Terror at Twin Lakes!

     Let's revisit something from earlier in the trip that has stuck with me. I've had my share of discomfort so far, and then some. Trying to go to sleep, and noticing a bump of a root underneath you that mysteriously popped up after you inspected the ground for a flat place to sleep. Waking up and finding the temperature, which was in the glorious upper seventies the day before, has now dropped to the twenties and the tent is covered in ice. None of this compares with the sense of foreboding and sheer doom I felt upon arriving at a place that's name still gives me the shakes when I hear or see it: Twin Lakes State Recreation Area.

Even the internets don't like this place.

     This eerie locale is not too far from the intersection of 395th Ave. and 236th St. I noticed this trend of street naming once we reached Ohio. You'll be driving through fields and fields of corn, or miles of empty grassland, and a small, pitted, dirt road will pass by. You glance at the name out of curiosity, and you'll do a double-take because it'll be something like, "849th St." Now you haven't seen shit in hours, and this road seems to go nowhere, and you're left wondering how the hell the number got up that high. Perhaps you nodded off briefly, and missed Streets 1 through 848?

This doesn't really apply to the blog, I just liked it.

      Outside of the oddly-numbered streets, the drive to Twin Lakes is...unpleasant. It seems the area used to be mostly cornfields, but at some point, they all became flooded. The whole area is a stinky, muddy marshland. And this is not something that happened recently either. Water fowl have moved into the area, and skim over the low, brown water. At one point we passed an old billboard sinking into the mud, and the old-school smiley face on it that once shone out with beaming yellow was now faded, and stained with years and years of brown-black high water marks. It was, to say the least, an ironic visage.

     After this journey through the wastelands, you finally come to Twin Lakes. They use the term "lake" extremely liberally, it seems, in South Dakota. I would have called it "Twin Piss Puddles State Recreation Area," but hey, I'm a stickler for accurate names. The grass was actually nicely manicured, and the half dozen or so campsites that faced the "shore" looked perfectly fine. Also, it's free to camp at, which was a first. Things were looking OK for us and Twin Lakes. That lasted for about 6 seconds, and then the bugs struck. A swarm of biting blackflies descended on us, and we scrambled back to the safety of the car. Which turned out not to be so safe, since (and we counted them as we killed them), 5 of the fuckers flew into the car in the time it took us to open the doors and get in.

Imagine Twin Lakes as this, but smaller, and marshier.

     As we sat in the car, scratching our fresh bites, I noticed a little community across the lake. Seeing as how the lake was only about 50 yards across, I got a pretty good view. Ramshackle houses and dingy trailers lined the opposite shore, about 10 in all. There were no cars, and while not boarded up or anything, it appeared to be a ghost town. I believe they were actually summer homes for people who wanted to boat on the lake. Which I imagine would be entirely possible, supposing your boat was made of folded newspaper and wax. Staring at those houses, though, I experienced something I don't think I've ever felt before. That would be the doom and foreboding I mentioned earlier.

     In the pit of my stomach, something started tingling, and not in a good, getting-a-boner kind of way. Something inside my head that wasn't a voice, exactly, but more like a repeating alarm clock going off, kept saying, "GO. GO. GO. GET OUT. GO." Panic overwhelmed me, and I'm not entirely sure why. I've seen shitty houses and creepy marshlands before, all the elements that made up my view. We've now camped almost 20 nights out here in the hinterlands, many of those places isolated and deep in the woods. But at none of them did I get the incredibly bad vibe that I did at Twin Lakes. I don't know if I thought some deeply inbred, nocturnal hicks were going to come out of the crawlspaces of those dilapidated houses once the sun set, paddle across the lake, and barbecue us...or maybe I would wake up to a mud-stained, mutated heron pecking out my eyeballs and swallowing them like grapes. Whatever it was I envisioned, it prompted me to get the hell out of there, leaving a rooster tail of dust behind my car as it hurtled away from that dark, evil place.

Yellowstone National Park, Brought to You by Disney

     What I'm about to say here probably breaks some cardinal law of campers and nature lovers everywhere, but to hell with it, I'm saying it anyway. Yellowstone kinda sucks. Now, now, settle down. I'm not talking about the environment or natural splendors there. They are quite beautiful, and wonders to behold. What sucks is the fact that while there, I was continually reminded of Six Flags, or Disney (which I've never been to, but feel I can imagine well enough).

     Much like Great Adventure, your visit to Yellowstone is kicked off with a line of cars waiting to drive through the entrance booth. Everyone has to pay their entrance fee, and of course, question the ranger there with a fervor normally reserved for a Mike Wallace interview on 60 Minutes. JZ and I had invested in an annual National Parks Pass, which I thought would allow us to bypass this clusterfuck much like the Fast Passes at Six Flags do, but I was mistaken. We waited our turn in line like everyone else, which irritated me to no end.

Welcome to Yellowstone!

     Another aspect of this national treasure that reminded me of a large-scale amusement park was the wildlife wandering by the roadside. It was very reminiscent of the drive-thru safari all us Ocean Countites know and ... love? While it was extremely gratifying to witness a buffalo up close, the behavior of my fellow motorists left much to be desired. When one merely saw someone standing in the shoulder of the road holding a camera at their side, they would proceed to slam on their brakes, kill 6 people behind them, and careen off the road in an attempt to snap a photo of whatever wildlife MAY be nearby. Downtown Manhattan has less gridlock at rush hour than Yellowstone does if an elk happens to wander anywhere near the roadside.

A more dangerous traffic hazard, I've not encountered.

     The congestion and claustrophobia continues once you exit the car and walk to gain a glimpse of one of the park's many natural geyser formations. Remember the line for El Toro the year it opened? Well, that has nothing on Old Faithful. Hundreds of people mill about, eating ice cream (handily sold at nearby concession stands), telling their kids, "shut up, it's gonna go off soon, then we can go back to the RV and watch TV," and preparing their cameras for the imminent eruption. If you're lucky, you get a spot behind two vertically-challenged Asian tourists and can view Old Faithful's mighty spew over their shoulders.

     Now I deride Yellowstone, but I do it in jest. It really is a beautiful, mind-blowing place that's enormity is amazing. I was there Labor Day Weekend, and I waited in line like all of the other cattle (people, I mean, not the actual cattle). My cynicism for "wholesome family adventure" didn't stop me from feeling like a kid again myself. Just not the kid stuffing ice cream in his maw and waiting to go back to the RV to watch Dora.

Wyoming's Rock Hard Protrusion

     In northeastern Wyoming, there's a natural wonder tucked away in the woods that is truly awe-inspiring. I never thought I'd type that sentence with sincerity, but alas, I've been proven wrong again (I could have sworn it was Kurt Russell in Point Break and Patrick Swayze in Tango & Cash!) Devil's Tower National Monument is a monolithic igneous intrusion, which is geologist talk for "huge rock that looks freakin' awesome." It's older than dirt (ha!) and humans have flocked to it for thousands of years for all kinds of reasons.

"Heh heh heh, hey Butt-head, check it out, the Earth has a boner."

     Clichés be damned, pictures really don't do it justice. The tower stands alone in a copse of serenely quiet pines. Wandering through those woods, craning my neck up to gaze at this marvel, I was overcome with a sense of peaceful calm. I tend to look at most things with a rather cynical eye, but even I couldn't restrain my wonder. I definitely understand why Richard Dreyfuss made a mashed potato replica of this thing in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Filmed on location...somewhere else.

     As you wander around the tower, you see little cloths tied to tree branches, or rock pyramids scattered about. Devil's Tower is a place of great religious importance to several Native American tribes, and they worship there. Unfortunately, this comes into conflict with the other group of people that flock to Devil's Tower most frequently - rock climbers. For years, these two groups have battled over who's entitled to have their views on the Tower respected. The Native Americans believe it is a place of worship, and see it as a Catholic might if a guy in Speedo shorts and a yellow helmet started flinging ropes onto the roof of the Vatican and scaled it to take pictures at the top. The climbers believe they're entitled to climb the Tower because...well, I'm not really sure what gives them their sense of entitlement, aside from, of course, their fancy belts with lots of metal loopy things hanging off. 

"Next summer, I plan on scaling the Taj Mahal."

     The matter was finally "settled" in the early 90's by Wyoming courts. They decided both sides had a legitimate claim to the Tower; the native people who have worshiped there for tens of thousands of years, as well the trendy yuppies who have climbed it for a few decades. Their ultimate ruling? Nothing. Since then, the Park Service has asked people not to climb during a few weeks in June (more specifically the summer solstice, an important time in Native American rituals) in a kind of voluntary ban. This compromise has been the status quo ever since, and studies indicate 85% of climbers honor the moratorium on climbing. Seems like a shitty "compromise" to me, but hey, I guess the Indians are used to that kind of thing...

Let's Do the Time Warp Again

     Somewhere around Ohio, you start to notice something. It's almost imperceptible at first, but quickly the realization strikes. You're a time traveler. It starts with the cars. You're zooming down the highway, and you pass a 1987 Chevy Astrovan. It makes you do a double take, because you haven't seen one since middle school. Then you see a soda machine (excuse me, POP machine) outside of some dinky gas station, and the outdated logo that adorns it triggers a memory in your brain of your first trip to McDonald's. The farther out west you go, the more the years tick backward.

The official state vehicle of South Dakota

     Now clearly, I don't believe in time travel. If I did, I'd go back and undo all those drunken texts I've sent to ladies at 3am. But all this retro stuff begs a question: Where did it come from? Have the citizens of these states merely meticulously kept up on their regularly scheduled maintenance? Even if that were the case, everything is a minimum of 25 miles away out there. It's highly implausible even the most cared for Ford Festiva would last several hundred thousand miles. Which brings up another point: It's never an old BMW or Mercedes you see cruising around, it's always cars that were pieces of shit from the moment they rolled off the assembly line. How do these anachronisms stand? It's a mystery worthy of Mr. Owl from the old Tootsie Pop Commercials. Which are now airing for the first time in southeastern Minnesota.

Is There Anybody Out There?

     Once you make it to the heartland of the country, you discover something: There ain't shit out there. The open space can be quite overwhelming for a born and bred Eastern Seaboarder. What appears to be only an inch or so on the map can turn into several hours of drive time. Naturally, your mind wanders in these wastelands. Whether it's gigantic expanses of corn, gigantic expanses of rock, or gigantic expanses of grass, you'll spend a lot of time staring through the windshield without much variation to stimulate your brain.

I've seen about 17 of these signs so far.

     Where I come from, one town ends, and then immediately thereafter, another town begins. There's a border, and theoretically, you could stand in two towns at once if you straddled it. This is not possible in most of the country. You leave one town, and a road sign informs you there isn't another for 34 miles. It's much like I imagined space travel to be as a boy. Propelling your way across the infinite void, random planets and outposts are encountered extremely rarely. I'm like a modern-day Captain Kirk, minus the hairpiece.

These are the voyages of the USS Chevy Cavalier...

     Instead of green-skinned alien babes, however, the only life forms you might encounter between towns are cows. Brown cows. Black Cows. White Cows. Brown and white cows. Black and white cows. It's a veritable rainbow coalition of cows out there in the abyss. The sad thing is, after a while, you're glad to see the cows. It's a sign of life, and something that is actually variable, as opposed to the endless, symmetrical rows of corn. You see an oddly colored cow, or (you gotta be real lucky for this) one doing something other than standing still and eating grass, and it's like you won the Powerball Lotto. An example:

          Me: "Holy shit, JZ! Did you see that cow over there?"

          JZ: "No, damnit, I missed it! What was it doing?"

          Me: "You wouldn't believe it, man- it was drinking some water, then it stopped and walked away!"

          JZ: "Wow! Ugh, I can't believe I didn't see..."

     And just like that, we have something to talk about for the next two hours until we reach a town.

Highway is a Life, I Wanna Ride it All Night Long

     Life on the road is a far cry from the comforts of a nice house in a nice part of town with nice neighbors. Life on the road is not nice. It takes a lot out of you. It can chew you up and spit you out if you don't adapt. It's not nice, but I was sick of nice. I wanted an adventure. A dirty, smelly, dangerous adventure. Boy, did I get what I wanted! But I wouldn't want it any other way. I've already started to conform to this new lifestyle, and I have to say, I like it.

Nope, life on the road is nowhere near this hip, or sexual.

     The thing you don't realize about a road trip like this is that your car becomes not only your mode of transportation, but also your closet, dining room, staging area, and in rare instances when you're in the middle of nowhere and a plastic bottle is handy, your bathroom. Take your life, and all the places that accomodate it, then compress them into a 2-door, 4 cylinder coupe. Oh yeah, and then halve that, because there's two of you traveling in this mobile apartment.

     

     Everything becomes a process. You finally make camp for the night, are enjoying the space and open air outside of the car, and realize you forgot to get your spoon out of the "gear bag." Open the car door, move the bag of dirty laundry to the left, the backpack full of electronics to the right, and throw the tote bag full of maps and books into the dirt because its just really been annoying the shit out of you all day. 

Here, jam this in your back seat.

     Success, gear bag located! Unzip it, dig past the cook set, the rain poncho, the windproof lighter, and there it is - the utensil bag! Open the plastic bag, shift the tongs out of the way, shove the spatula down farther, and toss the ketchup packets. Finally, you've reached the goal of your search, the spoon, which will allow you to enjoy baked beans like a human, and not a bear scooping them into its mouth with its paw. Walk back to camp, and prepare to enjoy....

     ...until you realize you need a fork and knife for your steak.

Newsflash---Mythological "Small-town America" found!

     I could hardly believe it, but I've found something in my travels I thought to be a legend. Something lost to the pages of history long ago, much like the fabled continent of Atlantis. Out there, away from the Wal-Marts and the Burger Kings, lies something so well hidden, many thought it extinct.

     Small-town America.

     It's real, everyone. I've seen it with my own eyes. At first, I thought it a trick, but no, it was there. Not the glorious mirage I thought at first, but tangible - concrete, wood, and glass.

This photo is not doctored, and taken today, 8/28/2010

     The spirit of Mayberry exists, and lives on in such places as Breezewood, PA, Sheffield, OH, and Manistique, MI. Driving down Main Street, you might see a kindly old man in bib overalls and a John Deere cap making his morning constitutional to the post office. Or perhaps you might espy little Janie Jones on the sidewalk, playing hopscotch, her braids flapping with each jump. Passing the old movie theater (usually The Majestic, but sometimes The Royal), you'll notice they turned it into a cute antique shop after it closed back in '86. The cops (or should I say, "cop") hangs out down at Irma's diner between patrols, and Mrs. McKeller is out on her porch every morning to make sure her red-white-and-blue bunting is hanging evenly.

The homeowner's association recommends at least three per each porch.

     It's a throwback, and an oddity to me, a child of suburban sprawl. To be honest, it made me a little nervous. Every smiling neighbor, every general store, I became more unsettled. I was convinced I had wandered into a Twilight Zone episode. At any moment, these Middle-Americans might turn, eyes glazed over, and haul me off to be sacrificed to their corn god. I searched frantically for something familiar... a Taco Bell, a 7-11, anything owned by a good old-fashioned corporation. Safety lie beneath their fluorescent lights and neon signs. Thankfully, once I got close to any interstate, my old friends welcomed me with open arms. Nice, homogeneous, corporate arms. 

Ahh, sweet relief!

      Soon, the corporations will expand their influence even farther, and these small towns will be swallowed up and the locations of the former Community Halls will now be toilet aisles in a Home Depot. The fudge shoppes will be gone, replaced by the tweens' clothing section of a Target. What I thought was only a legend will eventually become just that. Except for in old episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. Which you can buy in the TV on DVD section of your local Best Buy.