tastewar.com

Month: July 2009

  • None of the Comforts of Home

    Thank God it didn’t rain. I think the last time I camped at all was with Susan and some grad school buddies at the Delaware Water Gap long before Emma was born. To label me out of practice would be generous. We packed gear for summer camping — our borrowed tent is a glorified screen house with a rain fly (no offense, Alexx — thanks for the tent!)  so when we woke up this morning in 41 degree weather, we were all a little chilly. About 4:30 in the morning, Susan, Tyler and I were awake, with Tyler shivering, and me pretty cold as well. Tyler’s sleeping bag is essentially a folder over fleece blanket, and as we had lost his sweatshirt, all he was wearing under that was regular pajamas. So he climbed in with Susan. I think they went back to sleep, but I could not. At about 5:30, Clara awakened, so we went out and started a camp fire. Fire == Good.

    I’m also a little put out as I am lacking DC adapters for some things, including my camera battery. And I can only charge one of the two laptops, so at the moment the “server” laptop is shutdown so that I have this one for actually doing stuff.

    But we’ve survived, and even decided not to go to a hotel tonight. We are hopeful that the weather will be warmer for our next camping experience, in Utah.

  • A Day in the Life

    This morning, we woke up in our hotel outside of De Smet

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    Had breakfast at a local restaurant

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    Drove across a good part of South Dakota, with a rest stop along the highway for a picnic lunch, then continued on through a small portion of the badlands, then hit the famed Wall Drug

    Where we had an ice cream break,

    then we headed to our camp site, at Oreville Campground in the Black Hills National Forest.

  • Badlands

    The badlands of South Dakota are quite amazing. Pictures won’t do it justice, but here’s one anyway

    The structures are amazing, and they come in many different colors and textures. The feel of the clay soil beneath youyr feet is very different from “regular” soil, especially when wet! And of course, we did have some rain today.

  • Little House

    As Donna correctly answered, Mitchell is the town famous for the Corn Palace. Turns out we decided to go to De Smet instead. De Smet is the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little Town on the Prairie. They had lovely exhibits there, including a re-creation of the home that the Ingalls family built there. The kids got to make rope, and corn hust dolls, and a little button and string toy. They also got to go on a wagon ride and visit a one room schoolhouse, and ride a horse. And once again, the less than stellar weather kept the crowds down.

  • Across Minnesota

    Today, we ventured across the entire state of Minnesota, with only a couple of stops. We stopped at a Dairy Queen in the late morning for a treat, then for gas later in the afternoon. We covered a lot of ground today, and the kids held up well. Tomorrow also promises to be a long driving day.

  • On Alaska?

    After the water park, we didn’t want to have too long a day of driving, so we only drove as far as Onalaska, WI. Upon arrival, we realized we might have felt better if we had driven a few more miles over the Mississippi into Minnesota. This Comfort Inn is essentially in a little shopping plaza. That’s where we start today’s journey, which may or may not include DeSmet and Mitchell, both in South Dakota. Comment if you know what’s interesting about those places, without looking them up!

  • Water, Water Everywhere

    Today, we hit one of the major attractions of our trip — the largest water park in America, Noah’s Ark Water Park. We arrived at around 11:00, and had a nice picnic lunch on the tables outside, then enjoyed about 4 hours of wet fun!

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  • Literally Blew a Fuse

    We brought along a new powered cooler for the car,

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    so that we could keep slightly more interesting food than bread and peanut butter for picnic lunches. Prior to coming through Canada, we hadn’t used it, as we didn’t want to deal with any customs issues. But yesterday, we used it for water bottles, then after grocery shopping we filled it with a few items. At a certain point, I noticed that its fan wasn’t going, and it’s simple enough to have no thermostat, so I was suspicious. When we got to the hotel, we brought it with us, as we also have an A/C adapter for it. I looked for a switch or a fuse, and finding none obvious on the unit, I took apart the cigar lighter plug where fuses often are, but this proved more difficult than it should have, due to either a junky CLP or it being melted due to a current overload? Anyway, while the wire in the fuse wasn’t visibly broken, the fuse showed signs of being blown.

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    After dinner, we drove over to Home Depot which was right behind the restaurant, and while they didn’t have the exact same fuse (8A), they did have slow blow 8A and normal 10A fuses. I bought both. So far, the slow blow 8A is holding up.

  • A Plague of Mosquitoes

    This morning we are in Madison, WI, at another Comfort Inn. After Whitewater, we drove for a little over an hour and ended up here. When we got out of the car to go into the hotel, we were greeted by a cloud of hungry mosquitoes. Some followed us into the hotel, and a few were still following us when we went into the room. For dinner, we drove basically across the highway to the Texas Roadhouse, but coming back we ended up having to follow the highway for about a mile, then I took the next exit to find a place to turn around, but that was a divided highway as well, so I made an illegal U turn at the next light, drove about 3/4 of a mile back, made a legal U turn, then was able to get onto the entrance ramp to the highway, going in the right direction, go get to our hotel.

  • Whitewater

    From about age two to four, my family lived in a town called Whitewater, Wisconsin, where my dad taught at the University of Wisconsin there. My mom couldn’t remember our address, but as we had decided to head north from Illinois, I thought it would be fun to take a brief detour into the town. We found Frosty’s there, and had some frozen custard.

    Here is the sign at the main entrance to the campus there:

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