I've just returned from an epic road trip--a one-way drive from Toronto to Vancouver in a rented Chevy. The pins on the map above mark just a few of the exciting places we stopped along the way.

By the numbers:

Times we stopped in Minnesota: 0.
Lowest gas: $3.79/gallon
Highest gas: $1.38/litre
Times we crossed the Idaho border: 4.
Days: 6.
Favourite Motel: 6.
States: 10. (Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington)
Photographs taken: 407. (Not to worry--only 146 made it onto this page.)
Miles: 3,000.
Kilometers: 5,000.
Times Boaz prepended "Good Old" to something I mentioned: 1 billion.

The past few weeks of travel have been, well, awesome. Only those of us who experienced the awesomeness will ever truly understand, but here's a good way to begin: get yourself a big bag of gorp, set your iPod to loop on Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" (if for some reason you grow tired of it, you are allowed to splice in "Fishing in the Dark" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), and make yourself comfortable.

At noon on Monday, I walked into the Toronto Hertz rental agency, presented my reservation number for a "Toyota Corolla (or similar)" to be returned at Vancouver Downtown by 5pm Sunday. The agent looked at my license, gave me a form to sign, and then handed me the keys to a Chevy Cobalt. I was a bit worried when he showed me the "damage" sheet with several marks on it--what kind of junker were they giving us to drive cross-country? My fears were misplaced, however:

The entire procedure took three minutes. Dazed, I walked down to the parking garage, got into the car, and drove it to Boaz's apartment, then to Sebastian's, and then to mine. The time: 12:42 EST. We were off. I drove the first leg, because it is not legal for Boaz to drive in Canada. We crossed the border at Sarnia, joking about the smell of freedom in noxious line of traffic.

A Columbian, an Israeli, and an American attempt to cross the border into the United States--it sounds like the start to a joke, but fortunately the crossing went quite smoothly. Above is the first picture of the trip--the bridge to the United States. Boaz tells me it was his easiest border crossing into the US ever, presumably because an American citizen was sitting in the driver’s seat.

Michigan

Around 7pm, I pulled off the road for a filling station, swapping seats for the first time with Boaz. Dinner was potato salad, greek salad, and a rotisserie chicken from the local IGA. We ate at a small park picnic area and discussed the proper pronunciation of "weed whacker." The distinction between "good old" and "Great Canadian" was noted. We saw many, many dead deer at the side of the road. I’m not sure of the difference between Michigan and Maine: is it the number of deer, the number of drivers, or the quality of one or the other that explains the quantity of deer killed by cars? That night, we discovered the wonders of Motel 6. The next morning, we discovered the pleasures of the International House of Pancakes, which I hear has a branch just across from the Louvre. Imagine: four kinds of syrup! Not even one of which has any syrup in it!

Indiana

Gary is shocking. I read about Gary a few years ago. What I read was a study in the racial or class, dimension of environmental politics. White men owned the mills. Black men worked in them.* White men lived in large houses to the northeast of the city. Black men lived downtown. In the path of the smoke. When populations shifted in the sixties and seventies, white people started getting the brunt of the smoke, and laws changed, forcing reclamation of pollutants. (Taller stacks were ruled out because by then it was known that this simply shifts the effects to another location--one where other white/rich people lived.) As a result of reclamation, the plants generated more solid waste, and this was buried in--you guessed it--poorer, and predominantly black, neighborhoods. That knowledge is distressing enough, but what is shocking is how much smoke still pours from those stacks.

* Ed: presumably, there were also women somewhere in Gary, but at the beginning they weren't working in the factories or owning them, if I remember correctly.

Illinois

We spent an unfortunately short time in Chicago, because we had to push on to make it to Sioux Falls later that night--a seven-hour drive. We did have time for some deep-dish Chicago pizza from Eduardo’s, though!

Wisconsin and Minnesota

We stopped only for gas in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Boaz was driving, so I took a number of photos from the car. These have the disadvantage of always having the roadway or guardrail in the foreground, but the advantage of, well, not having to stop the car. One sight of note were these giant contraptions:

For all the farms we have in Maine, I have never seen an irrigation system like this in action. They sweep out giant arcs, for one end of the long arm is connected to a well. These machines turn marginal lands into fertile ones, and fertile lands into lush ones. Over the decades, they also drain the water table and salinate what remains.

South Dakota

We were in a bit of a rush the first two days of the trip, in part because we wanted to reach Sioux Falls, the only place we'd have free lodging until Vancouver. Boaz's father's cousin was kind enough to put us up for the night--and more, to cook us two wonderful meals. In the morning, Toni took us on a tour of her workplace, the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science. There, I discovered that my throwing arm sounds more impressive in kph, and that adults look at you funny when you play with the science exhibits. An art installation consisting of a thousand burnt loaves of bread mounted on the walls was going in while we were there -- possibly the smell will remain long after the exhibit is gone.

After this brief cultural respite, we were back on the road, aiming for Mt. Rushmore. Along the way, we stopped at the world's largest (and only) corn palace. Disappointingly, the building itself is constructed of traditional materials; corn and corn husks make up siding and interior murals. I have half a mind to start a corn palace of my own just so that Mitchell can no longer lay claim to the title "only." I would call mine "The World's Second-Largest Corn Palace," and it would be a-maize-ing.

South Dakota, more than any other state, has nothing in it. As Boaz said, the reason we stopped at the Mitchell Corn Palace is that our standards dropped: no longer were we looking for Something Exciting, just Something would suffice. The Corn Palace, essentially a gift shop surrounded by corn murals, was highlight enough to keep us for nearly an hour. It was an hour well spent, however, as I rediscovered why I do not wear hats:

Oddly, Mitchell sells t-shirts advertising South Dakota's Finest Road Kill Cafe. This is odd because there was once a Road Kill Cafe in Maine--it had the same logo, but a menu adapted to the local ecosystem.

Just after crossing the border into South Dakota, you see the first billboard for Wall Drug--"Don't worry! Just 300 miles to Wall Drug!" proclaims the sign. Every few miles comes another sign advertising a new attraction at Wall Drug. If nothing else, Wall Drug was Something rather than Nothing, so we stopped there as well. Coming, as it does, just west of the Badlands, Wall is a near-oasis in a near-desert. Boasting five-cent coffee and free iced water (and eight-dollar burgers), Wall is a must-see attraction if you're ever on 90 heading west. And not just because it's the only gas for a hundred miles.

After Wall, we pushed on toward Rapid City and nearby Mount Rushmore. And we got a little bored. So we played a road-trip game I like to call "would I like to have a beer with this person?" (patent pending).

When we finally reached Mount Rushmore, clouds obscured the peaks, so we opted to move on, burning through as many miles as we could toward Yellowstone.

Wyoming

We did very little driving after dark on this trip, but we did some this night, arriving in exciting Gillette, Wyoming a little after everything closed for the night. After finding a motel, we walked to a nearby McDonalds. The Restaurant closed, we attempted to walk through the drive-thru, and were refused service because, as the fellow at the window explained, "you might rob me." None of us thought it worth arguing that a robbery would likely be smoother with a getaway car. Instead, we purchased a nutritious meal of fruit juice, beef jerky, and cellophane-wrapped banana bread.

The next day, we quickly hit the mountains. As when I visited Utah a few years back, it struck me how suddenly they come up, and how sharp they are as compared to the rounded Appalachians of Maine. In a matter of minutes, we were above 10,000 feet and looking at snowpack.

A few hours later, in Greybull, on the other side of that particular set of mountains, we sat and ate Chinese food at one of the two restaurants on what appeared to be Main Street (I believe we were deceived: satellite maps show Greybull to be a relatively compact city, but one with more than a dozen streets. I became suspicious after I saw a garbage truck traversing a side street). Greybull is one of those small towns that prides itself on its heritage, and so it has a museum/library. The museum reminded me of nothing more than a rummage sale, though with less tupperware. It did, though, have many geologic wonders on display, and that, as Sebastian wrote in the guest book, "rocks!"

Onward.

Our next stop was the Buffalo Bill Dam and Reservoir on the Shoshone River.

The dam and visitor's center are set far back from the parking area, and although a road leads up to the front door, the way is obstructed and a center employee runs tourists back and forth on a golf cart. I imagine the worry is terrorism, though I am not certain how effective the "do not enter" sign would be to your more dedicated terrorist. Possibly there are hidden defensive battlements I missed.

At the center, we watched a video history of the dam's construction, offering our own critique of the historiography as institutional historians voiced an unrelentingly progressive caricature of what must have occurred. Apparently, the way a project like this (at the time, the tallest dam in the world) eventually succeeds is for several different outfits to bankrupt themselves attempting it. Eventually, one succeeded, building on the results of predecessors. The lesson? Be the owner of the one that succeeds, not the ones that fail. The other lesson? Never let historians loose at historical sites.

On the road toward Yellowstone, traffic was halted while these guys butted heads in the road:

Apologies for the crooked photo; I was hanging my arm out the window repeatedly depressing the shutter as I drove by, my eyes ahead rather than to the side. The technique is even more effective on buffalo, as I discovered a few hours later:

Yellowstone is beautiful. It is gigantic (we didn't have time to explore even half of the main loop), and not a little surreal to drive through it. Home to a vast majority of the natural geothermal sites in the world, the park is essentially a gigantic volcanic crater. The lake is still frozen over, and as the rain began to fall at dusk, I feared we would be driving through winding mountains in freezing conditions. Fortunately, the temperature stayed a degree or two above freezing, but the driving was a little white-knuckle for a time.

For me, Yellowstone was a real high point for the trip. Driving across the country is better than flying over it, but we really had little time to dawdle. One day, I would like to return to many of the places we drove past and really explore them.

The following day, after a hearty breakfast at Bubba's B-B-Q in Jackson, we spent some time in the Tetons, mostly doing boy things, such as throwing rocks into the lake, skipping stones, and peeing behind trees. Good times.

The clouds never quite lifted away from the peaks, which disappointed me a little at the time, but in retrospect, I probably had more fun cracking rocks and generally contributing to the slow erosion of the Tetons into nubbins like Katahdin.

Idaho, Montana, Idaho

Idaho reminds me of Maine. Weird. Then it's back to badlands in Montana and mountains in Idaho (again). Dinner at Chilis in Coeur d'Alene--the suburban experience.

Washington

Let's skip straight to Seattle, though there was much to see on the way. We were looking for our old standby, the Motel 6, just south of Seattle, but missed it, winding up right in the middle of downtown. Rather than turn back, we parked the car and wandered the streets. Almost immediately, we found this:

I think I prefer the Cobalt.

Seattle appears to be a very compact city--at least when it comes to the downtown. From a place that serves free (tiny) samples of tea and the famous fish tossers at Pike Place Fish Market to a sushi place and my old city-wandering standby Brookstone (with its massage chairs), Seattle has just about everything a tourist could ask for. Except sun. Seattle even has a tower:

Though it is puny compared to Toronto's.

Despite being a bunch of guys, we did do our part to support the arts.

Vancouver

Though delayed by road construction and a long wait at the border, the trip from Seattle to Vancouver wasn't noteworthy. Once in Vancouver, the sun came out and we went for a long walk along the shore. From all appearances, Vancouver has done a far better job than Toronto of making the shore accessible, both in the sense that it is easy to get there and in the sense that you might want to get there. It helps that Vancouver is compact and has so much shoreline. The city surrounds and spans English Bay. Its outward growth is restrained by the Fraser River to the south and mountains to the north.

Vancouver has great sushi, and my favorite food experience there (besides home-cooked meals at Sebastian's place) was all you can eat sushi for ten bucks.

Vancouver, like Toronto, always seems to have something going on, and when Eran and I spent the day exploring, we stumbled into a street festival in Chinatown.

Later that evening, we had a nice dinner with an incoming philosophy student. After dinner, we went to three separate art exhibit openings, which doubles the total number of art exhibit openings I've ever been to. An odd night indeed, we ended the evening at a karaoke bar.

Vancouver's public library is fascinating. The library itself is a large, circular structure surrounded by another circular structure filled with tiny shops. I gather that the intention is to draw people in to the library at lunchtime.

If only the HSS I know got this kind of reception:

When people visit Toronto, you ask, "where did you eat? What did you see?" When people visit Vancouver, it's, "where did you hike." Well, I hiked near the Capillano River:

And Lynn Canyon Park:

And then I flew home.