A Country Girl Goes to the City

For anyone who knows anything about South Dakota, you know that it is not exactly the most urban state in the country. And while I do live near Sioux Falls, which has the busiest intersection in the state, it's not exactly like living in a metropolis.

Three weeks ago, my family went to Chicago, Illinois for a Ham Radio meeting which occurs in a different city every year. After I successfully drove through South Dakota and Iowa without hitting anyone with the trailer I was pulling, my dad decided that he was going to drive through Illinois and Chicago. My mom, who was navigating from the back seat with a set of MapQuest directions, once again got to realize why she doesn't like MapQuest and she let everyone else in the car know, more than once, that MapQuest was wrong and that MapQuest wanted us to drive on roads that did not appear to exist. Then, as we are sitting at a red light in Elk Grove Village, I notice a Holiday Inn to our left. "Hey Dad, isn't that the hotel?". He did turn down the street the hotel was on, but proceeded to say "This isn't where the directions said to go. It could be the wrong one.". Luckily, we came across a parking lot full of Ham Radio antenna set-ups on the top of cars, so it was safe to say we were in the right place. Then, since it was going on 10pm and we hadn't yet had dinner, we ordered the "Sampler Platter" appetizer from the Old Chicago in the hotel. I think the platter should have been described as more than a "sampler" since 5 of us were unable to finish it.
The next day, we went to Charlie's CharHouse for dinner for my birthday. I'm sure my dad would have appreciated more concrete directions than "Drive on X street until you pass the Dairy Queen and go under the interstate." but that's all he got. Once there, 10 of us walked inside and the hostess asked if we had a reservation and we said "no" but, much to our delight, they had a table for us about 5 minutes later. The service the rest of the night was just as good, and our food was not "charred" as the restaurant name suggests.
The next day, I got to drive through downtown Chicago on my way to Shedd's Aquarium with my mom. Apparently she thought sitting in the passenger seat with MapQuest directions to shield her face, was preferable to driving. I got to drive under a building which I thought was pretty neat because Sioux Falls is small enough that we still drive around the buildings. At the aquarium, we waited in line (some of us less patiently than others... I am not used to this concept of a long line. A line is 5 people in front of you at the Sioux Falls Airport. This line had about 5 x 30.). Eventually we got in though. Afterwards, we walked along the waterfront on our way back to the parking garage. This was the second time I had ever parked in a parking garage (the other being at Vail), so I still thought it was pretty cool. My mom on the other hand would have preferred to park anywhere but in the parking garage. She is deathly afraid that we are going to run the roof of the Explorer into the roof of the garage, but with the number of people driving SUV's now, I think they've got that concern covered. On our way back, we got stuck in traffic, but eventually we got the to the Dairy Queen to pick up an ice cream cake and the ice cream cake kindly waited until it had been deposited in our hotel room to start melting.
On Sunday my dad got to be disgusted with the toll booths for charging us a ridiculous amount of money for having a tiny little trailer.

Then we were home for a week and a half before we packed up the car again. This time it was just me, my mom, and my brother in the car, driving out to Connecticut to visit my grandparents. Iowa has become our state to despise driving across because it is the widest and the scenery is not much different than that of South Dakota. Somewhere between Des Moines and the Quad Cities, we stopped at "The World's Largest Truck Stop!". I think a more accurate description would be "a crowded, over-priced tourist stop". They had about 5 different places to eat at inside, and each of the menu items was about a dollar more than it would have been at any other location. The World's Largest Truck Stop also had things like a barber, a dentist, a chiropracter, and 2 movie theaters. According to their website, they cover 200 acres and are visited by 5,000 people a day. By the time we reached Chicago, my mom was driving again (I did most of the driving... probably better that way since my navigator skills are about that of "Just follow the signs for Hartford, Connecticut" when we are still in Illinois). Shortly after that, I started driving again until we got to Toledo, Ohio where we spent the night. The next morning, we drove across the rest of Ohio and Pennsylvania until we got to New York. New York ranked right up there with Iowa by the time we were finished with it. Yes, it had scenery, it was more than continuous driving on the open plains, and there were trees. But they had road construction- lots of it. And a state speed limit of 55 mph. Except there were signs saying that you could drive 65, which we never understood, and my mom wonders what state they had to borrow the 65 signs from. Also, it took some getting used to their exit system. If you're at exit #5 and you need to go to exit #17, it's probably not 12 miles away. More like 40. Finally, we reached Connecticut, stopped wandering along small country roads, and got on the interstate. At this point my mom was on the phone with my grandfather saying "We're in traffic but it's moving... 50 mph". Then we proceeded to stay in the fast lane for the next hour. My mom is pretty sure we would not have gotten there nearly as fast if she had been driving. She knows this concept of driving at the traffic's speed, but her version of driving at the traffic's speed is to pick the slowest lane and blend in with them, while I blend in with the fastest lane.

The first day we climbed up an oblisk that used to be part of a fort to guard the Thames River. After the 156 steps, we decided that we were in no shape for walking up to The Statue of Liberty's crown.

The next day, we visited New York City. We left my grandparent's house at 8 with the idea of getting to the train station at 10:30. Well, we got to the train station at 10:30- and didn't quite make the train. After having hot chocolate at a nearby cafe, we examined the ticket-selling machine. After managing to get it to spit out 5 tickets from Bronxville to Grand Central, we wandered around the station seeing if there was a machine that had a New York Times, but there wasn't. Then we rode the train into Grand Central, walked past the New York City library, and went to the Empire State Building where we stood in a couple more lines before getting to the 86th floor. The souvenir map we got must have taken awhile to get pictures for, because when we were there, it was not exactly clear enough to see the state of New Jersey. Then we attempted to take a city bus but apparently we were missing something in that system, because the buses were not opening their doors for us. Finally, we decided to take a taxi instead. Turns out that the taxi cab had a "Taxi Riders Bill of Rights". I don't remember all of it, but some of the rights were:

• Your cab driver will speak English.
• Your cab driver will know the geography of the New York Area.
• Your cab driver will drive safely.
• Your cab driver will not listen to music.
• Your cab driver will not honk their horn.

Our taxi took us to Central Park where we ate our sack lunch before wandering through the park to the carousel. My grandfather opted for being the photographer while me, my mom, my grandmother, and my brother rode the carousel. Then me, my mom, and my brother walked through Central Park while my grandparents sat on a bench outside. Once we were done with the zoo, we managed to navigate the subway system to get to Battery Park where we took a cruise around the harbor and saw Ellis Island, Governor's Island, The Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, and a few bridges. While on the harbor cruise, we taught my grandfather how to eat a Fruit Roll-up. Once we informed him that the plastic in the middle was not meant to be eaten, he said it gained some flavor. After we rode the subway to Grand Central, found dinner, and rode the train to Bronxville, we taught him how to drink a CapriSun. He also had not been to the Statue of Liberty before, so overall, I think it was a successful day of new things for him.

The next day we went to the beach where I raced my grandfather out to the buoy. He beat me to the buoy because he had a head start and I had on shorts, but I beat him back to shore. Afterwards, my grandfather was talking to a woman who said that she had recently been to Times Square and they had police officers standing around with machine guns (my grandfather had been to Times Square right after 9/11 and the cops had machine guns then, and he was wondering if they still did) and then she was poking fun at her 15 year old son that he could only swim halfway to the buoy, but my grandfather could swim all of the way. Then we showered off and had dinner at Abbot's which is a seafood place which sort of resembles a fast food place only their main item is whole lobsters.

On Tuesday we drove to where my mom grew up. On our way there we ate at Friendly's. My brother and I liked Friendly's because ice cream came with our meal. We also learned that in Conneticut, drivers feel the need to test their horns fairly regularly to make sure that they still work.

On Wednesday, we enjoyed a day without being in the car the whole time. We went to my grandparent's neighbor's pool to go for a swim in the afternoon.

Thursday we took some crazy route through Conneticut, drove through the corner of New York, and spent a bunch of time driving through Pennsylvania. We got a particularly good look at Scranton, Pennsylvania while avoiding the "Expect Delays on Interstate. Avoid Area." route. Luckily Pennsylvania does not have a state speed limit of 55 mph, so we got through the state slightly faster than we would have if we remained in New York. We attempted to head towards I-90 in Chicago, but the 25mph city streets weren't doing it for us, so we got back on I-80 and wandered through Iowa and then in Minnesota and then into South Dakota.

I now get to enjoy being home for 3 or 4 days before heading out to Leadville. Once I'm in Leadville, I think I will be very much done with car rides.