Real Human Moments

Wow, what a delay between postings? I apologize for the lack of narrative not only in finishing the tale of the great cross country epic, but also in the following months. I will do my best to summarize the events after our time in Utah. We drove most the morning, and afternoon through the canyon, bare rock landscape of Utah. We were slowly gaining elevation as the mountains in the distance were not so distant anymore. I can only assume that we were crossing the great continental divide, the Rocky Mountains. Our surroundings transformed from earthen shades of washed out red to beautiful green, mountain vegetation. We passed towering mountains, with rivers, rafters, bikers, and hikers all traveling orthogonal to the road. As we got closer to Copper Mountain, a ski lodge / venue for Trancegression we started noticing towering pine trees. Behind the towering tree’s were equally towering houses.

The Trancegression festival was a slightly different atmosphere than what we were used too. Apparently the majority of attendees stayed in the ski lodge itself, which essentially eliminated the “shakedown” atmosphere that is, at least I though, ever present at music festivals. Instead there was a small parking lot, a bus rides away from the stage where people in tents congregated. The music was pretty good, we relaxed on the mountain side in the rain listening to Pharcyde, while watching the local police watch us with high powered binoculars. Evidently the local law enforcment was very worried about the type of people that are traditionally associated with a music festival, and went out of there way to harass festival goers. While listening to Pharcyde, we saw the police confront four people, each of which eventually ended up face down in plastic handcuffs. Apparently there was a representative from the ACLU lawyer in attendance and was helping people avoid from forfeiting any of their rights while dealing with the police. The Disco Biscuits and Umphrey’s McGee were very good, and played till sometime in the early morning.

We ended up just deciding to continue on with our journey, knowing we had to cross vast distances of America’s heart (flat) land. We did most the traveling at night, however not once during my turn at the wheel did I notice a speed limit sign outside of a town. Somewhere in Wyoming we stopped at a rest stop, which was supposedly self maintainable. Obviously, someone probably cleaned every once in a while, but all the toilets just dropped deep into the ground, where they somehow created a vacuum effect which kept all smells in the ground, and gave your butt a nice breeze. I believe this effect was what ancient Greek and Roman plumbing systems were designed to do, a 2000 year circle.

Following the GPS we eventually made our way into North Dakota and the foot of Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial. We only choose to see Crazy Horse from affar, fearing a large parking and admittance fee. We arrived at Mt. Rushmore before official park hours began, so we walked right in for free. Its quite amazing seeing these huge stone faces remove themselves from a photograph and be placed right in front of you.

After leaving the park, we began our long ride across South Dakota, past Wall Drug, and Minnesota, Illinois to Chicago.