After an extended goodbye to Vesta and Walter (and to my lovely plants and bubbling sourdough starter), we picked up our rental Mazda, dropped off keys and confirmed all the kitty care with our two furbaby sitters, then fetched Jenny. It was a late start for such a long road trip, but we found ourselves finally on the open road. I had been nervous about this trip, knowing that visiting the identical twin sister of my deceased mother-in-law would trigger some strong emotions, and also because she has been dealing with repeated illness and loss of loved ones since her sister’s passing 6+ years ago. It is difficult when such a good person goes through so much wearisome pain. You just want to help, do something, but sometimes there’s nothing to be done. All we can offer is to come out here to spend time with remaining family. To show support the way families do for each other. Just to be here for her, visit and gab and meet her dog and see her green, mountainous view, see little cousin Ashley again and maybe meet others in the family.
I drove the entire way, from Minneapolis to Illinois, and it was a long way, but I actually felt fine until we struggled through nasty rain in the Chicago area. There was an unbelievable amount of deer roadkill. There must’ve been 20-30 deer carcasses, and lots of poor raccoons, too. I blew a kiss and blessing to each one, and it seemed like every few minutes my hands flew to my lips and I whispered “blessings fly with you”, which has become my mantra in springtime it seems, with so much death along with vibrant beginnings of life. We spent the first part of the trip catching up with Jenny on her life and other family stuff, then hooking up the iPod and listening to some compilation punk stuff to keep us awake. We later switched to an awesome artist, Ulrich Schnauss, that we often listen to while driving, to bring the mood to a calm mellow. The long expanse of Wisconsin was pretty, and it reminded me that we would like to plan a trip to Door County. I collected some brochures and maps at the rest areas to plan for another getaway (hopefully) later this year. We stopped several times to drain my walnut-bladder and to give Jenny the opportunity for a regular smoke break. She has this funky little device that I wish I would have had when I was trying to quit: it’s a little battery-operated vapor nicotine inhaler. It is the funkiest little contraption! You put nicotine oil (some are flavored even) in the tip piece, and then the battery portion screws onto the bottom, and it produces vapor that you inhale and it’s supposed to give you the nicotine hit without all the chemicals that are in commercial tobacco products. It was quite interesting! I was going to try it, but after so many hours in the car, the smell of the orange-flavored oil was started to smell too sweet for me. Plus, I probably don’t need to give my body something that I was once addicted to. I can be very weak at times, and quitting smoking was the hardest damn thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done some hard damn things.
The rain that began in Chicago was the start of my transformation into Grumpy Hag. I was hanging in there, but the rain just kept coming, and the construction slow downs were nerve racking enough, but add to that insane speeding drivers flying all about, and the minutes seemed to swell into tiny eternities. We hit Gary, Indiana and I hit my wall. Back hurting, bladder filling, stomach demanding, it was time for the Wicked Witch to unleash a few expletives into the darkened, wet Universe. Pulling off at the sight of hotels and the promise of hot food, we scarfed some Wendy’s burgers and fries (fast food has never tasted so good!) and discussed whether to stay here in the infamous Gary, Indiana or continue on a little ways to find suitable lodging. After checking the rates at a nearby hotel (way over our price range), John took over the wheel and took us a few minutes further in the dark and rain and construction mess where we took a wrong turn that ended up to be a happy accident. He pulled into a Super 8 that ended up giving us not only a great deal for two rooms, but the rooms were amazingly cushy as well as functional. Squishy pillows, soft beds….bliss. Long day. DONE.
Day 2 - June 2, 2013
We both slept hard and well, and I woke just a little groggy. John was already up and showered as I croaked a good morning greeting to him. Jenny, thankfully, was also up having a smoke, so we told her we were going to try to get on the road as soon as possible to make use of daylight, energy, time. After showering, I scarfed down a piece of toast and tossed a mint tea bag into my Rubbermaid water jug and filled it with cold water. I’m going without coffee, at least in the mornings, or on days when I don’t want to be peeing every sixteen minutes, so mint tea it will be. John must’ve eaten while I was getting ready, and we were packing up the car at 6:50am. Another very long day of sitting in the cramped car, eating cheesy poufs and peanut butter everything. I did not realize that everything I grabbed to snack on seems to contain peanuts or peanut butter. I am so sick of it, I really just want a big ole taco or some spaghetti. Tomorrow, tomorrow I will have something non-peanut!
There was less roadkill on this leg of the journey, but what lacked in dead animal (which I’m happy for, by the way!), the day made up for in tolls. Oh. My. Gods. The tolls! It used to be that you could just grab some random change and get through toll booths, now, it’s a goddamned major investment! We have probably forked over a good $60 in toll fares so far. We meant to keep track, but honestly, it’s as bad as the roadkill! Just too much to keep track! I still maintain that the Ohio Turnpike is one of the best tollways, however, and not only is the road itself very well maintained and the rest areas are almost upper crust by roadside standards, but the method of toll payment is world’s above Illinois. You pull a ticket on entering, then pay the listed price as you leave. In Chicago, you have no idea what the fare is until you’re 500 yards from the booth, and you have to pull over suddenly from breakneck speeds to a complete halt for each and every toll booth, of which there are many. You get through one, and look! Here comes another! Oh shit, I have to pull over suddenly to the far right, oh now there are three more right hand lanes to get through, and forget that there are six Mack trucks bearing down on our tiny car at 70mph, oh and hang on, which booth takes cash, oops, nope, not that one, better fly even further to the impossible right! How are these roads even this big for 18 lanes of toll traffic? Dear Chicago, your toll system sucks it. Signed, Weary & Poor Travellers Now That You’ve Extracted All of Our Money From Us. We’ll be spending our tourism dollars in Ohio, Suckas!
Actually, I have to say we spent way more on tolls in Ohio, but still, it’s a lot more civilized, and I will gladly pay for civilization and my safety. It’s hard to give a lot of props to Ohio, you know, but I will praise their toll roads. This concludes my toll rant.
The rest of today was…driving! And more driving! It’s funny how absolutely tiring it is to sit in a car all day. I snacked uncontrollably being in the passenger seat today, so I’m feeling gluttonous and puffy. I should have grabbed some Burger King at our 3 o’clock stop because it was our last look at convenience food. Enter Pennsylvania Dutch country…we actually saw a horse and buggy! And women with little bonnets and the guys who wear their beards all, well, Amish style. It made me want to make a beeline for the nearest Amish store so I could grub down some delicious home cooking and home churned butter with steaming hot bread from the fire oven! But with daylight drifting and clouds forming threatening faces, we kept on. And on. The green lush continued to increase, and I became entranced by the trees. We started seeing many live deer bounding around, dozens of turkey vultures soaring the skies, wild turkeys in every field. This place is a wonderland of green, truly. I’ve spied lots of weeds I’m familiar with from back home, but also seeing lots of stuff I’m not sure of, and I pondered what kinds of weeds they have growing here, what medicinal gifts they bear, what are their charming folk names? As Jenny napped in the back seat, I went on to John about all I know about Granny Magic, Pow-Wow, Braucherei and HooDoo. This area is steeped, absolutely decocted, in magical lore and folk practices from the Old Country. For me, that is very neat. For those not into this stuff, maybe kinda boring. But he listens and enjoys my excitement about it ☺ What a Love!
We finally found our little cabin in the woods, which is the cutest cabin you ever did see! We hastily unpacked, called Joan to get directions to her place, and loaded back into the dreaded car for the windiest ride I think I’ve ever taken. But also idyllic and stunningly beautiful. The woods here are true, wild woods. I was afraid even to look into them, and yet, they are so wonderful, you want to know what’s in them, you want to walk through them. It really wasn’t too far to Joan’s place from where we are staying, but I fretted the whole way, insisting that we’d be driving back in pitch darkness, and was convinced we’d die on the way home. Sigh…I hate to admit it, but I think I may be a drama queen. Joan was sitting on her swing waiting for us. Her tiny little Dachshund, Oscar, came running up to the car to greet us. He was such a cute little wiggle-butt! I don’t know his history, but he has one eye that is blind and scars all over his back. I’m sure I’ll find out more, but for the time, I didn’t ask and it doesn’t matter anyway. We’ve all got battle scars.
Seeing Joan, I almost broke down into tears. As an identical twin, she is exactly as my mother-in-law, my dear L’Ma, was. Vibrant, fiery, funny. They speak alike, too, though Joan always had a bit more twang in her accent, living out here and Jan living in Minnesota for so long. But hearing her today, I heard so much Jan through her. John said the same thing later, and I fought tears again. She fed us cake, caught us up on her ailing son, we saw a bounding deer go by, and John saw a hummingbird at the feeder, and we gabbed a bit about random things before we said farewell. We wanted to get back before it got dark. We will be spending the next few days hanging out with the fam. It feels good to set a few roots down here.
Goodnight, all. May love and warmth find you, and keep you. Hugs, R&J
2 comments:
Glad you got there safe. Have fun and would like to see a lot of pictures. Say hi to Joan and give her my love.
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