"Eh!"

Having left the comfortable sedentary lifestyle we had with Marisa's new family we quickly set out for beer and long hours on the road(not in that order). The east coast of Michigan is slow going when you are in the rain and trying to stop at as many places as you can to sample fudge. We chose not to spend a rainy day on Mackanac Island even though it was the single most recommended sight seeing destination in Michigan, next time. We did follow Beverly's tip to check out the light houses, the rain meant fewer crowds (perfect).

Unfortunately for us fall arrived in Canada just 24 hours before we did. Word is, the day before we entered the country it was warm, sunny and the trees were green. We left Michigan on a blistery blustery Thursday and it did not stop raining until Saturday evening. Its colder than shit, windy and the trees are starting to turn beautiful fall colors.

The weather did not affect our ability to have a good time at the wedding we went to. It was our crappy attitudes and poor communication that almost sank the wedding reception fun, almost. We had a great time at the reception; we ate, we drank, we danced, we chatted up Canadians, we stole wine, cheese and veggies(yes vegetables) from the reception, and we slept in the wedding hall parking lot. The back of the truck seems to be the way to go after a wedding, this is the third time and it's getting better every time.

It was Marisa's birthday yesterday, eh. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARISA!!!!

Michigonians

Under the cover of darkness we snuck into Michigan and set up camp in a Walmart parking lot and readied ourselves for the onslaught of Marisa's family to follow. Keep in mind that until the 19th Marisa had about 9 family members that she knew... By the 21st she had met about 35 new ones. (That's nearly a 400% increase)

We were blessed to be at the nucleus house of all family activity surrounding Marisa's Great grandma's funeral, who passed away the day before we arrived. Although M never met the Matriarch it was because of her that we met so much of the family that we otherwise may not have. These people were super kind and generous to us and we were welcomed right into the inner circle of the Cruttenden family.

It was a lot like thanksgiving or the SuperBowl for about 5 days straight. We basically sat around, talked to family, played with the kids, had one huge meal a day and snacked the rest of the day.

While we were there we did manage to cut each others hair (A's head shrunk about two sizes and his hat fits again).

It was pretty exciting to meet so many relatives and learn some family history. Hopefully there will be opportunities in the future to hang out with the new found family.

We're now headed for the border, Canadian wedding on Saturday, eh!

On style

Blogger A: So when two people write a blog there are bound to be style issues...

So maybe one has a bachelors degree in journalism(writing) and the other is more of the loading people into a van and driving them around type(took this one 4 tries to spell bachelors right). Who's to say which has the better style? They are just different.

The last post took forever. Maybe we shouldn't both write every post, that could save some time.

Blogger M (just to keep it anonymous): Co-blogging = pain in the neck, bickering, bad attitudes and overall bitchiness for at least two hours. Just because one of us has a baccalaureate and the other specializes in a different field, doesn't mean the person with the B.A. is any better at blogging than the other (the person with the B.A. doesn't even journal or report and tends to triple check spelling). We just have different styles, one hates the word "failed" and the other despises "bitchen." Uuughhhhh! Editing each other is good, but we need to just agree to disagree and manage to get things done without wanting to taze someone.

Blogger A (rebuttal): I am very happy that we do not have a tazer.
(She just vetoed my personal typing space and told me my sentence was invalid...)
This post is merely to vent our frustrations in blogging together before we get kicked out of Starbucks for yelling and pinching one another. In conclusion, My writing is bitchen.

Blogger M (rebuttal to rebuttal): And I was just about to say how I feel this session has been beneficial. But then all of a sudden....! Geeze. "Bitchen"?!?!?! OMG!!!!
ok. I feel better.
And for the record, I told him his sentence was invalid because it didn't have a point or purpose and I was over the subject of spelling.

On to the real post....Marisa's Michigan People!

Chi-town

We went through Chicago about a week ago where we saw the giant shiny bean in Millenium Park, The Museum of Science and Industry, drank some more local beer and walked a bit through Lincoln park.

Chicago's pretty awesome, not too tall of a skyline, not pretentious and it's on Lake Michigan with Chicago River running through downtown.
The subway in Chicago doesn't run ground level, it's like MUNI, but it runs below ground and elevated. We didn't ride it but it looks cool like in movies and Batman and stuff. All the buildings are awesomely old and have a lot of character.

The shiny bean was awesome, actually worth paying $10 for 40 minutes of parking.
(yeah, Chicago's eexpeennnsiiive...)

Of course we had to have some deep dish pizza in Chicago and beer goes great with pizza soooo we looked to local breweries Half Acre and Goose Island to provided the refreshment.

Everything costs an arm and a leg in Chicago so we skimped on the activities but we did shell out for the Museum of Science and Industry. It was pretty awesome except for the farm propaganda exhibit. Its really not so great that soy can be found in nearly every food that comes in a box. As for the rest of the Museum, it's amazing take your kids and show up early!

Before we left we went to a greasy spoon to get some dinner. When we got back to the truck we saw that someone forgot to roll up their window, but we didn't get robbed! Maybe it's because we were in Hyde park area?(where Obama hangs out)

drank the beer, saw the corn and ate a little cheese

Wisconsin is beautiful, rolling hills, trees, randomly placed and irregular shaped corn and soy bean fields, big white farm houses with large porches. And of course the occasional cluster of giant enclosed animal (chicken?) sheds with huge fans at the end. On our way from Madison to New Glarus we drove past a farm with some cows and saw a cluster of six or so clean, brand new looking dog igloos with a fence around and a cow in each igloo (U.S. raised veal maybe?). Sort of weird and disturbing.

New Glarus is a tiny Swiss town with statues of cows wearing clothes scattered throughout, lots of brick buildings and most businesses ending in Haus. The driveway that leads to New Glarus Brewing Company starts at the bottom of a hill and wraps around to the top where you get to a beer estate (made us think of some of the wine estates we've seen in California). The Brewery is pristine with giant copper vats, shiny stainless steel pipes running throughout the building, delicious beer and a beer garden. It's unfortunate that it's only sold in Wisconsin.

Made our way to Milwaukee, didn't get very much cheese tasting in, but we did make it to Miller Brewing Company, Great Lakes Distillery and Milwaukee Brewing Company via bike.
Miller is a huge compound, more than four blocks. With machines that can 2000 beers a minute.
Great Lakes Distillery makes excellent liquor, some of the best Absinthe and Vodka we've had and has only four full time employees. It was a super chill place with nice people that pulled out their air compressor for us to fix a flat.

Now we're in Chicago and need to get out on the bikes and start checking things out since we didn't manage to get Oprah tickets.


Back in Big Sky, MT at a farmers market some hooterites suckered us into buying more eggs than we needed by telling us to just pickle them. They saw us walking up to their booth beers in hand and seized the opportunity to be folksy. These are the same Hooterites that sold us the pickled onions and pickled pickles. We gave it a shot and it's good, we just threw in a fresh batch and they look...''interesting.'' Hooterites are like the Amish but somehow not the same.

***Correction: Don't worry! Veal/Calf dog houses are not to prep the baby cows to be someone's expensive dinner, but actually "hutches," homes for the dairy cows until they are weaned! (thanks to Andrea of Big Sky for educating us!)

Three States in three days.

We made it through South Dakota in 24hrs. So fast we forgot about post cards. We saw Mt. Rushmore, a mountain goat and baby (Marisa was very excited) and the Crazy Horse Monument (from afar, while eating a dinner of Top Ramen and black beans). Crazy Horse is $10 a person to see up close, so if you have the money, go see it close so they can finish it and we can go see it finished from afar!


Next we drove through the night from the south west corner of S. Dakota to Aberdeen in the north east, to see our friend Wonseok (from the ranch in Utah via South Korea). We slept in the next day and got up just in time to meet him for lunch! It was good to see him, Northern State University is a pretty fancy old school.

After South Dakota we stopped in Minneapolis Minnesota where we enjoyed some beer at Town Hall Brewery and went to the first annual Kielbasa Festival where we had more beer, kielbasa's and enjoyed some live music on a rainy night. Good time over all.

The next day, Costco samples and onward to Wisconsin. Now we're scouting for some genuine Wisconsin cheese before we move on to Milwaukee.

Slow down! I think I see a squirrel...

We didn't get rammed! Made it through Yellowstone without any altercations with Bison.
So much steam, sulfur, and gurgling holes in the ground!

Uncle Ernie (actually Cousin Anthony's Uncle, Albert's 2nd cousin) is a super nice guy. We got there the evening we left Andrea's house and enjoyed more delicious home cooking, awesome conversation and neat stories. This guy is definitely in the running for the real life "most interesting man in the world" Look for the book in stores in a few years.

Jackson was a pretty fancy town. Went to the delicious Snake River Brewery and sampled the brewskies and had a delicious sandwich. There is about a million tons worth of bronze statues, a shit pile of antlers and 10 taxidermied animals for every tourist on the street at any time. It was great.

The Grand Titons are big ol' jagged mountains that push up on the edge of the Jackson Hole valley and host a glacier or two. Pretty cool mountains that we had to climb to the top of. Not really, it looked too cold but they are pretty.

We went in and out of Yellowstone three times to get enough and there is still plenty of stuff to go back and see. I have to say there is more terrible driving in Yellowstone than there is in any American city! It's like they are all that minority group that you blame when you see someone doing something stupid on the road. There are animals everywhere and people just slow down or stop right in the road, not to avoid them but to gawk and take ten pictures.

Those roadside animals are amazing though and so are the geysers, hot pools, mud pools, vents and everything else. You gotta see them.

Next up is South Dakota for Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse (& Jewel Cave?). From what I hear after that is the nothingness for a long ways.

Free Willie!

Idaho was a blur. We cruised through this odd little town called Wallace, a still functioning former mining town--it had a functioning boredello until 1982, when it was raided by the FBI.


We made it to Glacier on August 30th. It was cold and rainy and we drove going-to-the-sun road, which is supposed to be one of the most amazing scenic drives in America, which I'm sure it would have been if we could have seen anything beyond the fog. We camped on the Blackfeet Reservation in a turn out just outside an entrance to the park, continuing the free camping streak. Went on a hike to Iceberg Lake, saw some ptarmagin, moose and plenty of canadian squirrels.

When we got into Montana we gave an old friend a call. Hadn't spoken in at least four years, but she still had my number and we made plans to meet in Big Sky before cruising through Yellowstone. Andrea was awesome! She showed us the small town of big sky, got us drunk, baked us amazing breakfast scones, took us on some awesome hikes and a sweet camping trip and topped it off with a free Willie Nelson concert on her birthday!

An unfortunate event happened in California while we were in Montana...we got robbed from 1,100 miles away! Lost nearly everything that was valuable sentimentally and monetarily. Ouch.

Now it's time to make the trip through the west side of Yellowstone and to Ernie's house in Jackson. Should be sweet!