Posted on 08/25/2018 10:11:20 PM PDT by ransomnote
You are welcome. Thank you for coming. I hope your flight was less eventful than the drive to it.
Yes, it was really great meeting everyone. Hopefully things will improve in the world and more people can make it next year because such things as car rental fees will be more reasonable.
I still have a few days before I am back in Ohio.
We had to spend yesterday trying to get my aunt some emergency medication since hers was left in our room. That took a while to sort out with the dingbats who work at the call center of the pharmacy benefits provider. The pharmacists at a couple of the big chains that have branches here have been helpful as have the staff at the hotels.
Deadwood, however, apparently has very limited FedEx and UPS pickups.
I’m pretty exhausted and have miles to go, literally, before I can get a good sleep. I should go to bed soon. I probably won’t be able to post any kind of lengthy report on my travels until after I have slept in my own bed a couple of nights.
I don’t know about you, but one thing that haunts me is the masking of the little kids I saw at Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and the other tourist hot spots.
While the vast majority of people are not masked, there were an uncomfortably high number of kids under 12 who were. The signs said the unvaccinated should be masked and kids under 12 can’t be vaccinated. I don’t know how many parents thought they would be stopped or get in trouble if their kids, who are and clearly look to be ages 4-11, weren’t in masks. There were kids in that age group who were not masked, but I would say half were masked.
In only a few instances were others in the family masked.
If I believed I could “get in trouble” for not making my kid wear a mask, I think I would have the whole family wear a mask because it would suck for my one kid to be the only one to not get to breathe the free air.
(Of course, upon seeing other kids the same age not in masks, I would de-mask everyone.)
I would really be afraid of the neurosis that could develop in my kid if he or she had to spend the family vacation un-masked when the rest of the family got to be mask-free. What kind of resentment could that cause in a child?
And the family photos! I saw families taking pictures where the one kid was masked for their photos!
I didn’t see many masks during my visit, but it seemed like the people that wore them were mostly afraid of everyone around them. I agree, that sets up a psychological issue for young people whereby showing ones face in public becomes taboo (much like in an islamofascist country - witness the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of Iran).
Interesting encounter at the hotel in Paducah yesterday morning - I was in the elevator with the cart full of my belongings, taking them down to the truck to load back up. The elevator stopped at the 2nd floor and a woman and her son (both unmasked) were there. She was quite apprehensive about getting on the elevator, and asked me if they could get on, claiming that they had both been vaxxed. I said “sure, get on”, and said that I didn’t really care about if they’d been vaxxed or not. Turns out that she was more worried about my reaction than anything. She said that this was the first time that they had been away from home since the plandemic started.
I think that a lot of people, as they start seeing others without masks, will start shedding their masks also.
Side note - I was the sign you mentioned about the mask requirements at the gift shop at Mt. Rushmore. My visit in the shop - it wasn’t busy at the time - I saw only a couple of people with masks on. Most were ignoring the requirement. Even the guy at the door was very lax about it.
I got back to good old, boring, Ohio last night.
Some initial cursory observations about my trip that I may or may not expand on depending on interest.
In no particular order:
1. North Dakota is worth going to despite the boring drive from Fargo to Bismarck. It is an even more boring drive than boring drives in Ohio and very, very flat. That being said, there are nice rolling hills past Bismarck.
Dickinson has an excellent dinosaur museum with fossils and lots of cool rocks from all over the world. The Japanese restaurant in town is actually pretty good and has an actual Japanese hibachi chef.
Medora is a nice little tourist town. I thought the Teddy Roosevelt National Park was prettier than the Badlands National Park in S.D.
2. I do not regret staying in the Deadwood/Sturgis area as opposed to Rapid City, despite it being harder to get to Mt. Rushmore. It was very picturesque and different than your usual motel off an interstate.
3. I highly recommend taking a tour. I would have never been able to handle the one-way tunnels of the Black Hills National Park or curves in Needles Park on my own, or known about some of the roads to take. And seeing the narrow rock formations in Needles is not to be missed. Custer State Park lodge has an excellent buffet.
4. I am very glad that I went to Omaha. In fact, I would be willing to fly out for a 4-day weekend to see more of it and take bus tour. I had no idea it was such a big city. I had the best meal of the trip there, and it wasn’t beef, since I don’t eat beef.
5. People in the small towns of Illinois are quite normal. They are actually more normal than the same sort of people in the same sort of places in Ohio, although there might be more Trump signs in Ohio. But the mask thing wasn’t as pronounced.
I had no idea Peoria was large enough to have an international airport.
Okay, I have to stop here. I’ve piddled too much of the day away on FR and have to unpack, get groceries, and do other stuff.
Sounds wonderful.
I swear.
Glad you had a good time and thanks for the update on the rest of your trip.
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.
I’m glad you enjoyed your trip. It looks like you took advantage of just about every stop on the way, to take in what each location had to offer. That’s great.
Further trip reports. Again, in no particular order:
1) Wisconsin is very green, almost an Ireland type of green. And there really are a lot of cows. Drove in a diagonal from Lake Geneva to the MN line by the Twin Cities. Drove past Madison and Eau Claire, but too far away to see if they had a skyline. While Wisconsin has it all over NJ in terms of being much prettier, the cows in NJ make for better milk and the cows themselves are prettier.
I have never seen so many Culvers in my life as I did in Wisconsin. I hate Culvers.
Wisconsin is having a particularly hard time staffing their McDonalds.
2) Minnesota had the worst construction and detours (around the Twin Cities). I could not explore the countryside and did not see many of the lakes, but of the ponds, which perhaps they consider lakes in MN, that I could see from the interstate, surrounded as they were by a combination of marshy plants and sort of northern cypress-looking trees, they were quite pretty. The people seemed to be the least masked of any other place on the trip, although I was only in the small town parts.
There were more dead badgers on the side of MN than in any other state.
3) The outskirts of Fargo make the gas refinery areas of NJ look nice. Downtown Fargo has a surprisingly large number of coffee places and Lutheran churches.
4) Downtown Bismarck has a large number of 60’s bungalow homes and some very modest ones, though in good shape for the most part, right across from the capitol.
5) I was rather disappointed in Wall Drugs. I should have skipped that and gone to the Corn Palace instead.
6) Sioux Falls has a pretty park where their falls are, but the falls themselves are not that big. You can go over them without even really getting a shower out of it.
The city is laid out on a nice grid and had the most down to earth people of the whole trip, although the trendy shopping district street downtown had a few people with blue and pink hair and a new age shop. The one restaurant had really cheap wine. Overall the food was uniformly quite good.
Sioux Falls was the only place on the trip where the “free” breakfast at the hotel was an actual real regular breakfast of the type such places served pre ‘rona.
7) Iowa by far had the most intelligent road signs and road construction areas. Iowa didn’t mess around and barrel off huge sections of road where nothing was taking place. They were generous with their rest areas and signs telling you how many miles to go to the next city.
The capitol dome in Des Moines was very, very gold. It was much nicer than you would expect from Iowa.
I saw far less corn than I expected to. I saw more pheasants than I expected and a shocking dearth of cows.
Davenport’s river area is rather ugly.
Iowa had the worst food and for some reason they seem to be afraid of making real iced tea.
8) Everywhere you looked in Omaha a new huge building was going up.
Omaha has mean birds. They don’t like it when you park under their tree.
9) The traffic and construction in Indianapolis was almost as bad as in the Twin Cities. However, they did seem to have filled their many potholes since the last time I was there.
10) The most interesting store was in Aladdin, Wyoming, population 15 and proud of it. There are more horses than cows in Wyoming.
This Scooters Coffee chain seemed to be big in several states. I never got a chance to try it.
They are had in these states a chain of gas stations called, I kid you not, Kum and Go. I found that rather disturbing.
If you want to see elk, don’t go out west. Go to Pennsylvania.
Very enjoyable reading all your adventures.
Bless you, FReeQs!
Thanks for the updated information from your trip. You took every opportunity to enjoy and recall each stop along the way. I’m enjoying your trip reports, believe me.
A side note concerning Wisconsin - while it is known for its cheese industry, Ohio is very big on cheese too. Which is why I visit Grandpa’s Cheese Barn every time I go to Ohio, if not one of the true Amish stores. Grandpa’s is convenient, since it is next to the Fin, Feather, and Fur Outfitters store where one can find all kinds of shooting stuff most of the time.
Sioux Falls was nice, though I opted for a quick dinner at some rather lame chain known as Taco John’s. In hindsight, it was not the wisest choice. Safe, but extremely bland.
Very nice people all over, much like you find any time you leave the big, blue city. Although there are a lot of nice people in those big blue cities too, mostly just wanting to get out.
Staffing at restaurants was a problem in many places. We tried to stop at a local place in Hill City - plenty of empty tables, but insufficient staff. The wait would be over an hour. Ended up at Ruby Tuesday’s in Rapid City (decent food). I guess free government money beats working for many.
You mentioned Culver’s - I had no idea what it was, since they’re not present around my area. Seems, based on their web site, like a “wannabe” Dairy Queen.
Sounds like I didn’t miss anything by skipping Wall Drug. Their billboard budget must be enormous because no mile of I-70 is without a Wall Drug sign. :)
I ended up buying my Badlands Tee Shirt on line after I got home. It’s in the wash now. I would have gotten it at Wall Drug (maybe), but it wasn’t open when I drove by on the way back home.
What follows is my manifesto on the 2022 Q Thread Meet-Up. It is long. I want to get this all on the table and out of the way now and nice and early.
1) To begin, I think we can all agree on one thing: The United States is a very large country. While not the largest in the world in terms of area, in terms of area where it counts— places where one would want to and could go to— it is larger than other very large countries. No offense Canadians, but much of your country is only fit for polar bears. Same for you Russians, but I don’t think there are any of you here to take offense. If you exist, please drop us a line. You are probably quite interesting. Brazilians— you guys have a lot of jungle/rain forest with scary animals, and I have heard rumors of headhunters. But do correct me, as I am curious how many people from other countries are reading this. Chinese- sorry, but I don’t trust that any of you are not CCP.
Since ours is a large country, many people who are part of this thread would have to travel a long distance to get to any meet-up location. Others, not so much. That’s just reality.
2) Sorry, I just don’t see the states on the coasts as a good option due to travel. While I do expect good things in the future in terms of exposure of the deep state, election fraudsters, etc., I just do not see any improvement that would result in airplane travel and car rental prices being affordable a year from now. It’s going to take more time for car rental companies to invest in fleets.
3) Given that there were so many people who indicated 8 months ago that there were planning to go to S.D. and didn’t, I just don’t want to go through the rigamarole of voting on a new place and having the same low attendance next year. I get why the attendance was low this first time around given what we all thought 8 months ago the world would look like now.
4) We don’t know what life will bring. While I do believe the Great Awakening will take place before the next meet-up, we don’t know the level of pain and all the complications this will cause. I expect that many of our friends and relatives who have been drinking the Flavor Aid all these years could suffer some sort of major depression for a period of time and you may feel you cannot take off on a trip and leave them. You might have to check up on them and make sure they eat, shower, and change the kitty litter. You may feel you need a different type of vacation, one that gives you more solitude. You may be too exhausted to put up with many people.
5) Our voting last time around resulted in Branson ending up in 2nd place, followed by St. Louis. I appreciate that Missouri is not a small state and St. Louis is not down the road from Branson, but in the grand scheme of the whole U.S., St. Louis in in Branson’s backyard. Other places that got more than one voter were Oklahoma City and Mammoth Cave. Yes, these are a good five hours or more from Branson, but for some of you who might want to see these places, you might be practically driving right through them on the way to Branson.
The geographic center of the U.S. is Lebanon, Kansas. Nothing is really there. Wichita would be the closest major city. It could be really nice. Omaha was. But Wichita is likely not a place you could convince your family to go to.
Lebanon is practically halfway on a diagonal from Rapid City to Branson.
I think Branson is a good location in that it is on the opposite side of the Lebanon dividing line. Rapid City is a bit north and west and Branson a bit south and east, thus being closer to certain Freepers than was Rapid City.
Branson seems to have a large selection of cabins and vacation condos for those who want to bring the family herd.
6) We can vote this time next year on the 2023 meet-up site. I am hoping that by then that just like Gov. Noem impressed us so much that Rapid City won our first vote, some other governor, AG, state, etc. performs a supreme act of distinction. I also hope conditions will be such that getting a good hotel, flight, car rental package deal will be easy, such that if someplace like Vancouver, Canada is the place that stands out, travel is inexpensive.
7) June was the run-away winner in our last vote for the date of the meeting, so I guess June is a really good month for people. The new federal holiday might through a wrench in the particular weekend in June for the meet-up. We can discuss and vote on this around Labor Day. You need time to feel out the peeps you would be traveling with.
8) We will stick with this warehousing thread for discussion of the meet-up. Changing it would confuse people and people can look back through the past discussion. I posted a manifesto a few months back explaining what I was thinking as far as my “vision” for the meet-up.
They are had in these states a chain of gas stations called, I kid you not, Kum and Go. I found that rather disturbing.
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EEEK. We used to have Gas Stations called git and go. Then they changed the name...I found that choice to be weird, dumb, and disturbing.
I a familiar with Fin, Feather, and Fur Outfitters. They have a very impressive 10-year-old who helps out the gun clerks there. And there is a Perkins next to it.
Ashland University is one of the rare normal ones still left.
I was kind of disappointed in the people of MN and Fargo. They didn’t talk weird like they do in the movies.
Moorehead, MN, across from Fargo, is being filled with Somalis. Section 8’s going up there all over.
The people of S.D., Omaha, and Iowa had no accent. Nothing, nada.
In the Texas Panhandle, birthplace of Mrs. AZLiberty, it's Toot and Totum.
Also known as Fart and Fetchum.
🤣
I bought one of my rifle scopes at “The Fin”, as my friend calls it. I like the store.
Branson actually looks interesting. Table Rock lake, seems to be a lot of resorts and lodges. I’ll have to dig into it a little more, but it might well be quite a pleasant place to visit/meet up. And the bonus - it’s about a 10 hour drive from home so I could do it in a day.
My availability for travel falls to the mercy of my work schedule. 4 out of 6 weeks, it’s pretty much inflexible.
I’ve always wanted to go to the Ozarks. I might make this a two-week trip like I did for S.D. and go to Oklahoma and Kansas.
There is a diamond mine in Arkansas that might be doable as a day trip.
I think I’ll save Mammoth Cave for another trip.
Branson will be closer to 12 hours for me. I think I’ll stop overnight.
I’ll probably put a reminder out about this at the beginning of August.
I’d like to do similar - visit the area, see what’s great within a 100 mile radius or so.
Side note to AZ - I was almost correct about the clunking noise on the trunk. Turned out to be a worn/defective link for the anti-sway bar. I just swapped it for a new one tonight after work. No more “clunk-clunk” noise.
The next Q Thread Meet-up will be in June 2022 in Branson, Missouri.
We will vote during the first two weeks in September as to which particular weekend in June it will take place.
If you have posted three non-trollish posts to a Q thread in the 12 months prior to September 2021, you may cast a vote that will be included in the totals.
Please take the time to read the history of this whole meet-up thing before posing questions that may be answered in previous posts.
Start with post #2496 on this thread.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3682262/posts?q=1&;page=2451#2496
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