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