From a30c790edea652494e7481f6798047a3bc1fd4ea Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: luxagraf Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2023 13:43:36 -0500 Subject: added a backup of old pages that are no longer live --- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.html | 470 ++++++++++++++ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.txt | 54 ++ .../2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.html | 546 ++++++++++++++++ .../2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt | 73 +++ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.html | 449 +++++++++++++ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.txt | 45 ++ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.html | 718 +++++++++++++++++++++ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.txt | 87 +++ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.html | 626 ++++++++++++++++++ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.txt | 87 +++ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.html | 623 ++++++++++++++++++ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.txt | 66 ++ 12 files changed, 3844 insertions(+) create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.html create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.txt create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.html create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.html create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.txt create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.html create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.txt create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.html create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.txt create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.html create mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.txt (limited to 'bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08') diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a7a9433 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.html @@ -0,0 +1,470 @@ + + + + + Grassland - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
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Grassland

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Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, U.S.

+ – Map +
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+

The vastness of the prairie sky is addictive. Once you’ve spent a while surrounded by nothing but grass and sky you start to feel closed in whenever there is something else near you. We tried to go back to regular campgrounds, but you find yourself wanting more space, asking why are these things blocking my sky?

+

It took me a while, but I eventually I realized that what draws me in about the prairie is that it’s the only landscape that offers the vast unbroken horizon of the sea. This is why almost no one can come here without remarking on the “sea of grass” or the “islands” of trees within it. The grasslands are the land playing at being the sea.

+

We went to the other side of Buffalo Gap National Grasslands to a little campground called French Creek. It was a strange little campground, surrounded by a fence, but with a big gate. I figured it was tent-only, but there were no signs saying that, and the gate was open. As a U.S. taxpayer this is technically speaking, my land, so I drove the bus in and parked next to picnic table.

+
+ + the bus, french creek campground, buffalo gap national grasslands photographed by luxagraf + +
Seems like a legit place to camp to me.
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+ +

The ranger who came by the next morning did not like that one bit. I wasn’t rude, but I did tell him if he didn’t want people parking in the campground then maybe consider signs and a lock.

+

French Creek is near the town of Fairburn, home to about 100 people. We came here because Corrinne is a rock hound and this is the one and only place on earth to find something called a Fairburn agate. Corrinne went rock hunting the first evening we were there, but came up empty. The next morning she took the kids out to the agate beds and Olivia promptly found a Fairburn. She spent the rest of day teaching everyone else how to find one. Daddy, you have to look…

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+ + + + None photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + fairburn agate photographed by luxagraf + + +
+ +
+ +

We left the next day, headed for another national grassland in Nebraska. Corrinne and kids drove ahead to the campground while I dumped and filled our water tank in the nearby town of Crawford NE. I was just about to head down the 20 miles of dirt road when Corrinne called to say it was tent-only. Hey, at least this one had signs.

+

We ended up staying in Crawford at the city park. It was deserted, pretty close to free, had two playgrounds and a livestock auction that was could listen to all afternoon.

+
+ + City park, Crawford, NE photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Livestock auction, Crawford, NE photographed by luxagraf + +
A few of the brands on sale at the Crawford livestock market.
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+ +
+ + random buttes, near crawforn, NE photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

The next day we pushed on to the third grassland on our list, Pawnee Grassland, just over the Colorado border. Here, finally, we again found something as nice as Buffalo Gap near Wall. The road in was one of the roughest we’ve done, but we made it more or less intact. The first night we just pulled off the road, but then the rig that had been on the ridge overlooking the whole grasslands packed up and left so we swooped in and grabbed the spot.

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+ + Welcome to Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Pawnee Grasslands, Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
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+ + The bus, near Pawnee Buttes, Pawnee Grasslands, Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Cow, Pawnee Grasslands, Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Cows, Pawnee Grasslands, Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

It was a pleasant place to stay for a week. I could work, the kids played. The cows came by to investigate us. There’s something about this sea of grass that makes it seem as though just watching it is enough. You don’t need to do anything, just observe the land, the sky, the ever changing light.

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+ + Pawnee Buttes, Pawnee Grasslands, Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Pawnee Grasslands, Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Sunset over Pawnee Grasslands, CO photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + The bus, near Pawnee Buttes, Pawnee Grasslands, Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Pawnee Buttes, Pawnee Grasslands, Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + None photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Storm clouds over the Pawnee Grasslands, Colorado photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

We’d have stayed longer, but unlike our spot outside of Wall, in Pawnee Buttes the nearest water and dump facilities are over an hour away, and it’s a rough road in and out. Too rough to risk when your main goal is get to a specific place at a specific time. We stayed as long as we could, but when the water tank ran dry we fired her up and pointed our nose south.

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Thoughts?

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Please leave a reply:

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All comments are moderated, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice.

+ + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a3f1179 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/grassland.txt @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +Grassland +========= + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Monday, 27 August 2018 + +The vastness of the prairie sky is addictive. Once you've spent a while surrounded by nothing but grass and sky you start to feel closed in whenever there is something else near you. We tried to go back to regular campgrounds, but you find yourself wanting more space, asking why are these things blocking my sky? + +It took me a while, but I eventually I realized that what draws me in about the prairie is that it's the only landscape that offers the vast unbroken horizon of the sea. This is why almost no one can come here without remarking on the "sea of grass" or the "islands" of trees within it. The grasslands are the land playing at being the sea. + +We went to the other side of Buffalo Gap National Grasslands to a little campground called French Creek. It was a strange little campground, surrounded by a fence, but with a big gate. I figured it was tent-only, but there were no signs saying that, and the gate was open. As a U.S. taxpayer this is technically speaking, my land, so I drove the bus in and parked next to picnic table. + + + +The ranger who came by the next morning did not like that one bit. I wasn't rude, but I did tell him if he didn't want people parking in the campground then maybe consider signs and a lock. + +French Creek is near the town of Fairburn, home to about 100 people. We came here because Corrinne is a rock hound and this is the one and only place on earth to find something called a Fairburn agate. Corrinne went rock hunting the first evening we were there, but came up empty. The next morning she took the kids out to the agate beds and Olivia promptly found a Fairburn. She spent the rest of day teaching everyone else how to find one. *Daddy, you have to **look**...* + +
+ + + +
+ + + +We left the next day, headed for another national grassland in Nebraska. Corrinne and kids drove ahead to the campground while I dumped and filled our water tank in the nearby town of Crawford NE. I was just about to head down the 20 miles of dirt road when Corrinne called to say it was tent-only. Hey, at least this one had signs. + +We ended up staying in Crawford at the city park. It was deserted, pretty close to free, had two playgrounds and a livestock auction that was could listen to all afternoon. + + + + + +The next day we pushed on to the third grassland on our list, Pawnee Grassland, just over the Colorado border. Here, finally, we again found something as nice as Buffalo Gap near Wall. The road in was one of the roughest we've done, but we made it more or less intact. The first night we just pulled off the road, but then the rig that had been on the ridge overlooking the whole grasslands packed up and left so we swooped in and grabbed the spot. + + + + + + + +It was a pleasant place to stay for a week. I could work, the kids played. The cows came by to investigate us. There's something about this sea of grass that makes it seem as though just watching it is enough. You don't need to do anything, just observe the land, the sky, the ever changing light. + + + + + + + + + +We'd have stayed longer, but unlike our spot outside of Wall, in Pawnee Buttes the nearest water and dump facilities are over an hour away, and it's a rough road in and out. Too rough to risk when your main goal is get to a specific place at a specific time. We stayed as long as we could, but when the water tank ran dry we fired her up and pointed our nose south. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5bb4a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.html @@ -0,0 +1,546 @@ + + + + + Island Of The Golden Breasted Woodpecker - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
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Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker

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Moningwanekaaning, Wisconsin, U.S.

+ – Map +
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+

The wind is light, the air still cool and heavy with the morning dew. Already though the sunlight is warm on our backs. The crisp, clean smell of Lake Superior’s cold waters fills the air. Ring-billed gulls fight over pier pylons. Occasionally one launches out over the lake, perhaps in search of a less contested perch. Beyond the pier sailboats are already unfurling sails and heading north, up the coast, currently downwind. The ferry shudders underfoot, the diesel engine coming to life for the short passage to Madeline Island.

+
+ + Madeline Island Ferry, Bayside, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Lake Superior on the way to Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Madeline Island Ferry, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Madeline Island Ferry, Bayside, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
Fellow paper map users unite!
+
+ +

The Ojibwe, who were here when the first Europeans paddled through, call Madeline Island Moningwanekaaning, which translates to Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker. Today, a more literal translation might be Island of the Northern Flicker, but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

+

Moningwanekaaning is one of twelve islands clustered near the western end of Lake Superior, off the coast of present day Wisconsin. Moningwanekaaning is the only one that’s not part of the Apostle Islands National Seashore (the name Apostle Islands comes courtesy of the Jesuits). This is where the bulk of the action takes place in the first three novels of Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark House Series, which, as I’ve mentioned before, our kids are obsessed with. It’s one of the reasons that we came up here, to see where the characters of those books walked and ate and slept and swam.

+

To some people that might sound strange, traveling somewhere because a historical novel happens to be set there, but it’s not the first time I’ve done it. All the little “how do you decide where to go” things I’ve written about previously take a backseat the number of times I’ve gone somewhere because I read a book about it.

+

Books fire the imagination in ways that travel guides and glossy magazines can’t. If I’d never read Henry Miller I’d probably have cared less about Paris. Prague would have meant less to me without Kafka. I couldn’t help noticing all the places in London that I knew about because Slothrop had affairs near them. And I’m never in New Orleans or near the Louisiana coast without thinking of The Awakening, A Confederacy of Dunces and The Yellow Wallpaper.

+

The desire to visit more than a few places I’d still like to visit can be traced to novels I’ve read — Tangier Morocco, Dublin Ireland, and Varanasi India to name a few.

+

The only problem with going to places you’ve read about is that they’ll never measure up to what you’ve read, which is to say they’ll never compare to what you’ve created for them in your imagination. I’ve spent the last month or so making sure the kids understood that Madeline Island is not currently like Moningwanekaaning is in the books.

+

They didn’t seem disappointed wandering around Madeline Island. Part of that could be that Madeline Island, save for the town of Laporte, actually hasn’t changed much since the 1830s, when the novel is set.

+

After a short ferry ride over we stopped in at the Madeline Island Museum, which traces the history of the island, but is also part of that history. The museum was made by joining four historic log structures end to end, part of a small 1835 American Fur Company warehouse, the former La Pointe jail, a Scandinavian-style barn of somewhat mysterious origin, and a building known as the Old Sailors’ Home, which was apparently a memorial to a sailor who drown. From what I could tell the museum is in four of the oldest remaining buildings on the island.

+
+ + Madeline Island Museum, WI photographed by Madeline Island Museum + +
image by
+
+ +

The museum was somewhat unique in our experience for having by far the most knowledgable, friendly staff we’ve encountered anywhere. I didn’t ask a single question that someone didn’t know the answer to. At one point I was pretty sure there was a private tour happening in one of the rooms, the guide was going into way too much detail and answered way too many questions, but no, it turned out to just be one of the staff whose sole job appeared to be hanging out on the artifacts room answering questions and telling stories. He was an Ojibwe historian and seemed to know not only the origin of every artifact in the room, but roughly the year it would have been created and used.

+

One of the women who worked there gave us a kind of personalized tour, pointing out artifacts and telling us not only the story of the artifact, what it was, where it came from and so on, but also how it came to be in the museum’s hands.

+
+ + Birchbark House, Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
After reading about birchbark houses and seeing a few mockups, the kids finally got to go inside one.
+
+ +
+ + Deer antlers locked together, Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
My favorite exhibit at the museum had nothing to do with artifacts. These deer locked antlers while fighting and died that way. There’s a lesson here.
+
+ +

I’ll be honest, I don’t generally like museums much because everything is under glass and out of context. I’d rather find a tiny potsherd hiking in the backcountry than see a whole pot in a museum. Even the best museums that do try to get some context in their displays still leave out the modern context, who found it? What were they doing when the found it and so on. While none of the context is necessarily on display at the Madeline Island Museum, the staff seem to have all the information in their heads and if they see you studying something there’s a good chance they’ll come up and offer the full story of the artifact, what it is, what it was for, where it was found, who found it, what they were doing when they found it and how it ended up in the museum.

+

I would have stayed another couple hours in the museum and really it was only three rooms, but the kids were hungry and wanting to swim so at the advice of one of the museum staff, we wandered down to a little park with a nice beach the kids could swim at. We made sandwiches and went swimming to cool off.

+
+ + Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

There’s a hand drawn map at the beginning of each of the Birchbark Series books, showing roughly where the birchbark house was, where other characters lived and where various events took place. I, perhaps more than the kids even, wanted to see some of the places. I’d spent enough time studying the map to know roughly where they were.

+

After the kids had swam for awhile I convinced them to get out of the water (no small task) and we drove around the island to roughly where one of their favorite character’s house would have been. We walked through the wood along the shoreline and wondered about what it all would have looked like in 1837. Probably, I’d guess, not all that different than it does now.

+
+ + + Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + + Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + + + +
+ +

We’d looked into camping on the island, and the campground happens to be roughly where one of the character’s houses was, but it was booked full for the entire month of August. We had to content ourselves with a day trip and after our short hike, we headed back to catch the ferry back to the mainland.

+

The next day was supposed to be our last day at Lake Superior. We set out reasonably early for a little beach a local woman told us about and spent the morning playing on the shore and swimming.

+
+ + lake superior near, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + lake superior near, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + lake superior near, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + lake superior near, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + lake superior near, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

At lunch time Corrinne went back to the bus and brought some food over to the beach because no one wanted to leave yet. I realized I was really going to miss Lake Superior. I don’t know what it is exactly, some bodies of water just get under your skin. The UP is nice, Wisconsin was fun too, but really the best part of our summer was Lake Superior. Somehow we just couldn’t bear the thought of saying goodbye to it just yet. And since we’re fortunate enough to not really have to be anywhere, we decided to change our plans a bit and head up into Minnesota to check out one more side of Lake Superior — the north shore.

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3 Comments

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+ DREW ELDRIDGE + August 18, 2018 at 2:59 p.m. +
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Ill raise you one “buck”. I had read about this years ago. +https://www.fieldandstream.com/photos/gallery/hunting/deer-hunting/2010/12/triple-tragedy-three-bucks-drown-antlers-locked

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+ Gwen + August 19, 2018 at 2:46 p.m. +
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Love the name of this island! Just wondering why you think of The Yellow Wallpaper when you are in Louisiana…

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+ Scott + August 19, 2018 at 6:10 p.m. +
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+ +

Drew-

+

That’s a much more confusing lesson.

+

Gwen-

+

Ha! I was wondering if anyone would notice that. There’s one person, who I think reads this site, who will understand it. But I’m sorry, everyone else will just have to wonder.

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Thoughts?

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Please leave a reply:

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All comments are moderated, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice.

+ + +
+ +
+ + + + +
+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..98bb3ee --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt @@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ +Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker +======================================== + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Thursday, 02 August 2018 + +The wind is light, the air still cool and heavy with the morning dew. Already though the sunlight is warm on our backs. The crisp, clean smell of Lake Superior's cold waters fills the air. Ring-billed gulls fight over pier pylons. Occasionally one launches out over the lake, perhaps in search of a less contested perch. Beyond the pier sailboats are already unfurling sails and heading north, up the coast, currently downwind. The ferry shudders underfoot, the diesel engine coming to life for the short passage to Madeline Island. + + + + + + +The Ojibwe, who were here when the first Europeans paddled through, call Madeline Island Moningwanekaaning, which translates to Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker. Today, a more literal translation might be Island of the Northern Flicker, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it. + +Moningwanekaaning is one of twelve islands clustered near the western end of Lake Superior, off the coast of present day Wisconsin. Moningwanekaaning is the only one that's not part of the Apostle Islands National Seashore (the name Apostle Islands comes courtesy of the Jesuits). This is where the bulk of the action takes place in the first three novels of Louise Erdrich's [Birchbark House][1] Series, which, as I've mentioned before, our kids are obsessed with. It's one of the reasons that we came up here, to see where the characters of those books walked and ate and slept and swam. + +To some people that might sound strange, traveling somewhere because a historical novel happens to be set there, but it's not the first time I've done it. All the little "how do you decide where to go" things I've written about previously take a backseat the number of times I've gone somewhere because I read a book about it. + +Books fire the imagination in ways that travel guides and glossy magazines can't. If I'd never read Henry Miller I'd probably have cared less about Paris. Prague would have meant less to me without Kafka. I couldn't help noticing all the places in London that I knew about because Slothrop had affairs near them. And I'm never in New Orleans or near the Louisiana coast without thinking of The Awakening, A Confederacy of Dunces and The Yellow Wallpaper. + +The desire to visit more than a few places I'd still like to visit can be traced to novels I've read -- Tangier Morocco, Dublin Ireland, and Varanasi India to name a few. + +The only problem with going to places you've read about is that they'll never measure up to what you've read, which is to say they'll never compare to what you've created for them in your imagination. I've spent the last month or so making sure the kids understood that Madeline Island is not currently like Moningwanekaaning is in the books. + +They didn't seem disappointed wandering around Madeline Island. Part of that could be that Madeline Island, save for the town of Laporte, actually hasn't changed much since the 1830s, when the novel is set. + +After a short ferry ride over we stopped in at the Madeline Island Museum, which traces the history of the island, but is also part of that history. The museum was made by joining four historic log structures end to end, part of a small 1835 American Fur Company warehouse, the former La Pointe jail, a Scandinavian-style barn of somewhat mysterious origin, and a building known as the Old Sailors’ Home, which was apparently a memorial to a sailor who drown. From what I could tell the museum is in four of the oldest remaining buildings on the island. + + + +The museum was somewhat unique in our experience for having by far the most knowledgable, friendly staff we've encountered anywhere. I didn't ask a single question that someone didn't know the answer to. At one point I was pretty sure there was a private tour happening in one of the rooms, the guide was going into way too much detail and answered way too many questions, but no, it turned out to just be one of the staff whose sole job appeared to be hanging out on the artifacts room answering questions and telling stories. He was an Ojibwe historian and seemed to know not only the origin of every artifact in the room, but roughly the year it would have been created and used. + +One of the women who worked there gave us a kind of personalized tour, pointing out artifacts and telling us not only the story of the artifact, what it was, where it came from and so on, but also how it came to be in the museum's hands. + + + + + +I'll be honest, I don't generally like museums much because everything is under glass and out of context. I'd rather find a tiny potsherd hiking in the backcountry than see a whole pot in a museum. Even the best museums that do try to get some context in their displays still leave out the modern context, who found it? What were they doing when the found it and so on. While none of the context is necessarily on display at the Madeline Island Museum, the staff seem to have all the information in their heads and if they see you studying something there's a good chance they'll come up and offer the full story of the artifact, what it is, what it was for, where it was found, who found it, what they were doing when they found it and how it ended up in the museum. + +I would have stayed another couple hours in the museum and really it was only three rooms, but the kids were hungry and wanting to swim so at the advice of one of the museum staff, we wandered down to a little park with a nice beach the kids could swim at. We made sandwiches and went swimming to cool off. + + + +There's a hand drawn map at the beginning of each of the Birchbark Series books, showing roughly where the birchbark house was, where other characters lived and where various events took place. I, perhaps more than the kids even, wanted to see some of the places. I'd spent enough time studying the map to know roughly where they were. + +After the kids had swam for awhile I convinced them to get out of the water (no small task) and we drove around the island to roughly where one of their favorite character's house would have been. We walked through the wood along the shoreline and wondered about what it all would have looked like in 1837. Probably, I'd guess, not all that different than it does now. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +We'd looked into camping on the island, and the campground happens to be roughly where one of the character's houses was, but it was booked full for the entire month of August. We had to content ourselves with a day trip and after our short hike, we headed back to catch the ferry back to the mainland. + +The next day was supposed to be our last day at Lake Superior. We set out reasonably early for a little beach a local woman told us about and spent the morning playing on the shore and swimming. + + + + + + + + +At lunch time Corrinne went back to the bus and brought some food over to the beach because no one wanted to leave yet. I realized I was really going to miss Lake Superior. I don't know what it is exactly, some bodies of water just get under your skin. The UP is nice, Wisconsin was fun too, but really the best part of our summer was Lake Superior. Somehow we just couldn't bear the thought of saying goodbye to it just yet. And since we're fortunate enough to not really have to be anywhere, we decided to change our plans a bit and head up into Minnesota to check out one more side of Lake Superior -- the north shore. + +[1]: https://birchbarkbooks.com/louise-erdrich/the-birchbark-house diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e6ddb00 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.html @@ -0,0 +1,449 @@ + + + + + Northern Sky - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+
+
+ + +
+
+ + + +
+
+
+

Northern Sky

+ +
+
+

Nine Mile Lake Campground, Minnesota, U.S.

+ – Map +
+ + +
+
+
+

Unable to leave Lake Superior behind, we decided to head west and north, out of Wisconsin, into Minnesota, through Duluth and up to the north shore of Lake Superior.

+

Here, for the first time in our Lake Superior travels, we hit real crowds. There aren’t that many camping spots along the shore up here and nearly all of them offer online reservations, which means they’re full most of the summer.

+

We ended up heading inland, further north, up toward the Boundary Waters area. Once you get away from highway 61, which hugs the shore of Superior, it’s mostly wilderness up here, and mostly dirt roads, which keeps the summer tourists away. We cut inland without any real clue where we were headed, but you rarely go wrong with fourteen miles of dirt road that looks like this:

+
+ + drive into nine mile lake, MN photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

Eventually we found a campground on the edge of a smallish lake. It was relatively secluded and the water was plenty warm for swimming.

+
+ + nine mile lake, MN photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

The only downside was that Lake Superior was the better part of an hour away. We ended up only going down once, to Tettegouche State Park, to have one last day on the lake and say goodbye to Superior. I stopped in at the visitor center and asked the ranger if there was a good swimming beach around and she directed us a “nice beach, good for kids,” at a little oxbow a ways up the river. Uh, yeah, we don’t want to swim in a river. I had another of those increasingly common moments when I realize how much people underestimate children these days.

+

I studied the map and didn’t see any reason we couldn’t hike the cliff side trail and figure out some way down to the water. As it turned out, plenty of people have had the very same idea and there was a well worn trail that led down to a nice rocky point sticking out into Superior. The kids scrambled over the rocks and were out of their clothes and into bathing suits fast enough to put a superhero to shame.

+

And then they stuck their feet in the water. Cold, very, very cold. The north shore of Superior is much colder than around Madeline Island. No one went in past their knees, but we did have a nice lunch and a rocky point all to ourselves for most of the day.

+
+ + + Tettegouche State Park,MN photographed by Corrinne Gilbertson + + + + + + Tettegouche State Park,MN photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + + Tettegouche State Park,MN photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + Tettegouche State Park,MN photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + + Tettegouche State Park,MN photographed by Corrinne Gilbertson + + +
+ +

You can’t have the most prominent rocky headland to yourself for long in these parts though. By the time we were done eating there were a dozen other people on the beach and rocks around us. We packed it up and headed back up the dirt road to Ninemile Lake for warmer swimming.

+
+ + nine mile lake, MN photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + nine mile lake, MN photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

The lake was enough to entertain the kids for a few days, but eventually the weather took a turn.

+
+ + nine mile lake, MN photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

Faced with three more days of rain and a dirt road out, we decided to go ahead and push on, south, out of the north woods and into the plains, which just so happens to parallel the journey that makes up the last three books of the Birchbark House series.

+
+
+ + + +
+
+ + +
+ +
+ + + + + + +
+ +
+

Thoughts?

+

Please leave a reply:

+
+
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + +
+ + + +
+ + +
+ + + +
+ + +
+ + + +
+ +
+
+ + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+
+

All comments are moderated, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice.

+ + +
+ +
+ + + + +
+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..43e41bd --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/northern-sky.txt @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +Northern Sky +============ + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Sunday, 05 August 2018 + +Unable to leave Lake Superior behind, we decided to head west and north, out of Wisconsin, into Minnesota, through Duluth and up to the north shore of Lake Superior. + +Here, for the first time in our Lake Superior travels, we hit real crowds. There aren't that many camping spots along the shore up here and nearly all of them offer online reservations, which means they're full most of the summer. + +We ended up heading inland, further north, up toward the Boundary Waters area. Once you get away from highway 61, which hugs the shore of Superior, it's mostly wilderness up here, and mostly dirt roads, which keeps the summer tourists away. We cut inland without any real clue where we were headed, but you rarely go wrong with fourteen miles of dirt road that looks like this: + + + +Eventually we found a campground on the edge of a smallish lake. It was relatively secluded and the water was plenty warm for swimming. + + + +The only downside was that Lake Superior was the better part of an hour away. We ended up only going down once, to Tettegouche State Park, to have one last day on the lake and say goodbye to Superior. I stopped in at the visitor center and asked the ranger if there was a good swimming beach around and she directed us a "nice beach, good for kids," at a little oxbow a ways up the river. Uh, yeah, we don't want to swim in a river. I had another of those increasingly common moments when I realize how much people underestimate children these days. + +I studied the map and didn't see any reason we couldn't hike the cliff side trail and figure out some way down to the water. As it turned out, plenty of people have had the very same idea and there was a well worn trail that led down to a nice rocky point sticking out into Superior. The kids scrambled over the rocks and were out of their clothes and into bathing suits fast enough to put a superhero to shame. + +And then they stuck their feet in the water. Cold, very, very cold. The north shore of Superior is much colder than around Madeline Island. No one went in past their knees, but we did have a nice lunch and a rocky point all to ourselves for most of the day. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +You can't have the most prominent rocky headland to yourself for long in these parts though. By the time we were done eating there were a dozen other people on the beach and rocks around us. We packed it up and headed back up the dirt road to Ninemile Lake for warmer swimming. + + + + +The lake was enough to entertain the kids for a few days, but eventually the weather took a turn. + + + +Faced with three more days of rain and a dirt road out, we decided to go ahead and push on, south, out of the north woods and into the plains, which just so happens to parallel the journey that makes up the last three books of the Birchbark House series. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..14757b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.html @@ -0,0 +1,718 @@ + + + + + Range Life - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+
+
+ + +
+
+ + + +
+
+
+

Range Life

+ +
+
+

Buffalo Gap National Grassland, South Dakota, U.S.

+ – Map +
+ + +
+
+
+

There’s something about wide open spaces that makes time slow down. The vastness of the sky stretching around the endless hoop of the horizon overwhelms and dims our sense of clock time. There are only four times out here: sunrise, sunset, night and day. After that all is one open expanse of light and land dancing around together, indifferent to anything so mundane as the railroad time schedules that form the basis of our concept of “time”.

+

The vastness and timelessness of the Badlands makes the improbable seem less. Wall Drug, I’m pretty sure, would never have worked anywhere else.

+

After land and light there is only wind. It never stops, or at least it didn’t in the two weeks we were here. It ranged from a gentle breeze to a howl that drowned out every other sound and whipped a fine dust into the air. The sky was often hazy from the smoke of fires in California and elsewhere in the west.

+
+ + Sunset over the Badlands, SD photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + the bus, buffalo gap national grasslands, wall, sd photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + panorama, buffalo gap national grasslands, wall, sd photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + the bus, buffalo gap national grasslands, wall, sd photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

Camping in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, the area south of Wall SD, known as “the wall” is unique. Free camping with a view, less than ten minutes from to a town that has a dump station, free water, free swimming pool and a small, but decent grocery store is not something you find very often, which might explain why we stayed two weeks.

+

The first week we were out here was hot, in the high 90s. We can only run our air conditioner if we have hookups, which we obviously did not have, so the free public pool in Wall was a daily necessity. Every afternoon the kids and I would pile in the car and drive the ten minutes to Wall and go swimming in the deliciously icy cold pool for a couple of hours.

+
+ + + buffalo gap, near Wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + + buffalo gap, near Wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + the bus, buffalo gap national grasslands, wall, sd photographed by luxagraf + + + + + +
+ + snake, buffalo gap, near Wall, SD photographed by luxagraf +
This little guy seemed to think the magnatiles box was the best collection of rocks he’d ever slithered through, I must have chased him (or her) out five times.
+
+ + + + + + pool, wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + pool, wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + + + + +
+ + eating pork chops photographed by luxagraf +
I love this photo because there’s no plate, no silverware, no napkins. It makes it seem like we just eat giant slabs of greasy meat with our hands. Which, apparently, we do.
+
+ + + + +
+ + eating pork chops photographed by luxagraf +
And this is how we all look most of the time, wild-eyed, feral and covered in grease.
+
+ + +
+ +

Lest you think we’ve given up on seeing the sights, we did one day drive into the Badlands National Park proper. The first overlook on the drive in gives you a view of the other side of the Badlands from what we could see at our camp. After that you wind down into some of the more colorful of the formations.

+
+ + panorama, badlands np overlook. photographed by luxagraf + +
Sorry for the poor panoramic stitching, but this was the only photo that even halfway turned out.
+
+ +
+ + Badlands NP photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Badlands NP photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

It was pretty, but also very crowded. I’ll take a slightly less expansive view and no crowds any day. We did get to have a close encounter with some big horned sheep though. It started off normal enough, Olivia spotted some bighorns up on a hill and we stopped to watch them for a minute. They’d wandered by our camp a few times already, but they never got too close.

+
+ + Bit Horned Sheep, Badlands NP photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

Eventually a Yellowstone-style traffic jam started to happen as more and more cars stopped to watch the sheep. We jumped back in the car and went on to the visitor center. On our way back the sheep had decided to come down to the road.

+
+ + + + Big Horned Sheep, Badlands NP photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + Big Horned Sheep, Badlands NP photographed by luxagraf + + + +
+ +

One day Lilah and Elliott and I decided to go for a hike in the Badlands. We found a trail that lead out to a juniper flat about three miles away and was somewhat off the beaten path. It turns out though that nearly everything beyond pavement is well off the beaten path in the Badlands.

+
+ + hiking, Badlands NP photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + hiking, Badlands NP photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

This is not a place people hike. It might be that after mid morning there’s absolutely no shade anywhere until late evening. The midday sun is fairly intense, and after an hour or two you want a break. We went a couple of miles and in that distance saw no one and found only a single cottonwood tree to rest under. It was the only shade for miles and all the grass under it was trampled down and matted with clumps of fur from sheep, cattle and quite a few other things that had rested under the same tree.

+

We ate our snacks, contemplated going the rest of the way to the juniper flats, but we remembered resting under a juniper tree in Chaco and decided the cottonwood was a good as it was going to get for shade, so we started back.

+

Lilah’s shoes were giving her a blister so she walked all the way back barefoot, which I think made to two hikers we met at the trailhead, who were geared up with all the latest tech from REI, feel a little foolish, which, let’s face it, they should.

+
+ + None photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + baby cliff swallow, badlands, np photographed by luxagraf + +
At the trailhead there was a pair of cliff swallows nesting under the overhang of the sign.
+
+ +

A day or two after our hike, storms started to blow in more regularly and we got not just a break from the heat, but downright chilly, especially at night when it started dropping into the 40s — a little reminder that winter comes early up here.

+
+ + Storms over the Badlands, SD photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

From our campsite at Buffalo Gap we watched a lot people come and go. Most people only stayed the night, but a few hung around longer. The sort of people who come camp out in a place like this for more than a night are generally our sort of people, which is to say, people who live full time on the road.

+

One day a family with some kids pulled past us and parked their rig in a spot a little ways beyond us. They stopped by to say hi one evening and we got to talking and next thing you know all the kids had made friends and were roaming the range in a pack, the way I think kids should.

+

If I have any hesitations about living the way we do its the occasional thought that I should be giving our kids more opportunities to roam the neighborhood with a pack of friends the way we did growing up. There’s two problems with this notion of mine though. One is that no one back home lets their kids roam anywhere, let alone wander the neighborhood by themselves, so if we hadn’t done this our kids still wouldn’t be roaming the world in packs they way I think they should.

+

The other problem is that the whole idea that this is what kids should do is predicated on the assumption that my childhood was somehow a “correct” one, which, for all I know, is completely wrong.

+

One thing I do know is that this trip has erased any sense of shyness in our kids. They’ll march up to pretty much any kid they see and try to make friends with them, which they didn’t do before we left, and is really more than I can say for myself.

+

Whatever the case, I do love it when we meet people our kids can hang out with for a while, it’s even better when we get along with the parents too, which we did. We hung around Buffalo Gap a little longer so the kids could have more time together. Community is harder to come by when you live on the road, but when you find it, it tends to be tighter knit and you value it more I think. At least I do.

+

At the same time those moments of friendship and community don’t last as long and before too long we needed to start south and Mike, Jeri and their family needed to get to west before the cold comes, and it comes early up here.

+

After two weeks Buffalo Gap had started to feel a bit like home, much like every place where we’ve spent more than a few days. But we did what travelers do: we pack up, say our goodbyes, and head down the road for the next place we’ll call home.

+
+
+ + + + +
+
+ + +
+ +
+ + + + + + +

8 Comments

+ + + + + + +
+ +
+ +
+ Jeri + September 16, 2018 at 10:31 a.m. +
+ +
+ +

Beautifully written article Scott! I didn’t even know you wrote!

+

We loved meeting you and the girls still talk about their “friends in the blue camper” all the time. I hope you have a great trip to Mexico and that we can meet up again in the spring!

+

Jeri

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Scott + September 16, 2018 at 2:26 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

Jeri-

+

Thanks for stopping by, tell your kids that ours say hi. Hope y’all have fun making your way west. We’ll email you when we get back to the states. hopefully we can meet up again somewhere.

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Gwen + September 16, 2018 at 3:33 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

Great pictures. David and I loved the Badlands.

+

I just want to say that my kids and their friends roam the neighborhood on bikes and scooters and on foot, sometimes armed with Nerf guns. 🙂

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Scott + September 17, 2018 at 2:22 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

Gwen-

+

That’s awesome. I hope that more kids do than my experience would lead me to believe. I lived in Athens for over ten years and I’m pretty sure I only ever saw one kid who roamed the neighborhood we lived in. But then, that’s part of why we sold our house, it just wasn’t the neighborhood for us.

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ DREW ELDRIDGE + September 17, 2018 at 2:40 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

Your snake- juvenile Eastern Yellow-Bellied Racer

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Scott + September 17, 2018 at 3:17 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

Drew-

+

Nice. That means I finally caught a racer.

+

I once chased a really mean black racer around a pile of rocks in Arizona for about two hours (because what else is there to do in AZ when you’re 12?). It bit me like ten times, but it was so damn fast I could never get more than a hand on it (which would send it whipping around to bite my arm, once my face, which is when I finally quit). Good times. Anyway, thanks for IDing it.

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ DREW ELDRIDGE + September 18, 2018 at 11:22 a.m. +
+ +
+ +

Black racers are very “spirited”- I have a pic somewhere that Sam took of my reaching toward one and it in full strike. It didnt hit me, but it was darn close. I leave the getting bit part to 12 year olds!

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Scott + September 19, 2018 at 7:52 a.m. +
+ +
+ +

Yeah I haven’t caught a single snake we’ve seen, but mostly because I think the kids are a bit young to be chasing after them and I already know they’ll do pretty much anything I do.

+ +
+
+ +
+ + +
+ +
+

Thoughts?

+

Please leave a reply:

+
+
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + +
+ + + +
+ + +
+ + + +
+ + +
+ + + +
+ +
+
+ + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+
+

All comments are moderated, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice.

+ + +
+ +
+ + + + +
+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..82e1b1c --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/range-life.txt @@ -0,0 +1,87 @@ +Range Life +========== + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Wednesday, 22 August 2018 + +There's something about wide open spaces that makes time slow down. The vastness of the sky stretching around the endless hoop of the horizon overwhelms and dims our sense of clock time. There are only four times out here: sunrise, sunset, night and day. After that all is one open expanse of light and land dancing around together, indifferent to anything so mundane as the railroad time schedules that form the basis of our concept of "time". + +The vastness and timelessness of the Badlands makes the improbable seem less. Wall Drug, I'm pretty sure, would never have worked anywhere else. + +After land and light there is only wind. It never stops, or at least it didn't in the two weeks we were here. It ranged from a gentle breeze to a howl that drowned out every other sound and whipped a fine dust into the air. The sky was often hazy from the smoke of fires in California and elsewhere in the west. + + + + + + +Camping in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, the area south of Wall SD, known as "the wall" is unique. Free camping with a view, less than ten minutes from to a town that has a dump station, free water, free swimming pool and a small, but decent grocery store is not something you find very often, which might explain why we stayed two weeks. + +The first week we were out here was hot, in the high 90s. We can only run our air conditioner if we have hookups, which we obviously did not have, so the free public pool in Wall was a daily necessity. Every afternoon the kids and I would pile in the car and drive the ten minutes to Wall and go swimming in the deliciously icy cold pool for a couple of hours. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
+ +Lest you think we've given up on seeing the sights, we did one day drive into the Badlands National Park proper. The first overlook on the drive in gives you a view of the other side of the Badlands from what we could see at our camp. After that you wind down into some of the more colorful of the formations. + + + + + +It was pretty, but also very crowded. I'll take a slightly less expansive view and no crowds any day. We did get to have a close encounter with some big horned sheep though. It started off normal enough, Olivia spotted some bighorns up on a hill and we stopped to watch them for a minute. They'd wandered by our camp a few times already, but they never got too close. + + + +Eventually a Yellowstone-style traffic jam started to happen as more and more cars stopped to watch the sheep. We jumped back in the car and went on to the visitor center. On our way back the sheep had decided to come down to the road. + +
+ + + + +
+ +One day Lilah and Elliott and I decided to go for a hike in the Badlands. We found a trail that lead out to a juniper flat about three miles away and was somewhat off the beaten path. It turns out though that nearly everything beyond pavement is well off the beaten path in the Badlands. + + + + +This is not a place people hike. It might be that after mid morning there's absolutely no shade anywhere until late evening. The midday sun is fairly intense, and after an hour or two you want a break. We went a couple of miles and in that distance saw no one and found only a single cottonwood tree to rest under. It was the only shade for miles and all the grass under it was trampled down and matted with clumps of fur from sheep, cattle and quite a few other things that had rested under the same tree. + +We ate our snacks, contemplated going the rest of the way to the juniper flats, but we remembered [resting under a juniper tree in Chaco](/jrnl/2017/06/arc-time) and decided the cottonwood was a good as it was going to get for shade, so we started back. + +Lilah's shoes were giving her a blister so she walked all the way back barefoot, which I think made to two hikers we met at the trailhead, who were geared up with all the latest tech from REI, feel a little foolish, which, let's face it, they should. + + + + +A day or two after our hike, storms started to blow in more regularly and we got not just a break from the heat, but downright chilly, especially at night when it started dropping into the 40s -- a little reminder that winter comes early up here. + + + +From our campsite at Buffalo Gap we watched a lot people come and go. Most people only stayed the night, but a few hung around longer. The sort of people who come camp out in a place like this for more than a night are generally our sort of people, which is to say, people who live full time on the road. + +One day a family with some kids pulled past us and parked their rig in a spot a little ways beyond us. They stopped by to say hi one evening and we got to talking and next thing you know all the kids had made friends and were roaming the range in a pack, the way I think kids should. + +If I have any hesitations about living the way we do its the occasional thought that I should be giving our kids more opportunities to roam the neighborhood with a pack of friends the way we did growing up. There's two problems with this notion of mine though. One is that no one back home lets their kids roam anywhere, let alone wander the neighborhood by themselves, so if we hadn't done this our kids still wouldn't be roaming the world in packs they way I think they should. + +The other problem is that the whole idea that this is what kids should do is predicated on the assumption that my childhood was somehow a "correct" one, which, for all I know, is completely wrong. + +One thing I do know is that this trip has erased any sense of shyness in our kids. They'll march up to pretty much any kid they see and try to make friends with them, which they didn't do before we left, and is really more than I can say for myself. + +Whatever the case, I do love it when we meet people our kids can hang out with for a while, it's even better when we get along with the parents too, which we did. We hung around Buffalo Gap a little longer so the kids could have more time together. Community is harder to come by when you live on the road, but when you find it, it tends to be tighter knit and you value it more I think. At least I do. + +At the same time those moments of friendship and community don't last as long and before too long we needed to start south and Mike, Jeri and their family needed to get to west before the cold comes, and it comes early up here. + +After two weeks Buffalo Gap had started to feel a bit like home, much like every place where we've spent more than a few days. But we did what travelers do: we pack up, say our goodbyes, and head down the road for the next place we'll call home. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bf454d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.html @@ -0,0 +1,626 @@ + + + + + Superior - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+
+
+ + +
+
+ + + +
+
+
+

Superior

+ +
+
+

Moningwanekaaning, Wisconsin, U.S.

+ – Map +
+ + +
+
+
+

In the coldest parts of Lake Superior it takes discipline to convince yourself to swim. Just walking out knee deep in that water which looks no cloudier than air, but feels like a vise of cold squeezing at ever pore of your skin, takes concerted effort.

+

After a few steps your feet are numb. A few more and they begin to hurt. I never made it deep enough dive in at the coldest of the beaches, around Pictured Rocks, instead you lie down quickly, and then jump up, more of a baptism than a swim.

+

After the gasping subsides, and you climb back out of the water to lie on the warm brown and apricot rocks, the sun slowing draws the blood out of your core and back to the edges of yourself with a prickling, almost painful feeling, like the rock is needling at your skin.

+

This is the story of Lake Superior: water, rock, weather, and life.

+
+ + Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Playing in Lake Superior, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Playing in Lake Superior, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Swimming in Lake Superior, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

This is of course the story of everywhere as well. The world we experience with our senses is made up of water, rock, weather, life, and the relationships between them. Or, to use more familiar, but perhaps less fashionable terms, Water, Earth, Fire, Air and Spirit.

+

On the shores of Lake Superior, Water and Earth are the most obvious. Nothing is written here without taking them into account. The shoreline is the story of rock and water moving through time. “The journey of the rock is never ended,” writes poet Lorine Niedecker in a journal kept during a 1966 road trip around Lake Superior. “In every tiny part of any living thing are materials that once were rock that turned to soil,” she reminds us. “Your teeth and bones were once coral.”

+

Niedecker does something here that few have done in recent times — she makes us part of the story. Because we are part of the story, and have always been part of the story. Especially here. The “environmental” historian1 William Cronon writes of what he calls “historical wilderness,”2 an effort to remember that no matter what our ideologies and beliefs may claim, we are nature. Nature is not something outside of us and to pretend otherwise is to sell yourself a pack of lies that will leave you very confused about your place in the world.

+

We have always been part of the story, the question is how are we part of the story?

+

As California is slowly starting to realize, John Muir’s vision of untrammeled wilderness has always been about personal ideology more than anything else — Man as the special snowflake that lies outside nature, though in this case the snowflake ruins everything. The problem with that vision is that it’s demonstrably wrong. Muir’s beloved Yosemite Valley was the beautiful vast meadow he writes about because the people who lived in it used controlled burns to keep it that way. It was a garden because they made it a garden. Muir and his ilk kicked those people out, put fences around the trees and now wonder why it all burns down.

+

Here on the shores of Superior humans have been part of the story for longer than anyone can remember, which helps stop ideologies that espouse otherwise. Once this was the land of the people we call Sioux, who were driven out by the Ojibwe, who in turn were driven out by European settlers, who in turn will be driven out by someone. We’re all temporary.

+

Right now though, this moment in history, is a good one for Superior. Somewhere in the elaborate dance between people and place that’s been happening here for thousands of years is a feeling that’s difficult to pin down, but is clear when you experience it.

+

Lake Superior is one of those places where we immediately felt at home. The landscape, the forests, the water, the towns, everything up here feels welcoming and, for lack of the better word, good. In the 1960s, when it was still widely acknowledged that there were human experiences that did not fit into the world as defined by modern industrial society, people called this the “vibe” of a place (or person, or thing).

+

The more closely you examine this feeling, the more complex the experience of it becomes. For those of us passing through it often feels more like a color or hue that seems to hand over the place. And Lake Superior is a place of many hues, literally and figuratively. Its water alone can be twenty different shades of blue and green in a single day.

+
+ + Shipwreck tour, near pictured rocks national seashore photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Lighthouse, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Shipwreck tour, near pictured rocks national seashore photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + + + Tettegouche State Park,MN photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + + lake superior near, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + Madeline Island Ferry, Bayside, WI photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + + Madeline Island, WI photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + lake superior near, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf + + + +
+ +

The notion that Lake Superior has a single vibe to it is of course a simplification. It has many shores, many faces, many vibes. It’s also a place of moods that can turn on a dime. Sometimes it’s warm and humid and icy waters are a relief, but then ten minutes later you might find the sky shrouded in clouds that bring near darkness and leave you shivering in the wind.

+
+ + Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Whitefish point, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

Part of Lake Superior’s charm is that it has somehow escaped the “progress” of the world since about the early 1980s. Don’t get me wrong, I think humans are part of the story, but lately I think we’ve been doing a really bad job of writing it. Curiously though, much of the crap that’s come to infest our lives in the past few decades hasn’t come here.

+

It’s not just that there’s no Starbucks, no strip malls, almost no chain companies at all, though for the most part there are not, it’s more that it has somehow retained that previous world, carried it through the recent past and left it alone. Old metal playgrounds abound, the family-owned single story motel still provides 99 percent of the lodging, supermarkets are usually locally owned, co-ops are common, and even elements of far older eras persist, like the supper clubs that still seem to function. Houses remain simple, small and cozy, the McMansions found in most other parts of the country simply aren’t here.

+

It’s a place that seem to have recognized the difference between genuine human progress and technological advancement for its own sake and opted to stick with the former. Like the denizens of the Lake Superior region, I don’t think we’ve seen much of real progress in technology since about 19783 and even that would be pushing it. I can make a strong case for the early 1940s being the peak of human technological advancement, but I won’t bore you with it.

+
+ + old school motel photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + vagabond motel, near andrus lake, MI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + sign, st ignace, mi photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + sign, st ignace, mi photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Signs near Duluth, MN photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Playground, memorial park, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Playground, memorial park, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

We would probably have lingered in the Lake Superior area longer, but unlike last year’s completely open-ended travels, this year we have an appointment to keep. We must be in Dallas by September 26th and we needed to pass through South Dakota on our way. Eventually we packed it up, took a last look at Lake Superior as we drove down the Minnesota coast, and then headed west, away from the water, the forest, the rock, the water, the weather and the life of Lake Superior.

+
+
+
    +
  1. +

    Environmental historian is an interesting term, it implies, correctly I’d argue, that our conception of history is so woefully incompletely we neglect to even include the environment in our reckoning of it. It’s no wonder we completely fail to understand the past in any meaningful way — we can’t even construct a reasonably complete story of it. ↩

    +
    2. +
  2. +

    Cronon, William. “The Riddle of the Apostle Islands: How do you manage a wilderness full of human stories?” Orion May-June 2003: 36-42 ↩

    +
    3. +
  3. +

    But what about the internet? I give it a maybe. Future generations can decide that one. ↩

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3 Comments

+ + + + + + +
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+ classical_liberal + September 03, 2018 at 2:24 a.m. +
+ +
+ +

“Go’en Up Nort”. That’s what a native Minnesotan calls their trip from the Twin Cities to Superior.

+

Glad you enjoyed your time up here and a soon to be congrats on your shiny new SD residency?

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Jonathan + September 03, 2018 at 10:44 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

What do you mean by “the world as defined by modern industrial society”

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Scott + September 04, 2018 at 4:48 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

classic_liberal-

+

We did, we loved it. In 50-100 years, when the winters aren’t so bad, I’d move up there. :)

+

And yes, we did get SD licenses, almost a month ago now, but I look so old apparently that no one has asked for it yet.

+

jonathan-

+

That is a bit vague isn’t it? I mean the fairly narrowly defined world of scientific materialism and the general idea that everything is progressing toward something. I have nothing against scientific materialism though, it’s very good at what it defines. What I reject is its premise that that’s all there is in the world.

+

And I very much have a problem with the belief that time is somehow the inevitable march of progress. That’s superstitious hogwash that’s based on poorly understood notions of evolution and is demonstrably false.

+ +
+
+ +
+ + +
+ +
+

Thoughts?

+

Please leave a reply:

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All comments are moderated, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice.

+ + +
+ +
+ + + + +
+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d122ceb --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/superior.txt @@ -0,0 +1,87 @@ +Superior +======== + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Tuesday, 14 August 2018 + +In the coldest parts of Lake Superior it takes discipline to convince yourself to swim. Just walking out knee deep in that water which looks no cloudier than air, but feels like a vise of cold squeezing at ever pore of your skin, takes concerted effort. + +After a few steps your feet are numb. A few more and they begin to hurt. I never made it deep enough dive in at the coldest of the beaches, around Pictured Rocks, instead you lie down quickly, and then jump up, more of a baptism than a swim. + +After the gasping subsides, and you climb back out of the water to lie on the warm brown and apricot rocks, the sun slowing draws the blood out of your core and back to the edges of yourself with a prickling, almost painful feeling, like the rock is needling at your skin. + +This is the story of Lake Superior: water, rock, weather, and life. + + + + + + + + + +This is of course the story of everywhere as well. The world we experience with our senses is made up of water, rock, weather, life, and the relationships between them. Or, to use more familiar, but perhaps less fashionable terms, Water, Earth, Fire, Air and Spirit. + +On the shores of Lake Superior, Water and Earth are the most obvious. Nothing is written here without taking them into account. The shoreline is the story of rock and water moving through time. "The journey of the rock is never ended," writes poet Lorine Niedecker in a journal kept during a 1966 road trip around Lake Superior. "In every tiny part of any living thing are materials that once were rock that turned to soil," she reminds us. "Your teeth and bones were once coral." + +Niedecker does something here that few have done in recent times -- she makes us part of the story. Because we are part of the story, and have always been part of the story. Especially here. The "environmental" historian[^1] William Cronon writes of what he calls "historical wilderness,"[^2] an effort to remember that no matter what our ideologies and beliefs may claim, we are nature. Nature is not something outside of us and to pretend otherwise is to sell yourself a pack of lies that will leave you very confused about your place in the world. + +We have always been part of the story, the question is *how* are we part of the story? + +As California is slowly starting to realize, John Muir's vision of untrammeled wilderness has always been about personal ideology more than anything else -- Man as the special snowflake that lies outside nature, though in this case the snowflake ruins everything. The problem with that vision is that it's demonstrably wrong. Muir's beloved Yosemite Valley was the beautiful vast meadow he writes about because the people who lived in it used controlled burns to keep it that way. It was a garden because they made it a garden. Muir and his ilk kicked those people out, put fences around the trees and now wonder why it all burns down. + +Here on the shores of Superior humans have been part of the story for longer than anyone can remember, which helps stop ideologies that espouse otherwise. Once this was the land of the people we call Sioux, who were driven out by the Ojibwe, who in turn were driven out by European settlers, who in turn will be driven out by someone. We're all temporary. + +Right now though, this moment in history, is a good one for Superior. Somewhere in the elaborate dance between people and place that's been happening here for thousands of years is a feeling that's difficult to pin down, but is clear when you experience it. + +Lake Superior is one of those places where we immediately felt at home. The landscape, the forests, the water, the towns, everything up here feels welcoming and, for lack of the better word, good. In the 1960s, when it was still widely acknowledged that there were human experiences that did not fit into the world as defined by modern industrial society, people called this the "vibe" of a place (or person, or thing). + +The more closely you examine this feeling, the more complex the experience of it becomes. For those of us passing through it often feels more like a color or hue that seems to hand over the place. And Lake Superior is a place of many hues, literally and figuratively. Its water alone can be twenty different shades of blue and green in a single day. + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
+ +The notion that Lake Superior has a single vibe to it is of course a simplification. It has many shores, many faces, many vibes. It's also a place of moods that can turn on a dime. Sometimes it's warm and humid and icy waters are a relief, but then ten minutes later you might find the sky shrouded in clouds that bring near darkness and leave you shivering in the wind. + + + + + + +Part of Lake Superior's charm is that it has somehow escaped the "progress" of the world since about the early 1980s. Don't get me wrong, I think humans are part of the story, but lately I think we've been doing a really bad job of writing it. Curiously though, much of the crap that's come to infest our lives in the past few decades hasn't come here. + +It's not just that there's no Starbucks, no strip malls, almost no chain companies at all, though for the most part there are not, it's more that it has somehow retained that previous world, carried it through the recent past and left it alone. Old metal playgrounds abound, the family-owned single story motel still provides 99 percent of the lodging, supermarkets are usually locally owned, co-ops are common, and even elements of far older eras persist, like the supper clubs that still seem to function. Houses remain simple, small and cozy, the McMansions found in most other parts of the country simply aren't here. + +It's a place that seem to have recognized the difference between genuine human progress and technological advancement for its own sake and opted to stick with the former. Like the denizens of the Lake Superior region, I don't think we've seen much of real progress in technology since about 1978[^3] and even that would be pushing it. I can make a strong case for the early 1940s being the peak of human technological advancement, but I won't bore you with it. + + + + + + + + + +We would probably have lingered in the Lake Superior area longer, but unlike last year's completely open-ended travels, this year we have an appointment to keep. We must be in Dallas by September 26th and we needed to pass through South Dakota on our way. Eventually we packed it up, took a last look at Lake Superior as we drove down the Minnesota coast, and then headed west, away from the water, the forest, the rock, the water, the weather and the life of Lake Superior. + +[^1]: Environmental historian is an interesting term, it implies, correctly I'd argue, that our conception of history is so woefully incompletely we neglect to even include the environment in our reckoning of it. It's no wonder we completely fail to understand the past in any meaningful way -- we can't even construct a reasonably complete story of it. +[^2]: Cronon, William. “The Riddle of the Apostle Islands: How do you manage a wilderness full of human stories?” Orion May-June 2003: 36-42 +[^3]: But what about the internet? I give it a maybe. Future generations can decide that one. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..28481cc --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.html @@ -0,0 +1,623 @@ + + + + + West To Wall Drug - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
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West to Wall Drug

+ +
+
+

Buffalo Gap National Grassland, South Dakota, U.S.

+ – Map +
+ + +
+
+
+

We left Lake Superior the historically correct way — heading west, watching the trees thin out until they’re gone and the there is only grass and sky.

+

To be truly historically correct you must be driven out by someone else. This is how the Ojibwe left when they were driven out by the United States, how the Sioux went when they were driven out by the Ojibwe, and how whomever the Sioux drove out probably went as well. These days we have it easy, we get driven out by our own engines.

+

Over the course of a couple of days driving, the trees disappear and then, rather suddenly, you find yourself surrounded by sky, on the seemingly limitless plains of South Dakota.

+
+ + Welcome to south dakota photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

The first night out of the Great Lakes region every campground we tried was full. We ended up in a hotel. Driven out by crowds.

+

After that we spent a couple nights at a South Dakota state park, mainly for the receipt, which we needed to become residents of South Dakota.

+

Just as Delaware is home to corporations, who come for the tax breaks and whatnot, South Dakota is home for full time RVers who don’t want to pay state taxes anymore. All you need to do is sign up for a mailing address (which forwards your mail to you), stay one night in a hotel, RV park or anywhere that give you a receipt with your name on it, and your previous ID. We’re now legally residents of South Dakota, though we’ll always be Georgians in our hearts.

+

With our receipt in hand we headed west, stopping off at the Missouri river for a night.

+
+ + swimming in the missouri river, SD photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + swimming in the missouri river, SD photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + sunset over the missouri river, SD photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

After that we abandoned the back roads we usually stick to and headed down I-90 toward the Badlands and South Dakota’s other famous landmark: Wall Drug.

+

Wall SD is one of those places that no one would have ever stopped in were it not for one woman who gave them a reason to stop there. Ted Hustead bought Wall Drug in 1931. At the time Wall had 231 residents and pretty much nothing to entice anyone else to ever come into Hustead’s new drug store. His wife hit on the idea of offering free ice water to travelers headed for the newly opened travesty monument, Mount Rushmore. Back before air conditioning, ice water was no small enticement in these parts and it worked. And if water worked, think how many more people 5¢ coffee will bring, think how many more a giant jackalope will bring and so on until the tourist phenomena of Wall Drug had become something significantly more than a drug store should ever really hope to be.

+

Today Wall somehow manages to be terribly touristy, yet charming in its quaintness, even if that quaintness is itself a well-crafted enticement. Some things when examined too closely threaten to accidentally unravel the entire universe. Don’t dig too deep into these things. Still, the billboards are small, understated and feature photos of food seemingly lifted straight out of the illustrated pages of the 1953 Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog. It’s quaint.

+
+ + Wall Drug billboard photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + Wall Drug billboard photographed by luxagraf + +
Not lying, the coffee really is 5¢ and it’s on the honor system, drop a nickel in the wooden box, grab a cup.
+
+ +

The even stranger part is that inside the display cases of Wall Drug — the cases themselves looking not unlike something that might have been sold in that 1953 catalog — the food really does look just like the pictures. I still can’t figure out how they pull that off.

+

Wall Drug is more or less a full city block of tourist junk and food, and yes there’s still free ice water, and the coffee is still 5 cents. The donuts are pretty good too. Bill Bryson sums up Wall Drug perfectly in The Lost Continent: “It’s an awful place, one of the world’s worst tourist traps, but I loved it and I won’t have a word said against it.”

+
+ + + wall drug, wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + + wall drug, wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + wall drug, wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + + wall drug, wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + + + + + + wall drug, wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + + +
+ +

You can’t pass through these parts without stopping at Wall Drug. Something will entice you in. For me it was the donuts, though later I discovered the gas station sold them too, so I didn’t have the wade through Wall Drug just to buy a donut in the morning.

+
+ + view of the badlands, buffalo gap national grasslands, wall, sd photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

Head due south of Wall and you’ll run into the west entrance to Badlands National Park. About a mile before you get to the national park entrance there’s an unmarked dirt road with a barbed wire gate and small sign that says “Please Close Gate” and has a small logo of the National Forest Service. Open that gate — close it behind you! — and then you’re free to camp just about anywhere inside Buffalo Gap National Grasslands.

+
+ + buffalo gap, near Wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

There are “campsites” along the dirt road, which threads the edge main ridge that becomes the center of the Badlands. Pretty much anywhere there’s enough space to pull off the dirt road and not slide down the cliff there’s signs of someone having camped. We grabbed a small pullout about half way down the road that had amazing views of the canyons and ridges that make up the Badlands.

+
+ + playground with a view, buffalo gap national grasslands, wall, sd photographed by luxagraf + +
Playing with a view.
+
+ +
+ + Sunrise over the Badlands, Wall, SD photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +
+ + sunrise over the bus, buffalo gap national grasslands, wall, sd photographed by luxagraf + +
+ +

We liked it so much we stayed for two weeks. We’d have stayed even longer if we could have, but two weeks is the limit for federal land. It’s probably just as well, otherwise we might be there still.

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6 Comments

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+ Patsy Wall + September 12, 2018 at 12:30 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

Loved the pictures, we were at Wall Drugstore in June on our trek to Yellowstone. Yes we did get the free water and 5 cent coffee. It was fun and the badlands are amazingly beautiful. Enjoy your journey!

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Scott + September 12, 2018 at 8:08 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

Patsy-

+

Glad you made it to Wall Drug, it’s well worth the visit. Hope you enjoyed the rest of your trip.

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ DREW ELDRIDGE + September 13, 2018 at 10:35 a.m. +
+ +
+ +

Have you read Neil Gaimans American Gods?

+

If so, Wall Drug should have def been a setting in that book- its a place that pulls you in although it really shouldnt. Things are at play there that you cant see.

+

If not, I think you would like it. Its a fun read.

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Scott + September 13, 2018 at 12:22 p.m. +
+ +
+ +

Drew-

+

That’s the one and only audiobook I’ve ever listened to and I hated it (the audiobook part) enough that I’ve blocked it out. But I sort of remember the book seemed pretty good. I should go back and read it, thanks for the suggestion.

+

For all my obsession with the nature of places and the way they affect us, I actually hadn’t really given it much though with regard to Wall Drug. I’ll have to ponder that. I mean I thought all it took to get me in was a picture of donuts and 5¢ coffee, but perhaps there was something more at work there.

+

The book I kept thinking about out here was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. And Willa Cather’s pioneer stories.

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ classical_liberal + September 16, 2018 at 1:20 a.m. +
+ +
+ +

Glad you enjoyed the badlands. A wholey unappreciated area for most travelers IMO. I love it there. ND badlands are equally enticing, but with more wildlife.

+

Wall drug… after hundreds of miles of flat land and signs, anyone who doesn’t stop is a communist! Still, the only thing there I really enjoy is all of the old photos. The lives that were once lived on those prairies are amazing and thought provoking.

+

Were you in Chamberlain, SD in the Mo river pictures? I actual did a short contract at the critical access hospital there.

+ +
+
+ +
+ +
+ Scott + September 16, 2018 at 8:41 a.m. +
+ +
+ +

classical_liberal-

+

Wish we’d have had time to make it to north dakota, but you know, you have to save something for next time.

+

And no, we were south of Chamberlain in those images, but that morning we cut up from 44 up to 90 and went through Chamberlain. I remember it becaase there’s that big sculpture, Dignity, at the rest area on the other side of the river that’s pretty cool.

+ +
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Thoughts?

+

Please leave a reply:

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All comments are moderated, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice.

+ + +
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+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..475d4ff --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/08/wall-drug.txt @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +West to Wall Drug +================= + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Saturday, 18 August 2018 + +We left Lake Superior the historically correct way -- heading west, watching the trees thin out until they're gone and the there is only grass and sky. + +To be truly historically correct you must be driven out by someone else. This is how the Ojibwe left when they were driven out by the United States, how the Sioux went when they were driven out by the Ojibwe, and how whomever the Sioux drove out probably went as well. These days we have it easy, we get driven out by our own engines. + +Over the course of a couple of days driving, the trees disappear and then, rather suddenly, you find yourself surrounded by sky, on the seemingly limitless plains of South Dakota. + + + +The first night out of the Great Lakes region every campground we tried was full. We ended up in a hotel. Driven out by crowds. + +After that we spent a couple nights at a South Dakota state park, mainly for the receipt, which we needed to become residents of South Dakota. + +Just as Delaware is home to corporations, who come for the tax breaks and whatnot, South Dakota is home for full time RVers who don't want to pay state taxes anymore. All you need to do is sign up for a mailing address (which forwards your mail to you), stay one night in a hotel, RV park or anywhere that give you a receipt with your name on it, and your previous ID. We're now legally residents of South Dakota, though we'll always be Georgians in our hearts. + +With our receipt in hand we headed west, stopping off at the Missouri river for a night. + + + + + +After that we abandoned the back roads we usually stick to and headed down I-90 toward the Badlands and South Dakota's other famous landmark: Wall Drug. + +Wall SD is one of those places that no one would have ever stopped in were it not for one woman who gave them a reason to stop there. Ted Hustead bought Wall Drug in 1931. At the time Wall had 231 residents and pretty much nothing to entice anyone else to ever come into Hustead's new drug store. His wife hit on the idea of offering free ice water to travelers headed for the newly opened travesty monument, Mount Rushmore. Back before air conditioning, ice water was no small enticement in these parts and it worked. And if water worked, think how many more people 5¢ coffee will bring, think how many more a giant jackalope will bring and so on until the tourist phenomena of Wall Drug had become something significantly more than a drug store should ever really hope to be. + +Today Wall somehow manages to be terribly touristy, yet charming in its quaintness, even if that quaintness is itself a well-crafted enticement. Some things when examined too closely threaten to accidentally unravel the entire universe. Don't dig too deep into these things. Still, the billboards are small, understated and feature photos of food seemingly lifted straight out of the illustrated pages of the 1953 Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog. It's quaint. + + + + +The even stranger part is that inside the display cases of Wall Drug -- the cases themselves looking not unlike something that might have been sold in that 1953 catalog -- the food really does look just like the pictures. I still can't figure out how they pull that off. + +Wall Drug is more or less a full city block of tourist junk and food, and yes there's still free ice water, and the coffee is still 5 cents. The donuts are pretty good too. Bill Bryson sums up Wall Drug perfectly in The Lost Continent: "It's an awful place, one of the world's worst tourist traps, but I loved it and I won't have a word said against it." + +
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+ + +You can't pass through these parts without stopping at Wall Drug. Something will entice you in. For me it was the donuts, though later I discovered the gas station sold them too, so I didn't have the wade through Wall Drug just to buy a donut in the morning. + + + +Head due south of Wall and you'll run into the west entrance to Badlands National Park. About a mile before you get to the national park entrance there's an unmarked dirt road with a barbed wire gate and small sign that says "Please Close Gate" and has a small logo of the National Forest Service. Open that gate -- close it behind you! -- and then you're free to camp just about anywhere inside Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. + + + +There are "campsites" along the dirt road, which threads the edge main ridge that becomes the center of the Badlands. Pretty much anywhere there's enough space to pull off the dirt road and not slide down the cliff there's signs of someone having camped. We grabbed a small pullout about half way down the road that had amazing views of the canyons and ridges that make up the Badlands. + + + + + +We liked it so much we stayed for two weeks. We'd have stayed even longer if we could have, but two weeks is the limit for federal land. It's probably just as well, otherwise we might be there still. -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2