Where the Heck is Wall Drug?

Miles driven: 600ish

States: only 3

The next day we headed out bright and early, down through the rest of Montana, Wyoming, and into South Dakota. We thought about hitting Yellowstone, and then remembered it was the holiday weekend…an overcrowed tourist attraction was not where we wanted to be!

We also saw the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn…the monument was nice, and it was so cool to see where it took place. Obviously, we learned about it in school, and in the scheme of history it didn’t happen very long ago at all, but it’s still so easy to feel disconnected from history, and standing there where things actually happened makes it so much more tangible.

In the middle of Wyoming, we started seeing signs.

Wall Drug is a drugstore/tourist trap in the middle of South Dakota. It has signs up all over the world, with sayings like, “Where the heck is Wall Drug?” We looked up some history on it, and the owner once decided to put up a sign offering free ice water to people who stopped. Within an hour, bunches of people had stopped in, and a business model was born! There are now signs everywhere. It worked, because we stopped and camped in Wall, South Dakota for the night. It was one of the most confusing places I’ve ever been. Essentially, take an amusement park. Now take away all the cool rides. And the cotton candy. And anything else that doesn’t annoy you. Then you have Wall Drug, western-themed music and all. And the free ice water that started it all wasn’t even that cold.

The weirdest part was the animatronic T-Rex situated right next to the over price grill.

We also stopped that day and saw the Devil’s Tower…which is awesome. It just shoots out of the flat surrounding ground and keeps going…no wonder the Native Americans in the area consider it sacred.

I tried to get Ian to buy the coon-skin cap in the gift shop, but it wasn’t his cup of tea.

Montana: where the men are men and the women are, too

We headed out the door on th 29^th. Our goal for the day was Bozeman, where we spent the night with Phil and Tara, friends from high school. There was a live music event downtown, which was a whole lot of fun. It was good to catch up, and a nice easy start to the trip.

The Vortex

On Monday, we ventured out of Medford again to visit the Oregon Vortex and House of Mystery!

It's a circle pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and it was super cool to visit. The local Native Americans called it "The Forbidden Place" because their horses and other animals refused to enter it. Even when we were there, the one animal we saw (a bird) flew crooked and into a tree. The magnetic fields going through it basically bend. It's even listed as a no-fly zone, because instruments quit working when a plane flies over it.

The "House of Mystery" was fun. It used to be the miner's house, but one day it decided to tilt,and just kind of stayed that way. They have cables holding it up now, but from like 1920-1980, it stayed this way on it's own...the upper corner is about 20' higher than the opposite corner. It definitely gave me vertigo until our guide suggested that I just find my center of balance instead of leaning on the house.

The view from the inside with me standing straight

It's the place where a broom will stand straight up with no support, which I remembered reading about somewhere. It also shows a bottle rolling uphill, but it's actually an optical illusion...the bottle actually goes downhill, but because of the weird thing the vortex does to height, it appears to be rolling up.

The height thing is really weird. The closer one stands to the center of the vortex, the taller one looks. It's actually measurable in pictures. We're so close in height that it's a little hard to see, but the pictures were taken from center, we're standing on level platforms, and when we switch places, we gain and lose about 2/32" in height. It's much more dramatic to see in person, and it's the weirdest thing.

In the next one, the guide had us kiss...When I'm on the right, I tilted my head down to kiss Ian, and when we switched, I leaned up.

They have letters from Einstein discounting theories the man who starting measuring the effects had...the first one I thought of was that if the magnetic lines bend, maybe it acts like a lens and bends the light, but there was a very thorough explanation for why I was completely wrong.

This girl was on a level platform, and the tape measure being held up is level as well (they held a level up). At the far end, it's level with her eyebrows. As she walks towards the center, she appears taller and the tape measure is next to her nose. It was so spooky to see in person.

Overall, we had a lot of fun, and it was totally worth admission. The weirdest thing we saw, though, was on the map in the gift shop. They have a guest book and world map where people put a pin in where they're from and it gets replaced each March. There was not one, but two pins in Bethel, Ak, and I was tempted to go through the guest book and see if I knew who they were.

Caliornia here we come...

I didn't get picture of the "Welcome to California" sign, but this is a way better picture anyway :)

On Saturday, we went to Jewls' family's beach house just outside Crescent City, CA, the tsunami capital of the United States. As you can see, the view was terribly disappointing.




On our way, we stopped to see the redwoods

I knew they were big, but I seeing them in person is overwhelming. One that we saw is over 30' around and 360' tall...another one had another tree growing about 200' up the trunk.

I guess it's fairly common for three or four separate trunks to actually be part of the same tree and root system.

We ran into a park ranger who told us that most of the trees are actually hollow. They have an incredible ability to repair themselves after damage by things like fire. One fallen trunk we walked next to was hollow as far up as we could shine a light, and it was at least 12' tall.

We had a great time, but only spent a couple of hours. The area was so beautiful, we hope to be back someday...it would be a beautiful place to spend a couple days camping.

We also went to Crescent City, which was fun to see. We walked on the wharf, which had a bunch of tsunami warning signs.

On Sunday, we went exploring. We drove along the Pacific Coast Highway, which is just as beautiful as everyone says. I was too busy taking in the views to take any pictures, which I guess means we'll have to go back again soon :)

One tour guide we had advertised feral cats in on of the towns, which we couldn't find. Ian was pretty disappointed, because that's such a weird thing to list as a tourist attraction that we figured it had to be something good to see.


We did find a really cool bookstore though. One of the rooms had old collectable books, and had an entire shelf of books related to Teddy Roosevelt. One was written and signed by him, and was a bargain at $13,500. One day...

It also had the walls covered in quotes from different books and authors. Ian managed to get me out of there without spending too much money, and after a bite at a place called "The Hungry Clam" we headed back to Medford.

To Medford!

Miles driven: Aprox. 660
Hours in car: 14ish
Books purchased: (only) 2

We hit the road a little late, but by 9 we had a full
tank of gas and were ready to go. Mom and dad were nice enough to let us borrow the GPS for the trip, so combined with our maps, we were confident we'd be there with no problems...

until it told us to get off the freeway onto Coffin Road (that should have been our first signal not to listen) and then tried to make us off road next to, but not on, the freeway. The British voice yelled at us to "continue on unpaved road" until i figured out how to shut her up.

Luckily, it didn't take too long for us to figure out it was set to gas saver mode instead of quickest route, and after a brief detour in Kennewick, we continued on our way.

Our goal was to take a leisurely drive, and that was a success. The drive can definitely be done in around 10 hours, but we stopped at a dam (that was HUGE, and so cool to see). It clearly wasn't anywhere near capacity, but the amount of water rushing through it was insane. Most of it was gated off and locked, but we found an open gate to get closer to the dam. It was made with these huge stone pyramid things that were around 8 feet tall, and a little intimidating to stand next to. We also stopped at the Sam Hill Stonehenge WWI memorial...
I had no idea that a real-size replica of Stonehenge existed in the middle of Washington!
Basically, the man who built it visited Stonehenge when they still thought it had been used for human sacrifices. He thought it was an appropriate war memorial, because despite all of the advances in technology and civilization since Stonehenge was built, we are still making sacrifices on the altar of war (to paraphrase). It was amazing to really see how big everything was...I tried to capture it in my pictures, but the idea that people, without the help of machines, moved stones that epic is a little mind-blowing.We also got to stop at Powell's Books in Portland! Basically, I found my heaven. I could easily spend DAYS in that store, and I wanted everything I picked up. I did manage to narrow it down to just two, and I got to embarrass Ian by making him take a picture of me in front of the sign.We finally pulled in to Medford, and had a fun and eventful night. Jewls won a hat at the bar we went to (which was really cool...three or four buildings all share a patio, and there was live music last night).We have a big weekend planned with Jewls the Tour Guide (she basically handed us an itinerary when we got in), but we're planning on spending the rest of the day exploring Medford after enjoying a lazy morning.

Underway...

We're packed and ready to hit the road tomorrow morning! My last day of work was June 3rd, and although there are definitely worse jobs to have, I was so ready to be done with customers after 2 years! We've been in Post Falls with Margret's family since last Friday (June 10), relaxing and enjoying the first part of our vacation. We were lucky enough to spend lots of time with our good friends Luke and Matty, who we barely ever get to see. I went to a pure romance party at Matty's on Friday while the boys enjoyed video games up the street, we BBQ'd together Saturday night, and after breakfast at Old European Sunday, the boys got most of a shed put up in their yard. Matty and I provided sparkling and hilarious commentary while they attempted to line up holes and glared at us. Despite a poor critical response from the boys, we were very funny.

Bright and early in the morning (o.k., probably around 8, so not that early) we're off to Medford to visit Jewls! After 4 years of friendship, we finally get to see where she lives, and we're super excited. We're going to a reggae concert and to see the redwoods, so I'll be sure to post pictures (eventually). Until then, we're looking forward to an 11 hour drive and lots of snacks (provided, of course, by our mothers--why grow up if you don't have to?), and an epic beginning to our epic summer adventure.

The Begining

It's the first of June, and our summer is about to begin. We've been tentatively planning our cross-country road trip since November (October maybe?), and I can hardly believe it's actually going to happen. My last day of work is in two days, and after over two years at this place, I'm SO ready to be moving on to bigger and better things! And my goodness, do we have things planned!

Like I said, my last day of work is June 3, and I have a little under a week to get the house deep-cleaned and use up the perishable food before we head to Coeur D'Alene for the first part of our trip. We'll hang out there for a couple of days before heading to visit Jewls in Ashland...taking the long way through Seattle to drop my little sister off at the airport for her own summer adventure with our grandparents in Alaska on our way. We're planning on about 6 days there before Ian heads back to Moscow for a couple days while I go to Indianapolis with my sorority for a weekend. I get back into Spokane the day before our one-year anniversary, and then we hit the road!

The plan is to take I-90 until it ends in Boston. The official excuse is a family wedding in Rhode Island at the end of July...but honestly, when else in our lives aside from retirement are we going to get to do something like this? Ian starts upper-level ME classes in the fall, and I start law school...it's now or when we're 70.

We're hitting Boston, D.C., Jersey, Rhode Island, NYC, and hopefully Philadelphia. I've never been farther east than Chicago, and that was only the airport, and Ian hasn't been back since he was young, so we're so excited! We figure we should make the trip count while we have the chance! Plus, common advice is to enjoy yourself as much as possible the summer before law school, and we didn't have a honeymoon. I can't wait to see the Smithsonian, Ellis Island, (hopefully) a Broadway play, and all the monuments in D.C. (I'm a little bummed we aren't scheduling White House tours, but one of your goals is to keep our schedule fairly open. We're packing in activities, but we want it to be fun, not over scheduled), and I'm super stoked to meet my new East Coast family...only Ian's cousin Mike and Uncle Tom were able to make it over for our wedding, so I have a whole new family tree to get to know!

We hope to keep this updated as our trip progresses to let people know where we are and what we're up to, but for now it's bed time.

-Margret & Ian