Day Four: Attack of the Mole People

Fourth day of the trip took us from Billings, Montana out to Liberty Lake, Washington (just outside of Spokane), which covered about 800km.

Finally out of the plains of middle America, the terrain was becoming increasingly mountainous and forested. Which was absolutely gorgeous to look at but at times challenging to drive through. I also quickly realized that in the same way that North Dakota is obsessed with buffalo, Montana has an unhealthy fixation on bears. Within the first couple of hours I lost count of how many Bear Creeks, Grizzly Roads, Bear Lakes and other ursine place-names we passed. Not to mention a bear zoo that offered to let us pet the grizzlies (I'll decline, thanks).

Finally, something to look at

ATE AT: Out first stop of the day was to refuel and get a spot of lunch at an A&W, which if you ask me if you have to eat at a fast food burger joint, A&W is the best you could ask for. The frosty glass mugs add a lot to what would otherwise be a drab fountain drink. We found one in the city of Butte, Montana. Although the workers there were polite and efficient at their job (not that the place was packed or anything), both my father Brian and I couldn't help but notice that not a single worker we could had all their teeth.

Driving into the city I was trying to come up with something interesting to say about Butte and figured I would end up resorting to a pun, the lowest form of comedy (Brian's suggestion: "We stopped to stretch our glutes in butte"). But after interacting with the haggard looking A&W employees I started to think I had some new material to work with. Then, after we'd finished our meal and were heading back towards the highway, I saw this;

I think Butte, Montana may have a drug problem. Or a monster problem. "Not Even Once," indeed.

I don't want to portray the entire state like this, so I will say that the next place we stopped for gas, Missoula, Montana, was full of college kids enjoying their last week of freedom before classes started up again, and I kinda wished I had the time to stay there with them. It was seriously party central there (during the five minutes it took to refuel I'd already been hive-fived by two random dudes in shades, presumably passing between keggers on opposite ends of the street).



For dinner we ate chinese food at "Ding You" restaurant, but it wasn't really remarkable apart from it's surprising popularity.

ROAD KILL: Almost none! Which is kinda shocking considering how much forest and mountains we drove through. I think I remember a Raccoon or two maybe.

LISTENED TO: Having exhausted the podcasts I'd had the foresight to burn onto CDs, I now resorted to pulling out my old music collection from the 90's, before music was something that was easier to listen to on a WinAmp shuffle. We heard:
*Soundtrack: "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas"
*Soundtrack: "Austin Powers: Goldmember"
*Soundtrack: "Ghostbusters"
*Barenaked Ladies, "Stunt"
*Cake, "Comfort Eagle"

TALKED ABOUT: A lot of the conversation was about the scenery and life in the mountains, talking about camping and forest fires and the perpetual smoky haze that had enveloped the west coast after a dry summer. It really was impressive to see during the thickest portions of the drive, and I suspect my car now has a pleasantly manly woodsmoke scent to it.

This is not an instagram filter, nor is it the apocalypse

ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS: Around the Idaho panhandle we crossed Yellowstone river about three times and passed only a short distance from the norther edge of Yellowstone park. Which, naturally, made me think about the dormant (?) supervolcano in Yellowstone and wonder what it might be like to see it go off. There was also the aforementioned bear-zoo.

Day Three: Been Through The Desert On A Horse With No Name

Third entry of the trip started us off at Fargo, ND and landed us in Billings, Montana. Drove about 1000 km.

As soon as we had gassed up the car the entire day was spent on the interstate highway, which had the benefit of being fast and clear of traffic and well paved, unlike some of the previous stretches we had travelled across back east. I'll say this for the Americans: they take good care of their roads. The downside to this is that our route followed basically a straight line almost the entire day, with a rare little hill perhaps as the only thing to break up the monotony. We ended up playing around with the cruise control settings on the car since I can't think of another situation better suited for road testing stuff like that, but we suspect it burned more fuel that we ought to have as the engine automatically downshifted every time we mounted an incline.

Flatness, flatness everywhere

Towards the end of the day we passed out of North Dakota and into Montana, reaching a region of "painted canyons" which were really pretty to look at, though I suspect not good for much else. There's a reason they call it "badlands".

The painted canyons: what drove ancient Americans to decorate these cliffs? Modern man may never know.

ATE AT: In the little town of Forsythe, Montana, next to "The Town Pump" (a gas station, not a prostitute), there was a little diner called the Eatery. Weak coffee and deep fried, cheese smothered everything. I had the special, which was chicken-fried steak sandwich on whole-wheat but looked a lot like white bread to me, with a side of doritos. Brian had a roast beef sandwich with too much horseradish (he was wheezing and tearing up from the bite of it). The people there were friendly but struck us as the folk who had been born there, grew up there, would marry and eventually die there, their lives filled with daytime TV and beer. I'm going ot move on now before I get depressed.

ROAD KILL: Racoon (x2), Maybe possums(?)(x3), At night we passed a big buck with an impressive rack of antlers standing next to the highway in a pose that suggested he was waiting for the perfect moment to launch across the road. I was fully anticipating that he was about to charge my car as we drove past but thankfully my Hyundai remains un-gored.

LISTENED TO:
*The Dead Authors Podcast an earlier episode interviewing Carl Sagan, which even cranked up to max volume we had some issues hearing it clearly over the road noise. Still had many good jokes though, my favorite being that any number over 4-billion (which could then qualify to be described as "billions and billions") is now called "A Sagan".
*Monster Talk Two episodes, the first was a biography of the almost-forgotten 1950's horror-host Vampira, who established the format for characters like Elvira and the Crypt Keeper in decades to come. It was interesting but I am always greatly bothered to learn of any classic media which has been now lost forever because the film reels were too expensive to store and the TV execs didn't think anyone in future generations might have a historical interest in the earliest TV programs.
The second episode was a short one, a Christmas special apparently, which was a reading of Ambrose Bierce's short tale "An Inhabitant of Carcosa", which later evolved into Chambers' "The King in Yellow", Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, and now is known to modern audiences best as a major plot point in the first season of "True Detective".

Also a note for all the readers who are suggesting podcasts I might like more, your comments are certainly appreciated but I can't actually act upon them during this trip, since I already burned all the podcast episodes onto CDs for the trip before leaving Ottawa. Downloading and preparing more would require me to unpack my computer and hook it all up, which is just infeasible until I reach our destination.

TALKED ABOUT: Seeing as we were thick into cowboy country, our conversations revolved around the stories of the Alamo, General Custer's Last Stand (which we passed about 50k north of) and the impossibly rugged President Teddy Roosevelt, whose national park we also passed through during today's drive. Some old western TV shows that Brian used to watch also sprang up in conversation, notably "Here come the brides". Apparently one of the characters on that show was a distant ancestor of Star Trek's Mr. Spock. Look it up, it's canon!


ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS: North Dakota sure is proud of the mighty buffalo herds that don't exist anymore. They put them on their license plates, on their road signs, on their restaurants, and notably we passed by a buffalo reserve or zoo of some kind in Jamestown that boasted not one, but TWO albino buffalo (Breaking news: I've learned that they've just added a third baby albino buffalo calf this year that isn't on the billboards yet).

READING: Still making slow progress through "Supergods", enjoying the dissertations on the golden age of comics that saw the first appearances of characters like Captain Marvel, Captain America, Flash, Green Lantern, Namor and the Human Torch. Also learning what a kinky bondage freak Wonder Woman's creator William Moulton Marston was. Read that wiki link before you see her in the upcoming "Batman v. Superman" movie!

Day Two: We Murricans Naow

Second leg of the trip took us from Sault St Marie (just north of the border) through to Fargo, North Dakota. Distance travelled 1100 km, about 15 hours on the road. Collapsed into bed last night unable to update the blog due to exhaustion. So I've now been in Fargo for 9 hours and haven't seen Steve Buschemi or anyone getting fed into a woodchipper yet, I'll try to contain my disappointment.

So after a cheap little complimentary breakfast in Sault, we crossed the bridge into the states and passed the customs agent with our combined canuck charm. I've been on vacations down in Florida when I was younger but this was the first time I've ever just driven down into the more northern states. The first of which was Michigan. It looks like it'd be a lovely slice of America to live in, and I was surprised that American Mountain Dew is so much better than the yellow swill we get in Canada. Little disturbed by the gigantic bags of pipe tobacco that the Michigan truckstops apparently do a brisk trade in.

Pictured: Michigan

We passed through several picturesque little towns and cities in rapid succession, eventually passing through Wisconsin and Minnesota before arriving in North Dakota. We also got briefly lost just south of Lake Superior and found ourselves in the town of "Baraga" if you care to look it up, which cost us about an hour of daylight. You'd think this might be difficult with maps, a GPS, and a triptik printout, but we managed it anyway. I blame it on information overload.

After the sun went down we managed to cross the Mississippi river, which this far north is really not at all as impressive as I remember it when I first encountered it down in St. Louis. Night driving was made more difficult by intermittent fog banks that drifted across the road like obstacles in a Nintendo racing game.

ATE AT: We eventually ran out of snacks and stopped for a proper meal in a little lakeside town of Ashland, Wisconsin. Since we had lost time from our little navigation snafu we opted for some fast food at a chain called "Culvers", which might be a Wisconsin thing? They were split between burgers and dairy-based desserts sort of like a Dairy Queen but higher-end. The food was satisfying and the view of the lake was great, but the gal working the cash register was the most bored-looking teenager I've met in a long time.

Lake Superior, thinks it's better than the other lakes.

ROAD KILL: Skunk (x2), Shredded Tires (x4), Something Bigger Than a Dog, A Windshield's Worth of Huge Bugs. Crossed paths with a deer on the foggy night highways but didn't hit it.

LISTENED TO:
*The Dead Authors Podcast Apparently we were on a bit of a fantasy kick because we listened to both the JRR Tolkien and Gary Gygax episodes of this fun comedy show. Tolkien mostly joked about how everything, including a tuna sandwich, deserved 500-page stories detailing the minutia of their languages and cultures in order to properly appreciate them. Gygax was portrayed mostly as having an obsession with rescuing princesses from their overbearing fathers and drumming up ridiculous monsters based on whatever whim passed through his mind, and having played D&D as a teenager I can't say that this is really untrue.
*Monster Talk This was kind of dry, being a science show rather than a comedy program, but I can't say it wasn't interesting. The subject of the episode was the Homunculus, a creation of middle ages alchemy similar to a golem or Frankenstein's monster in that it was an artificially crafted human being. The talk covered the basics of what how these creatures came about and what they meant to the philosophy of alchemy, being a stepping stone towards the goal of a enlightened perfect human. Worth a listen if you are interested in medieval history, fantasy, or a combination of the two.
*Last Podcast on the Left I was pretty disappointed with this, because when I downloaded it the show looked like it was done by a group of horror movie buffs who were treating some gruesome topics with proper respect and research. Perhaps my mistake was clicking specifically on the "Fairies" episode, expecting to get a delving into Celtic folklore and some stories of the darker exploits of the Wee Folk. Instead, the show consisted mostly of rowdy frat boy types guffawing over crude jokes about gay people and Disney's Tinkerbell.

TALKED ABOUT: After listening to the show about Tolkien we got to talking about the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies (I've seen all of the former, none of the latter). If we could be one of the characters from that franchise, who would we be? Brian picked Aragorn/Strider (simple, honest, brave man whose greatness is recognized and rewarded in the end), Ben picked Treebeard the Ent (huge tree monster that knocked down Saruman's tower by chucking boulders at it, and is completely justified in taking forever to do anything).

Also the inevitable "If you could have one superpower what would it be" question came up; Brian wants mind-control like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ben wants shapeshifting like the T-1000. I also got some father/son life advice about careers and women but I won't get into that here.

ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS: Starting to realize that if you want to make it in the motel industry you've gotta have a pun. I've seen the Sleep-Inn, the Tucked-Inn, Americ-Inn, and more that I've already forgotten. We also passed by the Museum of Shipwrecks and the national Accordion Museum, either of which I would have gladly toured if we'd had the time to stop. Today's trip is going to be significantly shorter than the last one so perhaps we'll have the opportunity to take in a local attraction.

READING: Grant Morrison's "Supergods". It's well researched and well written, and Morrison paints a fun picture with his words as long as you can ignore his habit of reading way too into things in an attempt to get super deep and weird about everything. Yes, Action Comics #1 has a well designed cover. No, it does not contain subliminal imagery designed to hypnotize the customer into becoming marxists. Cripes Morrison, make yourself a tinfoil hat already.

Day One of Ben & Brian's Excellent Adventure

The first leg of the trip westward takes us from Ottawa to Sault St. Marie in Ontario. Distance Travelled: 800 km

After some time packing everything I could take with me into my car, I was able to depart at about noon, a fair bit later than originally intended but I did want to be extra sure that the roof-attachment was good and secure. The last thing I wanted was to be driving down the highway and realize a few minutes after hearing a thump above my head that the bag had come loose and the contents of my underwear drawer were now spread across a kilometer of Canadian backwoods.

But by noon everything was set to go, I had nuzzled my parent's poodles (Thor & Loki) for the last time, and I'd said a long goodbye to my mom earlier that morning. As I left Ottawa I was thinking about the things I would miss about it.

Even though I was born and raised in Ottawa, I don't think I ever developed an attachment to it the way that many people become entrenched in their home towns. I'd never had a regular pub or pool hall to go for drinks in (I'm not much of a drinker), I didn't especially enjoy the annual summer Bluesfest concerts and most of the landmarks of my childhood and adolescence like the local Rogers Video Rental store and Future Shop had closed down. I'd luckily had a last minute opportunity to spend some time with my old highschool Dungeons & Dragons crew for a few quick games and reminiscing, but by and large most of my friends from Ottawa had gotten jobs in other cities and moved elsewhere. And I guess now so have I.

But still, there are some parts of Ottawa that I will brag about to my new neighbours in Victoria and sigh wistfully about; the Ottawa canal freezing into a huge lumpy skating rink in the winter for example. There are few things as Canadian as fighting off the frost bite in your cheeks with a scalding hot chocolate and freshly baked Beaver Tail (for my readers in the USA and beyond, it's not literally a beaver's tail, Canadians aren't THAT much of a stereotype. It's a flat piece of fried dough slathered with butter and brown sugar and other toppings). I'll also miss the fireworks on Canada Day browsing the shelves at the Chapters that I worked at as a teenager and naturally, the house that I did most of my growing up in.

As much as I'd like to keep writing I do have another long day of driving ahead of me tomorrow, so let me summarize the trip as efficiently as possible:

My dad Brian Reilly at our first pit stop

ATE AT: M.I.C. (Made in Canada) Pub & Eatery in Sudbury. Lovely atmosphere with a big fireplace and clearly popular. Excellent food (I had a steak sanwich and a very hearty pea soup) but slow service. On the plus side, when my dad mentioned to the hostess that his food had arrived a bit cold, she had insisted on comping the meal in spite of my father's protests. Sudbury itself looked just as dull as everyone has always warned me it was, but to be fair we didn't stop there long enough to really find out.
 
ROAD KILL: Raccoon, Skunk, Porcupine (x2), Unidentifiable, Squirrel, Unidentifiable
 
LISTENED TO:
* Welcome to Nightvale my dad didn't have a taste for it, and shut it off after the first episode was over. I couldn't say I really blamed him, I remember the show being more coherent then it apparently is in reality.
* How Did This Get Made? I'd heard this particular episode before (Punisher: War Zone with Patton Oswalt) and knew it was going to be a funny one. My father was equally entertained and was asking if I had thought to burn more episodes of this show for the trip. Sadly, I hadn't. I wasn't expecting him to like it so much!
*The Dead Authors Podcast Started off with one of their most recent episodes, with guest host Carl Sagan interviewing guest Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens). We thought it was quite funny for a show that is clearly largely improvisational.
*The Faculty of Horror I specifically downloaded this episode ("Brides") because Bride of Frankenstein is one of my favorite films from the classic era of cinema and had high hopes, but both of us quickly agreed that the two hostesses were pretty insufferable, and the recording had serious sound issues too. My main complaint is that they spend most of the running time simply recapping the film and claiming one thing or another is "very interesting" (which, it is), without actually injecting any of their own opinions or input about WHY those scenes or characters were interesting. What little analysis they do bring amounts to decrying the institution of marriage as a prison for women fashioned by the patriarchy and glossing over the entire Hammer Horror era of the 60's and 70's as "schlock". Suffice it to say, I was not a fan of this podcast.

TALKED ABOUT: First Conversation was naming our top three favourite actors. I'm not sure if my dad meant specifically male actors when he asked the question but that's how I interpreted it. Our answers,
Ben: Jeffrey Coombs, Ron Perlman, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Brian: Michael Cain, Christopher Walken, Paul Newman

Second Conversation was to assemble our ideal bridge crew on a hypothetical Star Trek ship.
Ben: Captain Kirk, First Officer (movie era) Spock, Science Officer Wesley Crusher, Medical Chief Bashir, Security Chief Odo, Engineer Torres, Navigator Paris, Helm Officer Worf, Comm Officer Quark
Brian: Captain Picard, First Officer Spock, Science Officer Data, Medical Chief "Bones" McCoy, Security Chief Seven of Nine, Engineer Laforge, Navigator Checkov, Helm Officer Sulu, Comm Officer Hoshi Sato

Roadside Attractions: While we didn't really come across any serious tourist traps (and we wouldn't have had the time to spare on the anyway) we did pass by several billboards for something called "Frozen Beneath", which a big spooky picture of a UFO and an alien on it. I was immediately curious, picturing someone with tinfoil-wrapped car engine parts trying to pass them off as debris from a Roswell type crash. When I got to the hotel for the night I looked it up and, sadly, it's just a local author trying to sell his book. http://frozenbeneath.ca/
Dammit I wanted to see a fake rubber alien.

That's all I've got time to write about tonight. See you for tomorrow's update!

Hello, my name is Bennet Reilly and this is a blog I've created to document my upcoming road trip from Ottawa, Ontario to Victoria, BC. I leave tomorrow morning and my intention is to update every night when we stop for dinner, wifi availability permitting. I'm due to arrive in Victoria on September 1st, 2015 and after that I'll probably be too busy unpacking to continue updating the blog, but I might be able to post up the first round of snapshots I take as I tour around the city and Vancouver island in the first couple weeks after arriving.

Check back soon, I leave tomorrow!