| sketch 2 |

To put the previous post in perspective, Lisa is from Hawaii. =) The town wasn't exactly the nicest, but it wasn't worse than say, Flushing, Queens. The large box was being carried in full view of a police car, and the staircases just had long turns (Ted was kidding in that quote). She's right in that we are being careful-- but judging from the fact that most of the housekeepng staff didn't necessarily speak English, I wasn't too worried about the door opening this morning. As a New Yorker I'm being super cautious about these things, so don't worry too much; we're doing our best to watch out.


Today we spent a good part of our day just chilling with jerry at the airport, and thoroughly embarassing him as he went through the security check-points (the NSA guys shot us some looks). After the shock from the see-you-laters, we spent some time in downtown Denver, where I walked around and got my hair cut and glasses fixed and minor shopping, and Barnes and Noble for some books.


We then started driving across Kansas, which is remarkably flat, and we saw some neat thunderstorms. We're now in Hays, Kansas, and onwards from here.

Off to bed! Will upload pictures tomorrow.

-HC

Sketch

Day 8. 9:50 am. Denver, CO

We're staying at a Ramada Inn in downtown Denver. Not to knock the city, but this is a pretty sketchy part of town. Coming back from dinner, we saw at least 5 police cars and a couple of 20-ish year old boys running across the street carrying a large box. Not to mention the sirens outside of our window, the smell of pot in the hall, and the staircases where Ted said "you kind of expect to come around the corner and find someone shooting up."

Thank God for the security bolty thing on the door. Someone tried to come in this morning while we were sleeping. Howie and Ted are still sleeping like rocks. I would have thought it was housekeeping, but no one actually said "housekeeping." I bolted awake and got out of bed to find the door ajar. Thanks mom, I now understand why you put the suitcase holder with the suitcase on it in front of the door. So, I'm awake, thoroughly freaked out and can't sleep.

It's really sad that we'll have to say goodbye to Jerry at this point in the journey. Perhaps more so for the guys, since they'll actually be parting ways for a while. I'll be seeing Jerry again fairly soon. I liked the advice a wise woman told me "Don't be sad. Get over there and make some more good memories. Otherwise, all you'll remember is that you were sad."

Day 7 - | precious cargo |

Day 7
Mileage: 58800 (8 AM)
Location: Thermopolis, WY -> Denver, Colorado


We woke up this morning... rather, we slept through three sets of alarms this morning. Jerry kept on waking up to turn them off [I slept through them all too - jerry], and Ted, Lisa, and I slept like rocks. I think we were just plain beat, and swimming in the sulphur springs really made the sleep.

After packing up, we headed out to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, where we stopped to view the exhibits and got a tour of the dinosaur dig site out there. It was pretty neat being out on the dig site, and I now have a much better idea of how the process of paleontology works. The exhibits themselves were a bit underwhelming (the Museum of Natural History has spoiled me), and the tour was really so-so and filled with suspect science. The tour guide went as far as to claim that the Rockies were formed by a meteor collision. Go figure. Lisa pointed out that we're probably a bit overeducated at this point for these tours-- I know this sounds obnoxious, but we realized that we have 7.5 degrees between the four of us. Weird, isn't it? I don't feel like I deserve mine.


Heading out from the Dinosaur center, we trucked it out to Yellowstone Drug Store in Shoshoni. The drug store was exactly how I imagined middle town America to be like. Shoshoni is a tiny, tiny town, and the Drugstore looks as if it came from the 60s. A long soda fountain bar shined in a corner, behind which burgers are flipped and shakes are swirled. Kitschy merchandise is all over, scattered between antiques and random general-store goods. The entire place felt like a cross between a Chinatown shop and an antique dealer.

We then headed for the long drive towards Denver. A short stop to take a picture with the world's largest Jackalope in Douglas, Wyoming. The jackalope is part of an American mythology that I never heard of-- a jackrabbit crossed with an antelope. Go figure. [Ted: The jackalope stars in "Boundin'", an animated short by Pixar]


And a short stop in Cheyenne, which really isn't worth mentioning. Sorry Wyoming.


Anyway, I'm pretty tired and need to get some sleep. Tomorrow we're dropping off very precious cargo, as Jerry is flying out of Denver and back to Stanford again. I know we'll see him again in the future, but right now, the mile-high rains of Denver mirrors my anticipations for tomorrow.

Ted adds:
Dinner tonight was at Rock Bottom Brewery, where, as usual, we ate too much. Good and rich food. We've all been noticing it in the past few days: the Americana Diet is not good for health. We've had giant hamburgers, heaps of french fries, ribs, pork chops... sort of explains why there are t-shirts for sale with slogans like "Fat people are harder to kidnap." Hopefully in the next few days my body will see some real vegetables again.

I like downtown Denver. It's similar to Santa Monica's Third St. Promenade, another pedestrian road. Denver's downtown is on 16th St, and runs about a mile from end to end. It reminded me of something I read about the renaissance of American downtowns, some sort of rebellion against one-stop big-box stores sprawled over miles of road. Unfortunately in Denver, almost only thing to do late at night is to go clubbing. We found ourselves at ESPNZone where we played air hockey and embarassed ourselves trying to play the basketball games.

In other news, I committed to sign a lease for housing in Cambridge tonight. I'll be living in East Cambridge, between Central and Kendall Squares. That starts September 1st; until then, I'll be staying with some FiCS alumni in the same area. Signing a lease makes this feel so concrete....

After sending Jerry off at the airport, we may stay in Denver one more night, then begin the drive toward Chicago. I'm not good with goodbyes.

I tend to try to stretch out goodbyes, and I think I've just about stretched the one coming tomorrow as much as I can. It takes some time for me to process things, so I think I'm going to need to wait till after I get back to CA to sort things out.

But right up front, this has been a wonderful week traveling with Ted, Howie, and Lisa. I'm really thankful to have spent these past few days with them (and hope that I was decent company).

Ted, Howie, Lisa, have a safe trip to Chicago and then on to your destinations. Already starting to miss you.

- jerry

Days 4, 5 and 6

Day 4, Mile 1,294: Rexburg, ID to Yellowstone National Park

People are so friendly here.

Got to Yellowstone at 10 am. This place is unbelievably gorgeous. Got our first taste of a "wildlife jam" a few miles in, where rangers were directing vehicles by a raptor nest. Stopped at a couple visitor centers and sighted more wildlife (coyote, bison, elk, besides birds).

Distance seems to be measured a little differently around here. We stopped by some mud pots and the trail up to them is marked as 0.3 miles. Definitely farther than that.

Found one campground at Slough Creek, were attacked by bugs, moved to Tower Falls and didn't deal with any bugs. Great.

Went to Mammoth Hot Springs in the afternoon. We first stopped at the Visitor Center where we watched an orientation movie that featured, among other things, some tourist getting knocked over twice by a charging bison. The film said that no one was hurt.

Mammoth is a really impressive formation of terraced bacterial mats and mineral deposits formed by the runoff of hot springs. We walked around some of the formations and then drove a loop to see some of the ones further out. Unfortunately, a lot of the springs don't run anymore.

Went out to look for wildlife, on the recommendation of our campground host. Parked, drove a little more, found a traffic jam, went back and parked, discovered what the traffic jam was about. THAR'S A BAR!!!

Caused our own traffic jam by pretending to look at something reallly interesting in the distance. *car slows* random stranger: "What's going on here?" Ted: "There's actually nothing here, but if you go up there, you can see a couple of bears." random stranger: "Really??" *family continues on very happily, ignoring the fact that we just made them stop for no reason*

Return to campsite. Play a game of Oregon Trail on the computer in the tent. Sleep and pray we don't get eaten by bears. Sidenote: hammocks are nice.

Other quotables:
"Yellowstone blows..."
"Yeah, blows...hot water!!"

"I love your back. It's like butter." - Howie
"Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much." - Jerry, re: Ted

Day 5, Mile 1,513: Yellowstone National Park

Weren't eaten by bears. Woke up to the sound of busy park workers at 6:00am.

Canyon Village for some wandering around. Had a tourist trap lunch. Reminisced about elementary school cafeterias and chocolate milk.

Early on the way to Old Faithful, we stopped by Beryl Spring and decided to be friendly and wave to all the passing motorists. Sowed confusion and smiles.

Felt inspired by our day's theme music - Jurassic Park - and acted like velociraptors on the boardwalk around some geysers around the Lower Geyser Basin.

3:45 pm. Bear sighting. Highly amused at traffic jam created. Discuss summer thesis idea of generating a computer model of traffic flow. Receive a snort from passerby when Ted mentions using a second-order differential equation to model the propagating wave.

Sat in the rain waiting for Old Faithful to blow. Carrots and apple chips. Walked around a bit more and got a face spray by a well-timed geyser.

Ate dinner at another tourist trap cafeteria, but got to see Old Faithful erupt again.

Highlight: Waltzing in the lobby of the Old Faithful Inn to live piano music. Beautiful log cabin building. It's hard to do justice to the architecture with words. The space just begged for dancing. Howie got the pianist to play some waltzes and we all got to spin around the floor, navigating through tourists. Wonderful. Got some applause from the upper balconies at the end of it.

Day 6, Mile 1,601: Yellowstone National Park to Thermopolis, WY

Camped at Grant Village last night. No bugs, thankfully. On the way there, we crossed the Continental Divide twice.

First stop this morning was a short one at Fishing Bridge. No fish sighted.

Stopped on way out to talk with database engineer works out of his RV and is spending a month in Yellowstone and does his work by satellite uplink.

Outside the park, the landscape changes rather quickly and dramatically to a sort of midwest mesa desert.

Cody, WY. Ate at the Silver Dollar Bar. "Dollar Burger" = 1 lb. of meat. Wows.

Thermopolis, WY. Hotsprings and waterslides. Whee!!!

Staying at the Coachman Inn tonight.

My blogging mood is fizzling. Passing it off to someone else. Contributions interleaved.

Day Three

Mileage: 57656
Location:
Bend OR --> Rexburg, ID

This is Howie, Lisa and Jerry. Ted is in the bathroom.

By the way, the comments are fixed now, so that anyone can comment. Sorry about that.

Today was primarily a day dedicated to getting ourselves from Oregon towards Yellowstone, so we left Bend super-early to get ourselves into the car. Crossing Idaho was quite a feat, especially because we wanted to stop and see neat things along the way.

We left Bend and drove West, which was particularly neat because we ended up following the old Oregon Trail (albeit in the opposite direction). Lisa surprised us all with her marathon driving, relentlessly pushing us on with her strong endurance. I'm glad that all of us are safe drivers, and I feel comfortable in the car no matter who's at ht ehelm.

Our first stop was in Vale, Oregon, which is a very, very small town that prides itself on being built and raised on the Oregon Trail. The main street is only a few blocks long, and it was remarkably quiet. All the stores were closed for Monday, save a Dairy Queen, the library, and an antique shop. We noticed on the walls that even the local high school sports teams needed to drive over a hundred miles to play their games. This was definitely Middle of Nowhere, America.

The neatest part about the town is the series of very colorful murals painted on buildings throughout. Many of the buildings were particularly old; some were run down, but others have been restored to appear like they did in pioneer America. The murals illustrated scenes from these times, making the pioneer element of the town tangible.

The sun here is incredibly, incredibly hot. I'm glad we did our route on the Trail with cars rather than vans. Ted: "The Oregon Trail is like car camping!" Howard: "Yes , but with a wagon. And horses. And NO CAR."

There was a rodeo at Vale for July 4th that night; although we didn't catch the rodeo, we did catch the art fair in the local park. It was a nice break to hang out with the local residents-- 4 H had a spot set up, and we stopped to purchase cotton candy and cookies. We found ourselves in the petting area meeting goats (goats are very, very cool) and baby cattle and a bunny rabbit. I'm sure we caused quite a scene; we were the biggest "kids" in the petting area. We struck up a conversation with a woman who worked on 4-H and was a teacher's assistant, but managed a farm with her husband as well. Ironically, she was originally a self-proclaimed city girl, but her daughter like animals so much that her husband (a lawyer) decided to move out of the city into the country.

She shared a lot of her knowledge about farm animals with us. I was particularly surprised by her attitudes towards eating the animals, and the lack of any sort of response from the kids around us. She talked frankly about killing and eating the goats, and about the superiority of milk cattle meat to actual cattle meat. Milk cattle meat has a yellower fat, she said, that has an excellent taste.

We left the petting zoo to gnaw on BBQ turkey legs, sweet corn on the cob, tamales, and to worry about Jerry becoming burned in the sun.



Leaving Vale, we approached Glenns Ferry-- if you've played the Oregon Trail game, this area was an important river crossing. We stopped to walk around, and the area was exactly how I imagined it as a child. Snake river winds and turns alongside sheer cliffs of rock and grass. Sitting in the shade, sheltered from the relentless sun, we had a brief, brief idea of what crossing the trail would've been like.

From Glenns Ferry onward, we hit Route 30, which we missed most of but catched some glimpses of neat waterfalls. The route follows a gorge that was carved out by Snake River. It was gorgeous.

Snake River, by the way, is incredibly long and windy. It continues to intersect our paths, even as we approached Idaho.

In Idaho, we stop at Wendy's for dinner and our first Idaho potato. And now we're here in Rexburg, ID. Idaho people, by the way, are very very short. I feel tall, and even lisa is above normal here (based on the population at Wendy's).

It's neat being able to drive across these regions that we learned about as a kid, and get a feel for what this part of America is about. The scenery is beautiful and sculpted from granite and dreams.

Onward!




DOES ANYBODY KNOW IF WE TIP FOR FULL SERVICE GAS?!!! HELP!