So, I've heard a lot of people complain about how boring the drive is along the valley. Personally, I liked it. I think I had an extra thing going for me since I had already passed through so many different terrain types already along the trip. Montana was distinctively different with sharp rocky mountains. The "mountains" along the valley were not sharp at all and filled with trees a lot different from the evergreens we're used to in Seattle.
But the most interesting part of the trip for me were all the hawks you could see along the highway flying around. They looked huge even from our vantage point. Just amazing to see them...
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Hawks - Ohio River Valley
Wheeling,West Virginia
We stopped here to add to our side job of getting postcards from each state along the way. Luckily for us, there's a 13 or so mile stretch that you have to cross before getting into Pennsylvania from Ohio. The city was very "cute" looking...that is, until I saw they had a sports team called the "Nailers"....wow!
Columbus,Ohio
Ok, I make my fair share of fun of my Ohio State friends and all, but I have to admit, that the city of Columbus is actually quite pretty. They have a decent skyline, but in general the area felt like a smaller Seattle to me without all the hills.
White Castle Headquarters - Columbus,Ohio
Oh man! Am I dreaming? So, some of my Ohio State friends might have mentioned in the past about the White Castle HQ, but I can't remember at the moment. Hey, I'm an Illini, it's not like I'm going to pay *that* much attention about Ohio State stuff! ;o)
Anyway, we decided to check it out in hopes that they might have a tour. The honest truth is they didn't have a tour. It's a corporate office...people don't just go there to see a tour because they don't make the actual food there. But, they made up a tour for us anyway! I swear the people there were so nice to us!
They had a lot of memorabilia of old White Castle stuff and walked us through the whole building except for the testing lab (DARN!). At the end of our tour they even gave us souvenirs:
*White Castle shirt
*White Castle bandana
*White Castle coffe mug
*2 White Castle pens
and all nicely packaged in a White Castle bag. they rock! :o)
Hope Today Is Better Than Yesterday
We really didn't have too high of hopes for our activities in day 10 of the trip. We had made it to Columbus, Ohio a little late the night before in hopes of being able to reach Baltimore a lot earlier the next day.
We were on our trek to find yet another Super 8 hotel but were denied the night before and ended up crashing at a Red Roof Inn. Pretty ghetto, and no free internet, but the rate was really cheap and all we wanted to do was sleep anyway, so it all worked out.
One huge bonus was our accidentally passing the White Castles Headquarters!!! OMG! It's like the angels in the heavans were singing their hallelujahs! Guess where our first visit was going to be??
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
"Some" Bell - Newport,Kentucky
If there's one thing we've noticed during our travels is that cities will put up almost anything in their towns to draw attention from tourists. It works with us at least...Now, this bell may have a lot of significence to them, but I just can't remember for the life of me what it was...I'll look it up and update this post later...
UPDATE: Alright, a quick search for this brought up a Wiki site for it. Apparently, the name of the bell is the World Peace Bell. It's teh world largest swinging bell. It's one of the newest attractions we've seen too...looks like they built it in time for the 2000 millenium.Newport, Kentucky
This was the city that ran along the other side of the river opposite to Cincinnati. The people there were extremely nice for the small amount of time we were actually there...
Example #1:
HOT girl joggin across the bridge slowed down to say hi to us....yeah...anyone who knows us knows *that* doesn't happen often...
Example #2:
I'm, crossing the street while the light is turning yellow...a car is turning onto the street and almost hits me before breaking hard...they roll down the window and I think they're about to yell at me...nope...they apologized! wow...go Kentucky!
Cincinnati, Ohio
Just wanted to get in a quick photo of the city at sunset...I took this while we were crossing over into Kentucky...nice looking city!
Purple People Bridge - Cincinnati, Ohio
So after our failed attempts in Indy, we decided to hit the next closest city over in Ohio...Cincinnati that is. I will say that I was mildy surprised by that city. It lies at the southern border of Ohio and is separated from Kentucky via a river. They have a bridge (see name in title) that you can walk across to go into Kentucky if you'd rather do that instead of drive. We figured we'd walk across it and take a picture of the state sign along the way. Wrong...no state sign on the bridge! What's up with that?
Well, Kentucky made it state number 11 for us anyway. And as for the sign photo, we figured we'd just drive over and get it that way instead...
Indianapolis Motor Speedway - Indianapolis, Indiana
So we read in Sung road trip book that the speedway gives a tour around the track on a bus everyday until 4:30PM. Well, after our late start in Chicago, we hauled buns over to Indianapolis in hopes of reaching the last tour of the day. We ended up arriving with 30 minutes to spare...yay! Or so we thought...
Apparently, we crossed a timezone somewhere along our trip south and ended up being a half hour late for the last tour. Boooo! At least the guard at the entrance was nice enough to let us into the museum's parking lot (which was in the middle of the track) long enough to take some photos of the track.
The Day Where Nothing Seemed To Go Right
So the plan was to get out of Chicago and continue on with the road trip and hopefully get somewhere interesting by the end of the day. Define interesting? Well, apparently that would end up meaning anywhere outside of the state of Indiana. The only thing was that as the day progressed, we kept getting our plans changed on us for various reasons.
For starters, we had to go to Hertz to replace our car because a small crack in the windshield was growing in it. That ended up taking a lot longer than we thought and so we didn't get out of Chicago until after noon. But our hope was to make it to Indianapolis to catch the last tour of the Indy 500 speeday...
Is That Cloud Following Us?
Man, everywhere we've gone, people have mentioned how the weather has been so nice right up until we arrived. Well, things didn't change a whole lot once we arrived in Chicago. At the very least, the weather got warmer than the frozen tundra Yellowstone turned out to be. We could walk around downtown in t-shirts again! Yay! But the rain came with a vengeance our last night in town.
Field Museum - Chicago,Illinois
So after the aquarium, Pawan and Sung head out to the field Museum next door. There was a big King Tut exhibit, but they opted to just do the general portion of the museum. Apparently each side attraction in the museum was an extra cost added on top of the initial admission. And those guys being the stingy bastards that they are, opted to not see it. aw well!
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Shedd Aquarium - Chicago, Illinois
I never realized just how awesome the museums are in Chicago until I left. I tried hitting the aquarium in Seattle, and was extremely dissappointed to say the least. If you really want to see a great assortmant of sea life, you'll have to visit this museum!
BTW...photo courtesy of Pawan...
White Castle - Chicago,Illinois
mmmm...How many times must I say how much I love White Castles? Let me count the ways....
We've been talking up White Castles in Seattle for so long and it only got worse after the Harold & Kumar Movie came out. But Sung never experienced the "Drunk Eat At White Castle" moment, so we had to add it to our agenda.
mmmm...I could go for some White Castles right now!
DarkRoom - Chicago,Illinois
Alright...so if you want to be totally technical about it, day 8 actually started at a bar in Chicago. The cool thing about Chicago being so big is that I can hit a new bar every time I go back to visit. This time around we hit a place called DarkRoom. It was pretty neat...part lounge part dance area...with New Age type music. We met up with other Seattle transplants there (hi Vivien! hi Katie!) and had a blast...at least i think I remember that! ;o)
Ok...BREAK!
So on Saturday we decided to split up as a group to cover more ground. Pawan hit downtown to meet up with Sung with the plan to check out more museums and food in Chicago...I hung back to take care of an issue with out rental car...but i'll get into that later...
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Buckingham Fountain - Chicago, Illinois
No...no relation to Buckingham Palace. Anybody who ever watched Married With Children should remember this view. We were relaxing in the area when the "music show" started. All that means is that they started blaring "America The Beautiful" on speakers and the fountains lights turned out. Not that big a deal until you see the Chicago skyline in the backgroun as well. Makes this a truly magnificent fountain
Millennium Park - Chicago, Ilinois
Fun new attraction to the Chicago waterfront. I haven't been able to catch a concert here, but I'd love too. My favorite part of the park is the bean though. You can get some awesome photos off the reflections:
But in the end, I just love how random it is to have something like it along the city's skyline!
Tribune Tower - Chicago, Illinois
In terms of architecture, the Tribune building is just a wonderful building. But there's a little known fact about the building that even most Chicagoans don't know about. If You're ever downtown and walk past this building, you'll be able to see pieces of other buildings placed along the facade all around this building. And we're not talking about just "any" buildings. The structures are so famous that you can't help but ask yourself, "are these for real?"
You can see more of the bricks off my flickr page, but some of the highlights:
*Great Wall Of China
*Taj Mahal
*White House
*Colloseum
*Parthenon
*Berlin Wall
*World Trade Center
Segways In Chicago
I read about the recent recall of all Segways. Apparently, both the Chicago Police and Fire Departments do not really worry about any suh issues, because we saw both using them throughout the day. I've cracked jokes about how officers don't need to be reducing their exercise levels with all the donuts they eat. But, to be honest, every guy I saw on a Segway was fit. They all still looked stupid though. ;o)
Art Institute - Chicago, Illinois
Our first real stop of the day was at this art museum. If there's one thing i've missed while living in Seattle, it's the lack of really good museums. There just aren't any museums in Seattle on the same caliber as those in Chicago. The Impressionist exhibit is one of my faves here, and below is my favorite painting of all time:
You might recognize it from Ferris Bueller's Day Off...also filmed in Chicago.. :o)
Sears Tower - Chicago, Illinois
The problem with something as big as the Sears Tower, is that its hard to take a good picture of. That's 1450 feet that you have to try and cram into a single picture...talk about needing a wide angle lens, huh?
Exploring The Windy City
It's the first of two full days we're going to spend in Chicago and we're trying to see as many things as possible. I'm just sitting back for this part of the trip in terms of picking where to go in the city. Between all the museums, sights, and - more importantly - the food...there's a lot to do!
Friday, September 22, 2006
Time For An Intermission
We're half way through our road trip and I figured what's a better time to add an intermission for your viewing pleasure. So stretch your legs, walk the dog, take that bathroom break you've been waiting to take, because the second week should only get better!
Lake Shore Drive - Chicago, Illinois
One of the best drives in the world, in my not so humble opinion! I had us detour away from the highway to make sure we were able to drive down it. You get an awesome view of the lake on your left...with the skyline on your right. Just awesome...
Wrigley Field - Chicago Illinois
Passed the home of the worst baseball team ever!!! But, I'm sure some people would whine about me not including the photo, so there ya go.
Miller Brewery Tour - Milwaukee,Wisconsin
There was no way we were going to miss two brewery tours on this trip. When we finally got to the brewery, we had to wait a good 45 minutes to do teh tour because a private party had already reserved the next tour pass...booo. There went our plans to hit the stadium tour afterwards.
The tour takes about an hour and you get three free glasses of beer at the end of it. Sung and I split Pawan's portion. But as we were getting ready to split the last glass, two guys asked us, "Excuse, but can we borrow him?" Apparently Pawan's a pretty popular guy in a place like that! ;o)
The two guys were pretty cool. They were from the island of Trinidad. They told us all about Carnival over there which sounded awesome...hmm..next trip? We'll see!
Miller Park - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
We saw the new Miller Park up close and tried to get into a stadium tour. But to do so, we would have had to waited a good hour and a half for the next one. So, we figured we'd do something else and then maybe go back and do this...but this day was not exactly on schedule as it was...
The stadium looks great though!
Pink Elephant - DeForest, Wisconsin
We found out about a random statue of a life size pink elephant at a gas station along the highway in Wisconsin. We tried finding info on the web about *why* someone would build one. But like all the other quirky attractions we've seen, I think the answer is: To get people like us to visit. It worked!
The Other U Dub
So we had stopped for the night in our 5th Super 8 motel of the trip...only this time we were in Madison, Wisconsin....the state capital and home to their flagship University of Wisonsin. Most of our plans centered around Milwaukee which was about an hour away, but we were hoping to catch something there as well.
We had found out that Madison, WI is actually the birthplace to The Onion , which we thought was very cool and should therefore be a must visit. Sung looked up the address from their website. As soon as we got to the address, though, there was no Onion office...just a UPS store...dang...we fell for one of the Onion's tricks! So stupid! ;o)
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Mall Of America - Bloomington, Minnesota
This is a HUGE mall. But, in the end, it's still just a mall. The inner courtyard is obviously the main difference with all the amusement rides that remind me a lot of Seattle Center back home. But, still something to see! I could spend hours in that Legoland by the way...
Jolly Green Giant - Blue Earth, Minnesota
We really didn't know what we were going to hit in Minnesota other than the SPAM Museum and Mall Of America. But, we caught a sign along the highway that talked about a 60' statue of the Jolly Green Giant. That was enough for us until we also noticed that the town is was in was called Blue Earth. Holy smokes, they have some weird names up here (it wasn't as cool as Welcome, Minnesota though).
My First SPAM Breakfast
Across the street there was a restaurant that totally catered to the SPAM tourist. They had a menu that followed the Monty Python route where every item in the menu had SPAM in it. So we went there so both Pawan and myself could try out SPAM for the very first time.
Result? salty as hell....greasy as hell...but exactly what I thought it would be. :o)
SPAM Museum - Austin, Minnesota
Holy cow this place is so cool! I mean, everyone knows its going to be kinda dumb because...well...it's about a canned meat. How serious can you possibly be about it? We had high hopes for some laughs on this visit and were not dissappointed! The one thing we didn't get though were some free samples. Damn! I guess my first time to try SPAM is just going to have to wait!
They had a lot of hands-on stuff for you to try out. Check out Pawan and Sung getting a little too rowdy during their interviewing process:
Holy Cow! There Are People Around Here!
So it's day 5 and we're starting to see a ton more cars on the road again. Honestly, I already kind of miss parts of Montana and South Dakota! Anyway, our goal for today was to check out some key spot in Minnesota and the try to end off the day over in Wisconsin. Let's just say these two states weren't exactly on our top priority lists. ;o)
Sung's Blogging Too!
I think he tired of the way I was telling the stories, so he started taking matters into his own hands! :o) Check out his blog with all his videos as well in my links section on the right.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
The Hardees Experiment
So once we found our hotel in Minnesota, it was time to go hunting for food...we found a Mcdonald's across the road but there was also a Hardees right next door. Since neither Sung nor Pawan had ever ate there, we decided to hit that instead. I had remembered how Hardees had introduced a huge hamburger to offset the whole diets craze that was going around. Well, it was still on the menu! The thickburger with 2/3 of meat and cheese and bacon. I made a deal with Sung that if he ate the whole burger, i'd call him Thickburger for the rest of the trip. He made it through, but paid the price for it:
oh, and for those of you who are curious, here's the nutritional info for his burger...yowsa! ;o)
2/3lb Double Bacon Cheese ThickburgerTotal Calories: 1300
Carbs: 51g
Protein: 55g
Fat: 96g (about 5.5 Tombstone cheese pizzas worth!)
Saturated Fat: 4og
Cholesterol: 205mg
Sodium: 2110mg
Corn Palace - Mitchell, South Dakota
We had seen some info about a large Taj Mahal type building in the middle of South Dakota being "made" out of corn. Well, after doing some more research we learned that in the city of Mitchell, the locals had an annual custom of decorating the outside of their civic center with 275,000 ears of corn. Each year they have a different design for their decorations and you could see pictures of all of them inside. Neato! Here's a more detailed view of the building so you can view the actual ears of corn in the design:
Pioneer Auto - Murdo, South Dakota
So Pawan saw a sign for this along the highway and wanted to check it out. We were trying really hard to end the long day of traveling somewhere close to Minneapolis, but had enjoyed so much of the quirky stops in South Dakota that we just had to stop there. To say this place was quirky was an understatement though. The guy not only had a large collection of classic cars (including a General Lee car built by the same company that made the original for the TV series), but much more. We saw old tractors, rocks from around the world, old game machines, motorcycles (he had one of Elvis' motor cycles)...and on and on.
He had so much stuff that he even built an old style town where each specialty building had everything you would have found back in the 1900 era...like a schoolhouse, and old dentist's office and even an old bar! This place definitely hit the bar for strange place to visit on a road trip. And, well, come on, it's not like there were a lot more other things for us to still see in South Dakota!
Wall Drug - Wall, South Dakota
Sung had told us even before the trip of how he had heard about this place a long time ago. The basic idea is that this little drug store in the middle of South Dakota decided to advertise itself via highway billboard signs (the pioneer of the idea apparently). But they didn't just use one or two big ones...oh no...try more like hundreds...and apparently all over the world too. Anyway, so as we were within maybe 50 miles of the place, we started to see signs for the place pretty regularly. We even tried to take a picture of all of them, but sometimes, there were so many that we couldn't get them all.
Once we got there, the store turned out to be just as quirky as all the signs we saw. The store is huge now..and, judging by the old pictures, significantly large than the original. They had all the knick knack souvenir stuff. We ate lunch there too and had a pretty tasty buffalo burger...mmmm...
Dinosaur Park - Rapid City, South Dakota
Read a quick blurb about this before the trip, so wanted to quickly check it out. it's basically just a small park up near the highest point of Rapid City. They built the "replicas" of dinosaurs way back in the 1930's for educational purposes. Well, the accuracy of the statues has gone down a bit over time, but this little park still has all the charm from its first day. Definitely a cool 10 minute stop location.
Mount Rushmore - Keystone, South Dakota
So, we knew we had a lot to do this day, so we weren't going to spend a ton of time at Rushmore. When we first got there, we caught a glimpse of the first mountain goats on our trip:
The mountain was pretty amazing to see. The clarity in all the faces is just amazing for something of that size. To be honest, though, we wished we saw this before Crazy Horse if anything, because the sheer size of crazy horse is so much larger than this one. Still a must see though, obviously.
Starting Where We Left Off
We went back to the Crazy Horse Memorial the next morning to walkthrough the museum and get some day pictures of the memorial. We were so glad we did because we got to see a movie that talked about the history of both Crazy Horse and the sculptor of the monument. Both very very interesting stories! We also each got a rock from the mountain that's being carved! yay! Useless souvenirs!
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Laser Show At Crazy Horse Memorial
At the end of a looooong day of driving, we made it to Custer, South Dakota with just 20 minutes to spare before the nightly laser show at Crazy Horse Memorial. Sweet...we did what we thought would be impossible. The laser show was a little disappointing, but we were definitely going to head back the next morning to see the area during the day more thoroughly...
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