Morlocks

     Ordinarily, I don't spend too much time in cities. An occasional drunken romp in New York, a rare trip to Philly to get wasted...I'm noticing a pattern here, that I usually only go to cities to get wasted. Well, this trip is certainly no exception. I've stumbled and fallen on my face in Minneapolis, upchucked in Seattle, and peed my pants in Las Vegas (technically inaccurate, as I was not actually wearing any pants when that occurred). But this entry isn't about my drinking problems (we'll have a separate entry for that!), it's about the...other people in the cities. The ones not there to party or confidently stride to their executive offices. The people I call The Morlocks (read your H.G. Wells', people! Or at least watch the shitty movie with Guy Pearce.)

A finer role model, I know not.

     Now those of you familiar with your 19th century sci-fi will know that the Morlocks inhabited the dystopian underground of a distant future. Above them, small, frail Eloi lived in a lush and wonderful paradise. How is this paradise possible? Well, the good ol' Morlocks run all the underground machines to power this Eden the Eloi live in. The Morlocks are portrayed as the villains in The Time Machine, but I always felt the Eloi were the real bad guys. Lounging around, loving life while ugly people toil underground for your benefit? Sounds villainous to me. Sure, the Morlocks would occassionally eat one of the Eloi, but hey, they had to get their energy somewhere, right?

Not so bad, really, just misunderstood.

     I use the term Morlocks to refer to the people that make the city living I've witnessed and experienced possible. The janitors, the cooks, the garbagemen, all the anonymous blue-collar workers it takes to power a city. I realize that may sound mean, or derogatory, but I don't think of it that way. Remember, I sided with the Morlocks when reading that book; the Eloi were the bad guys to me. Instead of being small, androgynous children, the Eloi are now the tourists, the businessmen, and disappointingly, myself, I suppose. The Morlocks come to a downtown they'll never live in to pick up our trash, sweep our streets, and prepare our food. If they're lucky, their specific industry may encourage tipping, so they'll get a little something extra, at least. If tipping is not a part of their profession, they probably won't even get direct eye contact from us Eloi.

     It makes me sick, really. And there's nothing I could do about it anyway. Somebody has to clean up dogshit. Even if I had a winning smile, wink, and a warm handshake for every service worker, they'd only eye me with suspicion. "Why is this strange Eloi engaging me? Highly unusual behavior for one of their ilk..." they'd think. So, I support them silently. I always throw my trash in the proper receptacles, tip well when appropriate, and generally clean up after myself as much as possible. I suppose if it really bothered me, I wouldn't stay in hotels or visit tourist traps at all, but I do anyway, of course. It's impossible to avoid in this day and age. Shit travels downstream, and I've swallowed my share of it as well. To be honest, I'm not much more than a Morlock living the Eloi lifestyle for a while, myself. This fantasy vacation will have to end at some point, and I'll return to my place in the chain, eating a larger portion of shit than I produce for the ones beneath me...

Disparity

     I met a man in Washington state near the Oregon border that was quite different from me. Our impromptu rendezvous occurred in a McDonald's parking lot. Mickey D's has become one of our favorite spots to stop because of the free wi-fi and dollar iced teas. So there it was that my path and this man's crossed, and we couldn't have been headed in more different directions.
    
     It was late afternoon, and we had stopped to try and figure out our night's accommodations. We sat there in the parking lot, maps spread open, atlases dog-eared, laptop up and running and jacking into McD's wi-fi. The man walked past us and did a double take. He glanced at our NJ license plates, smirked, and said to his two kids, "Now they look lost!" He walked inside, and we continued our search.

     15 minutes later or so, he and his offspring sauntered out, bellies full. He stopped by my window, and the following conversation took place:

          Man - "You fellas still here? Where you headed?"
          Myself - "Oh, hi! We're driving across the country."
          Man - "Well, you made it, haha! So, where you headed now?"
          Myself - "Um...south..."
          Man - "Hmmm...where in particular south?"
          Myself - "I dunno. Somewhere on the coast, probably."
          Man - "Huh. Well, good luck to you, boys."

     At this point, the man walked away, shaking his head to himself and looking slightly perplexed. He was trying to be helpful, and while I certainly appreciated the attempt, I could tell he just didn't understand. Here was a man who probably had every day of his life planned out until he died. I judged him to be a "soccer dad." He had a perfectly coiffed hair, a hip windbreaker, and loafers to go with his pressed jeans. I assume he was taking the kids to McDonald's after one of their sports practices or dance recitals. After their fast-food dinner, I'm sure it was off to home, for a few hours of TV while the kids did their homework. Perhaps one beer if the mood struck him.

      I, on the other hand, was wearing the same clothes for a third day in a row. My Chevy Cavalier was dirty, dusty, and splattered with countless dead bugs. All my possessions that mattered were stuffed in the backseat, and the trunk was not too far from busting at the seams. I was in dire need of a shower, and my hair stuck out wildly like a mad scientist.

     He was in the midst of his normal weekday routine, and I was poring over maps on the roadside trying to figure out what was next. He had his retirement carefully accounted for and planned out, while I didn't even know where I'd be spending that night. As I lay on the hard ground later, under the stars, I thought of that man. He probably just put the kids to bed, and he and the wife were on opposite ends of the couch reading, with the TV quietly droning in the background. The weekend was coming up soon, and maybe they were discussing which Applebee's in town to go to with the kids on Friday. Also, the fiscal year was coming to an end soon, and he might be thinking about upping his 401k contribution this year to 15%, to make sure he and the wife would definitely be able to afford that place in Boca Raton when he retired in 17 and a half years.

     So I drifted off to sleep that night, thinking of the differences between myself and that man, and also wondering if maybe he was thinking of me as he drifted off. Thinking about that wild-haired, grimy, 20-something from across the country he ran into while taking the kids for a treat. That devil-may-care wanderer without a thought for the future, off to unknown destinations and adventures.

Pasties & Pasties

     Two favorite heteronyms (look it up or puzzle it out yourself) that I've experienced so far this trip are pasties (pah-sties) and pasties (pay-sties). One is delicious, and has meat folded up inside of it, and the other is a food item. Rimshot! In all seriousness, I'm talking about the regional food favorite, pasty (rhymes with nasty), and the pasties which were found covering up the ladies at a burlesque show I took in while in Seattle.

It's delicious, it's good for me...

     First, since I like dinner before my show, let's talk about the meatalicious treat. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is famed the world over (well, at least a small surrounding area) for their pasties. Cross the Mackinac Bridge from mainland Michigan, and you'll immediately start seeing signs for this delicacy. Also popular is smoked fish, something I passed up this go around. Thankfully, we happened to have a book handy that informed us of the proper pronunciation, or I would have been quite embarrassed to be corrected by a local. We stopped at a roadside place (see below) and waited patiently after placing our orders.

Looks enticing, no?

     Our steaming plates were delivered to us shortly, and I devoured the crust-wrapped beef, pork, onions, carrots, and rutabagas. Also included was some of the best coleslaw I've ever eaten, and a small bowl of brown gravy for dipping. I highly recommend to all of my brethren who enjoy gorging themselves to the point of exhaustion.

     Now let's get to the really good kind of pasty. While looking for some nightlife in Seattle, JZ and I noticed an advertisement for a burlesque show at a local bar. It just happened to be every Thursday, we just happened to be visiting on a Thursday, and we also just happened to really enjoy mostly naked ladies. So we paid our $12 and waited eagerly for the show to start.

Now those are the pasties I'm used to eating!

     I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew it wasn't going to be like the trashy strip clubs I've visited sporadically. How sexual would it be, though? Was it more comical than sensual? My brain was filled with wonder and excitement. Throughout the course of the show, I came to find out it really wasn't that sexual after all. Sure, the audience howled and hooted when one of the girls lifted a hem or lowered a strap, but it seemed to be done more in jest. I wouldn't have felt at all uncomfortable if I had taken a date there.

The only photo I was allowed to take that evening.

     It may sound like a pervert justifying, but I really have to say, these girls were talented! Not only excellent dancers, but creative choreographers as well. Their acts were quite entertaining, and we saw ones that followed the history of dance, imitated Tokyo Rose from the 1800s, and a finale that included an Egyptian goddess eating a raw heart and blood squirting everywhere. You know, good old-fashioned family fun.

     So there you go: a tasty meal from the upper Midwest, and a live show from the largest city in the world named after a Native American chief. If you get the opportunity, I recommend treating yourself to either. Or both at the same time if you manage to find a burlesque show in the U.P.

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.