Sara with No H

Um...Never Say Never?

2008-07-23T13:38:00.003-05:00

Posting this here rather than on my other blog because this is more personal than observational.

J and I are talking about moving.

And we MIGHT have found a place that we'd like to make a bid on. And we got the okay from the bank. And I spoke very briefly with the realtor and am going to meet with a guy about renting a storage locker for interim decluttering of the condo.

Maybe...everything is very hazy right now, and the market isn't good, so we might never get an offer, but you never know until you try, right?

Here's to trying!

And if nothing else, I get to put some junk into storage.

Calm Cool and Collected

2008-07-18T22:58:00.002-05:00

I just got back from vacation last week, and find myself still floating in the mindset of someone without a care in the world. I'm driving at 25 mph, while others zoom by me shooting me dirty looks. I find myself grinning inanely at others I pass while riding my bike. I tap my hand against my leg to the tune of my iPod and sing along. People are staring.

A co-worker told me that she thinks that 2 weeks is the best amount of time to go on vacation and I'm inclined to agree. Even today, after a week of being back, I can truthfully say that I'm still hovering in the vacation mindset. I think that this is just what I needed.

That being said, I need to take more vacations!

I'm still posting on Wisconsinnative.com, but will occasionally touch base here, so don't forget to check both!

As Predicted

2008-07-13T10:35:00.001-05:00

I've started to post my blog at WisconsinNative.com.

Why not take a gander over there?

Day 12: Wall, SD to HOME

2008-07-11T12:27:00.002-05:00

Yes, you can do Wall to Wisconsin in less than 12 hours. We are living proof.

Along the way, I forced J to stop in Mitchell, SD so we could get our pictures of the corn palace.

Interestingly, there are a lot less signs for the Corn Palace and Wall Drug coming back east than there are going out west. I guess they know who to hit.

(My dad's nickname is Zeke)

We joked, as we came closer, about how the cliffs and hills just seemed smaller, and how there were so many trees. About how much traffic there suddenly was. About how many lights there were on the horizon, and about how the highways were suddenly so much larger and dense.

Oh, it's good to be home. I slept in my own bed last night, and Monty was extremely happy to see us. It's really good to be home.

Day 11: Cody, WY to Wall, SD

2008-07-11T11:50:00.007-05:00

When we awoke, my abiding thought was that we could leave this horrid place.

My next thought was getting breakfast and getting this museum expedition started.

Cody has an outstanding set of museums, all comprised in something called the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. The reason we were here was really for the Cody Firearms Museum, which I thought J might like.

And he did. We went to a talk given by the curator on the history of firearms in the old West, and walked around most of the museums. A smattering of pictures for you.

Black bear skull farthest to the left, grizzly in the middle, and the extinct snout-nosed bear skull farthest to the right.

Animals killed in the hunting frenzy of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Note the walrus.

Yes, it's a crossbow.

A tommy gun like the gangsters would use.

A gatling gun.

WWII weaponry.

Sick of guns yet?

This is just a fraction of the pictures that I took.

Teach your children about how guns work. That seems...um...smart. Maybe I'm just too damn liberal.

More pictures here...in case you need to see more guns...

But there was other stuff in this museum too...

A Plains Indian Museum...

A ceremonial mask for a horse.

A necklace made of buffalo fur and bears claws.

A Buffalo Bill Museum...

but most of my pictures there didn't turn out.

We left and turned towards escape.

On the way, however, we stopped at the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp. This is a place were Japanese-Americans were interned during WWII for being ethnically Japanese.

Most of the buildings are knocked down and now only plaques remain.

A heartbreaking place to visit. Thousands of people held here under guard for no reason than they looked different.

Hot and arid, imagine coming here after leaving your home and business in sunny and lush California. They helped bring irrigation to this area, making it farmable. They brought farming in, teaching techniques to local farmers to make growing food work.

They made this place a much better place with their presence, even if it was unwilling.

Soberly, we turned towards the mountains.

J and I decided on taking the northern most route (Alt14) through the BigHorn Mountains, because we'd already done the south route. It was scenic and beautiful, but absolutely terrifying. He was driving and I'd look out the window, feel my stomach drop and snap pictures out of the window with my eyes closed. Please forgive the bug splatters on the windows.

It was during this queasy trip over the mountains that I saw a moose disappearing into the forest and saw a cow and three small cows resting on the side of the mountain road. Of course, the camera wouldn't cooperate, so no pictures for you.

Once J had successfully guided us out of the mountains, I took over driving for a while and then J took over again. The plan was to get a hotel room in Rapid City, SD.

When we stopped there, we found that there wasn't a cheap hotel room left in the city. Seriously. We tried 10 hotels and were eventually told that the entire city was booked. (No one has vacancy signs there...you just have to go into each one. What a pain.)

J drove us clear through to Wall (50 miles east and home to Wall Drug), and there, at 11PM at night, we took the last room that a Best Western had. A family suite with 3 (!) queen sized beds. I was exhausted. J was exhausted.

Time to rest up. Another big day of driving lay ahead of us. Oh. Yeah.

Day 10, Thermopolis to Cody, WY

2008-07-11T11:16:00.003-05:00

Tuesday, the 10th day of our journey, started out just fine. We stopped at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. I wish I had brought the camera because it was a really amazing place. The fossils were bought by this guy who must have had TONS of money because they were fantastic.

And then, in 1993, a couple of geologists found fossils poking up through a dark layer of rock in a nearby ranch.

The rich guy bought the ranch and they started to exacavate and they keep pulling really amazing dinosaur bones out of the mountain. We got to visit the dinosaur dig and our guide was an older gentleman by the name of John who knew almost everything that there was to know about this particular site.

Then we got on the road.

We were headed for Cody, WY. On the way, we saw the Rocky Mountains rising to our left, and the land turned more arid, more rocky, more deserty. Cody is only 50 or miles from Yellowstone. We had decided against making that final trek there because we'd been warned about road construction and heavy crowds, but Cody, well, maybe Cody wouldn't be so bad.

I don't know why we thought that.

Cody was created as a tourist town to deal with the traffic heading to Yellowstone, to capitalize on the legend of William Cody (aka Buffalo Bill), to basically spread tourism dollars a little eastward from Yellowstone. It has a long Downtown area with little boutique shops designed to slurp money from your wallet at an alarming rate.

I'd seen a sign for Buffalo Bill State Park. State Parks, usually, are pretty nice and cheap places to camp. Cheap being the most important word there. $12.00 a night cheap, to be exact. The park itself is 15 miles on the other side of Cody, and built on the Buffalo Bill Reservoir, which was created by the damming of a canyon river. The resulting lake was large and treeless, but it would be a good place to camp, right?

Wrong.

The first place we tried to set up our tent at was a flat and baked hard slab of adobe mud. We tried to push our tent stakes in and they wouldn't budge. We ended up finding rocks and using them, cavemen style, to pound the stakes down. It was then we noticed the wind. Not just a wind, but a gale, coming across the reservoir and bending the tent poles like we were in a hurricane. J was frustrated and I wasn't much better. This place was hot and windy, and we'd just paid $12.00 in a place where our tent would likely blow over.

We tried a different camp area. A park employee listened to our tale, and suggested the Trout Creek area, which he said had no wind. We found it, and indeed, the ground was softer and there was no wind. There was also lots and lots of bugs. Mosquitoes.

Now, the mosquitoes out west pale in comparison to Wisconsin mosquitos. Wisconsin mosquitoes have a work ethic that few could muster. J even suggested kidnapping a few Wyoming mosquitoes and bringing them back for an interbreeding program to temper the Wisconsin stock. However, it was hot. Heat and mosquitoes together is a combination that comprises my own special version of hell. I spoke with a drunken Wyomingian Packer fan who assured me that "Favre would be back!". A baby cried nearby and I agreed. This place sucked.

I tried slapping them. I tried hanging out in the hot tent. I tried to find the bug repellent. I finally convinced J to go to town, to get out of this pit, and maybe see a movie. We got there after the movies had started. Just another nail in our coffin.

That's how we ended up in Cody, WY, visiting a Wal-Mart for bug spray at 8PM. This place was a pit, and that's saying something since I don't have a really high opinion of most Wal-Marts. The bathrooms were disgusting. I'd rather use the pit toilets at the campground than there. They moved the bug spray from Camping to something called Household Supplies, and we couldn't find it, even with the help of two employees. (Eventually we did find it.)

We had both reached our trip breaking point.

It was at that point decided that we'd see the Museum the next day, and maybe a couple other things, but then we'd start to head home. We were out of vacation juice. Cody had broken us.

Vacation Extra: The Skies

2008-07-10T23:27:00.002-05:00

I often have to get up in the middle of the night to attend to (ahem) bodily functions.

I don't know why, but it just happens like that.

When I did this, I would check out the skies.

When we were in the Bighorn Wilderness, the skies were so full of stars and so clear that I didn't really need my head lamp to see where to walk. I actually paused on the lakeside to stop and take it all in.

I wish my camera would have a better "night" function for my friends in the big city, but it was truly a sight to behold.

In the hotel in Buffalo, there was bad weather moving through, and the skies hung low like mammatus clouds with swirling grey and black. I was glad to be inside.

When we were in Thermopolis, J spotted a spot drifting high in the fringes of the atmosphere. "I think I saw a satellite!"

All in all, the skies were beautiful and clear, but beyond simple words.

There's a reason why they call it Big Sky Country.

Day 9: Thermopolis, WY

2008-07-07T20:56:00.004-05:00

Props to Mrs. Armless Bear for recommending Thermopolis as a destination when J and I were discussing how to best heal up. Neither one of us wanted to climb another mountain.

While J was in the shower, she saw I was online and suggested a bunch of things to do while in WY, Thermopolis being one of them. I knew about it because my guidebook had said it is the largest mineral hot spring in the world, so that is why I took her suggestion.

But as we filled up the car at the "Kum and Go" (what a horrible name), I saw a pamphlet for whitewater rafting in Thermopolis. I suggested it to J and off we went.

Along the way, I got to drive Hwy 16 from Buffalo to Tensleep (up to 9946 ft.), go down a pretty (terrifying) mountain road, and saw some pretty Wyoming scenery. This side of the state is a lot more arid, with oil fields and lots of sagebrush.

(Speaking of sagebrush, it grows wild out here and I'm currently trying to destink my feet with a sprig I picked off of a nearby hill. My feet are pretty funky.)

The campsite we rented is just down the road from the Wind River Whitewater Rafting company. They took us about 8 miles upriver into sacred lands the Native Americans traded for the hot springs of Thermopolis, and we got in. As the lands are sacred, there is no development or hiking or anything on them. The Whitewater Rafting people have a compact to do this. It is owned by a tribe member.

The canyon that the Wind River runs through juts up high on both sides, but the guide told us that the dam up stream was trying to fill their reservoir, and the water height was low. The trip was several small class 2 rapids, a couple of 3's, and a 4, although J, who has been on another whitewater rafting didn't think the 4 warranted the rating.

I didn't care and I enjoyed myself immensely. It was all new and thrilling to me.

The canyon has a railroad track running through it and you can see where there was a hut built by Chinese day laborers building the railroad. And you can see caves in the rocks, and rocky precipices. Bighorn sheep were reintroduced to the region and I kept scanning the shores for them. (I didn't see anything....)

We did see a pair of seagulls fighting over a small fish, which was pretty entertaining and some strange looking ducks that J tells me I've probably seen in Wisconsin, even though I don't remember that.

At one point, the guide suggested that we jump off and go for a swim, and we did, floating down the river in our life jackets during a pretty calm time. When they tried to pull me back into the raft afterwards, my life jacket almost went completely over my head.

It was kind of expensive, but how often do you get a chance to do something like that? Totally worth it.

Tomorrow? Doing the Hot Springs, the Dinosaur Museum and traveling to Cody, WY. I'll blog if I can get free wifi. Not sure about pictures...camera battery is running low.

Mountain Man Bruce: Vacation Extra

2008-07-06T20:47:00.004-05:00

We met a guy while hiking named Bruce. He's a local. He was hiking north as we retreated south to our campsite. He was heading to a crash site of a WWII bomber that had slammed into the Big Horns during 1943. His grandfather had been part of the original horse rescue team that had tried to get there after the crash.

By the time that they'd gotten there, the bodies had already been looted. The team tried to bring a machine gun back, but it was too heavy, and they ended up hiding it somewhere in the hills.

Bruce was hoping to visit the crash site but it was too snowed in.

It's kind of a neat piece of local history, and if it hadn't been too snowy, we might have been able to visit it. More Info Here.

Maybe sometime when it is less snowy, J would like to head back up and see if he can find it.

Evidently, there's a book written about it...maybe I can find that for his birthday.

Day 6,7,8

2008-07-06T18:13:00.003-05:00

We spent a day in the B&B in Story, and headed to our Trail Head, in the Big Horn Mountains, to the West of Buffalo, WY.

I'd never hiked with a pack before, and I'd never seen mountains until day 5. J and I discussed the best trek we could find that would give us plenty of hiking and mountains for our time.

W. Tensleep Creek was our trailhead, and the plan was to follow the trail from the trailhead to Lake Helen, to Lake Marion and up to Mistymoon Lake, where we'd camp. We'd then do day hikes from there to Lake Solistice and Florence Pass. Sounds adventurous, doesn't it?

Oh, it was.

You see, not 1 mile from the trail head, we ran into rangers, who told us that the bridge was out farther up the trail and we probably wouldn't be able to cross. We went up, being distrustful souls, and sure enough, the water was running fast and deep.

But J wasn't to be daunted. We headed back to near Tensleep Lake, and found a shallow area that looked easy to cross.

So, J stepped in with a stout stick and edged across.

And then I tried it.

As I first stepped in, all that went through my mind was COLD! COLD! COLD! The water was frigid. I stepped carefully on the rocks as I concentrated on not being knocked over by the fast moving current. I edged closer and then J was there and he pulled me up on the opposite bank. I successfully forded my first river!

In a bit of time, we found our way back to the path. And when we first saw our first patch of snow, I even thought it was unique enough to take a picture. But as we inched up the path, we noticed more.

And then we had to climb over and through them.

By the time we reached Lake Helen, we were exhausted, wet from snow, and sick of picking our way around the fields of snow that covered our path.

We set up camp there.

It was beautiful, even if there were rogue sheets of ice floating by.

Our campsite was simple, and we decided to explore the next day, maybe for another campsite nearer Lake Mistymoon, our destination.

And so the next day, we set out to see the lakes north of us.

And the ice fields were larger, the running water to traverse wider and colder, and the sights even more extreme.

And when we reached Lake Mistymoon, we were in for a surprise.

The lake was completely ice.

And the paths that we hoped to explore? Completely snowed over. The icy lake was draining down the valley, feeding the flooded creek and rendering us at a dead end.

Dead tired and at a loss for options, we decided that maybe a different trailhead might hold promise.

After, of course, a trip to Buffalo, WY for a hotel room, a hot shower, and some pizza first. We were both exhausted, and scratched, bitten up, and achy.

And that is how we arrived here. At a Super 8 Hotel in Buffalo, WY with free wifi. Enjoying HBO.

But tomorrow...definitely back to the trail. Maybe an easier one with no snow.

Day 5: Heading to the Mountains.

2008-07-06T17:40:00.002-05:00

We left our little campsite to head towards Wyoming.

The plan was to spend a few days hiking the Big Horn Mountains after a brief stop at a B&B in Story, WY

On the way, we decided to stop off and see Devil's Tower, which is about 100 miles from the Black Hills. It's actually smaller than "little" Devil's Tower (from day 1) in the Black Hills at 5200 ft above sea level. But it is just so strange to see it emerge from the rolling plains on its own. People actually climb it and that day we were treated to 4 people inching up the side.

It has as structure of dolomite columns that are 4-7 sided, geometrically precise, and the base of the tower is littered with columns that have broken off of it and fallen. The National Park Service assures us that nothing has fallen off in a very long time.

Again, this is a place seen as sacred to Native Americans. Legend has it that it was formed when little girls were pursued by a bear and prayed for rescue. The land responded and pushed up the land under the little girls to save them, and the bears claws scratched the column in trying to reach them. They call it Bear Lodge.

(prayer cloths in the trees)

But on the way, we had time to view native Wyoming too.

We chose a couple of back roads to make it there and were treated to sights of native Wyoming. We discovered that Wyoming is 1) home to mile long trains of coal heading east 2) flat expanses of sagebrush and cattle and 3) oil fields - and oil pumps come in small and large sizes!

Another thing that takes some getting used to is how gas is sold. You can buy the cheapest grade for about what we'd pay at home, $3.99. But that has ethanol in it, and you don't want to put ethanol in your car do you? Then "regular" unleaded is marked at a slightly higher price, but has no ethanol. Then "premium" unleaded is of course the stuff we'd pay for too, but without ethanol. I put the "regular" non-ethanol in before I realized it. I don't really care, but here they pump oil, and they probably don't like those corn-based fuels making their way into their fuel supply.

But then we saw our destination...

MOUNTAINS!

Day 4: Mammoth Day

2008-07-06T17:07:00.004-05:00

(Steps to our campsite)

It rained that night and the morning we awoke to find our entire campsite shrouded in mist. Well, we are at the top of one of the Black Hills, and it seemed a cloud had settled down on top of us.

Also, that night, a large group had parked and camped in the site above ours. They spoke a language that I didn't recognize, and I couldn't place. Until I saw their van the next morning.

(it reads USA-Sweden Roadtrip, Day 11)

It promised to be a grey and cloudy day, and that called for more sightseeing. How about a mammoth dig?

Hot Springs, SD has a working mammoth dig. You see, in 1974, a bulldozer on a building site unearthed a mammoth tusk. They called in experts and found that the site had been a sinkhole where 50-70 young male mammoths met their untimely end. The sides of the sinkhole were slippery shale and the mammoths (and other beasties too) fell in, never to get out.

Everything is left "in situ" which means it will be left in place, and casts of the bones and structures left by the mammoths are made to be studied and put on display, instead of removing them from their final resting place. The tour left a bit to be desired, but the exhibits were very informative.

Early man of Eastern Europe would make entire homes from the bones of mammoths and their hides. They replicated it here. Also in the sinkhole was a now extinct version of bear called the giant short-nosed bear was kind of a cross between a dog andn a bear with really long legs. Camels, who eventually would become extinct in America, but move to Asia and Africa and thrive. All sorts of very strange little beasties, even a mystery bone, which they can't quite place.

But after an hour, the crowds of children in the space got to be too much for me.

We went to a little pub in downtown Hot Springs. On their menu they had "Denver Nuggets" (Fried Cheese Curds) and something called Chisilik (deep fried sirloin steak). Good thing we just wanted burgers.

The strange thing was that on the televisions there they had this Japanese (maybe Korean?) soap opera on. It was subtitled and had a multi-layered storyline. This girl was fending off the advances of her ardent boss. This poor waif of a girl suffered as the assistant to a fashion model who was spoilt and enjoyed torturing her. I was actually getting into it. It was definitely not the sort of thing you'd imagine seeing in Hot Springs, SD.

After that, we didn't feel like spending more time battling crowds at the hot springs, and J drove us back to the campsite.

While he was driving, we cut through Wind Cave National Park. We saw prairie dogs as large as Monty and I saw some of the rocks that made the Black Hills famous. It came to me as I sat that they remind me, with their deep fissures, of the giant heads of Easter Island with mouths and noses and eyebrows. No wonder the Native Americans find this place to be holy. No wonder they were so mad when the white man took it away and started to bulldoze and dynamite the place. When Mt. Rushmore was completed they decided to build their own monument, and one day Crazy Horse will be its own monument to their people and this land.
(Not the actual buffalo we saw)

As I contemplated this, J drove across a bridge, and there, on the side of the road, sat a buffalo, not 5 feet from us. I didn't even have my camera ready and it wasn't exactly a safe place to stop for pictures. All over the Black Hills are signs that say "Buffalo are Dangerous! Do Not Approach!". Still people will get out of their cars with their cameras and stomp up to them. And they'll stop in ridiculous places too, along the side of busy highways and where it is clearly dangerous to be out of their car. I mean...it's a buffalo. And it's special and rare, but so are you!

Day 3: The Sights

2008-07-06T16:47:00.006-05:00

“We could do monuments today,” suggested J.

We’d already driven by Mt. Rushmore, and saw the full parking lots. Did we really have to go back?

But Crazy Horse…I’d rather see something like Crazy Horse now because someday it will be completed and then I can say I saw it being built.

We packed a lunch and set off early, getting Crazy Horse before the crowds did. We could see it before we got there. It’s HUGE! The head is much larger than Rushmore’s heads and they’d painted an outline of where the horses head would eventually show with white paint.

Impressive is an understatement. The sculptor (Korczak Zilkowski) had spent most of his life working on just the head and died before he could see that completed. The entire enterprise seemed so large, but no one in his family seemed dissuaded. They were going to see this completed, and have turned it into an enterprise.

He arrived in Custer, SD with only $174 in his pocket. A pittance. He had to establish a dairy and a lumbermill to support the blasting and carving. He built his own home, his own studio, his own roads. He climbed 700+ stairs to the top to work on it, and had to often climb down to restart an ancient gas compressor to restart it when it failed. One day he walked down 9 times.

We took the optional bus ride to the base and learned about the beavers that he tried to get rid of by blasting their dam. They rebuilt and ate some of his hoses. After that he left them alone. We saw the deer and marmots still living on the property and saw them sandblasting part of the horses head from on high.

We toured the grounds and did the standard touristy things like buy a chunk of the mountain (only $1!) and an Indian braided bracelet (only $1!).

But by the time we finished, it was only 11:30. I think we are still on Central time. We get up too early and go to bed too early.

J handed the car keys off to me. I got to drive down a mountain highway myself. It wasn’t as twisty and turny as the ones that J’s been driving, but I did okay. I have a tendancy to shift into neutral for some of the slopes around Wisconsin, and that drives J nuts. He was taught to use your standard transmission gears to modulate your speed on down slopes. I tried to do it to appease him, but I’m afraid I’m not very good at it. It’s probably not very good for my car to coast in neutral and brake a lot either.

We found our way to Jewel cave. Most of my pictures from there did not turn out. Jewel Cave is a giant geode basically. 100 miles of caves covered in crystals and they are still discovering more and more. After riding down an elevator for 275 feet, we entered the cave at 49 degrees F and 95% humidity. (Boing! Goes my hair.) The tour guide was careful to caution us not to touch them, and I had to temper my “touch and feel” habit a bit as a consequence. There are dozens of different formations; some spiky like glass fragments, some that look like popcorn, some with jabba the hut like blobs and even some that are hollow on the inside and end in a bulb that will eventually shatter under its own weight. Most of them do not sparkle, as they appear kind of muddy. She told us that, in order to go on the “spelunker’s tour”, one had to fit into a space that is 8 1/2” x 19” . J and I both tried and failed.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the rest of the day was spent out driving and trying to see wildlife. Let’s see how we did.

That’s quite enough for a day.

Day 2, The Trails

2008-07-03T20:19:00.001-05:00

We got up stiffly. Our bodies just weren’t used to sleeping on rocky protrusions. We were going to do outdoor stuff while the weather cooperated and it was beautiful out. Today we would hike the trails.

We consulted with a ranger and found out all sorts of useful things like; where the pump was, the trailhead for the hike, and that there was a shower! Yeah! A Shower!
We’d decided to do Little Devil’s Tower. It was marked as strenuous but only 3 miles long. We’d geared up with lots of water and snacks and set off.

At first, it wasn’t so bad. There was a split from our trail to go to Harney Peak, but we kept on track. The paths are quite good, with lots of gravel speckled with mica which is in the stones here. The result is that the paths sparkle. It’s enchanting. I’m a bit of an amateur rock hound anyway, so I spent a lot of time picking up pretty rocks and pointing out neat structures.

“That must be Little Devil’s Tower,” said J. Large rock walls had started to rise on our left, and they were pretty large.

But the path was still level. We kept walking. The path turned slightly upwards and another LARGER rock protrusion loomed on our left.

“That must be Little Devil’s Tower,” proclaimed J.

But the path kept curling upwards. We picked our way through the rocks on the path. Someone had come up here and cut down a lot of trees. Maybe for fire prevention, to get rid of the dead wood.

Another LARGER rock wall loomed even farther up on our left.

“This must be Little Devil’s Tower!”

No, but close. The path was very steep now, and it curled around and through a fissure to get to the real Devil’s Tower, which was an hour more of very steep sometimes crawling climbing to get to the top.

But the view was worth it. Completely worth it. We could see for miles. 6332 ft.

We weren’t even tired, and we had all of this stuff packed for a real day hike.

“We should do Harney Peak!’ proclaimed J.

I was psyched. It had been great fun to come up here, and Harney Peak was only marked as moderately strenuous. I wasn’t even tired. I quickly agreed.

We picked our way down to the split.

Harney Peak was 6 miles. We’d just done 3 with no problem, so how bad could 6 be?

The path we were on was not a straight shot to Harney. It was a path that lead along a ridge to another path which led to another path which connected to another path in the Federal Black Elk Wilderness, which lead to Harney. All of that meant that it took a long time to even get in the vincinity of Harney Peak.

It also seems that Harney Peak is a tourist destination. Maybe they get put off by Little Devil’s Tower’s strenuous rating. The federal section of the park that Harney is in allows horses on its trail, even though they seemed a little too rocky in places. We kept close watch for horse apples. We were passed by a family from the Netherlands. The mother smiled and said, “We don’t have hills in Holland.”

Indeed you don’t.

And the hills weren’t bad, with rock steps and decent switchbacks, it was easy for families to pick their way up. At some point the horses had to stop and they had a horse tie-up. The steps began again and we wound our way up, passing gasping senior citizens unused to either the altitude or lacking in endurance. At the top of Harney Peak is an observation tower, made entirely of stone and a National Historic Place. Supposedly you could see 4 states from there. We tried, but we think we only could see Wyoming. What is there to see in Nebraska that high? Nothing of note. (That’s a dig on Brad. He’ll probably not see it.)

We just had to make our way home. 3 miles? Maybe? And all downhill! Easy!

No.

The walk down was taking its toll on our feet. Each time we stepped down or balanced on unsteady rocks, our feet had to break us and they hurt. We kept being passed as we slowed down and slowed down again. I took off my socks. We grumbled and kept on. We drank the last of our water. I pondered about how we didn’t have enough and should have bought the water filter.

Finally, at long last, we saw Sylvan Lake loom before us.

We made sure to soak our feet in the lake.

Wonderful.

Day 1, Getting There.

2008-07-03T19:56:00.003-05:00

We left early, or late as you look at it. Midnight, we got in the car, threw in the last minute stuff and set off. On and off, J and I switched off. I went to LaCrosse, he drove to the Minnesota-South Dakota border. I drove to Al’s Oasis in Chamberlin, and he took over and we drove to the Badlands.

We’d seen 51 Wall Drug signs before we pulled off into the park, paid our fee and joined the hordes of other tourists. If we’d stayed on the interstate, we’d likely had made our 96 signs. As it was, post-badlands we got up to 65 before we actually got there. What a pit.

But I digress.

The Badlands were amazing. Insane. You stop at these view points, walk out a few feet, and the earth falls away from your feet, revealing deep crevasses of baked mud and ridges of fossilized remains of Oligocene sea monsters. These aren’t the monsters of Jurassic Park, but rather the monsters of Ice Age; sabertoothed pigs and early ancestors of hippos and horses. We even saw fossilized turtle shells. It’s huge, We spent 2-3 hours stopping at different points, walking around trails, and climbing these huge masses of baked rock. The road swung up and down the park and the elevation kept changing, and the poor flatlander that I am was gripping the handles on the passenger side of the car.

We swung out of the Badlands, got to Wall, saw Wall Drug, did not go in and headed for Rapid City, then south out of Rapid City. I was the navigator as J drove, as he said I’d be staring out the window when we got into the Black Hills. He was right. I manueuvered us around as best I could, but the hills kept getting larger and larger. We drove right past Mount Rushmore, and tourists kept stopping to take pictures right on the highway! We manueuvered closer to Custer State Park, where we were staying, and I directed J down what I thought was the final stretch.

It was the most harrowing stretch yet. This road had 4 count-em (4!) 10 mph hairpin turns. It basically climbed the side of a “hill” which fully qualifed as a mountain in my book. Before, in the Badlands, I was gripping the side of the door. Now I was clutching the door handle, and holding my stomach tight too. It had a one way tunnel carved out rock. This was on the way to the entrance of the Sylvan Lake Campground, park of Custer State Park.

Who knew that Sylvan Lake sat 6000 feet above sea level?

We got to the campsite, and started setup. The campsite was actually on the side of a slope, and we had to park 25 feet away, carrying our things up a slope. We were exhausted. Immediately upon completion, we collapsed into bed, and then…I couldn’t sleep. We did have some noisy neighbors, but I didn’t even care. I just couldn’t fall unconscious. I couldn’t declutter my mind.

I’d been up for 17 hours and was wide awake. It was like I was jet lagged, but we’d only moved over one time zone.

I read half of a book while J dozed fitfully. I highly recommend the Secret Life of Bees so far. I probably shouldn’t have read half of it the first day. We might have to find a bookstore before this trip is over.

I then realized that I had forgotten to take some medication and I had to find it RIGHT NOW. While J slept I went down to the car and tried to find it, setting off the STUPID car alarm. I kept trying to disable it and kept setting it off.

I was just overtired. It’s my car. I should be able to do this.

Plus I was frantic about my medication (which I probably didn’t need to freak out about) and in a bad state.

J is my rock. He came down to the car, disabled the car alarm, and we set to tearing apart the car until I found it. I apologized to him. I was a mess.

We tried to sleep more, but sleep just wouldn’t come.

We ate a final meal, and crawled into bed early. Now I could sleep. And I did. After about 22 hours.

On the Road

2008-06-29T10:32:00.002-05:00

From Al's Oasis of Chamberlin, SD.

Where the Missouri River crisscrosses I-90, and the banks are a maze of hills and bushes of amazing shape and complexity.

Went across a rickety bridge to cross the river and am REALLY glad that is over!

Counting Wall Drug signs; 29 so far! I say we'll see 96 before Wall Drug, J says over 100.

So far, 9 hours on the road. Heading out for the next 3-4.

Sneaky Announcement

2008-06-27T11:50:00.001-05:00

Now, something to announce, in a very sneaky fashion.

I've been asked to join a new website that is about Wisconsin natives, and to post my blog there. I've been doing this blog in this place for a long time, and while it's okay, I am looking forward to move into this new situation because I think that it might be a good opportunity to gain new readers and maybe gain some new inspiration. It's not easy to try to find topics all of the time. I'm looking forward to some focus.

It's not happening yet, and I'll do forwards from this site to the new one, but I think it will be a great site, and I'm looking forward to it.

I'm not sure if I can post the URL yet, because it is still under development, but I'll let you know when I do.

There are a lot of issues to work out, but I just thought that a heads up was probably in order.

Thanks!

Only One More Day

2008-06-27T11:42:00.004-05:00

I'm spending my last day before my vacation in a training class. This is a training class on change management, and it isn't as boring as I might have thought it would be.

It is however, a lot of sitting and talking.

I've taken to walking up and down the stairwells during the breaktimes. Even with my lunch, after I shove leftovers into my mouth, I plan on walking around a bit.

I just was asked to play the leader in a group exercise, and I plowed into it with my usual bull in a china shop technique. I'm not sure it went over well, but I get impatient.

My boss is laughing at me, because, while on vacation, I will have extremely limited internet access, and he thinks that I'll go insane. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong.

I'm told there is a park in Rapid City that has free wi-fi. I'm told truckstops and a lot of places offer it as a carrot to get you in there. I'm hoping that this is true.

So, if I don't post again before I leave, there'll be a lull there while I travel around the West, seeing mountains and generally being a dorky tourist.

CSA Souffle

2008-06-25T20:18:00.002-05:00

So, I'm at yoga tonight, trying to think about food for dinner.

And then, I realized how much of the leafy greens that I still had at home from the CSA box.

And then I realized it's been a long time since I did a soufflé.

Soufflés are one of those things that people think are hard. There are a lot of steps involved in doing a good and proper soufflé, but it's actually pretty easy.

I have a cookbook called "The Good Egg" which has loads of egg-y recipes, including soufflés and quiches. I've made them a few times, usually cheese soufflés. They cook, they fall, and are usually delicious the next day regardless.

Soufflé it would be. Chard, Spinach and Cheese Soufflé.

Greens of some sort
Onions/Garlic type things of some sort
Butter/Oil (1 tbls?) (for sauté of the greens)
Butter (for the pan)
Bread crumbs or parmasan cheese (for the pan)
Butter/Oil (3 tbls) (for the roux)
Flour (3 tbls) (for the roux)
1 1/4 c. milk
Salt
Pepper
Cheese in some sort of shred or bits
Whatever else you want to add
4 eggs separated
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

Heat up the oven to 400 degrees. Don't be a wuss. It's not that hot out.

I got home and set to deveining the chard and adding a bit of spinach, and threw it in a sauté pan. I added butter and diced garlic scapes and some scallions, cooking them until they wilted substantially. I put it into the food processor then, and quickly pulsed it to get it roughly chopped. Of course, you don't need a food processor for this step. You could chop it by hand too. I always hate those recipes that assume that you have a food processor.

Next, I melted 3 tbls of butter in a saucepan and threw 3 tbls of flour into it to create a roux. I love making roux. After the roux cooks a bit, I put 1 1/4 cup of milk into the roux, and it thickened right up. (I almost never have milk on hand. I had 1/4 cup of cream and a small amount of dried milk powder, which I used to make the rest of the milk I needed. You see...you don't have to have everything exact!)

In went some salt, some shallot pepper, some shredded cheese as well as the sauteed and minced greens. (I had shredded romano to use up and I shredded a bit of mild cheddar as well.)

That went off the heat to cool, while I separated the eggs. 4 eggs. The yolks slowly get added to the cooled/cooling roux/veggie while stirring quickly (after tempering them a bit) while the whites get whipped on the Kitchenaid.

Again, you don't need a mixer to mix whites. A strong arm will work as well. A little hand mixer is even up to the job. You want these stiff but gleaming. The recipe suggested 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar in them. I probably used an 1/8. I hate cream of tartar.

Once whipped, the whites get folded carefully into the roux/egg/veggie mix, and then added to a well buttered soufflé dish. I've done this in a pie tin before too. It doesn't have to be a soufflé pan. What's important about the buttering is that you coat the buttered surface with either bread crumbs or parmasan cheese, which helps the soufflé to climb high on some sort of rough edge. And folding is just careful stirring until it looks mostly encompassed.

This has to bake in a very hot oven initially, so the pre-heating step is crucial. In fact, once you have it in the oven, feel free to drop it to 375. Bake for 30-35 minutes.

I cooked up some mushrooms as a side while I was waiting.

And you can see the results! Delicious!

Turtle Salad

2008-06-24T21:15:00.005-05:00

The green coat of grass on this turtle kind of made me laugh.

I wish I had decided to eat some greens today, but instead we headed to Quaker Steak and Lube for all-you-can-eat wings. Oh they take the "Lube" part of their title seriously.

Fried wings, fried fries, fried onion rings, we had it all.

I'm just going to sit here and moan for a while now. Next time, I'll ask for salad.

My nephews would LOVE that place; all of that fried food and Nascar stuff everywhere. We need to have a Wii weekend, where we take them there and then take them to the gaming stores of Madison.

Their idea of heaven.

What's that Smell?

2008-06-23T16:01:00.004-05:00

I had a day of meetings today. Luckily, one of them was a lunch meeting where food was provided or I would have had to survive on diet Coke and vending machine chips. I had to leave one meeting early to get to another meeting, and decided to take the Lakeshore Path to do it.

You know the Lakeshore path. The dirt path that runs alongside beautiful Lake Mendota. The path where you can look out on the sailboats and the crew team on the water, or at the people on the terrace, or the people who sit near the water and throw food to the ducks. Picturesque, isn't it?

Well, this is where you hear the jarring sound of a record being scratched with a needle. Throw that picture away.

Because of the smell. The flooding has rendered the beauty of Lake Mendota a mere visual sensation. There is a smell that permeates the lakeshore with putridness that infiltrates your pores, and the placid surface of the light reflecting off of the lake serves to only emphasize the gleaming swirl of green *something* floating on the surface.

The Hoofers have put up black pirate flags, and no one is touching a sailboat or dipping a toe in, for it's obvious that something is horribly horribly wrong. I didn't even see a duck.

I'd heard that there was the problem with the flooding of sewage and other assorted nastiness getting into the lake water, but now, as I experienced today, I realize what a huge problem this will be, and how troublesome it will be to clean up.

In the meantime, the water, the lakeshore, the Terrace...it looks dead. It's so sad.

I didn't have my camera, but Letter from Here did, albeit on the other side of the Isthmus.

Results

2008-06-23T07:23:00.002-05:00

Swim: 00:08:13
Swim/Bike Transition: 00:04:05
Bike: 01:15:53
Bike/Run Transition: 00:01:37
Run: 00:39:33

1/4 swim, 22 mile bike, 3.1 mile run total = 02:09:22

6th place over all in Athena, 5 minutes behind my sister who was 5th place Athena

And that's that!

My Big Baby Blue Bottom

2008-06-22T17:21:00.002-05:00

Yes, I survived the Triathlon, but you knew I would.

But the pictures, oh the pictures. J was snapping pictures of me, as was his Mom as were the official photographers and anyone in the immediate vincinity. My problem is that every picture has seemed to showcase the enormity of my lower section. I see a picture where I don’t look squinty eyed or showcasing horses teeth, and there it is. It didn’t help that I was wearing baby blue, and well…it’s not basic black and it ‘s not slimming. But it does help to identify any picture where I am present.

Anyway, sorry to subject you to the planetoid that is my butt. There are pictures, and I did complete it, so maybe that’s something.

Imagine my pleasure when I saw that the waves of people leaving the beach ahead of me who were able to touch bottom ALMOST THE ENTIRE WAY to the third yellow buoy which was the turnaround point. It wasn’t so much swimming as a delightful water walk the entire way. No chance of drowning here, although there were a few waves that smacked me in the face from time to time, and the troublesome problem of people being indecisive about whether to swim or not. Plus, being in the water hid my giant baby blue butt from the world.

Then I got on the bike. I love the bike. I have amazing muscular legs that you’d never see (because of the sheer intensity of my ass) that helped me ROCK the bike. Even in the section that turns north into the wind, I was able to take a gel or two and really make some great time. I kept looking for my sister, but I pretty much paced her the entire race. I saw my dad watching for us near the entrance of the park and waved like an idiot until he saw me then zoomed by. How he could miss me, I simply don’t know. I’m the one with the gigantic baby blue butt.

I dropped off the bike, and swung up the run path. Oh … what horrible pictures loom. The run goes back up the hill that leads to High Cliff, and I walked it. I walked/jogged a major portion of this, and it felt a LOT longer than last year. I was tired, and kept hoping that around every corner there might be the path that would lead to the hill down.

I did finish and Reece, Rachel and Zebbie ran with me to the finish line. I didn’t get my results because they’ve changed things this year, but I think it was roughly comparable to last year. Which is good, because I didn’t have this troublesome blue giant butt last year, so I didn’t manage to lose time. What I think happened is anytime that I gained on the bike I probably lost on the run. That’s okay, because I was beat. Tired. You would be too, carrying this load around.

Okay, I just put the pictures up on Flickr, and I guess it isn’t that bad. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little. But it’s not tiny. Trust me.

Next year, basic black. If there is a next year.

CSA Intro Week

2008-06-21T09:48:00.005-05:00

I completely forgot to blog about my first CSA box from Primrose Community Farm. It being an extremely wet year, we had a lot of green leafy things in our box this week, like spinach.

You can see some sauteed spinach I made by heating up some oil, throwing in some of the garlic scapes that they gave me, cutting a bit of scallion, and then adding spinach until I couldn't fit any more in the pan. It was beautifully green and very tasty. A lot of spinach cooked this way can be bitter, but this still had that classic spinach sweetness. I might also try creamed spinach (or assorted other greens). We've already had a pretty good salad of mixed greens.

Also in the box are nettles and rainbow chard. I'm told that rainbow chard can also be fixed according to the saute it and eat it theory, but the nettles look like something that I would weed out of my garden. I've put them in the fridge and have been staring at them, bemused. Okay...so I can eat you, huh? Hmmmm....

There were radishes in the box, and I dislike them. J likes them, and I'll likely roast them until they are sweet. Maybe I'll like them better that way. There was a small head of broccoli as well. That I like.

Also in the box, strawberries! Sweet little nectar bombs. Since we'll miss our next box (due to our vacation), we'll likely not see any more this year. (Unless we can carve out some time for picking.)

There was more there. They ask us to pick up the contents of the box and leave the box...I stuffed it into my bike's saddlebags and my backpack. They were totally stuffed full! There are a lot of veggies here!

Pre-Race Jitters

2008-06-19T20:27:00.003-05:00

I can feel it building.

The knot in my stomach. The doubt that says "You haven't done enough swimming training."

I told J about it last night, in bed, after he made me collapse into laughter by asking if I thought his armpits smelled bad. You know when you feel comfortable with someone when you can ask them a question like that. I snuggled deep against him and breathed deeply. "Only if I put my face there," I replied.

I told J about how it felt the first time that I did the race, how the waves were really high, about how I couldn't do a crawl, about how I backstroked most of the way and it took twice as long as it should have. About how, months later, I still was hearing stories from others who had done it and about how bad it was. About how, a year later, I chose not to participate. I'm too busy, I said. I did the bike vacation instead. That was great. No chance of dying there. Except the day we biked 80 miles in 100 degree heat.

Then my sister decided to do it, and I decided to join her. The second time, the water was still deep, but somehow, someway, I managed. And last year? Last year, the water was low. I walked 80% of that course.

J reassured me, as I curled against him, that I could do this. I have done this before, he reminded me. I could do it again.

The knot in my stomach knows that the water will not be low this time. The knot in my stomach knows that I'll lose touch with the bottom and have to swim. I can swim. I love to swim actually. But I've only swam in the crystal blue chlorine of the gym's pools, and the murky slime of Lake Winnebago is different. It's cold. There's seaweed. It's chaos as the water is hit by a thousand hands. Even on a still morning, it is churned into waves.

Actually, it's like this.

Props to GeekGrl, who first featured this on her blog.

I went to the SERF and swam today. On the trip there, I passed the shadow of the old Ogg Hall, as they tear it down. I remembered hearing "Ogg Sucks!" "Sellery Sucks!" through that courtyard many many years ago. I may have yelled it myself. They've already built a new Ogg Hall across the street. I'm afraid it's Sellery that sucks now.

And then I swam, as if my life depended on it. It won't, but in my current state of mind, I think it might. Only a few more days til this race is over. Why do I put myself in these situations?

I hate the swim. Once that part is done, the rest of the race is cake. Just keep repeating that. Once you drag yourself out of that lake, you get on a bike and you are free. Once you glide in, you trot around a bit, and you are done. And then you did it. Get the swim done and over with, and you are home free.

I can do this. I really can.