Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin Welcome You

The Midwest Passage Cont'd...

I saw no purple mountains, but the amber waves of grain were everywhere as I plunged onward into the heart of the Midwest. Eager to make up for time I had spent at Cuyahoga, I sped indifferently past the landmarks of Ohio and Indiana. Apologies to the birthplaces of Thomas Edison, and Rutherford Hayes. Another highway billboard warned me that Jesus was coming in May 2011. Apparently, I’d missed the boat on that one.

The miracle of the Eisenhower Interstate System is that now you can go anywhere in the nation, but still inhabit leave the sameness of highway signs and rest stops. (Wow! They’re using a different kind of asphalt in Indiana!) 

Most truckers have probably discovered that driving though thousands of miles of America can get kind of boring, even with The Best of Kenny Chesney in the tape deck. In Travels With Charlie, John Steinbeck was turned off by the interstate’s flat boredom, and did most of his driving on back roads.

While the great author may have had time to look for America and whatnot, I’d need to take a more efficient route in order to get to Wyoming on time for work. I told myself that it was worth it to economize the sightseeing in the first half of the journey in order to spend quality time in the Dakota Badlands.

Still, I decided I would like to stop east of Gary to see the Indiana Sand Dunes National Lakeshore. There was camping there and I was thinking it would be cool to wake up and run along Lake Michigan.

I think I would have stopped if it had been a sunny, beautiful day. Instead, there was a persistent downpour as I left the interstate and navigated a post-industrial hell of fast-food chains and big box stores. Welcome to Michigan City.

Some poorly marked roads took me outside the city limits to where I thought the park was. Just when I was getting ready to think that the dunes were just a sick joke to sucker tourists, I came upon the shores of the great lake. There was a parking lot nearby, which had flooded from the storm. The harsh wind flung the rain into my eyes. Everything was gray and unpleasant.

I ran down to the beach to the water’s edge where I skipped a rock across the waves. I couldn’t see much further than the last splash. Behind me, expensive beach mansions towered over the lake—likely havens for wealthy Chicagoans. It seemed strange that what was marked as a huge national park on the maps, could actually have so many houses and roads.

I got back in the car and began scrutinizing the map. Hours of driving had made a small dent out of the miles that remained. As I shivered wet in the driver’s seat, I decided that I didn’t really give a damn about this place and would much rather keep driving, get past Chicago, go closer to the goal.

Fine, I thought. Let’s rumble. And I left.

I didn’t get back on 90 right away, but took a parallel road in the direction of Gary. The rain picked up again and cut the visibility to where it was all I could do to drive between the lines. After about fifteen miles, the downpour subsided to where I felt comfortable going 40. Through the fading light, I could make out the Gary exurbs, a disturbing land of gargantuan power-lines and smokestacks. The sun setting from behind the clouds gave the sky the rich color of coagulating blood.

Just as I had left the Sand Dunes for other explorers, I decided that The Windy City could wait for next time. I got on 90 again briefly, and then dumped it for 80, aiming to swing west of the city and cut up towards for Wisconsin along 294. Outside the gates of O’Hare airport, 90 and I would reunite, and stay together for the rest of the way west.

First there was the matter of getting past America’s third largest city alive. I steered my poor, rumbly car through the eight-lane monster highway, taking care to avoid veering semis. Though I wanted to double check my map to make sure I was going the right way, the traffic made it impossible to look down without getting killed. I guided myself through about five different interchanges interpreting a morass of confusing signs and a dim memory of what things looked like on the map. Amazingly, I didn’t screw it up.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the big city fell behind and I was back to driving across the endless fields.

The next relevant of course was where the hell I was going to sleep that night. I decided that if I just kept driving, a campsite would show up eventually. Thinking I would be spending that night in Indiana I hadn’t little research concerning accommodations on the road past Chicago. (Notice how I didn’t even think about getting a hotel?)

There were a couple parks in northern Illinois where I thought there might be tent sites. I swung off the highway to check one out and found it gated up with “no camping signs.” Deciding I’d rather not get a cop rapping on my window looking for conversation, I got back on the road. As I hit the Wisconsin border, I saw a sign for Pearl Lake Campsite. It was after 10:00pm, too late for most desks to stay open. I’d park somewhere and pay in the morning I thought.

The “campsite” turned out to be some kind of RV retail center. Well screw them. The Road Ranger truck stop was right next door. I wasn’t exactly sure how sleeping there was, but I knew I was through with driving and looking. If this was good enough for truckers, it was good enough for me.

I would have to eschew the comforts of my tent for the passenger seat. I yanked some blankets out from under my hiking gear and tried to sleep. The situation was pretty damn uncomfortable for someone who usually sleeps belly down. Meanwhile, sodium vapor lights cast a harsh orange light through the windshield, requiring me to pull a hat down over my eyes. The cold was enough to put frost on the inside of my windows.

Still, I managed to get perhaps five hours of sleep. When I awoke, there was a bathroom and food conveniently close by. Even better, no one had smashed through the glass and slit my throat while I slept.

Perhaps I owed such good fortune to the benevolent presence of the Beefaroo Lady, guardian angel of the Road Ranger station. She even watched out for vegetarians it seems. The miraculously proportioned roadside icon beamed in the early morning sunlight, savior to all men who travel the lonely highways.  

Golden Cuyahoga

A dull gray dawn washed over the soggy campsite. Slowly, reluctantly, I extricated myself from the sleeping bag and embraced the shivery Ohio morning. It’s always a hell of a time waking up when you’re camping, but it makes you stronger. I’ve found that a cold draught of dewy air is a better stimulant than coffee.

I took my shelter down quickly, so that I wouldn’t be tempted to go back to sleep. Soon I would leave this place forever, but before my departure, I decided that I might as well take breakfast on the lake nearby.

There were no paths going down to the water, but there was a slippery bank of mud with a handy network of roots to grab onto. It was a drop of about 20 feet. I eased myself down slowly, taking care not to skid my jeans.

The silence by the lake was perfect; a mist hovered over the water, softening the trees on the far shore. Gnarls of driftwood lay half-submerged above their reflected twins. Behind me, the stands of maples threw off a deep golden light, suffused with what green autumn had not yet stolen.

I poured my cereal in meditative reverie, and slurped each spoonful with thoughtfulness. Much as I enjoyed the solitude, I found evidence of an earlier customer who sought solace with nature here. The other guy had brought a roach clip however, and probably experienced things rather differently than I did.

After I’d finished my meal, I checked out at the ranger station, got in the Mazda and got back on 80. There would be miles to go until I crossed into the far-famed fields of Indiana, but I was not quite done with Ohio yet.

Within about twenty miles, I pulled over for a morning run at Cuyahoga National Park. The tourism brochures I’d picked up at the state line had assured me that this was a place well worth visiting. It piqued my interest to hear that the place was actually laid out with hundreds of miles of trails for bikes and hikes. Needless to say, this was a far cry from my snobby East-Coast perception of Ohio as an unwonderland of suburbs and strip-malls.

And yet, when I’d asked one of the rangers at the campsite what she thought of Cuyahoga Falls, she told me not to bother visiting.

“Did you ever here about the river that was so polluted that it caught fire in the seventies?”

I had missed the connection. The falls, she said were an unimpressive drop and the river itself was an ugly mud color.

What I’d messed up was that Cuyahoga Falls is the name of a town nearby, and it has nothing to do with the national park. It was the falls on the Brandywine River that I wanted.

Of course the nerd in me couldn’t help but notice that the river shares its name with the river in Lord of The Rings. Right at the start of the hobbits’ journey no less.

Should we then choose to stay within the Tolkien trope, I’ll say that the park reminded me the most of Rivendell. Just like what I’d seen on the lakeshore, the leaves on the trees here were green-gold. As the morning sun climbed higher, it burned away the fog and shone in through the leaves. The canopy filtered the light like a vast stained-glass window, one that suffused the forest with a warm radiance.

The fine scent of the living earth rose up from where it had been locked away the night before. I breathed it deeply as I ran

There were indeed paths to explore. I followed the banks of the Brandywine for a while, and then wandered up into some hills. I found a gravel road that led into an empty field where I realized that I was trespassing in someone’s backyard.

After I had satisfied my craving to explore, I wound back to the river and up to Brandywine Falls. There is a slick wooden walkway for the spectators, with stairs leading down to a viewing platform in front of the drop. I took time out to walk out and admire the scene. The falls are about 60 feet tall and are pretty, if not quite at the level of Niagara Falls’ grandeur. It was nice, but I realized that it was getting close to noon and I had already spent far too much of my time enjoying Ohio.

A Spooked Out Night Run in Ohio

The Midwest Passage Part I: 610 miles logged.

I pulled into the West Branch Campground under a pasty autumn sky that was dimming fast. I had spent the whole day driving I-80 from the city, through Jersey and Pennsylvania and finally, across the border into Ohio. The campground was in the town of Ravenna, just east of Akron. There are perhaps 200 sites in the park, set up alongside a good-sized lake. To get there, I had to drive about five miles off the intestate to turn onto an entrance road that led down to the main camping area.

With Halloween approaching in about three weeks, the park rangers seemed to have enjoyed themselves decorating the roadside. Here was a tree filled with mangled scarecrows. Spider webs had been hung out of the tree branches, orange inflatable pumpkins glowed along the roadside. The Styrofoam tombstones served to remind we travelers that sometimes death is riding next to us in the left-hand lane, veering in our direction as he types out a text message and eats a sloppy sandwich with the other hand.

The road went down for about a mile and a half or so before it arrived at the check in station.

“Are you the one who called in a while ago?” the ranger asked.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I didn’t think it would take you that long to get here from Penn.”

“I, uh, overshot the exit—ended up getting a little lost.”

She gave me a map of the grounds so that I could go find a tent site that I liked.

“Say,” I asked, vaguely curious, “What are you guys doing with all the Halloween stuff up? Is there a haunted hayride here or something?”

“Yes,” she said, “But we don’t start those until Friday.”

I went and found a good enough looking spot to tent and then wandered back to the station to pay the $22.00 tenting fee. 

Some trail maps on the wall caught my eye. Though it was getting dark fast, I thought that I might be inclined to try a run. The ranger recommended that I try the horseback trails, which are flat and smooth going. This sounded good because it meant I wouldn’t be as likely to trip and break myself if I couldn’t see where the hell I was going.

After I had set up camp, I decided that I should probably stick to the entrance road because the light had almost entirely left. I grabbed a headlamp out of my car and headed off. The moonlight shone down through the clouds, casting its witchy illumination upon the landscape. Fall looked like it had just got started here. Most of the trees still had their leaves, while the crickets chirped in the woods. The warm, humid air reminded me of the end of summer around late August. 

But there was a creepy undercurrent as well. A steady mist fell from the sky, clung to my skin. It drifted in ghastly whirls across my headlamp beam. Then there were the scarecrows, hanging out, being dead in the branches up above.

It was pleased at the creepiness of it, glad to be experiencing something different from the earlier monotony of drifting from rest stop to rest stop. Never mind that tomorrow I would be back to doing exactly that.

In comparison to driving, running makes a place seem far more real to me. It covers more ground than walking, but unlike travel in a vehicle, it connects the perception of distance with real effort. Outside the car I can be aware of many things that I would have overlooked otherwise—sensations like the suspicion that there might be something somewhere out in the darkness. Watching.

But I did not turn back to the well-lit campsite. Instead, I went turned off down the horse trail, where they would be holding the haunted hayride. I didn’t even need the headlamp, with the bright sky illuminating the path. The surface was gravel and free of stones or roots that I might trip over. I did however splash my way into the odd puddle.

  

Beside the sounds of nature, I could hear some cars going down the highway nearby, as well as somebody blowing stuff up across the lake with perhaps the world’s biggest cache of illegal fireworks. A dull red glow lit the sky from the direction of Akron. As I ran out, the highway noise faded, but the glow endured. A cluster of swamp snags looked properly menacing against the hellish atmosphere.

Suddenly, I became aware of a white light filtering through the woods—headed in my direction. A dull rumble was on the air, growing louder as it approached. It was a freight engine, moving westward down the tracks. The shadowy bulk of the train ran alongside me on the other side of some trees, pushing toward Chicago in the night. For about five minutes, the thunder of the engine and the wheels drowned out my footfalls and all else. The railcars screeched and groaned as they went along, making their way like some procession of the damned.

After the train, I kept going for  perhaps ten more minutes until I arrived at a cul de sac in an open field. It seemed like as good a place as any to turn around. Approaching the road again, I saw an owl swoop down off its branch. The shadow whirled away into the night to look for whatever helpless animals it could devour.

I had thought that when I got back to the road I would simply head back to the campsite where I would jimmy open a can of beans open for my dinner. When I returned to the pavement though, I was far too wired. It was the adrenaline of running at night, the adventure of starting west. Instead of going back, I turned right, determined to explore the park roads until I was satisfied. It took me quite some time.

23-Year Old Runs Away From Home

 Child Services put out a missing-persons advisory Saturday for 23-year old Tom Fagin of Ledyard CT, last seen behind the wheel of a teal-green 1993 Mazda Protégé on the interstate, heading in a westerly direction. The runaway stands six-foot, is identifiable by the poorly groomed beard and hair that go with his disheveled, generally disordered appearance.

Over the last year, friends had noticed that Fagin would talk increasingly about leaving the East coast for work.

“He never shut up about going west,” said one friend who preferred to remain unnamed. “If you said you wanted to do something next week, he usually said that he couldn’t make it because he planned to be out climbing Mt. Rainier or something. Personally, I’d always figured he was full of if, but I guess he finally got his ass in the car and decided to do something.”

While it has notoriously been difficult to pin-down details about Fagin’s plans for the future, there is speculation that he may in fact be headed for Gillette, Wyoming (pop. 30,000) to work as a news reporter. The isolated city, wedged between the Black Hills in South Dakota and Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains, is known for its brutal winters, which will shrink the odds of survival if Fagin does not find shelter. 

In his departure, Fagin has left a loving family and a wonderful set of friends who he’s going to miss a lot. Many of these people are already scattered out around the country pursuing their dreams and ambitions. It wasn’t even possible to say goodbye to everyone, before leaving, which sucks.

But wouldn’t it be wonderful if one of them decided to land in Gillette Wyoming some sunny day perhaps to climb some mountains? Chances are, he’s going to be out there for a couple years. In that time, hopefully he’ll get to cross off a couple peaks in the Bighorns. Oh yeah, and go see Devil’s Tower—just like the crazy guy in Close Encounters.