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.