Day 2: PA-OH-IN

Driving through Ohio and Indiana was exactly what I predicted.

imagine endless miles of this and other flat, wide open spaces, with the occasional silo/tractor/corporate farm building dotting the blanket of crops. The icing on this somewhat bland and surprisingly uninspiring cake is random fields of yellow flowers. Surrounded by green, the yellow jumps out. Very beautiful.

On interstate 90 in Ohio, I looked up to see a giant gray/black plume of smoke, and I grabbed my camera, thinking it was pollution, ready to send an email to my enviro-crazed friends back at home/UNH to rant and rave about how nasty it was. Instead of a smokestack, though, the plume was coming from an exploded truck on the highway in front of me. It was about a half mile ahead, and just at the moment that I realized it was on the highway, traffic ahead came to a dead halt, and didn't move for an hour. It seemed strange to experience this for a second time.... I was about a half mile behind the oil tanker that crashed and exploded on Rt 7 in Ridgefield a few years back. And it turned out that this crash was also an oil tanker..... I must be bad luck for those poor drivers. I doubt this guy survived... the cab of the truck (when we finally drove past it), was absolutely gone.... scrap metal was all that remained. Very sad.

I arrived in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore at around 6:30PM, set up my tent in the daylight (which was much nicer than setting it up in pitch-black night), and then headed down to the beach to photograph the sunset... (just wait!) A local guy who was sitting on the beach started talking to me, and he was very nice, even offering me dinner (don't worry Mom, I said my "boyfriend and I" had already eaten - I made up a fake boyfriend so the guy wouldn't think I was doing the trip alone :) ). I promise that these photos have not been touched in photoshop or any other photo editing program... this was the color (actually it was more intense, but the camera can only pick up so much...)

This morning when I woke up I went and did a 5 mile hike through marsh, bog, forest, and dunes in this national park. Very interesting hike... When I got to the dunes it was so beautiful, but then I looked to my left and there were 4 giant smokestacks... Very strange dichotomy of natural beauty and ugly industrial development.

I will head to Chicago tonight, Iowa tomorrow, and then South Dakota and Badlands National Park on Friday :D

Email if you are interested in more pictures. I have thousands (as those of you who know me can imagine!)

paz y amor

first days of the roadtrip

The first days of my road trip have been quite interesting. I drove for more than 10 hours yesterday, making it from Charlestown Rhode Island to Niagra Falls in Canada, and then on still until Erie, Penn. The drive was surprisingly relaxing... I stopped when I wanted to and stretched. I sang at the top of my lungs to the music blasting from my speakers. I drove through the Berkshires, through the Hudson River Valley, and through random rural lands. At one point on the trip a flock of birds were dancing in the sky. They were all flying together, perfectly in sync, turning this way and that, changing direction at a moment's notice, and getting bigger and smaller as they turned towards and away the road. Just as I passed they dove straight to the ground, and pulled up at the last moment. If I had stopped and videotaped the dance you all would have been able to understand the beauty of the dance....

I drove over to Canada to see Niagra Falls, and coming back they chose me for a "random" vehicle check. They must have thought I was a Canadian pot mule. I was worried they would unpack the whole car and then leave me to repack it. Luckily the guy seemed overwhelmed by the disorganized mass that is my stuff jammed into my trunk. He didn't even open my thule rack (thank goodness, because I would have had trouble closing it again!).
As I drove from Niagra Falls, after seeing the beauty of a full rainbow arcing over the falls, the sun set, forming a subtler, more earthy-toned rainbow in the sky, with night progressing from the top. I tried to take a picture of it, but that kind of color cannot be captured on film, and so I can only remember the image in my mind...
Erie Pennsylvania was probably not the best place to camp for my first night camping out on my own.... Erie is an appropriate name for the place, I was feeling a bit like I was in an episode of the twilight zone, driving through the completely dark towns around the city at 9 PM. The campground that was in the Lonely Planet guide for Erie was actually in a different town 30 minutes away (though the book didn't mention that), and the proprietors were annoyed at having to answer the phone, so I had to wing it, direction wise. Somehow I managed to find the place (thanks to my handy-dandy i-Phone!), and they were closed. Luckily the office of the place was also their home, and I rang up to them to come and take my $30 (for a campsite!!!!!!!), and then went to set up my tent in the dark.
I woke up throughout the night from the cold, and from the train that sounded like it was .0001 miles away from my head. But I woke up excited, proud of myself for making it through the night and doing this trip by myself!
Today I will travel through PA, OH, and end in IN, at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore to camp and explore the beaches.