We live in a huge fucking country. Today, Jake and I woke up at five, and stole out of the Chicago apartment that has treated us so well. We realized as soon as we woke up that in our hurry to buy groceries before the store closed last night we forgot to pick up a gift for our generous hosts. Hopefully they’ll come and visit us and we can return their generosity at some point. On the road by 5:40 and into Wisconsin just past seven, the early start was the right choice. We flew through Chicago, and in the early morning sunlight it truly looked like a dream city.
Starting in Wisconsin we played My Cow for quite a while, until I got up to about 1045 cows, and Jake was trailing at about 594 cows. Neither of us could quite fathom the idea of our cow armies actually killing each other, and in Wisconsin there isn’t a lot of ammo to pick up anyway, so I took a nap, which essentially brought the game to a close.
Basically, the theme today was just straight up driving. On the way from Great Barrington to Oberlin the theme was school busses – we inexplicably saw about 15 school busses on the highway that day. From Oberlin to Chicago the theme was that all of the towns in Ohio have the same name as other places, such as Milan, Russia, and Peru to name a few. But today, it was just driving through the fairly flat lands of Wisconsin (which has mounds and is actually quite beautiful), Minnesota (most of which I slept through), and South Dakota (which is overwhelmingly long). We did have a few high points. We crossed the Mississippi, the Missouri, and into the Mountain time zone. Also, we stopped at the inevitable Corn Palace, which was less exciting than I had hoped it would be. Nonetheless, the pictures of the old corn palaces, from when the buildings were made mostly of corn are really neat. Plus we picked up postcards and I can now say I’ve been there.
And then, the Badlands. I’m writing in my tent in the Badlands state park. It turns out the Badlands are so called because the French settlers thought they were la terre mauvais traville, aka lands that were hard to travel through. I bet they were right – we’ll find out tomorrow, since we’re going to do a short hike in the morning. It’s comforting to know that nobody actually thought these were an evil place, just hard to get your horse to clomp through. I think this place is beautiful, and it’s such a welcome sight after miles of billboards for Wall drug and 1880 Town and the Mount Rushmore movie and Pro Life/Anti Choice propaganda. I’m looking forward to exploring more tomorrow morning, although I’m sad not to have a camera yet.
A few last Chicago bits before I forget. We did a drive by look at the Robie House, which looked way too clean to me, on our way up to visit with Melissa again. When we got to Mel’s house, she said she had a surprise and walked us to this place called Lula’s Café. There, we had fantastic food and drinks, and I copped the most expensive blueberry lemonade I think I’ll ever have. They gave us a shot of chilled spring garlic and herbed new potato soup, which was super tasty, and I had some sort of pasta dish with fresh homemade ricotta, oyster mushrooms, and olives that I polished off. All around the outdoor sitting area were fans of this death metal band that were waiting for the show next door to start and providing constant amusement for us onlookers. When we mentioned Lula’s to Colin, Jason, and Lyrica, they all knew it and how tasty it was, so I felt like we found a true Chicago treat.
Oh, there’s always more to report than I can possibly put down. It’s great to be writing (almost) every day, it’s very meditative and reflective. But now I want to get to sleep to be ready for tomorrow’s exploration of the Badlands and Black Hills.