Oh yeah, us having arrived in Fargo, ND this evening, you were expecting movie references like “You betcha” or “Mr. Lundegaard? Mr. Lundegaard!” But no, we have reached far deeper into cultural irrelevancy to bring you Fargo North, Decoder. He was the goofy detective on “The Electric Company” a 1970’s PBS show for children who had graduated from Sesame Street. They had lots of puns, like, well, Fargo North, Decoder. There are lots of clips on YouTube.

So this was a very long day; our second longest distance but the most time on the road. It should have been shorter but we lost an hour in a construction zone west of Eau Claire, WI and that put us in rush hour traffic in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Otherwise it was an un-eventful day. The temperature and humidity were oppressive in Madison. Both broke about thirty miles out of town. We covered the whole width of Minnesota on a bit of a diagonal. By the west side of the state things were starting to feel a bit more like west than the mid-west including more grazing animals and speed limits greater than 65! And yes, Minnesota has a LOT of lakes.

Steve Goodman wrote it, Arlo Guthrie made it famous, you know when you hear it and can probably hum it if not sing it.

 

The City of New Orleans

by Steve Goodman

 

Riding on the City of New Orleans,

Illinois Central Monday morning rail

Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,

Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.

All along the southbound odyssey

The train pulls out at Kankakee

Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.

Passin’ trains that have no names,

Freight yards full of old black men

And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

 

CHORUS:

Good morning America how are you?

Don’t you know me I’m your native son,

I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans,

I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.*

For a long time I’ve wondered about this place, Kankakee; figured here must be some romance to the place to garner a mention in the song. Uh, no. Not unless things have gone way-downhill for Kankakee over the years since 1971. More likely, the train from Chicago to New Orleans stopped in Kankakee; and the name fit the meter of the lyric.

Today we drove from Indianapolis to Madison, WI. We decided we’d prefer not to re-trace our steps, so that meant leaving Indy to the west instead of the more direct route to Chicago. We looked at a map and decided Kankakee was not too much of a stretch. We did enjoy the ride because we got to take some rural roads through real farms, both corn and wind. The mid-west feeds America and the world of course. But it’s also becoming dotted with wind farms. We love the graceful look of the vanes on the modern windmills. Today we saw a massive wind farm under construction. Most of the windmills had their generators but no vanes. We did see some vanes and some tubes on massive trucks heading to the wind farm.

Madison is fun. We’ve been here before for the graduation of a nephew. We found a BBQ that serves gluten-free ribs. It’s hot and very humid, a 1.5 mile walk to and from dinner pretty much tired us out.

*Tomorrow we plan to drive just about… five hundred miles.

Yup, somebody said that. On TV. The Brickyard 400 was today. One of the local stations was interviewing people at the track in the morning before the race. A woman said the above when asked if there was any crowd when she and her family entered the track.

The bigger theme here is that the race has lost its mojo. When we first came here in 1994, we had to stay in Ohio because there were no rooms to be had in Indianapolis. I mean there wasn’t not any rooms there. Even just a few years ago we were reserving our rooms a year in advance and paying double the normal rate. This year we reserved a few weeks ago and got a discount.

The economy may be to blame. But it may also be the fact that the race hasn’t been great in recent years. This year was no exception; one driver, Jimmie Johnson, was in his own zip code he was so much faster than everyone else. It’s still fun to be there. The cars sound great, look awesome and you really feel them when all 43 race into turn 1. New (to us) this year; they lined the cars up right in front of the stands before the race. We heard and felt an awesome rumble when they fired up and took off for the parade lap.

The last few days have been very hot and muggy. Today was a bit cooler (high 80’s) and much drier. Once the sun swings around to the west a little bit, our seats go in to the shade and on a day like today, we are pretty comfortable.

Tomorrow starts the return trip. We’ll go about 2,300 miles, a bit more direct than the trip here. There are no more off days; we drive every day until we get home.

We kind of replayed the day before. We saw a movie, Ted, that was a little raunchy but fun overall. And we did some Farkle and people-watching in the evening. Downtown Indy becomes a bit of a freak show on a Saturday night. You see people dressed in ball gowns while others are in full cowboy or cowgirl get-ups. Some people are smashed; others are just getting the party started. There are plenty of con men working the crowd. Cool cars and bikes circle the Monument. We had fun watching it all.

Two weeks down, one to go.

Slept a little later than usual, went to our favorite breakfast place, saw a movie (Moonrise Kingdom) and had a nice dinner at Palomino. Plus just a little Words with Friends…

Moonrise Kingdom was interesting, a little reminiscent of The Royal Tenenbaums, which is not surprising as they are both Wes Anderson movies.

The weather broke a little, at least temperature-wise.  But it rained like crazy at times during the afternoon.  We missed a lot of that by being in the movie.

We’re in Indianapolis. Eight days of driving (we stayed put in Boise  and Chicago for two days each) brought us 2,809 miles. If we had driven directly from the Seattle area, we would have driven a little under 2,300 miles. Last summer we drove just over 2,800 miles in 25 days, but covered four countries.

We’ll be here for a few days and then it’s six long days to get back home.

Hump day because that’s what people call Wednesday, the middle day of the week. It’s also the middle day of our trip. So far, so good and we are having a blast. The fish reference is because today we went to the Shedd Aquarium here in Chicago.

It’s naht a toomah!

The aquarium was a zoo. No wait… Anyway it was packed. We waited on line to buy tickets, waited on line to see fish and waited on line to eat. We probably should have guessed this would happen; but we didn’t. We loved the otters; they are cute. And the rays are amazing, if a little scary looking.  And no, they don’t have a whale at this aquarium.  At lease we didn’t see one…

Today was hot. Over 100 for most of the day. When we left dinner around 8pm it was still well into the nineties.

Tomorrow we hit the road again. Chicago was fun, but it’s time to move on.

Today we went to see the Roy Lichtenstein exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Lichtenstein is that painter who used colored dots to give his art a newpaper-y feel. That’s a gross simplification of course, but it’s how a lot of people know him. In fact, he went through several periods in his artistic life including the pop-art phase we all know but also a modern phase, a landscape phase and even some sculpture.

The Art Institute is HUGE. We spent a few hours there and hardly saw half of it.

For lunch we went to Rick Bayless’ Frontera Grill. We give it mixed reviews. The Mole Trio was great, the ceviche, while fine also, was very small. In the afternoon we played Words-with-Friends, read the newspaper and grabbed salads at Whole Foods to eat while we watched “The Five Year Engagement” in the hotel.

It was good to have a day off the road. We’ll have another tomorrow; probably hitting another museum, the planetarium or the aquarium in the morning and then hanging out in the afternoon.

Chicago has the most amazing architecture and public art. We’ll post a few photos on Smugmug.

Today we drove to Chicago were we will stay three nights. We’re in a cute hotel that says of itself “European style”. We traveled for three-plus weeks in Europe last summer and only stayed in one hotel room that was smaller than the room we have here. But, on the plus-side; it’s nicely located and they wave the parking fee for hybrids!

OMG, they traded Ichiro?!? Even though his skills and numbers have declined in the last two years, he’s still one of our favorite Mariners. The only bad thing about being on the road at this moment is that we won’t get to see the game on TV and see how the Safeco Field fans treat him when he comes to bat tonight for the Yankees. We will miss you Ichiro…

Short day today, we drove here pretty quickly from Des Moines. Lots more traffic than we’ve been used to, but things moved for the most part. We had a nice dinner at a hipster place called Hub 51. They have a lot of gluten-free options.

Tomorrow we’re off to the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Roy Lichtenstein exhibit.

No photos again today…

Today we drove from the middle (southern part of the state) of South Dakota to Des Moines, IA. Since we were very close to Nebraska, we thought we’d take a quick spin across the Missouri River and check that state off our list. But first we stopped for salad and coffee at a grocery store in Iowa. We’ve been having really simple lunches along the way, mainly stuff we buy in… grocery stores. The store we found today had a food court and we ate there. At one point we asked the barista at Starbucks (in the grocery store) about the best way to cross over into Nebraska. Along with directions, she warned us about Nebraska drivers saying they were all crazy.

We’re not sure what her reference is; drivers in Iowa seem pretty crazy too. We’re definitely not in the West anymore. The roads are more crowded, the speed limits, and the speeds are about 10 miles slower and people seem to like to hog the left lane regardless of their speed.

Other grab bag items:

We’re seeing a lot of permanent construction zones. About 14 miles of I-90 in South Dakota has east and west traffic sharing what was the eastbound lanes. The westbound lanes are gone. No pavement, just road bed. And that’s eroding with weeds popping up here and there. There are no construction machines to be seen anywhere in that stretch. It looks pretty permanent. We saw something similar in Iowa.

The Missouri river is huge. We crossed it in South Dakota and it forms the border between Nebraska and Iowa. Land within 10 or 20 miles of the river is generally green whereas most everything else is brown. You can see where the nation’s food comes from. BTW, Iowa is corn, corn, corn.

It’s really HOT here. Generally it was 100 degrees plus-or-minus a degree everywhere we went today. We left a restaurant after dinner and saw a bank sign that said 103. That’s around 8pm or so.

We’ve been heading east our whole trip; today was the first time we hit an odd-numbered (north-south) Interstate. We were on I-29 for a while, but then connected with I-80 for more eastbound travel.

We’ve seen some ‘funny’ gas station names including Whoa N’ Go, Kum & Go and the Loaf N’ Jug.

Des Moines seems like a nice city with friendly people. We found some good gluten-free options at a local brewery.

No photos for the blog or Smugmug, it was all interstate travel today. Pretty much the same on tap for tomorrow.