2020 was off to an unbelievable start. Lu and I had reconnected and we were starting to share adventures together. For Lu’s birthday in March, we had planned a trip to Rome. We booked our flights and picked out inexpensive but eclectic hotels (thank you, EuroCheapo.com). We’d be staying in a converted monastery in Rome and a palace in Florence. We spent evenings poring over pictures, making itineraries.
Then the Coronavirus hit. It had started in Wuhan, China, quickly sickening and killing thousands. At first, it had seemed like something happening far away. Then it spread to Northern Italy. We watched the situation unfold with some concern, not yet knowing how quickly things would accelerate. We’d find out soon enough.
Within a week, Italy was on lockdown. After some debate, we optimistically booked tickets to the Bahamas. We’d walk on sandy beaches, swim with stingrays, explore pirate forts, and sample the local cuisine. We were still unprepared for what the virus was capable of. Then it hit the United States.
There was a great deal of uncertainty during the early days of the outbreak. Supermarket shelves were cleared of toilet paper and cleaning products. The government started talking about “social distancing”, keeping a minimum of six feet apart from other people. As a hobby farmer, I guessed we were as prepared as we were going to be, so Lu and I went back to talking about how to save the week of vacation time we had together.
We settled on a Mad Max style adventure, driving cross country and sleeping in wild places. We’d be able to spend time together exploring, while still distancing ourselves from others. We stocked the car with a cooler of food, a small coleman grill, and all the camping gear we would need, and made up a bed in the back. As an afterthought, I threw in a case of toilet paper, the currency of our time. Just in case.
We had initially considered heading west along historic route 66, or south toward the islands off the coast of Georgia or Florida, but as maps of coronavirus cases became available, we decided instead to take the opportunity to see parts of middle America we otherwise would not have jumped at.
An Uneventful Day 1: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Minnesota
The tollbooths in Illinois were all deserted, and the systematic failure of this highway norm seemed shocking, a signal of the impending collapse of society. We raced past the empty booths with wild abandon, delighting in our own lawlessness.
Minnesota dragged on interminably, an endless landscape of fields and windmills. In the town of Blue Earth, we had our first chance at a roadside attraction, a sixty foot Jolly Green Giant statue, touted by Roadside America as a “must see”. Somehow, we drove right past it. We spend the next hour discussing why the earth and sky were blue (it relates to the short wavelengths of blue light which scatter more easily) and what the Green Giant jingle was. Lu was convinced it was “dum da da dum dum dum dum dum, Green Giant!” and was disappointed when I googled “Ho, ho, ho, Green Giant!” She would spend the next two days trying to figure out what jingle she was thinking of.
We stopped for the night at a very clean parking area in South Dakota, where signage described how the white prairie dog towns near the Badlands came to be. Let’s just say that theirs was a history of senseless brutality and “unnatural“ selection.
We made our bed in the back of the car and got settled in cozily. I opened a small split of champagne, lit a candle in a hostess cupcake, and badly sang “Happy Birthday” to Lu. She held her breath for the big finish, then asked excitedly, “Can I blow out the candle now?” It was definitely one of the most memorable birthday celebrations ever.
Day 2: South Dakota, Wall Drug, and the Badlands
We were driving along I-90 when roadside billboards started to catch my eye:
“Wall Drug 200 miles”
“5 cent coffee, Wall Drug”
“Eat here and get gas” (OK, so I made that one up)
“Wall Drug, as seen on the Today Show”.
There wasn’t much else going on, so the old fashioned signs kept us company for the next 200 miles. As the morning passed, it became clear that we’d have to detour to see what all the fuss was about. Mostly though, we wanted our 5 cent coffee.
Wall Drug certainly had the most of these kitchy signs, others soon jumped on the bandwagon. Firehouse Brewing Co. had upended antique firetrucks for use as billboards, wrote limericks spelled out word by word on roadside signs, and openly poked fun at Wall Drug. “Firehouse Brewery, as seen on Star Trek.” And Que Pasa Cantina took the win, with “Mexican food so good, Donald Trump would build a wall around it”.
Soon we came to our first scenic outlook, and eagerly pulled off the highway, excited to catch our first glimpse of the Badlands. Strangely, there was nothing but prairie as far as the eye could see.
About 40 minutes later, we made it to Wall Drug and went inside to find our 5 cent coffee. The coffee was in fact 5 cents, but you get what you pay for. It tasted like brown bean water. Also, the cup cost extra.
We jumped back into the car and soon we were entering the Badlands. From the park entrance, we could already see buffalo grazing on the plains, but they were too far away to photograph. I’d spend the rest of the day wondering how we could get close enough for pictures.
We passed a prairie dog village, piqued by the way that they’d warn of our presence by standing on hind legs, throwing back their heads, and letting out a high pitched kip. We’d see a lot of these guys over the next two days.
As the day began to fade, we made our way to our campsite. I’d been so worried all day about getting close enough to a buffalo to get a decent picture that I never even imagined an entire herd of them would come walking right in to the campsite. Having the buffalo herd and a prairie dog town so close to our tarp made for an unforgettable experience.
That night, we listened to a chorus of coyotes beneath the clear, dark sky. The stars overhead were impossibly bright, seemingly close enough to touch. Overnight, the wind picked up and temperatures dropped into the low 20s. Lu and I huddled together for warmth, covers pulled up over cold noses. The next morning, as we cuddled sleepily, Lu murmured, “It got so windy last night! Do you think that’s why the tarp blew down?” I looked up in confusion at the roof over our heads and then back at Lu. That must have been some dream!
Day 3: The Badlands, Mount Rushmore, and Crazy Horse Memorial
We crawled out of our tarp in the darkness of pre-dawn, delighted to see the dark shapes of what we assumed to be the buffalo surrounding us. “Wait a second,” I muttered, glaring suspiciously at the motionless herd. “Are those… bushes?”
We got packed up quickly in the dark and headed back the way we had come. As the sun rose, we were delighted to see a majestic bull with a great white cape grazing nearby. “Ike, what’s his name?” Lu whispered. I looked at Lu for a second, eyes gleaming with excitement, then back at the buffalo again. “I call him… Big Humps”
Once it warmed up, we boiled some water for coffee and put together some hard boiled egg, bacon, and cheese breakfast sandwiches that were amazing. (Side note here: shelf stable bacon is a game changer when it comes to backpacking cookery. Trust me on this one). We then spent the morning hiking through the park’s trail system. I would soon learn about Lu’s love-hate relationship with heights, and also about her capacity to overcome just about anything.
Throughout the journey, Lu had been posting pictures and video of our adventures, and we soon had a following of friends eager to escape the boredom and uncertainty of the pandemic by following us vicariously. One had started playing a game called “find the dicks”, recropping our photos to emphasize them.
Having finally exhausted the trail system at the Badlands, we decided to take the opportunity to see Mount Rushmore while we were in South Dakota so we jumped in the car and headed out. Like the Badlands, we found Rushmore open, but with no one manning the gates. Bonus! “I can’t believe it,” I confided to Lu. “Being here with you, seeing one of the seven natural wonders of the world!” Lu giggled, “It’s not natural!”
Seeing Mount Rushmore really only took up about twenty minutes, so we headed out to check out the Crazy Horse Memorial while we were there. Unlike the National Parks, the Crazy Horse Memorial was staffed with a parking attendant who was all too happy to take our money.
We beat a hasty retreat from the memorial as daylight faded, and set about looking for somewhere to sleep for the night. After driving around for a while, we finally came across a state park that was open and found a place to set up camp. We sipped some wine while preparing dinner, grilled kielbasa with a pasta side dish. Temperatures that night dipped well below freezing and we woke to frozen undergarments. It was time for a new adventure.
Day 4: South Dakota, Nebraska, and Missouri
“Let’s go somewhere warm!” Lu exclaimed, looking over a map of the national parks. “No one would ever expect us to pop up someplace like Arkansas.” The idea struck me as having just the right amount of crazy, so I was in. We settled on Hot Springs National Park, and I spend the rest of the morning imagining what it would feel like to relax luxuriously in a hot spring. I was picturing a natural stone hot tub for just the two of us at the top of a mountain.
The drive was going to be about 1,100 miles and we figured we could do most of it in a day. We packed up quickly and hit the road, eager not to lose any daylight.
The day passed without much of note. We were now on what a roadside sign declared to be the Lewis and Clark Trail, which made it sound much more interesting than it really was, as if we were recreating some historical journey. “I spy with my little eye something yellow” I said to Lu. She looked back flatly. “Uh, is it the prairie?”
”So we’ve been on this one road all morning, and we’re about to turn onto a different road. How are you feeling about that?” I asked Lu, hoping to strike up some conversation.
“I’m pretty excited about this turn,” she answered brightly. “I’m hoping we’ll get to see some more rock piles in the fields. I love rocks. And also, we haven’t eaten our snacks yet, so there’s that to look forward to.”
We sat in silence for a while after that, when suddenly Lu shouted, “I got it!”
”Got what?” I asked
”We are Farmers!” she yelled triumphantly. “Dum ta da dum dum dum dum dum.”
We stopped for the night at a truck stop parking lot in Missouri and grilled burgers by the light of our headlamps. Lu put together a side salad and we munched contentedly, enjoying each other’s company. “It’s definitely not the kind of trip you could do if you didn’t like the other person that much,” Lu commented as we drifted off to sleep.
Day 5: Hot Springs National Park
We had maintained radio silence since leaving South Dakota, hoping to surprise our friends by popping up unexpectedly in a new location. Finally in Arkansas, we stopped in front of a shack whose roof had collapsed to film the reveal.
”Imagine being magically whisked away to scenic- Arkansas” Laura started in her best Wayne Campbell impression.
”Hi. We’re in…Arkansas,” I said dejectedly, giving it my best Garth.
“How the F@%?…” one friend wrote back almost immediately.
”Lol” said another. “As someone from Delaware, I’m so happy to see this joke used on another state.”
We hadn’t been climbing long when we came across our first spring. Lu got down on hands and knees and began wetting down her hair with it. “I thought it would be bigger…” she said disappointedly.
“Is it hot?” I asked.
”Not really,” she replied.
”Well, this is faulty advertising,” I quipped.
At the top of the mountain, we saw an old man talking to his dog. “It’s just the flu!” he shouted when he saw us. “Only 3 people have died in Arkansas. They’re shutting everything down for the flu!” He continued his rant, not seeming to notice that we had slipped away, using social distancing to our best advantage.
We stopped at the Happy Hollow Spring to take a drink. A sign posted nearby listed the concentration of each of the minerals that could be found in the water. ”Do you like it?” Lu asked.
”It’s pretty good,” I replied, “but I prefer my water with 3 parts per million of potassium.”
We were starting to hear rumors about the possibility of lockdowns in certain states. As much as we would have liked the chance to continue this awesome road trip and to pop up unexpectedly in a new location, we knew that it was probably best to head home. We spent the final night at a beautiful but empty rest area in Arkansas where we crafted the perfect grilled cheese sandwiches and sipped wine.
”Just getting drunk at a highway rest stop,” I said in bemusement.
”That’s what we do now,” Lu responded. “We’re in Arkansas.”
Day 6: The long road home
During the long drive, I looked over contentedly at Lu sleeping in the passenger seat beside me. I had spent every minute of every day for the past week with her, never once wishing for some space.
Looking back on this incredible experience and all the changes that have taken place since then, I’m left with two thoughts that give me some comfort during these strange times. The first is that the natural world is still out there, completely unmoved by the current events and just as beautiful as ever. Taking every opportunity to reconnect with it is time well spent. The second is that these slower times offer the chance to really be present in the lives of those that matter to us. Remember, now more than ever, that the future is not guaranteed. Treat the now accordingly. And if given the chance at love, take it!
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