such

as

these,

how can you say no?

Spoiler: You can’t.

Let’s talk about Yakushima, though. Yakushima is a small island off the coast of Kyushu. It is famous for its ancient cedar forests, banyan trees, monkeys, and oranges. It has become so famous for its forests in particular that Hayao Miyazaki visited the ancient trees of Shiratani Unsuikyo and got inspired to make a movie that we know and love called Princess Mononoke. In fact, it has become so famous that a section of Shiratani Unsuikyo is colloquially known as the Mononoke Forest, because tons of travellers to Yakushima not-so-coincidentally happen to be Studio Ghibli trash (hi, it me) who would love nothing more than to experience the otherworldliness of these landscapes (hi again).

So it should be of little surprise that my first full day was spent hiking in Shiratani Unsuikyo. I went on a tour with YES! Yakushima, and Steve did a fantastic job of guiding us away from the throngs of tourists.

The forest itself is — in a word — verdant. Moss is sprawled all over the trees, the rocks, everywhere. The trunks and branches have all but twisted with time, creating an organic web of curves across the ground. If you’re lucky enough, you can see the indigenous Yaku macaques among the green-brown-black color palette of the landscapes.

Before we hit Mononoke Forest, Steve had warned us that it might be easy to miss, because it’s a relatively small section of the park, and there are less-crowded variants of the forest nearby. He did have a point, though, as it’s pretty missable when your view is shrouded by lots of tourists trying to take photos.

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princess mononoke vibes

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on Aug 13, 2018 at 5:36am PDT

It doesn’t make the view any less stunning, though.

MISCELLANEA:

• It rains a lot. Yakushima runs on a subtropical climate, which means that it can be completely sunny one minute and a torrential downpour the next, like some weather god is flicking a power switch for funsies. Even though the hiking itself isn’t very physically demanding, hiking gear is a must if you don’t want to turn the trails into a Slip ‘n Slide.
• Go to the bathroom before you head out to the trail, because peeing in the bushes is not a thing people do in Japan, ya barbarians.
• Mosquitoes aren’t a huge deal in this part of Yakushima, as they don’t tend to hang around the heavily waterfalled areas. You have no idea how relieved I was.

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A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on Sep 7, 2018 at 5:06pm PDT

Hiroshima had been on my Japan travel bucket list for several reasons, chief among them history, okonomiyaki, and bunnies, but squeezing in trips outside of Tokyo within a 2-day timeframe was a challenge like any other.

Saturday brought about too much rain for my flimsy $2 drugstore umbrella to handle. Between visiting Miyajima Island versus Okunoshima Island (Rabbit Island), the latter seemed like a better option in the rain.

The train station at Tadanoumi — a far cry from the city life in Tokyo and Hiroshima

I took the Shinkansen from the Hiroshima station to Mihara, switched to the JR Kure line from Mihara to Tadanoumi, walked a few minutes to the terminal at Tadanoumi Port, and then boarded the ferry for a 15-minute boat ride to Okunoshima. If I choose not to include the amount of time waiting for the hourly trains during the transfers, it took a little over an hour. However, door-to-door, I’m looking at over two hours of long transfers and hoping that my phone and external battery would last me the better part of the day (thankfully, it did). But hey, I used to commute 90 minutes each way to-and-from work, so I should have been used to it, right?

Anyway, work may have given me many perks and benefits, but work has never graced me with the presence of hundreds of cute bunnies.

Okunoshima Island is a small island off the coast of Hiroshima that is host to hundreds of feral rabbits. (Mind you, these cuties are absolutely tame and the exact opposite of what feral implies.) The exact origin story of how the bunnies populated the island is shrouded in vagueness, but either way, bunnies have taken over Okunoshima so much so that one step onto the island and you will be approached by a colony of rabbits.

After feeling peckish, I ventured back into Hiroshima before the sunset. Dinner that night was at Koshida, where they serve my favorite food: okonomiyaki.

Okonomiyaki — besides having the incredibly distinct honor of being MY FAVORITE FOOD — is a savory pancake, often made of eggs, flour, cabbage, and meat, and topped liberally with bonito flakes, an okonomiyaki sauce not unlike Worcestershire sauce, seaweed flakes, and Japanese mayonnaise. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, however, is a slightly different beast, as:

(1) the ingredients are mixed
(2) there are more layers of cabbage that uncooked okonomiyaki resembles a literal cabbage patch
and
(3) they cook it with noodles

THEY. COOK IT. WITH. NOODLES. The only thing that could make a savory pancake even better? MORE CARBS!

It goes without saying that I scarfed this bad boy down within minutes.

While it may seem that my culinary adventures in Hiroshima would be over after having peaked at okonomiyaki, Hiroshima is actually rife with really good food options. The next day had a pretty decent weather forecast, so I finally made it to Miyajima Island, an island known for its forests, temples, and Great Torii Gate. While I witnessed and appreciated all three things, the first thing I did as soon as I got off the ferry was eat oysters.

Protip #1-#1.5: Hiroshima is well-known for their oysters. So much so that Glico makes Hiroshima-oyster-flavored Pretz, which is good, but I’d still recommend eating the real thing over the Pretzed-up version.

Protip #2: Kakiya grills some damn good oysters.

Hiroshima, or rather Miyajima Island, is known for momiji manju, a red bean cake shaped like a maple-leaf. In fact, these cute little cakes are so well known and synonymous with Hiroshima that the Kit-Kat regional flavor is a momiji manju.

While tourists (and deer — see above) normally overpopulate the main street of Miyajima, the number of people dwindled by the time I hiked the upward ascent to Miyajima’s peaks. You’ll find that the island itself is a juxtaposition of verdant forest and the blue ocean tides that surround it, should you choose to venture ahigh.

The rest of the day was a quiet afternoon spent at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park. A sobering testament to the city’s past, the park is home to the two Peace Bridges, the Peace Memorial Museum, the Memorial Cenotaph, and the ruins of the former Hiroshima Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall.

Hello!

So for those of you who keep up with me on another social media outlet (or any other medium, really, like IRL), you might know that I’m in Tokyo (!) for the summer.

I’m working as a UX designer, and so far my experience has been good, if not a little routine:

6AM: Wake up at this hour, every day without fail, FOR NO REASON AT ALL other than the fact that my body clock is a bitch???
6AM-9:30AM: Make a futile attempt to go back to sleep. Suck it up.
10AM-7PM: Work.
7PM-9PM: Grab dinner with my limited Japanese skills. This is usually ramen or soba or some other noodly variant.
9PM-11PM: Watch a World Cup game. (Interchangeable/negotiable, depending on the match)
11PM-12AM: Get ready for bed, but debate internally if I should watch the next World Cup game
12AM-2AM (?): Decide screw it, I’m watching the match! Sometimes I can stay awake through the first half. Sometimes.

That said, it’s not my first rodeo when it comes to Japan, though it’s my first time being here for more than 2 weeks. Hell, the last time I was living abroad for more than a few months was back in 2008, when I studied in Beijing during the summer. Fun fact: this blog started because I needed a way to update my friends on my whereabouts with LiveJournal being banned in China. It feels weird coming full-circle a decade later, but here we go.

Anyway, I’ve been here for ten days. I don’t think I’m quite settled yet, though the amount of times I have eaten an egg salad sandwich from my neighborhood Lawson or run to the 7-11 in search for a workable ATM show otherwise. I haven’t even used my camera yet. But that’s ok — I’ve got a good amount of time to explore this city and country (I’m lookin’ at you, Hokkaido and Okinawa).

#jpncol managed to turn the busiest intersection in the world into the craziest moshpit in the world. what a game. #worldcup #jpn

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on Jun 19, 2018 at 7:38am PDT

Let me tell you, being in a country whose national team just landed a hard-fought win in the World Cup is An Experience. I remember going to a block party in Vila Madalena the night Brazil defeated Chile in the knockout stages of the 2014 World Cup, and to this day, that memory wins all the awards for the biggest moshpit ever. Anyway, Japan had just scored an upset defeat over Colombia, and — well. Pandemonium descended upon Tokyo. I just so happened to be coming back from a watch party in Shibuya, which may or may not be THE BUSIEST INTERSECTION. Just imagine the amount of crowds in Times Square but with a fraction of the space. This photo was taken right before I decided I actually valued my phone and quickly stowed it away before a throng of drunk and (rightfully so!) excited fans could knock it out of my cold, dead hands.

Here’s a live recording. Turn those speakers up for full effect.

Udon noodles with grated yam at Kokuwagata. Despite (or even because of???) the slimy texture, I am ridiculously endeared to grated yam. The name is a pretty poor descriptor of what it actually looks and feels like (who knew that yams, when grated, would turn mucuslike?!), but this was delicious.

Speaking of yams, the KitKat Chocolatery sells purple yam KitKats, and yes, they are as delicious as they are purple.

This is Yodobashi, also known as the world’s largest electronics store. I poked my head in here last Sunday because I needed to replace my broken Fitbit strap, but alas, the world’s largest electronics store didn’t have my size.

getting into the weeds #latergram

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on Jun 23, 2018 at 8:59am PDT

gorillaz!

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on Jun 22, 2018 at 7:16am PDT

On Friday, I went to the Gorillaz concert, where they premiered their new album, the Now Now. Also, I’m really impressed by how punctual the concerts are. Case in point: The show was done at 9PM. 9PM! Even after the encore! A concert schedule that actually agrees with my old-lady sleeping habits is downright revolutionary.

Technically, we had already hit Minnesota by the time we made it to Fargo, as the Fargo-Moorhead area rests nicely on the North Dakota-Minnesota border, but without further ado:

Just the facts:

STATES: Minnesota
NICKNAME: The North Star State
FOOD EATEN: Leftover food, breakfast at Al’s Breakfast, pho at Pho Hoa, Indian/Nepalese at Namaste Cafe, cupcakes from Nadia Cakes, coffee from Spyhouse, ramen at Zen Box Izakaya
GOOGLE MAPS ILLUSTRATION: Prince, because WHO ELSE?
PHOTOS: HERE
DATE(S) VISITED: May 16th-19th, 2017

As somebody who had grown up in the Midwest, I actually hadn’t made it out to Minnesota before. “GIRL, how have you not been to Minnesota?!” people would ask exasperatedly when they noticed that it was on my States I Hadn’t Yet Visited list.

Me: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That said, I’ve always heard pretty glowing reviews about the state, especially from those who live and have lived there, and Minneapolis (where I stayed for the 3-4 days) has a charm of its own, cold and drizzle and all.

After being flanked on all sides by Mother Nature and her environs, it felt damn good to finally be in a city with six-digit populations!!! Even though the drive from Fargo led to a pretty intense downpour, which escalated into a thunderstorm. Even though I faceplanted and skinned my elbows while running through the rain to grab my belongings out of the car. This was obviously the Midwest’s way of welcoming me back into their fold.

After catching up on sleep, the first morning in Minneapolis was kickstarted by a hearty breakfast at Al’s Breakfast, famous for its blueberry pancakes and its building size so cozy that NYC-sized closets feel palatial by comparison.

No joke, this place is packed tighter than a can of sardines, and the line starts at the very inside of the store, so you can jealously stare and glower upon everybody sitting and eating their pancakes, while you stand in wait.

To Al’s credit though, the line dissipated pretty quickly (unlike the lines in San Francisco, COUGH), and Grace and I snagged two barstools within 15 minutes. No sooner did we step inside were Grace and I treated to a meal of the corned beef hash and blueberry pancakes so comforting and filling that we felt like the Pillsbury Doughboy by the time we left.

We took a comfortable stroll around Dinkytown (and later, the U of M area) to walk off our blueberry pancake food-babies and take in the industrial sights and sounds of the city. Because it was raining on/off and we had a comfortable 3-4 days to kill, we spent most of our time meeting up with folks and eating. But mostly eating.

A few highlights:

These are momos from Namaste Cafe. Momos are meat-based (we had bison!) Nepalese dumplings that you typically dip in a tomato-based sauce, and I will forever sing their praises. We also had spicy potatoes, garlic marathi, and almond chicken, and let’s just say after days of eating straight-up carb-loaded American food with where salt is the spiciest ingredient, it was so satisfying to have a break in between. My taste buds cried.

This was ramen from Zen Box Izakaya, aka the ultimate comfort food on a cold, drizzly day. My love for ramen is woefully not very well-documented, but rest assured, this was so good.

However! We did other things besides stuff our faces with food. Minneapolis, perhaps by virtue of being host to MCAD, has a pretty bitchin’ art museum: the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA). And get this:

Membership was free.

While I appreciate free shit as much as the next person, what made the MIA pretty bitchin’ was actually its (– look surprised –) art.

del toro exhibit = 10/10, would go again #gdtatmia

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on May 18, 2017 at 4:53pm PDT

We immediately made a beeline for the Guillermo del Toro exhibit, which has various art from his movies, from Hellboy to Pan’s Labyrinth (my forever fave, FIGHT ME) to Crimson Peak. Sadly, this exhibit was curated a good few months before The Shape of Water had even been released, but we still spent a good amount of time poring over the dark magical beautiful gothic romantic fantasy aesthetic of del Toro’s works.

#gdtatmia

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on May 20, 2017 at 9:12am PDT

The snaps below aren’t del Toro, but rather, other works we found while wandering the MIA.

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on May 21, 2017 at 12:55pm PDT

finally made it to mt. rushmore!

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on May 19, 2017 at 11:26am PDT

Fitting, considering that I was just at Mt. Rushmore only a few days prior to taking this photo.

By the very last day of our Minnesota adventures, my Midwestern raised-in-the-90s teenaged self was curious about the Mall of America, because that place is a gargantuan representation of my childhood weekends of hanging out at malls. 11-year-old me would have loved MoA. Now, I get that millennials killed the shopping malls, just like they killed a lot of other culturally irrelevant things we knew and loved so dearly, but my past self would have hated me if I didn’t go.

That, and I needed new eyeliner.

When I was younger, I was a big fan of The Baby-sitter’s Club like no one’s business. 90s-era #squadgoals — what’s not to love, right? In one Super Special, BSC in the USA, the girls embark on a cross-country road trip, and while they’re in the Badlands, they run out of gas and are stranded in what feels like the literal middle of nowhere.

If anything, I can blame that book for making me think that South Dakota was the epitome of the middle of nowhere.

In reality, the Badlands are pretty dope, but I’d highly recommend going with a full tank during the day when you can actually see stuff. Because you will not be stressing over gas and instead you will be gifted with rugged landscapes like this:

While the terrain is so rugged that it looks like some higher power decided to take the desert and implode the ground to oblivion, it’s flat and makes for great (albeit very sunny) hiking.

However, like I mentioned eons ago, South Dakota is a mix of nature at its most breathtaking and rugged …. and tourist kitsch at its most egregious.

On the drive out of Badlands, it’s impossible not to notice the 43892485 billboards for Wall Drug.

Wall Drug Store claims to have everything under the sun, from ice cream to 5-cent coffee to every material object you can think of to dinosaur replicas. An onslaught of Western kitsch in South Dakota, it’s unmissable and you’re inundated with so many billboards that you’re practically compelled to check it out.

In BSC in the USA, Claudia Kishi buys a painting that looks awfully Georgia-O’Keeffe-esque, only to find out by the end of the book that it’s — SPOILER ALERT — a real Georgia O’Keeffe painting. Unfortunately, I didn’t get so lucky, but I only went for the milkshakes (listen, I was hungry!) and braced myself for the long drive through North Dakota.

Just the facts:

STATES: North Dakota
NICKNAME: The Peace Garden State
FOOD EATEN: Whatever we could find in Medora (aka CLIF bars from the C-store and taffy from the Taffy Shop) and later, knoephla soup and milkshakes at Kroll’s Diner
GOOGLE MAPS ILLUSTRATION: A beekeeper
PHOTOS: HERE

Driving through North Dakota was something else, though.

First of all, there were no lights. When it’s the evening and you’re driving into a void of nihilist-level nothingness with only your car lights for assistance, IT IS SOME NEXT-LEVEL BLACK HOLE SHIT.

I literally had no idea what North Dakota looked like until I woke up the next morning in Medora, a quaint town and centerpiece of Theodore Roosevelt National Park:

JK, this is what T-Ro actually looks like (click for a larger view):

And here’s a replica of Teddy Roosevelt’s crib back in his Rough Rider days, when he called the park home:

Secondly, when you stroll into Medora during the park’s off-season, you’ll find that most businesses, from the saloon-like restaurant to the convenience store (aptly named the C-Store), operate on severely reduced hours, if they’re even open at all. Hell, when we walked into the taffy store, we were asked if we were looking for employment, as opposed to buying a bag of saltwater taffy (which we did!).

Even the park rangers were surprised to see visitors, especially out-of-state visitors.

If the morning was spent wandering town and figuring out which businesses were actually open in May (answer: Very Few. Medora is very much a Bring Your Own Food locale in its off-season.), the afternoon was spent mountain biking! MAD-MAX STYLE. The Maah Daah Hey Trail is not a mountain-biking trail engineered for the faint of heart. The trails are unforgivably thin and winding and you will turn into a human jackhammer as you jump over rocks and careen downhill.

The actual trail connects the north and south portions of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and extends for 144.7 miles (there’s a great NYT writeup here on biking half the trail), but given that I only had an afternoon before we needed to haul ass over to Fargo, I rented a bike from Dakota Cyclery, and my wonderful guide Jennifer took me out for a spin.

As we pedaled up the mountains, my attention was gripped by the unspoiled landscapes above. I’m such a sucker for the color palette of the Maah Daah Hey: pale blue skies, splotches of dark green sagebrush, dusty prairiegrass, and light brown earth. The landscape goes on for miles and miles, with little end in sight, as if to speak to the immense size of the state.

Isn’t nature the best?

We even made friends with this little buddy below (also known as a short-horned lizard):

The ride was the pick-me-up I needed before the five hours of driving from Medora to Fargo. As somebody who has yet to discover the appeal of podcasts, I was limited to the bleakness that was radio in the middle of North Dakota. This might be the origin story of my hatred for “Shape of You”. Either that, or I was inundated with religious sermons. After hours of listening to nonstop NPR, we whizzed by Bismarck and the majority of ND and finally made our way to Fargo by midnight.

Tired from yesterday’s one-two-punch of mountain biking and driving, we slept in the next day alongside this adorable doggo:

Because we were hungry and we hadn’t really eaten much in North Dakota other than whatever snack foods we managed to scrounge up at C-stores and rest stops, Bailey took us to eat some good ol’ North Dakotan comfort food at Kroll’s where we indulged in knoephla (aka the Lumpy Yellow Soup), which is like the culinary equivalent of a warm hug. Listen, chicken noodle soup doesn’t hold a candle to this.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), no lutefisk was had, but if the HECK NO license plate was emblematic of South Dakota, then I’m going to humbly nominate this T-shirt as Peak North Dakota.

Just the facts:

STATES: Montana
NICKNAME: The Treasure State
FOOD EATEN: Brunch at Jam!, dinner and drinks at Montana Ale Works, drinks at Lockhorn Cider House, brunch at Cateye Cafe, groceries at Community Food Co-op
GOOGLE MAPS ILLUSTRATION: A cowboy
PHOTOS: HERE

Fun as Idaho was, my roadtrip hit two minor snags early on.

Or rather, my ability to adult came under fire in the first two days of the roadtrip when I realized that (1) there was a fraudulent charge on my credit card and (2) my camera was broken.

#1 left me a credit card down, and #2?

Welp, thank god for Montana and their lack of sales tax!

Because goddamn, if I’m going to completely replace my Nikon, I might as well get it tax-free. Two camera stores and a D7100 later, I was in Bozeman, MT, which I had actually visited twenty years ago, during a trip to Yellowstone. All I remember from Bozeman during the summer of ’97 was my parents refusing to buy me stuff from the local shopping mall. And a bird pooping on my head.

Thankfully, my second rodeo with the Bozone improved by leaps and bounds, and I can proudly say that no birds have pooped on my head. Since I’d already been to Yellowstone, I opted to take it easy during the Montana leg of the trip, which meant lots of food. And beer, which is pretty much liquid bread, so that also counts as food.

Highlights included:

Biscuit and waffles at JAM!

at #montanaaleworks (salmon fly honey rye, razzu, and beltian white) #latergram

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on May 17, 2017 at 8:29am PDT

Shepherd’s pie at Montana Ale Works, topped off with a beautiful beer flight of Salmon Fly Honey Rye (Madison River Brewing at Belgrade, MT), Razzu Raspberry Wheat (Philipsburg Brewing Company at Philipsburg, MT), Beltian White (Harvest Moon Brewing at Belt, MT)

Cider flight at Lockhorn Cider House, which is a wonderful place not just because of the cider, but because it is a dog-friendly cider house and there is no combo more wonderful than cider and dogs.

The Cowgirl (= banana bread french toast topped with yogurt + marionberry sauce and whipped cream) at Cateye Cafe, whose aesthetic caters quite well to my cat-eye-glasses-wearing self.

Other than eating and playing with dogs and getting a replacement camera, I suppose I did other stuff in Bozeman. I went grocery shopping at the Bozeman Community Food Co-op, which my friend described as peak Bozone, and welp, I can’t say I can find the lie in that description:

Artisanal bone broth exists in this world, and of course it is in a jar with a well-designed label with nice typeface.

There were also some rad skeletons of dinosaurs at the Museum of the Rockies, so if dinosaurs and prehistoric stuff are your jam, you’ll dig it.

But if post-Civil-War US history is what you’re after, then perhaps the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument might be more your speed. Also known as the site of Custer’s Last Stand (remember your AP US History classes?!), this stop broke up an otherwise monotonous drive out of Montana.

I am also including a gratuitous photo of huckleberry ice cream sandwiches, because only in convenience stores in Montana do they sell huckleberry ice cream sandwiches alongside old standbys like vanilla and chocolate. And they are delicious.

Just the facts:

STATES: South Dakota
NICKNAME: The Mt. Rushmore State
FOOD EATEN: Dinner at Lewie’s Burgers and Brews, coffee at Pure Bean Roasters, coffee at Dixon Coffee Co.
GOOGLE MAPS ILLUSTRATION: A miner
PHOTOS: HERE

Huckleberry ice cream sandwiches and national monuments aside, the drive from Montana (to Wyoming) to South Dakota was pretty forgettable for the long stretch of distance I had to cover. Damn you Mountain Time Zone for your bigass states! On the plus side, there are higher speed limits and mountain views in Montana that are easy to take for granted. On the minus side? Eve-ry-thing else.

Love bugs stuck and clung to our windshield and made it nigh-impossible to see, rest stops are practically extinct, I was getting dehydrated, and instead of seeing small-town exits with gas stations/fast-food restaurants, you get unnamed exits that lead you into a hamlet, unincorporated community, or worse: somebody else’s backyard.

And yet, several hours later, we made it! To Rapid City, South Dakota!

This, my friends, is peak South Dakota.

Okay, okay, to South Dakota’s credit, there actually is a lot to offer, and it truly is an underrated state, especially if you’re into nature and are willing to withstand some degree of tourist kitsch (because you’ll see so much of it to an unavoidable extent). We went to several national parks, all of which were clustered within a two-hour radius of Rapid City. If we squinted a little bit, we could even see some portrait busts carved into the mountains:

The upside is that Mt. Rushmore is a quick drive from Rapid City, but the downside is the stretch of tourist hell so egregiously tacky that you cannot avoid. You think you’re screwed, and then you get inundated with a stretch of billboards you wish you hadn’t read. For the most part, Mt. Rushmore is a fairly quick trip:

If you walk a little closer, you can see up Washington’s nose.

Do you understand this equation?

It’s okay, neither did I. But now you know that Thomas Jefferson authored the first ice cream recipe in America! #themoreyouknow

That afternoon, we headed to Jewel Caves, which I found fascinating. Apparently, my camera didn’t find them very fascinating, according to the number of blurry photos I amassed, but look, if there’s anything The Magic School Bus taught me, it’s that caves are Pretty Dope:

Once we got out the caves and drove through the Black Hills, we stopped at Deadwood, a cute little town that’s been historically preserved to retain its likeness as a gold-mining town, saloons and all.

You can even catch a glimpse of history at the Deadwood Mountain Grand, where we missed a live concert featuring everybody’s favorite 90s alt-rock acts like the Barenaked Ladies, Vertical Horizon, Fastball, and Everclear by

DAY.

No, I’m not salty. You’re salty.

Just the facts:

STATE: Idaho
NICKNAME: Gem State
FOOD EATEN: Potatoes. HAHA, jk. I went to Twin Falls Sandwich Company in (surprise) Twin Falls and Cristina’s Restaurant in Sun Valley
PLACES VISITED: Shoshone Falls (via Twin Falls), Sun Valley (via Ketchum and Hailey), Craters of the Moon
GOOGLE MAPS ILLUSTRATION: Potato farmer
PHOTOS: HERE

For those who don’t know, I’m on the road before I head off to grad school. While I could make things a heck of a lot easier for myself and stay in one location, I did have a bucket list item I wanted to complete, come hell or high water. Or, rather I had 13 bucket list items that I wanted to complete, and those were all the states I hadn’t yet visited:

1. Idaho
2. North Dakota
3. South Dakota
4. Nebraska
5. Kansas
6. Oklahoma
7. Minnesota
8. Iowa
9. Arkansas
10. Mississippi
11. Alabama
12. Georgia
13. Vermont

This is probably a terrible time to mention that I haven’t driven regularly since I was in high school, right?

While most of these states can geographically be grouped together, it did mean that I was going to have to zigzag my way through the US. To go out of my way just to hit up Idaho OR Vermont makes zero sense to the average person, but hey, I’m committed.

In fact, the first state I checked off was Idaho. There are two things I know about Idaho, and those are (1) potatoes and (2) Napoleon Dynamite.

Speaking of which, it’s been 13 years since Napoleon Dynamite was a thing?!

Unfortunately, I didn’t quite make it to Preston, and after hours of driving through the Tahoe/Reno area and bits of Nevada along I-80, I was quite happy to see some form of civilization in the form of Twin Falls, ID: home to Chobani yogurt and CLIF bars!

Mostly, I was just plain hungry, hence this chicken pesto panini from the Twin Falls Sandwich Company, with lots of fries because being in Idaho warrants a metric crapton of potatoes.

Appropriately fueled up for the rest of the leg, I eventually made it to our first real destination: Shoshone Falls! Dubbed the “Niagara of the West” but careful enough to disassociate themselves with the tourist kitsch that defines the real Niagara we know and love (to hate), Shoshone Falls boasts the type of waterfalls that TLC told you not to chase:

channeling TLC

A post shared by cindy! (@cindypepper) on May 9, 2017 at 5:27pm PDT

That night, we drove to Sun Valley, aka the ski area where Ernest Hemingway used to spend his winter vacays. By May though, Ketchum and its surrounding environs were quiet with little residual mounds of snow, which is to be expected when the ski season is already over, but that didn’t stop us from walking around the main town, Ketchum*, the next day and grabbing coffee and a meal at Cristina’s:

DAT RIGATONI was excellent (10/10 would eat again), and a good walking distance away from Ketchum Cemetery, where you can find the graves of Hemingway & co, should you know where to look:

We then headed to the Hemingway Memorial at Trail Run, which is nestled between a park and a golf course.

That afternoon saw us driving out of Sun Valley and onto our next Idahoan destination: Craters of the Moon! A national monument and preserve in central Idaho, Craters of the Moon is an endless expanse of dark volcanic ruins. Equal parts weird and stunning, Craters is made of dark lava flows, cinder cones, and sagebrush that look both futuristic and jurassic.

As we walked along the trails, the landscape looked largely like this:

with the occasional trees poking out:

with a few ice caves:

Like, damn, Idaho. Who woulda thunk that you’d be able to come across this post-apocalyptic aesthetic in this neck of the woods?

*Yes, of course I thought of Pokemon. What, you think I was just going to roadtrip and not play Pokemon Go?

So, hi. It’s me.

If I haven’t seen you in the past two months (which is highly likely, given how ridiculously hermitic I’ve become), do I have an update for you.

A month ago, I left my first “real-world” job at Google, one I’d had for the past 5+ years, to go back to school. (Yes, it’s the same job I’ve had since I announced, way-back-when in July 2011, that I’d be moving cross-country from New York to San Francisco. Boy, has time flown by!)

Which is to say: I’m pleased as punch to announce that I’ll be attending the design program at STANFORD (!!!!!), where I’ll be for the next two years!

Am I excited?

The short answer: Hell yeah!

The longer answer: Hell yeah! But of course, it’s bittersweet to leave behind the first job and neighborhood and life that I’ve had since leaving college. I technically won’t be moving too far, but after a decade of living in a city, moving to the suburbs of Palo Alto will be an adjustment. There will, in fact, be a lot of adjustments, from not relying on free food at Google to dorm life to having things called classes. How do you all-nighter again?

So, here’s the gameplan. Anybody who’s known me in some capacity of familiarity knows that I travel — well, a lot, so it should come as zero surprise to y’all that I’m going nomadic and spending the months between now and Stanford.

May – June: I’m driving cross-country, with a primary goal of visiting all the states I’ve never been to (Idaho! The Dakotas! All of Middle America! Vermont!). If you’ve recommendations for Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Vermont, I’d be happy to hear them! I’m also making my rounds through the Midwest, the East Coast, and bits of Canada. Bonus points if any of your recs involve using a National Parks Pass:

As of now, my roadtrip has taken a turn for the south (literally speaking, thank god), and I’m currently in Little Rock, ready to begin the Southern leg of my trip (Arkansas – Mississippi – Alabama – Georgia), just after finishing up the Mountain timezone and Great Plains legs. So if any of those number markers look familiar, send your recs my way!

Late June: New York!

July: I’m then off to South Africa, with stops in Victoria Falls and Seychelles. I’ll be hitting up Cape Town and Joburg, where I’ll be for roughly two weeks, before I head to Morocco for ten days.

August: It’s back to New York for about a week, and then it’s Brazil, where I’m finally finally going to Rio, among other places. But mostly Rio, because how the hell have I been to Brazil twice and still not managed to have set foot in Rio?

September: WHAT’S GOOD, Western Europe! My endgame is to hit up the first weekend of Oktoberfest, which is my last weekend before I need to move back to California. As for everything else in between, welllll. I’ve got London on the list, but this is the one that’s most flexible, aka HI I DIDN’T BUY MY PLANE TICKETS HAHAHA.

And then it’s school time.

So. I’m committed to updating this more regularly, especially since New and Exciting™ Things are happening in my life that are worth documenting. For a more real-time update experience, I’m on Instagram as (surprise, surprise) cindypepper. For everything else, there’s MasterC—

Wait, wrong commercial.

Our bags packed and ready to go, Rebekah and I were on the train to our second Uzbek destination: Samarkand! Was I excited or was I really freaking excited that I could now visit the one elusive place that refused to be crossed off my travel bucket list. If there was one place that inspired this entire trip, it was Samarkand, the historic town that became an UNESCO site for being the Crossroads of Cultures, the Silk Road hub, the capital of the Timurid empire … the list goes on and on. If Bukhara felt like a town that was pulled out and recreated from a time-machine and Tashkent felt like a modern city breaking out of its post-Soviet shadow, then Samarkand was an intersection of the two. There were a lot more cars! Bars! (Granted, this wasn’t exactly pub crawl territory, but there were at least more signs of life during the nighttime.) People! Like this gent below:

The man above, Timur / Tamerlane / Amir Temur, was the leader whose dynasty had revolved around Samarkand (and overall, Persia/Central Asia) and whose statue now watches over one of Samarkand’s biggest intersections. He also has a pretty awesome mausoleum dedicated to him:

Gur-e-Amir (also known as the Amir Temur Mausoleum) is a mausoleum (duh) that contains the tombs of Amir Temur himself, his sons, grandsons, and teacher. Only the foundations, entrance portal, and one of the four minarets remain, but even what’s been left (and restored) is nothing short of stunning. Can we talk about how incredible the azure mosaics are? Or the intricate patterns on those domes, because damn, son. And to think, we got to walk past this beaut day in and day out as we ventured outside.

In fact, the first day was largely spent visiting mosques, mausoleums, and minarets (the three Ms), and honestly something you could have made an entire trip out of. We had hit up Amir Temur Mausoleum as shown above, Bibi Khanym Mosque, Shakhi Zinda, Ulugh Beg Observatory, and Rukhabat Mausoleum, in a day, making good use of our walking shoes and sunscreen. By the time we passed by the crown jewel of Samarkand, Registan Square, we had only enough energy to buy ice cream sandwiches and plop down on the nearby park chairs and people watch. Which, to be fair, blows all other summer afternoons out of the water, when you’ve got a view like this:

The main public square of Samarkand, Registan Square is to Samarkand as Times Square is to New York, even though that’s a gross comparison to make because Registan doesn’t feel like a tourist-ridden hell, despite being the main go-to for tourists.

Ulugh-Beg Madrasah

A wide sprawling square, Registan is flanked on three sides by madrasahs, which were actually schools! With dorms and colleges and lecture halls — the whole she-bang. Look, I’ve visited plenty of gorgeous college campuses before and have studied at a university with an impressive neoclassical-style campus, but going purely off architecture here, the Ulugh Beg Madrasah (above) might just school all the other schools out there.

Also, I’m not sure if I’d get enough schoolwork done, because I’d likely do what I did the first day and eat ice cream all afternoon on the grass. Not that this was terribly different from what I did on weekday afternoons in college, but.

Tilya-Kori Madrasah

Sher-Dor Madrasah. Check out them tiger mosaics!

Also, don’t these close-up shots make you so mad? These mosaics, man.

Inside Registan Square, there are several bazaars tucked away where you can buy different goods and souvenirs to bring home.

As you can tell by the bajillion photos that I just posted, Registan was so fucking big that it totally justified Rebekah and I spending our entire second day there. However! We of course needed enough nutrition and sustenance to last us in the 90-degree desert heat, and Uzbek food happens to be such a largely-untapped goldmine of carb-fueled cuisine that it deserves its own mention. Standouts included:

Lagman. We ate this in Bishkek, but in Uzbekistan, they were generous with the dill and this one was more soupy, like the type of dish you’d want if you were stuck inside during a particularly cold day. Cold-weather comfort food, if you will.

When paired with non (Uzbek bread), it’s carby heaven. Also, non is etymologically similar to naan, so of course it’d make sense that all carbohydrate-y goodness happens to be related.

Manti are traditional Turkic dumplings about the size of a fist. Usually topped with butter or cream, they contain lamb meat with added fat for all that savory goodness.

My absolute favourite Uzbek dish, though?

Plov, hands down.

As a general fan of rice (having grown up on that stuff as a kid), I’m already naturally predisposed to love plov. If you take any dish with a rice base, and add garlic, carrots, chickpeas, and lamb, consider me sold. However, in Uzbekistan, plov is a national institution. It’s the national dish, of course, which already gives it some legitimacy, but there are cult-like levels of enthusiasm where there are restaurants that make large batches of plov and only plov and they sell out before noon. Could you imagine if that happened with every brunch place in America?

Fun fact: plov = pilaf. Rice pilaf, get it?

Weirdly enough, the plov game was strongest in Tashkent, where there are incidentally a higher concentration of cafes and restaurants and of course, a much larger demand. But more on that in my next post! I’m already getting hungry just waxing nostalgic about it.

A photo posted by Cindy (@cindypepper) on May 26, 2015 at 4:53am PDT

A photo posted by Cindy (@cindypepper) on May 26, 2015 at 4:59am PDT

A photo posted by Cindy (@cindypepper) on May 27, 2015 at 12:25am PDT

A photo posted by Cindy (@cindypepper) on May 28, 2015 at 8:28am PDT