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.
