We’re home – well, at our other house, the one without wheels. It’s remarkable how fast two months can fly by. A few times during the 2008 Herzog Family RV Adventure, I was asked (usually by newspaper reporters for whom life’s glass often seems to be half empty), “What’s the worst thing about your summer RV trips?” My answer: The fact that it has to end.
So… what did we do during our summer vacation? To most folks, I’d simply answer, “We drove an RV from California to Chicago and back – zigzagging our way through 14 states over 66 days.” (That’s because people are busy, and you never want to overestimate other peoples’ fascination with YOUR life). But to folks who might be inclined to know more – or who might read my travel journal – I’d say something like this:
We visited Disneyland, California Adventure, Legoland, San Diego Wild Animal Park, children’s museums in Palm Springs and Salt Lake City, the Denver Mint, the Colorado Renaissance Festival, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Mount Rushmore, the Mall of America, the Very Large Array, the House on the Rock and the Matchstick Marvels Museum.
We strolled through the streets of San Luis Obispo (California), Santa Fe (New Mexico), Park City (Utah) and Deadwood (South Dakota). We drove past cacti waving us into the hills of eastern Arizona and broad mesas welcoming us into northern Utah and great fields of corn ushering us through central Iowa and massive rock spires towering over us in the Black Hills of South Dakota and a bevy of bison ignoring us in Wyoming. We experienced 118-degree heat in southern California… and then mountaintop snow flurries just two weeks later in Colorado.
We climbed a twelve-story tree house in Iowa, clawed our way toward the top of the Great Sand Dunes and roamed the Garden of the Gods and hiked through Cave of the Winds in Colorado, fished off a pontoon boat in Wisconsin, braved a waterslide in Minnesota, swam in a wave pool in Nebraska, watched a pirate battle and a jousting competition in Las Vegas, and made our way to the top of Pike’s Peak on Independence Day.
We spent time with family in Santa Barbara and the Santa Ana Pueblo in New Mexico and the North Woods of Wisconsin and the suburbs of Chicago. We watched a hot air balloon launch at the Winnebago-Itasca Grand National Rally. We heard Hootie & The Blowfish at an open-air concert. We sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Wrigley Field. We tasted blackberry pie in a place called Pie Town.
Funny, though. Usually, when I finish a trip like this I most vividly remember specific moments – images that emerged as sublime: A field of sunflowers – all facing the same direction – in Nebraska. A lavender sunset backlighting the Missouri River in South Dakota. An array of colorful sailboats gliding along a pine-rimmed lake in northern Wisconsin. A rainbow arching over a northern New Mexico reservation. A snowbow dropping from the heavens over Colorado Springs.
So THAT’S how we spent our summer vacation.
The trip may be over, but this travel journal lives on. One thing about our expeditions into the nooks and crannies of this country: They make it impossible for me to ever suffer from writer’s block. If anything, I suffer from sensory overload. So I hope to be writing frequently – about people and places and observations and insights and any other discoveries I’ve made while cruising America in a house on wheels.
Meanwhile, would it surprise you to know that I pretty much have next year’s trip already mapped out?
Posted: August 14, 2008 3:07 AM | Posted By:
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Las Vegas is the kind of a place where everyone walks around with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other shoulder… and the devil somehow has the angel in a headlock. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas… except if one happens to be writing a travel journal. Then all bets are off…
So here’s what happened in Vegas… written in dialogue form – a conversation between me and the devil… well, actually a devil’s advocate:
Devil’s advocate (DA): What? You drove an RV into Vegas? How exactly does that work? What did you do? Valet it at the Bellagio?
Actually, there are a bunch of RV parks in and around the city. In fact, we stayed at the Circus Circus KOA. That’s right – a campground attached to the casino, just off The Strip. The swimming pool came in handy, as the thermometer was just north of scorching. And by the way, one of my all-time favorite movie scenes actually involves an RV in Las Vegas. It’s from Lost in America, a scene where the wife (played by Julie Haggerty) loses the “nest egg” in a casino binge, and the husband (Albert Brooks) desperately tries to convince casino management to give it back. He even offers a great advertising pitch: “Casino With a Heart.” It doesn’t work.
DA: Fine. Vegas is RV-friendly. But is it appropriate to go there with kids? What’s next? Family movie night, and you rent 9 ½ Weeks? What can you possible do with kids in Las Vegas?
Well, nothing really, unless kids like carnivals and circuses and magic and pirate battles and ancient pyramids and castles and jousting competitions and… Let’s just say that if you asked Luke and Jesse where Las Vegas ranks among their favorites places we’ve visited during our 2008 RV Adventure, they’d put it right near the top, alongside Disneyland and Wisconsin’s House on the Rock. Luke’s says he wants to live in Vegas someday. Judging by his eagerness at trying a couple of magic tricks we bought for him there (Houdini’s Magic Shop is ubiquitous in the casino shopping areas), he just may have a viable act.
We watched the circus acts in Circus Circus, won a few stuffed animals at the carnival midway, and roamed the hotel’s Adventuredome amusement park (where we tried everything from a Ferris Wheel to a Spongebob 4-D ride). Then we went to The Venetian, where we…
DA: The Venetian? Isn’t that one of those newer upscale casinos? What can you possibly do with kids there for under a hundred bucks?
Well, we had a quick dinner at a deli. Corned beef and matzo ball soup (who knew Venice had good matzo ball soup?). And we strolled along the Grand Canal to St. Mark’s Square, where the kids were mesmerized by the living statues and the jugglers and the mimes. In fact, one of the latter picked Jesse to come up to the stage to participate in a routine – and he bowed at the end to great applause. The moment combined one of my favorite things (my son overcoming his shyness) with one of my least favorite things (mimes). So the dinner was cheap, and the entertainment was free. From there, we headed across the street to Treasure Island, just in time to catch their pirates-versus-sexy sirens pyrotechnic song-and-dance battle.
DA: Now that sounds a bit inappropriate for kids…
If you’re paying attention, yes. But the constant (and eventually tiresome) stream of sexual innuendo was WAY over the heads of a first and second grader who simply marveled at the whole scene. So while Amy and I rolled our eyes, the kids barely blinked. Now, the next afternoon we made our way to the Luxor… you think two little boys think it’s cool to enter the world’s largest pyramid? And then we walked next door to the Excalibur hotel-casino… you think they liked walking into a castle?
DA: Yes, but what can they DO in there?
Well, how about dinner at the Tournament of Kings. We watched the Knights of the Roundtable joust and ham it up while we ate Cornish game hen and broiled potatoes without the use of silverware. It was like professional wrestling on horseback, but hey… you gotta do it at least once in your life. Each knight represented a different country. We were supposed to root for the Russian knight, who was a bit of a scalawag. Believe it or not, the French guy won. Anyway, the kids were cheering as loud as anyone…
DA: Okay, okay, I get the point. The kids enjoyed Vegas. But what about you? It all sounds a bit… over the top.
Over the top? Of course it is. It’s Las Vegas. Subtlety is against the law. It’s the metropolitan version of Elton John’s oversized glasses. It’s a city as subdued as of one of Cher’s costumes. There’s a Liberace Museum there, for crying out loud. Apparently, even the mimes have their own way of doing things. Jesse swears she whispered something to him…
Posted: August 11, 2008 3:52 AM | Posted By:
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For a good time, call 866-730-9097. By that I mean, for a good laugh. That’s the number for Vegas.com at Hoover Dam, and if your sense of humor is juvenile enough, it sure sounds like the guy is swearing a blue streak: “Prices for the DAM tour are $30 per person. DAM tour tickets must be purchased in person. Children under the age of eight are not permitted on the DAM tour…”
Our stop at Hoover Dam yesterday was a totally spontaneous decision. We were planning on spending the night in Henderson, Nevada, just south of Las Vegas, and the big dam was just a half-hour away. The kids are under eight, so we didn’t take the tour. But just seeing a piece of construction that required more masonry that the Great Pyramid. Well, that’s impressive…
I was thinking that there are probably four examples of iconic American construction – the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Gateway Arch and Hoover Dam. I’d seen the first three; now I can cross the latter off the list.
Really, though, the most spectacular moment of the day occurred a few hours earlier, as we drove south from Utah toward Nevada and found ourselves crossing a corner of Arizona for a couple-dozen miles – a breathtaking drive between red-rock mountains and alongside a river that looked exactly like the chocolate stream in the Wonka factory. The kids were looking out the window as we drove (they sit buckled into a couch) and they let out a simultaneous, “WHOA!”
I can’t put it better than that.
Here’s a DAM photo:
Posted: August 8, 2008 5:38 PM | Posted By:
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As we drove through Wyoming over the past few days (we’re in a place called Beaver, Utah, after spending the day in Salt Lake City), it felt like déjà vu on wheels. That’s because we kept seeing the same two signs alongside Interstate 80.
Anyone who has driven through South Dakota knows that Wall Drug signs are everywhere in that state, like grasshoppers and hay bales. Well, Wyoming’s Little America truck stop and hotel may rank second. Every few miles, we were told a different factoid about the place – that it offers 31-inch TVs in each room, for instance, or that it boasts a 24-hour mechanic. The place can’t help but be underwhelming once you stop there. So we didn’t.
The other sign we kept seeing as we rumbled through Wyoming? STRONG WIND POSSIBLE. This one was more on the mark. Wyoming is one windy place, but in my experience it ranks second to New Mexico in that category. Actually, not New Mexico – northern New Mexico. Really just the city of Gallup, New Mexico. It’s like driving in a wind tunnel.
In fact, along those lines, I’ve put together a list of state superlatives (well, at least for the Lower 48). These are just one man’s opinions, and they tend to change with each RV expedition:
Windiest: New Mexico
Flattest: Nebraska
Hilliest: Pennsylvania
Buggiest: South Dakota
Emptiest: Wyoming
Greenest: Virginia
Brownest: Nevada
Most geologically diverse: California
Least geologically diverse: Kansas
Most inspiring: Montana
Most spectacular: Colorado
Most underrated in general: Iowa
Most underrated scenery: Idaho
Most tourist-friendly: Wisconsin
Best accents: Maine
Most road kill: Louisiana
Anyone got any others? Delaware may be tough…
Here’s a photo of the sun setting on our Winnebago Adventurer in Cheyenne, Wyoming:
Posted: August 7, 2008 12:08 PM | Posted By:
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Sometimes during a long journey, the best moments come in unremarkable places and in unexpected situations. Like in the middle of a state in the middle of the country, and like when life’s lemons suddenly emerge as lemonade.
We’re in Gothenburg, Nebraska, about smack-dab in the middle of the state, which is itself where the map of America folds. If you don’t know where Gothenburg is, it’s about eleven miles west of Cozad. Does that help?
We’re in the homestretch of the 2008 Herzog RV Adventure – we should be back on the Monterey Peninsula in about ten days. And we’re heading west with a head of steam, cruising along I-80 at 70 miles per hour. Well, at least the parts that aren’t under construction. Tomorrow, we make our way into Cheyenne, Wyoming. Yesterday, we drove through Omaha and stopped at a KOA Kampground in an eastern Nebraska hamlet called Gretna. We’ve stayed at a bunch of KOAs on this trip, mostly because they are guaranteed to be family friendly. This one had a pool, free mini golf, badminton, horseshoes, nightly ice cream socials, hayrides and pizza delivered to your RV door.
It was Friday movie night at the KOA. They showed “Bee Movie.” You’ll see why this is relevant in a few seconds.
Anyway, the moment that will stick with me occurred tonight. It didn’t happen during our mid-day stop at the Island Oasis Water Park in the city of Grand Island (you’d think, by the name, that we were in the Bahamas) – although the wave pool and lazy river were much appreciated as the thermometer reached triple digits. Yes, the Herzog family has resumed its role as a heat wave magnet.
No, the big moment occurred after we parked in our site here in Gothenburg. Luke and Jesse noticed a small playground about 100 feet from the RV and ran to check it out. About five minutes later, I looked out the window to see Jesse lifting his shirt up. Luke was examining his abdomen.
It turns out that Jesse had just experienced his first-ever bee sting. And his second.
But here’s the thing: Jesse was a brave little guy. He clutched at his stomach, but not a tear flowed. And Luke led him back to the RV, softly placing a hand on his shoulder as he did so. Trust me when I say that those two qualities – Jesse’s courage and Luke’s compassion – are, let’s say, not necessarily always exhibited by those respective little boys.
Anyone who wonders whether or not these lengthy summer RV excursions are good character builders for two growing boys… well, that bee sting moment says it all.
So Amy and I beamed. We offered Jesse a Special Jesse Night, and he chose to utilize his chip on behalf of a Family Movie Night. We watched a DVD on the big TV in the RV – “Galaxy Quest” (if you haven’t seen it, go rent it immediately – I dare you not to enjoy it). And the kids went to bed with smiles on their faces, almost as wide as ours.
Nothing has brought our sons closer to one another than our journeys far and wide –although, as you see by this photo of them sleeping in the spacious queen-sized sofa-bed, sometimes they get a little too close.
Posted: August 3, 2008 3:12 AM | Posted By:
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I played golf with my good buddy Jimmy a few days ago. Eighteen holes, not-to-difficult municipal layout, perfect weather. Yet I still managed to hack my way around the course in 107 strokes. Jim shot a solid 87 and spent most of his time in the fairway; I hit more trees than a lonely woodpecker. Still, I had a great afternoon – even though I couldn’t drive straight.
Anyone see an RV trip analogy coming? That’s right, the same thing happened today in Iowa.
Now, I happen to love Iowa. In fact, all things considered, I’d rate it as probably the most underrated of all the states. I’ll have to put together a Top Ten list one of these days. What I love about Iowa is the fact that it seems to be brimming with charming towns. There’s always a stretch of Main Street that seems like something straight out of a Jimmy Stewart movie. And many of these towns announce themselves with clever and hyperbolic slogans. Yesterday, we passed through Tipton, Iowa (“Where dreams happen!”). Today, we coasted through Vinton, Iowa (“City of Lights”). What? You thought that title belonged to Paris?
Anyway, we could have just settled for a straight drive. Point A to Point B – in our case, a simple trek through Iowa, from Cedar Rapids to Des Moines. But what fun would that be? The best of Iowa is along the back roads, and an RV was made for such exploring. So I took us on a couple of detours. Strangely, both involved the use of trees.
First we drove to a little town called Gladbrook, home of the Matchsticks Marvels museum. For the past three decades, a local fellow named Pat Acton has been sculpting… well… marvels out of matchsticks. One matchstick at a time. The museum – they call it a tourist center – houses several of his creations. There were large-scale models of the space shuttle Challenger, the Wright Brothers’ Flyer, the USS Iowa battleship, a brontosaurus, a crooked house and the U.S. Capitol building (are those last two redundant?).
These are bigger than you’d think (the U.S. Capitol is 12 feet long) and painstakingly detailed (the Challenger is accompanied by an elaborately-sculpted launch pad). Ripley’s Believe It or Not has purchased 15 of Acton’s creations for their museums throughout the world – from Jackson Hole to Jakarta. Acton’s most extensive creation to date – a model of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that required more than 600,000 matchsticks – has been shipped to a buyer in Spain. I’m telling you, it’s pretty cool stuff.
In his day job, Acton works as a career counselor in the nearby burg of Marshalltown – which happens to be where we headed next. There we found an attraction (adjacent to the Shady Oaks Campground, in fact) known simply as “The Big Treehouse.”
It’s sort of like Johnny Appleseed meets Donald Trump. There are twelve levels attached to a 50-year-old maple tree, each section given a name. Treetop Walk. Bird’s Eye View. The Loft. Bell Tower. Stargazer Point. There are 140 wires running everything from lights and ceiling fans to a television and a telephone. And there is Mary.
Mary is in her late eighties. She was our tour guide. It was a one-hour tour that could have easily been, say, a twenty-minute experience. But then how could she have pointed out the kitchen with the working sink and the makeshift dumbwaiter and the birdhouses made of license plates from 38 different states and the inflatable parrots and the motion-sensor raccoon noises and the swinging benches and the faux outhouse that opens up to reveal an animatronic peacock?
Really, I’m not making that up.
Once again, though, we didn’t regret the detour. Okay, perhaps it was the road trip equivalent of shooting a 107 on a muni course. But it was an afternoon well spent in heavenly Iowa.
Posted: August 1, 2008 3:22 AM | Posted By:
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As a sports fan, I can fully understand the “recreation” part of “recreation vehicle.” My RV journeys have taken me on a tour of some of the nation’s classic sports venues. I’ve driven though cities and towns whose names are forever attached to iconic sporting events: Daytona, Florida... Augusta, Georgia… Cooperstown, New York... Canton, Ohio. I’ve seen Notre Dame’s Golden Dome in South Bend, Indiana. I’ve roamed beneath the twin spires of Churchill Downs in Louisville. I’ve enjoyed a walking tour of Claiborne Farm (in Paris, Kentucky), where six of horse racing’s 11 Triple Crown winners were born. I’ve looked down on the gridiron at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and at the diamond at Camden Yards in Baltimore.
But I’m not sure anything quite compares to Wrigley Field.
A couple of days ago was Amy’s birthday, and (before we celebrated with an evening barbecue) she spent much of the day with her mother – lunching, shopping, relaxing. Me? I spent it with 41,000 people, all of them with the same mission – to cheer the Chicago Cubs to victory. It was an EVENT, in the sense that it was a sold-out Saturday in perhaps the ultimate sporting venue. Not only that, the Cubs – who have not won a World Series in exactly 100 years – are in FIRST PLACE. And it’s almost August. So cheering the home team on this particular day was a bit like having a front row seat to Halley’s Comet.
My sister Laura has sporadic season tickets at Wrigley, and she thought it would be fun to take her nephews to their first REAL baseball game. By that I mean, their first big-time, major league game. We’ve been to a couple of minor league games in the past two summers – one in Montana, and the other in Virginia. The one in Virginia was the boys’ first ever professional ballgame, and they were thrilled to hear that, hey, if they catch a foul ball, they can keep it. By the second inning, they were actually lamenting the fact that we hadn’t snagged one yet.
“I’ve been going to games for 30 years,” I told them, “and I’ve never, ever caught a foul ball.”
Three innings later, I caught one.
It was an unforgettable moment. Unfortunately, it also set the bar of expectations pretty high.
Funny thing is, my kids really don’t have much interest in sports at all. Funny because I began my career as a newspaper sportswriter… and I used to write for magazines ranging from Sports Illustrated to Basketball Digest… and my first book for adults was about sports (The Sports 100: The One Hundred Most Important People in American Sports History)… and my last six children’s books have been alphabet books about sports… and I swear I’ve read the Baseball Encyclopedia from cover to cover. So you can say I have an interest in sports.
But I don’t watch a lot of sports on TV. So my kids don’t watch a lot. And they don’t really have the desire to play a lot. So they haven’t really learned the basics. And they don’t seem to care.
In fact, if it weren’t for our summer RV trips they might not know a thing about baseball. As it is, they’re only gradually (and reluctantly) learning the basics. And let me tell you, it is EXHAUSTING watching a baseball game and having to explain EVERYTHING to one little boy sitting on each side of you. Jesse, who seems to have at least some athletic genes, started to get the hang of it rather quickly. His older brother, Luke, however is more of the artistic type. He was, well, slow to catch on. I can’t even begin to count how many times I pointed something out to him – “He just hit a double!”… “That’s strike two!”… “One more out to go!” – and Luke turned to me and said, “Is that good or bad?”
Of course, Cubs fans have been asking that of themselves for a full century now.
But you know what? The game went into extra innings. And Daddy decided it was time to go home. But his sons wanted desperately to stay. Wearing their brand new Cubs hats, surrounded by diehard Cubs fans, singing “root… root… root… for the Cubbies…”, they found themselves converted to the cult of Cubdom. Is that good or bad?
Oh, and here’s the funniest thing of all: I was born and raised a diehard White Sox fan.
So this post will self-destruct in five seconds…
Posted: July 28, 2008 2:09 PM | Posted By:
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My mother turned 65 today. Happy Birthday, Mom! So where did she spend the evening? At a Hootie and the Blowfish concert. Ah, but she wasn’t nearly the oldest person there. That honor would likely belong to my 92-year-old grandmother.
Perhaps I should explain.
Amy and I met at Highland Park High School. We grew up here, in Chicago’s northern suburbs, where our RV is now parked after a quick foray through southern Wisconsin. Highland Park is also home to the Ravinia Festival, which brings in musical acts ranging from Willie Nelson to symphony orchestras. You can buy tickets for the pavilion or sit on the vast lawn that surrounds it. My mother opted for the latter, celebrating her birthday with family (her mother-in-law included) and friends. For me, it’s one of the great perks of our RV excursions – we get to time our arrival in special places on special occasions.
Unfortunately, we (that is, Brad and Amy and Luke and Jesse) were only able to stay for half of the first song. That’s because they didn’t start playing until 9 p.m…. and we’d already been there for more than three hours… and the kids had been up since 5:30 a.m. (because we did an early morning TV interview on Fox news in Chicago)… and the inevitable meltdown happened just as Hootie and Co. took the stage. But we did get to enjoy the opening act – a country rock group called the Drew Davis Band. They played one of my all-time favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd tunes – “Gimme Three Steps.” And we had a fantastic picnic, along with nearly two-dozen family and friends… and some 14,000 other people.
Before arriving in Chicago, we had left Iowa and pointed the RV toward Madison, driving along a beautiful stretch of road – scenic Highway 60 – through the Wisconsin River Valley. We stopped for a few hours at an attraction called the House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin… and… I just don’t have the time to describe how remarkable it is. Google it. Read up on it. Visit it. It started as a quirky house on a rock (hence the name) built by a fellow named Jordan, but it now houses an almost unfathomable array of artifacts and collectibles and assorted wonders – from antique cars to hot air balloons to a huge room full of massive pipe organs to circus memorabilia to nautical artifacts to more than 100 fully furnished doll houses to a replica 19th-century Main Street to the world’s largest indoor carousel.
Best I can offer is this: It’s what Willy Wonka would have built if he had been a collector instead of a confectioner. Seven-year-old Luke Herzog, who isn’t always easy to please, called it “the most amazingest place in the universe.” So there.
But the photo I’ve included below isn’t of the country rockers or the House on the Rock. It was taken in rural Iowa, along Highway 9 as we headed toward Wisconsin a couple of days ago.
You see, only a few miles from Forest City, we passed through a hamlet named Fertile. Not long after that, we arrived at a town known as Manly. Apparently, there was a famous local headline of yesteryear that read something like this: FERTILE WOMAN MARRIES MANLY MAN.
So, naturally, I couldn’t pass this up. My grandmother may be 92, and my mother may be 65, but I’m more concerned with the fact that I’m turning 40 in exactly a month. The following photo basically encapsulates my angst:
Posted: July 26, 2008 2:01 AM | Posted By:
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You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a ventriloquist sing “God Bless America” – until you’ve seen a crowd of people stand, face the flag and sing along with a wooden dummy.
Welcome to the Winnebago-Itasca Travelers (WIT) Grand National Rally, where we spent two nights in an Aaron Copland composition come to life.
They come from all over to this motorhome mecca – some 1,400 Winnebagos and Itascas and several thousand travelers have converged on Forest City, Iowa, home to all things Winnebagish. And yes, a good many of the participants are… of a certain age. But you know what? It’s simply well-run fun: a tethered hot air balloon ride, a mini roller coaster for kids, a barbershop quartet, a bowling tournament, a Dixieland jazz band on wheels, a no-frills restaurant selling delicious vanilla malts. What’s not to like?
“National Explore America Family to stop at rally,” shouted a paragraph from the program. But there aren’t many better ways to explore all things American than by roaming the grounds of an RV gathering. It’s one of those fascinating subculture immersions that becomes a people-watcher’s paradise. It’s like going to the Daytona 500 or the Westminster Dog Show. Like traveling to Sturgis on a Harley or Cheyenne on an 1,800-pound bull. The only difference is the people here don’t need hotel rooms.
“Rock’n Reunion” is the theme at this year’s rally. So several RVs are decked out in, say, fuzzy dice or cardboard cutouts of Elvis Presley. (Monday night’s entertainment was a three-person band known as New Odyssey, which consists of three guys playing 30 different instruments and covering the widest range of musical styles imaginable – everything from Louis Armstrong to Johnny Cash to the Doobie Brothers. They’re really talented, except I could have sworn I heard the wrong words to Ob-la-di Ob-la-da during a Beatles medley. I’m pretty sure Desmond doesn’t stay at home and do his pretty face.)
This week, the GNR, as they call it, is like a meeting of the tribes. Various regional WIT clubs are represented, adorned with guileless names. The Kansas Heartland Winnies (“Kansas: Harvesting peace from the seeds of justice,” declared a banner. I’m still trying to figure out that that means). The Rushmore Winnies. The Winnehahas from Minnesota. The Winnie Poo chapter from Peoria, Illinois. A Texas contingent that includes the Alamo Winnies, Red River Wrangers and Astrobagos.
With all the proud regional representations, it feels like a trip to the Summer Olympics, only instead of basketball and marathons it’s bingo and Medicare seminars. Or talks about railroad road crossing safety or awning care and maintenance. I spoke to a large group of people about my cross-country journeys and my travel memoirs, selling some books afterward. Whom did I follow? A guy talking about how to check the air in your tires. I think his crowd was bigger.
Strolling among the sea of RVs, you can get a sense of the diversity of the RV culture – I saw signs announcing the presence of everything from a singles WIT club to a military club (MILWITS) to an internet club (NETWITS). But that’s just it, isn’t it? Everybody likes to belong – whether you drive a Corvette or collect salt shakers or breed cats or participate in fantasy football.
So if you want to pop in from Michigan and put up some homemade versions of the old read-as-you-drive Burma Shave signs (“Soap may do… for lads with fuzz… but sir you ain’t… the kid you wuz.”), then who’s going to stop you? If you want to drive your house on wheels from Florida to Forest City, put up a WINNIE-GATORS sign and surround your Winnebago Chieftan with pink flamingoes (one of them animatronic)… well, why not?
I’ve never been much of a joiner in my life. Sometimes I think I’ve been missing out. So who’s the dummy now?
Posted: July 23, 2008 11:37 AM | Posted By:
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There are two places in which my thoughts expand to fill the scene – while rolling through vast landscape in an RV and while immersed in the pages of a book. So let’s talk about the combination for a moment:
We spent yesterday afternoon at the massive Mall of America in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Fun place, if you like that sort of thing. The kids loved the Nickelodeon Universe amusement park (mostly because they are BIG Spongebob Squarefans), and the aquarium there was nice. (They bill it as the World’s Largest Underground Aquarium – we come upon lots of manufactured superlatives like that. Once we toured the World’s Largest One-Room Log House in Paris, Kentucky. Hey, you can’t blame them for trying).
Anyhoo… while Amy, Luke and Jesse roamed the amusement park, I met with an editor (and friend) of mine – Aimee Jackson from Sleeping Bear Press. We discussed current projects (we’re working on a children’s alphabet book about how kids can help protect the environment, due out next spring, called S is for Save the Planet) and brainstormed future ones. And we stopped in for a spell (so to speak) at Barnes & Noble.
A trip to the bookstore with me can be an interesting experience, if only for the emotional roller coaster on which it tends to take me. I look for any of my books on the shelves (which means either frustration or overweening pride, depending on the find). I offer to autograph them if they have more than a few (false modesty is usually involved). I shake my head at the sheer numbers of competing books out there (depression). I take note of interesting titles and concepts (curiosity). I grimace at the bestsellers with entire tables or shelves devoted to them (jealousy). Finally, I secretly turn any of my books so that the cover is facing out (guilt). And that’s only in the first ten minutes.
But while we’re on the subject of books… One of my favorite ways to immerse myself in a place while on my Winnebago wanderings is to read the appropriate book for each locale. I have to admit, I haven’t done much of it during this trip. I’ve been reading stuff either related to another children’s book I’m writing (The Greatest Game Ever Played by Mark Frost – about turn-of-the-century golfer Francis Ouimet – really fine book) or on writing in general (i.e. Stephen King’s On Writing). However, in the past I’ve tried to make my journey through the pages match my road expedition.
When Amy and I set out in a RV for the first time nearly 13 years ago and I prepared to write States of Mind, my first travel memoir, I read classics of the genre to get me in the mood. John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, for instance (he’s the best). And William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways (extremely well-written). And Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (interesting writer, overrated book).
Then I started getting more focused in my forays. Sometimes specific books evoke a sense of place. To Kill a Mockingbird (best book ever written) in Alabama. A River Runs Through It in Montana. Sometimes it’s particular authors: William Faulkner in Mississippi, Thomas Wolfe in North Carolina, Edward Abbey in Utah, Steinbeck in California, Mark Twain anywhere along the Mississippi River.
The point is, while it’s often said that you read to lose yourself in a story, I think sometimes you can read to find out more about exactly where you are.
Of course, there’s another good way to do that: Watch the local news (we did a FOX news interview this morning). I’ll write more about that another time. Meanwhile, B&N had about eight or ten books of mine, which was nice. And we’re now parked in the driveway of our friends’ house in Hopkins (a Twin Cities ‘burb). They have a GREAT swimming pool, and we’ll stay here until the afternoon, when we head off toward Forest City, Iowa, and the Winnebago-Itasca Grand National Rally (more on that to come, too).
Posted: July 21, 2008 2:26 PM | Posted By:
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I spent six summers of my childhood – eight weeks per summer – at Camp Nebagamon for Boys in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin. They were the most formative 48 weeks of my life. My memories of my childhood tend to be somewhat sparse, but the most vivid of them are set not in the suburban enclave in which I spent four-fifths of my childhood, but rather during those fleeting but wondrous summers in the North Woods.
My father went to Camp Nebagamon in the 1950s. My brother joined me there in the 1970s and 1980s. My whole family spent a week there at family camp every late August for more than two decades. It is our psychic home.
Back in 1978, I met a kid at camp. I was nine; he was ten. His name was Adam. We became lifelong friends. Well, now he and his wife Steph are the DIRECTORS of Camp Nebagamon. Sure, all of us former campers feel like we own the place. Adam and Steph actually do. They are only the fourth camp directors in the 80-year history of the place, and they were made for the job.
So it was with great joy that I was able to park my RV over the last couple of days alongside the pine-rimmed shores of Lake Nebagamon, a stone’s throw from the camp’s gate. My parents drove all the way up from Chicago (the camp is only 40 minutes from Duluth, Minnesota) to join us for a couple of days in this, a place that means as much to them as it does to me.
So, though I’m pushing 40, I went to camp again.
I watched my sons roam the grounds that their father and their father’s father roamed. I shared stories and updates with old friends. I checked in on a 3rd-grader who had just arrived for his first summer. His dad was my cabinmate for all 48 glorious weeks. We’re still good friends, and I was able to inform him that his son was all smiles.
Oh, and I went fishing with my dad and my sons (we didn’t catch much, perhaps because one of the two fishing rods we were using was a three-foot SpongeBob rod with a gummy worm as bait (see photo below).
Anyway, I’ve often mused about why this camp means so much to me, and I’ve concluded that one big reason is because it was a trip outside my insular box, a paddle away from the mainstream. I was from Chicago, but my cabinmates were from Atlanta, Memphis, Dallas, Cincinnati, St. Louis, New York. I had counselors from Tacoma and Detroit and Denmark and Northern Ireland. I learned how to put up a tent, chop wood, string a bow, paddle a “J” stroke, cast a fishing line. It was an excursion into the exotic.
I LOVE that I have the opportunity to travel here and share my affection for the place with my sons. But equally important, I’m proud of the fact that our RV journeys allow us to remove our kids from their routine, explore exotic places, meet people from all over the country. And I’m hoping that their summer experiences stay with them for years to come.
So no, the fishing wasn’t much to write about. But the memories were keepers.
Posted: July 19, 2008 11:59 PM | Posted By:
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Yesterday, we spent a few hours in Baxter, MN (about halfway between Fargo and Duluth, where we are today) -- at the Paul Bunyan Water Park. Paul Bunyan is big around here (pun intended). The water park is a couple of blocks from a bowling alley bearing the legendary lumberjack's name.
Lots of places are like that. Bigfoot seems to haunt the redwood region of California. Mark Twain's name is plastered all over his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. The area where I live -- California's Monterey Peninsula -- was John Steinbeck's stomping ground. So there a Steinbeck Center and Steinbeck Realty, etc., etc.
Funny thing is, sometimes the names are really ironic. For instance, there's a Steinbeckland Kennels in Salinas, California. Really? A kennel named after a guy famous for taking his dog WITH HIM on a journey around the country (read Travels With Charley -- great book). And in Hannibal, there is -- or at least there used to be -- something called the Huck Finn Shopping Center. Yes, a shopping center named after a penniless boy.
So while the image of Babe the Blue Ox spewing water from his (her?) horns at the Paul Bunyan Water Park is a bit incongruous, it's not the worst I've seen.
Along those lines, as we've traveled through the past few states, I've taken note of my favorite names of things:
Favorite town: Nimrod, Minnesota
Favorite road: Oink Joint Road (Wadena, MN)
Top eight favorite business establishment names:
1. Mooers Resort (Deerwood, MN)
2. The Purple Pie Place (Custer, SD)
3. C'mon Inn (Wellington, CO)
4. Space Aliens Grill & Bar -- "Earthlings Welcome" (Bismarck, ND)
5. MishMash Restaurant (Belle Fourche, SD)
6. Loaf "n Jug (Casper, WY)
7. Common Cents (Custer, SD)
8. Gulches of Fun (Deadwood, SD)
Finally, on a completely different note... is anyone out there the parent of two litte boys. Is it just us? Are they always doing this:
Posted: July 17, 2008 2:19 PM | Posted By:
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If it’s Tuesday, it must be Fargo, North Dakota. On Monday, we did a TV interview in Bismarck. Today, there’s a newspaper article about us in the Bismarck Tribune.
(Lest you think we, as parents, are perfect geography teachers, my favorite moment of the TV interview went like this:
Interviewer to seven-year-old Luke: “What do you think of Bismarck?”
Luke: “What’s a Bismarck?”)
Anyway, I was on TV twice and the radio once today, and this is not uncommon for the Herzogs during the summer. We do a whole bunch of media interviews during our road trips – in which we essentially discuss the joys of our family’s RV travels. So far this summer, we’ve appeared on TV in San Luis Obispo, San Diego, Tucson, Colorado Springs (twice), Denver, Casper (twice), Rapid City (three times), Bismarck and Fargo (twice). We’ve been profiled in newspapers everywhere from Phoenix and Albuquerque to Casper and Rapid City.
Sometimes we sleep overnight in a TV station’s parking lot and do a segment on the morning newsmagazine show. You know, “Wake Up, Spokane” and “Daybreak Dallas” (I’m making those names up, but I bet I’m pretty close to the mark). Sometimes, reporters come to the campground and film us, editing the piece for the 5 or 6 or 10 or 11 o’clock news. But always, every single interview this summer, we get a variation of the same question: What about gas prices?
In fact, I seem to be getting it from all fronts – from friends who send e-mails wondering how it has affected our trip… from strangers at a blackjack table (we stopped at a casino/RV park in Mobridge, South Dakota) who wonder how far we get on a tank… from folks at the gas pumps who make jokes (“Guess you have to take out a loan to fill that thing up, huh?”). When that happens, I smile, shrug and then – when they’ve turned away – shake my head at the fact that they don’t quite get it.
My premise is this: When you look at the big picture, RV vacations save money – despite the outrageous gas prices. There is actually a study out that says RV vacations for a family of four are almost always less expensive than other trips involving air travel, hotels, restaurants and rental cars – even with RV ownership costs figured in. I believe it.
Here’s a summary of what I say on TV:
First of all, the money we save by not having to eat EVERY SINGLE MEAL in a restaurant (what’s that? Maybe $100-$150 a day for a family of four?), by not having to spend EVERY SINGLE NIGHT in a different hotel room (even if you squeeze into one room, we’re talking probably at least $100 a night), by not being at the mercy of the airlines that seem to be raising their rates and canceling flights with impunity… well, all of that more than makes up for what we spend in gas.
(Some quick math: So far, we seem to be filling our 75-gallon gas tank twice a week. These days, that means maybe $500-$600 total. Sure, that sounds like a lot. But consider: We have our kitchen with us, so we save a lot of money on food. And we have our bedroom with us, which is a comfort – both financially and physically. If you figure how much it would cost to eat out three times a day and stay in a hotel each night, it adds up to probably at least $1400 per week. Even the cost of renting an RV is surely less than the price of airfare for four and a rental car – which, by the way, requires gas, as well).
Secondly, the great thing about an RV vacation is the flexibility. Your house is always with you. YOU”RE IN CONTROL OF THE VACATION. You’re not obligated to go any specific distance, any specific direction. If you want to save some money on gas, you simply don’t go that extra 200 miles. There are some 16,000 campgrounds in the country, and it’s not about how far you go. It’s the experience that matters.
This is usually when the interviewer says, “Sure, okay, but just what kind of gas mileage does this thing get?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I tell them, mostly because I honestly don’t know. “But for a house, it gets great gas mileage.”
Plus, I can get some reading in while we fill up. Here’s a photo:
Posted: July 15, 2008 7:18 PM | Posted By:
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We’re now in Bismarck, North Dakota, a place where John Steinbeck believed the map of America should fold. Here, he said, the green, wooded, well-watered landscape on the eastern side of the Missouri River stood in stark contrast to the brown, treeless, semiarid flatlands to the west. “The two sides of the river,” he mused, “might well be a thousand miles apart.”
Which is rather appropriate because the Herzog family just passed the halfway mark of our 66-day RV adventure. But I’d like to tell you about the past three days in South Dakota:
DAY ONE
We arrived in the Black Hills on a Thursday. At the risk of being punny, the Black Hills rock. Truly a beautiful region. And in the scheme of things, pretty underrated. We stopped first at Jewel Cave National Monument, where we toured the visitor center that describes a cave system more than a hundred miles long. Unfortunately, the earliest tour we could take was two hours away, so we opted instead for the virtual tour. Sometimes that happens. We can’t do it all. We’d just done a cave in Colorado Springs. So we bailed.
From there, we visited the Crazy Horse Memorial, a massive and remarkable sculpture that has been under construction (that is, blasting away huge sections of a mountain in the shape of the great Native American hero and his horse) for six decades. The final product is sure to take another six more – at least. Right now, you can only really see his face in profile – but even that is nearly 90 feet high. The end product is going to dwarf Mount Rushmore. But it’ll take a while. Meanwhile, for a small donation, Luke and Jesse were able to grab a couple of pieces of blasted rubble from the mountain.
So yes, we’re now lugging some big rocks around the country. Brilliant.
From Crazy Horse we motored to the Hill City KOA, a fantastic place to stay. It offered a coffee shop, restaurant, two pools, mini golf, water slide, horse stables… We spent the afternoon there, soaking in the fun.
DAY TWO
We did three TV interviews and a newspaper interview in the morning, all of them converging on us in a three-hour span at the campground, doing various stories about the Herzog family and our annual summer excursion through America.
Then we rented a car. Not because it’s hard to drive the RV through the Black Hills – in general, it’s a breeze. But the KOA offered on-site rental cars, and we wanted to drive along a remarkable stretch of road known as Needles Highway. As the name implies, it’s for small vehicles only.
We spent the whole afternoon oohing and aahing along switchbacks and tight-squeeze tunnels through the gray rock formations rising up from the pine-tufted hills. It was spectacular. We followed that drive with another drive, along a Wildlife Loop, that was… less successful. Again, it was a beautiful scene. But a couple of bison and a few wild burros didn’t quite cut it. And frankly, we would have had a better view from up high in the RV.
From there, we drove into the town of Keystone, had a quick dinner, then made our way to Mount Rushmore. With the sun setting and the four presidents in vivid relief against the sky, it was a pretty awesome sight. Amy and I had been to the nighttime show a dozen years earlier, and for some reason we told the kids it was going to be a fun light and laser show. Well, it turned out to be a well-done (but not all that exciting) movie and a big spotlight on Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
“Is that it?” frowned the boys. We shrugged. It was inspiring, but it wasn’t… you know… like, Disney-riffic. Turns out the show we had remembered wasn’t at Mount Rushmore at all. It was at Stone Mountain in Georgia. That’s the mountain with Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis carved into its side. Sort of the anti-Rushmore, in the sense that they were the sworn enemies of Lincoln. But like Disneyland, you can’t help but appreciate Mount Rushmore. C’mon, visit it. Sing “America the Beautiful” with a thousand people from all over the country. And I dare you not to get a bit teary-eyed.
DAY THREE
We started by driving the RV northwest into the town of Lead (rhymes with “need”). And a place called Presidents Park, a relatively unknown but pretty enjoyable piece of Americana in the Black Hills. There, we took a half-mile stroll through busts of all 43 presidents. Not just little busts – each was 20 feet high. I gave the kids an interesting factoid about each of them (James Buchanan was a bachelor, FDR was in a wheelchair, Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer…) But in the end, we just played a game deciding who was the ugliest president. The runners-up were jowly John Adams, awkward Abe Lincoln, chunky Chester Arthur, weighty William Howard Taft and egghead Dwight Eisnhower. The winner: muttonchopped Martin Van Buren.
We lunched in the infamous town of Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickock met an untimely end while playing poker. We ate at a place called the Buffalo Steakhouse, where a guitarist yodeled a few tunes – and where they offered a drink called the Royal Flush. It was prune juice. There were slot machines at the restaurant (gambling has revitalized Deadwood), and the kids were curious. So I put three quarters in and told them that you almost ALWAYS lose when you gamble. Well, we won $4.50.
Then we drove a couple of hours into central South Dakota and the hamlet of Faith, the first real town we saw in more than 100 miles. Faith had been the subject of a whole chapter of my first travel memoir, States of Mind. But our visit had come a dozen years earlier. This time around, to our surprise, there was a dinosaur there.
The famous nearly complete dinosaur skeleton – named Sue after its discoverer – was found there in 1990. Sue usually spends her time at the Field Museum in Chicago (which paid more than $8 million for her), but this summer it’s back home, on display in Faith. We arrived just before the exhibit was closing for the day, but they let us stay for a while, roaming the interactive displays and marveling at a carnivorous creature bigger than a Winnebago Adventurer.
Finally, we drove another couple of hours to the banks of the Missouri River, arriving just as the sun set over the waterway that carried Lewis and Clark west, changing the course of America in the process. That’s South Dakota. And that was a perfect way to end a magical few days.
P.S. Happy Birthday, Dad. This picture is for you:
Posted: July 14, 2008 12:59 AM | Posted By:
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We drove through a song today, the one with the buffalo roaming and the antelopes playing. Our trek through some 160 miles of Wyoming – from Casper to the state’s eastern border with South Dakota – took us through exactly three towns, a total population of about 1,900 souls. Other than that it was three hours of open road, just the way I like it.
We passed across Thunder Basin National Grassland; past parsley-green rolling hills and mesas and buttes the color of lox and cream cheese (OK, I was hungry). We passed a gaggle of bison lounging alongside the highway. We passed a massive coalmine called Black Thunder, which sounds like it should be the name of an angry rodeo bull. Or an ice cream flavor. And a sign there announced, “BLAST AREA… ORANGE CLOUD POSSIBLE… AVOID CONTACT.” Um… sure thing.
I absolutely LOVE drives where the only thing in front of you is a ribbon of highway, and you simply go along for the ride. I find myself yearning for a soundtrack to complement the scenery. In fact, today I found myself pondering the ultimate road trip album.
I’m not simply talking about songs that have “America” in the title. In fact, I’d say “Proud to be an American” and Neil Diamond’s “We’re Comin’ to America” may be my two least favorite songs (although I do like “American Pie” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “American Tune,” and two other Americ-ish songs did make my list). No, I’m talking about music that you want to drive to. Usually, there’s some sort of on-the-road subtext. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious. Always, I find myself drumming my fingers on the steering wheel.
Here’s a 15-song collection that works for me:
“America the Beautiful” (Ray Charles version)
“On the Road Again” (Willie Nelson)
“Ramblin’ Man” (Allman Brothers)
“Thunder Road” (Bruce Springsteen)
“Big Yellow Taxi” (Joni Mitchell)
“Turn the Page” (Bob Seger)
“Love the One You’re With” (Stephen Stills)
“Gotta Travel On” (Bob Dylan)
“Watchin’ the Wheels” (John Lennon)
“American Girl” (Tom Petty)
“Take it Easy” (Eagles)
“LaGrange” (ZZ Top)
“I’m Gonna Be” (The Proclaimers)
“The Way” (Fastball)
“Breakdown” (Jack Johnson)
Actually, just about any song by Springsteen or the Allman Brothers would suffice. But I challenge anyone to come up with a better collection. Of course, ask me tomorrow, and I’d probably give you 15 different songs…
Meanwhile, we finally got to where we were going -- a place called Newcastle, which was appropriate becauset today I felt like (as the song says) King of the Road.
Posted: July 10, 2008 11:13 PM | Posted By:
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