Alberta, Alberta - Where You Been So Long?

Because there’s a $700 surcharge to rent a car in Montana and return it in Canada, I come to you tonight from Calgary.

Let me explain. Originally, this trip had us flying into Kalispell, renting a car, making our way across Glacier, crossing into Canada to see Banff, and flying out of Calgary. The surcharge effectively ended that idea. Fortunately, I managed to pry enough brain cells away from the Rule Against Perpetuities to come up with a solution: Do half of Glacier, go to Banff, do the rest of Glacier, and return the car in the country from whence it came. In my eyes, an eminently reasonable solution. And one that no one wanted to do. I’m still not entirely sure why the opposition, but in my delicate pre-bar state, I had no patience for people being irrational. The only obstacle keeping us from visiting the Canadian parks was gone, so what was the problem?

In any event, if they wouldn’t do my solution, I’d split off from the group and do it myself. I figured it was a good idea anyway, in the event of a repeat of the Yosemite situation, to give us all a break if needed. It wasn’t really needed, but it did get me the opportunity to see another of the world’s most scenic landscapes. So here’s how that went.

Only Hate the Road When You’re Missing Home

I’m back.

My return journey, including a compelled overnight stop in New Jersey, has deposited me back in Boston, where I’ll have to settle for this boring view from my apartment:

In the past, the return journey has always carried with it a sense of dénouement – gratitude that this happened but disappointment that it’s over. But this time was different. As must as I enjoyed all the sights and experiences of this trip – and I did – when I took that eastbound ramp onto I-70 out of Terre Haute yesterday, I felt nothing but excitement. I knew that in only 2 days I’d be waking up early and once again stumbling down Mission Hill and up Huntington Avenue towards NUSL. I knew that soon I’d be back in my routine of morning classes, afternoon reading, and evening freedom. I knew I’d soon have the chance to complain about classes and professors to people who felt the same way (or who would tell me I was wrong). And most importantly, I knew that soon I’d see my school friends and classmates again and have the chance to share with them more of the “Breakfast Club moments” that made this year so special – and that every mile I drove would bring me closer to that. My speedometer rarely dipped below 80.

I’ve Got Nothing

Sorry, folks. After hours of thinking it over, I’ve been able to come up with nothing significant to say about today. Maybe it’s that I’m becoming progressively more tired each day, as I stay up later and later to write these things (which does not bode well for next week when classes start again). Maybe it’s that spending time with another person in the car means that I’m spending the driving days having actual human interaction, instead of the kind of pure reflection that tends to produce the best posts here (although when I make the last 2 legs of the journey alone tomorrow and Monday, I’ll have plenty of time to myself). Not that I’m complaining – I’m sure this trip has been better than if I had taken it by myself. It’s just that it may not lend itself as well to blogging.

Keep On Walking

Ah Chicago, we hardly knew ye. Just as quickly as our time together began, it has come to an end. But before the end, we two travelers checked off 3 items the Quintessential Chicago Experiences list: taking the L, riding the Navy Pier Ferris wheel, and seeing a Cubs game at Wrigley Field.

The fact that I have nothing of interest to say about the L probably constitutes a positive review. The best way to explain the view from the Ferris wheel is probably to show it to you:

 

It's Electric

This is one of the rare times when I’m at a loss for what to say about today. Not because something so profoundly fantastic or terrible happened, but because so much happened. I was so busy doing today that I never really had time to stop and think of a theme that tied it all together. So, as much as it pains me, today’s Chicago adventure will have to take the form of a bed-to-bed story.

It began with a 150-mile trip north through western Indiana. Since the designers of the interstate highway system failed to consider the importance of a high-speed linkage between Terre Haute and Chicago, we had to slum it and take a lowly U.S. Highway instead. Except, in parts of the country like this, I sometimes prefer those over some cold Interstate. Because they’re not limited-access, there are interesting things along the side of the road. Plus, these roads aren’t subject to interstate highway rules, so they’re free to go in a completely straight line with no bends whatsoever, all the way to the horizon.

Channels of Interstate Commerce

Traveling over 700 miles in a day can get boring. I can usually entertain myself for 2 hours with music from the radio, another 2 hours with talk radio, 2 hours of my own music, and sometimes another hour of podcasts. But when the itinerary calls for 12 hours of driving, that still leaves some gaps. So this time I tried to fill one of them by marveling at that part of western Ohio where the terrain starts to look like a completely different country from where I live:

But then something else caught my eye. On my left, I appeared to be racing someone:

As I was saying before I was interrupted…

The time has come once again to hit the road. But before I get to the details of this new adventure, let me set the stage (there are pictures after the jump, I promise):

Another semester of law school is over and, once again, I find myself in a different place than when it began. While the life of a law student is often compared unfavorably to a war, a marathon, or any number of seemingly impossible unpleasant tasks, I see it differently. Call me naive or oversentimental, but it often feels to me like a love story. So if last fall was “boy meets girl,” this spring had its roots firmly planted in “boy loses girl.”

He Liked to Drink a Lot of Juice

After yesterday’s crazy hiking shenanigans, this morning came as a warning from each of our bodies that we daren’t try that again lest the bodily rebellion we were feeling today return even more forcefully tomorrow. It turns out that when I call hiking down 3,200 feet a knee breaker, that’s pretty accurate. This morning my knee (only one though… weird) was so sore from turning through all the switchbacks yesterday that I was often reduced to going on stairs using my blown-out-kneed-mother’s mantra of “up with the good, down with the bad.”

For sure, we were all in need of a quieter itinerary today. Tioga Road was more than ready to answer the call. It was a peaceful drive with occasional stops, like the obligatory one at Olmstead Point and a less-obligatory but felt-essential one at the Tuolumne Meadows Grill and Store for lunch and junk food (all of which disappeared within 4 hours). 

Modern Family

After taking enough of these trips, some patterns begin to emerge. The one that shows itself first is that Day One is all about feeling out how things are going to work for the rest of the trip. That’s when decisions are made, consciously or not, about things like how to organize bags and vehicles, how much travel companions will indulge each others’ special interests, and probably most importantly – what will be the tone for the rest of the trip. As far as Day Ones go, today fit the bill.

The Highway Sets the Traveler's Stage

So here we are. My journey has all but come to an end as I pause in New Jersey before completing the last leg back to New England (and before soon embarking on a new long-term journey to Boston). After a mundane driving day (I thought about waking up early to give Shenandoah one more shot at a sunrise but chose instead to sleep until a normal hour), I thought this space would be better spent reflecting on the tumultuous experience that was the past week.

We Have Come This Far, Always Believing

What a strange day. It didn’t really have a beginning, since I went right from writing last night’s post into watching breaking news coverage of what at the time looked like a random crime spree around Boston but that was getting national coverage because all the media in the country was already there. When I decided to go to bed around 2:30 that was still all it was.

From there, things got weird. The first important piece of information is that the Motel 6 sheets were made of some strange material that got much warmer than most sheets. The other key piece of information is that the TV in the room had no sleep timer. Combined, these factors led me to wake up several times during the night to adjust the heat, while also hearing a version of the story that was slightly different from the last one. It wasn’t until 8:00 when the alarm went off that Morning Joe proclaimed “it’s all connected, folks.”

On Top of Old Smoky

While it wasn’t covered in cheese, it was still the main event on today’s schedule. But before I get to that, there is much scenic driving to report:

Chasing Waterfalls

Success!

I laid out a rather ambitious plan for today – carefully navigate to 4 waterfalls in a precise order and then wind up a dirt road to set up camp and climb a mountain. All this needed to happen within 12 hours.

With so many places where parts of today’s plan could have gone awry, I’m pleased to report that I reached each of those destinations and did everything I wanted to do at all of them. The only low points of the day, and to call them low points is a stretch – were that I didn’t get as good of a picture of Looking Glass Falls as I had hoped and I wasn’t so happy with the Max Patch Road. But more on those momentarily. 

After the Morning After

 North Carolina comes through again. Having trudged through 200 miles of fog yesterday all through Virginia – your remember Virginia: my least-favorite state due to its questionable politics, overeager state troopers, those ugly-named suburbs of DC, and Shenandoah National Fog Park – I awoke today to a Virginia invasion across its southern border. In other words, Wildcat Rock was still enveloped quite thickly in fog. In fact, after turning out all the car lights last night the fog still seemed to glow even though there weren't any signs of civilization for miles. Spooky.

With no Plan B, I just kept on going down the Blue Ridge Parkway, knowing that the forecast called for “AM clouds / PM sun” and that the road would be rising higher than in Virginia, which might put me above the fog. Apparently I also had the sun on my side, as it burned off all of the fog by the time I stopped in Boone (yes, a real place name – as is “Gooch Gap”) at 9:00. Of course, by that point I had reached the one stretch of the Parkway that I was able to drive last year so there was nothing new to see. I was even there at the same time of day.

Fire & Rain

We awoke this morning in a fog. It was a fog so thick that the outside world seemed almost to fade away, leaving only Latke and me as survivors within our front-seat universe. Nevertheless we set out, treading slowly and carefully through a world indifferent to our plans and itinerary.

A Dog & Her Boy

Unfortunately, nothing particularly interesting happened today (Note to self: Do not start posts with "nothing interesting happened today" if you want people to read it). Which is not to say it was a wasted day. It got me in position to begin my assault on the Blue Ridge parkway in the morning, but more importantly it gave me some valuable information about my travel companion and gave me a general idea of what it will be like to drive another 1,800 miles with her.

Everything Old Is New Again

So here we are again, on the eve of another road trip adventure. Having procrastinated all day, my bags are finally packed, my itinerary set, and my dog sufficiently confused. In the morning the two of us will head out once again towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. This time, the goal was initially to go back and see the places on the Blue Ridge Parkway that were closed when I was there last February. But then when I found out that the governor of North Carolina will personally send you some pretty good swag for driving the entire 469 miles and becoming an “end-to-ender” I decided to try that. Throw in a little bit of Great Smoky Mountains National Park that I missed last time (namely Clingman’s Dome, the highest point in the park), some waterfalls in nearby Transylvania County, and a couple of strategic stops along Skyline Drive at Shenandoah, and my week was pretty much filled out. As usual, here’s the plan, courtesy of Google Maps: 

  

A Thoroughfare for Freedom Beat

This is a public service announcement to all Canadian taxpayers: Your government has been stealing from you.

You pay the equivalent of over $4.50 a gallon for gasoline, much of it taxes, yet you have the highway infrastructure of a third world country. Either your government is full of waste, fraud, and abuse (more than even the US government), or the Trans-Canada Highway (which, as far as I can tell is not yet complete) is being built across the most hostile terrain ever encountered by road makers. I’m skeptical about the latter, since they manage to make roads out of ice every year. So boreal forest can’t be that tough to build on.

Yet there I was, paying $63 for a tank of gas when I’d never before paid more than $50, and yet every local road I took until mercifully limping onto the big 104 was as unpaved as unpaved could be. I’d call them dirt roads, but dirt would have been a welcome alternative to the ridiculousness I encountered.

The World’s Your Oyster Shell, But What’s that Funny Smell

Whenever I’m on these adventures, as I think of something I want to remember to mention in that night’s entry, I use the iPhone Notes app to write myself… well, a note, as the thought hits me. The stuff left from last summer’s note includes “open space, self-determination, no deadlines, only chance.” Today, I only wrote down one word: “Punished.”

You’ve Already Won Me Over, In Spite of Me

Nova Scotia, you’ve been holding out on me. After today, it’s clear that you’ve just been teasing me – showing me your less attractive features so that your best qualities stand out that much more starkly.