota and Minnesota, I can understand) They can barely be civil to each other and rarely are.  The next thing I know I’m starting to be bitchy towards Cork.  Whoa, kind of like Jack Nicholson in The Shining…. I think I better stop reading that book.

So in one of my earlier posts I posed the question of just why are we taking this trip?  All ageism jokes aside (although I did find myself in a restaurant in a sleeveless shirt, holding my upper arm to keep it from wiggling while I was shaking the salt) we’re taking this trip because Cork and I started to feel trapped by our lives.  He probably won’t talk about it much, since I don’t think he likes things to be that simply said, but the fact is that he hasn’t been inspired artistically in quite a while, and I haven’t been inspired emotionally or really on any level in a long time.  Simply put, I’ve been bored and find myself boring.  This isn’t self deprecation, it’s middle of the night therapy sessions with myself, where I realize that I stopped being an interesting person a long time ago and was having a hard time jump starting that person again.  There are many reasons for this, the main one being that I postponed certain parts of my life in order to be married and have a child, and now that it’s time to reclaim them, I’ve forgotten how.  The result of that forgetfulness coupled with menopause has left me growing impatient, hypersensitive, Cork would call it prickly.  I slowly started to become one of those women you read about, stern, brittle, and humorless.  Most people wouldn’t notice it from the outside, but I noticed it, and noticed it growing.   I found myself thinking “If I don’t do something soon, I’m going to pluck my eyeballs out and bounce them across the room!”  It was time to do something.

We’re slowly making our way across the United States.  We arrived in Minneapolis last night, the 19^th, and will stay here until Thursday when we head down to Milwaukee.  While we’re here we’re staying with Cork’s ex, Donna, and her husband Paul.  I just want to take a moment to say “HEY DONNA AND PAUL, YOU GUYS ROCK!  THANKS FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY!”  They’ve put us up in their guest quarters.  It’s always so nice to have some space!  Last night we had a great dinner at an Italian place they chose, and our server was so great I asked if I could put a picture of her in my blog.  Then I lost all my pictures transferring them to my computer., so… THANKS AMAYA FOR A GREAT MEAL!

Cork and I have prevailed as adults and come to an agreement regarding our trip.  We’re going to put off going to the Bay of Fundy this time around.  I know this is disappointing for Cork, but in the wake of that decision came an AMAZING happening.  Two, maybe three songs of his band, 50 Foot Hose, has been chosen to be in a movie that Billy Bob Thornton is directing.  I don’t know much about the movie, but its working name is Jayne Mansfield’s Car and it stars Ray Stevenson, Kevin Bacon, John Hurt,
Robert Duvall and more.  Next to Lily, the 50 Foot Hose is Cork’s biggest love, and he is so excited that it’s made postponing the Bay of Fundy part of the trip okay.  (And I have to tell you, I wanted to see the Bay of Fundy, but one of the draws is that it has the most extreme tides in the world, greatest range, I guess, but to experience it you have to sit and watch for six or seven hours.  I could handle that, but Lily would want to pluck her eyeballs out and bounce them against the wall and then we’d both have no eyeballs and Cork would have to do the driving, and he’s having an eye exam right now as I write, so….

Crazy Horse Memorial

In the middle of nowhere... who the heck knows what this is!

Starting to have fun!!!

One of the quieter campsites... and our home away from home

Road Rage

Zip.  Zero.  Absolutely none.  Considering that Cork and I were sure that the first words out of Lily’s mouth were going to be “use your blinker you dickhead” (sorry, Mom)  it’s a big accomplishment for me to be calm on the road.  I’ve always been an intense driver.  Not externally, but internally.  Meaning that I didn’t roll down my window and yell at people, but I definitely had something to say to every person on the road.  Driving in the city was exhausting.  It’s different in an RV.  It reminds me of the Willie Dixon line “I’m built for comfort, not for speed.”  You just can’t push it.  So for the first time in years I don’t care if I’m going too slow or if you have to wait a few minutes to pass me.  It’s all good.

It’s kind of the way things have been with Lily.  I just can’t push anything.  On her own she’s really starting to enjoy the trip, to look out windows, to ask questions.  She now wants to help set up and cook… maybe helping to clean up will come next???  For the first week or two I had to ask (beg) her to pose for pictures.  Now she asks us to take them of her.  It’s great!  Now if I could only pretend I lost her cell phone.  Of course I won’t do that, but she is able to receive texts from almost every location, so quite often we’ll be in the middle of something really wonderful and there’s that ping sound and she’s completely pulled from whatever her experience is and back in to San Francisco or Pacifica.  Who knows, maybe she’ll be willing to give it up for the second half of the trip.

Today we had one of those surreal experiences where we went from the dramatic landscape of the Badlands to Wall, South Dakota.  Wall sprung up in 1931 when the owners of the land established an oasis in the middle of nowhere, based on free ice water.  You didn’t have to ask, you just got off at the exit marked by the green dinosaur and went into the drugstore and there was an ice water tap and cups.  It’s now morphed into one of those tourist places that you can find anywhere, with store after store of Wall paraphernalia.  But still entertaining.  We had lunch, rode a Jackalope, almost got eaten by a dinosaur, and just generally played the tourist.  We haven't done any of that on this trip, and it was fun.

THE LIST

Best campsite “close to it all”          West Yellowstone, Montana

Best campsite “away from it all”       Interior, South Dakota

Best water (hands down, tie)           West Yellowstone and Bozeman,

Worst water                                      Florence, Oregon

Wealthiest campsite                         West Yellowstone, Montana

Least wealthy campsite                    Westport, Washington

Best meal (besides our RV)              Tin Table and Skillet, Seattle

Worst meal                                        Gillette, Wyoming

Best pie                                            Junction of 14 and 15 in Wyoming

Most scenic highway  (tie)              14/16/20 (one road)  and 44

Least scenic highway                      90 (particularly through the middle of South Dakota)

Biggest WOW factor                      Spring/geyser action in East Yellowstone, Gorges/

                                                         waterfalls in Big Horn National Park, Badlands

Least WOW factor                          Mount Rushmore, Wall Drug

So, a note about Mount Rushmore:

Although I had the presidents right, I was not nearly as eloquent, or accurate, in the reasons they were the presidents chosen to be hammered into rock.  So directly from the monument itself:

"The four American Presidents carved into the granite of Mount Rushmore were chosen by the sculptor to commemorate the founding, growth, preservation, and development of the United States.  Tehy symbolize the principles of liberty and freedom on which the nation was founded.  George Washington signifies the struggle for indeendence and the birth of the Republic; Thomas Jefferson the territorial expansion of the country; Abraham Lincoln the permanent union of the States, and equality for all citizens, and Theodore Roosevelt, the 20th century role of the United States in world affairs and the rights of the common man."

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

So what hasn’t worked out as planned on this trip?  Just about everything outside of the traveling/RV experience that I thought we would do.  Exercising, for one.  We walk whenever there’s time, and if we’re in a campsite that we stay in for more than a day Lily and I will pull the bikes out and tool around, but I had this great vision of doing yoga every morning in the quiet of nature, of walking for hours on trails.  Well, guess what?  RV parks, for the most part, aren’t in the quiet of nature.  If I had really thought it through I would have realized that in order to have hookups for RVs, i.e. water, sewer, electricity, sometimes WIFI and cable, you can’t really be in the middle of nowhere.  Yes, there are camps that manage it, but for the most part you are close to highways or the industrial parts of towns, or 5 miles outside of town, sardined in with 50-70 other RVs, usually MUCH MUCH bigger than ours.  There’s no room to stretch in the RV, and I’m not big on the pull-out-the-yoga-mat and put on a show for everyone having their breakfast… and no way will Lily do that…

And the dancing?  Lily informed early on in the trip that she is NOT going to go to studios that she’s unfamiliar with and dance.  Except maybe in New York, ‘cuz she knows my cousin’s kids.  A huge part of this trip was about exposing Lily to different dance in different places, both to keep her chops up and to keep her physical (during the summer she spent at least 3 hours a day dancing) but she’s just not having any of it.  And honestly, I feel that I’ve asked her to give up enough just going on this trip, so I’m not going to push it.

And the caramels!  I had this idea that as we progressed through the United States we’d be eating at these diners in the middle of nowhere, just a bike ride down the road from the little campsite we found tucked away in the middle of nowhere where we were staying for a few days.  After a meal or two at the diner we would come back to the RV and make a batch of caramels and drop them off on the way out of town with a card with our info on it.  I imagined that by the time we got back to SF we would have followers from around the country ready to buy our caramels.  Ain’t gonna happen.  So far we haven’t stayed anywhere for more than a day or two, and the small town diners aren’t as warm and welcoming as I’d imagined.  It must be that need you/hate you relationship they have with tourists.  It’s not that they don’t warm up to us by the end of the meal, it’s just that it’s not warm enough to engage them in our enterprise. 

Am I disappointed?  Not really.  We’ll just have to have a caramel eating dance party when we get home.

Route 14/16/20 September 17

Before I forget, I have to tell you about this AMAZING thing we learned on our way out of Yellowstone a few days ago.  We had been noticing that around some of the mud geysers and fumeroles there would be a massive amount of downed trees.  Cork and I kept trying to figure out if there had been a fire (no signs of anything burned) or if the park had cut them down in order to allow people to see them (a bit of an oxymoron for a state park...) and we finally found a sign that explained it.  When these mud geysers/springs would first blow, the force of the explosion would literally blow all of the surrounding trees right out of the ground!  I thought that was way cool. 

So if anyone is ever planning a road trip through this part of the country, there's a great route, not very travelled, out of the east entrance of Yellowstone.  You take Route 14/16/20.  It will take you through Big Horn National Park with some of the best canyons and gorges and waterfalls ever.  And almost no one else around.  We took that to Crazy Horse Memorial and then Mount Rushmore, then hooked up with 44 right outside of Rapid City, SD and headed for the campsite we're at now.  It's by far the best campground we've been to when it comes to beauty and privacy and the ability to really get away from it all.  It is about 1 1/2 hours from Rapid City, right outside of Interior, SD.  That 1 1/2 was the weirdest drive.  Kindof like something out of the Twilight Zone.  Vast, barren, absolutely NO ONE on the road.  If you had a flat tire you'd be screwed.  No phone service.  No signs.  Then suddenly there's a billboard for a bar and grill in "uptown" Interior, which is pretty funny considering Interior has maybe a six block radius.  It's worth it though.  Lots of trees right next to the White River, and again, not many people.  The owners are both from California (Oakland and Stockton) so things like internet access are here, but no phones.

We are now officially into our third week of the trip and today none of us could remember what day it was.  Success!  I was hoping that there would be a moment when we stopped keeping track of everything. Cork talks like a girl.  I've thought about that  a lot on this trip.  I remember my friend Allegra sitting at our dinner table telling us about a class she was taking for her Master's program. She told us that the true definition of introvert and extrovert are opposite of what we would think.  An introvert finds balance from being around lots of people and an extrovert finds balance by being by themself.  I think of this because I can go for hours not saying a word, just listening to music and looking out the window.  Cork, on the other hand, yakkity yakkity yak.  Sometimes it's interesting and oftentimes it's like being in a small town beauty salon.  "He said then she said then he said then she said.."  To be fair, I could win a contest with some of the stuff he knows, but jeez, be quiet already. 

We're heading through Badlands National Park tomorrow and on to Minneapolis in a few days then to Milwaukee.  Lily can't wait to see MIKAIL and RYAN and SASHA and MABLE and all the adults that go with them.  She's actually having a good time these days, but there are moments when she so wants to go back home that I almost break...  And go figure, she's terrified of bees and insects.  I've been her mom for, well, as long as she's been alive, and I had no idea she was this freaked out by them.  It does make camping a bit of a challenge for her...

I can't upload any pictures 'cuz I can't get phone access, so here's a random shot.

To Hump or Not to Hump

Ha!  I'm talking about bison here... we've been wondering if bison and buffalo are the same?  I have some research to do.

Today we leave Yellowstone and head for Cody, Wyoming, home of Buffalo Bill, and more importantly for Cork, Jackson Pollock.  Yellowstone has actually been relaxing even with all of its crowds.  The first day in the park we spent a couple of hours at Mammoth Hot Springs, walking the miles of walkways around what once were active hot springs, and now but for a few are steamy patches of history.  The few that were active were AMAZING.  I don’t know if you’ll be able to tell from the picture, but there’s a dragonfly that somehow landed in the heated water and died, leaving a beautiful calcified reminder of why you shouldn’t stick your body parts in the water!!!  (Science word of the day is “thermophiles.”  Thermophiles are heat-loving organisms that live in the springs) 

I’ll warn you now, the hot springs are NOT a good place for menopausal women to be walking around on a hot day.  OMG, standing there with steam rising and everyone oohing and ahhing and all I can do is hot flash and hot flash and hot flash.  Then I read a sign that says “Toxic Gases exist in Yellowstone.  Dangerous levels of hydrogen sulfide and carbondioxide have been measured in some hydrothermal areas.  If you feel sick, leave the location immediately.” And I think “How am I going to know if it’s my own personal summer on hyperdrive or if it’s the toxic gases?”  Luckily it clouded over and started to sprinkle before I had to find out.

Loggerheads

Locking Horns

Impasse

Knucklehead micspasitron (per Lily)

Cottenheadded ninnymuggen

Cork and I have been wrestling with how the rest of the trip should unfold.  We know if we try to do the entire route we had planned it will mean most if not all days we have to spend a few hours driving.  We know that this means there is no time to just relax and not plan.  We know this entire trip was about relaxing and not planning.  We know this means one of us has to give up the most important part of the trip for that person.  Cork’s highlight destination is Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, off the tip of the east coast.  My highlight destination is New Orleans.  We can’t do both.  Of course, to me, my destination point makes more sense.  Cork’s son and grandsons live in Orlando, Florida.  I’m meeting my sisters in Orlando to celebrate my little sister’s 50^th birthday (how weird is it when your “younger” sibling turns 50???)  From Orlando we just toodle over to New Orleans where there’s a potential surprise waiting for Lily.

To Cork, the entire trip is for naught if we don’t go to the Bay of Fundy.  Anyone who knows Cork knows he can be, ummm, what’s the word I’m looking for???  Childish?  (yeah, I know I can be, too) and the thought of having him upset, depressed, negative for the next few weeks does not sit well with me.  I have the luxury of thinking that because my destination highlight makes more sense!  To me, if we don’t do the southern route we have to incur the cost of me flying to Orlando for my sister’s birthday, we miss seeing Cork’s family, and perhaps a really cool moment in New Orleans will be missed.  Oh yeah, and I will probably be pissy for a few days. 

So this is when Cork and I have to exercise our true adulthood and come to a rational decision.  We have to make sure that before we move ahead on our new route, that whomever it is who has to give up their highlight destination will be able to do so willingly and with the least amount of drama.  Oooohhhh, this is going to be a tough one!

LATER THE SAME DAY...

We just set up camp in Cody, Wyoming after an AMAZING day driving through Yellowstone to the east entrance and then down to Cody.  We entered Yellowstone through the north, camped in the town of West Yellowstone, and I have to say that the drive east was the most scenic, beautiful, radical landscape yet.  I have to tell you, I was TERRIFIED to go over the pass.  It's called Sylvan Pass and it's about 8600 feet.  I have a vivid, yet vague on details memory of taking a trip with my family when I was young.  We were going over a pass somewhere in the Rockies, and our station wagon broke down on the side of the road that had a 500+ drop.  There were six kids in this station wagon and we were all freaking out and I was in the back pretending to be dead so if we dropped over the side I'd already be gone.  Obviously we made it.  Today when I knew we were going over a pass (something that I should have "gotten" earlier, yes?) I started to panic.  I figured I'd go back and get in bed and pretend I was gone, just in case.  Well, I'm happy to report we made it!  The pass was nowhere near as intense as what I remembered (possibly because this range of mountains, the Tetons, is the youngest range of the Rockies.)

After wending our way through the mountains and into Wyoming, through countryside that provoked memories long forgotten (a paper contrasting Picasso's Guernica with Goya; Betty Bettiker, my dad's secretary... go figure) we landed at the Buffalo Bill Center, which houses five museums.  We visited the museum on the Plains Indians, which was incredible, and the Buffalo Bill museum, equally incredible from a historical perspective but not as big of a WOW factor.  We are now making bean soup for dinner, doing homework, and catching up on life in general...

More about Seattle

This was supposed to post along with the pictures of Animal, Bennett, and Norma ...

Late yesterday we arrived in Seattle.  One of the funny and sometimes unfortunate things about our relationship to Seattle is that of the dozen times we've visited here, only two or three times has it been raining.  Every other time it's been FREAKY HOT, like this time.  Anyway, we are happily sweating away here in order to visit our good friends, and Lily's godfathers, Animal and Bennett, and, of course, Norma, their amazing office general.  We love these guys, which is why we made Seattle our first official destination point on our trip.  It's an easy place to land in order to regroup and FIX a few things.  Remember the tailpipe meets the Golden Gate Bridge?  Well, a day later that same tail pipe dropped to the ground, trailing every move we made.  If it weren't for the Duct Tape King, who happens to love bungie cords too, we would have been in big trouble.  Lucky for us we taped and strapped and hit the road.  (We managed to place a Craig's List ad and by the time we reached Seattle there was a guy waiting for us at our B&B to fix it....)  We've also decided to do away with the Captain's chair (sits behind the passenger seat in the RV) in order to stash our bikes...  Bennett owns The Gaslight Inn, one of the most popular B&B's in Seattle and has graciously put us up in two of his units...  Animal, an amazing glass blower, has helped us package the chair and get it sent back to Pacifica.

Cork and I spent two days removing the Captain’s chair and installing a Black & Decker cabinet.  More storage, yea!!  On our last morning in Seattle we had breakfast with Allyn and Jim and their daughter, Bailey.  They have just relocated to Seattle where Allyn heads up the EPA office for the Pacific Northwest.  I’ve known Allyn for close to 20 years and without planning it, Lily and Bailey ended up at the same school for a few years.  I love how there are certain people that you can pick up with as if no time has passed… Animal and Bennett, Norma, Bailey, Jim and Allyn made Seattle feel like home. 

Oh, Pooh

Poopoo hose (red)

Some people might know that I've been a bit preoccupied by the entire getting-rid-of-the-poopoo part of the RV experience.  I just wanted and want to know that's it's being done correctly and there are no mishaps.  A bit of RV info, the system is totally cool.  There's black water and grey water.  When you arrive at your site you "hook up" to the sites sewer/septic system.  Easy as pie.  The RV has one big (6 inch diameter) accoridan tube that you hook up to a valve and place the other end in the hole that leads to above mentioned system.  First you turn the handle to black water (icky poopoo stuff) and when that's emptied, with a simple turn of the handle, all of your grey water (from washing dishes, washing hands, taking showers) exits the same tube, cleaning it of all icky poopoo stuff.  Well, yesterday we had a little poopoo problem.  Don't really know why, 'cuz there's now way (and you wouldn't want to anyhow) look inside the whole system, but when we went to hook up there was a little, well, spurtage.  Not a good thing.  Unless you've RV'd, you wouldn't know that the sites are actually very close together, and don't ask me why, but all the sites are laid out so that your picnic table/hang out area is backed up against your neighbor's poopoo hose.  So here are our neighbors, already set up and having a chat and a cocktail when we arrive.  We back in, hook up and splooge!  Unlike the movie RV with Robin Williams, neighbors do not come running over to saying "Golly gee, let me help you figure out your poopoo problem."  They actually scatter really fast...and then they avoid you for the rest of the time you're at the camp.  Ah well, one man's poopoo problem is another man's poopoo problem too!

Streaming Along

Burbling, babbling, rushing, skipping, meandering, this is a day of streams.  We left Spokane after a night of motel hell.  You know you’ve lived a privileged life when you haven’t stayed in a Motel 6 in over 30 years.  DISGUSTING!  It brought out every OCD tendency I have.  Anyway, we decided on an early exit, probably so that I would stop complaining, and we’ve just passed through Idaho and into Montana.  BIG SHOUT OUT TO MICHELLE, ANDREW, MAYA AND JAMES!  We’re thinking of you as we head towards Missoula, where we’ll stop for lunch.  This is beautiful country.  There is a hint of fall with subtle colors changing, and the streams, WOW!   I have this beautiful stream following our path of travel.  It’s amazing to imagine Lewis and Clarke actually navigating through all of this terrain.

We all woke up a bit pissy, which I attribute to the motel.  It could, however, be the heat, since it was ankle swelling hot again yesterday.  Right now, however, we’ve just come over a pass and have our windows down and are breathing in, just like John Denver sang about, fresh mountain air.  Right before we headed up the grade we passed a totally cool looking town called William Burke, or maybe it was two towns, William and Burke, I don’t know.  Quintessential mountain town, and the streams … We’ll round a bend and there’s nothing in sight and then suddenly the lone fly fisherman, alone, quiet, patient, or at least it seems so from the passenger window of our RV.   Our final destination today is Bozeman, Montana.  We decided to take advantage of our great highway system (thank you Eisenhower!)  and do a long day of driving so that in the morning we can tool around Bozeman on our bikes and then head to Yellowstone for a couple of days.

So far the trip has been pretty darn good.  Not exactly what I had in mind, but closer than not.  We haven’t had the leisurely hanging around the campsite doing nothing for a couple of days, but that lies ahead, I’m sure. 

Okay, so our RV site is 7 miles outside of Bozeman, and it looks like we probably won’t go see it tomorrow, but I hear it’s a beautiful town.  This is one of our favorite RV sites yet.  It’s quiet, clean, plenty of room around the sites and a BEAUTIFUL pool, which I just might take advantage of tomorrow before we leave.  Lily got out one of the bikes and toodled around checking things out

To Blog or Not To Blog

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of mental energy trying to ferret out what is and is not okay to blog about.  I wondered if it was okay to actually use the blog as a journal or if it was meant to be entertaining or informative or all of the above.  I got to wondering about it so much that I actually stopped writing.  Ach, it’s that exact twisting thought process that I hope to get away from on this trip.  I mean, this is MY experience, right?  Anyone reading this can stop anytime they want, right?  I can let it all hang out if I want to, right?  Maybe this will turn into some long drawn out screed about life and love and relationships and y’all will just want to scream for me to get on with it, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll figure some things out along the way.  For instance, I know that I’m mourning the fact that my daughter is growing up.  But the fact is, my being a mom is the single most important and wonderful thing I’ve ever done in my life.  Ever.  I have been a GREAT mom.  Even more important, having a child healed my childhood.   What can I say?  Abandonment issues are not easy to overcome.  Having an intense and chaotic childhood punctuated with my dad leaving when I was 12 did not build a lot of self-esteem.  Having Lily, however, allowed me to feel like I was not damaged, that I was good enough to deserve her.  Our family unit, whacky and frustrating as it can be, has felt safe and warm and loving.  Of course I don’t want to see/feel that change.  Of course I’m bright enough to know that there’s no stopping it.  Of course I want Lily to grow up and be independent and vital and delightful.  Of course I want her to have her own life.  Of course I don’t want to let go.  I’m realizing the unwitting sense it makes to have two or three kids.  As the first kid leaves you’re still dealing with the younger ones, and by the time they’re ready to go you’re so excited to have some space that … well, I don’t really have an end to that sentence.  Does it just hit you later?  I’m aware that not every parent has these issues.  Not every parent actually becomes a better person by being a parent.  But I am.

Seattle

Today Cork and I spent the day preparing the RV for the next leg of our trip.  We ended up building and installing a GREAT storage cabinet where the Captain's chair used to live.  The best part about it is that it will leave enough room in the substorage that we can stash one of our travel bikes.  Things are starting to come together!  It was, however, a pretty work intensive day, so we've decided to stick around for another day or two.  That is the wonderful thing about this adventure, there are very few deadlines.

Last night we went to the MOST AMAZING restaurant for dinner.  It's a place on Capital Hill (which is close to where we're staying) called Skillet Diner.  WOW.  And it was REASONABLE!  Southern fried chicken and waffles, pot roast, beet salad, trout, some of the best lemon curd I've ever had... and slightly irreverent waiters, which is kind of fun.  Animal and Bennet know everyone, so by the time dinner was over we'd met at least three of the staff who had all lived in SF at one time or another. 

(Skillet Diner's crazy waiter, Steven)

After dinner Cork, Lily and I walked back to where we're staying.  It was just warm enough not to need layers.  Lots of people out on bikes, walking, hanging out on their porches.  Seattle always feels like San Francisco 20 years ago...

Seattle

Animal and Bennet

September 5 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

SHOUT OUT TO BILL BANYAI FOR ONE OF THE BEST REDS I’VE HAD IN A LONG TIME.  BILL DROPPED A BOTTLE OFF AS A BON VOYAGE GIFT, AND IT’S GREAT!

2005 SESTADISOPRA BRUNELLO DI MONTALCINO

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Yup, you guessed it.  Cork having a bit of a rough start to his day..... I noticed his shoes about an hour into a walk around the piers in Astoria....  Even though I'm used to this stuff, it can still get a pretty good laugh.

Astoria, Oregon to Westport, Washington

Now we’re talking!  Today was one of those glorious days that I had in mind when we decided to take this trip.  Slow morning with waffles and bacon done outside on the grill, long walk in the coastal fog with Lily riding her bike, then we went to this GREAT sandwich place for lunch.  We found it by mistake when we went into a fish shop hoping they’d have food, but they were a shop that takes the fish you catch and cleans it and smokes it for you to take with you.  Anyway, we asked the lady where she would go for lunch and she directed us to the Mermaid Deli.  Yea!  Then on to the Westport Museum which boasts a Fresnel lens, which was GORGEOUS and AMAZING!  I really have no idea what makes a Fresnel lens a Fresnel lens, but I’ve never seen anything like it. 

Lily is either going to have the most amazing education ever or it’s going to be total crap.  She couldn’t have two parents who are more opposite.  On the one hand there’s Cork, who has such an amazing depth of knowledge that he can take something as simple as a toothpick and describe it to death.  Yesterday for example, when we were in Astoria, we went for a walk on the pier.  Cork was telling Lily about how they made piers out of logs that had been dipped in copper sulfate in order to kill the bugs that would eat the logs making the pier fall down.  Interesting, yes?  But after 20 minutes of describing each step of the process, Lily and I were both glazing over.  On the other hand she has me, who answers almost every question about the physical world (vs. emotional) with “I don’t know, go ask your dad.”  And the scary thing is that I don’t know!  I mean, I don’t think I’m stoopid, but sometimes I feel as if I haven’t been paying attention for the past 45 years.  I tend to focus on how things feel and what’s “going on” with people, but what four faces make up Mount Rushmore?  Don’t know.  Well, I do now ‘cuz someone talked about it today and I actually listened because I know we’re going there, but yesterday?  Nope.  (Just in case you haven’t been paying attention either, Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln.  Why?  Washington ‘cuz he was the first president;  Lincoln ‘cuz of the Civil War;  Roosevelt established the National Park Service; Jefferson, the constitution.)

September 4 Signs

Wonder Stump Lane
Pud Chips
Reading Champion

I love the little signs you see along the road.  I think my favorite today was Pud Chips.  I mean, what the heck are pud chips anyway?  I have an idea, and I don't think it's something to eat.  We're driving towards
Astoria, Oregon after spending a couple of nights in Florence, Oregon.  As I've mentioned, this is one of our favorite beaches ever.  I don't really know why, but my family just relaxes when we're here.  I'm sure it has something to do with the 3 mile long and 1/4 mile wide expanse of soft sand.  Every time we visit Florence our stay seems too short.  Lily always walks along the water's edge singing, dancing, looking for shells.  At this moment she's the same little girl that she was two years ago when we first visited this beach, only taller.

There are a lot of people on the beach, and I laugh at the different way Cork and I respond to the looks Lily gets from just about everyone over the age of 12.  I want to have a T-shirt made that reads "Born in 1999" and Cork wants to have one made that says "$1 a look."  If you know Cork, it's actually pretty funny.  Anyway, it's interesting to be in Lily's presence these days.  It's almost like watching a party but not being invited.  I think it's where the word "bittersweet" comes from.  Her sense of humor is deepening along with her general knowledge of life and the way things work, making her commentary sharp (sometimes too much so) and really, really funny.  Unfortunately, much of the time we're not invited to share in this commentary or respond to it.  It's like there's a big "keep out" sign across her personal experience these days.  There are still many moments when the sign isn't there, and my hope is that this trip will help us learn how to navigate around it when it is.

So right now Lily is reading.  I look back, see her engrossed in her book and think, "Oh good, she's loving the story."  I've always been an avid reader and I've been looking forward to the time when Lily reaches for a book because she wants to instead of because she has to.  No sooner do I think this then we round a bend in the road and there's a little sign posted on someone's lawn that says "Reading Champion".  I love that stuff!!!

Random Thoughts and Liner Notes

Because I seem to lose my posting every time I spellcheck or preview, I am NOT going to do either.  There may be misspellings etc...

And

Because my computer is kindof kaput and won't let me on to my blog site, I'm going through Cork's computer.  Oh yeah, right now I can't load pictures either, so for fun filled shots you'll have to look at Cork's site...

That being said, THANK YOU to the grand trine of Cara, Martha and V for watching our house and taking care of our animals.

THANK YOU to Milan for feeding us the night before we left.

THANK YOU to Robin for offering to feed us the night before we left.

THANK YOU to the Pacifica gang for helping get all of the Pacifica stuff handled.

THANK YOU to all of our friends who are excited for us and thought what we are doing is great, even if you really thought we might be crazy.

September 3rd WHAT, AM I EFFING NUTS????

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Driving me nuts.
Driving me around the bend.
Forty miles of bad road.

Okay, just had to get that out of my system. 

The middle of the night is when I have what I call my "moments."  These last from an hour to three or more, and it's when I'm wide awake, often because of night sweats (yes, there will probably be quite a bit of reference to menopause and age-related looniness in this blog) where I have great ideas (road trip anyone?) plan things, solve problems, create new businesses, write letters in my mind, (I never manage to get up and put pencil to paper) and totally freak out about life and death, my family, the state of my relationships, if I tipped enough, and just general am-I-of-any-value-whatsoever-on-this-planet types of questions.

 Last night the general topic was what the hell was I thinking?  This already has been a common theme in my little pea brain as we're hurtleing down the highway doing about 60 miles an hour... Don't get me wrong, I'm still excited and committed to this entire adventure, but for the first two days the reality of this undertaking has been front and foremost.  For instance, there is no way we can cover the number of miles we want to cover without spending more time in the RV than we necessarily want to - we've decided to shelve that conversation until we actually haven't been driving in the RV for 7 hours straight  - and it's a little louder than Cork likes, which he mentions every 20 minutes or so, and the poopoo hose might be leaking, and the great getaway from the intensity of urban life is a little harder when Lily is plugged in to either her ipod or her phone or her computer all the time ... I have beautiful visions of opening the window and lobbing all of the technology out ....and right when all of this is screaming through my mind I almost knock myself out on a overhead door that someone has left open and I just break down and all my excitement and probably overblown fantasy about getting away from it all crumbles into a dismal picture of futility.. and all of this comes back to haunt me when I'm wide awake at 3:00 a.m.... and then I start to plan.

Quite frankly, my constant planning exhausts me and is hard on the spleen, I'm told.  It's a beneficial talent if you're, say, an event planner or something, but as a way of life it's getting a little old.  I'm making myself tired.  Ergo, one of the reasons for the trip.  Why exactly are we taking this trip?  The answer will differ depending on whose blog you read.  Cork wants inspiration.  Lily is here because she has to be.  Me?  Well, for me it was the result of looking in the mirror one morning and thinking "Jesus Christos, what the hell is going on?"  I still feel like I'm young, but the body just does not reflect that, and it's startleing. So it was either a road trip or a face lift ....

Ah, the fam just walked in so I gotta go...

September 2nd What We Learned On Our First Days

corktincantourist.blogspot.comlilysroadtrip.blogspot.com

Here we are on day two of our Grand Adventure.  I have to say, a 24 ft. RV is just a microcosm on wheels.  Whew.  By the end of today I'd relaxed, rejoiced, refused, reneged, rearranged, repented, just about everything you can think of, and all within 8 hours of leaving our first campground. 

As many of you know Cork, Lily and I left San Francisco on September 1st for a three-month RV trip.  We have little of it planned.  There are a few destinations, but for the most part we're just going.  We do have some rules, and they are:

We will all blog (I've linked them here, I hope) but we will NOT read each others blogs until we return from our trip.
We will all .... well, really, I think that's the only rule.

 So the things I learned on our first day (or two) that I probably knew if I'd paid attention:

1)  Be careful when previewing your Blog post 'cuz it deletes easily, no matter how much time, energy, thoughtfulness and good will you put into it.

2)  It takes a MONUMENTAL amount of energy to plan and pack for three months.  We went from 2000 square feet to about 175 square feet.

3)  Be careful how close you drive to the side of the Golden Gate Bridge when your tailpipe sticks out the side (versus the back.)  I'm sure those tourists are still talking about the spark show they saw!

4)  RVs are bigger and go faster than wild turkeys.  (It's okay, the turkey made it.)

5)  It's really hard and very dangerous to slam on the brakes of something that weighs 25,000 pounds.  (See # 4)

6)  It's better to blog in the morning when I'm optimistic than the evening when I'm not.  (See # 1)

That's it for now.  We just got back from a cold but beautiful walk on one of our favorite beaches in Florence, Oregon.  We're here for two days, which will allow us to repack (I forgot to  mention that one, didn't I?) and regroup.