The Last Great Road Trip

PICKS:
Cafe Bernard
We rolled into Chicago in the early evening and pulled up to the family home of our friend, Brian. Not long after walking in the door, I realized that this family had created the type of home in which anyone and everyone is made to feel welcome. Even though it [...]

Essen House
Apparently a trip to Madison is not truly complete until you have visited Essen House, ordered a plastic boot full of beer and recruited some friends to help you drink it without allowing the boot to touch the table until it’s empty. As we were to learn later in the trip (at the Corning [...]

My dad grew up in Minnesota, and so a lot of his childhood stories involve tunneling through snow to make epic forts, skating up a river with the roving horde of neighborhood kids and generally making mischief in a land of snow and ice. I had never had the pleasure of being in Minnesota during [...]

PICKS:
Mount Rushmore
We arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house in Rapid City just in time to avoid driving in a pretty serious snow storm, but my uncle, being the dyed in the wool South Dakotan that he is, decided that a snow storm was the perfect time to go see Mount Rushmore. Turns out, he [...]

PICKS:
Highway 60 from Globe to Show Low, AZ
After much too brief of a stop at my sister Vanessa’s house, we began a new phase of the road trip — the all driving, minimal stopping, hauling of our behinds to get across the country in time to spend Christmas with my grandparents in western New York. [...]