IN DEFENSE OF PAPER MAPS

Getting our kicks

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 4 likes

It happened to Talaura and I when we were in Maine. Most of the time we couldn't get a cell signal while we were out driving around and we'd get stuck waiting for google maps to load so we could figure out where the heck we were. We finally gave up and bought an actual map. You know (or maybe you don't), the paper kind of map that teaches you patience when it's time to fold back up. For those of you who have no idea about paper maps, I am real sorry. My dad had paper maps stashed everywhere. He had a large basket stuffed full of them next to his recliner. The glovebox of his truck was like one of those gag peanut cans but with maps instead of springs. Every truck pocket was jammed full with paper maps and the dashboard would also be littered with them. It drove my mother crazy. 

Michael and I had the same problems with cell service and maps while we were in Wisconsin. Also, that area had gotten a storm a few days prior to our visit that caused flash flooding. Roads and bridges had been washed away. So there was this square of odd and confusing detours that took you down tiny roads that were sometimes paved and sometimes gravel. I took our paper map in with us when we stopped at the Northern Great Lakes Visitors Center and the rangers there were able to highlight a route for us that would take us around closed roads. Sunday morning, when we left Randy and Katrina's, we decided to stay on Route 66 as long as we could and avoid the interstates completely. After looking at maps on my phone for about ten minutes, I said "I don't want to do this one my phone!" I was tired and part of my brain was still gunky from all the limoncello I'd had the night before. So, Michael pulled over and bought one Oklahoma map and one Missouri map and then we proceeded to take the longest possible way home.

It was glorious. We traveled along most Route 66 all the way into Baxter Springs, KS and then followed Hwy 69 up through Kansas and on into the city. We stopped at a roadside fruit stand and bought fresh corn and peaches. We wandered around Ed Galloway's Totem Pole Park and admired a corvette club traveling through from Illinois. We saw a bicyclist pulled over near an old ranch. We noticed that the cyclist was prepared for a long haul with large saddle bags and a small trailer. We turned around to check on him because we'd just heard the weatherman say something about a heat index of 102. The cyclist was an older Japanese man who did not speak much english. We made sure that he was OK and that he had enough water and then we left him there wishing we'd asked him way more questions. It's my biggest regret of yesterday. I regret not getting his picture. I regret not finding out where he was on his trip. Did he start in California or Chicago? I really regret not getting his story. 

We travelled on to Baxter Springs where we stopped in at the Historic Vintage Service Station to buy a pin and a car sticker. We spent some time talking with Dean "Crazy Legs" Walker who was manning the station. He told us how to get out to the Rainbow Bridge and about where to see the original tow truck that inspired Mater. We drove out to the bridge and took pictures and then we headed north towards Ft. Scott. We stopped at the Fort and got stamps in our National Parks Passport and all along the way, we discussed the logistics of doing a scooter trip of Route 66. Michael kept talking about needing some sort of support driving team for parts where we can't ride on 66 and how we'd have to do it two trips. I think he's making it more complicated than it needs to be. We pack light, rent a Uhaul to get us to Chicago with the scooters, ride the scooters to California and the rent a Uhaul to drive them back to KCMO. Done. If that guy can fit all the things he needed for the trip into a tiny bicycle trailer and two bags, we can fit everything on the scooters. 

It took us about eight hours to get home yesterday when usually that's about a four hour drive. We were exhausted by the time we made it home and in the back of my head, I was a little annoyed with myself for not pushing to get us home sooner. I'm behind on laundry and the bathroom needs to be cleaned. We both had things to get ready for work the next day. Instead, we moved at a snail's pace.

And we had the best day.

THE CICADAS ARE SO LOUD

Our hotel on Lake Superior

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 8 likes

We're back! I thought by adding an exclamation mark on the end of that sentence that it would give me some enthusiasm for getting back to the regular routine. I've spent my morning sorting emails and gathering protocols for clearing tissue samples for imaging and listlessly staring out the window. I'm not really ready to be back. I'm not ready for the things that are coming up on the calendar like a wedding and an unexpected trip to Boston for work and packing up my desk to move into the new space. I'm not ready to be up-to-date on current events. We came home to a police barricade because the man suspected of killing three police officers in Baton Rouge lives or lived in a house one street over. They arrested the man's brother who is now out on bail. Our neighborhood is a crime scene. I haven't had time to get facts or to form coherent thoughts on any of this. All I can say is that the deaths that have occurred in the last few days are horrible and that sounds trite. 

Can I have just three more days of vacation, please? 

Michael and I learned a whole lot of stuff in the last five days. Lake Superior is called Lake Superior for a reason and that reason is because that lake is HUGE. I mean, I knew it was big because in geography, our teacher told us it is the largest lake (by surface area) in the world, but being told this does not prepare you for actually seeing it. We were thinking that we were going to see a bunch of little islands but what we actually saw was maybe four of the islands from way off in the distance surrounded by an ocean. For about fifty bucks a person, you can do a boat ride that takes you around five of the twenty one islands without stops. A hundred dollars will get you to two of the islands with stops and tours. Getting to the islands is not easy. We watched a tour guide pack up a tandem kayak for a couple he was taking out to an island for camping. He told them it would take about three hours to get to their campsite. So, yeah, we didn't make it to any of the islands on this trip but we did kayak around the sea caves and from our kayak, we could see Eagle Island and Sand Island. We also spotted a bald eagle. 

We learned that summer temperatures in Northern Wisconsin are somewhere in the mid to low seventies and that the biggest threat while kayaking is if you fall out of your boat. It takes about ten minutes of being in the water for hypothermia to set in even on a nice warm, sunny day. I wore wool socks while kayaking and should have packed at least one more heavy blanket. We learned that our air mattress leaks air and I'd wake up in the middle of the night with a rock jabbing into my hip. We learned under these circumstances that I didn't mind Michael's snoring or how he took up most of the mattress because I was only warm when he was present in the bed. We learned that we could joke and laugh about all of these things. We learned that even though we could handle a tandem kayak without too much arguing, we both want our own kayak. We learned that we'd rather spend the four thousand dollars we were going to spend on purchasing central air on things like kayaks and trailers. 

The biggest lesson we learned was that it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to get away. Our camp gear was already well packed and organized with only a few minor things that needed replacing. Of course, we have to replace the air mattress now since we left the old leaky one in a bear proof dumpster in our campsite. But for the most part we're good. We did discover that we over pack on food. The amount of food we packed would have worked if we had been completely isolated, but we were not. We ended up in a camp ground just outside of Bayfield WI and had access to local foods like trout and white fish, pulled from Lake Superior the very day we bought them. We decided that we should take advantage of local foods and produce. We learned that this trip was like adding kerosene to a camp fire. We've done nothing but discuss how we are going to cart scooters and kayaks and camp gear. When we're not trying to figure out how transport these things, we're looking at maps, trying to figure out our next destination.  

I think we should put a map on the wall and just throw a dart at it and wherever it hits, that's where we'll go. 

ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE

For the last two nights, I've dreamed about bears and then @heirloomkc I get the bear card.

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 5 likes

Thursday night/Friday morning, I had a dream we were hiking through the woods. I could see something near the trail up ahead and then I realized it was a bear with her cub. I stopped in my tracks and whispered "we should go that way." I pointed to a path that would take us safely around the mother bear and her cub, but Michael and the Cabbage didn't hear me or see the bears and they just kept on walking. I don't know what happened after that because I woke up, but then Friday night/Saturday morning, I had another dream about a bear. This time I dreamed that I could hear something in the living room. Thinking that the cat had dragged in some helpless half dead thing, I got up to investigate. When I opened my door, Josephine shot out and into the living room barking and growling. There was a medium sized black bear sniffing around the coffee table. The next morning, I got up and went about my usual Saturday morning routine. I went to Heirloom for breakfast and after placing my order, the girl at the counter handed me my coffee mug and my order card, which happened to be the B is for bear card. 

Jen Tucker sent me a link to a Huffington Post article about dreaming about bears. Barbara Condron, B.J, D.D., D.M. says that "a bear figuring prominently in your dream will indicate a compulsive way of thinking, speaking or acting that contributed to a 'bear of a day'." I don't think I'm the compulsive kind of person. Though I will admit that there were most days last week when I felt like compulsive screaming at some people on the internet and I probably had a lot of those compulsive conversations in my head. That could explain why I have been dreaming of bears, but really, I think the bear dreams mean that I am going to see an actual bear. You see, a few hours after I posted Friday's blog entry, Michael sent me a text. He says he doesn't read the blog, but he read the blog Friday and sent me a link for the Apostle Islands. It's a group of Islands on Lake Superior in Wisconsin. In fact, the Apostle Islands are a National Lakeshore. You have to ride a boat to get to any of the campgrounds on the islands. There's an island that has only one camping spot. There's an island called Bear Island. There are no campgrounds on Bear Island and the campsites on the two islands closest to Bear island, come with bear proof boxes. 

When Michael sent me that text, I replied with "Can we leave next Thursday?" An hour later he sent me another text telling me that he'd booked us on a kayaking day trip on Lake Superior for this Friday. So, we are going North! I've never been to Wisconsin. I have plans to see the 143 ft Muskie (a fish) in Hayward and maybe stand inside it's gaping mouth. We're going to get a new National Parks passport and put a bunch of stamps in it from all the islands. It's going be in the low seventies and I'm going to be cold just like all those times we traveled to Colorado during the summer and I won't care because we'll have a fire. The camp gear has been organized and is ready to pack. We have most of our groceries. All that's left is to give the dog a bath before we drop her off with Uncle Terry, load up the car and go. And see a bear. 

I can't wait!  I'm hoping that we'll be so isolated that there won't be any cellphone signal. No internet. No blogging. Just some camera time. That's it. So...I'll see you guys sometime next week.

I'm on vacation!

I WAS IN MAINE

Cadillac Mtn

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 4 likes

I had a whole entry going about the deliciousness of fried clams, but I never got a chance to finish it and post it and it seems a little outdated now. Let's just say if your only experience with fried clams is the Long John Silver's experience, you need to get your butt to Maine. LJS is really serving you fried rubber bands. Then I started a new post about driving to the middle of Maine in search of moose and how we ended up at a divey motor lodge (Moosehead Motor Lodge, to be exact) outside of a teeny town called Dexton. It was snowing and we never saw a moose. That post didn't really get finished either because I fell asleep. The next day we drove to Augusta and then on into Portland to eat one more lobster before boarding flights to home. 

As per usual, Talaura and I managed to pack in a whole lot of sight seeing in a very short amount of time. We saw all of Acadia National Park including a sunrise on Cadillac Mountain (the first place the sun hits the US in the mornings). We saw a little bit of Roosevelt Campobello International Park. They are still closed for the season. We did manage to catch one of the rangers to ask a few questions and he kindly let us in to stamp our National Parks passports though. We saw lighthouses. There was one in Canada that you can only get to when the tide is very low. It's sister lighthouse on the American side is the Pete's Dragon lighthouse, safely guiding ships into the Passamaquoddy Bay. It was also closed for the season, but we still managed to walk around and take pictures. 

It was the farthest East I had ever been and the farthest North I had ever been. I had never been to Canada before either. Truly, we couldn't have gone any more east and still be in the continental US. The Pete's dragon lighthouse, Quoddy Head Lighthouse, is the Eastern most point in the US. Talaura and I are on a roll. Two years ago, we stood in the geographic center of the continental US. I think we need to go to Alaska next for several reasons: to stand in the farthest North spot in the US and the most Western spot in the US (I think), but also to see a dang moose (I don't believe they exist). In fact, our wildlife list for this trip seems a little short. We saw a dozen or so deer and some Eider ducks who nearly killed Talaura because we climbed out onto rocks we probably shouldn't have climbed out on to see them. We saw squirrels and chipmunks and grouse and sand pipers and gulls. We also saw plenty of roadkill porcupines and figured that the porcupine is Maine's armadillo. Again, I repeat, we did not see a moose. Because they're not real.

Here are some pictures in no particular order! Enjoy.

THE GETAWAY

Goodbye @chromeplatedgirl and goodbye New York 😢

"Goodbye @chromeplatedgirl and goodbye New York 😢"

There used to be a time when I traveled where at the end of each day, I'd sit down and write the day's events in my journal. It was a good habit that I've neglected this summer. While we were in Alabama, by the time the dinner dishes where dealt with and the Cabbage was put to bed, I barely had enough energy to get through a cocktail before calling it a night. Every day was filled to exhaustion. I suppose I could make the same excuse for this trip to New York. I mean, just on my last day alone, I ended up walking a little over 25,000 steps. This trip was a spur of the moment splurge and I didn't really prepare myself for journaling. 

Here's an un-ordered list of things I saw:

• Fort Tryon Park
• subway rat
• The Wild Party
•  Pier 84
•  Boyz II Men and Nick Canon
•  Chinatown
• what's left of Little Italy
• the Morgan Library
•  the original manuscript of Alice in Wonderland
• the Highline
• the Roosevelt Tram
• Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Schmakery
• Congee
• Ramen
• that guy wearing an American flag tank with a matching bandanna on his head carrying a pineapple. 

It seems like a short list, but part of my time was spent in a conference. Of course I saw old sites like Times Square. There's no missing The square when you're headed to a theater. I hung out for a few minutes in Bryant Park and passed by Columbus Circle. There were so many new sections of New York for me this time. I walked from the Highline to Chinatown which took me through parts of the Village I'd never seen. I emersed myself into the tactileness of New York. I ended each day with sore feet and a body sticky with sweat and city grime and I did not care. The best part was getting to see Talaura's new home. I met her dog park buddies and saw the place where every Tuesday, she picks up her CSA veggies. We'd pass people on the sidewalk while walking Sarge and Talaura would tell me how that's so and so and they're currently in this or that. Her neighborhood is full of people involved in the theater in some way. I was star struck and giddy and so impressed. I am happy for the life she's created and is cultivating for herself.

When I sat on the plane to leave New York after my very first time visiting, tears dripped down my chin. I was overwhelmed by the grandeur that is New York and joy of spending time with a good friend. The same thing happened as I said goodbye to Talaura at the airport after my second trip to New York. That was understandable. It was an emotional trip, the trip that Chris and I had planned to take together. The Statue of Liberty was where we held the first leaving of the ashes ceremony. I assumed these tears were warranted, but a passing things. Eventually I would get used to saying goodbye to Talaura and this great big city she calls home. So I was surprised as the tears welled up in my eyes and spilled over as my plane taxied down the runway.  I chalked it up to being tired. Also the s'more cookie that Talaura shoved into my hand before pushing me off the bus was now gone, eaten while standing in line at security. There was also someone sitting near me who was making the plane smell like a boys' locker room. 

I know really the tears are there because I've just said goodbye to a piece of my heart.