Lèse Majesté

Days 14 and 15

Having a hard time keeping up with my travels in detail... Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I slept in, then visited Powell's and Voodoo Doughnut, followed by lunch (but no beer) at the Bridgeport Brewpub.

In the process of looking for a bank, I came across the delightful intersection of MLK Jr. Blvd and Rosa Parks Way:

The bank branch I found nearby had an interesting feature: a parking space near the entrance reserved for police vehicles. Wonder if it gets held up so often they need it.

Then I cruised down to Salem to spend the next couple days, including Thanksgiving, with a couple of old friends. John and Stella are pilots I met at the annual Pinckneyville fly-in some years ago. They met each other there as well, and eventually they got engaged at the fly-in before moving to Oregon. They were kind enough to include me in the turkey day festivities with a bunch of John's relatives. A good time was had by all.

One of the more interesting stories to come out of the conversation was about a project John's brother is involved in. He is participating in the Extreme Mustang Makeover. He will have 100 days to train a wild mustang for competition.

Day 13

After all the confusion, calls, emails, etc., the window repair was quick and easy.

Learned about the cheap motel I had chosen arbitrarily for its location. Seemed pretty odd when I went to get my free breakfast in the morning that it was served in a coffee shop in the same complex of buildings. It was called Sacred Grounds, there were religious posters all over the place, and they were playing Christian rock on the sound system in the coffee shop.

Turns out the Eastside Foursquare Church owns the whole complex. They operate a meeting center with all kinds of A/V gear there, which is used as their church at other times. From a recent newspaper story:

"When we bought the hotel, one police officer told us we just bought the biggest meth lab in Portland," said David Walmer, executive director of the church.

The church purchased the old Travelodge hotel at Northeast 97th Avenue and Sandy in 2004. Walmer says it was no secret that sex and drugs were for sale at the old hotel.

After spending $8 million on renovations and marketing, Walmer says the old clients are long gone. The hotel now hosts travelers and worshippers, and it also operates a drug and alcohol rehabilitation
program.

Nice neighborhood...

Had a mediocre dinner in downtown Portland, then returned to the Green Dragon for a meet-the-brewer night. I ran into one of the Beer Goddess's friends I had met the night before and talked a bunch more about the Portland beer scene while trying a few other brews. Then she talked me into checking out yet another neighborhood place, the EastBurn. Where I topped off the night with a Storm King Stout. Now that's dessert...

Day 12

Awakened to a beautiful, sunny day on the coast with the expectation of adventure in Portland. The drive into the city was pleasant, with Mt. Hood visible in its glory from many miles before reaching Portland.  I had booked a cheap room on the northeast side of town, near the airport, since my window repair appointment would  be very close by.

Once settled in, I hooked up with the Beer Goddess. A former coworker who has moved on to full time beer journalism, living in the center of the craft beer universe, she had promised to introduce me to some local establishments and brews.

First stop was the Horse Brass Pub, where Lisa was interviewing the owner. It's blurry already what I tasted there, although I do remember a late lunch of halibut and chips. Then on to the Green Dragon, a neighborhood joint I had first visited at Lisa's suggestion back in early September, making my acquaintance with the Duchesse. The Green Dragon has recently been taken over (or saved, depending on your perspective) by the Rogue Brewery. There is a lot of controversy over this, and a lot of people nervous over whether the place will lose its character. I sure hope not.

Once again, my memory blurs as to what I drank, but it was all delicious. Perhaps the best part was sitting with Lisa and watching a parade of people stop to say hi to her. Seems like she knows everyone in the Portland beer scene, and I met a bunch of them thanks to her introductions.

We finished up the evening with a visit to Belmont Station. Besides the pub, they are a bottle shop with an enormous selection of craft beers from around the country and the world. More than 1000, I believe. Check out a current list of what they carry here. I'm pretty sure I finished the night off with a glass of Santa's Little Helper on tap, but I wouldn't swear to it under oath. Barely managed to crawl home to my room to try to sleep it off.

Day 11

Finally got a confirmed appointment for the repair of my quarter window. It was supposed to be Monday morning in Portland, but they delayed it to Tuesday to get the parts delivered from Everett. Amusingly, I pretty much had to drive by Everett to get to Portland, so I could have picked them up. But no...

So after another sleep-in, I got up and checked out, then headed into downtown Seattle to visit the REI mothership store. Hoped to find a rain jacket in my size, since my last one got stolen out of my checked baggage on the way to Ireland last year. No luck, though. So I headed south. Stopped at the Museum of Flight again to pick up my eyeglass case out of lost and found, then headed towards Olympia. I had thought about driving around the Olympic peninsula, but realized I wouldn't have the time. Settled for heading out to the coast at Aberdeen, then down the coast towards Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River.

Not a real exciting day, I'm afraid. Pulled into Seaside, Oregon, in the dark and searched long and hard for the Best Western I had reserved a room in. Google Maps was seriously confused and kept taking me to a quiet neighborhood, but I finally found the place. And then drove all over trying to find some dinner. There were a couple fast food chains open on the highway, but I'm avoiding them as much as possible, adhering to William Least Heat Moon's dictum about eating on the road: "You have nothing to lose but the chains."

Day 10

Seattle again... Slept in to give my cold some rest, did laundry, and went to the Museum of Flight. Lots of interesting and historical aircraft there. Just a few snapshots:

That last one is the Gossamer Albatross II, the backup to the man-powered aircraft which successfully flew across the English Channel in 1979. The display designers must have had some fun - they hung it ahead of and above an SR-71. An aircraft that flew very slowly at very low altitude, ahead and above of the world's fastest and highest-flying operational manned aircraft - nice...

Best part of the day was dinner with a former high school classmate and his wife. David is one of the few people from my teens that I have stayed in tough with. He cooked up  a delicious meal. They've lived in France in the past and served the meal in a French sequence: a hearty lamb stew on pasta (orso, I think), a salad, and a cheese course. Pascale wanted some dessert as well, so she brought out a couple flavors of sorbet. A lovely evening with the two of them and their cats.

Day 9

Yeah, I know. Days 7 and 8 are missing. Hopefully I'll get back to them. But I want to try to catch up...

Friday (11/21) was my first full day in Seattle, where I'm settling in for a few days before heading down the coast. Found a great cheap room in Renton, of all places. Nothing much to do in the neighborhood, but the hotel is an excellent place to hang out in for the weekend. Spent the first half of the day sleeping in, doing laundry, and resting up my cold.

Then headed into downtown Seattle. What a zoo. There are waaaay too many freaking cars in this city and not enough parking places. I didn't help, of course, but I don't know the local transit system so I pretty much had to drive. First stops were the tourist things. A mediocre overpriced lunch at Ivars on the pier, but I had to do it. Brought back memories of one of my first trips to Alaska, where I caught the ferry nearby. (The Alaska ferry terminal has long ago moved north to Bellingham, though.) Then a stroll through the Pike Street Market and a stop at the original Starbucks. Got that all out of the way, then went to different coffeehouse to wait out some rain showers and doze off for a bit in a comfy chair.

The day finally got interesting after that. A former coworker had strongly urged me to visit a neighborhood beer joint he loved, the Stumbling Monk. (Thanks, Jeremy!) Tracked it down and had a great time. It's a small place that specializes in Belgian brews, both genuine ones from Belgium and domestic Belgian-style beers. They had my current favorite beer on tap, the Duchesse de Bourgogne. Yay!

Had a long conversation with a couple guys at the bar who were friends since childhood in Cleveland. One of them had lived in the Twin Cities, having married a gal from Eagan. One of the owners, behind the bar, was just as friendly and conversational. Some previous customer had given him a wooden nickel from Al's in Center City, MN. When I found out I was visiting from Minnesota, he pressed it on me, insisting I had a better chance of spending it than he did. 

I enjoyed two glasses of the Duchesse and one of Ommegang Rouge, that New York brewery's version of the Flemish sour red ale, which they have made for them under contract by a Belgian brewery. Holy cow, did they emphasize the sour aspect. Kinda like drinking green apples. Glad I tried it, but it's the Duchesse for me...

Wrapped up the day with a really lame late dinner of Dungeness crab cakes in downtown Renton. At least there was some decent live jazz in the place.

Day 6

Decided on a short day because the cold was kicking my ass. I slept in, then got off to a great start when I walked out to my car in Butte to find someone had tried to break into it overnight. Slashed the window patch that had held up well for days, reached in and unlocked the rear passenger door, and tried to pull it open. Fortunately the suicidal deer had hit it hard enough it cannot be opened.

Strange photo of the day:

Only went a few hours to Missoula and called it a day. Funny thing, I think Missoula is a town I could be happy living in. It's a college town, like the places I lived in for most of my first 30+ years. Lot of old hippies. A bunch of microbreweries and lots of good food.

I had a chicken dinner for the ages at the Double Front Cafe - not as good as Stroud's in K.C., if only for the lack of sides, but damned for the price. $9.95 for two plump breast quarters and a pile of excellent fries - more than I could eat. My waitress was friendly and talkative. Said the batter was 65 years old. I told her I hoped they made a fresh batch once in a while. She laughed and said the recipe was only known to the family that had run the joint for three generations. They had gone out of town just then, and the biggest football game of the year (the rivalry between the University of Montana and Montana State) was coming up in a few days. So they expected to get slammed with business and begged the owners to make up a bunch of extra batter before leaving. Because chicken is all anyone goes there to eat and they'd be high and dry if they ran out.

And according to my waitress tonight, they recently decriminalized possession of small amounts of weed. Apparently, it's a pocket of progressive politics in the middle of a conservative region, like where I last lived in Missouri. It's big enough to have a decent amount of cultural activities and shopping but it's close to lots of wild country. Only a day's drive from the coast. There's a very good public radio station.

On that last point - it was weird in Butte to hear the student station use the call letters of the first radio station I ever worked for, KMSM.

Day 5

Another day of wandering through the high plains and desert... First, a drive around Jackson looking for a breakfast better than fast food. Unfortunately, it was the off season between summer and ski craziness, and all the great places I'd read about were closed. So headed west towards Idaho Falls, stopping at a grocery store in Alpine to buy some breakfast at a grocery store.

Idaho Falls and Jackson were the first two places on the trip where I found 3G coverage on the iPhone. Frankly, an iPhone would be a waste in most the areas I've hit to this point. No 3G, very little EDGE, and broad areas of no coverage at all.

I'm in serious Mormon country by now. They even have their own radio stations preaching alongside those of the evangelical stations infesting the radio waves everywhere. I actually heard one pair of idiots preaching that Barack Obama is the anti-christ and his election signals the beginning of the end times. Holy crap. Which is why I was surprised to encounter this north of Idaho Falls:

How odd. I wonder if those are barley elevators, not that Budweiser emphasizes barley in their brews. Anyway, I veered off I-15 onto another blue highway, following the Sacajawea trail. State highway 28 was some of the longest straight sections of road I've ever seen, climbing the valley beween the Lemhi Range and the Beaverhead Mts. Eventually it reached Salmon. Sacajawea was born into an Agaidika ("Salmon Eater") tribe of Lemhi Shoshone between Kenney Creek and Agency Creek, about twenty minutes away from Hayden and Bear Trail Creeks in what's now Salmon. They have a very nice commemorative site for her there. The interpretive center was closed for the season (getting to be a pattern here...), but I could wander around the grounds and see some of the outdoors items:

There was also a statue of the dog that accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition:

At this point I was heading towards Helena, MT, after originally planning to bypass Montana altogether. But there's a VW dealership there and my insurance company was trying to arrange for a repair to the smashed window there. Later in the afternoon they told me it could not be arranged without several more days' notice. But I continued on to Butte to spend the night. Had another near miss in the dusk on the way. I came over a rise and saw a big deer standing on the side of the road. I braked as hard as I could without triggering the ABS. Sure enough, just as I got close, the idiot ran right across the road in front of me. I missed him by a foot while still decelerating.

Two more continental divide crossings, nothing as high as the previous one, and I was in Butte. Just in time for a vicious cold to start clobbering me. Ugh.

Day 4

Waking up in Worland, WY - can it get much better? Well, yes. But the breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy in the motel lobby was a tasty way to start the day. My plan had been to cut over to Yellowstone. But when I checked road conditions, all but one road were closed for the winter. And that one just cut across the northern edge. So I changed plans and started out for Jackson Hole to see how the rich folks live.

The route was a real zig-zag across both desert and mountains. First waypoint was Thermopolis, home of some huge hot springs. I thought I might take a soak. But the smell was a bit much for me, and I was freshly showered, so I kept going. South to Lander, then northwest towards the Grand Tetons. Much of the route was through the Wind River reservation, and on a whim I pulled off at Fort Washakie to look up Sacawajea's burial site:

This is controversial - the conventional story is that she died young in 1812 after giving birth to her second child. But a lot of people believe she left her French husband at that time, headed west, married into the Comanche tribe, then eventually returned to her Shoshone ancestral lands where she died in 1884. The statue and gravestone above mark her 1884 death and burial there. Took me a while to find it. I drove all the way to the end of the road I thought it was on and was sitting there looking at maps when an Indian couple pulled out of a private road in their pickup and asked if I needed help. Told them what I was looking for and the guy asked if I was a biographer, then offered to lead me there. I had actually passed the cemetary but there was no marking for the turnoff.

Continuing on into the Wind River Range, I crossed the continental divide for the first time and did my first driving on real snow for the year:

Down into Jackson Hole, which is actually the long valley east of the Teton Range, and into Jackson, WY, for the night.

World Domination Tour, Day 3

At last, a calm and uneventful day. The winds died down from the day before, the skies cleared up, and it warmed up into the 40s. Back to the Black Hills for the obligatory visit to Mt. Rushmore:

 

I'm really glad I didn't come here in high season. Most of the tourist traps in the area were closed down and there were no hordes overrunning the monument itself. Just a few exotic visitors at the entrance:

From there, I cruised west on US 16, avoiding the interstate as much as possible. This must be wild turkey heaven, because I saw numerous flocks, some of them quite large, all along the way. Speaking of turkeys, check this guy out:

Wonder what gave out first, the springs or the tire. I'm glad I don't have to jack that rear end up to change the tire, that's for sure.

Pulled off the road in Gillette, WY, for a beverage and drove into downtown where I experienced a sense of serious confusion. I was stopped in front of the Wisconsin Cheese Shop, listening to Whad'Ya Know, where Michael Feldman was interviewing Andrew Zimmern on the phone from Minneapolis. Didn't I leave all that hundreds of miles behind?

Back onto US 16 at Buffalo, I climbed through the Bighorn Mountains towards the Bighorn Basin. Major paranoia set in as the sun set. I saw literally hundreds of antelope and mule deer right off the sides of the road in the hour of dusk before darkness, and could just imagine how many were lurking in the darkness with my car's name on them. But apparently they were not feeling particularly suicidal at the time. Meanwhile Garrison Keillor was doing a sketch on Prairie Home Companion about a deer drawn to rush across a highway and the deer therapist trying to talk him out of it. Seriously - the coincidence was utterly ridiculous.

Ended up in Worland, WY, for the night. It's a small town on the scenic route to Yellowstone, loaded up with hunters for the weekend. I wanted a decent dinner, not fast food from a chain, but at 8:00 on a Saturday night the limited number of sit-down places had already closed down for the night. However, there were at least two drive-through liquor stores still open. Yeah, drive-through. Welcome to the west...