{Guest Post} 10’s List from Janet Ruth Young

Yesterday my review of The Babysitter Murders by Janet Ruth Young went up, and today we are honored to have her on the blog sharing with us her Ten Greatest Travel Experience's in the US!

Ten Great Travel Experiences in the U.S.

Several years ago my sister Diane and I quit our jobs at the same time. Diane stopped working as the assistant director of a library in order to join the Jesuit Volunteers in Billings, Montana, where she would live with five housemates and share values of community, simple living, spirituality, and social justice. I left my job as an editor at an educational publishing house in order to write my novel The Opposite of Music.

To celebrate our leap into the abyss, we packed Diane’s Escort with camping stuff and spent six weeks traveling across the country. Here, in the order that we encountered them, are some of the most remarkable spots we found.

1. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

If you live on the coast rather than inland, weird yourself out by swimming in a body of water that looks and acts like the ocean but has no salt in it.

2. Architectural Walking Tours of Chicago

I have a thing for old buildings and unique new ones. We took two tours led by the Chicago Architecture Foundation: early skyscrapers, by foot, and the Chicago River, by boat. While you’re in town, also walk along Chicago’s lakefront, an impressive 24.5 miles of continuous recreational area, including beaches, volleyball courts, outdoor gyms, an artificial ice rink, bicycles, museums, and cafes. Let’s face it---Chicagoans know how to live.

3. Osseo, Wisconsin

The major attraction of this silent, two-street town is the Norske Nook, a (presumably) Norwegian-owned pie restaurant. Large slabs of pie topped with whipped cream can be had all day, and with about 30 varieties you can easily try a different one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Bring your camera and take pictures of a picturesque peeling bench, a local bar selling Leinenkugel’s beer, and the sign that says “Snekker Versted Snekkermester,” which I believe refers to the harbormaster.

4. Custer State Park, South Dakota

Although a park guide kept showing us brochures of better-known attractions and saying we were wasting our time at Custer (is he the best spokesperson?), we thought this park was heaven. We had lunch, including buffalo stew, in a Frank Lloyd Wright lodge; swam in a private cove in Sylvan Lake surrounded by towering rock formations; and took a sunset drive around the wildlife loop before enjoying a gourmet dinner at the lodge that was Calvin Coolidge’s summer White House. South Dakota can be a very hard state to leave.

5. The Copper King Mansion, Butte, Montana

The home of copper magnate and senator William Andrews Clark (also the father of the recently deceased heiress Huguette Clark) is now a bed and breakfast. Diane and I stayed in Clark’s suite and slept in his bed. After we had checked in, a staff person told us that tours would come through our room several times a day. As a passel of tourists gawked around the room, Diane signaled to me that I had left my underwear lying in plain sight. Too funny.

6. Fairmont Hot Springs, Montana

Fairmont’s resort and convention center has two Olympic-size pools built over a natural hot spring (water temperature 88 to 104 degrees). This is a big treat for Montanans, many of whom have never owned a bathing suit. We had a day pass for the pools, and we also tried the water slide. The slide was completely enclosed with no ventilation on a hot day, it had seams that chafed our speeding elbows, and without her eyeglasses Diane couldn’t tell which direction she was headed. Boy, that was a long 20 seconds.

7. Redwoods National Park, California

If you can, arrive late and set up camp in the dark. You’ll be amazed by the trees when you crawl out of the tent in the morning.

8. 17-Mile Drive, Pebble Beach, California

We were going to skip this because you have to pay $8 just to drive down a road. What a tourist trap, right? But during a phone call to home, our father offered to reimburse us for the entrance fee. Watching the coastal wildlife and getting the kid-glove treatment when we ordered burgers at the golf resort made this attraction a highlight of the trip.

9. Camping Beside the Grand Canyon, Arizona

Set up your tent a short walk from the South Rim. Leave the fly (rain cover) off the tent to see the stars all night long. Then awaken before dawn to watch the sun rise over the canyon.

10. Jasper, Arkansas

In the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas, you may find a little tourist cabin that runs on the honor system (leave your money in the cookie jar). If you don’t have the right amount of cash, and you set out into the night to find an ATM for the cookie jar money, you might travel along a dark, hilly road to find a blaze of colored light that turns out to be a county fair and rodeo. The next morning when the rooster crows, watch from your porch swing as the mist rises out of “the Grand Canyon of the Ozarks.”

Thank you Janet Ruth Young for stopping in and sharing this with us and thank you The {Teen} Book Scene for hosting the blog tour and letting MMSAI participate!