Road Trip! - Chicago

In March, I traveled to Chicago for a convention. It was called GlobalShop and it was about store fixtures and Point-of-Purchase advertising. Woo-hoo! But I did do a little sight seeing, and ate a lot of pizza while I was there.

First I had to get there though. I flew Northwest into St. Paul. Which is an odd airport in that all of the terminals you can easily get to are operated by Northwest or an affiliate airline. As Airports go it is a very busy closed shop. Oh sure, they have one international terminal. But even that is used primarily by KLM, an affiliate.

Apparently, it is also the home of the Mall of America. Honestly, I thought it would be, well, bigger.

It rained while I was in Chicago, but it wasn't very windy. My hotel was in an area of the city called North Loop. The original Pizzaria Uno was just a few blocks away (very yummy) and I was also just a block or two from the Miracle Mile (high end shops and an Apple Store) and about six blocks away from this view of the river. The tower under construction is the Trump Tower and Hotel. My hotel, a Courtyard Marriott, was a 12-story place hiding behind the Trump.

I was also fairly close to Millennium Park which is home to the big silver bean, some giant video walls and a great outdoor concert facility. Parking? under your feet. The bean is a lot more impressive than I believed from just looking at pictures.

Under your feet. If I have any lasting impression of Chicago, it is layers upon layers of city. Many of the roadways are stacked two to three deep in places. On one bus, we came out of a tunnel to a busy intersection, took a ramp up to another covered area with a busy intersection and then came up again into a covered intersection (many stories of parking above) before heading out into the light. Its like, every time Chicago reinvented itself, it covered up the layer before but left the systems in place.

I had a fun three days in Chicago. But am happy to be back in Spokane.

Meteor!

So there's a meteor crater outside of Winslow, Arizona. It is a very large hole in the ground.

You aren't allowed to hike to the bottom of the crater for "scientific" reasons, although I would guess in this instance, "scientific" = "liability. So instead, the gift shop has set up a diorama for photo ops, so you can send out pictures of yourself at the "bottom of the meteor crater."

Interpret Matt's expression here:

a) I have made an important scientific discovery at the bottom of this large hole!
b) AAAA! A METEOR!
c) I have paid $30 so that my wife can take a picture of me in front of a picture of rocks!

I'm going to have nightmares for a week.

The 101 in California

Beth and I have driven a large portion of US-101. We've driven around the Washington Peninsula, where 101 turns east, then south, and then west to meet up with 101 again. We've driven the length of Oregon (or would that be the width of Oregon) as 101 winds down the coast. And now we've driven it in California to San Fransisco.

The 101 in California is both amazing and strange. One moment you will be driving a two lane twisting road through redwood forests and then it is suddenly a six lane divided highway – in seemingly the middle of nowhere. But it will narrow to two lanes again once you're back in the protected forrests. Which is great. But wherever California can fit six divided lanes, they seem to put six divided lanes.

California also doesn't have mile markers. Roads are marked showing distance to or from the county line. And seemingly at random, sometimes as close as a few meters apart. I'm guessing that with so many roads to maintain, this system allows crews to pinpoint problems to, well, the exact meter.

101 seems to have its share of problems. Several times as the road would wind along the coast, we would come upon recently patched areas, on top of an older repair zone, where the road washed away over the winter. Kudos to the California Department of Transportation for getting everything repaired before we came on down. We know you did it just for us.

And they do the same for their own. We were on the 101. Also listed as the Redwood Highway. Also known as a Blue Star Highway in honor of those who have served the country at war. And individual stretches would be named in honor of Transportation workers who dedicated their lives to making California drivable.

If you were driving the 101 on Saturday, we were the ones in the red jeep driving the speed limit, being passed by everyone.

Roadside Attractions and Giant Trees

Driving down Highway 101, it is clear that there are different touring styles. Some people drive by, see the giant T-Rex in front of the Prehistoric Gardens and think "What a rip-off." And then there are people like Matt and I, who can't resist paying our money to see what's behind the gate.

As we worked our way down the Oregon and California coasts, we stopped at the Prehistoric Gardens:

The Trees of Mystery:

And the Drive-Through Tree.


The verdict? Worth every penny. OK, I'm not entirely sure we got our $5 worth of fun out of the drive-through tree. There are only so many times you can go through before you become fairly blase about it being a large tree with a hole in for driving through.

Create Your Own Geologic Wonder

It's easy!

First, chose your favorite kitchen tool. Or really, any human-powered tool. It could be as simple as a spoon or as complex as an apple peeler.

Got that in your head? If your tool has more than one word (like Measuring Cup), simplify it to one (Cup). Good. Now, add "Devil's" before it. Devil's Cup. Devil's Grater. Devil's Churn. Congratulations! You could have been an Oregon coastal explorer.

Road Trip Day One

Spokane to Oceanside, Oregon:

We had lunch at the picnic grounds of the Maryhill Museum, which is infested with peacocks. Funny how you normally think of peacocks as decorative, elegant creatures. Until you're surrounded by seven or eight of them and you realize that those long elegant necks have sharp pointy beaks at the end.

We stopped to take some pictures of Rooster Rock, which has long been used as a navigation landmark on the Columbia River. Yes, Rooster Rock. Because it looks just like a great big... rooster.

Oceanside is a small village nestled into a steep, rocky hillside. Just offshore, there are several large rocks that are absolutely covered with birds. Gulls, cormorants, and pelicans could all be seen through our binoculars.

Dinner: Angels on horseback (oysters wrapped in bacon and fried); locally caught ling cod dredged in parmesan and pan-seared, served on a bed of fresh greens with a housemade caesar dressing; strawberry shortcake with fresh Hood River strawberries.

We might be coming to your town.

If your town is San Francisco or Las Vegas or Santa Fe or Moab, that is.

6 days and counting....

Short Timer

The house sitters are ready to move in, lots of cat food will soon be on hand, and the last of our new plants will be in the ground by the end of the day. There is a road trip in our future -- two weeks in our future. I should be concentrating on work. I have a coffee table book that I need to finish, a direct mail piece to mock-up for the client, and empty Happy Meal boxes that require something self promotional and of actual interest to our clients.

Instead, I am configuring a company laptop for personal emergency use while on the road, making Google maps for each day's driving, and blogging checking the connectivity of said laptop by testing its airport connectivity. Oh, and flying over the terrain of our trip in Google Earth. That's important, too.

I'm slipping into short timer mode too early. Maybe I'll take an extra day just to make the vacation start that much sooner.