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We wanted to thank you all for staying along with us on our road adventures! We hope you found our blog entertaining and that we've inspired y'all to do the same! Keep in touch, and tell us about your travels anytime - we'd love to hear it.

Yours, Cheese Boy and Maple Girl

Missouri to Ontario - on our way home

The last leg of our road trip was an accelerated one. Both Philippe and I were so happy with what we’d seen and experienced, but with Philippe’s flight back to Switzerland drawing nearer, we decided it was time to head back to Ontario and chill out a bit.

After sleeping in once again in our dark, cozy digs in Crève-Coeur, we said our goodbyes and got back on the road, but not before the obligatory visit to the Art Museum – another worthwhile stop at the gateway to the west (or more like gateway back east). The we crossed three states, not even stopping in Indianapolis with this new drive to be back and resting by the pool.

In Lima, Ohio we found our last motel. In the morning we drove to Toledo, where Philippe had already visited with his roommates from Ann Arbor, to see its art museum. A full circle from Chicago, it seemed – only Phi took me through this one like an expert, knowing which collections we would appreciate, and trying to rush me through a Warhol exhibit which I took my time studying and memorizing. Soaking in our last stop, we climbed back into the toasty Cavalier and headed North over Lake Erie, halting in the beloved Ann Arbor to tie up some of his loose ends and of course buy yet another round of “blue and maïze” cheerwear – if only you’d all heard the exclamations of “go BLUE!” every time we saw a University-print M on this trip; you’d be proud to have such an enthusiastic supporter anywhere!

I let out my own (more muted) hurrah back over the Canadian border, even when we drove kilometres off the 401 just to find a small pizza diner – something about Smalltown, ON still feels more like home than the rest of America. We arrived in Elora in the evening, and ended up fully-clothed in the pool one playful hour into unpacking. For now, we can say with a satisfied sigh, we are off the road.

Love to all. Looking forwards to seeing you soon!

St. Louis, Missouri

It’s hot, very hot here. We’re sweating as soon as we get outside and get exhausted from the shortest walks.

The night we arrived Jason took us to his aunt who lives next door and then out to a typical St. Louis pub on the loop. He also introduced us to his charming parents and his brother and to his mom’s famous tuna salad.

First place Jason took us the next day was the Arch in downtown St. Louis right by the Mississippi. We got our tickets for the elevator to the top but had to wait a couple of hours before we could get on that magnificently designed monument (Finnish deign by the way). Meanwhile we visited the museum of westward expansion, had something to eat and tried as well as we could to escape the burning sun. When it was our turn, we got into these ferry’s wheel type of gondolas that fit five people and take you to the top. Two oversized and not so young women shared our ride. Jason had to comfort one of them since she was terrified of heights and probably claustrophobic, too. He earned us big hugs from them when the two women safely made it down later. From the top the view over the city was great. We got back home and had a thin crust St. Louis Pizza and the famous toasted raviolis.

We got up a little bit earlier the next morning and headed out to the world famous free St. Louis Zoo. This Zoo deserves its reputation such that we had a great time observing all animals. The penguin’s tank was especially impressive since it was inside an open concept where the proximity between the visitor and the animal is impressive. We could have touched the animals if we hadn’t followed the visitor’s rules.

After the Zoo we had a sushi lunch and drove out to the Anheuser-Busch brewery of St. Louis where we enjoyed a comprehensive tour followed by a free tasting of their beers. The free tour was obviously a marketing tool but the free beer just seemed irresistible. After a couple of glasses we met up with John, Jason’s younger brother and drove downtown to the St. Louis Cardinals Baseball game. Even if I still find baseball slow and not particularly interesting it was a fun and exciting experience. The Cardinals won 5 to 0 against San Diego. We got back home rather exhausted from this busy day in the heat but got motivated later for our last night out with our super cool beat-boxing free-styling (and calculated? :-o) host.

Hot Springs to Memphis

Not one to complain about a good massage and steam treatment, I must say the car ride (me as passenger this time!) was exhausting and not long into it we stopped in Little Rock to see the Clinton Presidential Library. Neither of us knowing much about presidential libraries, we scoffed at the admission (but forked it over anyway), grumbling about being students and having to pay to get into a library. As some of you may know, these institutions are more like museums in honour of past presidents, and it was nice to fall upon one from our lifetime and who we both relatively admired. Despite the blatant back-patting, it was a good exhibition, and we continued on to our destination: Memphis, TN.

Looking back on Memphis, we are ashamed at one wrong decision, made upon our arrival when we resolved that we would spend the last hours of daylight at Graceland (yes, Elvis' mansion)
and thus have the whole next morning to browse the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine motel, where MLK was assassinated. Although the humble abode of the King were amusing, we would discover the next day that the Civil Rights Museum is closed on Tuesdays; we would never enter its doors and learn more about this piece of history, the little bit that would not have been art-related. It is a sad, sad fact: we chose Elvis over politics and revolution. Woe is the day.

That aside, the night we spent in Memphis was a little anticlimactic. The city seemed slow and dark when we went out for dinner and music - finally, we found Beale Street, but not its BBQ or blues! The street was alive with neon, open cafés blasting mediocre live covers of the great musicians who have past through the gates here, but the tamales Philippe ordered in a diner we'd been ushered into off the street were bland, and our moods fell into the same lack of motivation - there are always nights. Even the horse-drawn carriage chauffeurs didn't have optimistic advice for us, so we called it a night.

After the Martin Luther King disappointment, we headed off towards St. Louis, where our friend Jason eagerly awaited our arrival, where we’d looked forwards to a place to rest since the beginning! Phi will recount the rest.

Dallas to Hot Springs

We got to the Dallas Museum of Art late in the afternoon and met my friends Dorothy and Thomas there. Dorothy works at the museum and was participating in a discussion about the role of women in art that same evening, which we attended and found very interesting. Thomas then took us home to their place where we enjoyed a delicious pizza and talked late into the night.

On Friday morning Kate and I headed out to Fort Worth (following our friends' advice) and visited the Kimbell and the Modern Art Museums. There was an extraordinary exhibit of modern art portraits at Kimbell and a surprisingly creepy exhibit of Ron Mueck's super realistic sculptures at the Modern Art Museum. After this artistically rich experience we drove back to Dallas and got stuck in the daily urban traffic. We met Dorothy and Thomas at the Museum and followed them to some friends of theirs who own a photo gallery. We had a fun time. After an hour or so we drove back home and had a delicious dinner the four of us and a very interesting conversation, too.

The next day, Thomas took us on a full day trip in his car. Since he is an architect most of the tour was about architecture and urban sprawl. He drove us around a nice park near their house, out to the suburbs to see the urban sprawl, then to a beautifully designed Mall, to a new Neighbourhood downtown, past the spot where Kennedy was assassinated, to the remaining buildings of the international fair (modern but almost fascist architecture), through the poorest parts of Dallas and back through downtown to their house. It was so nice of Thomas to take us all day and show us all these things. In the evening we all went out for dinner and Eleanor (their daughter) came with us as well. We had a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant where we apparently got to see a big Mafiosi boss…

Before we left Dallas on Sunday we had to drive back downtown to finally see Dorothy’s newest exhibition about the Société Anonyme and also the Nasher sculpture garden. Both were great shows. We hit the road eastwards, had lunch at a greasy Texan fast-food on the way and got to Hot Springs, Arkansas as the sun was setting. We built our tent in the National Park, had dinner and went to see the Simpsons movie which we both found mediocre.

Hot Springs is a small city near Little Rock, Arkansas which is famous for two things: it is the place where Bill Clinton spent his boyhood and as its name says there are hot springs that have been attracting people for centuries. In the early morning we got up and went to one of the old Bathhouses on the Bathhouse row. There Kate and I treated ourselves with a ninety minutes Bath/Massage/Spa treatment. We both got out of there relaxed and fresh but as usual we jumped into our Chevy and hit the road for new adventures!

Newly posted Videos

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Grand Canyon
Red Rock Country
Black Waterfall
Me Rocking...
Death Valley
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Don’t Mess With - ...Oklahoma?

On the interstates, to avert Philippe from singing the one verse of the Dallas themesong he knows and repeats, I’ve taken to reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. But my voice faltering and southern accents becoming too typical in Texas, I took over the wheel and we decided to cross the Red River(bed) into Oklahoma for the night. The rain was pouring down so hard we had to pull over a few times, and it was getting late again.

Disclaimer: I write this in my defence – in Oklahoma, the Dustbowl State where natives were marched on the Trail of Tears and whose exodus west during the depression was well-recounted by Steinbeck once upon a time, the roads, as you can imagine, are wide, straight, and pass through endless fields into ghost towns - I mean, true-blue empty, boarded-windows, out-of-business, deserted crossroads. The laws make it so that when you approach these towns, within a mile, the speed limit drops from 70 to 65; to 55 within a kilometre; to 45 within 500 metres; to 35 at the first of three old silos; to 30 at what was once a schoolhouse - and then climbs again as you leave. Of course, I only really noticed this after we got pulled over.

So the black, boxy police car’s lights go on, and he friendly officer informs us he clocked me at 52 in a 35 zone. (“But, I didn’t really realize we were in a town, Sheriff… ahem.”) Now, a’fore y’all go ‘n’ translate that into km/hr, I will mention that he ran our plates and my driving record is CLEAN (-Windekind!)! My smiling charm (hah) must have won him over, since we got off with a warning – or maybe it was because Philippe lit a smoke, asked him about the best motels and if there was a rodeo in town. (I’m not even kidding you). It had to happen sometime, and we were still lucky enough to have a friendly Okie let us off easy.

We continued to Altus, determined not to spend a creepy night in Texas, and ended up at a Best Western where the bubbly receptionist gave us a military discount because Phi is Swiss. (It’s a landing base, apparently!) The creepy thing about that part of Oklahoma was the abundance of jittery cicadas this year – I mean almost ankle-deep in them! – which made you feel like one of the plagues had been brought down on the Baptists. There were even frogs hoping around the motel! To our dismay, the pool was closed this morning when we came down with our suits. But here we are, on the road where we belong, headed to Dallas, TX to meet up with more friends of Phi’s family. I know how to choose ‘em, eh?

Texas-sized love to everyone back home. xo

Four Corners to Santa Fe, NM

Having zigzagged back to Utah from Arizona, we dipped into the southwest corner of Colorado to take the diagonal across Four Corners, the proud place where four ruler-drawn state borders meet – and a fee charged by the Navajo tribe to have to privilege of taking a picture of your limbs starring out from this all-important point in America (and hopefully buy a few souvenirs from the dilapidated stands circling the dial). Feeling only slightly ripped-off, we headed towards the well-named Shiprock, jutting out of the vast dry land of northwest New Mexico. We had decided to go to Santa Fe, legend of artistic community and mixed culture. Coming in to town (surprisingly small for a state capital) its character was evident in the soft-cornered plaster buildings, like wind-tormented sand castles. The Missons (Spanish churches) are distinct in the style, and we rolled though the Plaza, and out again to find a youth hostel.

The grey-haired dude at the counter gave us a speech about independence and “doing our own thing” when we mentioned the facility’s invisible listings… we took a room and listened to house rules, which we would experience first-hand in the morning when we were given “chores” to sweep and take out garbage before getting our key deposit back. Long live communal living. It was a nice idea, though, and we were advised a very good local Taqueria for dinner, where the salsa was hot (no bland tomatoes or the like used in New Mexico!) and the margaritas strong. In the morning we went back downtown to gaze at gallery windows – a lot of native and Mexican inspiration, but colours too vibrant for my taste on the most part. There were exhibitions of Norval Morriseau (a Canadian native I know of) and Georgia O’Keefe, but we passed them by and wandered through the markets, asking about the local woven blankets, baskets, horse-hair pottery and turquoise jewellery. Finally we continued on through the state, to try to make it a ways towards Dallas.

Grand Canyon National Park to Monument Valley

After crossing the Navajo Indian Reservation with thunderstorms surrounding us, we made it to the east entry of the canyon at sunset. The campground there was full such that we had to drive the 30 miles along the rim to canyon village. Their campground was full, too – but at least we’d gotten to see our first dusky view of the magnificent canyon. Not as redundant as we thought the canyons might be getting to our spoiled eyes! We got out of the park and finally found a spot approximately 10 miles south around 10pm at night. First time we didn’t get a spot inside the park at the last minute.

The next morning we entered the National Park and realized that we had spent more on National Park entries than the yearly pass costs. We were able to get the pass for free by showing all receipts of the previously visited parks, which was good. After having set up our tent in a camping ground inside the park, we headed out to the canyon and walked along the rim for several hours amazed by the beauty and greatness of the canyon. A big thunderstorm was approaching and the lightning bolts gave the whole scenery an even more dramatic sense. We reached our car just before rain started to fall and decided to watch the Imax movie about the canyon. The movie was all right but not unforgettable. We spent most of the rest of the rainy day writing and sorting out our pictures.

We woke up at 5:30 the next morning. Kate and I had been added to the waiting list of the Mule ride company the day before and weren’t sure if we’d be part of the trip that was to leave the village at 8. We got to the mules at 6:15 and were happy to find two free spots. After an hour-long introduction to the mules and the safe way to ride them, we each got assigned to one of the world-famous Grand Canyon mules. The guy who gave us the intro was a wild cowboy with a great sense of humor and the ability to captivate everyone’s attention when he told a story.

The mule trail down the canyon was steep, as we had been warned, and the first part would prove to be the most tense, what with having mounted the stubborn beasts only minutes before. We had been given “Mule Motivators” – the politically correct term for whips or riding crops, but Kate and I both found ourselves on animals determined to stay with the group – and Kate’s, to charge ahead. She was also behind another mule who had gas problems the whole day, which made for a few laughs.

The ride was to be almost eight hours long, and the first few were the descent. The four hooves of our rides didn’t make this a leisurely experience – in fact, at times you felt you were holding on for dear life as your legs dangled over the canyon’s side. We stopped for a water break at the Indian gardens at the bottom of the first step into the canyon half way to the Colorado river. We then continued into the boiling hot cacti landscape to the second step from where we could observe the flow of the River. We had lunch there in the shade of a rock and were called back to our mules 20 minutes later because our guides wanted to avoid the storm that was supposed to roll in soon. The path up the canyon was less tiring for us but not for the mules. Every ten minutes we gave them a break and they parked one next to the other facing the valley. Kate’s mule called Gismo then decided to stretch its knees by putting one of his front legs over the side of the cliff, which of course freaked out Kate. I tried to convince her that mules are not very suicidal animals and that Gismo just stretched his legs but that wasn’t much help for her. As we made it back to the top of the canyon I spotted a Californian Condor that was flying just above our heads, beautiful creature. Getting off the mule was a painful experience. We got back to our tents completely content of our day and had a long nap, took a shower and cooked good dinner.

We left Grand Canyon early and headed toward Utah and the Monument Valley. This is a place I didn’t want to miss since it was practically on our way. After a couple of hours driving through the Navajo Indian Reservation we begun to see signs to this famous valley. We drove through it and were amazed by those monoliths and rock formations. We were in Marlboro country.

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