One thing I like about the Badlands National Park is that the rangers tell you to go wherever you want. Sure, there are trails — but you don’t have to stay on them.

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I don’t miss living in an apartment at all. Of course there are things I miss about having an apartment, like having a place to go to the bathroom or showering more than once a week (just kidding, I showered less than I do now when I had one). So I’m trying to think of ways to extend this road trip. Of course that means extending money, which seems to be impossible somedays. On a road trip, 3 days = 1 week. So when I think about three days ago, it’s like I’m thinking about last Tuesday. I don’t even remember what I did last Wednesday! Wednesday was practically a month ago!!!

Every state has it’s own accent, which is GREAT. Right now we’re in Wisconsin, where they say ‘backpack’ and pronounce the ‘a’ like the ‘a’ in ask - a backpack. Once again we’re not too close to the city, this is because either there are no campgrounds close enough, or we cannot find one close enough with Wifi. Not having the internet is a pain in the rear and I’m thinking about just giving in and signing up for a measly 5gb of upload/download bandwidth.

Mark and I have this problem called “We live next to New York City”. So we know most of what there is to know about NYC and expect all cities to be as great as it is. But no city is like New York City, and I found this painfully true in Boston the first five times we visited. Finally I realized that maybe Boston isn’t 1/8th as awesome as New York, but for Massachusetts, Boston is pretty great and has it’s own little flavor (and accent). But then we experienced Cleveland and all my hopes of enjoying a city for what it is, were smashed. We recovered from Cleveland in the countryside of Illinois for a few days and finally ended up in Chicago, from last Friday to Sunday.

I was in a good mood when we headed out there on Friday. Chicago and the surrounding areas are flat, so when you’re driving into the city you can see it from at least 10 miles away. That combined with the Metra running along side of our car, driving down some highway and I had a feeling Chicago might be more exciting than those other Non-New York Cities. “WOW! It looks like New York City!” Once we got to another section “Hey! This looks like Boston!” Then it looked like Philadelphia and Baltimore so I figured maybe Chicago is just Chicago.

We arrived at the Chicago Diner, a vegetarian restaurant. We were served tasty food by a bunch of hipsters who I suspect spend a lot of time looking in the mirror to look like everyone else (but guys, to your credit you all look good).

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when you’re in Amish Country, photographing it all by your lonesome with no one in sight?

It makes the sound of someone sneaking up behind you with a big stick, waiting to bring it down on the back of your head WATCH OUT!!!  Just kidding. But not really, I was starting to get freaked out when I was walking through the corn fields.
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