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.