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Vacation Summary
Sep 9th
This is gonna be really long. That’s why all my photos are on flickr and if you want to see them go there.
My car had issues with one of the coils or spark plugs or whatever but I got that fixed and took off. 10 minutes in the car and I decided to go completely off my rocker and head towards areas talked about in those Little House books. I wandered back roads to Sleepy Eye and then Walnut Grove to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum. That’s where I got this giant chip busted out of my windshield. I don’t even know where the rock came from. Oh well.
From Walnut Grove I went to De Smet where she actually grew up. I stopped by the homestead, but they wanted a chunk of money and a wagon ride to show me everything so I passed. Ended up near Murdo, SD for dinner and then spent the night in the car.
Guy walks in the restaurant and says anyone wanna see a horse? Everyone goes outside. I’m in freaking South Dakota! Horses are unusual?
The next day I stopped at the infamous Wall Drug for (an expensive and not very good) breakfast then toured the place. Bought a nice leather purse I liked for $14. Wall Drug is enormous and completely touristy. Way too much crap.
Wandered through Sturgis and Sundance before heading to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Breathtaking and way cool. I managed to walk the path around the entire tower (1.3 miles) though I was done about two seconds before I came across the Halfway Point sign. Shit. But I did it and am kind of proud of myself. I decided right then and there to pony up the cash and camp at the KOA at the foot of the damned thing. Had my tent up and shower done by 7 because the campground movie was… can you guess? Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Which was canceled because of this ginormous storm. I should have stashed the tent and stayed in my car! That storm was scary as hell! Lightning and thunder and wind and rain and I’m zipped in the tent and can’t see anything and the wind is gusting and my fat ass is the only thing holding that stupid tent down. It kept folding over on me (no, the stakes disappeared years ago) and I kept picturing myself wrapped up tubal in a polyester tent and sleeping bag. Eventually it passed and I crashed until about 1am when the cold drove me into the car after all. My light AZ sleeping bag isn’t very useful when the temp drops too far.
Next day I headed towards Deadwood, SD for breakfast. I love Deadwood. I could live there if it didn’t get cold in the winter. Then to the Crazy Horse Memorial Monument. Huge museum and a bumpy bus ride to get closer. From there I stopped by Hot Springs but I didn’t do anything.
Blew through Colorado on the major highway. You don’t really see much doing 85 mph. Stopped for the night in Santa Fe at this cute little Silver Saddle Motel, but I really didn’t get to enjoy much because the elevation made it hard for me to breath. Saturday morning I decided to take another back road home. South of Albuquerque I found the US60 and headed west.
And stopped almost immediately because some little town was having it’s Labor Day parade on the ONLY STREET. I’m stuck behind the last police car disappointing small children because I’m obviously NOT part of the parade. So I blared some George Hrab as loud as I could stand it the whole length of the parade.
You know there’s a tiny town called Pie Town? Right there on the continental divide. I stopped for pie in honor of my friend Mur Lafferty. I’m not really a fan of pie, but I knew if I ever saw Mur again and passed up the opportunity she’d smack me.
And then I was home! Nice vacation but more expensive than I though it would be. I can’t tell you if the car ate more gas because the windows were open the whole time or if it would have been cheaper if the A/C worked. Who knows.
What I do know is, the next time some Fucktard tries to tell me I can’t do something they can just fuck off. I was fine. Better than fine. I did GREAT!
Thinking about my next road trip. Where should I go?
Vacation: Texas Sucks
Dec 13th
This is gonna run long. I didn’t have internet for more than a few minutes the entire trip and there’s only so much I could do on my DROID.
- Aaaand we’re off! 8:58 AM Dec 2nd
- GirlChild driving now. 300 miles to El Paso.
- Stopping for dinner in Van Horn TX.
Lousy place, Papa’s Pantry. We walked in and though the place was fairly full, nobody on staff even came over towards the door. Do you seat yourself or wait there like idiots? Finally we were waved into a dark corner where the overhead lights didn’t work. Yeah, yeah we should have left, but it’s fucking west Texas and stops are few and far between. Slow unfriendly service, lousy food, unclean bathroom.
- Texas sucks part 3: GirlChild gets us pulled over for speeding. Cop searches all of us and unpacks the car.
This was ridiculous. It was like he was bored or something. There was hardly anyone on the road and he came zipping up behind her when she was passing a truck so she changed lanes without signaling just to get out of his way. So he popped her for that, for going 79 in a 65 and because I didn’t have a light on my license plate – I totally didn’t realize that one. He put Ginnie in his car, Casey off between the cars and had me in front of mine while poor Kira is shrieking in the car in confusion. We were all polite (my kids were raised watching Cops) and he still searched the car and then started pulling everything out of the trunk. And it was frikking COLD out there, snow on the ground and dark as hell. Asshole.
- #texassucks pt 4: After successfully dodging a dozen deer Son runs over some pteradactyl’s dinner.
Too funny, I was dozing and could hear Ginnie and Casey mentioning deer every few minutes when Casey suddenly swerved and hollered “What the FUCK was that?” and Ginnie was howling. He thinks it was a giant owl and I (who didn’t see a thing) expect it was more likely a vulture but either way it was trying to drag something huge across the road and Casey hit whatever the roadkill was. We laughed for hours over that one.
- #texassucks Unfortunate HOV turn dumped us into downtown Houston. Light rail stations look similar to ours.
We couldn’t figure out the HOV thing at all. There needs to be a Just Passing Through lane on interstates. Their HOV on the I-10 had three different acronyms with various tolls and we couldn’t decide if it was OK to use then figured what the heck why not, except at some point it emptied into downtown Houston street level. Thanks to my handy dandy DROID we turned the GPS/Google Navigator and got right back out again.
Hey big city sign people, make sure outsiders can figure out what your signs mean. Here in Phoenix that whole I-10 / I-17 / 51 / airport thing is completely confusing and I LIVE HERE. Especially since you can’t rely on direction as the left of the V actually goes north before it goes west while the right of the V goes west before it takes you north and crosses over the road you should have taken to continue west way back there! Anyway…
- Fuck Texas! We’re outta here!
Here’s where we started Day two.
