Minneapolis and the land of 10,000 lakes

After the relaxing "family" weekend, I'm off again and head back into the US, destination Minneapolis. I won't bore you again with all the details, but yes, I got "harrassed" again entering the US border. Searched my car again. It was scarier this time because they put me into this holding 'cell' where I could not see anything. One-way mirrors and all. If they decided to plant something in my car, I wouldn't have been there to see or point it out or anything. Of course that does not mean anything anyway because it would still be their word against mine. (On the Canadian border, at least I could watch them as they searched my car.) After a few minutes, they call me out and say I was free to go.

I stay with a friend in Minneapolis, and she drives me around the next day to see the sights. It's the land of 10,000 lakes, so of course I had to have a picture by a couple of them. These are Lakes Calhoun and Lake Harriet in downtown Minnie:

Next place we see is the Minehaha falls in Hiawatha park. You literary types out there will probably recall Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem about Minehaha and Hiawatha: they who went against all of society's norms and laws and dared to love each other anyway. How poignant.

Finally, a trip to the twin cities wouldn't be complete without a visit to the other twin city, St. Paul. So of course the only place I visit before heading out on the road again is St. Paul's Cathedral:

Winnipeg, eh?

OK, sorry for the delay in posting. I'm about a week behind now. Hope y'all enjoyed the little intermission before I could update this.

So I left Sioux Falls and drove north heading to Canada. The weather was terrible. The terrain was flat as far as the eye could see, and you could see rain falling on the left coming closer and closer until it hit excactly where I was driving. It was the first time I've ever seen lightning go horizontally acrosss, parallel to the ground! Usually it's from the sky down to the ground. I dunno how to explain it but I guess I must have been driving really close to where it struck.

Entering the border into Canada, everyone else seemed to just get waved through, but not me! They asked me a ton of questions: "Is it your first time in Canada? Where are you headed? Where did you come from? Who are you visiting? etc. etc. etc." Then they took me aside and searched every inch of my car! Of course they didn't find anything. An hour later they let me go and I arrive in Winnipeg around 10 pm. (Can't say I blame 'em: brown guy driving a beamer with California plates, arriving at 9 pm saying he's visiting Canada for the first time and going to Winnipeg! Not Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal, but Winnipeg. I guess I must have looked suspicious.)

So I spend the weekend with one of my best friends and his family (Thanks Dot and Eve for letting me visit, and thanks for letting me stay in your room Migs!) Their son Migo is my godson. Nice relaxing family weekend. Bear "exhibit" down Broadway, downtown Winnipeg:

Being silly with Migo in front of the State Capitol:

Artsy partsy photograph of a footbridge, some pictures taken at St Boniface church, and at a farm outside town where we had a bonfire and waited to see if the Northern Lights would come out that night. Unfortunately, it didn't.

Kinda before and after shots of the North American plains: Indian tepees and bison hides replaced by white man's barns and tractors.

GQ pose in urban Winnipeg :)

Close Encounters.... Badlands!

Hungover. Ugh. Supposed to drive all the way to Fargo, ND today but didn't think I could drive that far. Aiming for Sioux Falls instead. Another 5 hour drive or so. But I stop by some sights along the way so I end up arriving after dark.

The first stop is a kitschy tourist destination, almost at par with the world's biggest ball of twine! Wall Drug. From miles and miles before you get to Wall, they advertise with lots and lots of funny signs along the freeway. Apparently it's gotten to the point where you can see Wall Drug signs in Nairobi, the London subway, Israel, and other spots all over the world! It's grown over the years from a drug store to almost a mini-mall in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota.

Next stop is Devil's tower. A short (40 mile) detour away from the freeway, it's an interesting geographical oddity. Created by volcanic energy and by the surrounding soil getting eroded over the centuries, this "tower" has been the center of Native American and other mythology: including the 70's movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Next stop: Badlands.

Oooops. Wrong Badlands.

I drive through the (real) Badlands, another geographical sight-to-see, created by centuries after centuries of soil erosion. You can actually see different colored layers in the formations, representing different eons in history. Fossils from the Badlands are found in museums everywhere.

After a long drive, I end up in Sioux Falls where I quickly find a room and lay my head down to rest.

Funny thing. I didn't know there was a time change (I'm now on central time) driving from Rapid City SD to Siouxs Falls SD. I thought the time zones went by state, and didn't cut individual states into two time zones. I guess I was wrong. So I was actually having dinner at this brew pub at 10 pm, when I thought it was only 9!)

Just a Little Teaser...

Sorry. Didn't have time over the weekend to update the blog, and then didn't have internet access until tonight (Tuesday). Will update tomorrow morning.

Yes, I'm still alive! (Am now in Madison, Wisconsin; but that little bit of info brings this whole thing out of chronological order, ooops.)

In the meantime, just thought I'd vent on the bane of modern gadgetry: power supplies and cables!!! You have to travel with all of these just to ensure the continuous use of our modern conveniences. Sheesh. Someone should invent a universal one to do all these (yes, yes, I know there's one that attempts to, but it still does not do it all!)

BEFORE

AFTER GETTING ORGANIZED

(That little plastic organizer, btw, was the packaging for a 3-pc set of tightie-whities I bought in Hong Kong. Good thing I'm a pack rat and keep these little things handy... :)

Oh, and yes. I need to share with you a snapshot I took somewhere along the praires that represents the philosophy of this trip. Loosely interpreted: that I'm finally free and can plot my course however way I choose.

Cowboys and Indians -- Again

I start the day by visiting Raptile Gardens: the largest collection of reptiles in the western hemisphere, and a "must-not-miss" according to my guidebook. Interesting and fun little stopover. They have the world's rarest snake (only two in captivity in the world), the world's deadliest snake (another rare one in captivity), etc. I catch the alligator show and the snake show, and still have not seen all the animals, but have to leave because it was getting dark (forecast was rain for this afternoon) and I still had to see some other sights. Wish I had more time. Oh well.




Mount Rushmore is impressive. It's a national monument to our nation's freedom; so there is no entrance fee -- free to the public. HOWEVER, there is an $8 parking fee. grrrr. I didn't stay long. Once you've oohhed and aahhed and taken the pictures, there's not much else to do. (But it is worth a visit at least once.) And it did begin to rain. So I head on out to my next destination.

This one was way more interesting. The Crazy Horse Monument is still being built. After over 50 years, it is still, I would say, only 25% done. The story behind its construction is fascinating as told by the 2o minute "orientation" video. All the work is done from funds raised from the public (admission fees, souvenir sales, etc.) -- no money from the government at all. (The federal government has offered $10M grants twice, but they refused to accept it.) There is a huge collection of native american art and craft on display, as well as historical pictures depicting the era.

It is a monument to Crazy Horse, of the Lakota tribe, and to all the Native Americans who were here before the white man. The Black Hills are considered sacred to them, and this location (just a few miles from Mount Rushmore) is "where it should be", according to tribal elders. When finished (no estimated date), it will be over 4 times the size of the Mt Rushmore monument. I think it is so right, what they are doing. If America can still, to this day, celebrate Columbus Day, i.e. the start of Native American genocide, then there definitely should be a monument to those people, larger than the white man's!

There was a Native American author who had a display table and was selling his book(s) on Crazy Horse. He had other bestselling books there as well. He was a fighter pilot in Vietnam and he was talking to a lot of the visitors. Now, I have been mistaken for Chinese in Hong Kong, Singapore, China, etc., Japanese when I'm in Japan, Mexican in California, etc. But I've never been mistaken for Native American. Well, this guy asked me if I was, and I guess I was mean, but I said I was from the Apache tribe, and in fact was named after a famous chief. Then I show him my ID with Geronimo as my middle name. That convinced him!

It was getting dark now so I head into town and have dinner at the Firehouse Brewing Co. A microbrewery in an old firehouse. Met these two guys over dinner at the bar, one of whom was from Rhode Island. They were just in town for business. He gives me his contact details, and if schedules work out, we're gonna do something when I get to RI.

After dinner, I head back to my hotel. Not yet ready for bed, I head to the hotel bar. Have a couple of drinks, meet these other two nice people (also here on business: from the bay area no less!! Palo Alto and Pleasanton!) and they keep buying me drinks. Needless to say we were sloshed as we headed back to our rooms.

No pancakes this time, just cereal.

Old Faithful and Yellowstone National Park

I did an 8-hour drive today from Montana, all the way East through the whole state of Wyoming, and am now in Rapid City, South Dakota. Tired, so I'll keep this update short. Not much to chronicle anyway as it was mainly a touristy, but nonetheless awe-inspiring view into the beauty, majesty and inherent power of mother nature.

I enter Yellowstone Park from the West Side (Montana) and see thousands of dead blackened trees/naked tree trunks pointing up to the sky, with shorter greener trees interspersed beneath them. These are the remnants of a huge wildfire in 1998, according to the guidebooks I read the night before. After driving through this somber reminder of that tragedy for about 30 miles or so, I enter a clearing that goes as far as the eye can see. And in the distance I see smoke rising from the trees. Hmmm. I have a few "uh oh" moments, thinking I did not want to get caught in another wildfire. But I see the cars ahead of me driving on, so I decide what the heck, and follow suit. As I get closer, it turns out it wasn't fire causing the smoke, but the thermal energy from under the ground! This was steam rising from hot springs and cracks in the earth! For a moment I felt like an idiot. Ugh.

Then driving along, we hit a bisonjam. This is when bison decide to take over the road and block motorists. These are large creatures and can run 30 mph (3x faster than man) so they should not be taken lightly. Apparently quite a few people every year get gored by these creatures (unless that's just rumors the park rangers promulgate to keep tourists in check).

After a short wait for the bison to get bored of us and leave the road, I drive on towards Old Faithful. Rangers can predict the next eruption to within 10 minutes, and they predict the next one to be at 3:21 pm. I have a few minutes to kill so I go to the book store where the ranger announces that the Beehive Geyser was about to erupt in 10 minutes! This is the tallest of the geysers in the park (200-300 ft high) and it erupts only every 12 to 23 hours (unlike Old Faithful, this one is unpredictable). So I thought I was pretty lucky to catch that:

I then head to Old Faithful to wait, and sure enough at 3:23 she does not disappoint:

(All these eruptions remind me of my night in Salt Lake...)

I continue to drive to other spots within Yellowstone Park. Beautiful hot springs, with bacterial mats adding color to the base of the springs.

And the wedding-cake like terraces at Mammoth created by hot springs:

Other wildlife I see in the park (but was not fast enough with my camera) include wolves, deer, and elk! I leave the park after dark, get stuck again in another bisonjam for a few minutes, then head into town for dinner. After a beautiful day enjoying nature and wildlife in its own terrain, I do what every nature-respecting human is expected to do: I have a nice buffalo steak, medium rare.