We visited Mount Carmel Center, just outside Waco, TX. This was the site of the April 19, 1993 massacre of 82 people by the Federal Government.

It was really kind of upsetting. The memorial lists the names of 18 children under the age of 10, 2 unborn fetuses, and a goodly number of people over the age of 70.


We walked up the path for a while to where someone's planted a crepe myrtle for each of the slain citizens. Dogs came and told us that was as far as they wanted us to go.

September 9th

U.S. 380 ... New Mexico -> Texas

September 9th, 2008, Roswell New Mexico

In 1947 a weather balloon crashed in the middle of nowhere 75 miles away from this town. Brilliant entrepreneurs took that fact and somehow transformed it into the national belief that it was an alien spacecraft, and it happened somewhere in Roswell.

They must have done a good job, because : : : :







Alien themed LOANS.

So now you probably don't have to go to Roswell.

Fascinating Events to Catch Up On

things we need to make blog entries about

uhhh

From Olympic National Park we drove to Portland Oregon. We had a pot luck barbecue thing in the park with the Discordians because it was the day of Discord, so that means that was on August 23rd. We stayed with Johnny Brainwash. Excellent host. Next day we bought bikes for Burning Man and went swordfighting in the park with the Mu Ryu Syndicate, yay.

Monday the 25th we drove to Black Rock Desert, arrived really late, about 4am. Replaced brake lights on the way.

25th to 31st, Burning Man. Burning Man is good..

We drove to Reno and stayed two nights at the Plaza on the River Hotel, and we took a dozen showers until we were clean. We went to San Francisco and met CityRat, he gave us a map which we used to go to the Sutro Bath Ruins and then we went to a town that was 100% cemetaries. .

We drove down California 1 and saw tame squirrels and the ocean, which is big. We stayed at Gina and Rogelio's house and met their NEW BABY

We drove to Phoenix and stayed two nights at the home of childhood best friend Nik Fogle and his girlfriend, they are adorable like chinchillas eating rosebuds in a dust bath and damn that Jen can cook

We drove to Roswell New Mexico, where the only thing that ever happened that had to do with aliens was merchandising. On the way there we went through a Border Patrol checkpoint. The man looked at us and asked us if we were US Citizens and told us to move along thanks.

The Olympics in Washington are ... full of water.


That tree there was up in a giant cedar tree, with its roots suspended in the air, with moss growing on the roots and feeding them. A LOT of water.




And yes! We finally made it to the Other Ocean!

Let's see, then our camera was off for a while... and two weeks or more passed.

Lots of things happened.

We went to Arches National Park. . . saw some Arches. Saw some tourists. Way more tourists than Arches. It is kind of like a zoo for rocks there. They're pretty rocks. . . buuuut, we decided time with people was better than time at attractions so we cut our Utah national parks itinerary short and drove to Ogden. We have fun in Ogden. We visited Chaplain and Boris the first night and caught up with them. The Chaplain gave us our wedding gift that we forgot to get from him last time we were in town, which was a really fine meditation bowl-slash-lamp made by his brother who is an excellent potter. We shipped it back home for safekeeping. Chaplain and his pals threw us a barbecue and made us eat all this really really delicious fish. We spent the next night with Happy which was less safe and more crazy.

The cemetary in Ogden is way creepier than the cemetaries in Boston and Somerville. Happy showed us the back road they used to bring in plague dead so townsfolk wouldn't know how many corpses there were. It's big enough that once you go in you can't see out. Apparently there's been a lot of ground shift because of water there, so in the older sections the bodies aren't underneath the stones. We heard some good horror stories about the place. scaryscary.

Next morning, we headed for Olympic National Park in Washington State, with ambitions to walk a 22 mile loop around the North Fork of the Quinault River.

We drove through a scenic part of Oregon to reach the Park.



We stopped in Washington at a Lavender farm, which Allison sniffed.



She liked it.

Day 12



We camped by the Colorado River near Arches National Park.

Day 11

Colorado National Monument

We had lunch with Liv on the roof of the Denver Post.

The above pictured farmer's market is where we bought the below mentioned delicious jerky.

Then we went to Roxborough State Park.


Also, we sweat and sweat and soaked and soaked in underground caves at Indian Springs.

We got all floppy.

Errata.

Everyone that we met in Indiana had a gold cross around his neck, a moustache, and an enormous can of Red Bull or Monster energy drink.

We read "World War Z" out loud in the car as we went from Pennsylvania to Indiana.

Now reading book 5 of the Dark Tower, "Wolves of the Calla". Allison's first time through, would be my second.


Misanthropy seems to be a condition caused mostly by isolation from the anthropes, which is problematic. The more people we talk to on the road here the better I like humans in general.



Good jerky :

www.oregontrailjerky.com

Yum.

Days 9&10: Denver, Colorado.

We accessed the interweb at the Gypsy House.

Day 8:

Mount Sunflower: highest point in Kansas.
Photos.

A Point of Interest.

Then we got to Liv!!! Yay! We made peach cobbler out of the peaches we had left from Evan's farm (thank you Evan). We had it for breakfast on days 9 and 10.

Day Seven. . . Middle America . . .

We left Jess' place early as she had an engagement with an equine friend of hers, then pulled off the road to:

Historic Blackwater, Missouri: breakfast at Back Roads, the only place to eat in the extremely small town.

We went to a shop modeled after a late 19th century trading post and bought an excellent wide brimmed hat and some stuff to keep mosquitoes away.

Then:

KANSAS

We were warned that driving through Kansas would be "mind numbing," "extremely boring," "flat," "featureless..." The old guy in the shop in Blackwater said "there's one good way to go through Kansas; at 11pm at 30,000 feet." Well, it was flat. But really. It wasn't so bad. I'd describe it as peaceful and serene. There was virtually no traffic, the speed limit was 75 mph, the sky was huge and every now and again there were enormous fields of sunflowers. Unlike New Jersey or Delaware, the highway takes you through beautiful fields with delapidated farmhouses, not ugly, smelly industrial buildings. It was nice. We liked it. Also, there was a wind farm you could see from 12 miles away.

The little black specks you can barely see in the grass are cows, to give you an idea of how huge these turbines are.

We pulled off at Abiline just to check it out. Only in America can the descendants of murderous rot-gut whores get to live so well. There was a lovely park with a swimming pool and skateboard ramps, some historic mansions, and a Purina dog food plant.




At around 7:30pm we saw a huge storm cloud and were warned of a dangerous thunderstorm with potential for golf ball sized hail that would be directly in our path until around 11:30. Having been driving since 9am in a different time zone, we decided it was high time to pull into a motel. So we did. The next morning we had a complimentary breakfast of biscuits and gravy and eggs. Mmmmm.

On I-70 West through Western Ohio at about 10 pm, we hit some truly horrible traffic...

Road construction had closed the right lane and just where that happened, in the left lane a tractor trailer had died. It took us about 2 hours to go 7 miles. The car started to rattle and overheat, so we stopped and slept in Englewood, Ohio. No pictures.

The next day (#5) we made it as far as Richmond, Indiana before we decided to take the car to a mechanic.


We stayed at the Holiday Inn while he replaced the water pump. We drove the rest of Sunday (Day 6) and got to Columbia Missouri, where we visited Jess Bowers. Fun is fun.

We passed a house on a county road in Ohio where several trailers were set up like billboards. The family living there is enraged at their neighbors and Judge Ward because of human waste being dumped in their freshwater pond, and the inaction of the county judiciary in regards to said dumping. . . Three trailers with their broadsides covered in angry lettering, detailing the grievances, and this artistic capstone:


Even without seeing the proof I am inclined to believe that they are in the right and that Judge Ward should indeed go to hell but ah, we are merely passing travellers.

Yay. This is the fellow who fed us our dinner on Day 4 of the trip. He is the owner and curator of Etta's Lunchbox Cafe in New Plymouth, Ohio. This is an exceptionally friendly person with a heavily canonized narrative version of his autobiography. I suspect that if you go there, you will hear many of the exact sentences that we heard. We liked him. I played his dulcimer. The food was tasty and the jalepenos were grown in his garden.

He has goats, llamas, a donkey, and chickens in the yard. Dogs and cats. . . He also had a lot of art back there that he had done... all of which was extremely weird and creepy considering his demeanor in person. I asked him if that was what he saw... he replied that it was what he experienced, and that without an outlet for the dark impulses lurking inside of him, well, who knows.

Allison took this picture of his llamas, and it came out looking exactly like one of the pencil drawings on the shelf in the museum, minus the ghostly undead image of Jim standing behind the llama on the left.

Our blood ran cold.

Day 4:

We drove from New Vrindaban to a county road in Ohio, where we put on our boots and headed down an old train track searching for the ghost town of Moonville Ohio. The enormous train tunnel gave us a clue that it might be nearby...


The train tracks had run across several tressels that crossed a snaky river. We searched for signs of dead Moonville with no luck. The closest we came to finding the town was a couple of skeletons off to the side of the trail next to a flashlight that was still lit. There was an odd smell of turpentine and lilacs. Suddenly, they were upon us:


Clearly the reanimated bodies of the two dead ghost hunters. They claimed they too were looking for the town and cemetary that they had seen advertised on a 'ghost town site' on the Internet. This is when we realized that there was no such place as the ghost town of Moonville, and that the web site was part of an elaborate plot to lure tourists into the woods and devour their souls. The ghosts leapt out of "Norah" and "Chris" and into our bodies. They ripped the flesh and organs from our skeletons, leaving the bones steaming in the water, and assumed our identities for the remainder of the trip.

Day 3: New Vrindaban, West Virginia.
After fixing us an incredibly delicious breakfast, Evan suggested we check out this golden palace in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia. It was built by a bunch of guys in their twenties with no building experience to honor their teacher. Evan knew the guy who manages their farm and told us we should try to meet him.
After a tour of the palace, we arrived at the farm just before they were going to have a community meeting about the farm's ability to support the community and an Indian man spoke about village farming in India. We were interested in hearing about this as we wish to have a community farm of our own some day. They invited us to stay for dinner. It was delicious! We had so much fun eating and talking and being in this beautiful place that time slipped away from us. We were invited to stay the night so we pitched our tent in their gated garden. The next morning we joined them for breakfast. Such hospitality and so many smiles! I don't know if I've ever encountered so many happy, relaxed, generous people. And unlike my preconceptions about Hari Krishnas, they seemed just like regular folk. Except maybe happier and friendlier.

We walked around their magnificent rose garden and lotus covered pond one more time, said goodbye to some tame peacocks who wander freely, and headed to Ohio.

Day 2: Morgantown, West Virginia: Visiting Evan!!!

Pleased to report that Evan seems to be doing well. He is working on West Virginia University's Soil Sciences farm, tending a garden and greenhouse for the purposes of science.
He took the day off and we went to Cooper's Rock state park and hiked around the Rock City. Insects kept dying right before I found them so I could go "oooo! pretty!" at them. I took a dead butterfly with me.

Photos.

Day 1: New York City. Objective: obtain fire poi from Dube. Mission successful.
Photo: traffic enforcement van parked in left turn lane, making left turn virtually impossible.



Later: Centralia, PA. Photo: "the end of the road" - defunct road overgrown with plants. Mysteriously the camera froze (completely unresponsive) after this picture, lens still extended. At the diner, the camera worked again and we viewed the picture. Interpret the floating orb beside me as you will.