Once again we have returned from the wilds of America and Canada and I take it upon myself to tell the tale. I would like all of my faithful readers to know from the outset that I have decided to try my very honest best to avoid political invective and tirades this time around. I think it is probably pretty clear where I stand on most any issue great or idiotic, and if not, all you need do is ask, I am happy to share my opinion and to correct your benighted ones. If I fail to completely live up to this goal, well, just figure that change takes time and I am trying. Also, you all know me, you have all endured being with me live and in person, so place emphasis and sarcastic drollery wherever it seems appropriate.
Getting Started
We started our journey to the great Midwest at the Atlanta airport of course. Now, I have said it before but it bears repeating, loyalty has its rewards! This could be loyalty to whatever is important to you, but in this case I refer to airline loyalty. We paid the whopping sum of $198 round trip each for coach class tickets to Minneapolis on Delta. Because we are loyal customers who are less than 2,000 miles away from Platinum status (grrr, so close, but we will be there midway to Seattle next month), we were upgraded to First Class seats, with an advance upgrade confirmation coming through via e-mail before we even left the house. You have to love that! Granted, I was asleep the whole time, so while Tim had at least one Bloody Mary (but who was counting) I chose to nap, a process started in the Crown Room in fact. I don’t sleep well the night before a trip. But, regardless, I am fat and I am getting old, so I am very much not a fan of the ever shrinking Coach seat, so I was pleased, even if I was asleep. And since MD-88 aircraft no longer have ovens there is no risk that you will miss a meal. The ovens were all removed, along with complimentary magazines, aside from the Delta magazine and SkyMall, and newspapers to reduce weight and therefore fuel costs. On any one flight on any one plane the savings are minor, but over an entire fleet over even a year’s time, the savings add up to a surprisingly large amount. I wonder if the fattening of America is driving up fuel costs. I mean, it is more overall weight to carry so perhaps overweight passengers will start being charged for their excess girth just as everyone is, well except those of us with status, are for their bags and their heavy bags. Just a point to ponder before you eat dinner.
A word of caution to those of you amongst my readers who might ever want to venture to Minneapolis: the airport frankly sucks! Minneasotans don’t seem to have mastered the art of signage, so finding anything in the airport is a treasure hunt of sorts, but remember you probably have baggage on the hunt with you. If you must go, go with Northwest, for everything you want from bathrooms to car rental is near their, and only their, terminal doors.
Eventually we found Hertz and we found our Prius. OK, I was skeptical at first, I admit it, but honestly if I was in the market for a car I would buy one. They are comfortable, quiet, and over the course of 2,400 driven miles (the Midwest is a big place!) we averaged OVER 40 MPG highway, and that is known to be lower than city due to the way the car operates. Only one proviso: if you live in a hilly place, you probably won’t like a Prius, but for us it was great. We saved a huge amount on gas as you might imagine for a road trip of this length.
Minnesota is lovely and people talk a bit funny, sort of like Wisconsin. And everyone but everyone is blond and tall. If you have so much as a dark tan, you will stand out. Everywhere in Minnesota is between some lake and another, for they don’t call it the Land of 10,000 Lakes for nothing! OK, I confess, Minnesota bored me, practically to tears, but I try to find something nice to say about places, so if you like tall blond people, go and enjoy.
There was some bittersweet anticipation for me as we approached the Red River which is also the border between Minnesota and North Dakota. Once I crossed that river, I would have traveled to all of the 48 lower US states and would only lack a trip to Alaska. Goals are great things but there is something almost sad about approaching the end of a process. But cross the river we did and behold North Dakota.
Eastern North Dakota is as populated as it gets and nothing in the way of towns is over 100,000. Fargo is as big as it gets and that is around 90,000. But the whole state is only just over 600,000 people, 92% white if you were wondering, and shrinking steadily. The young leave for there is nothing to do here in the most basic and literal senses of work and livelihood. Unlike West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Michigan these folks move on when there is no economic lifeblood. The suicide rate is very high and population is aging. Some folks have struck it rich since it now makes economic sense to drill down 2 miles or more to get at that North Dakota oil, whereas I would think that investing in wind farms in a lightly populated state with more than enough wind to justify collecting it would make sense. But of course those oil companies are so close to bankruptcy now that it would be a shame to deprive them of more profit. Oh yeah, I forgot, whoops, that could be taken as political commentary, but really I am just noting some significant and salient points about the state of the state of North Dakota. By the way, that isn’t a typo, I meant it to be that way. Read it again, SLOWLY.
We were staying in Grand Forks instead of Fargo because the hotel in Grand Forks was cheaper. And why wouldn’t it be! Sadly, Grand Forks is a dying place from what we could gather of it as we toured it trying to locate a grocery store and to also try to determine what bizarre set of Byzantine laws governed the sale of beer in this state. Really it is different everywhere from California’s buy it anywhere anytime except 2am to 6am to the South’s can’t buy it anywhere on Sunday. About the only going proposition in Grand Forks that we could see was the University of North Dakota, which wasn’t hard to see since the hotel had an elevated and enclosed walkway connecting it to the University. Actually there were a lot of these enclosed elevated walkways on campus, which confirms your suspicion that it gets REALLY cold in North Dakota in the winter. In January 2008, there were a total of FOUR days in Fargo in which the HIGH temperature was above freezing. Yeah, cold. And throw in the wind for some chill factor, and suddenly what Tim referred to as “Habitrails” look pretty darn good.
So, if you have a chance, pick a Hilton Garden Inn. For $78.00 we scored a one bedroom suite that was seriously bigger than several apartments I have lived in (NYC, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco all come to mind). The staff were amazingly nice and competent, the free breakfast, thrown in because of loyalty status rewards with Hilton, I told you it counts, was delicious as well. I speculated that perhaps the hotel was run in conjunction with the University as perhaps part of a hospitality management training program or something because clearly everyone from front desk to housekeeping to kitchen staff were university students. Yeah, only in North Dakota are you going to find white girls as hotel maids! It was slightly surreal to see white folk doing manual labor these days, but with the immigration policies of the Republicans we better all dust off our dust rags! Darn, slipped again!
UND, University of North Dakota, has a brand new building, right next to the hotel, called a Tech Incubator. They offer pilot training programs among other options, and reportedly it is about the best of the non-military pilot training programs in the US. Of course, US trained pilots are fleeing labor disputes and failing airlines in the US for lucrative deals with overseas, especially Arab, airlines by the hundreds, but at least North Dakota kids have some options. The building is wazoo and congrats to them for being innovative in providing for the education and future of their residents. And what a great name, Tech Incubator, for that semantically speaks to what the programs are about in terms that make sense. Clever, n’est pas?
North Dakota isn’t what I would call geographically interesting as you run the Red River up to Manitoba. It is flat and there are no towns but lots of oil seed fields on both sides of you. We reached the border and went through the usual drill of what we want to do in Canada. Tim over-explains what we are doing by explaining that once we visit Manitoba and Saskatchewan I will have visited all the Canadian provinces, so off we want to go, etc etc etc. Honestly, I don’t think the Canada border dude with a paragraph tattooed on his forearm really cared, but he listened more or less patiently, figuring that the more Tim talked the sooner he would slip up and mention that keg of beer, case of cigarettes, and semi-automatic rifles we had. But we didn’t have those things, so we were of no interest to the literary tattoo guy and away we go. I tried to explain to Tim that talking more just makes you look nervous with something to hide, as does having too pat a story, but what do I know? After all, I am the guy who had his truck dismantled by Canadian immigration in Victoria, British Columbia!
Oh Canada!
Of course the sun was shining in Manitoba for it is the great land of Canada! “O Canada!” I kid you not, we watched the Weather Channel in Grand Forks and despite the blanketing of green, indicating rain, over the entire Midwest from Montana to Michigan to Texas, at the border with Canada the map magically cleared. For it is always whatever weather you want it to be in the perfect paradise of Canada. Tim tried to give me some line about how the map was clear because US weather reporting ignores Canada, but I knew better. I knew it was just better in Canada. Later, in Saskatchewan, when we were dumped on with pelting rain, I would come close to conceding that Tim might have been correct, but it was a Sunday and they need rain, so perhaps it was planned that way. We all cling to something!
As you run up to Winnipeg, you start to wonder if people actually live in Manitoba, for if they do, you sure won’t see them. There is just about nothing between the border and Winnipeg, which is inconvenient if you need gas or cash or food. We did find one town that actually had a bank with an ATM, and behold real Canadian money emerged. The towns, such as they are, are tiny with quaint French names, usually Ste, meaning Saint, someone or the other. You all did know that a significant number of folks in Canada speak French didn’t you? Because of this, Ste. Agathe really isn’t a surprise.
Of course as is true elsewhere in Canada, the Canadians want to be absolutely sure you realize you are in Canada, so they fly lots of Canadian flags everywhere. Honestly, even the McDonalds outlets, clearly American in origin, stick a red maple leaf smack in the middle of the arches just to make some point about being, at least nominally, Canadian. And no, we didn’t eat at a McDonalds, I am just saying that you see them everywhere. I read a newspaper article about a Canadian woman living in London who hastily explains to people who overhear her accent that she isn’t American, she is Canadian. She reports that the Brits who have actually asked if she was American apologize as if, and I do quote, “they had accused me of leaving a love disease on the toilet seat.” Yes indeed folks, being assumed to be American is now equivalent to being the spreader of such lovely everlasting gifts as herpes, which incidentally my public health training compels me to point out has never been documented to transmit via a toilet seat. Really, your mouth has more germs than any toilet seat, so get a grip and sit your ass down! As I was saying, Americans are the subject of much speculation, as in, “what the hell are they thinking over there?” We bewilder the world, including Canadians, and our more recent actions over the last 8 or so years have not endeared us abroad, not even to our formerly staunchest friends. Again, this is not political commentary, this is simply reporting of experience in Canada. Geez!
We approached Winnipeg pretty early, so we skirted around the city itself to the east and then headed north up to Lake Winnipeg, which is realistically a sixth Great Lake in all but name. It was formed by the same processes and it is pretty impressively large. We pulled into a provincial park to get a closer look at the lake. There was one other vehicle there, a family of four who were in the process of pulling their kayaks out of the lake. Now, my experience of Americans is that they would likely ignore you, but in Canada, the dad of the group spoke to us very pleasantly and provided recommendations about other spots along the lake that would have more going on and more to see. I finally realized that we had a license plate on the front of our vehicle so he could clearly see were from the US, and he could be excused for thinking we were from Illinois since that is where the license plate was from. It dawned on me that this really isn’t a part of Canada that lots of US residents visit so I think we were a bit of a novelty and that people appreciated us taking the time and making the effort to come and check out Manitoba. And of course Canadians are very friendly people on the whole and this guy wanted to make sure that we had information about the best spots on the lake.
His recommendation was Gimli, one of the places settled by the wave of Icelandic immigrants in the 19th century. And yes, it is same name as the dwarf, Gimli son of Gloin, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Whatever Gimli was in the past, most likely a fishing village, it has been reinvented as a tourist destination. It is a cute enough little place so if you happen to be in the area you might as well give it a visit. I had hoped that Gimli would be the northernmost place we had ever visited, but when we checked its coordinates we discovered that Brussels still had it beat even if just by a few minutes (a subset of degrees if you didn’t know).
We had lunch in a local diner. Pickerel was the local fish on every menu and in every window so we decided to give it a try. It wasn’t bad even if it wasn’t great. What was most interesting to me was the waitress. She was chatting with some local folks who knew her at the table next to us and was detailing her origins as Portuguese and Greek. Furthermore, she was in graduate school finishing up her Master’s degree in aerospace engineering. Canada is probably a far more diverse place than many would realize and they have some rather impressive educational standards and institutions to boot!
The true food delight, or horror, depending on your point of view, that we had in Gimli was the poutine. I have no idea what the word actually means in French, although I believe that it translates as “mess.” That would make sense since a poutine consists of French fries covered with brown gravy and cheese curds. It is very popular and available in most of Canada at fast food outlets and even school cafeterias, even though its origins are Quebecois. I have to confess that I liked it and would eat more of them should I come across them even though they clearly are not good for you.
The other thing we did in Gimli was to buy real Sudafed! This shouldn’t be such a big deal, but with ridiculous US laws that make the purchase of sinus pills a 20 minute ordeal involving signatures and driver’s licenses, presumably for reporting to who knows what Federal snoop agency, it was a true joy to just buy the things without it being assumed that we were planning on cooking up meth! Imposing draconian rules on all of us in an attempt to prevent determined people from poisoning themselves frankly seems just dumb. That is just an observation, not political invective.
On the road to Gimli we saw lots of people selling corn at roadside stands. We are big fans of fresh produce but we didn’t really have a way to cook corn. We also saw several signs advertising the availability of “Saskatoons.” Neither of us had a clue what a Saskatoon was, although I was pretty sure the signs didn’t refer to the city of Saskatoon, which is in Saskatchewan, for I didn’t see how people could be selling the city from their houses. I guessed it was a fish. Later I would discover that I was wrong.
It became clear as we drove that it was migration season, for overhead we could clearly see and hear the flocks of ducks, geese, and other water birds heading south for the winter. We also saw many many many red-tailed hawks perched on the power poles watching the fields for a snack. The end of the harvest is a good eating time for hawks since the cover for the multiple mice, rats, and the snakes that prey on them is removed, making them easily visible. We watched several swooping strikes, including one onto a snake, which is a bit harder to tackle, but really no match for a hawk. Anything that makes lunch of a snake is a friend of mine, although I must say that when you see a red-tailed hawk close up, you would be disinclined to mess about with it, for those talons mean business.
The other thing to notice in this part of Canada is the truly endless sky. You can see for literally miles into the distance, since it is very flat with few trees, and you can watch clouds and weather form and move across the horizon. It doesn’t sound like much until you experience it and for those of you who are accustomed to urban areas, hilly terrain, or lots of trees, it is hard to explain the sense of almost agoraphobia that can overtake you with so little to break the visual run to the distant horizon caused by the very curvature of the Earth.
Just outside of Gimli there were large signs for Smith’s Smoked Fish. Tim and I like smoked fish so we wanted to stop and get some eats. Imagine our surprise to find out that Smith’s Smoked Fish shop was actually quite literally in the garage of the Smith’s house! They had lots of coolers and lots of smoked fish, clearly homemade. There was a very tall and very blond man to sell the fish to us, and his appearance made the settlement by Icelanders easy to believe. Tim asked for whitefish, and in this case that is exactly what he got, a whole whitefish, head and eyes, and all. Tim was a bit taken aback since he expected smoked fish fillets I think, but we braved it and took the fish, whom we nicknamed Gill since he traveled with us a while, along with some angelfish fillets. We also asked the fish guy what a Saskatoon was. He was puzzled, and then responded, “It’s a berry, eh. You must not be from these parts.” No, indeed we weren’t, and if we had been apparently we would know what a Saskatoon was. He explained that a Saskatoon was sort of like a blueberry crossed with something else, but he wasn’t sure exactly what. Later, I would discover that if you crossed a blueberry with gravel and cardboard you might get close, but as of yet we hadn’t experienced a Saskatoon.
You might notice that I included the “eh” in reporting the fish dude’s commentary. If you know anything about Canadians or have ever been there, you will know that “eh” is an all purpose add-on that peppers many Canadians’ speech. It is uniquely Canadian and not only do you get used to it, but you find yourself saying it as well faster than you might think.
On the way back into Winnipeg we started looking for likely places to pick up beer for the evening. We wanted to find another Beer Store like the one in Ontario, but we would discover that the different provinces have their own liquor laws and the model of the Beer Store which we were so enamored of in Ontario would not exist in Manitoba.
Specifically we wanted to try Fort Garry beer, which is named for the oldest standing stone fur trading post in Canada, which happens to be just outside of Winnipeg. They have costumed historical re-enactors, yawn, snooze, snort…oh yeah, we saw it but didn’t stop. You might have guessed that.
So, we find this nice liquor store and are wondering why all the Fort Garry beer is sitting at room temperature, so we ask a store employee. Immediately, the gentleman leans against a rack and says, “You are not from here are you.” Not a question, a statement. He proceeds to explain that Manitoba laws are primarily based on recycling. The store we were in was run by the province, although there was no obvious way to know this. The Manitoba rules state that any establishment that sells refrigerated domestic beer has to accept the cans and bottles for the refund of the required deposit, BUT if only room temperature beer is sold, then the consumer has to take the bottle or can back to the manufacturer to get the refund. Private establishments can and do sell cold domestic beer and they accept the empties. The provincial store sells beer, wine, and liquor, whereas private stores can sell only one of the three, although there are private stores dedicated to each of the three, hence private beer stores, private wine stores, and private liquor stores. The provincial stores have the better selection and better price by a considerable margin even though everyone working in them, all of them clean and nice by the way, are provincial employees.
The province has no interest in messing about with the accepting of the empties, and after visiting a private beer store we understood why. The empties are not rinsed upon return and the place fairly reeked of stale beer remnants. Plus, private beer stores seemed to be primarily located in the ground floors of questionable motels, so visiting one was rather adventurous.
The provincial store employee also explained that the US beer brands that we saw on the floor, not in the cooler, were not actually imports since they were made in Canada under license by Labatts. He also pointed out that there was no dispute that Canadian coolers were superior to the US counterpart. He wanted to be clear that he had no interest in debating all the fine points about which country was better, the US or Canada, little did he know I would have agreed with any assertion of Canadian superiority, but one had to admit that Canadian coolers were better because a Bacardi cooler in Canada actually had rum in it, unlike the US where every cooler, wine, vodka, rum, etc, is actually made with malt liquor NOT the actual liquor being named on the container. I guess if you read the fine print it says this, but since I don’t drink them I had no idea. But this guy felt certain that we would have to admit that Canadian coolers, with real liquor or wine, were better. OK, no problem, I took his word for it.
The conversation with this chap highlighted again that Canadians in general are a patient and friendly lot. He took a great deal of time to explain the intricacies of the liquor rules to us and to make recommendations as well. It was also clear that Canadians know far more about the US than the average US citizen knows about Canada. I think the Canadians resent us for this and I can’t really blame them. Not knowing anything about our neighbor is pretty arrogant even if widespread. This gent knew a great deal about US liquor laws, US politics, US geography, really things that were a mix of specialty and generalist knowledge about the US, but probably more than most US residents themselves know. But then that isn’t all that surprising.
Just as a quick check of your Canadian awareness, answer the following as quickly as you can, and no, you can’t use Google or other assistive devices.
Name all 10 Canadian provinces and all 3 Canadian territories.
What is the provincial capital of Alberta? (Hint: It isn’t Calgary)
What is the provincial capital of British Columbia? (Hint: It isn’t Vancouver)
Who is the Prime Minister of Canada?
Is there a Federal election in Canada this year?
The liquor store guy’s final bit of advice was that if we wanted a truly local product we should buy Crown Royal whiskey, because all of the rye used to make it was grown in the area around Winnipeg and the distillery was no more than 20 kilometers north of the city.
Most all of you will have noticed that I have a true love affair with Canada, so you know this will pain me to admit, but it is clear that Winnipeg has some issues to deal with. Alcoholism is an epidemic in Canada as a whole but I have never actually seen public drunkenness in Canada before coming to Winnipeg. Canada also has a national unemployment rate of 6%, which is the rate in the US now following steady increases. And that rate stays pretty firm despite increases in Canadian employment. The rising value of the Canadian dollar has slowed exports and Canada exports primarily raw materials, although that is changing.
Our hotel was on the edge of a wave of gentrification that is transforming the town. However, the hotel did still have a sign indicating that parking was at your own risk since break-ins have occurred. That was another thing I have never seen in Canada and it was a bit heart-breaking to discover that not all of Canada was as perfect as I liked to think. However, I did find it interesting and important to note that despite some rough areas and some folks who clearly had consumed more ethanol that was probably good for them, Canada and Canadians continued to impress me with the fact that there was absolutely no litter on the ground.
Winnipeg does have some high points though. The Canada Mint is located in Winnipeg and it produces all of the circulation coinage for Canada as well as for 60 other countries. I would have liked to tour the facility but it was closed on the day we were there. Winnipeg is also a very diverse city with a large and growing Asian population, which surprised me since I would expect Asian presence in Vancouver and probably Toronto, but not really Winnipeg. There were lots of Vietnamese restaurants along major roads, admittedly not in the best of neighborhoods, but still a presence. We treated ourselves to fabulous Indian food just doors from our hotel, which was convenient since it was raining. We both crave Indian food but have a hard time finding it in rural Georgia, so we take advantage of our journeys to eat it. The place was packed and the food was amazing, so we were happy campers.
Tim had read an article about the best donuts and he wanted to taste test both types that score the highest in each category. Krispy Kreme scored tops for its type, being a raised glazed donut, but the winner for cake style filled donut was the Canadian Maple Leaf sold by Tim Horton’s. If you have spent so much as a day in Canada, you have seen a Tim Horton’s even if you didn’t eat there. We had the much lauded donut, which is OK I guess. It seemed to me to be a basic vanilla cream filled donut with maple glaze, but since I only eat donuts maybe once per year, maybe, I am really not an expert judge of these things. Otherwise I sort of thought Tim Horton’s was like an upscale McDonalds in that they have real plates even if the flatware is still plastic.
We headed out from Winnipeg to Regina, the provincial capital of Saskatchewan. Granted, the city of Saskatoon is bigger, but Regina is the capital, based on the location of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which still actively crosses the nation to this day, and we know for we saw it.
It is a lengthy journey, 571 kilometers or about 6.5 hours, with frankly little to break it up. The plains, as Tim put it, are plain. There was more big open sky, more hawks, more fields, and not much else. But with crossing into Saskatchewan, I have now personally visited all of the Canadian provinces, and in fact have slept at least one night in all of them except New Brunswick, even though I have been there twice. I have not been to the three Canadian territories yet, but I do plan on it someday. After all, Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory is a boomtown once again.
While driving across the plains, there was road construction and the workers would flash us the V sign. At first I assumed they were just intrigued with Americans crossing the province, but then I begin to wonder if perhaps they were associating the Illinois license plate with that state’s current famous personality, Barack Obama, and flashing us a victory sign in the hopes that we as a nation come to our senses and reject the freakish lack of sense that is represented by the gut toting shoot it if it moves because God wants you to Sarah Palin. After all, Canadians support Barack, a pity they can’t vote for him, as do 4 out of 5 non-US residents surveyed by the BBC in 22 different countries. It is amazing how clearly others can see through the mire of US politics while so many who live here seem to not be able to wipe the bullshit from their eyes long enough to see disaster looming. Yeah, OK, that is a bit invective-like, but really it is more just an execration, imprecation, or even an excoriation, and I didn’t promise to limit or avoid those.
With the open plains you can see Regina, or any place with a building higher than one story, long before you get there. Regina, like Winnipeg but smaller, has probably seen better days. The most happening place is the large casino complex in downtown. We ate what was supposed to be dinner there, but honestly most Canadian cuisine is less than thrilling, and this proved no exception. But the waiter was incredibly nice and didn’t charge me for the Saskatoon berry pie I failed to eat. Ah yes, the much wondered about Saskatoon berry. At first I thought something had to be wrong with the ones I was eating for they were nothing but seeds, more seeds, and again, seeds. The taste was non-existent, just seeds, grit, and chew chew chew. I hated them, wouldn’t eat them, and won’t ever try again. Tim made his way through the pie, although I don’t know how, but I don’t think he will be hunting them down again soon either.
Our hotel was a classic turn of the century building, the Hotel Saskatchewan, originally built by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, but now owned by Radisson. It was elegant with blue watered silk on the walls and again a space bigger than some I have lived in. We made a stop in a local antique shop the next morning to see about picking up some items I had spied in the window the night before. Whether we bought anything or not will have to wait to be revealed to Tim’s Grandmother on Christmas and to my mother on Mother’s Day 2009.
Regina marked our farthest point on this trip, being 1,876 miles, or 3,019 kilometers, from Euharlee, Georgia.
As our journey progressed, we started to see more wildlife, especially once we crossed into Montana. A word to the wise about border crossings though. Granted that it will take longer in general terms of waiting time to cross at major crossings, beware that at the in the middle of nowhere crossings, like the one we used in Montana, the border staff may well be bored and have nothing else to do other than to take your car apart because they can. In this case it was relatively painless although they claimed that a case of beer that has been unsealed is technically a violation of the open container law. Uh-hunh. What exactly does one do with a six-pack then that was never sealed to begin with? I sort of figured that the container in question would be the bottle, but OK, fine, have a nice day, we put the open case in the trunk.
In Canada of course we saw lots of birds, both migratory and hawks, and naturally there were the predictable cows, sheep, horses, and the occasional donkey. Tim didn’t seem to know what sheep were at first, perhaps he had never seen them on the open range before. He was also intrigued by the cattle guards at the freeway entrances until I pointed out that cow versus auto is a contest no one wins. We even saw some llama herds on a couple of occasions. But in Montana we branched out into chipmunks, which we have at home, or we do if Casey doesn’t dig up their burrows and eat them. But we certainly do not have weasels, which were surprisingly larger than I would have expected. We also don’t have bison, which are commonly referred to as buffalo, and in fact you may have been taught to call them buffalo in school, but alas, that is incorrect. The only true buffalo are in Africa as Cape Buffalo or in Asia as water buffalo. The correct term for the North American creature formerly the mainstay of the Natives Americans of the Great Plains is in fact bison. The most striking and unexpected animals we saw lots of were the pronghorn antelope which roam freely in Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. They are beautiful animals that seemed surprisingly unconcerned with human presence. We also saw large groups of pheasants, which should have been more concerned with the presence of people since they are a very popular game bird. It is unfortunate that we didn’t have Ms. Palin with us, for surely she could have brought down an antelope or two or twenty along with some pheasant for a nice dinner. But perhaps she was busy burning some books somewhere and couldn’t make it. Or maybe she was parading her children as life style accessories in front of a howling crowd somewhere who has never seen the pregnant result of abstinence only education before. For whatever reason, she wasn’t there so for at least our time in Montana, the antelope continued to roam and play.
Our goal for the night was Miles City, Montana, only because there was no other place to stop. Eastern Montana is sparsely populated and we were not up for the further 4 hours required to get into South Dakota, so Miles City had to do. It isn’t a large place but it does have a selection of a hotel or two because the Interstate runs through. We wouldn’t be taking the Interstate out of town, but it was a place to sleep. The high point of Miles City was dinner across the street from our hotel. As the front desk clerk explained it, mostly locals ate there, and they ate there because the food was plentiful, affordable, and excellent. The owner raised and slaughtered all his own beef, and while it wasn’t as good Uruguayan beef, it was the best rib-eye I have had for that small a price. The waitress told us she knew we were from out of town because she didn’t know us and she knew everyone who lived in Miles City. That probably isn’t a major intellectual challenge, but it did speak to the local character of the place. I have a sort of rule whereby I try to find local restaurants to eat at when we travel, and admittedly, sometimes the results leave something to be desired, but nonetheless I would rather give my business to a local place than to yet another chain restaurant that could be anywhere. This place had the local color with folks eating in their Stetson hats with their knives attached to their belts. These were hard working and hard worked men and women who were prematurely aged by the nature of how they made a living in the harsh outdoors in all weather, which is rarely kind and forgiving in eastern Montana. Montana liquor laws were clearly different from other places we had been for while the restaurant itself didn’t serve, you could walk next door to the bar/casino and bring your cocktail back to your table. Presumably they get their glassware back somehow. However they do it, there was a pretty constant flow of newly arrived patrons being seated and then gathering the table drink order to walk next door to obtain the libations. It was a new and unusual bit of local color for us, so naturally we were fascinated by the process, not enough to try it, but enough to observe it and comment on it.
Our goal for the next day was the Black Hills of South Dakota which have been accurately described as islands of peaks and trees in a sea of grass. The Black Hills are the result of very long ago volcanic activity, with a large amount of resultant granite rock. They are lushly forested and the logging companies kindly do their clear cuts somewhere away from what you can see from the major roads. What the loggers don’t take the pine beetles are busy killing to the extent that entire hillsides have been denuded. The Forest Service says that additional logging will slow the infestation and I suppose this could be true. After all, if you shave your head you don’t get head lice do you? So I suppose pine beetles will have a hard time eating if all the trees are cut down and carted away. How grateful we all should be that we have such brilliant stewards of our natural resources! Ahem!
At any rate, the Black Hills come as a surprise and welcome change from the flat treeless plains. Most folks among the 3 million plus who come every year are coming to see Mount Rushmore, surely one of the most iconic and recognized of American landmarks. We went to see the monument, which is free to view but for which you pay $10 to park to a concessionaire not to the Park’s Service. And if you have one of those yearly or senior citizen passes that you were told would get you into any and all parks, well, it won’t get you in here. You pay the $10 or you go away. Rushmore is certainly a sight to behold but once you have beholden it, there really isn’t anything more to do. I don’t think we managed to pretend that we were enthralled past about 15 minutes at most. But the Black Hills don’t have anything else going except tourist traffic, so every town has a gimmick or something to try to make you stay. There are no doubt worse places to spend some time but unfortunately the effect of tourist development seems to be that tourists leave home with the fervent desire that wherever they end up look and taste like where they came from. So, you end up with a lot of the “could be anywhere” sort of establishments that you find in Florida, Los Angeles, etc. Put put golf really is the same anywhere you know.
We knew times were tough when we heard a local woman talking about how the school districts were consolidating because of a lack of students. They were also motivated to close schools because land values for development were astronomically high, with the district able to sell one school site for over $5 million. Once the gold mines closed, the last of which did in 2001, which was unfortunate from my point of view since I had wanted to visit it, tourism was all that was left of the local economy, and that isn’t a good reliable income source for families with school aged children, so the exodus continues leaving young seasonal workers and those too old to move along with an influx of summer residents who drive up real estate prices, further necessitating the flight of locals who can no longer afford to live in their own communities. And yet, without those visitors there would no economy at all, so it is a conundrum that holds no easy answers and no clear blame. It seems to be a common problem in various parts of the nation and I am not personally sure that there are any long term winners on either side of the local or visitors divide.
If you find yourself in the Black Hills by all means take a look at Mount Rushmore but if you are tight on time, reserve what time you have for the Crazy Horse Memorial. This is a work in progress and it may well always be, but it is a poignant and important reminder that the faces carved into Rushmore are the faces of the invaders who stole the land they are looking out at from other people who had been there for thousands of years prior. I don’t have the space or the knowledge to get into a discussion or even a review of the treatment of the Native peoples of what is now the United States. But I think it fair to say that at the very least our behavior was reprehensible, dishonest, and cruel, despite what you may have been taught to believe in school. A visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial, commission by the Lakota Sioux many years ago, is at least one step towards a better understanding of at least part of the other side of the story.
We were nearing the end of our allotted time for the journey but not the end of the journey, for now we faced a 427 mile, 6 hour trek across the width of South Dakota. Now to be honest and in all fairness to the great state of South Dakota, other than the Missouri River, there just isn’t a whole lot to see out there. Well, there are a large number of hysterical and completely misleading anti-abortion signs everywhere you look, but then I remembered that South Dakota is the proud owner of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation and then it all made sense. And once again, for just one of MANY reasons, I am so grateful to be male!
We did stop in Wall, South Dakota, but we did not fall victim to the tourist trap of Wall Drug. If you see a person with one of the ubiquitous t-shirts, don’t worry, you really haven’t missed much of anything by not having visited Wall, South Dakota.
We also stopped in at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. The building isn’t really made of corn but the exterior does have a changing decorative scheme made from corn and other grasses and grains. Again, you won’t spend a lot of time here, but given the dearth of other attractions and trip milestones, you might as well stop and gawk for a bit and what all can be done with different colors and types of corn.
We stayed in Sioux City right on the Missouri and had dinner in a fascinating little place that opened in 1929, admittedly not good timing for a restaurant, but they survived and are still around so they did something right. Our final day took us up Iowa into Minnesota and back into Minneapolis for the return flight which we managed to change to the first morning flight instead of the noon flight at no charge, again a perk of status with the airline, and by a squeaker, pulled off the upgrades for the return flight as well.
Admittedly this won’t go down in the log books as one of the more exciting journeys I have undertaken, but it was a key step along the path towards several goals. The plains are not blisteringly exciting, that is true, but if you are unfamiliar with very wide and very open spaces, they would at least be a different experience. And for whatever they may lack in enthralling appeal, the next time you go to put a piece of bread in your mouth, cook with most any vegetable oil, or eat a corn chip, you really do have to be grateful that the Great Plains, and the people who continue to struggle to live and work there, are there allowing you to continue to eat, wherever you may be.
Next stop is Seattle with volcanos, yes active volcanos, temperate rain forests, the Columbia River, and one more Canadian province for Tim to experience. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.