Tonight finds me in a Super 8 (a cheap chain motel) somewhere in St Paul, Minnesota.
The beautfiful thing about Super 8’s is that, unlike campgrounds that make grand promises about internet connectivity ‘at every site’, the wireless actually works here. Sweet.
Tonight is the fourth night of our camping trip, and the first that we haven’t actually camped.
The first night was spent in Madison County, Iowa, and the KOA campground was decidedly lame. For one thing, it was sixty RV’s and us in a ripped tent camper and small, yellow pup tent, and for another it was WINDY AS FUCK ANYTHING and it took us a good thirty minutes to even get the canvas up. I thought we’d end up in Wisconsin.
It was TOTALLY the wind’s fault that I ripped a giant hole in the canvas, I take no responsibility. But the fact that I haven’t fixed it yet… that’s on me I guess.
In addition to the wind and the RVs full of retirees who stared unashamedly, the campground was sterile and boring, with a bright blue pool and air conditioned toilets and wireless that flat out refused to cooperate. As if that weren’t bad enough (I know, my life is hard, right?), I totally wanted a T shirt that said ‘Madison County Iowa’ but the women’s fitted shirts were BRIGHT PINK to make sure we didn’t go getting any ideas about gender. Dog forbid we dare wear a confusingly masculine colour like grey.
Stupid KOA.
The bridges of Madison County were nice. I haven’t seen the movie or read the book, mostly because I don’t care, but driving around winding country roads and Nowhere, Iowa, reminded me of riding around winding country roads in Nowhere, Victoria, taking pictures on foggy saturday mornings. One of the few things I liked about living in wangaratta.
Hogback Bridge
Apparently the bridges in the county were built by local farmers to help pay their taxes. They covered them because the wood for the bridge was expensive, and the wood to cover it was not.
It made them last longer.
Fascinating.
Ace and Juno in Hogback Bridge
A combination of me not knowing what I’m doing and the point-and-shoot nature of my digital camera left me unable to capture the glowing halo of light I saw around Ace and his canine.
Imagine angels singing. Or don’t. Whatever blows your skirt up.
Grafitti
It seems that the best use visitors to this historic site could think of for it was to write, carve and burn their names into. Some Australians decided to join in and defiled it in the name of Sydney. I bet our nation was proud of them.
Hey look it's me!
Hey look it’s me!
The rest of the bridges were WAY less interesting, and the photos would only prove my boring point – so I won’t post them – but as we followed the terribly terribly marked Bridges of Madison County Trail, we got lost for half an hour in a forest masquerading as a city park.
‘Where do I turn?’ asked Ace, as we decided not to stop at the third identical bridge, a bridge so boring that even the river had left for a more interesting course. ‘I don’t know.’ I suggested helpfully, and we turned left.
As we bumped and bounced down a one way dirt road Ace grumbled and I ignored him, both of us thinking what a bad decision left had been when, BANG – we ran into a castle.
Not literally, but it did kind of jump out of nowhere at us. I was more excited than Ace, and Juno was more excited than me. None of us knew why there was a castle there, but Juno and I climbed it while Ace stood around by the car like a good chauffer.
Now where did I put that bucket of hot tar...
The view was amazing. Iowa is pretty if you don’t live there.
The never ending road
Eventually we escaped the horrible, monotonous beauty that had held hostage for over thirty miles, and we headed back to the Pine-O-Kleen campground.
That night was about a billion and a half degrees, so I fell asleep in teeny tiny shorts and and a singlet with only the fly screen of my tent between me and the elements, thinking about how it wouldn’t really even help anyone much if I roasted because it was too hot to eat roast.
I woke up to hurricane Katrina.
I stirred when the first rain drops hit me, and stirred a little more a few seconds later when the sky broke and the wind kicked up. All of a sudden rain was pouring in through the door, leaking through the zip and blowing up under the fly into the tent, which was doing it’s best impression of Dorothy’s house (whywhywhy didn’t I put the guy wires on?) and Juno was trying her damndest to climb onto my head. I guess she thought it might be safer up there.
I spent a good five minutes (after doing as much as I could to prevent myself from floating and/or flying away) trying to find my camera to capture the Blair Witch antics of my tent in a surprise documentary, but I’d foolishly left it in the car. Two metres was way, way too far to go in this storm, so you’ll have to use your imagination again.
No angels this time.
The next day we broke camp (in the rain) and headed north to Minnesota to a camground called Hidden Valley.
Hidden Valley
Hidden Valley, as far as I can tell, consists of a river, a soy field (above), a few houses, a post office, a town hall, a campground and a store that rents tubes to float down the river on.
It’s amazingly beautiful, and as psyched as I was about the campground from the pictures online, I got even more excited when I saw how beautiful the area was.
My spirit was dampened a little when we drove in and discovered that, not only was campground full of drunken college students, it had also been hit by a tornado.
Not kidding.
I don’t have any photos because I assumed the chaos would still be around in the morning, and it wasn’t, but it was incredible. Tree branches and debris were scattered everywhere, and in several cases whole trees had crashed down on picnic tables, tents, RVs and some guy’s SUV. In between the wreckage, resilient party goers had pitched hundreds of tents, with no care for whethere they had access to fire rings, electricity or even water, and certainly without a though for the site boundaries.
The overall effect was to make the campground look like some sort of impromptu refugee camp for disaster victims.
Eventually a guy, who turned out to be the camp manager, tundled past in a daze on an ATV pulling a trailer full of branches, and instructed us to ‘clear a spot and get to it.’
I spoke to him later and he said nobody had been hurt and promised that photos of the damage would be up on the site soon, so I’ll link it when they go up.
Eventually we found out that there was a second level to the ground, further away from the river but also away from the drunken hooligans who screamed and drummed and revved cars all night.
Ace wasn’t particularly pleased with the place, but I was thrilled. It was in the middle of nowhere, it was on a river, it was run by a sleepy, happy old man who refused to answer phones, and it was GORGEOUS.
Except for the part where it was beat to shit, it was exactly what a campground should be.
Road into the campground
Driving in we were greeted by several falling down buildings and barns, one of which functioned (or, more accurately, didn’t function) as the office.
Road to our campsite
We chose a campsite to the right of this picture, and pitched out camper and tent. Those two RVs, as far as I can tell, were abandoned and the one closest to us had been damaged by a falling tree.
The rCamper
This is the mighty might camper from 12BC that Ace calls home on the road.
Eureka!
I prefer my very excited ten, which generally has less snoring in it.
Broken Tree
This tree was snapped in half by the tornado and hung precariously over the rMobile for three days.
I thought it was pretty.
Sedonia
Eventually Sadie Jane showed up and cooked some leeks, every enthusiastically, to go with the taters I was trying to cook cooking over the fahr.
Taters
Here they are, not cooking.
I left them unattended for a good while and this happened, so I decided to go get some wood and build it back up, and I nearly fell over backwards when I saw this:
Zombie
I choked a cry and stumbled backwards as I realised (or more accurately, didn’t realise) just what I was prying a stick from.
I can has power?
At some point Happy Stoned Camp Manager came up and made our shitbox of a power outlet work, but I never really trusted it.
Sadie Jane
It is unclear to me exactly why Sadie is eating out of a mixing bowl, but she is wearing a Young Democrats hoodie and we were talking about how great Hillzor is. So this picture is ftw.
Diz box pertanes to mai intrsts
And, in any case, she could have been rattling off reasons why John Mcain is the greastest candidate ever and I STILL would have loved her, because she brought BAKED goods from the Norweigan bakery her family owns. Go Sadie!
River
This is the river.
Mah face
This is my face in front of the river.
Check it
After three days in Hidden Valley, without Carmel’s inexplicable ability to endure cold showers and certainly without the courage to brave those particular cold showers, this is what my whole body looked like. I wore a bright shirt that day in hopes of drawing attention away from my skin, but I’m not sure it worked. I also got covered in grease shortly after this, messing with the trailer and the hitch on the rMobile.
I was a little disappointed about staying in a motel tonight, but I took the hottest shower I could stand and scrubbed until my arms were sore and my skin was red raw and sparkling clean. It felt lovely.
BFFs!
We dropped Sadie off at her place in St Paul, and both realised that of the millions of pictures we’d each taken over the weekend, none included the two of us. We remedied it and said our sad but happy goodbyes, and Ace and I headed out to the Super 8. (Note the bright shirt)
Tomorrow will be a long day, consisting mainly of a seven hour drive to Thunder Bay, Ontario, and I’ve no idea when I’ll be online next (so to the people I didn’t email tonight, sorry sorry I’ll be online real soon).
I’m sure your lives will be empty and meaningless without my internet presence to validate them, so here’s a little something something to tide you over:
