Rance and I are in a bit of a holding pattern while we wait for our sublet to become available. We’re going to move into our friend Padraic’s place while he goes out to sea for five months, but he doesn’t leave until May 7th. So, in the interim, Rance and I are traveling around America seeing what the country has to offer.
Our ultimate goal is to see the Grand Canyon. After taking in Waimea Canyon on Kauai, the place Mark Twain called the Grand Canyon of the pacific, we wanted to see the real deal. But with eleven days to kill we’re taking a round-a-bout way to get there.
Yesterday we headed northwest from Chicago with an agreement to stop at anything that sounds interesting to either of us. We didn’t make it too far into WI, before our first stop: Mar’s Cheese Castle. How can you not want to stop at a castle? Imagine our disappointment to find it neither a castle, nor is it made of cheese. It did however have a fantastic array of grossly named hot sauces, names like: “MegaSoreAss,” “Fiery Fart,” and “Ass in Hell.” Needless to say, Mar’s Cheese Castle provided us several minutes of laughing like 8-year-old boys.
Continuing our travels west we took a small detour off the freeway to get a gander at the Wisconsin Dells area. I’ve only heard about this wonderland, and it being late it wasn’t really showing itself in all it’s glory. Most of the attractions were still closed for the season, but we got the gist of this hot-spot of the north. My guess is it’s probably a perfect place for roaming packs of hormone-racing teenagers or families with younger kids, but it looks like the last place I would want to be on a summer day. Maybe someone can tell me different; otherwise, I doubt I’ll ever see The Dells in full bloom.
It was here though that the first hitch in our road trip plans occurred; the oil pressure light came on. Uh, oh. Rance had the oil changed last week, and there was plenty of oil in the tank. The car wasn’t running weird, but there it was, that damn flashing light. Oddly though, it went off after we drove a few miles on the highway. It’s always a little nerve-wracking to have something go wrong with the car. I don’t know what goes on under that hood and feel like I have a flashing neon sign on my forehead whenever I have to walk into a garage: SUCKER. So I breathed a sigh of relief that the light went out.
We found a cheap, but clean hotel in Onalaska, WI, and took a quick refresher nap before getting back in the car so we could catch a showing of “Kick Ass.” We weren’t in the car more than five minutes before the oil pressure light and alarm went off again. Crap. Of course that didn’t stop us from seeing the movie, I mean we do have our priorities. We’ll get that oil problem straightened out in the morning, hopefully it doesn’t blow our entire budget.