we would have missed it. but because we are backroads people, we had a chance to revel in it.
the mississippi was grand next to us as we drove the wisconsin great river road south – stunning, really – winding its way along the wisconsin-minnesota border. driving the interstate both directions may have gotten us there faster, but would not have had the same effect on us.
the first time we drove into wisconsin together – from the west – we drove this river road. we lumbered along in a budget truck with david’s stufff in the back, moving him here from seattle. i wanted him to see just how beautiful the bluffs were, just how magnificent the river – both from soaring heights and up-close and personal. i wanted him to have a memorable entrance into his new home state.
we hadn’t been that route since. so it was pretty special to take it home again. we stopped along the shoulder of the road to look at the farm where – bumbling along in our budget truck – we had found our dogdog. we remembered the hilly driveway up, the time spent with farmer don, the other aussies running free and this one black puppy, stealing our hearts. it was with more than a little anticipation we stopped in the little towns along the way to window shop a bit, to get a bite for lunch. we ambled and time – and everything else – stood still.
our bit of time with cousins and a drive along the misi-ziibi gave us just the space and breath we needed. the sweet phase has some deliberately quieter – more peaceful – moments than whatever the rest of the phases were. it is not burdened with speed or competition. it has intentional appreciation of things we may have missed otherwise.
the back way added – i dunno – maybe forty minutes drive time in a full-day’s drive. not a bad return on investment. we’ll pick it every time.
there is often a need to step away – these days. for us, that mostly means a hike at the end of the day or a longer hike on the weekends. sometimes it means getting in littlebabyscion and just driving.
we are a little limited by lake michigan – we cannot mosey east from here. but we can mosey north and south and west.
mostly, we go west. a little north or south thrown in for good measure and to shake it all up a bit, but west. east would mean up and over the u.p. or down and around – through gary, indiana – which is no one’s idea of a good mosey. so. west.
it doesn’t take much for us to decide. our days are filled with trying to sort to optimism, to wishing wishes and dreaming dreams. we work on finding ways and places we can contribute all we have learned and worked at in these last decades. sometimes that is easier said than done. and so, there is often a need to step away, yup.
the wander women – amazing and truly inspiring thru-hikers – have a QR code on their youtube channel. when you point your phone camera at it, it brings you to a place where, in multiples of $5, you can express appreciation, channel sisu, buy them a cup of coffee (or multiple cups, for that matter).
it’s been suggested manyatime to us that maybe we should have a QR code. our very own. i know that we are pretty verbose – lotsa words – maybe more words than anyone wants to read, but you can pick and choose, like from those overburdened menus at tgif’s. but they’ve encouraged us, adding very generous words like “we love to read your posts” or “this would be a way we could say thank you for something that touches us”. their thoughts – QR trail magic – we could use it for coffee or maybe a glass of apothic or…if you wish, it could be thought of as gifting us with miles. miles of thru-hiking middle age. and so anytime we just needed to step away – go find zen in the country outaways west from our home – we could use those miles. to keep going and going and going, thanks to you and you and you.
and then, we could maybe – just maybe – stop and get a coffee or a piece of flourless chocolate cake on our way. if coffee and flourless chocolate cake and red silos and gravel roads don’t help, nothing will.
and so, with the pompoms of people we are grateful for, our QR code is born. we’re gonna name himherthem “qrky”.
over here, by one of the great great lakes, it is mostly flat. when you drive a bit south – toward chicago – particularly on the back roads – you will find ravines punctuating the landscape, gorgeous woods with deep cuts, gullies likely carved by streams into glacial moraines with bluffs high above the lake. i can’t imagine choosing the interstate over these roads and, if time allows, we are avid believers in the back ways.
most of the places we hike in our area do not present elevation gain as a challenge. instead, we have to do distance to make up the exercise gap. i’ve been a sea-level-girl pretty much my whole life – from a where-i’ve-lived standpoint – so when we are faced with elevation gain i have to do a bit of acclimatizing to get any kind of mountain legs or lungs. long island, florida, wisconsin – clearly, none of these are known for their mountain peaks.
we hadn’t ever walked the bike trail on the south side of the illinois border. we parked littlebabyscion near the entrance of the bike trail in some neighborhood – much to the chagrin of a woman walking her dog who – clearly – immediately had her suspicions about these two people exiting their vehicle – having parked their good-grief-it’s-a-2006-vehicle-ewww on the end of the road in this upscale ‘hood – for the trail. i started to walk to the trail and went back, wrote a cheery note “hi. we are just walking on the bike path,” finished it with a happy face and placed it in full view in the windshield. for the first hour or so of hiking i worried if we would get back to an empty space where our sweet littlebabyscion had been and a note to call the tow company. (it was with relief we later returned to find our little vehicle and another parked there as well.)
we crossed the wisconsin-illinois border and found the straight and narrow. illinois does a remarkable job of trail upkeep, no matter where we have found one, no matter the terrain. we kept walking. and walking. and walking. it was a beautiful day and easy to lose sight of the time or distance. we had water and halos and lemon lärabars. we were set.
we looked at the bike trail maps. though there are sections that are harder to define – one must find one’s way from one defined trail to another – you can pretty much walk or bike all the way to chicago.
we giggled and decided we would section-hike to chicago. it will be practice for the possibility of section-hiking or thru-hiking the john muir trail or the PCT. uh-huh. because walking on a bike trail – near civilization, without elevation gain, without 30 pounds on our backs, with littlebabyscion patiently waiting for us and our kitchen and comfy bed at the end of the day – is definitely good practice for say 211 miles or 2650. oh ye of little faith. whatever.
we turned around after checking time and the mileage and the forecasted hour of sunset. the way back – like the previous day on the des plaines river trail – i thought about how many miles we would complete that day, in a few hours. i doubled it and tripled the time and pondered doing that day after day for weeks or – in the case of the PCT – months.
it has a magical dreamy lure. there is no straight and narrow out there. there is hard work and perseverance. and we – watchers of more youtube video accounts than most – ponder if we could do it. we are fueled by people like the remarkable (!) wander women and, really, anyone, say, over 60 we watch successfully navigate the challenges. we think aloud – “maybe someday.”
in the meanwhile there is work to do, a plan to piece back together again post-implosion, and section-hikes to chicago.
we almost did it. almost. almost ordered thai food for pick-up.
but we didn’t.
we’d been hiking and were cold and tired. and we didn’t reeeeally want to make dinner.
but we did.
eventually.
we got around to it.
slowly.
we pulled our adirondack chairs into the last vestiges of sun in the yard, sipped wine, had a happy snack. when the sun disappeared, we brought our glasses inside and painted rocks – from the sand near the beachhouse – at the kitchen table, for we had hidden all the ones we previously painted. time stretched out in front of us, slow, a glorious saturday night.
instead of pad thai, we made tacos with homemade seasoning, had one of the last two avocados from my sister, watched a hallmark – yes, hallmark – movie under a big sherpa blanket, had two squares of chocolate.
hiking – tough elevation climbs – on this last trip to north carolina reminded me to go slow. it was the lesson i brought home from vacation. set a slower pace, don’t set too high a bar, mosey a bit, let living happen.
so i planted the painted rock on our sunroom table on top of sandstone from those smoky mountain trails. the other side of the rock reads, “no. slower.” you know…take a backroad, linger in the setting sun, sink under a blanket, climb a little slower.
my snapchat alerted me to a flashback. two years ago. on a balcony in aspen. the caption: “i don’t want to leave.” i remember slowly packing up, slowly loading the truck, slowly driving away. it was hard to go – as always – but slower made it a little easier.
i leave summer slowly and i step into autumn – my favorite – slowly. i wasn’t really ready for flannel. i pulled off the summer sheets for the last time in the season, thinking about how it feels on a hot night to place your face on a cool spot of the pillow. flannel isn’t like that.
but at the end of the night, after hiking and tacos and wine, chocolate and blanketed-movie-watching, in a house chilled by blustery northwest winds, the flannel was warm and i found myself snugged in soft stripes, slowly drifting off.
i can’t remember what state we were in, but it was on the back of an suv.
“act like you got some sense.”
it should be a road sign. posted every ten miles or so. a reminder.
we have turned into backroads people. ok, well, we were always backroads people but now it has been cemented, etched in stone, made immutable. we would rather be on a backroad than any interstate, freeway, multiple lane expressway.
driving down toward chicago on i94 we were surrounded by semis and vehicles zipping in and out, 80+ mph in a 55 zone. it’s craziness. frantic. though it’s clearly worse on expressways, we’ve encountered our share of aggression on regular around-town roads as well. what is WITH people?
we have kind of made some new driving decisions. the two people – who would drive 15 hours, 17 hours, straight-thru 22 hours – have got themselves some sense. our journeys and roadtrips will be a little less pushed, a little less arduous, a little less long each day on the road. the frenetic days – driving, driving, driving – are over. and we bid them adieu without regret, looking back fondly and with not just a little awe.
in this new got-some-sense era of our lives, each step counts, each mile an opportunity to see something new or different, beautiful or funny.
yesterday, while driving down a not-extraordinarily-busy-but-still-busy-enough road, we came upon a bar on the side of the road with a slewww of motorcycles parked outside. in front of us, standing in the middle of the lanes, scarily exposed, was a biker-dude-sans-bike, leather jacket and all. he pointed at us. i slowed down and stopped. from the side of the road came another biker, this one on a big motorcycle. he roared into the lanes and took off like the infamous meatloaf batoutofhell. i resumed driving, without pausing for reflection.
sometimes got-sense means deferring to those – even temporarily – without it.
there are three parking apps on my phone. and that’s just to cover chicago.
not wanting to appear outdated (ahem!) or out-of-the-loop, just before the last time we went to visit our son, i loaded two new apps…that way, no matter where we parked i would have it covered. no matter what space – on the street, in the lot, in someone’s yard, anywhere – i would be able to -all-casual-like – take out my phone and calmly pay for our spot without a second thought. i was ready. the credit card was loaded, the apps were signed into and open. and i was both proud and brave, thinking i was on top of it. i mean, driving in the city has enough issues sans parking woes. i detest bumper-drivers and people who weave in and out of lanes, the aggression of people-trying-to-get-somewhere faster than the people in front of them. we choose the back way as much as possible.
we had picked him up and drove over to the restaurant, through a crowded wrigleyville on a cubs-home-game-day, having had someone drive right into littlebabyscion’s back bumper at a red light, arriving to parallel park on the street. i was all ready. i pulled out my phone, poised to impress everyone with my parking readiness, this new knowledge of parking spot ease.
i studied the sign on the side of the street. a little confused, i looked over at my son, who was counting his lucky stars he had survived my city-driving to arrive at lunch. alas, it was sunday. and in a moment of utter letdown-from-a-big-buildup, he announced that we didn’t have to pay to park.
as lovely as it was to park for free – imagine! – i was disappointed to not use my newfound parking je ne sais quoi. the irony.
we drove home the back way, through little towns and on country roads, with no one on our bumper, figuratively or literally, confident that we could park anywhere our little hearts desired.
we are creatures of repetition. we will eat black-bean-burgers every single day for lunch until – one day – we cannot stand the idea of another black-bean-burger ever-again. and then, after some time – poof! the yen for a b-b-b comes back.
it’s like that with oatmeal too. oatmeal-oatmeal-oatmeal. oatmeal’s biggest fans. with walnuts and dates and raisins and dried cranberries and bananas. yum! oatmeal! until – ugh – we cannot stand to eat another bowl of oatmeal.
and then, in our latest obsession, there’s rye toast. now, keeping in mind that we have been eating gluten-free, rye toast is kinda out of the safety-loop. but….ohmygoodness…it’s rye toast! it makes me think of my sweet momma and her momma and long island and – this is really great – the day my daughter was born. they brought me scrambled eggs and rye toast in the hospital and now, forever, the association is sealed. so…rye toast, rye toast, rye toast!
for a while we would have midnight-pancakes. what is not to love about pancakes and maple syrup late at night when your tummy is kinda pokin’ at you?
we aren’t ihop people. i can’t tell you the last time i went to an ihop. denny’s too. the stand-out time i went to denny’s was the day we moved to wisconsin on thanksgiving day and ended up at denny’s for dinner. it was a pitiful scene, i’m sure. but it wasn’t for pancakes. my mom and dad always went for the grand-slam-breakfast, which, i think, includes pancakes. denny’s has never made it onto our list of places-to-go when we roadtrip.
there was this place – a diner – in hanover, new hampshire just on the other side of the state line from vermont. i was eighteen or maybe nineteen. a group of us had been to a drive-in movie (where the guy driving drove in the exit backwards while i worried about getting in trouble) and were properly starving at the end of the double feature. especially me. anxiety will do that. the diner served up piles of pancakes and lukewarm coffee. it’s hard to remember the details from back in the dark ages, but, somehow, i remember the pancakes.
these days we generally try to find hole-in-the-wall kinds of places. back-roads places. small-town places. and, truth be told, we never ever – and i really mean never ever – go to any thing or any where that is “all-you-can-eat”.
though all-you-can-eat-pancakes does have a certain ring to it.
kodiak cakes had an ever-present home in our cupboard for a long time. because, really, pancakes have a way of satiating all worries and bringing peace.
reverse threading 