17 Aug 2008
The Joy of the Unexpected, Part 1
Tonight’s theme: spontaneity and the unexpected. It’s what has made this trip exciting and memorable.
We made our first spontaneous decision on the way to the Bryant’s back in northwest PA. Back then, the GPS and I didn’t get along very well. She seemed more like a smooth-talking authoritarian than a friendly guide. So in Franklin, she tricked me into going a different way, which then led to a detour around the quaint town of Oil City and later on, a backwoods “adventure” on a dirt road through some backwoods neighborhood of unknown name. Calling it an adventure reflects the child-like excitability about what makes up a road trip that I possessed early on.
Of course, then I grew up and took our next adventure much more seriously. Speeding through northern Indiana, we were suddenly convinced that a stop in the state of Michigan was absolutely necessary. Up we went into the wilderness until we fell upon the lakeside village of South Haven, a place where the very wealthy dock their boats and build their summer homes. The beaches, however, happen to be free, so we lathered our bodies in sunscreen and ran straight into the water. I swam like a bird, free and fast; Jared recorded the moment on “film” (in other words, his camera’s 8 MB memory card). We were there an hour.
Other spur-of-the-moment decisions included stops at a scenic overlook north of the Wisconsin Dells, at a Minnesota Apple store (of which you’ve seen a photo), and in Mitchell, SD (to see the Corn Palace and then the cornfields from which the building material was harvested, just outside town).
We also saw a little more of Minneapolis than we had planned at first because the GPS got overwhelmed by all the side streets and freeways and I missed an exit or two. Of course, I quickly forgave her.
I’m sure you all remember (favorably or not) the dramatic experience we had up near Point Sublime. All throughout the Badlands, Custer State Park, middle-of-nowhere-Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Tetons, we stopped to see and wonder at similarly sublime sceneries, though none were nearly as distinctive. Occasionally, my horribly indecisive nature put us in danger of being rear-ended. But most of the time, we chose to “shoot” or “run” speedily enough to satisfy the definitions of safety and spontaneity both.
Northern Utah gave us nothing worth remembering or reporting, except for the mysterious letters “G” and “Y” pinned to two distant mountains. The word “gynecologist” seemed to be implied, but the next letter—“Z”—dashed our hopes.
Fortunately, before we ended our holy (and thus, wholly uneventful) trek through Mormon country down near Zion Canyon, the GPS led us once again into the wilderness. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize what her intentions were until we had already traveled seven or so miles toward nowhere-in-particular so we were forced to turn back and fill up on fuel before resuming the adventure. To summarize this episode in three words, we went up. We drove up a thirteen-degree incline, past Bryan’s Head ski resort, through an inadvertently discovered state park, to an astonishing overlook (apparently belonging to some sort of Chess piece). There, due to elevation, our heads became overblown balloons, and our legs filled with jelly. Once again, we owe our thanks to Glenda Phoebe Systema.
