Welcome to New York, B****

After leaving Chicago, the City of Broad Shoulders (which might explain why we saw so many bad dressers), we took I-90 through Gary, Indiana. Nothing much to report about Indiana other than the six guys who we saw working with horses in a rundown backyard that faces the highway. We popped out of Indiana to have lunch in Sturgis, Michigan because there is a Sturgis, South Dakota and we wanted to see if they are alike. The answer is a resounding no. The people we met in Sturgis (MI) were quite unpleasant. Unpleasant as in “I wonder if they spat on my food” unpleasant. Needless, to say, we did not stay long in Sturgis. On to Ohio, where we spent the night in Beachwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Nothing great happened there. The Hilton messed up our rooms and could not fix the mistake, but that is life on the road. Then the next day, we were on to Buffalo because the wings were calling us. On our way to Buffalo, we stopped in Madison, Ohio where we saw a guy getting gas with a confederate flag as his license He was glaring at us the entire time. I mean really, what an idiot. But, we put him out of our minds and headed to Buffalo.

Buffalo is surprisingly pretty. It has beautiful old buildings and great views of Lake Erie. I lived in New York for decades and even went to Niagara Falls in 2007 and had never been to Buffalo before this trip. It just seemed too far to drive to from Brooklyn on Brewster. I’ll never go back in the winter time and the drive from Buffalo to downstate New York is painful, but it is definitely a great place to see. Eric loved the falls and pronounced them (no surprise) “the best waterfall ever.” We decided to have Buffalo wings for dinner (surprise) and to have them at the originator of the Buffalo wing concept – Anchor Bar & Grill. Okay, I’ll say it: “the best wings ever.” Cece made friends with the jazz singer who was performing while we were there and all in all a great time was had by all.

Now, we were on the last leg of the trip – “No sleep till Brooklyn.” We arrived in New York City and it was 98 degrees, the skyline was hidden in this disgusting looking grey haze, and we were stuck in traffic. People were beeping us if we waited a second for a green light before moving and one driver actually bumped my car when the light turned green and when I turned around he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the light. I am sure that he only did that because I am a woman and had California plates. I joked that he was saying “Welcome to New York, b****." People were playing in open fire hydrants in Cece’s neighborhood; it was hot like it only gets in cities in the east -- muggy with not a breeze anywhere to be found. Cece was loving the noise and energy around the way. As in Chicago, I realized that big city life is just too loud for me and I was starting to complain about the heat and traffic and wondering why I even wanted to drive to New York when Sarah started singing “Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t do.” So, while it is pretty clear that I’ll not be hood forever, it is great to be back in New York.

So, I’ll be putting the blog on hold until I return from Europe in August and start the road trip back to California, but meanwhile, here are all the “welcome to” signs that we photographed (we started after Idaho so no Nevada, Utah, Idaho signs)

It's A Wonderful Life in Fergus Falls

In Sioux Falls, when I mentioned that I was going to Fargo to a woman, she expressed surprise that I was voluntarily going to Fargo (a lot of people do that) and invited me to her lake house in northern Minnesota on the way from Fargo to the Mall of America. But, I had to turn down the invitation because if I added eight hours or more to the last leg of the trip to the MOA, I would pretty much be on Sarah’s bad side for the rest of my life. The clock was ticking as we left Fargo. Sarah had imposed escalating penalties for lateness. It was like having court fines that double every day and next thing you know you owe a 12-year old millions of dollars. Against the backdrop of ever increasing fines, I could make only one stop on the way to Bloomington. We stopped in Fergus Falls, Minnesota because we liked the alliterative name. Come to find out the following: there are no falls in Fergus Falls (or so we were told); the town looks just like the town in “It’s a Wonderful Life;” it is the county seat of Otter Tail County; it has a large geriatric population and a coffee shop that makes a banging café au lait and great spice cookies. The Sarah clock continued to tick so after a quick stop at the Otter Tail County Museum, it was off to the MOA. I made it with five minutes to spare.

The MOA is obviously huge given that it is the largest enclosed mall in the United States. The children had great fun. There is an amusement park in the MOA, plus an aquarium. Cece took Eric to the amusement park for 3.5 hours and after that he announced: “This is the best mall ever.” I took Sarah shopping. What can I say about how big the mall is other than the fact that it has 3 Bath and Body Works stores? Do we really need a Bath and Body Works store that sells only the brand’s home products? I don’t know the answer, but there is one in the MOA. There are all the same stores as in a garden-variety mall just more of them. But, Sarah and I had a lot of fun because shopping is fun. It’s just that simple. At the MOA, we saw the oddest thing that we saw during our entire trip -- a group of adult men and women having a “Build A Bear” party. There were no children in the group. We still can’t figure out what that was about. I mean adults do not build stuffed animals even for work-related team building events so this remains a mystery. We had to drag Sarah out of the MOA and I promised to bring her back next year, and we probably will do it because I have to get back to Wisconsin and given that it is right next to Minnesota, it should all work out.

Talk about an underrated state and you are talking about Wisconsin. It’s big – not Texas big, but big for a state east of the Mississippi. It takes 7.5 hour to drive from the MOA to Chicago (our next stop) and most of the drive takes place on the southeast diagonal through Wisconsin. There is a lot to talk about with Wisconsin. First, the bad news: I got a speeding ticket. Really, Wisconsin should be a 75 mph state, but alas, it is a 65 mph state. The good news is that the trooper who gave me the ticket was really nice and told me where to get some great cheese, etc. in the area. The food in Wisconsin is super – the cheese, ice cream, maple syrup, sausage, cheese bread, etc. – yummy, yummy. The women are just a little bit bigger – not fat, just bigger and stronger looking and I loved that. Baldwin, Wisconsin – another super cute small town with a great coffee shop. The weird thing about Baldwin is that every teenager I met there had these Katy Perry anime character eyes. I thought that they were all on drugs but then I realized that I was looking at wide-eyed innocence. Either that or they were all sporting the new circle lenses that girls use to make their eyes look really big. The coffee shop in Baldwin (The Hazelnut Tree) is also a gift shop and Eric, the only one who went in with me, insisted on getting Cece a gift. Strangely enough the gift was two bottles of Coca Cola and lo and behold right before we gave the gift to her he told me “I think that two sodas are too much for Aunt Cece. I think I will keep one for me and Sarah.” I found out that Wisconsin is the water park capital of America. I have never seen more and the Dells area of Wisconsin is full of beautiful lakes and the aforementioned water parks. Check them out at this link. Next stop: Madison. This is a beautiful capitol city, with a pretty lake right in the middle of town, crazy “college town liberal” people, nice restaurants and just an all around nice place. I could totally live there. I e-mailed Andrew a picture of the state capitol and he e-mailed me back with “Wow, that’s a nice capitol.” I e-mailed back “What were you expecting a dairy barn?” I think that we all know Andrew’s answer.

We had great weather (excluding the hail, rain and snow in Yellowstone and even that was not as bad as it could have been) for the entire trip. Every time, we would get to a town, the people would tell us that they were just finishing up a few days of bad weather. Now, we were heading to the biggest city in the Midwest (“If you don’t know by now, I’m talking about Chi town”) which would prove to be no different. Apparently, we were driving behind a series of tornadoes that were moving through the upper Midwest. Just outside of Rockford, Illinois, a random guy approached us at a gas station and started talking to us about tornadoes. Have you ever noticed how everyone in Illinois other than people in Chicago has a slight southern drawl? I noticed it in 2007, but I attributed to the fact that I was in southern Illinois, but what is up with the area between the Wisconsin border and Chicago. Anyway, we arrived in Chicago at around 8:30 p.m. after a day during which tornado warning sirens had apparently gone off 3 times. Despite some frazzled nerves, Oprah’s soon to be former home was looking good. We went out for Chicago-style pizza which I happen to think is pretty disgusting, but the children and Cece loved it. Sarah pronounced Giordano’s pizza as “the best pizza ever!” We’ll have to agree to disagree. The next day, we went off to the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower and also had the good luck to see one of the bridges over the Chicago River opening. Eric loved that. Then it was bye, bye to “Chi town, Chi town, the city with best skylines.”

While in Chicago, we realized that we had eaten Buffalo wings a lot during our trip so we decided that our next major stop would be Buffalo, New York so we could have the wings at their place of origin, plus Eric would get to see Niagara Falls because he had pronounced the Lower Falls at Yellowstone to be “way big” and we wanted to show him another “way big” waterfall. So change of plans – no more trip to Detroit, Canada and Rochester, New York. Instead, we were off to Buffalo by way of Cleveland with a stop for lunch in southern Michigan.

It's A Wonderful Life in Fergus Falls

Otter Tail County Museum (Fergus Falls, Minnesota)

No Caption Required

Sign at Ehlenbach's Cheese Chalet (DeForest, Wisconsin)

Up close with the Cow Statue at the Cheese Chalet

The Front End

Cece had to capture the site of the speeding ticket!

Downtown Baldwin, Wisconsin

Wisconsin State Capitol

Willis f/k/a Sears Tower

Why is this bridge opening?

There Is A Lot of Room in This Country

After leaving Crazy Horse, we headed back to Rapid City for dinner. Rapid City is South Dakota’s second largest city and has a very cute downtown. Then, after swimming the next morning, it was on to Wall Drug (a major tourist trap/stop), the Badlands, and Mitchell for the Corn Place before heading to Sioux Falls, South Dakota’s largest city.

Wall Drug is this huge drug store that sells all manner of things – western wear, ice cream, rocks, western art, prepared food, candy etc. The place is huge and they have no intercom which would prove to be a major problem when I got separated from Cece, Sarah and Eric. Ninety minutes later when I finally found them, Cece had taken a picture with an Annie Oakley mannequin (of course). Suffice it say that Annie Oakley was as not as cute as the woman who played her in “Annie Get Your Gun” if the mannequin is anything to go by. When I found Cece, Sarah and Eric, they were hanging out with some people that they had met at Mount Rushmore and agreeing to get in touch with them if we passed through South Dakota again. Not likely, but we are keeping it mind. A wedding was taking place in the chapel at Wall Drug while we there. We were invited to attend, but we passed on that. I mean I would feel awful about attending a wedding without having a gift for the bride and groom and then there is the whole not knowing them thing. But, I did decide that on my next trip, I am going to accept some of these random invitations and see what happens. There is a theory that Jamaicans are everywhere and that proved true in Wall where I met three Jamaicans working at Wall Drug.

Next up the Badlands. Of course, we had to listen to “Badland” by Bruce as we drove into Badlands National Park. That’s why it’s nice to have an I-pod in the car. The GPS kept trying to get us to make phantom left and right turns off cliffs, but we made it through. Moments after I called Andrew to say hi and scoffed at his warning about snakes, I saw a sign warning us about rattlesnakes. And, moments later we saw a rattle snake sunning on a rock. To top that off, people went running over to the snake which naturally slithered off only to be chased down a ravine by a teenage boy. I mean what about “Beware Rattlesnakes” makes a person think that he should chase after one. Luckily, the snake decided not to kill this boy and all was well. We also saw mountain goats in the Badlands. Check out the pictures. They totally blend into the mountains and then walk around these steep angles like they are on flatland.

On our way to our next stop, Mitchellville, we were passed by a car. Later we would meet those people when we stopped for dinner in Chamberlain. They remembered passing us. We got to chatting and after expressing surprise that we planned to go to North Dakota they invited us to dinner at their home in Sioux Falls. We had to pass on that because we were only going to be in Sioux Falls for that one night. Later when they passed us again, we bid each other a fond farewell. People are friendly like that in South Dakota. It’s kind of weird, but you get used to it. I had to drive like a westerner (i.e. very fast) to get to Mitchellville before total darkness. Mitchellville is the home of the Corn Palace and no, it is not made of corn. It is a concrete concert hall that is decorated annually with murals made of corn. Again, Sarah was too cool to get out of the car, but Eric, Cece and I loved it. On to next one, Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls is nice. Nothing to crazy happened there and the falls are nice. Eric met a fellow four year old who was staying in our hotel for the weekend and was invited to the boy’s birthday party. We explained that we live in California, but they insisted that we take the party information so that if we are in town, we can attend. Eric and I are thinking about it.

Before I went to South Dakota, I was firmly of the mind that the Dakotas should merge into one state. But, now I know better. If anything, western South Dakota feels like Wyoming in a more horses than people kind of way and eastern South Dakota feels like Nebraska. South Dakota is basically two different states divided by the Missouri River. On the western side of the river, you have Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands, ranches and people who think that they are part of the American west and they scoff at the easterners. On the east side of the river, you see more cows and corn than you can count, the bugs hit the windshield so fast that it sounds like rain, and the people think that they are Midwesterners and scoff at the westerners. And you see people from everywhere in the world in South Dakota visiting Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. I mean in South Dakota we saw a car with a license plate from American Samoa. Then, you go north to North Dakota and everything changes again. First, no cows and lots and lots of farms with corn. We did not see a whole lot of North Dakota just the bit north of the South Dakota border and south of Fargo. Fargo is way nicer than I thought that it would be even though it is the least visited state in the nation. The people dress way better than I thought that they would and later we would realize that they dress better than they do in Chicago, but that is a story for another posting. It could be that because Fargo is just across the Red River from Moorhead, Minnesota. Between Fargo’s North Dakota State University and the five colleges in Moorhead, the Fargo area is not at all like it was in the eponymous movie and has more of a college town vibe. In Fargo, I discovered that its Lutheran Social Services Organization settles refugees from all over the world in Fargo – I am talking places like Burundi, Somalia, Liberia, Bhutan, etc. proving once again that as Cece said almost every day of our trip, “There is a lot of room in this country.” She also always said “America is the beautiful.” Both of which are true.

Now, the excitement was starting to build for Sarah because our next stop would be the Mall of America, where we would see the oddest thing that we saw during the entire trip. The Mall of America is a mere four hours from Fargo and to encourage me to get there as quickly as possible, Sarah set a timer and escalating cash penalties for taking more than five hours to get to Bloomington. So the challenge was on because you know that I like to stop when the feeling hits me.

One of many views in Badlands National Park


Another view of the Badlands


Up close with the mounds that make up the Badlands





The Mountain Goats

More Mountain Goats


The Corn Palace as night falls


The Corn Palace

I'm Out for Dead Presidents . . .

It was in Cody that I discovered that Cece is obsessed with Anne Oakley. Apparently at around age 4, she dressed as Annie Oakley in a red and white outfit with white cowboy boots and twin holsters and silver toy six shooters. So each day in Cody, she would say, “I feel like I have come full circle” or “I like it here; it reminds me of Annie Oakley.” We enjoyed Cody, Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Park, but, for me, the initial point of the trip was Mount Rushmore so I did laundry, packed up the car, said goodbye to the coffee ladies and the “best hotel ever” and we headed out for Rapid City, South Dakota. We set the GPS, saw that it is a 6.5 hour drive and headed east out of Cody on Route 14. Cece asked me if we would go through any more mountains and I said, I did not think so because eastern Wyoming is pretty flat. That might be true, but given that we were in northwestern Wyoming, I might have spoken prematurely.

We stopped in Emblem (population 10). That’s right, population 10. We also stopped in Greybull (population, around 1,900). We stopped because we passed a lovely post office and a taxidermy shop and Wilford Brimley lives there. If you can’t stop in the town where Wilford Brimley lives, then why drive across the country at all. The taxidermy shop showcases (and I quote here from the official Destination 2010 Wyoming website) “outstanding taxidermy works of animals that seem in motion in a natural setting in their front window display.” Sarah refused to get out of the car. The entire display looked like it was alive and the highlight was a deer being killed by a wolf – both of them captured “in motion.” Eric and I were fascinated. Cece was off talking to complete strangers which is pretty much what she did every stop, which always led to us learning more about the area or getting an invitation to lunch, a birthday party, or something like that. Eric and I went to the post office and just had to go back to the taxidermist shop. It was like a magnet for him – dirt, animals, and tools. If it had also displayed rocks, sand and bugs, we might have never been able to leave Greybull. Anyway, as we were looking into the store a guy walked by and he tipped his cowboy hat to me said “Afternoon Miss.” In that moment, I decided that hats and hat tipping should come back into style for men. We chatted for a bit about the weather, the taxidermy store, horses, the Internet, etc. and after Cece came back, she and I and I headed back to the car and headed out of town. Next up: Shell ([population, 50).

All the while as we were driving out of Cody and towards Greybull, we could see this magnificent snow-capped mountain range far off to the left (north) of Route 14. Cece kept asking if we were going to cross that mountain range and I, of course, said no. I mean they were to the north and we were heading east. It seemed reasonable. Then, there came a point when we could not see the mountains off in the distance and the reason for that was that we were in Shell, Wyoming, which, surprise, surprise is located near the base of the Big Horn Mountains. And surprise, surprise, the Big Horn Mountains reach a peak of 13,179 feet and surprise, surprise their highest point has a lot of what I now know is “topographic prominence”, which basically means that it looks really tall and dramatic. The thing about Shell is that after passing through town, you end up in Shell Canyon, with its sheer rock walls leading to Shell Waterfall which is characterized as an oasis in the middle of a high (very high) dessert. Check out the pictures at the bottom. The weird thing about the drive was that we would see bicyclists miles away from anything, some of them with back packs. How did they get there? Surely, they did not bike 30 miles uphill. Are they planning to bike over the mountains? Who knows? If we had been in a valley, we might have found out because Cece would have asked. But as it was, she had her eyes closed for much of the drive, was muttering about trying to find a helicopter service to take her Sarah and Eric out of the mountains but we had no cell phone service and urging my children to be silent. “Sarah, Eric – no talking back there. Your mother is driving.” “Please no music, your mother is driving.” “Guys come on you can’t ask her to look at how high up we are, she is driving.” “Guys, didn’t that sign say 25 mph up ahead? Do you think your mother saw it?” “You know, I have been to Wyoming before and I don’t remember anything like this.” And so on. It’s only about 60 miles up and over the mountains and I think that this is one of the best drives ever and I encourage everyone to try it. It’s not as bad as it sounds. It is the fastest route from Rapid City, South Dakota/Mount Rushmore to Yellowstone. Ranchester marked the point where we more or less exited the mountains and picked up I-90. Since, we were so close to the Montana/Wyoming border, we (and by we, I mean I) decided to pop up to Montana.

That trip took about 20 minutes because when the speed limit is 75 mph and every car on the road is going over 85 mph, it does not take that long to go 20 miles. What is in Montana? As far as I can see nothing. I am going to have to go back next year and check it out in more detail. It just can’t be as empty as it looks.

We turned around and headed back to Wyoming stopping in Sheridan for lunch. Now here is what happens to you when you spend days in northwestern Wyoming passing towns with populations of 10, 50, 700, etc. You get to Sheridan (population 15,804) see a Home Depot and find yourself saying “Wow, this is a big city.” The children and Cece went to lunch in a McDonalds and I took a call. By the time I got into the restaurant, Eric had made friends with a four year old girl and they were playing together. Her parents and younger brother were sitting with Cece and Sarah. The parents had just finished telling Cece that they used to live in Ranchester, but it was too small. Plus, the schools in Sheridan are really good. They encouraged us to move to Sheridan and I told them that we will consider it. So far Andrew is stubbornly opposed to even considering relocating, but . . . We are still talking about that couple because they were so sweet. They had loads of “positive vibrations.”

As we left Sheridan on I-90 East which is really travelling north to south at that point, we look back and saw the Big Horn Mountains looking majestic behind us. I said “wow, I feel great having crossed those. I feel kind of like the people who settled the west only in reverse and in a 2010 GMC Acadia.” To which Cece responded “Well you ought to feel like that blazing a trail for black people into Wyoming.” I wish that we had taken a picture of the Big Horn Mountains from our new vantage point. Unfortunately, it’s hard to take a good picture when you are travelling 90 mph down the highway making tracks for Mount Rushmore. We decided to stop in Sundance, Wyoming for gas just because we liked the name. While we were at the gas station facing east, a car pulled up going west. And the people struck up a conversation with me. It turns out that they were relocating from upstate New York to Portland, Oregon. They gave me some great suggestions for stops in Wisconsin so I added that to our itinerary. More about that in the future.

Meantime, Mount Rushmore (“I’m out for dead presidents to represent me”). Cece and I had another one of our little mountain moments when she asked if I thought that there would be mountains on the way to Mount Rushmore and I said no, but the name might suggest something. Cece came through like a champ because it wasn’t much especially after crossing Jackson Pass and the Big Horn Mountains. She has sworn never to drive in Wyoming again, but I think I will be able to change her mind or I’ll have to drug her. I’m picturing her waking up like B.A. Baracus. But, back to Mount Rushmore. It looks just like it does in the movies. It’s what this trip was initially all about for me so I was thrilled to be there. For Sarah, it was just one step closer to the Mall of America. For Cece and Eric, it was all about the rocks because they started a rock collection about two days into the trip. I, of course took the ranger tours, went to the artist’s studio, asked questions and had a good old time. In the pictures below, the one from the artist’s studio is the one that shows the monument from the view that the sculptor expected it to be viewed. Check out http://www.nps.gov/archive/moru/park_history/carving_hist/carving_history.htm for the history of Mount Rushmore. In all those tours and walks, etc, I learned about the Fort Laramie Treaty. Here is an excerpt from a government sponsored web site: “In the spring of 1868 a conference was held at Fort Laramie . . . that resulted in a treaty with the Sioux. This treaty was to bring peace between the whites and the Sioux who agreed to settle within the Black Hills reservation in the Dakota Territory. The Black Hills of Dakota are sacred to the Sioux Indians. In the 1868 treaty, signed at Fort Laramie and other military posts in Sioux country, the United States recognized the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, set aside for exclusive use by the Sioux people. In 1874, however, General George A. Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills accompanied by miners who were seeking gold. Once gold was found in the Black Hills, miners were soon moving into the Sioux hunting grounds and demanding protection from the United States Army. Soon, the Army was ordered to move against wandering bands of Sioux hunting on the range in accordance with their treaty rights. In 1876, Custer, leading an army detachment, encountered the encampment of Sioux and Cheyenne at the Little Bighorn River. Custer's detachment was annihilated, but the United States would continue its battle against the Sioux in the Black Hills until the government confiscated the land in 1877. To this day, ownership of the Black Hills remains the subject of a legal dispute between the U.S. government and the Sioux.” What this excerpt does not say is that the Sioux won a court battle that granted them the market value of the land in 1877 plus 103 years of interest ($105 million) and the Sioux have refused the money and continued to demand their land back. Meanwhile, the “replacement” reservation is in the Badlands and is one of the poorest counties in the country. According to a park ranger, the land in the Black Hills is technically in limbo because the treaty has never been repudiated and one is technically not supposed to enter the area without an invitation from the Sioux. I found all of this fascinating, but while I was doing all this touring and learning, Sarah, Eric and Cece were hanging out in the promenade, having drinks, shopping, watching a stage show, etc. Basically, it was like a trip to the mall for them.

There was a member of the Lakota people at Mt Rushmore doing some traditional dances and playing the flute. Somehow after he told us about his son who is an Army Ranger in Iraq he invited Cece on stage with him. Why? It had something to do with her saying that she is part Cherokee. Unfortunately, she did not have a flute with her so we had to miss that.

You can’t go to Mount Rushmore without going to Crazy Horse so, of course, we went. I have no idea when they are going to finish that thing. It is huge and it will be magnificent, but right now, it is a work in progress. The people carving the monument will not accept government funds and are hard at work blowing up the mountain and raising the money to complete the monument. I bet that $105 million would help, but you have to have principles. So, in the meantime unlike in national parks like Mount Rushmore where one cannot legally take anything, including rocks, the Crazy Horse people are selling chunks of the rock blown out of the mountain to create the monument. Eric and Cece each purchased one.

Next time, I’ll tell you why Eric and I have to get back to South Dakota in September. I’ll give you a hint – it’s a new friend’s birthday party.

Cody, Wyoming


Greybull, Wyoming



Welcome to Shell!


Shell, Wyoming


Shell, Wyoming


Shell, Wyoming




Vista outside of Shell, Wyoming


Shell Canyon/Waterfall (Big Horn National Forest)



Shell Waterfall



Hey, Cece come on up here with me.



Mt. Rushmore Park Ranger



Lincoln at Mt. Rushmore


View from Artists Studio



Crazy Horse