…Or Maybe a Chunk At A Time

If you ever see an ad for “Wanted: Person to Post Picture of the Day,” do not let me apply.

That is a job at which I would fail miserably. However, I might make a go of “Wanted: Person to Toodle Around and Occasionally Share Moments of Her Toodles Digitally.” Whatever the wage per hour, I’d still be overpaid, of course.

So here I am, in a frame of mind to do some digital toodle-sharing. Truth be told, I’d like to post about thirty pictures, but I’m working on the elusive art of restraint–something that is anathema to all I am–and so I’m only allowing four pictures. We’ve been on the road for four days, after all, so it makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that we’ve been on the road for four days, and I have four photos to share…yet I have no photo from Day One or Day Four.

As I tell my children, “Maybe don’t get too analytical about what I say versus what I do. Maybe just view me as a full-throttle lesson in Going with the Flow.”

As part of my Restraint Program, I shall stop the blather and get down to it.

We departed Duluth on August 4th, leaving our house in the care of a gun-toting trainer of rabid pitbulls, so don’t even think about a break-in. My picture of the day would have been of Byron sipping his first-ever cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee; sometimes, in the middle of Wisconsin, there are few coffee choices, so we were forced to try out the Dunkin’ Donuts coffee that has sooooo many people raving about it.

It was–how you say?–fine. Considering.

Day Two had us visiting the science museum in Chicago (after which we went out for a nice Turkish dinner with my college roomie and eternal great galpal, Colleen, and her partner, Tim). You know what I realized at the science museum, a place I recall being wildly excited about when I visited it as a kid?

I realized I can’t even fake being a science person. These places are billed as “interactive” and full of learning, and most of the time that I’m in them, I wish to be sitting on a bench, people watching, or else left alone to read a book for a few hours. On some level, I lack the natural curiosity of a scientist. So, um, sometimes there’s air and some moisture and an updraft, and something like a “vortex” happens. Okay. Now can I go read?

Fortunately, others in my family got more out of it:

While the fellas made tornadoes, Allegra and I quite liked the miniature diorama skyline of the city, complete with teeeeensy figures enjoying an afternoon on Lake Michigan:

Interestingly, one day later, when we’d gone to Navy Pier (tourist hell, really), I experienced miniature once again, this time from my vantage point high up on the Ferris Wheel. I was adamant that I wanted to ride the wheel, having read Erik Larson’s The Devil in White City and gotten the back story on the creation of the Ferris Wheel for the world’s fair of 1893 in Chicago. To ride a wheel that is a direct tribute to that invention was very, very cool. Being able to look down and pretend I was seeing the entire world as a miniature diorama was just as exciting.

My biggest thrill of the last four days has been the art deco, intricate, ever-changing-yet-very-harmonious skyline of Chicago. We took the train into the city from our hotel, and then we took water taxi and trolley to get around the downtown area. Thus far, I’d say the late afternoon water taxi ride, just as the light was hitting its best slant, has been my biggest highlight.

Today, my picture of the day, had I taken one, would have been of the line of semi-trucks parked at a rest stop in the middle of Indiana. Due to the hoards of trucks toting goods around the country, I had some white-knuckle driving on the interstate. With construction narrowing the lanes, and being hemmed in by trucks from all directions, I was glad to hand over the wheel to Byron. He glided us into Columbus, Ohio, where we sleep tonight.

Tomorrow, we go to the much-recommended Columbus market and then drive six more hours to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where we’ll spend a night readying ourselves to tour

the Hershey’s Factory in Hershey, PA, the next day.

If I don’t post for a few days, it’ll be because I’m still slowly reviving from the sugar coma.

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18 responses to “…Or Maybe a Chunk At A Time”

  1. Lil Avatar

    Next time you go east, go more east and come to Montreal. We have kick ass middle eastern food – and many many byob restaurants.

    1. Jocelyn Avatar

      Honey, Montreal is one of the BIGGEST travel desires of my life–because it seems properly foreign enough to be a “cultural” experience, yet it’s just a long drive away, really. It will happen. Brace yourself.

      I’m prepping now to love the food when I come. And the booze. And you.

  2. Kimberly Robinson Avatar

    Enjoy your stay in Our Fair Commonwealth! I reside just three hours north of Harrisburg, close to the New York border. Should you have a sudden overwhelming urge to visit the Corning Museum of Glass please let me know, I’ll drive up for a meetup! 🙂

    1. Jocelyn Avatar

      Wouldn’t that be lovely? I would adore a meet-up. Truth be told, a museum of glass is a pretty strong draw… we’re booked up, itinerarywise, until our mad race home in a couple weeks, though, so it’s probably iffy. But now the idea’s in the hopper.

  3. kmkat Avatar

    Coffee in n.w. Wisconsin: between 6am and about 1pm, Julia’s Java in Milltown on WI Hwy 35. And if you stop there and don’t come to my house I shall drop a jinx on you that you will never recover from. Between 6am and 7pm, Cafe Wren, just north of Luck on WI Hwy 35. Same deal with the stopping in and the jinx.

    I love the photo from the Ferris wheel. V. original — good enough to publish somewhere (besides the blog, I mean).

    We toured the Hershey thingie back in 2002 when Elder Son was checking out colleges on the Right Coast. Mmmm…

    1. Jocelyn Avatar

      I should have specified: coffee in the mid-Dells. It was a hurting proposition.

      I’m scared of your jinxes and smiling that you like the photo. You are so ying and yang.

      Hershey’s is actually a chocolate I can barely tolerate, but Paco’s waaaay excited, and who am I to get crabby about touring a chocolate factory?

  4. Jess Avatar

    Are you going to Rhode Island to visit my birthplace? You ARE, aren’t you??!?!?

    1. Jocelyn Avatar

      Yes. We’re staying in the house you grew up in. We’ll be there mid-August. Don’t tell anyone; it’s a surprise.

      Actually, we maaayayyyayayayay get to RI, but more than likely, maybe not. We have to save the best for when the kids are even more developed, intellectually.

  5. Julie Sucha Anderson Avatar

    Road trip – I love ’em. Guidebook in hand. As for Chicago, I love Chicago. All the museums and the food. Ballgames. Music. I also understand about forgetting the camera for a few days. I think that is called a Travel Coma.

    1. Jocelyn Avatar

      Road trips are some of the highlights of my youth, and I’m so appreciative I have a job that allows me to pass that feeling on to my kids. The map gazing; the random stops; the feeling of subcultures within our larger culture and, at the same time, significant regional differences… Chicago was a great first stop, and today I’ve been marveling at the rolling green-ness of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, states I haven’t been through in decades.

  6. chlost Avatar

    So-Are you there yet?

    1. Jocelyn Avatar

      We’re in Harrisburg, PA, tonight…heading to Hershey tomorrow and then, after the factory, on to DC for a week. Up to CT (using it as a base into NYC and perhaps the shore) after that.

      1. chlost Avatar

        I have loved road trips since I was a kid, even when my dad made us pee into a coffee can rather than find a bathroom. At least he stopped alongside the road and we were able to maintain our dignity by being between the opened passenger and back seat doors which opened out toward the ditch. It was always an adventure!
        Looking forward to the next installment of your trip.

  7. Bone Avatar

    Ooo, Pennsylvania! Did you go to Three Mile Island? If not, maybe you can swing by on your way back through, pick me up a postcard, or at least take a few pics 🙂

    I’ve never actually visited Chicago. Only driven thru a couple times. Love the Ferris wheel pic.

  8. Friko Avatar

    I’d love to do a road trip in the US. I understand your roads are wide and empty and you are not allowed to go faster than crawl. At least that’s what we found in New England some years ago.

    I am about to go back one and ponder the good blog question.

  9. lime Avatar

    whispers, “crayola factory and martin guitar factory” if they get you to stop in my neck of the woods….

  10. Pam Avatar

    Did the great U.S road trip in 1978, east to west, north to south, with two carloads of other hormonal Australian young women students , also in their twenties. We thought we were invincible. How we survived the laughter and tears (and driving on the other side of the road to what was normal for us) I’ll never understand. Somehow seems safer and wiser the way you’re doing it.
    (Our ‘chaperone’, our Australian uni. lecturer almost abandoned us for starry-eyed true love in Buffalo N.Y)
    Guess jumping ship,with benefits, looked like an attractive proposition considering being the only male in all that high-tension fiasco!
    Have fun!!

  11. heart in san francisco Avatar

    I was in Hershey, PA as a child. I don’t remember taking the tour but the entire town smelled like chocolate. Happy coma, darling!

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