Days 21 and 22 Life on the Road

These past two days have been mostly spent in the car.  No natural wonders or monuments to see – we just need to make tracks over long distances.  In the past 48 hours we have passed through five states: Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona.  We are ready to move into the Grand Canyon.

We consider the first leg of our journey behind us.  We are approximately one-third of the way through our road trip.  We have traveled 7438 km since leaving Nova Scotia.  We have passed through four time zones and currently are in the Arizona Time Zone (because they do not change for Daylight Savings).  We have been on the road for 3 weeks and have spent $766 in gasoline.  Gas prices in Canada averaged $1.00/ litre.  American gas prices are about $2.75 per gallon (70 cents/ litre).

We have eaten out at a few restaurants and been treated at friends' homes, but mostly we have prepared our own meals at rest stops.  We buy fresh milk, fruit, and yogurt every couple of days.  Sometimes we eat simply, like Peanut Butter and Jam on sourdough bread, bought at a local Farmers’ Market.  Sometimes we prepare more home-cooked meals, like pork chops, carrots, and baked potatoes with all the fixings.   Our most memorable meals have been beans and wieners in Yellowstone Park, and Wisconsin mozzarella with tomato on Melba Toast.  Things just taste better in the fresh air!

Max and Simon have persisted with their school work and the Switched On Schoolhouse curriculum is perfect for their needs.  They work for a few hours each day in the car or at the campground/ hotel/ hostel before we leave.  Each evening Tim checks their work and gets lessons prepared for the next day.  Obviously their structured curriculum is supplemented by impromptu lessons in geography, wildlife, or culture.  Each day Lisa also gives them a journal question related to the previous day’s activities.  For example, “Use your 5 senses to describe the Jewel Cave in South Dakota”.

When school work is done, the boys watched an IMAX movie on the DVD player, or play “Animal Crossing” on their Nintendo DS, or read a book in the Alex Rider series.  But most of the time we chat about our different personalities, our future, and our bodily functions. And so we continue on our Memory Making Tour!

Day 20 Yellowstone

Natural Wonders!!  Yellowstone National Park is AMAZING.!!  Not only is there beauty in the scenery, but the wildlife is such fun to watch for!  And the science lesson about geysers and volcanoes is a bonus!

When we first arrived in the Park, Max made the mistake of reading the Park newspaper which talks about all the dangers of the park:  wild Bison that trample you, thermal mud that melts your sneakers, acidic water that eats flesh, dangerously high levels of hydrogen sulfide, and bacteria in thermal water that can cause meningitis….  Nonetheless we convinced him it would be worth the trip – and it was!!

First we passed through the wild Bison herd… 

Then we saw what remains of the 2009 forest fire, when more than 10,000 acres was burned.…

Then we breathed in the warm (potentially fatal) steam from the hot springs.....  We took a walk along this basin full of paint pots and mud pots.  Yellowstone is 8000 feet above sea level.  Water (and mud) boils at a lower temperature -- just 199 degrees Fahrenheit (93 degrees Celsius).  At this altitude the mud and water bubbles most of the time.

But it was all worth it when we saw the Old Faithful Geyser erupt -- four times!!  We stayed in the Snow Lodge on the same site as Old Faithful, so every 90 minutes we went out and watched it erupt.  There is a brand new Education Centre which explains how water and steam are constricted inside the earth and builds pressure until the confined bubbles lift the water above its opening, creating a geyser.

We took an early morning stroll on the Geyser Walk and saw many fumaroles (steam vents) and geysers.  As we walked we saw three geysers erupt just as we passed.  This one is called the Lion Geyser because of the ROAR it makes just before it erupts.  We were startled by how much it did sound like a lion!

Day 19 Jewel Cave

 After a quick look at the unfinished Crazy Horse Monument, we traveled west to the Jewel Cave National Park.  We were just in time to catch a morning tour of the second largest cave in United States.  With 151 miles of tunnels we were happy to see just 1% of this system.  We descended 240 feet below the surface (by elevator) and then walked to "Spooky Hollow" which is 380 feet underground (over 700 steps). 

 The cave was discovered in 1900 and got its name from the calcite crystals displayed on every wall.  It is a very dry cave and has bumpy knobs everywhere.  The black colouring of the walls is because of the manganese present in the cave.  Manganese is responsible for the variety of colour crystals (from white to dark purple).  We learned about how a cave "breathes" in response to the atmospheric pressure on the surface.

The ranger told us about cave exploration and how teams of 6 people go deep into the cave and plot more tunnels.  Max was keen to do this.  Some of the rooms are as big as a football field with 50 foot ceilings.  But to get to those rooms can be a miserable trip.. Here, Simon checks to see if he would fit in the 8 inch openings.

Most of the rest of our day was spent driving across the plains of Wyoming and through the Big Horn Mountain Range.  We spent the night in Cody, Wyoming – the home of “Buffalo Bill”.  We definitely feel like we are in the Wild West.

Day 18 Mount Rushmore

We started our day by traveling into the Badlands of South Dakota.  These rolling hills are appropriately named and we enjoyed watching the landscape change.  At the  “wall” of the Badlands is a community called Wall and a store called Wall Drug.  Famous for its free ice water and 5 cent coffee, we had to stop and see just how tacky it was.  And we were not disappointed!

                                                          

 

Our next stop was the highlight of this first leg of our journey.  Mount Rushmore is a National Monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  It is a majestic sight!  Completed in 1941, it was meant to be a reminder to the world of the history of the United States and the four Presidents responsible for its “foundation, preservation, and continental expansion”.  

Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln’s heads are 60 feet tall each and set high atop the Mount called Rushmore.  We were thrilled to be able to take a short walk closer to the statues.  And the Visitor Centre is an impressive display of the methods used by Gutzon Borglum to sculpt the monument and the life of the men who carved into the mountain.

 

 The landscape of this area is also breathtaking with its “needles”, outcroppings, and  wildlife.  The Black Hills get their name from the bark of the Ponderosa Pine trees that cover this region.   

Unfortunately, the last five years have seen the destruction of many acres of trees by the Mountain Pine Beetle.

Day 17 Corn Palace

 Today was a long day of driving.    We started in Wisconsin and drove through Minnesota to South Dakota.   The landscape along the way was spectacular and interesting.  We saw several wind farms as we drove through Minnesota – some with over 200 windmills!   We also crossed the mighty Mississippi River.  But after spending 10 hours in the car, we were glad to get to a hotel that had a pool and hot tub!

The highlight of Mitchell, South Dakota is the world’s only Corn Palace.  This structure gets a new corn mural every fall.  The first mural was created in 1892.  Every August it is put up and every May it is taken down to make way for a new design. This year’s was just completed and took 275,000 ears of corn in 5 different colours.  Each ear is cut in half and nailed to the building in an elaborate design.  Tim and Lisa visited the Corn Palace in 1989, while living in Winnipeg, Manitoba.  But this time we got the T-shirt!

Day 16 Milwaukee, Wisconsin

After traveling through Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, we reached the state of Wisconsin where our friends the Millmans live just outside Milwaukee.  We had a restful time with them and caught up on the last 7 years of family activity and mutual friends.  

 We also took a tour of the Journal Sentinel newspaper.  This Milwaukee daily newspaper has a beautiful production facility and we were able to follow the process of creating a newspaper using the web process (one continuous sheet of paper that feeds through seven storeys of machinery).  Each roll of paper is 10 km long and weighs a ton (literally 2000 pounds).  And guess where the paper comes from?  Canada, of course.  Some is even from Bowaters in Nova Scotia!  It was a fabulous behind-the-scenes look at the making of a newspaper.

We stopped at Miller Park for a walk around the baseball stadium where the Milwaukee Brewers play.  It is a beautiful facility with a retractable roof.

Days 14 and 15 Factory Tours

One of our plans for this trip is to tour a variety of factories to see how things are made.  If Tim had his way, we would visit every car and truck factory in the United States.  Thankfully, we have been able to convince him that we need a bit of variety.

Before leaving Ontario we toured the CTS Television Studio in Burlington, Ontario.  We saw the sets of 100 Huntley Street and the Michael Coren Show.

  

We also stopped for lunch with our friend Sam in Waterloo.  We had a short but good visit and a wonderful lunch at the Mongolian Grill.  The Grill is a restaurant where you choose your meat and vegetables, give it to a grill chef and watch it being stir-fried on a large open circular grill.

After a long drive to Flint, Michigan we toured the GM Factory Assembly Plant.  We walked along the assembly line while hundreds of the 2011 Silverado were being put together.  We saw robots welding doors with precision.  We saw the truck frames moving slowly along a route that gradually added the tires, then the engine, the dashboard, the seats, and, finally, the doors.  This plant opened in 1947 and the day we were touring the factory they made their 13^th million truck!