Sunday, August 12/6:30am: Time to leave Viking Country East—or as we fondly refer to it locally—Minneapolis, Minnesota. My car has been parked here at the Mall of America/Airport Super 8 motel awaiting my return from real Viking country and our journey back over the Great Plains—on different byways this time.

……..

 Two days ago Teresa and I were still on the trail of our Viking ancestors—our last day in Iceland about to begin. We began with a rather fancy green and leafy Icelandic pizza at a new and very hip waterfront hotel. Tried to find a place where we could gnaw on leg of beast and let the grease run down our chins but all of these bloodthirsty seafarers have turned to fresh veggies and linen napkins.

But our sissy lunch was quickly followed with a blustery outdoor adventure at hot springs, geysers, waterfalls and the rift valley (where North America meets Eurasia). We clamber up and down rocks and hillsides and around hot water puddles, getting soaking wet and cold in what feels like gale force winds.

The background for these dramatic displays is pretty spectacular all on its own. Emerald grass on black and deep red lava, all sharp and shiny in the rain. Round white plastic-wrapped hay bales dot the landscape and the shaggy Icelandic horses (do not call them ponies we are told!) stand with their butts to the biting wind.

SoCal girl capturing her northern adventure.

Rivers of heat, air of mist

It is all grand here. No wimpy scenery in this country.

In spite of our attempt to stay focused on the natural wonders of the northern world thoughts of cozy room, sweat pants and Nutella for dinner cross our minds. Teresa’s actually trying the dried fish with butter that Icelanders eat with such pleasure. It is our last night and she is torn between her desire to go out and watch the wild partying that consumes Icelandic weekends or huddle down in her blankets with a movie. The latter wins.

But every adventure must be followed by the long ride home. Saturday was our Delta day. Bob stops over in NYC, Teresa flies on to Los Angeles and I go back to Minneapolis.

We are sad to leave our Icelandic hut in the wilds of Reykjavik.

One last breath of unpolluted air before Los Angeles.

…….. 

Back Outwest. Well, still Minnesota actually…but western Minnesota.

8am: I am happy in this Sunday morning rain driving along on U.S. Highway 212 which begins here and which I will take almost all of the way to Rapid City, South Dakota. Cows and fields and groves and grain and corn and a dark red barn.

9am: Countryside is opening up. I will consider this the transition place from the Viking country of  Minnesota with many trees to the Great Plains…I don’t feel quite ready to leave Minnesota…but I must go. Bird Island, Olivia “The Corn Capital,” 59°, Sheep Shedde Motel. We had a sheep shed on our place when I was a kid. Later it became the chicken house and now it has fallen down.

The Olympics are ending, U.S. won a lot of medals which proves we’re better than the Chinese at something?  Romney picked Paul Ryan as his running mate which proves the desire to eliminate every vestige of all social gains of the last century is alive and well in certain quarters of this country. Driving and thinking is a fine sport—Olympics-worthy.

10am. 212 detour, no towns. I’m lost. Will never find McDonald’s hash browns for breakfast. Not so bad to be lost in a green drizzly farmscape—I’ll just eat my yogurt from the breakfast bar at Super 8.

It is the time of year in northern places when the trees are discussing fall colors. Not actually changing yet but a hint of gold is in the air.

Further and further from Viking land and into the Great Plains—which I was quite romantic about on the way here…but now I am thinking one drive through the vast beautiful emptiness is enough for this year.

Wonder where I am. Good paved and gravel roads, prosperous farms, ponds, bogs, creeks but no one out and about. No signs, no traffic, no noise, no humans. Just me and the corn and the song birds.

I have crossed into South Dakota but don’t know when. And a nice lady stopped by my car as I sat pondering my atlas and gave me directions back to 212.

11:15: Almost to Watertown.

11:45; Wrong turn in Watertown and a Starbucks appears. Venti non-fat latte please (haven’t said those words for three weeks). Lemon cake and Sunday NYT. Re-entry into real life I suppose.

3pm: I have crossed the wide Missouri for the second time…further north in South Dakota…just before I travel over into the Cheyenne River Reservation.

Amidst all of this wide open grandeur are many sad little towns both on and off Indian land. Dilapidated and/or deserted. Among the picturesque acres of sunflowers, herds of semi-wild horses and steady stream of bikers—for we are in biking land. The only traffic on much of 212 and the other roads this side of Rapid City and Sturgis are bikes. Big bad boy bikes, not the pretty lightweights of urban cyclists. No neon spandex cycling shorts on these highways.

4:50: I stop at a little crossroads store to ask directions—remember I am only driving back roads—very back roads, not so far from Rapid City but in the true middle of nowhere. A handsome weather-beaten oldish guy tells me which way to go. His store is well-stocked with the staples of life including decent booze and it looks like he has a great apartment out back. I want to live with him…in the middle-of-nowhere and write books and help out in the store and travel half the year and be all cozy here in winter blizzards rescuing lost travelers who have strayed down the wrong road today or in life.

But alas, there’s no flyer advertising an opening for just such a position. So back on the road again……….

5pm; Almost to Rapid City for my night’s stop. Temperature has climbed from mid 50s in am to mid-70s, cloudy or overcast most of day. Perfect driving weather. Just me and my Mazda. La Quinta in Rapid City.

Monday, August 13

6:30am: Just out of Hot Springs I pass the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary. A place to which I will return. The Black Hills is a dream land with powerful iconic sculpture and Indian history galore and the most graceful sleek pintos and bays and palominos any little girl (the one still buried deep within me) could wish for.

7am: Less than an hour to Hot Springs. But I’ll go on to Ardmore SD for gas since I’m already on Highway 71.

7:30am: BAD decision. Gas light comes on and it turns out Ardmore died some years ago from lack of water…Towns are 50 or 70 miles apart here. But Fire Station appears maintained and open and lo and behold the men-of-the-plains cowboy firemen are here for my rescue. Couple gallons of gas and lots of dead town photos and I’m on my way again.

Firemen to the rescue. Ardmore, South Dakota.

8:15am: I GET GAS and peanut butter cups for breakfast.

All day: I am driving straight down Nebraska and Colorado Highways 71. For space to be grand there must be a little up and down to it, a glimpse of something in the distance. This country is just flat and brown and sky. Still I rather like. Two lane road is straight and empty and I can drive fast.

In a small town store an 81-year-old guy working 12 hour shifts at the wind farm (I know because he tells someone else) turns to me to exchange a pleasantry, I congratulate him and say I want to work that long. He responds with “Well if somebody’d shoot that SOB in the white house the economy would get better and everybody wouldn’t have to do this.” “George Bush did that to the economy,” I say. “But this sonovabitch made it worse…somebody oughta take a gun and shoot him,” he repeats. “Boy, that’s a responsible attitude” I say…and walk out. Fuming for miles and miles over what I should have said about guns and the he-men who love them. Does spike my adrenaline and keep me alert for the next 100 miles or so of driving.

5pm: I cross Raton Pass in a downpour—the likes of which I have not seen since I lived in tropical jungles. My only concession to freeways is I-25 on into Albuquerque when I am very tired. Ice cream sandwich in Las Vegas. Albuquerque. Home.

3511.5 miles.

Across the wide wide Missouri.

Broken but still a thing of western beauty.

End of the trail.

PUFFINS…JUST BEFORE THEY LEAVE FOR WINTER AT SEA

Wednesday evening, August 8.  Teresa and I all snug in our room on backpacker street. Outside 55° and raining. Inside about 75° and we’re drowsily in touch with you all via Google, facebook, blog, email and telepathy. We are satisfied travelers: slightly aching feet from pounding the pavement between museums, slightly too full bellies from slightly too much dinner at our favorite Icelandic-food restaurant, slightly sleepy, slightly worried about how much everything costs…all the typical travelers’ laments.  Our travel buddy Bob is at his hotel probably all tucked in for this long summer’s night as well.

How to talk about Iceland. I know they had a huge ashy volcanic eruption in the recent past and not too long before that a financial melt-down. I know that it is a chill and isolated land. But there is no whining in Viking land…and Iceland IS Viking Central.

When the Norwegians, Swedes. Finlanders and Danes sailed from the Scandinavian lands of northern Europe between the 8^th and 11^th centuries they explored, raided and even settled in Iceland and Greenland along with their forays as far east as Russia and down into Ireland, Great Britain and France. Their captives/slaves appear to have come mostly from Ireland according to major DNA studies. Celtic blood in fact accounts for the majority of Icelandic female bloodlines while the majority of male DNA is Scandinavian. So, the story goes, these mostly Norwegian adventurers brought home their Irish and Scottish slaves/captives/brides to Iceland and lived happily ever after producing beautiful babies with just a hint of red in their blonde curls.

Probably however the biggest factor in the Viking presence in Icelandic history is that, while the rest of Scandinavia was part of the population flows of the European continent, Iceland’s isolation kept the Viking story alive and, to a large degree, the old Norse language, bloodlines and mythology pure.

So Then…the only other place in the world where you can experience this much Viking overload is in Minneapolis-St. Paul just before a big Vikings game!

To fully experience Vikingdom, we have pursued the following—which I intended to describe more fully—but there were places to go…puffins to see

Teresa with her luncheon corncob. She’ll wash up later.

Great great great Grandma and her first husband…right after he told her to go kill the troll.

Bob, thinking about what he will say in that first saga….

Monday: Our FAVORITE adventure took place—a trip to the top of Langjokull Glacier, part of which was in an “8X8 Monster Truck” (purchased from NATO where it was used to carry Polaris missiles and brought here from Poland) modified for this Ice Explorer adventure-travel. It was brilliant. Three Americans (us), three Indians and one Spaniard, bumping over this vast sheet of ice to the tune of “Take It to the Limit One More Time” So put me on a highway
And show me a sign
And take it to the limit one more time

A cold blue world.

A dark and forbidding world.

Volcanic ash still colors in some of the landscape.

To glaciers everywhere!

I do love the world and its places.

Monday’s trip included steaming springs, awesome (as in truly awesome…not just “awesome, dude”) waterfalls, farms with colorful sheep and shaggy horses and last but definitely not least—the Thingvellir where, it is claimed, parliamentary/democratic government was born. Wish we could have kept it.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Many museums. Bob has become something of an expert on early Norse/English/Viking history including reading the sagas over the past few years so Teresa and I had our own personal expert by our side. We did some serious walking in the rain all over the city, indulged in open-faced sandwiches (putting butter on sandwiches is just one of the many good things offered to the world by the Vikings) as one must in Scandinavia, and fell into bed with good Icelandic crime fiction every night.

Thursday: Bob finished the museums and Teresa and I did the Puffin Tour. AND a lunch of RAW puffin, salmon, lobster/shrimp and lamb AND the dreaded rotted shark. The latter is served separately in an elegant white bowl. We had to do it. For the honor of travelers everywhere. This Icelandic delicacy has the consistency of a bunch of rubber bands melted together and tastes like a blend of Comet Cleanser and urine.

Live puffins.

Dead puffins.

Today/Friday: We will go to a geyser and hot springs and pack. And finish our exotic grocery store snacks of Nutella and Philadelphia Cream Cheese and van der Meulen Melba Toast!  Obviously adventure ends at the door to our room.

Travel is a fine way to spend time. It is not for the faint of heart, even an easy trip like this with family and friends. I once spent an entire day in bed in Paris, reading a book about Paris and subsisting on Madeleines. But when traveling with others such sloth is not permitted—and besides when will we ever get back to Iceland.

I am thinking of trying to write a story about two places I have visited this year and how they contrast to fill the world with diversity and challenge and beauty—Nigeria and Iceland. And about getting a degree in Geography. And riding freighters across the seas. And I will never have to eat rotten shark again because I already did it.

THE SHARK FROM HELL…

Teresa…on the road…around the world.

Our street

Sunday, August 05/10:45pm: It is dusk. West coast cool sea damp feel. Lovely here. Scandinavia simplified. Deep primary colors of many buildings against the undecorated concrete of others. Teresa and I live in the AR Guesthouse, small clean quiet backpacker haven. The electricity just went out but a staff was here to fix it quickly and upon request supplied a fan for the white noise Teresa and I so treasure.

Happiness is being places. Here. Reykjavik. Settling into our digs in late morning after a ($100) ride from the airport. Showers and determination not to give the day over to sleep. Meeting Bob for a late lunch of traditional Icelandic food: beef burger with mushroom gravy and Skyr with blueberries, cream and sugar. An elderly gentleman played ancient favorites on the accordion while we dined.

All Icelandic music is not Bjork.

Pleasure is wandering about a refreshingly cloudy and invitingly low key, clean and accommodating small city that could be said to have an opposite vibe from the pulsating energy of Lagos for example. Reykjavik doesn’t feel intense like big important cities; it feels human but not at all bland. More like a primary color city: simple, straightforward with that old Viking essence of bold.

Contentment is a first day in an almost new place that lets you acclimatize without pushing and shoving and insisting you pay attention right now. Less exciting maybe, more humane surely.

Delight is a caramel muffin so moist and delicious as to warrant a food group all its own, streets full of eclectic restaurants and souvenir shops with tasty and excellent quality stuff, surrounded by a green rocky treeless countryside, with glaciers and mountains in the distance—where we will venture tomorrow.

Marj, Bob and Teresa LOVE Iceland.

I love Places. Almost all Places.  Right now I am feeling especially sentimental about a place called Minnesota because my annual visit is nearly over. Until another year then…lefse  walleye lakes 3.2 beer hay shocks marshmallow malts DFL Lutheran snow salad-of-lime-Jell-O pineapple-grated-carrots-cottage-cheese-sweetened-mayo sour cream pie sour cream raisin bars trees trees trees sandwiches with butter hunters “the old place” swamp lady slippers tamaracks blue flags cat tails goldfinches robins bluebirds Baltimore orioles tufted titmouse cinnamon rolls crusts of homemade white bread spread thickly with butter browned in the oven served with hot cocoa after school first whiff of rich black soil with the advent of  spring thaw Milacs Lake Island Lake Lake Bemidji Red Lake cosmos moss rose sweet peas poppies evening stock moss mud blog blueberries June berries chokecherries gooseberries Rainy River Deer River Mississippi River Chippewa Falls International Falls Big Fork Littlefork Grand Rapids Park Rapids Blackduck suckers bear Norwegians Swedes Finlanders Chippewa/Ojibwe Paul Wellstone Paul Bunyan Margie Gunderson Gurney’s seed catalogue cream check pulpwood lumberjack purple martin houses small smelly beer joints creeks Ike’s creek Orth road Louie and Helen Knute and Agnes Ole and Matea Shorty Tula Cherry Pal Shep Laddie 47°below blizzard drift yellow snow clover dandelions goldenrod  Ovidia Mathilda Floren Sven Neset

Dad was a lumberjack and Mom was a farmer. We lived at the end of a gravel road. Now our house is crumbling sinking staggering resignedly into the ground…the walls and roof still stand but the floor is done down decayed declining…but I like being there.  I try to come at least once a year to say hello to the ghosts.

Here it is…the old place we call it.

My bedroom was a lovely safe place where I dreamed that the books I wanted would be right there on my pillow when I awoke.

This field was alfalfa…if the sheep got loose in it they would eat too much, get bloated bellies and literally tip over onto their backs…had to be rescued or they would die.

Things get left behind.

The front room this was called. And that couch was always very ugly.

Robert and Marsha. Marsha grew up about 30 miles away in comparable rural splendor.

Old windows, bright thistles. The beauty of old and prickly!

That would be an outhouse…a real one. With the mosquitos waiting hungrily for bare butts to bite.

When I stayed here one summer 15 years or more ago with my border collie Max she watched for deer on this field. When she saw one she raced wildly toward it and then came to a dead halt about halfway…looking puzzled…like “what on earth would I do with that big thing if I caught it?” Max was a city dog.

Milacs Lake. A grand wild lake in the summer and an ice fishing village in the winter.

Visit with the folks.

My Very Own Personal Minnesota (Photos and miscellaneous comments in some sort of order at the end.)

Home is…where you were born? Where you live now? Where you lived the longest? Where you were happiest? On my journeys when people ask ‘‘where do you live?’ I say New Mexico. When asked ‘Where’s home?’I say Minnesota. And always, when I cross that Minnesota state line, I know that is true and I am back home.

There are many Minnesotas however. The culturally rich, sophisticated and arts-loving Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul; in the south Rochester and the world-famous Mayo Clinic where the famous come to live or die; the soybean, corn and sugar beet farms in south, central and northwestern Minnesota—home to the Jolly Green Giant and many of the beautiful blondes in my extended family.

And then there’s the land of birch and spruce and tamarack and lakes and mines and walleye and deer and bear and hunters and fishermen. My Minnesota. (Even though my dad disliked hunting and fishing intensely, preferring rambles through the stands of fir and popple on our land or cutting down the trees where his logging jobs took him. It still seemed in those days that the forests would never end.)

Much of the other Minnesota can be classified as the eastern edge of the Great Plains so my journey through that world doesn’t really end until I cross over some imaginary line between Roseau and Red Lake. My Minnesota starts where the plains leave off because, although still flat, the profusion of lakes and trees leaves little doubt that the prairie of grazing herds and wilting corn has been left behind. My Minnesota lies roughly between Bemidji (Paul Bunyan land), Red Lake (home to the Red Lake band of the Chippewa nation), International Falls (“Icebox of the nation”), and Grand Rapids or even further through the mining towns and almost-mountains to the shores of Lake Superior (although none of us ever went that far when I was a kid).

This territory is just a little wilder, a little grittier, like any frontier where the footloose and mildly criminal and those with dreams of a fast buck congregate. Tall tales from the weeks in isolated lumber camps filled the air already redolent with bad whiskey fumes, and finding frozen bodies behind the saloons, which still outnumbered the churches, was not uncommon. Those times were largely over when I was a kid but their essence lingered.

In fact…In 2005, the Grand Rapids Herald-Review published this tidbit in a section called A Century of Memories: Jan. 3, 1945—Mrs. Swan Neset of Nore Township was seriously injured when struck by a load of fine shot fired by her neighbor, Gus Senkapiel, who thought he was shooting at a strange dog which he believed was attempting to attack his flock of sheep.

Since mom was walking with our quiet shepherd, Pal, and carrying a lantern we always attributed the accident to the fact that Gus had hated us ever since Dad nailed boards in a V (for Victory) on the garage door (which faced Gus’ farm) and painted them a glaring white. Gus was a German immigrant and Dad, a Norwegian immigrant, didn’t take kindly to the news from Europe.

I fiercely defended the wooded wildness of my youthful stomping grounds against all references by my mother to the more settled civilized lands of the Sioux River Valley in eastern South Dakota (her birthplace) or the Red River Valley of Crookston Minnesota where she worked as a young woman.  That is…until the day I graduated high school and left as rapidly as possible for Minneapolis and city life.

On Thursday this week I crossed over from the Great Plains on Chippewa land and  stopped by my home disintegrating quietly at the end of a road through the woods before going on to my brother’s in Grand Rapids. My family still owns the land so I can visit at will and I do as often as possible. My collage of memories is bright and clear. The reality isn’t sad. It’s history and it’s home.

Happiness is a sign on a back country road.

Clara

One of the beautiful blondes of the northwestern prairies.

One of the other beautiful blondes.

As kids we were awed by this lake ‘you couldn’t see across’–just like the ocean we said.

Right three miles to home.

Almost there.

Without family smells, sights, sounds, touches to nurture you just quietly disintegrate.

My room, guarded against all intruders…like my brother.

The tree is my age. Looks older than me I think. But more interesting.

At the end of the afternoon. Or the drive. Or the walk. Or the life.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota. 7:11 AM. 85°. A summer of record-breaking temperatures on the Great Plains. It is 1055 miles and 19 hours from Albuquerque to Sioux Falls—my way. Google says it is 1131miles and 17 ½ hours their way.

I meandered, not setting wheel on any form of freeway from Trinidad, Colorado to 829 North Van Eps in Sioux Falls. No radio or book tape, just driving and looking and thinking about starvation and global warming as I passed the dying corn and observing how many roads there are with no traffic and how nicely Highway 14 in Nebraska balances the 405 between San Diego and Los Angeles at rush hour. If you write the ‘who we are as a people’ articles you need to know both. Red State, Blue State!

Out on the Great Plains a mirage of smoky Indian villages and racing ponies and buffalo and battles between tribes, and between the natives and the interlopers is always shimmering just ahead and overhead and underfoot. Of course this whole continent is “Indian Country” but it feels especially present in this central emptiness. In New Mexico Native America is real and down the road and at the store and part of our everyday culture. Here on the prairies it was America’s manifest destiny to drive the native cultures underground—often literally—so you must envision the dancing running fighting Sioux, Crow, Blackfeet, Cree, Cheyenne, Arapahos, Apache, Comanche and so many others across the sky.

The dying corn is with me all of the way from eastern Colorado into South Dakota, but nowhere is it so drastic as along the Kansas roads I traveled. I stop often to tromp around on the edge of fields and take pictures. We had big garden and planted fields of alfalfa on the Minnesota farm when I was a kid but they never died from a hot killer sun. Reports from the drought-stricken corners of the African continent always include photos of the brown wilted plants and the extended empty bellies of the babies that are the effect. Here in the U.S. the cause and effect are distant from each other, barely linked in fact. The corn is dying and according to the web site of the National Corn Growers Association nearly everything good and warm and homey in our lives contains corn. That link is pretty clear. Dead corn; our favorite sweets are history! Unfortunately it is now pretty clear that the high-fructose corn syrup that makes all of these fields so profitable is as deadly as it is tasty. And then there is ethanol—good product, bad product?  Corn is a complicated plant. Best reserved for tortillas.

My driving thoughts are more about what it is like to watch the live things you planted from seeds and waited to sprout and are depending on for food and/or income wither and brown and droop and die.

Finally, across the wide Missouri near Springfield, South Dakota. What wild and beautiful country—the spirits of Lewis and Clark accompany me.

Journeys officially begin at the first state line.

On both sides.

Hotter going north. That’s not right.

The Platte River

Dune buggies on the river bottom. 102°  119°  113°  107°

East out of Trinidad

The Great Plains include eastern Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico; the western part of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma; and pieces of Texas. Generally east of the Rockies so no mountains; hundreds of miles from the oceans, hardly a tree in some spots.

A lonely tree

Just me and you and a dog named boo
Travellin’ and livin’ off the land
Me and you and a dog named boo
How I love being a free [wo]man…

I can still recall
The wheat fields of St. Paul…

Couldn’t resist because I miss traveling with Max. (Thank you Lobo)

All gone to the city

 But I digress!

So many left to die

I drive back and forth over much of this territory almost every summer. Crisscrossing to try new roads or catch a bit of history, sometimes just trying to get to my destination, sometimes happily meandering. I complain but at the same time it’s like getting to the heart of the matter or rather the center of the nation, for better or worse. A large sign: Another Tea Party Patriot.

Why are abandoned houses so beautiful?

Abandoned houses and tiny towns by the dozens.  Horses, cows, burning, bleak, highway, field, highway, stripes of horizon.

Great Plains horizon

The Great Plains are a large expanse of flatness, this summer roasting with heat and dry to the bedrock. The corn isn’t growing. What sadness to look at fields that should be wavy with tall green – elephant’s eye and all that – and they are instead spotty with stubble and brown.

Just another drought or portent of things to come

How drivable this country is though. There is rarely a sight that is grand or unusual in any way but the roads are good and straight with no traffic or signs or cops or stray animals. The freeway is unnecessary. On these roads cutting up and down and kitty corner across Kansas and Nebraska you can drive as fast as you want, pull over on a dime for a photo op and find gas and coffee as often as you need. What is lacking in scenic views is more than made up for in a delicious sense of freedom.

Where there’s Mexican food there’s hope

I am at a motel called the Sleep Inn. Indulging my obsession about keeping a window open extracts a price here in Oakley, Kansas. There’s a feed lot just south of us and every other breeze blows in the delightful scent of cow manure. Actually it is preferable to the perfumed spray that usually saturates roadside motels. Didn’t motels in Kansas cost $35 a night in some not-too-distant past…now it’s $100.

It was 119° at one stop today. 113° when I checked into my room.

Well not much hope

The goal is to read much of Ian Frazier’s Great Plains tonight so I have things to write about tomorrow night! (He is my source of just exactly what territory comprises the Great Plains.)

Road Trips…still the best travel of all!

Chapter ONE: Lists

I love lists. And I love to travel. On road trips these two loves intermingle freely. Especially as I prepare.

Be aware. You may find evidence of a (relatively harmless?)  case of obsessive-compulsive disorder as you read.

Hoping for northern cool…

Tomorrow morning I will leave for:

• Sioux Falls
• Roseau
• Grand Rapids
• Minneapolis
• Reykjavik
• And at least two small towns with characterless motels

I will travel on Highways:

• I-25 to Trinidad CO
• Un-numbered to Highway 96
• 96 to Sheridan Lake
• 385 (I think) to Cheyenne Wells
• 40 to Oakley KS
• 83/383 to Woodruff (still in KS, but barely)
• 183 to Holdridge NE
• 6 to 14
• 14 to Niobrara
• 12 to 81 (crossing into SD)
• 81 into Yankton & on the 42
• 42 to 29 into Sioux Falls.

There will be additional lists necessary to continue beyond Sioux Falls. It is clear my obsessive compulsive impulses extend to Atlases.

Packing. It is sheer luxury not having to subject every single pair of footlets, every scarf, every book, every liquid to lengthy consideration as to weight or threat level. So why not take everything I could possibly want or need over the next three weeks. Oh sure there are shopping opportunities everywhere but why buy toothpaste in Roseau when I can haul it from Albuquerque. So here is what is going into my car:

• Suitcase for Summer pants shirts sweater for up north
• Suitcase for Warm clothes for Iceland
• Overnight bag for change of clothes pajamas books toothbrush for on the road
• Backpack for laptop, portable printer power sources pet mouse
• Backpack for notebooks diaries journals atlases
• Shoes
• Favorite blanket and pillow
• Backpack for trip books

Trip books

• Northern Lights Tim O’Brien
• Americana Hampton Sides
• A Popular History of Minnesota Norman K. Risjord
• Great Plains Ian Frazier
• The Lost Continent Bill Bryson
• From the Hidewood: Memories of a Dakota Neighborhood Robert Amerson
• Norway to America Ingrid Semmingsen
• Koochiching Hiram M. Drache

And

• Bitter Sanctuary Marjorie Neset (the half-written [a third of which is brilliant/a third mediocre/a third really bad) novel which, while at my brother’s in Grand Rapids, I intend to reread and decide whether to toss, fix or ignore for another 10 years.

Of course it would be impossible to read all of this material AND drive AND talk to my relatives AND sleep. But I had to share the fact that I’m not taking my usual detective/murder lit.

Finally. About food.

Usually I buy Fig Newtons and Cheetos for $10 or so at the gas station. Turning over a new leaf this time I shopped at Whole Foods instead for baby carrots grape tomatoes gluten-free brownies green machine stuff for ONLY $35.

But many food pleasures ahead:

• Marshmallow Malts (like drinking sugar)
• Butterscotch Malts
• Pineapple Malts
• Hot beef sandwiches
• Hot pork sandwiches
• Hot chicken sandwiches (I think I made that up)
• Real grilled cheese sandwiches where the Velveeta oozes out between the white bread
• Walleye for dinner, snack before bed, cold with morning coffee
• Hot dishes
• Jell-O salad

Forgive me. This is a very self-indulgent post. But so much fun. Tomorrow will be more profound and literary!

Going through a lot of Red States…making my Blue State (I hope) statement

UCLA 2012 Teresa the Graduate

Familyland is a lot like Disneyland really. The rides (over the desert or through the air), the excess of food (especially dead animals), happy shrieks of children and their easily amused elders (even more so after generous helpings of San Diego brewpub product), maybe just a little underlying tension that accompanies the necessity of having fun (families being families…), and, of course, the big event that brings you all together, warranting all that travel and expense!

It takes a family…

The EVENT: My first granddaughter, Teresa Magalong Klotzback, is graduating with a degree in Civil Engineering from UCLA. We are so proud. First person in my family to take that college leap up from the solid, but not top tier, state colleges we have been attending. This is a BIG DEAL.

Hatch cut-off

The Road I-25 to the Deming cut-off to I-10 through Tucson to eventually pick up the 8 which will cross some tiresomely bleak bush-sprinkled desert, sand dunes, rocky mountains, run into the 15 in San Diego going north to Penasquitos and Scott, Sandra, Teresa and Steven’s house. Once over the mountains the temperature drops and it is California coastal cool. The house on the hill has been updated with new carpets, bathroom tile, etc. in preparation for selling but all the better to celebrate Teresa’s big achievement.

Steven helps Sara with her future college decisions

 Steven’s college; Steven’s goals: Steven is 19, just finished two years of community college and entering UC Irvine to immerse himself in developing and perfecting his budding entrepreneurial skills. Focus of studies will be business economics with some sociology on the side.

Seriously Steven…and what are you studying again?

On his way to becoming a corporate leader with a conscience perhaps. Or not. Steven’s friend, Ashley, will be a doctor. Cousin Sara at 13 has already decided she will go to college in California.

Ashley, Sara, Steven

Smart kids all…

Aunt Marsha and Uncle Robert

Graduation Day: We are up early to get to the 9am ceremony on the UCLA campus, must leave an extra hour or so for the San Diego/other freeways getting to the university.

New Mexico is represented

Robert and Marsha are here from Minnesota; Steven, Michele, Patricia, Sara and me are here from New Mexico—Teresa’s dad’s side well-represented, even outnumbering the Filipino side which is usually not easy!

Graduate with Professional Student Grandmother

This ceremony is for the “nerd” side of the campus, i.e. engineers, computer scientists, etc. There is one huge event for all graduates and then the separate colleges/program areas have their own ceremonies.

Teresa and Yusuke

Teresa’s super great boyfriend, Yusuke, whom we all love, is graduating with an art degree in film studies.

Anyway it’s all good and we’re all very proud and each taking credit in our own ways! I think she inherited her potential to be a life-long student from me!

Graduation lunch in Koreatown

 Celebrating with Korean Barbecue: Finally…food, family, friends in Korea Town. The graduate chose one of its many barbecue places for the post-graduation family lunch. Which is okay…especially for meat lovers and aficionados of pickled veggies.

Yummy meat and pickled veggies?

Like visiting Luxembourg, Korean Barbecue is an experience to be had…but one you don’t necessarily have to repeat.

As I climb Black Mountain

 My Walk on the Wild Side: Climbing Black Mountain in Penasquitos/North San Diego County is my semi-annual check-up to determine whether I am old yet. Phew…made it up one more time. Went by myself and while trudging along deep in thought a sudden movement and telltale rattle made me leap ahead quite a few steps.

A trek through the urban wilds

Had to get a picture though to prove I was almost attacked by a giant rattlesnake! Well it could have happened. A few days later spotted a coyote on my morning walk in the Bosque which made me feel like I was becoming a real wild life explorer. Ready for my own Nature show.

Party Time

All California cuisine is not alike!

Final evening is the big celebration with aunts, uncles, cousins from both sides of the family and friends from little girlhood, grade school, high school and college all dropping by. There was a dead pig, belly dancing, beer drinking, storytelling, laughter and most importantly Marsha and I managed to take over the TV briefly for the final final final episode of The Killing.

Three generations

Don’t mean to be too sentimental about all of this (although I could have been killed by the GIANT rattlesnake and missed the party) but it really was a perfect time and life is too complicated to take such lovely occasions for granted. So here’s to many more visits to FAMILYLAND in the years ahead.

And a good time was had by all…

Around 8am, the third of three ABC buses bound for Lagos, Nigeria with stops in Lome and Cotonou pulls out of the Accra station. I have some deep-seated fear of not making it to wherever I am supposed to be on time so I have been up since 4am, downstairs checking out of the hotel and waiting for the night staff to find a taxi to the bus station…in a part of town with no taxis…which takes a long while.

Accra Bus Station

Down at the station all is apparently chaos but it turns out to be purposeful chaos. There are three buses that leave about half an hour apart and since most people seem to be traveling home to Lagos for vacation or longer there are many many cardboard boxes, once containing product—diapers, soap, soft drinks—now filled with everyday clothes, presents for the babies back home and bedding for the room back home; and the ubiquitous plaid plastic bags—the real suitcases of the 99%; and there are some regular suitcases, not a single one from REI. People are shouting and jostling and negotiating forcefully with the ABC staff…and somehow it all gets loaded and everyone’s on board and the first bus pulls out almost on time.

The bus pulls out

I am the only white person, the only little old lady in jeans and a t-shirt, the only silent one except when I ask ABC staff yet one more time will I know when to board the right bus. What makes me very happy is that I am completely comfortable in crowds of people not like me in one way or the other. In Taiwan, I seemed to be the only non-Asian in my neighborhood or my hotel. In Romania the people were white and there were a lot of older people on the buses and train but no one who spoke English, no one  of my age in jeans and a t-shirt, always reading, always taking pictures. In West Africa, the people are all another color and more boisterous than me. But I am a natural observer, not a particularly clever or thoughtful observer, but always content to watch people. And they watch me only a little. Probably the thing that is the most different about me is that oldish women in the rest of the world do not often wear blue jeans! Sometimes I AM proud to be an American (we invented blue jeans!—I think).

The ABC Bus.

Buses are the best means of travel. You get to be with the regular people of the world; working class people like me drive cars in some places but in much of the world they’re riding on buses and trains. For a long trip you ride a “luxury” bus otherwise the local van/buses that move on as they fill up are the way to travel. I went on one of these market buses from Maputo to Swaziland and it gave my travels some sort of authenticity (to me!) that I hadn’t claimed before.

Out the bus window

As the bus pulls slowly out of the station the Sunday morning sermon begins. Twenty minutes of “Praise Jesus” and “Lord Be Merciful” later we are safe to journey on. The sermon would not have been out of place in any Baptist church in the American south. Africans on the whole are quite religious. Christian generally, those missionaries really got around, but of course as you go further north, more Muslim. And the indigenous religions are strong in this area.

The kid on the bus

ABC buses are comfortable and well-maintained as advertised. While not quite “luxurious” there is a toilet and meals for each leg of the journey. The meals, rice and chicken, looked tasty but since I try very hard to avoid public toilets, whether on African buses, Romanian trains, United, Delta or American airlines or gas stations in Phoenix. I did not eat or drink for those hours which, fortunately, does not bother me …being apparently part camel.

The salon

The West African countryside rolls by as the bus speeds along the 118 miles to Lome.

And just over there is the ocean

The view isn’t grand especially since I’m in an aisle seat and the window is smudged. But I snap away. I am not comfortable taking pictures of people and homes up close and personal so most of my photos are taken from bus and taxi windows…hence the sometimes questionable quality.

On the road

Takes half hour or more to get through customs. But walking through the checkpoints—get stamp out of Ghana, walk into Togo for the next one makes it all real. I have my colorful visas for all of these countries so it’s very hassle-free.

The Dead

To TOGO. But first an explanation/confession. I usually read anywhere from a little something to quite a lot about countries before I go there. I admit to not doing that with Togo or Benin, neglecting to get any “neighborhood” background before my two-day drive through. My excuse is this: I travel alone and either do not or cannot pin down precise information about many places I visit…so as I have whiningly stated in other blogs, much of my time is taken with simply finding out how get to the next country or city; ditto the next hotel; where to eat; in French-influenced countries getting Africans who speak one brand of French to understand the abysmal pronunciation of my 20 French words and phrases; getting new money ( I will go from Ghanaian cedi to Togo and Benin’s CFA’s to Nigerian naira) and trying not to get too much because the next country won’t take it…and I am hoarding my dollars for when I cannot change money or use a credit card. Everyone still takes dollars and Euros but keeping track of how many of any given currency equals X number of dollars is no small trick by the third country.

Everyday things

So all of that is my explanation for why I did not explore the cities of Lome or Cotonou but instead spent my few hours observing!, napping, reading “Let the Great World Spin”—preparing for my return to Albuquerque and my book club! But that all counts as exploring the neighborhood even though I was NOT seeing monuments or eating at one of the many fried chicken spots.

About TOGO:

Togo’s flag

Very small, tropical sub-Saharan; official language French; while parts of this region of West Africa were called the Gold Coast, maybe its more apt moniker was the “Slave Coast” since West Africa is where much of the transAtlantic slave trade was based. There was one president, Gnassingbe Eyadema, from a 1967 military coup until his death in 2005; his son, Faure, is the current president. It’s colonial history goes something like this: Originally colonized by the Germans, Togoland was invaded by British troops from one side and French troops from the other during WW I, afterward separated into League of Nations mandates, then UN Trust Territories. The residents of British Togoland voted to become part of Ghana while French Togoland because an autonomous republic of France. A fine example of the craziness of colonial mentality.

The Bight of Benin–the sea along the West African coast

There are 40 ethnic groups in Togo, the largest being the Ewe. 51% of the population maintains indigenous religious beliefs, 29% are Christian and 20% Muslim. Come to think of it the “Jesus Saves” bumper stickers were scarce. This is a place where if I had been traveling with someone who said “let’s at least go to the museum” I would have seen some of the local sculptures which are influenced by the native animistic practices. Alas I didn’t.

I have a few shelves of books about all things African. But I’m lazy so my bits of basic info about Togo and Benin come from Wikipedia.

The coast along Togo, Benin

Here’s what I did do. Found my way by taxi to Napoleon Lagune. I am including most of my Trip Advisor review here for your general amusement!

Togo cat

I just checked the web site again to see if memory (from April of this year) is serving me well. And yes, it does look quite charming upon arrival. The outdoor restaurant so pleasant, the hotel cats so cute, the lagoon right in front of the hotel with the picturesque fisherman drifting along!

Reading “Let The Great World Spin.”

Even the room was okay in spite of the lamp with the red velvet shade that I had to place on its side to have enough light to read. It was bare bones but everything worked and it was quite cheap. The desk staff was okay if nothing special.

The man on the Lagoon

The RESTAURANT was the PROBLEM. Since the hotel appears to be French owned, certainly French operated, I expected okay food…at least okay onion soup and baguette! WRONG. I have never seen onion soup as clear as water with a few slices of onion floating in it and a couple balls of gummy cheese on top. And breakfast the next morning consisted of instant coffee and chunks of bread obviously left over from dinner the night before. And to top off the dining experience, the wait staff was probably the surliest I have experienced–maybe EVER!

That is NOT a baguette

I did have a pizza in the evening just across the driveway, still part of the hotel I think. It was the equivalent of bad stateside pizza, limp and greasy. I asked about a store in the neighborhood and received blank stares and that emphatic French “no!”

Don’t go here

 And I had a beer and admired my Togo visa and passport stamp. And was satisfied.

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea

Back on the on the ABC Lagos bus mid-morning after an argument with a taxi driver about fares. I really don’t believe in bickering over cab fares in poor countries and I leave large tips everywhere…(well, except that hotel restaurant), figuring if I can afford to travel to far places where earnings are so meager and the lives of the workers are so hard then I can afford not to be one of those obnoxious quibblers from the west. But every now and then I snap…it was the onion soup made me so cranky.

Gas station

About BENIN: Generally the same “sandy, coastal plain…marshy…dotted with lakes and lagoons communicating with the ocean” as Ghana and Togo. Interestingly, Benin has quite a different early and post-colonial history than Ghana and Togo. It was ruled by the Kingdom of Dahomey which was known for its military elite including “an elite female soldier corps, called Ahosi or ‘our mothers’…and known by many Europeans as the Dahomean Amazons” War captives of Dahomey were either sold into transatlantic slavery or killed in special ceremony known as Annual Customs. The French took over in 1892 and finally granted Dahomey independence in 1960. One of the several rulers prior to a turn to democracy in 1991 is probably worth mentioning just for his sheer weirdness. In 1972, Lt. Col. Mathieu Kerekou overthrew the ruling triumvirate. He announced the country was officially Marxist and established relations with China, North Korea and Libya; then he converted to Islam and changed his first name to Ahmed; then he became a born-again Christian and changed his name back again. And we think Romney is a flip-flopper.

Floating village

The ABC bus to Cotonou, about 84 miles and another border crossing. We arrive late afternoon on the edge of town and then there’s the hassle of finding transportation to the hotel. All the motorbike riders want me to go with them…saying “safe, safe.” I almost acquiesce but there are no helmets and the driver will carry my suitcase (small but not that small!) in front of him on the bike and traffic is intense and I remember my broken elbow last summer and finally say NO. A real taxi finally arrives and we go the distance to the Hotel du Port. Here’s my Trip Advisor review:

I could be a spy…I know I could

The Hotel du Port is an attractive pleasant hotel. Maybe a little above average. Very nice pool and dining area, food was good, decent Pasta Alfredo, cold beer, lovely patio area. Room was also very nice looking although a little hard to operate. I finally used a Gideon bible to prop the headboard away from the wall which otherwise shut off the lights over the bed. Phone didn’t work unless you played with the cord so I was up and down the stairs a few times to get things like towels and water for the room. Still and all, average +

If you go here, remember to prop the bible behind the headboard

The restaurant staff was welcoming, the hotel staff not so much so although certainly not rude. Partly of course it is my lack of language skills in countries where only French and the local languages are spoken. Does try their patience I know.

Church where the Cuban spies exchange plain brown envelopes and secrets

The spy reference comes from the fact that my room looked down over the Cuban Embassy and I am a spy/detective novel aficionado extraordinaire. So I pretended I either worked for the CIA or was John LeCarre starting my next novel about a Cuban spy in Benin waiting for hapless Americans to appear!

Getting to work

I decided to ditch my ABC bus and hire a driver to Lagos so I actually could see the countryside. Fortunately I had saved dollars for this very purpose so it was time to use them.

Every now and then…A Pretty Picture.

Left in the morning about 10am for my really short but splendid Nigerian adventure. See Chapter IV next week.

The end

CHAPTER IV HAS DISAPPEARED. NIGERIA WILL BE REVISITED AT THE END OF THE BLOGGING BOOKS! If I find it.