Day 2

Our first stop after leaving in the morning is the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.  Every year, the outside is decorated with corn, grasses and other plants.  Begun in 1892, the Corn Palace is somewhere you might think will be, if you’ll excuse the expression, corny, but as my best friend found out several years ago, it’s really interesting.

Hay’s an important crop, so hay and grass for grazing are much of what we see as we drive through South Dakota.  Earlier in the year, we would have seen sunflowers, but I only spot one field of them.  

Since it’s Bike Rally week in Sturgis, there are literally hundreds of bikers on the road.  Motels and hotels are filled as far as five or six hours away.  Bikers who look like they were young during the 60’s and older couples whose motorcycles sport sidecars all make the trek from all over the country.  It’s always the first week of August and some wild and crazy things go on.

Road trip!

At long last it’s time for our annual vacation trek to the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming!   It’s a two-day drive, so we start relatively early, once the van’s packed. The coolers are filled with all sorts of goodies, both to consume during the trip and to “import”. Our menu today consists of grapes, cherries, corn chips and bierocks. Bierocks are a type of pocket sandwich shaped like a turnover. I make the slightly sweet dough in the bread machine, roll it into circles and fill with a combination of ground beef, onion, cabbage and a bit of cheddar cheese. After a short rise, they’re baked.  Besides being delicious, they’re also perfect because the filling doesn’t fall out while you’re eating them. 🙂

After leaving Illinois, we head into Wisconsin  into relatively flat farmland.  As we go further, it becomes more hill, wooded, and wild-looking. We make one stop each year in Mauston, a small town that’s home to an amazing cheesemaker, Sid Cook (http://www.carrvalleycheese.com/).  I read about Sid and Carr Valley in the book, Cheesemonger. The author mentioned Carr Valley so often that I looked to see where it was located and realized we drove by the exit every year. Now we make a regular stop there. Deciding which cheeses to get, though, is difficult as there are so many choices and every one we’ve ever tried has been good. (Photos of cheeses at a later date when they’re not being kept in the cooler.)

If you’re from Wisconsin or Quebec, you know about cheese curds, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese_curd. Cheese curds are very, very fresh cheese, cut into curds. Ideally, they’re eaten the day they’re make or within several days and besides being tasty, they squeak. 🙂 Needless to say, we buy a bag.

Something old, something new

I’ve driven the Chicago-Cleveland (or Cleveland-Chicago) route many times in the last years but still, once I get in the van and on the road, I settle down and enjoy the ride.  There’s always something new to see and plenty old favorites.  Join me for a very compressed, selective six hours.

A van with a view

Here are a few pictures from my trip back from Philadelphia to Cleveland…

Surprise boxes or how to survive travel with children

We’ve gone to Wyoming every summer since we’ve been married (and I’ve gone every summer but one since college).  When the girls were small,  Bill didn’t have much vacation time, so we flew but eventually the girls couldn’t travel for free in our laps and paying for four seats didn’t figure into our budget.  But no matter the mode of travel, there are two necessities for travel with children to go well–plenty food and drink (and not at airport prices unless in dire need) and something for them to do.

Granola Protein Bars

Tried a new recipe a days ago from a cookbook that I unfortunately didn’t get through before it was due (and there was a hold on it, so I had to take it back or suffer the dreaded fines.)  The cookbook is The Sprouted Kitchen, by Sara Forte and you can access her blog here for additional recipes:  http://www.sproutedkitchen.com/.  (Sara, thanks for giving me permission to share your recipe.)

The recipe made 16 of these tasty bars (or 8 twice the size.) I prefer to eat 2…just feels more decadent. 🙂

Pennsylvania Paradoxes

Besides eating well at Ramen Bar and having a great time with our younger daughter while in Philadelphia, our flying road trip took us through a state of contrasts:

Riding in the rain, just riding in the rain

One year in college, four of us went on a bike trip over Easter break.  (That’s when there used to be Easter, not spring, breaks.)  We left from the home of one of the guys, starting out blithely, feeling free, despite packs on both bikes and backs.  We were having fun, an adventure.  It rained; we got wet.

It’s corny…and it isn’t.

Several summers ago, my friend and I were on our way to Wyoming for a week of vacation in the Big Horn Mountains.  The rest of my family wasn’t able to make it and my friend had, oh, miracle of miracles, been able to take off an entire week.  She’d never been on a road trip of that magnitude nor been to that part of the country, so I was trying to decide what she should see on the way out or the way back.

Usually we don’t stop except for necessities such as food, gas, and pit stops, because we can’t wait to get to Wyoming and we do all our sightseeing on the return trip.  But on our second day, I realized there were two places we needed to stop on the way out, leaving Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands for the trip home.

On the road again

When I was growing up, we’d leave for vacation early in the morning when the air was still cool.  The traffic light at our corner was changing, but no one was there to see it except us.  That was always the start of vacation.