The Indian and the Cowboys

Reblogged from Today X 365:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Sometimes—on the road or in the air—we’re travelers, sometimes explorers, sometimes we are simply tourists but, in the best of all possible worlds we are first and foremost students.

The Crazy Horse Monument and Mount Rushmore nicely meld the tourism/student functions. In a way they are oddly juxtaposed, the enormous romanticized face of the brave warrior and the smaller coterie of dead white men.

Read more… 1,541 more words

MANITOBA ✓

 WE TOOK A WALK IN WINNIPEG…AND FOUND

A DISCARDED/LOST SHOE?

 

DEAD FISH.

 

DANDELIONS.

  

AND ATE A BEAUTIFUL SWEET WAFFLE.

8:10AM/Friday The journey of the 4 M’s—Manitoba, Minnesota, Montana, Mexico (Nuevo). The first is complete. Best Western Charterhouse Hotel, downtown Winnipeg. Room service Club Sandwiches, Poutine, Caesar Salad, Chardonnay. Nice. Teresa went for a walk by the river and I tried to wrestle this cold out of my body one more time. It is one of those colds that move through your system in stages. Short time in full attack mode with aches and heavy head, days of just having it on the edge of consciousness and then the cough begins. I skipped the orange juice and zicam for 2 days so maybe that’s why last night felt like a relapse. However TODAY WILL BE FINE. I declare it finished after a night of various Advil and chocolate milk variations. DONE. Hear me. DONE.I have thoroughly enjoyed this time on the road with Teresa. She’s an excellent traveler, no complaints about small things, curious, just the right amount of adventurous in my eyes—exploring new sight and sounds but not running away with the carnies or, in this case oil field guys. She’s both thoughtful about what she’s observing and has quite an advanced sense of humor.

Geography and habitation modes galore. Rockies alternating with plains, smaller mountains giving way to hills, grazing land to ranches to farms to small towns to cities, black angus to blonde Guernsey, McDonalds to…well…more McDonalds.

 If some preacher’s rant could convince me that heaven was rolling down a two-lane highway over the western plains with one of your best friends driving, a caramel malt from DQ in your hand/mouth/tummy and melancholy music in the background, I too would believe!

 8:12PM/Friday We are now cozily ensconced in the guest room at Oak Crest Senior Housing in Roseau, Minnesota. About three hours south of Winnipeg. My cousin Audrey lives here and her giant 80^th birthday party is taking place tomorrow—a surprise for her. The fact that she’s very leery of both parties and surprises makes the suspense that much greater. I suspect once she is over the shock she will be honored and moved by having so much family around.

 Tonight the three of us went over to Warroad to a most pleasant restaurant overlooking Lake of the Woods and serving perfect Walleye. My life is really chock full of good things…I am usually grateful…occasionally I forget. I think the cold is gone except for lingering laryngitis but no one seems to mind that I can’t talk.

 I exaggerated earlier when I said almost 2000 to Winnipeg. The total for the first leg of the trip—the first M checked off is actually 1870 miles and that includes getting to our first stop in Minnesota. Roseau.

MINNESOTA WALLEYE.

MINNESOTA WILD RICE…YAY, MINNESOTA.

LAKE OF THE WOODS…WHENCE COMES THE FINE FOOD.

TERESA, ADJUSTING TO SENIOR APARTMENT LIVING.

 

WAY UP NORTH, May 23, 2013

Winnipeg. Almost 2000 miles from Albuquerque. Too tired to go down and out to the car and get the exact numbers.

 The following photos are Canada so far. Trying to show the differences. Little gas station cakes better than ours. Gas station coffee almost worse. Cheetos aren’t as good either. Cows are blonde and fuzzy. Full service at gas pumping. Fewer billboards. AND tonight we had room service and tried Poutine. It’s good with wine.

 

BUGS IN THE FIELDS.

BUGS ON THE ROAD.

BLONDE WOOLY BEAST.

CANADIAN COUNTRYSIDE.

I GREW UP HALFWAY BETWEEN WINNIPEG AND MPLS/ST. PAUL.

POUTINE. A CANADIAN NATIONAL DISH. I GUESS.

 

BIG OIL

12:57AM Thursday: Econolodge, Minot North Dakota.  Little trouble getting out of Watford City ND…the epicenter of the North Dakota oil boom it is said. But with some tricky manuevering we got out of line, backtracked 40 miles or so, changed routes entirely and now only 3 hours late…WE ARE HERE.

There are many stories from the road but for now this must suffice as  the tale of the day.

Goodnight from Teresa and Marjorie…on the trail NORTH.

THE TRUCKS AHEAD OF US.

THE TRUCKS BEHIND US.

US.

 

My Wyoming Story

 

8:50AM Leaving the Super 8 in Cheyenne, presently our favorite new town. It’s crisp and cold and sunny. We happily anticipate another day on the road. Wonder if happy anticipation will be with us all the way to Minnesota? Now we have some miles to go at the western edge of the Great Plains before we reach our Black Hills destination.

 In The Great Plains Ian Frazier focuses on the Plains tribal history, the presence of Native Americans long before I started driving back and forth and seeing the ghosts of the people and ponies and buffalo, imagining how it must have been. I do love this country, geography at its emptiest, history at its richest.

 California girl Teresa is astounded. There are more people in her LA neighborhood than all of Wyoming. She’s experiencing the sheer pleasure of driving these lonely roads…that sense of absolute freedom.

 10:30AM We’ve driven as far as Torrington, stoked by our Cheyenne Starbucks’ lattes and cakes. Oh Brother is our sound track again this morning. For me these endless plains and sky are the background to evaluating life and ideas and planning new ventures. Even with a companion and music I can turn on my prairie thinking mindset.  

 Up toward Lusk the hills barely show up but it’s no longer so flat, a prelude to the Black Hills. There are real ranches here. Like in Green Grass of Wyoming, the third book in the trilogy, following My Friend Flicka and Thunderhead. As a young girl I was obsessed with the family, Nell and Rob and their young son, Ken, who was probably my first crush. I walked up and down the lane leading from my house to where the gravel road began, telling myself stories about MY ranch in Wyoming. Lot of horses and a big ranch house and a boy like Ken.

 Up and down the lane, telling my stories. Now my granddaughter is driving me through my stories.

 Now at 8:00PM we’re all cozy in our next Super 8 in Keystone, South Dakota. Tired. A wonderful afternoon at the Crazy Horse Memorial Park. More about that in the morning as I have a little work to do tonight. Why can’t things ever be totally tied up at work? Rhetorical question. Until tomorrow and Crazy Horse.  (May 21, 2013)

The Donner Party had Cream Puffs Tonight

8:20AM We must go over the Rockies today and the desk clerk says there’s bad weather up there. New Mexicans are not accomplished snow drivers for the most part and Minnesota winter driving is far in my past so I’m just a little nervous. True, we have enough snacks in the car to survive an entire winter—so the need for cannibalism is unlikely (besides given my years and my nasty cold it would be like gnawing on some aging creature with mad cow disease).

 We will be in the papa bear mountains today, getting to Black Hills mama-bear size mountains tomorrow and then baby bear’s craggy hills in Teddy Roosevelt Park—and they are just right!. Gigantic snow-peaked mountains are okay but maybe a little claustrophobic. It’s much more interesting where you get the variety of the scattered and mysterious formations breaking out from rolling rangeland or flat prairies like so much of TR’s park.

 But now we must be off. Hampton Inn offers the common variety of things to toast, lots of bananas and apples and decent coffee so we will fortify ourselves for the road, then feed the Mazda and it’s up to the high country.

 10:00PM In our pleasant enough room at the Cheyenne Wyoming Super 8. Long spectacular drive through the splendid Rocky Mountains today. Teresa did some serious work on our route this morning to keep us off the iciest of passes. So a little rain, lots of clouds which of course made me quite happy. Long and extremely winding roads with 10 mph switchbacks, rushing rivers, towering pines, even a few big darkish deer that may have been elk but they disappeared too quickly to know for sure—can I just say they were elk? All the great beauty that geography can throw at us but, for me, a day and a half of towering snowy peaks, rock walls and mighty forests goes a long way. I am ready for some prairie/plains/big sky country now.

 Even though it was all so damn gorgeous we were both quite happy to reach Loveland and drive some straight open plains miles to Cheyenne. Which it turns out is the most charming of western towns. Historically, architecturally fine and funky buildings in the downtown. We ate at the Albany, an old fashioned restaurant with comfy booths, friendly old fashioned waitresses AND tasty old fashioned comfort food such as hot beef and French dip sandwiches and a salted caramel cream puff. Oh yeah, Blue Moon and Odell’s IPA from Fort Collins. My cold is leaving so having a meal and a beer was a treat and confirmation that orange juice and zicam are true cure-alls.   (Tuesday, May 20, 2013)

Ah yes, America’s loves…this charming establishment was up in the mountains somewhere.

Fry Bread and a Gravel Road and a Big Cow and More…

California girl goes on the road.

The first morning of a trip everything is clean and organized: car, clothes, maps, snacks, people. How is it that by the first night it all has changed so much. The car is filthy from two unexpected sections of dusty gravel road. The warm clothes had to be dug out of the very back suitcase because we came through a snowstorm and it is cold up here! And if one molecule of food or drink is allowed into the interior of your briefly spotless vehicle it mutates into multiple crumbs and spills. How is that? 

USA on $300 or $400 or even $500 a Day (to be researched and verified by Marjorie Neset and Teresa Klotzback before they run out of money in North Dakota and go to work in the oilfields)

Reblogged from Today X 365:

• 

Remember the Lonely Planet’s Shoestring series, including USA and Canada on a Shoestring, and Europe on $25 a Day (Arthur Frommer/1985). That was then, this is now.

 I am budgeting for the coming month-long road trip. Almost every day driving and staying in motels. Almost every day eating gas station food with McDonalds for the good times.  Please let me assure you that we intend to find country kitchens full of tasty nutritious food (or more likely hotel/motel “dining” rooms) … but in the daylight there’s always a fish sandwich and apple turnover wherever you go, whenever you desire, however you’re attired, whomever you’re with……..

Read more… 444 more words

Which Way is Up?

Road trips can be milked for mountains of pleasures, big and small. There’s the first sighting of a magnificent mountain peak; the sign announcing a town famous for outlaws or famous men/women or pie; the hotel that turned out to be the most homey, cozy, welcoming rest stop since you grew up and left home; the mom and pop restaurant that actually had the kind of food mom made; the herd of wild horses or buffalo or antelope grazing the big-sky prairie.   

 Then there’s me and my maps, on a paper journey with Rand McNally months before it’s time for the real thing. Now I only have eight more days to play map-quester, planning-geographer, highway-specialist. Then we head North. Up North. To the end of the USA. To Canada. WAY UP NORTH.

 You already know the outline of the trip: Albuquerque to Winnipeg to Roseau, Minnesota to all around North Central Minnesota to Minneapolis to Sioux Falls to the Bitterroot Valley of Western Montana to Sioux Falls to Albuquerque. That’s the rubber hitting the road for 5,000 to 6,000 miles.  

 You also already know that my companions are granddaughter Teresa as far as Minneapolis, then cousin Vivian to Montana and back, then my own company back to Albuquerque. My usual mode of travel is just me wrapped into my own particular stream of consciousness interrupted by occasional coffee/pee/fish sandwich/gas stops. This time there are companions; will I love that?

What she ACTUALLY reads are Icelandic murder mysteries!

And she is ACTUALLY meaner than she looks!

 The purpose of these pre-trip posts is to give me a chance to share Highway names/numbers as I track our way north and then a small jog south after reaching Winnipeg. To me part of the romance of the road is in saying “US Highway 16 to Custer,  South Dakota” or “Manitoba 2 to Winnipeg” (same feeling as “Flight 32 to Singapore now boarding at Gate 11”—really!).

 The two previous posts offered exciting highway numbers all of the way to Fort Collins before I gave myself over to making dinners for friends and cleaning house for company. Now it’s time to finish the plan all the way to Roseau before I switch into my Minnesota girl mode and begin babbling about not being able to see the forest for the trees and lakes and flowers and birds and bear and deer and walleye and my inner (little-girl-in-the-woods) child.

 I will be back in the next post with those highway numbers that so many other people find equally thrilling. By the way it is 1,059 miles from Fort Collins to Winnipeg with NO cities to drive through in between. Well there is Cheyenne but it is a small cowboy city (approx. 60,000; metro area under 100,000) so I am not counting it.  

 

Next Stop Fort Collins, 285 miles through the Rockies

 HISTORY 101: How the States got Their Shapes is a plain little book full of fairly interesting facts—especially if you are someone who still gets a thrill from seeing that “Welcome to ….” sign at the next state line. We will cross the state line separating New Mexico and Colorado at the 37^th parallel, just north of Chama NM on Highway 17. It seems that back in 1850 Congress actually thought ahead, for better or worse. While the territory of New Mexico’s northern border had always been the 37^th parallel that became an even more important division when it was decided that three Rocky Mountain states of exactly the same 4° height should be created between New Mexico and Canada. In the future Colorado, Wyoming and Montana would fill that space, (p. 196).  The book doesn’t really explain why that was important but of course we trust Congress to have done the wise thing. Not.

  The story of Colorado’s borders is all about GOLD. In the beginning…there was no Colorado. The territories of Kansas and Nebraska originally reached to the crest of the Rockies and Utah and New Mexico comprised the rest of what would become Colorado. When gold was discovered in 1858, over 50,000 people, who would soon need services from their territorial government, came running.

 Unfortunately at the moment, “Bleeding Kansas” was in the throes of the debate over slavery and could not respond. The miners dealt with the situation by electing representatives who gathered in 1859 and created the “Territory of Jefferson.”  The territory’s borders stretched from the 35^th parallel in the south (encompassing Santa Fe) to the 42^nd parallel in the north, west to the 109^th meridian and east to the 102^nd meridian.  The eastern and western borders stuck because Congress had in mind western states of exactly seven degrees width. (Why?)  

 As for the northern and southern borders, changes would be made; Congress moved the border with New Mexico north, back to the original 37^th parallel because it was intended for the new territory’s Hispanic population to remain in the place called New Mexico.

Colorado’s northern border was retracted to the 41^st parallel to keep the idea of three states between New Mexico and Canada of exactly 4° in place (pp. 39-43)

 THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS BRAVE MAZDA: Let us rejoin the intrepid road trippers who are leaving Salida, Colorado for Fort Collins for a visit with friends. We are going through the seriously high Rockies on this day. I’ve only been through the high mountain country a few times.   

   I am remembering we came this way when we returned from being stationed at Clark AFB in the Philippines. My son who is about to turn 50 was approximately two-years-old at the time so please forgive me if this is a little sketchy. We (husband Don, sons Scott and Steven, and me the mom) bought an old car in San Francisco where we landed, and pointed it east. I think we stopped in Reno, Nevada overnight; my first sight of slot machines, and I remember we could not walk through a casino to the restaurant because we had small children.  Reno seemed a shabby place. Went there for a conference years later and cannot remember one thing about the town—I do remember the night I arrived, sitting in the casino playing the nickel slots and getting free Baileys on the rocks from the circling waitresses—still in a dreary unmemorable town.

So much for vivid accounts of past travels that I keep meaning to write. Hopefully I’ll do better when I start remembering Paris.

 

 

PHOTO: Steven & Scott, I think on this trip.

What I remember about the high Rocky Mountain passes was that our sickly old automobile did not like to climb so those miles on the way up were filled with anxiety. Probably the miles going down also because I vaguely remember the car had ‘mushy’ brakes. But we were young and brave and lived to tell the tale.

 

 

 

SALIDA TO BRECKENRIDGE TO SILVERTHORNE TO EMPIRE TO GRANDY TO ESTES PARK TO FORT COLLINS.

 After a morning in our Salida motel while Patricia registers for her summer classes we will drive north on US 285 for 49 miles then State Road 9 for 8 miles or so to Breckenridge. I haven’t been this exact route before but I am imaging some wide open spaces expertly ornamented with sharp peaks and jagged ridges all of the way. From Breckenridge to Silverthorne is only 17 miles on State Road 9, US 6 and some streets. Then 40 miles to Empire partly on US 6 but here is where an Interstate first rears its ugly,  make that boring, head. The maps I have indicate we cannot avoid about 15 miles of I-70. We will try our best to make this the only 15 miles of freeway between here and Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

 At Empire we’ll take US 40 about 44 miles to Granby. Then Granby to Estes Park appears to be 60 miles of US 34 and then 36 through Rocky Mountain National Park  so I am predicting a slow picture-taking gorgeous ride through a piece of the world’s truly scenic landscape. I’ve only seen this from the east side of the mountains except for that one long-ago trip so I am quite excited. Estes Park into Fort Collins will be an easy 42 miles, coming down out of the high country to the sprawl of urban almost-Denver. Dinner with a couple of my favorite people in the universe, Val and John, and we’ll meet the babies for the first time. My granddaughters will get a glimpse into the lives of young working parents who love their jobs, kids and lives. I am a fervent patriot when I am out in the geography of America. Mountains, plains, rivers, lakes, all of it so exceptional, so fascinating, so…mine!