Driving up to Mason City today with my mom we passed a large group of wind turbines. I, of course, had to stop and take pictures. Be very glad that I don’t live closer to them, as this would probably become the “Look at these cool pictures I took of the wind turbines” blog pretty quickly. I couldn’t go up close to any of them as there were technicians working on nearly every one of them that we passed. I will, however, get the shot of one that I want yet; I just need to be patient….
This is probably one of my favorite shots as the juxtaposition of the old-fashioned red barn and farmstead against the towering modern wind turbine is just great.
Somehow, when I wasn’t paying attention, Iowa came along and joined the 21st century in a big way. Between the push for sustainable energy with these windmills and the fact that Iowa, Iowa, allows gay marriage while that paragon of all things alternative California doesn’t, I have to say that Iowa has definitely made a lot of really major strides forward. Not baby steps, no sir; these are gigantic leap-frog monster steps!
Way to go Iowa!*
*(This is not, in any way, endorsing the University of Iowa team in any manner. In that area, if I am forced to choose an Iowa team to endorse, I will of course always chose Iowa State. However, if I am allowed to choose a team to root for on the national level, of course I will have to say, “Go Gators!!!” [It was nice to finally go to a school that actually won stuff including a few national championships and party school of the year 2008])
As I was driving back from the “20/30 Something Knit Night” tonight at Crazy Girl Yarn Shop (more on that later) I was listening to a Des Moines “Lite” Music station. Now, this would not be my normal choice for music stations but it seemed that everything else that I could get on the radio was either really twangy country music or heavy metal. Now, I have nothing against either genre of music. I been both to a Garth Brooks concert as well as one put on by Metallica. Anyway, neither were really what I was in the mood for and the “Lite” station fit the bill the closest. On comes “The Glory of Love” by Peter Cetera and I find myself not only enjoying it but singing/yodeling along to it!!! I’m not even sure when or where I learned the words to this particular song but here I was busting out with some, “I am a man who will fight for your honor. I’ll be the hero that you’ve been dreaming of. We’ll live forever, knowing together that we did it all for the glory of love!!!!”. I mean, I was born in 1978 and this song was a big hit in 1986. So did I actually somehow absorb the lyrics to this when I was 8? How many brain cells has this song occupied for 23 years of my life???
So, besides the self-surprise at my proclivity for 80’s power ballads, my night was really nice. Like I said, I went to the 20/30 Something Knit Night at Crazy Girl Yarn Shop in Cedar Falls with the lace stole in hand. It was a relaxing evening with the ladies there. I like the fact that you can buy a bottle of wine there or bring one yourself if you would like. The Crazy Girl shop is really in a lovely space with brick walls and an impressive wall of Cascade 220. Leslie, the owner of all 3 of the Crazy Girl shops was there as well as the lovely Bel who I got to chat with quite a lot as she has lived in the UK in the past. It was a fun night and if you are in the Cedar Falls area on a Friday night, I would totally recommend checking it out!
While I was in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area, I also got some shots of the gigantic parts for the wind turbines that they are putting up all over the area. I think that I have mentioned how happy I am that these are being put in and just how cool (I think) that they look in the landscape. Anyway, these photos will give you an idea of the scale of these puppies!
I liked this photo as you can see the car for scale next to one of the pieces of the bases of the wind mills as well as one of the actual blades.
A bunch of the blades sitting on what used to be the track.
They are using a defunct greyhound racing park as sort of a staging area for the parts and personally, I can only think of a few things more karmically appropriate for the space. It’s not that I am against dog racing in general, it’s just that the sport is so very wasteful of animal life.
And folks remember, please, spay or neuter your pets!
I’m writing this from my bother’s house surrounded by gun parts, military uniforms and other manly paraphernalia with Top Gun on the t.v. It is a seriously far cry from Badlands National Park in South Dakota.
If the Western part of the US has a desperate sort of beauty the Badlands are screaming bloody murder. Their beauty is stark and cruel.
However, the prairie dogs are cute as hell!!!
We also got to see the other type of bison that once roamed free across our continent. The bison that we saw earlier during the trip were wood bison, in other words, they live in the forest and these guys lived on the plains.
Say Cheese!!!
We also saw some pronghorn antelope chilling in a bean field.
But the real attraction of the Badlands is, well, the Badlands themselves.
We then moved on to the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. I had visited it many years ago as a very small child and it was, oddly enough, bigger than I remembered it.
All of the designs on the building are made with different types and colors of corn.
We then drove until about midnight to get the rest of the way back to Ackley. It was really good to get back here. Being on the road for that long is tough no matter what the circumstances.
So, today I decided to go visit a yarn shop in Cedar Falls that I had heard about and was pleasantly surprised to find now one but two shops located quite close to one another! The first that I visited was Three Oaks Knits. The owner, Beckie Scheel, was lovely to talk to and had a large range of different yarns. I then wandered down the street to Crazy Girl Yarn Shop. They had a beautiful wall of Cascade yarns as well as large selection of various alpaca yarns. I don’t know if the knitters and crocheters in the Cedar Falls/Waterloo area have any idea of just how lucky they are to have two such great yarn shops!!! If you are in the area, I would highly recommend that you check out both stores! If I go back, I’ll try to take pictures!
(Don’t worry honey, I didn’t get much at either place!!!)
In no particular order:
1.) I’ve learned that the past decade plus of being mostly alone has not prepared me well for a cross-country trip with my parents.
2.) Canada is big. I mean, really big. Folks from the US have no appreciation of just how big our neighbor to the North (or the West depending on location) really is. Let me tell you folks, it is big. I thought that where I grew up was big because we had to travel 45 minutes to go to a shopping mall. I have met more people in the last week that going to shop at a Wal-Mart means staying at a hotel overnight.
3.) Swimming pools with water slides are really big in the plains of Canada.
4.) I am not used to eating 3 meals a day. If I fit into my pants by the end of this trip I will be utterly amazed.
5.) Pizza with scotch is good!
6.) Mountain Dew in Canada is caffeine free. Sort of defeats the purpose in my opinion.
7.) Driving to Alaska is very cool. However, I wish that I could fly back….
8.) Hotel heating and cooling is inexplicably incomprehensible.
9.) I now know where I get my lack of patience.
10.) Wildlife is much bigger in the wild.
11.) I do get hit on more in areas of a higher guy/girl ratio like Alaska, the Yukon or Iowa State University.
12.) Sometimes yelling does work quite well, especially if you don’t do it very often.
13.) Scotch enjoyed with sour cream and chives Pringles is also pretty good!
14.) Just because a hotel comes with a breakfast and costs more than $150 a night in the middle or nowhere doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to hear the guy in the room next to you fart in his sleep.
15.) Driving in a train tunnel is nerve wreaking.
16.) The Alaska Marine Highway rocks!
17.) Wolverines are badasses. Don’t mess with a wolverine.
18.) It’s nice when you have one parent who is nearly deaf and another who really doesn’t care what kind of music you listen to when you are driving late at night and suddenly are overcome with a penchant for some industrial.
19.) South Dakota’s offical state motto should be, “South Dakota, not nearly as boring as North Dakota.” (I know, like I can speak, I’m from Iowa for God’s sake!)
Over a month is much too long for me to be away from home. I’m pretty seriously homesick right now. The only redeeming thing going on now is that I get to cuddle with my eldest “puppy” who has become quite the blanket hog in my absence.
I am hoping that Florida will be better.
I’ll post pictures from the Badlands and our last days of travel when I have both internet access as well as juice in the computer. It seems that these things are constantly at odds with one another (there is no good way for me to plug in the computer near where any of the internet cords are!).
Sorry it’s such a poopy post. I think that I am tired of living out of a suitcase.
So we are on our way back to Iowa in a big way. This is probably our last night on the road as we are in Rapid City, SD. We decided not to go to Yellowstone or Glacier National Parks as we have visited both of them in the past and, well, to tell you the truth, we are a little jaded now when it comes to nature and wildlife. After spending the last couple of weeks avoiding hitting either we are sort of ready to not have to worry so much about it for a while.
So, we spent a lovely day in Seattle. Mom and Dad took a tour of the city and I took the hop-on, hop-off bus tour thing. It was sunny and borderline hot out the entire time that we were there. I went to the top of the needle and could see for miles and miles. I did all of the usual touristy stuff and mostly just enjoyed a really fabulous day walking around the city.
Honestly, being in such a crowded city after having spent so long out in the wild was more than a little disconcerting. I am not a city person by nature but it was at the same time nice to be around people again.
The next day we took off to the East. It was amazing seeing the effect of the rainshadow once we got over the mountains. You could actually see where the last of the rain fell and then it just turned dry. Very cool.
The cloud is where the rain stops coming over the mountains.
So we have been driving through “Big Sky Country” for the past 2 days. It has a sort of desperate beauty to it but it is definitely not a place that I would chose to live. I’m looking forward to being in a place that I don’t have to pack each night. Oh, and have dependable internet!
Wild horses monument.
Actually got some lace knitting done today. I-90 is one of the overall smoothest roads that we have traveled-on on this trip!
So, to start off, it has been a little longer than I thought since I last posted. Sorry about that. We have stayed in a few places that claimed to have internet but didn’t really, a few that didn’t claim it and a few that were so far away from anything we were happy that they even had electricity. You know how it goes!
Day 15: We traveled from Seward to Valdez via the Marine Highway stop in Whittier. Getting to Whittier is an experience in itself as you drive through a single lane, 3 mile, modified train tunnel to get to it. Of course I was driving when we hit this gem of a driving experience! Seriously, you are driving on the train tracks the entire time you are in the tunnel. I swear that my ass didn’t unclench for at least 5 hours!
We took the ferry from Whittier to Valdez and I have to say that that has been one of my favorite experiences so far. If I were doing this alone, I think that I would somehow ditch the car for a week or so and just take the ferries up and down the coast and visit the costal communities. The ferry was clean and well run and I was able to knit LACE for more or less 6 hours straight. It was awesome to get to see some of Alaska without having to keep an eye on the road.
The good ship Aurora
The other end of the Alaskan pipeline.
We got to Valdez and went out to eat. There, in the restaurant, was the Barrow Whalers football team. Yes. That Barrow. I think that the Whalers are stalking me! Is this a sign that I should move there?
Anyway, that night in Valdez we had what has been really our first really bad hotel experience. The place that we were staying was where a bunch of construction guys were at as well and it was dirty (like easily visible Doritos crumbs under and around the bed) and the walls were so thin that I literally could hear the guy in the next room fart in his sleep. A couple of guys got thrown out for fighting and someone kept trying to get into our room throughout the night. We were originally going to stay 2 nights there but we cut our stay at that particular hotel short. However, we still went on the tour of Prince William Sound the next morning and we were really glad that we did!
A "raft" of sea otters doing what they do best, floating on their backs!
I so want one as a pet now....
My favorite Bald Eagle picture so far. Notice the no fishing sign below it.
A sea lion posing for pictures.
It's hard being this beautiful!
Part of the surreal landscape.
Waterfalls everywhere.
Water is, of course, important in this Northernmost temperate rainforest.
This is a group of juveniles and what are called "unsuccessful males". AKA, these guys weren't good enough to get a date to the prom so to speak...
Otters or Sea Lions on an iceberg.
Icebergs calved by the Columbia Glacier
One of the best views was from right behind the captain of the boat.
The Captain, who was cute in a sort-of young Kevin Costner sort of way. (Think: Dances With Wolves)
Water. Ice. Mountains.
Some of the pieces of ice were out of the water as much as 3 stories!
I did nothing to the colors of these photos. I can only imagine the blue colors on a sunny day!
The dark black and grey stripes are actually pieces of ground up mountain.
"Man...Why do I always get the hard pillow?!?!?"
Afternoon Siesta
However, that night we didn’t have a hotel room booked so we decided to try to get as far as we could on down the road. We made it about 100 miles past Glenallen quite late that night. It was a really long drive and the last several hours of it were in the dark with signs warning of moose and caribou all over the place. That night we stayed in a lovely lodge that was as quiet as a tomb as we were the only guests staying there! The next morning we got up and headed back towards Tok (rhymes with joke) where we got gas and girded ourselves for the area of road near the border with Canada. On the way up to Tok, we saw this guy on the side of the road rather nervous about crossing in front of us:
We crossed over into Canada and made it down to Haines Junction which is at the base of some amazingly pretty mountains. This was our view out the windows of our nice (despite the lack of internet signal) hotel.
We then drove a little more down the Alaskan Highway before turning South on 37 in British Columbia. This was a new road for us and it is, admittedly, even a little more exciting that most of the Alaskan Highway. It was only finished in the 1970’s so it doesn’t have nearly as much “development” on it. We stayed the night in a cabin at a great RV park called The Red Goat Lodge that is just South of Iskut. It’s right on a lake and has lamas running around!! The guy that runs the place is super friendly and the setting is just amazing! Definitely check it out if you are headed up (or down) 37.
We left from there and kept on Southward. The big highlight of the day was seeing some authentic totem poles in one of the villages that we went through.
Last night we stayed in a town called Prince George and then pushed on for the US. We passed through some pretty serious rain shadow country caused by the Coast Mountains. It was amazing, one minute we are in more or less a temperate rain forest and the next there is sage brush. It was honestly one of the more disconcerting travel experiences that I have had as the landscape didn’t change, just what was growing in it. Anyway, we made it down to the US Border and now we are in Bellingham, WA. Tomorrow we plan on seeing Seattle and then after that, well, I’m not really sure at this point. I think that we are all getting sort of tired of traveling and staying in hotel rooms and such. I’ll let you know when I find out (assuming that I have internet of course!).
This is a picture of the big-assed mountain that we saw as we were coming into the country and could still see right up to Bellingham. Anyone know the name of it?
We have been on the road for two weeks now and quite honestly, it feels longer. I’ve been away from my family for nearly 3 weeks now so that is at least part of it. I’m missing cuddling with my fuzzy family so much that I find myself totally chatting with random folks that happen to have dogs with them. Not that I wouldn’t do this normally, but it is much more-so now.
Seward is a pretty small town that seems to get overrun with cruise ship folks. We, not being cruise ship folks, were not terribly impressed with this aspect of the town. Anyway, we went out on a cruise of Ressurection Bay to check out the wildlife and it was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures.
This was the view out of the window of our hotel
One of several glaciers that are visable from the town.
Sea otters being cute and....otter-y.
We were lucky enough to get to see a pod of orcas (killer whales) in the bay.
Freaking cool huh?
Way better than SeaWorld!
We saw lots and lots of Bald Eagles
A black bear grazing the hillside
One of the many lovely waterfalls created by the previous days of rain
Birds trying to dry themselves on a wet day.
Amazing views in every direction
Like I said, Baldies everywhere!
Mountain Goats, a nanny with a kid on the side of a pretty shear cliff.
Harbor Seals
Don't they sort of remind you of a pile of puppies?
Probably the last Puffin in Alaska!
A cool ship I saw in the harbor.
Travel Knitting: A few rows of lace while in the hotel room.
(BTW, sorry that the post is late. Technical issues stymied me there for a few days!)
Today we drove from Anchorage down to Homer and then on to Seward. It was sort of rainy and windy most of the day. We saw the water down there and took a few pictures. It was a lot of driving and not a lot of stopping to tell you the truth. Here are some of the photos I took today…
Tidal flats outside of Anchorage
One of the many glaciers that we saw today
What a great view!
Land's End, Homer Alaska
The pebble beach at Land's End
Our hotel here at Seward is right on the water by the marina. I will take pictures tomorrow when it is light. It’s probably more interesting then anyway:-)
Travel Knitting: A couple of rows of the lace stole.
So, not a lot to write about. Everything that we tried to go see today was closed. Either for the season or for a special event. The one thing that I was really looking forward to was going to the Botanical gardens and they were closed for a big thing for the United Way volunteers.
Sarah Jane Humke 