Road Trip (Part 7): The End (Seattle)

Leaving Idaho, we entered into the wasteland that is eastern Washington state, made cool by the shocking number of dust devils popping up on their dirt fields. 

That evening we drove into Seattle where we would stay for a few nights, visiting friends. I'd never been to Seattle, but since college, I'd had a utopian vision of its grandeur: good music, good coffee, coast line, ideal temperatures (I like it cool). I'd put up with the rain for the rest of it. Seattle did impress me. Though a visit to anywhere that begins with a weekend tour of donut shops would. Still, it didn't feel like the Eden I'd always thought it would be. I'm not completely certain about this, and of course I need to explore more Pacific corridor before I make my conclusion, but I think I might innately be more of an east coast girl. Sorry Tupac.

Famous fish-throwing fishmongers
at Pike's Place farmers market

That said, I do love Seattle. I'd be perfectly content if life brought me to this city, I thought, standing in line for a piroshky--a supremely amazing Russian "hot pocket" stuffed with meat and cheese. What's not to like: great skyline; nearness to natural beauty (constant view of Mt. Rainier from many parts of town); awesome donuts; good food; accessibility to fresh products at markets like Pike's Place; and yes, amazing coffee. Seattle-ites are just as obsessed about coffee as we think they are. While Starbucks is popular, in Seattle, it has become like the Target of coffee: it will suffice, but it's pretending to be a higher-quality than it really is. I had plenty of other far superior coffee in Seattle. The options are limitless. If food and natural wonders aren't your thing, then go visit the gravesite of Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Lee. Something for everyone.

A few things were a bit foreign to me. First, nine in every ten grocery stores was a local chain of a natural/organic foods market. I'd have serious trouble finding fruit roll-ups in this city. Second, being green-conscious is a really really big deal. I saw several national parks and natural wonders in a short span during my trip. For those of us too distracted to think about it, visiting a place like Yellowstone will get you thinking about recycling and conserving energy in a snap. So I appreciate all places where there is an emphasis on saving the environment. Seeing recycle bins in hotel rooms is nice. Reusing bags and dishes is swell too. Sometimes the green-ness was a bit overwhelming in Seattle.
Girl at donut shop: "Those cups are made out of corn starch."
Me: "Uh huh." (emphasis on the Uh)
Girl: "So, they're completely compostable."
Me: "Oh. Um. Cool?"

It occurred to me later that she was subtly signaling me to drop the cup in the compost bin instead of the recycle bin as I had done. I'd never been to a donut shop with a compost bin. Later, I also heard that many people don't mow the grass in the Seattle area. Instead, they bring in sheep herds to graze on the grass and essentially mow it for them. Only in Washington.

This is what I'm talking about.
Spotty, disc cloud cover,
 with the mountains clearly
visible many miles in the distance

Oh and the clouds creep me out. Not in a it's-so-bleak-and-depressing kind of way. More in a sci-fi kind of way. The thick clouds in the mountain ranges seem like giant living organisms that will soon take over the horizon. I know Mt. Rainier is there. I've seen it. But on a partly cloudy day, the poofyness that covers the peak is like a giant fungus come to life. Then there's the random gray plates of cloud cover. Literally plates. There is clear sky for miles, and suddenly you pass under a 50-mile wide disc of gray cloud like that scene in Independence Day when the camera passes under the space ship. Seriously, it's a space ship cloud. You can see sky and horizon in front of you and behind you, but directly above you it's a water vapor alien-craft.

I've finally made it to Washington from Connecticut. The road trip is over. Eighty-miles south of Seattle in Chehalis and Adna, Washington, the new adventure begins!

Watching the opening of the locks,
dividing Lake Washington and Puget Sound

Road Trip (Part 6): Idaho and, finally, Washington...kind of

The morning after Yellowstone we started our drive out of Montana. On the way, we took a short detour to visit the state capitol in Helena. We were greeted inside by a stately, colorful capitol dome and an anti-meth rally. Just your usual day at the capitol.

I was peculiarly excited to enter Idaho, which is the last of my top-three most random states to visit (North Dakota and Delaware being the other two). We could have made it through Idaho that day and stayed the night in Spokane. But, I was so excited about the idea of Idaho that I demanded we cut the drive short and stay the night near Coeur d'Alene just so I could say I had spent the night in Idaho. 

Idaho was the last stretch of scenic, winding mountain roads, which is a much more pleasant drive in the daylight than the drive the night before when I was certain that a Prius was going to run us off the winding two-lane highway out of Yellowstone. Halfway through the sliver of Idaho's handle we stopped at Wallace to take a tour of the Oasis Bordello Museum. This stop might be the road trip-find that exceeded our expectations the most. I halfway expected a scam operation that was was going to lure us in for five dollars, show us a pin-up poster, and shoo us out. Instead, I learned so much about organized prostitution operations! The Oasis is a full-fledged museum, preserving a former bordello that had been in operation until, get this, 1988. Aside from that one bordello episode of The Simpsons, I was under the impression that bordellos had long gone out of style as a place for young men to get their jollies. I was so wrong. 

Wallace, a mining town, was once well-known for its many bordellos and bars with underground gambling operations. The town residents were at peace with the illicit side of Wallace right up until its' demise. They simply knew which street not to send their children down. In 1988, the bordellos and local bars got wind of an impending FBI raid. The girls and the madam at Oasis immediately ran from town, leaving the bordello completely intact with all of their belongings. The raid didn't actually happen, but primarily out of caution, the girls never returned. When the new owner of the building purchased it several years later, he was pleasantly shocked by what he found. It was as if someone had left on vacation the day before and would soon return. All of their belongings were exactly where they had left them. The place would be perfect for a museum, he thought. The madam's room still had all her makeup, her Atari, a perfectly made bed, and the "price list" for her girls (I could only understand a quarter of the words for the various "services" they provided). Upon her death, the madam's family donated a few more of her personal items for display in the madam's old room. Other than mannequins to recreate the former inhabitants and a few belongings pulled out of drawers to show what they owned, everything is original and exactly the way it looked on the last day of operation in 1988. There was even a bag of dry goods groceries left on the counter.

Once the museum opened, some of the girls have come back to visit, informing the current owners of how things operated and informally training them with information for the tours. One woman, upon seeing her tip jar on her nightstand, checked inside and found a small tip that she had left behind. Apparently, to this day, shame is still not an issue for many of them.

The girls would work for a few months at a time. They were college-students working summer jobs and traveling call girls on a bordello circuit. Surprisingly, most went on to lead normal and successful lives afterwards. One woman was trying to save up money to buy a ranch with her boyfriend. She left Oasis after a few months with 100 grand. They purchased a ranch together and are preparing for retirement now. 

Unfortunately, pictures were only
allowed in the basement. 

Oh and did I mention that the girls were covered by workmen's compensation? The Oasis was licensed as a hospitality-hotel business and there was a workmen's comp certificate on the wall proving as much. To avoid scrutiny, they even respected their lack of a liquor license and wouldn't accept direct payments for the drinks they offered clients. Time for each service was kept with a kitchen timer and recorded on a timesheet. Each worked and lived in her room and kept sixty-percent of the money she brought in from clients. All the girls were required to see the town doctor on a weekly basis. A handful of maids and cooks  worked in the house. Many of these women have also come back to visit the museum and relayed their perspectives. Based on my impression from the tour, every woman associated with Oasis has nothing but fond memories of the place. 

The tour was baffling. I had no idea that these places existed or the types of operations they were. Do they still exist? Are you a whore at a clean, well-run bordello? If so, can I have some gas money for the month because apparently you're rich. 

Lake Coeur d'Alene

Since threat of the raid, Wallace has cleaned up and become an average, but charming, small-town. That day they were having a huckleberry festival. I had no idea what a huckleberry tasted like, but after eating some huckleberry ice cream I have become a supporter.

We ate a corn dog, bought a commemorative coffee mug at the whore house and left town. 

Boat Show

Spokane

We finally arrived in Coeur d'Alene but decided to cross state lines to have dinner and watch a minor league baseball game in Spokane. The game was sold out, but we walked around the riverfront park and had a great dinner at a neighborhood pub. The riverfront was nice, but Spokane was nothing special. I mostly enjoyed that I had finally made it to my destination state...just to leave again for the novelty of Idaho. Hi there Washington; I'll see you again tomorrow. The next morning we explored more Idaho in Coeur d'Alene: a coffee shop in the morning, a walk along the lake with the longest floating boardwalk in the world, and lunch at Pita Pit (if only because Coeur d'Alene is the Pita Pit headquarters). The lake was beautiful and, for that weekend, was playing host to a wooden boat show. Tad and I had randomly stopped at an antique car show in Connecticut once. This was sort of the same, but on water and with wealthier people. Boat show or car show, I love seeing people's creativity and hard work...but I could have stood less of the annoying and entitled old woman in a Rascal who would not stop honking her motorized chair at people in her way. 

Road Trip (Part 5): Montana, Wyoming, & Yellowstone

Yellowstone

Sunset in Montana
on the way to Bozeman

So continues the onslaught of states I’ve never seen. Leaving the Black Hills we almost immediately enter Wyoming. Until we get to Yellowstone, there’s nothing much to stop and take stock of. While mostly boring, the western half of Wyoming was an impressively consistent manicured warm palette of golden farmland and modest hills. I had grand plans to stay in Cody, Wyoming that night, a mere hour away from Yellowstone, allowing plenty of time to visit the park the next day. Turns out lots of people want to go to Yellowstone and therefore Super 8 Motels’s could charge me pants-crappingly obscene rates to stay so close without camping. If only I had a tent. So instead, I opted for the much cheaper option of two nights in Bozeman, Montana, two hours away from Yellowstone. I would just have to wake up earlier but the benefits of Plan B ended up being a better deal. First of all, Bozeman is actually pretty fun. We had a great dinner at a pub on the main street and a grand time guffawing at the drunk college students. I’m sure a Moons over My Hammy at the local Denny's in Cody, Wyoming would have been lovely too.

Site where Custer's body was found
on Last Stand Hill

Little Bighorn River

The biggest bonus of the Bozeman pick was the opportunity to drive north through Wyoming right past the Little Bighorn Battlefield. Anticipating a long boring drive on many stretches of road, I purchased an audiobook. I wanted to get something interesting and relevant to the Wild West, westward expansion, and thereby the bulk of my drive. I opted for Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand, the historical account of Custer’s last stand against Sitting Bull at the Battle of Little Bighorn. I figured some good ol’ non fiction would make me smart at the very least. I was aware that the conflict involved the Black Hills in some way, but I actually had no idea where the battlefield was. I assumed it was in South Dakota, but didn’t think to look it up and see if we could visit. I wasn’t even sure if the book was going to be any good. Turns out, not only does the book rock, but the Battle of Little Bighorn is right over the Montana-Wyoming border—almost a couple hundred miles from the Black Hills. Coincidentally, we ended up at the park’s entrance just as the book was finishing up with the big battle narrative and reaching the climax of the “last stand.” The timing was perfect. I’ll admit I was a bit on the edge of my seat, excited both for the narrator’s account of the grand finale and excited to get to the battlefield before it closed.  I’m not sure if rolling up to a historical battlefield while listening to the story of that battle in your car makes you a badass or a total nerd. I’m suspecting the latter, but I don’t care. It was awesome.

We arrived in Bozeman late that night, leaving Wyoming just to re-enter it the next day to get to Yellowstone.

Bison crossing!

The path visible on the hill below
led to our secret lunch spot

I love Yellowstone. It makes sense to me now why so many people want to go there. It’s like a fun-house of natural wonders that would keep you entertained for weeks. We started the day with a hike up to Mount Washburn. The climb was short but a steady uphill to over 10,000 ft elevation (granted, we probably started at about 6,000 ft elevation). The view at the top was incredible. You could see all of Yellowstone: the canyon, the lake, and the tippy tops of mountains. We ate lunch around the side of a neighboring hill at the top of the hike. Our nook was part of a backcountry trail so nobody was venturing our way. As we ate our pbjs, it felt like the whole park was all ours. On the hike, we saw indigenous big-horn sheep, and some sort of small squirrelly looking things (I clearly know a lot about my park fauna). We had seen a couple solitary bison earlier, which we pulled over to ooh and ahh at. On the drive after the hike, our ogling would seem just foolish. Further into the park’s grassland and river valleys there was a bison party. There were bison EVERYWHERE, snarling cars and non-chalantly crossing the road in front of us. Despite the signs telling us the bison were dangerous and should not be approached, they were right there a few feet away. Traffic jams because of wildlife on the road or side of the road would be a common occurrence in the park.

Geyser party--as soon as the geyser
in the foreground finished erupting
the geyser in the background put
on a show. 

We continued on and saw the canyon and overlooks of the waterfalls right on their brink. Then came a barrage of natural oddities: a hole in the ground filled with steaming green sulphur water (sulphur cauldron), a pit of mud that shoots up from the ground (mud volcano), a cave that shoots gas like a dragon’s mouth, fields of geysers spouting water and smoke, geyser basins where the ground is so unstable and acidic that it can burn off the bottom of shoes. It was like an amusement park with mother nature’s freak show.

The day ended beautifully with a viewing of Old Faithful and a few other active geyser eruptions as the sun set on the park. 

As much Yellowstone as possible was packed into a 10-hour day. We circumnavigated the park and, in the process, crossed the Continental Divide twice. I’d say it was a fairly productive day. 

At the top of our hike,
with Lake Yellowstone in the background

This guy was less than pleased

It's a topsy-turvy world at Yellowstone

Road Trip! (Part 4): South Dakota

After several days visiting friends and family, we drove north from Omaha into South Dakota. I had planned to stop and see Mount Rushmore on the way out west, but little did I know what a road-tripper's wonderland South Dakota would turn out to be.

Hilariously touted inside as the 

"World's Only Corn Palace,"

 because I'm sure others were

 chomping at the bit when this

 idea was stolen from them.

First, there are the oddities. We stopped at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, which is exactly what it sounds like: a giant domed palace-looking structure covered in corn and corn husks. Every year a different theme is chosen, and the façade of the palace is decorated with murals made out of corn that depict said theme. This year, the theme was transportation. There were impressively inlaid corn pictorials of various modes of transportation, such as plane, wagon, train, car, and sadly, even Segway. The Corn Palace has been around since the early 1900s and inside you can see pictures of what it looked like throughout the years. Other than the pictures, the inside houses a concession area and a big gym floor that looks like it could double as stage for plays. At the moment, the gym/stage simply served as a giant gift store. Our stop didn’t take long.

Then, there were landmarks of good ol’ road trip Americana. On our approach to the Black Hills, we made the requisite stop at Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota. What once was a small struggling pharmacy run by a young couple became a bustling hub for road trip activity with one simple promise to weary travelers: Free Ice Water. We started seeing signs for Wall Drug almost as soon as we entered South Dakota on I-90. Promises of fresh donuts and handmade ice cream almost five hours ahead started to work their magic on me. The signs for free ice water just seemed weird. But post-depression South Dakota, was likely dotted with far fewer McDonalds and Exxons. The poor rural community couldn’t prop up a drug store, but as the story goes, the signs for free ice water lured in travelers. Now, the place is a giant mega store of diversions, including a chapel, a museum, a fudge shop, several gift shops, and a cafeteria. Their bison burgers aren’t bad, and the donuts are, in fact, freshly handmade.

The Wall Drug billboards were only the beginning. Signs promising road side diners, mom and pop antique shops, and even free prairie dog sightings (I believe it read something like “See a Prairie Dog for Free…Weeee!”), begged road trippers to spend their money on some recreated version of roadside Americana.

Lastly, and most notably, South Dakota has natural beauty. The rolling plains almost suddenly melt into the Badlands, where miles and miles of rock spires and canyons erupt from the land like a hallucinatory mirage. It was as if the clouds had dripped hot wax from the sky, and before it could spread out, it cooled and turned into rock. The Badlands would be an awesome place to find one of a thousand nooks in the rocks and pitch a tent.

From the Badlands, we quickly began to enter the Black Hills. The landscape was less surrealistic but no less beautiful. We visited Mt. Rushmore, which was actually more impressive than I though it would be. How did they make those eyeballs look so real? We waited until dusk for the lighting ceremony. The ceremony itself was a bit sugary, but the Presidents look statelier lit up at night.

One of many
tourist accommodations

Graves of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane

The next morning we visited Deadwood, an old gold mining town steeped in Wild West history. For those who love the HBO show Deadwood as much as me, expect to be underwhelmed by the town itself. I was warned that the place is mostly a tourist trap filled with sad little casinos, so I was prepared. I also was aware that most of the characters were fictional. The only notable thing in town was the original location of the No. 10 saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed during a game of poker. It sat directly across from the new fake No. 10 Saloon, named identically but with no historical significance whatsoever. While the town itself was underwhelming, I loved the graveyard, which was tucked at the end of the steepest uphill climb I’ve ever attempted. The graveyard overlooks all of Deadwood and houses the gravesite of Wild Bill, Calamity Jane, and the only other real major character on the show buried there, Seth Bullock. Visitors had laid coins and poker chips on Wild Bill's grave in memoriam of his general ability to rule at all things. There were gravesites of others who seemed like they were only loosely connected to characters on the show, but whose place in the history of the real Deadwood was interesting nonetheless. In sum, Deadwood—probably about as cool as a do-it-yourself Wire tour of Baltimore.

I can’t end this post without mentioning the stupid awesome lunch we had at Cheyenne Crossing on the way out of the Black Hills and into Wyoming. It’s a small home-cooking diner, tucked away near Lead, South Dakota at a place actually called Cheyenne Crossing for historical reasons I didn’t have time to figure out. I was too busy destroying a badass Indian Taco and eating the world’s best carrot cake. Seriously, this carrot cake makes me want to slap every person who contends their mother’s carrot cake is the best in the world because they are just lying dirty liars. This cake was so good I kind of wanted to order another piece just so I could make out with it.  

Onward to Wyoming!

The biker rally in nearby Sturgis had just ended

Road Trip! (Part 3): Reflections on Home -- Kansas City & Omaha

After a couple months into my cheese internship and away from the law firm, a friend of mine who had left the firm four months before me asked if I felt like I was back to my normal self. Had I shaken the law firm off me? I more or less understood what he meant by that vague query. It’s the type of question that anyone who has wasted years in a dehumanizing, dead-end venture would understand: law firm, telemarketing, corporate drudgery,…heroin, prostitution, what-have-you.  It had been about six months since he had left the firm and was glowing in his assertion that he finally felt like himself again. Only two months out, I was less certain.

How will I know when I’ve fully regained my confidence, assertiveness, inquisitiveness, social charms, or hell even my basic desire to socialize, which had been slowly whittled away? At what point am I my whole self again? Most importantly, what does it take to get back there? For my friend it simply took time and fully immersing himself in his one passion, music….and to a lesser extent, copious amounts of PBR.

The time component is a given, and mostly out of my control. Sure, one of my passions is cheese, and immersing myself in that dream and other worthwhile endeavors will do the trick too. My first foray into the world of cheese on the east coast most definitely helped revive my spirits. When I visited DC, it was a common refrain to hear old friends from work say how happy, refreshed, or “good” I looked. But I was really anticipating this road trip to the west coast to finish the job in restoring my psyche.

Another friend of mine once pontificated that something about a road trip is especially therapeutic after a trying time in your life. It’s that sense of letting the distance of the journey put all the worry behind you, venturing into new and exciting adventures and letting your car sift out the dirty wounds and memories to the pavement with each passing mile.   

After leaving Detroit, his theory starts to make more sense to me, perhaps simply because there are so many miles of nothing on the interstate that self-reflection is required to pass the time. As I got farther away and started entering new areas of the country previously unseen to me, I started to remember less of what I had left behind in DC and grew more curious of what lay ahead.

Another thing happened as I entered the Midwest, the mid-way point and, more importantly, my home. I stopped in Kansas City to attend a good friend’s wedding and Omaha to visit my parents (secretly hoping my dad would refill the gas in my car).  I didn’t do any of the typical road trip activities I did elsewhere while I was in Omaha and Kansas City, even though there was a lot I hadn’t seen: the Jazz Museum, the World War I Memorial etc. Instead, I simply visited places where I could surround myself with people who knew me when…when I was really me, that is. I was near family, sleeping in my old bedroom decorated in 1990's-era X-games posters. I was near friends who are practically like family—friends who have known me for anywhere between 13 and 5 years and likely have many embarrassing stories to tell, which I would proudly let them share.  For some people going home is suffocating and reminds them of the person they've been trying all these years to shed. For me, it’s hard not to feel like yourself when you’re around the people who know and love you best.

…Oh and eating a Z-man at Oklahoma Joe’s helps too.

(A representation, by no means all-inclusive, of people who help me feel normal again. To those not pictured, you're still a part of this post.)

Oh Z-man, you're all that
a barbecue sandwich should be.
I'll never cheat on you again
...unless it's at Chap's Pit Beef in Baltimore. 

Road Trip! (Part 2): Detroit

Seriously, what day is this? Nineteen states, one District, and four timezones later, I'm woefully behind on keeping everyone apprised of my galavanting. I had every intention of doing contemporaneous updates as I drove across the country, but the time allotted for that quickly evaporated. So let's catch up.

The day after leaving Cedar Point we swung up to Detroit, Michigan to take a gander at America's urban graveyard. I've been to Detroit on a community service trip before, but Tad has been yearning to visit for a long time so I indulged him. He has a soft spot for castaway cities. I'm not sure what a full weekend, or even lifetime, in Detroit would look like, but we packed in a lot of variety into our one day there. By that evening, Detroit had squirmed it's way into our hearts with its decrepit charm. 

The day began gloriously: chili dogs for breakfast! Detroit has an odd obsession with Coney Island and Coney Island style hot dogs. Every block, there are vacant buildings and at least one busted looking Coney Island hot dog spot. We did some research and went to what was reputed to be the best one, Lafayette Coney Island. We were unabashedly the only ones in the joint eating chili dogs and fries at 10am. I don't want to be a traitor because I love Ben's Chili Bowl in DC, but this was a great chili dog. The dog couldn't beat Ben's half smoke, but the chili was superior. 

The one thing I knew I wanted to do for sure was visit the Motown Museum. I didn't know what to expect, but this turned out to be my favorite part of the day. I was impressed, in equal parts because our tour guide was so awesome and because the house was so well-preserved in the face of the riots and economic destruction that the city has seen. But it was also inspiring and kind of eerie to stand in the very garage that Berry Gordy turned into a recording studio that changed the music world. We were standing in the same spot, preserved for all this time as it was, where the Temptations, the Supremes, Edwin Starr, Stevie Wonder, Little Richard, and the Jackson 5 had all recorded and sang their way to greatness. 

From Motown, we ventured outside of Detroit city limits to Farmington Hills to visit the best arcade ever.   Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, discreetly tucked away behind a suburban strip mall, makes Dave and Buster's look like a crack house and going to Chuck E Cheese sound as fun as playing Big Buck Hunter at the front entrance of Wal-Mart.  Most arcades follow the same formula and their greatness is usually defined by the level of variety and scuzziness. Marvin's really thinks outside the arcade box. Dimly lit, with manequins, lighted signs, and other crazy crap on the ceilings and walls, it was fun just to stare up at it all and spin around the room. They had your usual arcade games: Time Crisis, skeeball, Pacman, DDR, race car games, lots of pinball. Yet, whoever Marvin is apparently also likes collecting antique fun-house style, kitschy macabre or satirical mechanical wonders from England. Drop in a quarter and see wooden puppets recreate an execution. Fifteen cents to see a puppet sex change. The best were the interactive games. My favorite was a machine that was once housed in the Tower of London prison, which tested your fright factor with fake razorblades and rats attacking your hand.   Have your fortune told by a Chinese puppet, watch a drunk puppet vomit, and let a fake spider make you shriek by jumping out and tickling your palm. Arcade's will never be the same for me. 

After Marvin's, we headed to Alinosi's, home of the best Spumoni ice cream...or so I'd read. When I was a kid, I used to love ordering Spumoni in Italian bakeries simply to see the brightly colored layers. Now, I've come to really appreciate the flavors that come together. A combination of rum raisin, chocolate and pistachio ice cream form layers of an ice cream brick, with servings sliced thin like an all-ice cream cake piece. If trafficking of ice cream bricks ever became its own drug trade, I'd be the first mafioso on that frontier. Alinosi's ice cream was awesome! For preservation purposes, they sold their Spumoni in the store in scoop form instead of slices, but it didn't detract from the flavor. If not for the lunch that was soon to follow, I would have tried a sundae too. 

Don't be deceived by its appetizing
meat. This sandwich will steal
your soul. 

For lunch, we went to Slow's Barbecue, which was the only really disappointing part of my day. Not only did I ruin my appetite for the Kansas City barbecue that would follow on our next stop, but it also did a number on my digestive system. I ordered a brisket sandwich, while Tad ordered a pulled pork with cole slaw sandwich. Any idiot can make good pulled pork, which is why most barbecue places have it. So his sandwich was great. I was belligerently confused when I bit into mine. My brisket was an unnecessarily fatty mess with a frighteningly bizarre onion marmalade condiment and the most god-awful shredded gouda. Just thinking about that sandwich now makes me gag. I tried to give it a second chance and continued eating. With each bite I got sadder and angrier. A perfectly good cow wasted on this. This food had so much potential until some bumbling chef came up with this half-assed concoction. The worst part was that the sandwich had a lasting effect on my stomach and my barbecue psyche...like a brisket hangover. I'll just say my appetite is still not back with its usual vigor, and I avoided disaster and frequent stops during the 13-hour car ride the next day by sleeping and keeping Pepto and baby wipes at the ready. 

Bowling at Garden Bowl,
a few blocks from
Comerica Park

I fought through a terrible stomach ache to finish off the day with bowling at a bowling alley that had been open since 1913 (because apparently no business would dare open in Detroit since the 50s), a visit to a dive bar (where thankfully PBR was not their hipster beer option), and taking in a Tigers baseball game (with a spectacular view of buildings, many vacant, in the Detroit skyline). 

Some of the rumors about Detroit are true. Driving into downtown on a workday morning seemed eerily easy for a functioning city with tall buildings and almost a million inhabitants. Where were all the office workers? The streets were wide and empty, and there were many areas that did feel like a ghost town. The old train station was a burnt out shell of it's formerly majestic self, but still an architectural remnant of and testament to what the city once was and could have been. Old Victorian manions stood boarded up on vast lots that had regrown native prairie grass.  It requires a little hunting, but there is enough to discover in Detroit that makes it a city worth visiting and a history worth saving.

Old train station

Signs of what once was

Signs of new life