Un-Home

Reporting from a McDonald's in Pipestone, Minnesota. We've spent a few nice days in the Midwest among some of the nicest people in the world. It's true, what they say.

After leaving the UP of Michigan, we went to Patrick's uncle's house in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Patrick lived for a few years in Stevens Point around the time he first got married, so we drove around time figuring out what was still there after the 15 years since he lived there (and the 10 years since he last visited) and what was long gone. We hung out for a while with his uncle Joe (not to mention his dogs, a lab named Brandy and a truly massive one-year-old Great Dane named Rascal) and his family, and he then informed us that he'd intended to put us up in his stepdaughter's room - but said stepdaughter had come home for an impromptu visit, so he'd like to put us up in a hotel if we wouldn't mind.

Of course we wouldn't mind. So there we were, two nights in a row in a real live hotel. It was pretty much the best ever. I love camping and all, but having our very own bathroom only inches from where we were sleeping? Truly fantastic.

Our stop in Stevens Point mostly consisted of running some necessary errands, eating at Belt's Ice Cream (the "large cone" there is seriously as tall as your forearm and weighs about 4 pounds), drinking at Morey's (where Patrick celebrated either his 21 or 22 birthday - couldn't precisely remember), having a fish fry, drinking Point beer, and various other things that Patrick wants to do one more time in his life. He told me he likes the town, but probably won't be back. You know how ghosts can be.

We bade farewell to Wisconsin and made it to southern Minnesota by Saturday night. We camped the night on Saturday, July 28 in Lake Louise State Park, and last night got to Split Rock Creek State Park on the west end. In between we visited the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota - which, dare I say, is the coolest museum we've hit on this trip so far, not to mention it was free - the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, Minnesota (not to mention Sprout at the nearby gas station), and the highest point in Iowa, which is just south of the Minnesota border. The highest point in Iowa is just a little hollowed-out clearing in a cornfield marked with a rock. But there's another high point we can cross off our bucket list! (While we were in Wisconsin, we also scaled Timm's Hill, the highest point in that state.)

At this point we are basically just desperate to get West - and while we crossed the Mississippi two days ago, Minnesota doesn't really feel like it counts. Today we'll finally get over to South Dakota (after we hit Pipestone National Monument in a few minutes), where I feel like the West will finally begin.

Sometimes I like the feeling of not-belonging; like no one place can claim me fully. Home is not home, nor is anywhere else decidedly un-home.

Pictures 28: Adventuring on the Delaware River

About a week before Patrick and I decided we really needed to get outta dodge, we took what was going to be a day trip to High Point State Park in New Jersey and the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It turned into an overnight camping trip that also included the Upper Delaware National Scenic River in New York.

We got a late start because I was lazy and wouldn't get out of bed, so for a while Patrick was quite cantankerous. He had wanted to do some serious hiking that day, but since I decided not to get out of bed til about 10 am, his plans were foiled. We tried to make the best of the day anyway, but when signage at the Delaware Water Gap was pretty much the worst we've encountered at any NPS site, then Pat pulled a tendon in his calf that he'd pulled a few weeks ago and which was just starting to heal, it was shaping up to be a pretty lame day.

Since we'd gotten such a late start, however, by about 5:30 or 6 pm, we were still tooling around northeastern Pennsylvania and I said... "Do you want to just - not go home?"

We were in Pat's Jeep, which still had all his camping equipment in it. So he said, um, okay. So we drove up to New York and along the upper Delaware on the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway until we found the Ascalona Campground. What the campground is, basically, is the property of an older couple who had a bunch of prime land along the Delaware and decided to do something awesome with it.

By the time we got there, it was probably near 7 pm, and there was a sign on the main office (aka the proprietors' house) that if you wanted to camp, ring the doorbell if it was before 8 pm - or, if it was after 8 pm, just pitch your tent and register in the morning. We rang the bell, and a woman with a heavy European accent came out and greeted us. When we told her we were just driving around and unexpectedly decided to spend the night, she smiled and said that instead of $15 per person, she'd charge us $12. She told us to camp anywhere - the campground was completely empty, but there was a large party coming in the next day, so we had our pick that night.

We drove down to the campsite furthest away from the main building and pitched the tent. We didn't have service at the campground, so we drove a little ways back south on the byway til we got a bar. I called home and told my parents I wouldn't be home that evening and that I'd see them tomorrow. Done and done.

I'll talk a little bit more about camping when the pictures come up...


This is the monument at NJ's highest point, which also happens to be right near the northernmost point of the state too.


We really couldn't have asked for a better day, weather-wise.

34 more images below the jump - click any one to make it bigger in Photobucket.