On My Own Again (to the tune of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again”)

LA/XC-4 DAYS TWENTY-TWO THROUGH TWENTY-EIGHT:  POSTING FROM KENOSHA, WI

Seven-day mileage from Mount Shasta, CA to Kenosha, WI:  2,761

Total LA/XC-4 mileage:  7,659

Road Music:  Sirius cycle; NBA “red zone” (e.g., listening to the ends of all the playoff games); LA/XC-4 playlist (The Band Perry, Lee Brice, Tom Petty, et al); Hank’s 300 Favorite Songs of All Time playlist — and the NY Mets, who are now on an 11-game winning streak!!!!!

Weather leaving Mount Shasta last Friday morning: 68 degrees, and exquisitely gorgeous

Weather arriving Kenosha Thursday night:  39 degrees, and dark
Seven-day state tally:  8 (California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin)

New states for the Beagle Man: 5 (Oregon, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin)

Gas money to date:  $671.70

Most enchanting road signs:  Calapooya Creek (OR); Paha, Wanapum Dam, Soap Lake, and Potholes State Park (WA); Gackle, Absaraka, Kindred, and Home on the Range (ND); Downer (MN), and Baraboo (WI)

Attractions passed up:   World’s Largest Buffalo (Jamestown, MT); Cowboy Hall of Fame, and Enchanted Highway — world’s largest collection of metal sculptures (ND)

Road sign I mis-read from afar:  Big Boy Creek (it was actually Big Dry Creek); happy now, Sally Jo? 

Sur-PRISE!

Life on the road is full of ’em.  There’s the kind you get when you become too dependent on GPS and don’t look at your map, and you’re driving from Memphis and come to the state line and you’re sure you’ve arrived at your next destination, Oklahoma, but, sur-PRISE!  It’s Arkansas!  Or

you pull into your Best Western Plus Kelly Inn in St.Cloud, as I did last night, and find it’s right smack on the Mississippi River, which you didn’t think had any business at all being in Minnesota.  (Is it me, or shouldn’t the Big Muddy stay in the South, where it belongs?  It’s not even muddy here, for crying out loud.)

There’s also the kind of surprise you get when after three September cross-country road trips, you switch to April.  You’ve made certain assumptions — as in the weather will be perfect everywhere — which it pretty much always is in September.  Three days before your trip you call your friend Jeff in Virginia and ask if he wants to join

you for the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway.  And he says, yeah, those roads are pretty beautiful — but in April, you won’t really see anything.  The trees won’t be green yet, and there’ll still be snow on the ground.  Oh, yeah, right.  April.

And then there’s this kind of surprise:  You’ve heard for years that the one place you cannot miss is Glacier National Park in Montana.  You’ve seen photos, and it’s drop-dead gorgeous.  You’re traveling this leg with your oldest son Matt, who’d actually prefer to go through the Montana cities of Missoula (University of Montana) and Helena (state capital) and Billings (largest city in MT), but he indulges your desire to travel a couple of hundred miles north to see one of the most beautiful sights in the world.  And you get there, and it’s, well, kind of . . . closed.  I mean, not closed closed.  You’re allowed to drive into it.  You can go 10 miles of the Going-To-the-Sun

Road, billed as “one of the most scenic roadways in the world” in my Triple-A guidebook for Montana — but then you have to make a U-turn and double back.  And there are no ranger stations open.  And no Visitor Centers open.  So basically we drove a couple of hundred miles out of our way to see 10 miles of the Going-To-the-Sun Road . . . twice.  But let me tell you, that highway was one of the most scenic roadways in the world!

So of course Matt thought this was pretty funny-slash-stupid.  But he didn’t give me as hard a time as he actually might have.  For the 4+ days Matt joined the Beagle Man Tour, I’d say that in terms of the dynamics between the Beagle Man and his oldest son, things went rather well.  Granted, he thinks I do things somewhat meticulously (read slow) — and of course I counter by saying  that if he was on the road for 31 days, responsible for the well-being and happiness of an 8-month-old puppy, and visiting friends along the way, and blogging every couple of stops, and needing to drive some 400 miles a day, and trying not to leave behind anything important, he might have to move a little more deliberately too.  The fact is, we actually do share quite a number of travel habits — like needing to find the funkiest, coolest places to eat, and being curious about everything we encounter visually.  (Carol calls this my “visual ADD.”)  Kemba certainly enjoyed his city jogs with Matt — though I sense that he ‘s glad to be back to our original twosome — especially since he now

had both his seats, shotgun and rear-seat-with-doggie-bed, available to him again.

Had a great “last supper” with Matt — actually, it was breakfast — at the Little Cottage Cafe in Bismarck, courtesy of a killer reco from Britt, our very sweet and adorable server at B-Dubs on Tuesday night.  The caramel roll we split there probably didn’t fall within my diet and nutrition parameters, though overall I’d have to say I’m doing pretty damn well.  It certainly looked  like some of the locals had had a few too many of those rolls:  They couldn’t even fit their bellies under the table, but had to sit sideways in their booth.

So Matt, thanks for being my pardner.  And though Matt’s now back in the real world in Manhattan, I have little doubt that we’ll be hearing from him again with his LA/XC-4 wrap-up in the near future.

Oh, and he left me with a great parting gift.  When he was studying my Triple-A guidebook to see what we could do in Bismarck (nothing), he paged ahead to Fargo — and discovered that the Roger Maris Museum was there — tucked right into the West Acres Shopping Mall!  If you want a Hall of Fame experience without the Cooperstown hordes, here’s your place:  Mall personnel seemed shocked that I even asked about it.  This was clearly my oddest adventure since prowling around Carrie Underwood’s Chekotah, OK

hometown.

Backing up just a bit:  Despite the incredible gracious hosting of one of Carol’s oldest and best friends, Meg, and despite the

physical beauty of the city, my take on Portland was marred by the world’s most boring walking tour, and by the parking ticket I had waiting on my windshield after Kemba and I bolted from said tour when the guide’s back was turned.  I was really aggravated, but  Matt told me to let it go.  You can see I’ve done a really good job with that.  I regret to say, that was not my only brush with the law this week.  Today I got another parking ticket — this time in Madison, Wisconsin.  And I also got pulled over on I-94 in Wisconsin for speeding.  I truly believe it was Kemba’s adorable face in the shotgun seat that turned what looked like a sure-fire ticket into a warning.

DOG PARKS ACROSS AMERICA:   Met a couple of good ol’ heartland characters in the University Avenue dog park in Bismarck Wednesday morning:  Scott, with his Lab, Bentley, and Rick, with his Lab/Pit mix, Lucky.  Kemba and Lucky — also under a year old — became besties instantaneously, and played keep-away for well over an hour.  (Better than the previous morning in Great Falls, where Art the Ad Man —that’s what his biz card says! — had a dog who was a ball hog, and Kemba never got his own ball back. ) Rick was a misplaced Yankees fan who was very jealous to learn that Matt would be going to the Mets-Yankees game on Saturday, with Matt Harvey pitching for the good guys.  Who, by the way, may never lose another game.  This Rick really knew his stuff.  Not like the guy Matt and I met at Tanglewood Supreme in Seattle Saturday night (Great restaurant!  Go there!) who pretended to be a big-time sports fan, looked at my orange-and-blue cap, and said, “Yankees fan, huh?”  Come on, man!

Tomorrow (Friday):  Two Chicago-area visits, then off to Ann Arbor . . .

RANDOM ROAD NOTES:

•  North Dakota accents — think Frances McDormand in Fargo — sound pretty much like Minnesota and Canada accents, to me.  Which makes sense, I suppose, if you look at a map

•  I really do think people over 180 years old who sit in the left lane going 24 mph and have no clue should not be allowed on the road.  When I’m 179, though, I might re-think this

•  Saw about 4,000 of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes yesterday, and the other 6,000 today on the way to Wisconsin

•  First time I learn I’m in Wisconsin — a brand-new state for me! — is on my gas station receipt in Eau Claire.  So what ever happened to the WISCONSIN WELCOMES ME sign?

I PLAN TO POST AS CLOSE TO DAILY AS POSSIBLE WHILE KEMBA AND I ARE ON THE ROAD.  BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY:  MAN PLANS, GOD LAUGHS.    OH, AND BTW, YOU CAN ALSO FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND INSTAGRAM.