Falling to the Beat of Our Own Drum

There are times in life when plans A all the way through Z don’t end up working out. It’s at those times when a person resorts to animalistic need without regard for how he or she may be judged or whether or not his or her actions are in accordance with local rules and regulations. That was how our little gang of three was feeling when we crossed into Ohio late at night. It was drizzling rain when we pulled up at a roadside rest stop to make our beans for dinner and discuss our options for the coming evening. We had hit up family and friends and turns out that even with all three of us and in particular both Tweedy’s and Eric’s knack for networking not a single one of us had a connection in Ohio. We checked the map for any nearby national forests and once again came up dry. Next we started checking all of the nearby state parks to see if any didn’t have hours of operation, but all of them were already closed. Plans A through Z, and not a single decent possibility. It was time to exercise our creativity a bit.

First idea was to set up a tent right there at that rest stop, but after some looking around we found the signs that said camping was not allowed. Seeing as it was a rest stop on the side of the interstate we were pretty sure someone would catch sight of our six-foot-tall tent if we were to pitch camp there regardless. Maybe another roadside pull-off then? No, that seemed unlikely since we were just outside of a city. The ideas kept being fired back and forth and ultimately we decided on one of the more bizarre ideas that most people would probably never consider. We decided that good Christian folk are supposed to be all about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and visiting the fatherless and the widow. We are (in technical consideration) homeless, so we thought that it would be fair to give a nearby Christian church the opportunity to practice what it preached and set up camp by a church. It was a Wesleyan church that we ultimately ended up sleeping on the grounds of. Not only was it a church, but it was also a school. Thankfully we found a random bunch of trees that obscured the view of our tent so that we slept without being disturbed despite the fact that while we were breaking camp in the rain the parking lot was full of cars.

That morning we drove into a park that we had initially considered sleeping in to make some breakfast. It was called the Batelle Darby Metro Park, and it was quite comfortable despite the fact that it rained all morning while we ate our oatmeal, and even continued to drizzle as we hiked around a bit. Ultimately though I would put it down as a good destination.

So started a long day of just constantly being soaking wet. Our next destination was Grigg’s Nature Preserve. I have no idea how Tweedy even found this on Google Maps because the park is small enough when you walk up to it. The parking lot for it is just big enough for maybe a total of six cars, and even then you think you must be in the wrong place because on one side is a busy road, on the other is a residential neighborhood, across from that is a river that is so developed the banks of it are paved. The good thing about this is every visitor can clearly tell where he or she is supposed to go—the little opening in the barbed wire topped chain link fences. Once you step in though you are transported away from the signs of humanity. Especially that day with the rain pounding down. The little stream that the boardwalk we were walking along crossed had swollen the bounds of its usual banks and the whole place was soaked, it got even heavier when we got to the falls that we had initially come to see. It was a small natural mecca amongst the ceaseless sprawl of humanity. And our next stop was to prove to be the same thing. But first we basked in the spray of these falls combined with the rain from above.

This next set of falls was known as the Indian Run Falls, and there was a surprising number of people at those falls, especially considering the state of the weather. I thought for sure that we would end up being alone there, but I was mistaken. We ran into a few students making a commercial for Ohio State University, the school they all attended. I was more in the mood to enjoy the setting then to chat so I left Tweedy and Eric to it while I wandered on ahead. After admiring the falls we took refuge under a gazebo to make some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and plan where to take refuge from the rain for the next couple of hours. Tweedy and I were feeling the hurt of not getting our respective social media platforms updated so we convinced Eric that we needed to take refuge in a local coffee shop and get some work done.

The name of this Coffeehouse/Bar/Used bookstore was Kafe Kerouac. For those of you who do not know (which I am going to assume is a decent number of people seeing as even being an English major does not guarantee you will catch this reference) Kerouac was part of a literary movement during the 1950’s known as the Beat Poets. Some think that this self-appointed title is a reference to the beat of the jazz that they tried to make their writing sound and flow like, but according to the founders of the movement it actually referred to a feeling of being beaten physically, mentally, economically, and emotionally. Anyway, the reason that it was cool that we three traveling souls should wind up there is Kerouac and his contemporaries were famous for their love of road trips. In fact Kerouac’s most famous work is called On the Road. Anyway, I loved that little place, especially since I was also able to order a cappuccino name Hemingway. Unfortunately my laptop decided to take the entire time we were there to update so I didn’t get much written at that point. Eric went about talking to people though and managed to meet a delightful young lady who had a little garden that she left the coffeehouse to go back to in order to bring us back some fresh peppers and tomatoes. Now we didn’t find this out until a couple days later but some of those peppers were prime—in other words they turned our beans into an almost impossible to eat due to heat batch of deliciousness for several nights in a row. We all loved them. Wish I remembered her name so that I could give her a shout out for growing the best peppers ever.

That night we managed to find some people willing to give us space inside of their home to sleep and dry up in. These two loving ladies would be Tony and Linda. Spry ladies that were supposedly encroaching upon the later years of life, but you would never guess it from the kind of energy they had. They treated us to the use of their stove, showers, and even provided ice cream and Oreos for us to eat. We once again ended up arriving a little late, but Tony and Linda didn’t seem to mind and we had a fantastic conversation with them until it was time to fall asleep. The next day we said goodbye to our new found friends and continued on through Ohio.

First stop was Brandywine Falls inside Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was a Saturday and the clouds had finally cleared away, which we were happy for. What we were not expecting was the huge crowd of people at the falls that resulted from it being a beautiful Saturday. We’re so used to wandering off the beaten path or visiting places at the strangest hours that we forget other people like to see the same things we do and just manage to do it at a different time and day then we are usually there. Still we had an enjoyable time and even managed to do a bit of off-trail wandering in order to get a view of the falls from the base.

On our way up from this little detour Eric bumped into what I can only assume was a couple out for perhaps their first date ever. I was able to glean this information from the guy while Eric was chatting up the girl for nearly thirty-minutes straight. As far as I can tell he was not intentionally hijacking the poor little guy’s date. In fact I think the girl was doing as much talking as Eric was if not more. But anyway, we all chatted a bit and then completed the loop around the park before continuing on to yet another set of waterfalls. (Ohio seems to have a huge assortment of waterfalls which makes little to no sense when you are me and thing the state is pretty flat. Of course as far as the Midwest goes it can almost be considered mountainous.)

Blue Hen Falls were located in that same National Park (Cuyahoga Valley), and once again we encountered an endless flow of people, but once again this didn’t keep us from wandering far off trail, but not after first checking out the two falls that all the people were there to see in the first place.

It was down past the second falls where we just kept on wandering until we happened upon a random skiing hill. This comes back to the point that I made earlier where as a Westerner I thought Ohio was just slightly better than Nebraska as far as topographical variation goes, but to the Midwesterners this was mountain country. In Colorado that skiing hill would have barely been considered steep and long enough for sledding let alone skiing and yet this hill had ski lifts that we of course had to climb around on. This included doing a bit of hand over hand swinging up and down the cable that held the seats at the bottom while just climbing on top of the entire fixture once we hiked to the top of the hill where we were able to get some fantastic pictures of the surrounding area.

Some more wandering eventually led us back to the main trail and the crowds of people, but not before I sunk up to my knees in mud (but only for a short moment since I was running—and no, I didn’t break my leg or twist my ankle when my leg suddenly dropped a foot and a half deeper than I was expecting *knock on wood*) and climbed a random vine halfway up a tree.

On our way to our next destination for the day we passed a dead deer on the side of the road, which Eric decided had been hit recently enough for us to take a slab of meat from it and save it for our beans at a later time. So ultimately we found ourselves up in Cleveland by Lake Erie in Wildwood State Park. We had started in another random lakeside park, but apparently all the rich people around that park owned it collectively and the public was not welcome. Yeah, those filthy dirty little (words that are not safe for little sisters) rich people. But the other park worked just as well for drying out our tent and skipping rocks before we continued on.

The aim was initially to get into Pennsylvania that night and stay somewhere in Allegheny National Forest, but as we were on our way Eric heard from his older sister Anne who was actually rather close to us but heading in the opposite direction back to Colorado. We decided Eric better take advantage of this opportunity to meet up with family on the road so we met up with her at a Burger King in Middlefield, Ohio where we bumped into a van full of Amish while we were waiting for her that we chatted up before they had to head home.

We chatted for a while with Annie there in the Burger King and then decided that neither of us were going to get to where we were initially planning on being that night so Annie did the daring thing and set up camp with us in the middle of a state games land that night. The next morning we drove up to Geneva State Park with Annie, once again considering getting into Lake Erie, but it was raining again, so instead we made some breakfast and just messed around while we let the tent dry once again under a giant awning. At that point it was time to say goodbye to Annie and to the state of Ohio.

I was finally going to go “home” to Pennsylvania, and my was I excited!

Blues Bars and Mega Malls

First and foremost I must apologize for my severe lack of updates over the past couple of weeks, I'll try to remedy that over the next few days, but for now here is the tale of our wanderings through Minnesota (and a bit of lower Wisconsin).

We have a knack for showing up on doorsteps late at night, and the night we rolled into lower Wisconsin was no different. It was around ten o’ clock when we knocked on the door of Tweedy’s uncle's home (getting in as many apostrophes in a single go as I can manage). I don't know how, but Tweedy seems to have family scattered all over the country. They had been there for us in previous states and we have stayed with other family members of his since. All of my family lives out West, so you probably won’t hear any mention of the three of us staying with my extended family until we end up on the other side of the country. Just had to get that out there because it will sound like I’m riding the coattails of the other two for the next couple months, but don’t worry, my family will eventually make an appearance.

Tweedy’s uncle lived in lower Wisconsin—Mt Horeb to be exact. He and Tweedy’s grandfather were kind enough to share with us the leftovers from the dinner that was prepared earlier that day while we sat around and chatted for a while before setting up our beds in the basement. The amount of driving that we had done that day left our legs a little restless, so after we set up our beds we got back up and went outside to go on a late night walk. It’s funny how a person can feel so tired and yet remain awake for several more hours just in order to take advantage of the chance to stretch out the body. And stretch we did. In all honesty we took stretching to the next level by doing a little bit of a workout routine/set of childish challenges on a playground that was built by the side of a little lake. (I don’t know if it was technically a lake, but it was one of those bodies of water that is much bigger than a Coloradan is used to seeing, in other words to me it was a lake even if the locals thought of it more like a pond.) These little challenges involved muscle-ups on the cross bar holding the swings and creating new and difficult ways to cross the playground equipment. It took nearly two hours but then the wiggles were out and we were able to fall asleep with no difficulty.

  

The next morning we awoke and were treated to a breakfast by Tweedy’s uncle. On top of the breakfast his uncle also sent us off with some more food to hold us over until we encountered another gracious family or we broke down and bought some food ourselves (as it is we’ve only had to purchase food very rarely, in fact the only food we ever “have to” buy are fresh loaves of bread—people are pretty awesome and giving). After a little bit of conversation we were back on the road.

I had heard from one of my good friends and dance partners from back in Denver that there was a good blues dancing scene in Minneapolis that had weekly blues dancing every Tuesday night, and it just so happened that it was a Tuesday and it was time for us to head into Minnesota, but not until we enjoyed a little bit of what lower Wisconsin has to offer. This meant stopping off at a little state park on our way up to Minneapolis. We found a beautiful hike at this park that culminated in a picturesque view of the Mississippi from atop a bluff that bordered it.

It was a beautiful view, but we did not linger for very long. The mosquitoes were out and were waging a war against us. I rolled down my sleeves, popped my collar, and pulled my hat down as far as I could and still they found ways in and just kept feasting on me. Tweedy and Eric also collected quite a few battle wounds. I launched an offensive against them as well, but it was not enough, even when I got over 20 swatted. Their numbers were just too great, so we retreated to the cars and drove from the swarm, next stop was Minneapolis.

There needs to be a little insert here. See I am just going to call all the city activities that we engaged in during the next couple of days as happening in Minneapolis. The truth is that Minneapolis is just one of two cities that make up a rather large and sprawling metro area. The other city is St Paul and together with Minneapolis they make up the Twin Cities area. Still I’m just going to call it Minneapolis. Hopefully the mentioning of St Paul will keep locals from getting too angry at me though. Not like everyone reading this will be able to tell that some of the places I mention are actually in the St Paul area, but I thought I would tread on the safe side just in case.

Another little note I need to make before I go into the details of the rest of the night though, otherwise the night won’t seem as incredible as it was to me. I mentioned in earlier posts that I’m a blues dancer. There is this funny thing that happens among blues dancing communities—most of the time the dancers have no idea about the local blues music scene and the local blues music scene has no idea that there is a blues dancing scene. Denver does its best to remedy this by inviting blues bands (often locals) to perform at the weekly blues dance at least once a month, but most blues dancing scenes aren't quite so lucky. I rolled up to the location where the local blues dancers meet to dance in Minneapolis expecting this scene to be separate from the blues music scene as well, but almost immediately I began to question my original assumption.

The name of the joint was Wilebski’s Blues Saloon. People standing outside the bar looked more like bar regulars than dancers (not to say bar regulars have a certain look, but dancers are usually pretty easy to make out, they usually move in groups or—after some dancing—pairs, and they have this happy glow and tendency to be laughing/singing/moving almost constantly). Inside there was a live blues band playing, people gathered around the bar in an adjacent room to the music, and then an empty floor in front of the band. I looked around with a bit of confusion. I was expecting there to be nothing but dancers inside, but instead there was no dancing even happening at the moment, and a live band playing some killer music. Turns out it was the weekly blues jam night. A jam is when visiting artists can sign up to play together with other locals. They don’t have to bring a band, just their own instrument, and then most of the songs are just improvised. For about thirty minutes we just sat and listened while I waited for the dancers to reveal themselves, and soon enough they did so. It started with them conglomerating at a booth and then after some chatting they started to take to the floor.

After getting a decent idea as to who were the dancers I began to ask different girls to dance and continued to dance until about 10:45, at which point most of the dancers left. This was a much shorter period of dancing than I am used to. Back in Colorado the shortest dance was three hours, and usually I personally try to get in four hours of dancing if I'm going out dancing for the night. But this was just a small group, and so once they had all danced with each other a couple times they would just head out and get some sleep so they could function at their jobs the next day. (Why one needs sleep more than dancing is something I will never understand) Since I was dancing I didn’t get any pictures, but Eric has already posted a video that contains a short clip of me dancing.

That night we didn’t have a place to stay. This being the case we had to do some improvising, which began with making dinner on our camping stove in the parking lot back behind the blues bar. To this day that was still the most unique situation in which I have ever prepared a dinner. After eating we headed to a nearby state park that had a campground and snuck into a campsite that one usually needs to pay for. Thankfully no one would ever think someone would roll in to a campsite at 1:00 in the morning on a Wednesday, so we managed to get away with a free night of sleep before breaking camp and driving back into town to check out The Mall of America the next day. We figured you can’t be in Minneapolis and not see The Mall of America. It lives up to the legend of being a giant mall. Though it is just a mall and none of us were in the mood to spend money since we have such a tight budget. We did spring to pay for riding one of the roller coasters though. That’s a rare enough experience that it could legitimize spending seven dollars.

After the mall it was time to get out of the city and back into nature, so we drove up to northern Minnesota to camp for the night in a national forest. We then woke up and drove into Voyageurs National Park. I have a feeling that most people have not heard of this park because I had never heard of it and it is free to get into, and only the not-so-well-known parks have free admission. Here's a brief history of the park based on the short video that we watched in the visitor's center. It is part of a water system that runs through lakes both in Canada and the United States and was part of a trade route run by French fur traders in the 16-1700’s. These fur traders were known as Voyageurs, hence the name of the park. It is best accessed by boat—the same way the Voyageurs accessed the area—most of it is either islands or the water surrounding the islands and they build no roads between the islands for land lubbers like ourselves. We had to be satisfied with hiking around on the coast while admiring the islands from afar.

Almost more remarkable than all the islands were all the mushrooms. There were so many that it would take a slideshow to show all of them rather than just post four pages worth of mushroom pictures. Thankfully Eric already has a slideshow of all the mushrooms up on his Youtube channel so I can focus on the writing. (If you clicked on the earlier link you've already seen them)

There in Voyageurs National Park was also the first time we tried foraging for food, and what we found the most of was a lichen known as rock tripe. This lichen is quite dry during the fall season, but after being boiled in water it takes on a texture like a mushroom and doesn’t have much taste, so nothing to complain about or write home about (just enough to make a mention of in a blog). We also tried out the roots of lily pads and roots and stalks of cattails. Those were not near as satisfying or easy to prepare so we didn’t use them any more afterwards, but that rock tripe we feasted on and included it in the next few editions of our dinner beans. We also came across a random trove of old buried bottles and what appeared to be charcoal based bars of soap. I’ll let you be the judge of what you think those strange black squares wrapped in red and white plastic are.

That night we went back to the same place we camped the night before. The next day we woke up and drove into another national forest where we spent the majority of the evening. We did a little bushwhacking and stumbled across some random animal skulls. One of which we are fairly certain was a beaver skull and the other most likely was a white tail deer skull. We made a strong fire that night and put on some pine needles that filled the surrounding forest with the aroma of rosemary. The next morning we made one of the more ridiculous meals we’ve made on the trip—fried pickles. After the pickles it was back on the road and on into upper Wisconsin.

Missouri... Mizory... Mizery... Misery

I don’t know what kind of spell Missouri cast over us, but for some reason as hard as I think I cannot recall anything super interesting happening the first couple days that we were there. We woke up on the fifth of September with the intention of documenting what had already happened so far on our trip. You know, get the journals written, the photos compiled, the videos edited, and of course, the blogs written. But as you will all have noticed at this point, I only posted one blog that day, and that blog was as short as could be seeing as the subject matter was Kansas. As far as productivity was going for that day we were down near zero.

“Still something must have happened” you say, and to that I nod my head a bit and try my best to recall what we did with all the time that we had that day. Here is a real streamlined approach to it (because wasting words on doing nothing seems like such a lousy thing to do, of course I suppose that is exactly what I’m doing now, how many words have I shoved in this parenthetical statement already? Okay, maybe wasting words on nothing is more up my alleyway after all).

1.         Wake up and I make the morning oatmeal out on the front porch after Katt leaves for work. (Morning oatmeal is pretty much a sweeter rendition of evening beans, for this particular oatmeal I accidentally overloaded on the amount of molasses that I included, something that I have made sure to avoid since)
2.          Sit around and try to get some work done on social media outlets while trying to ignore the rising heat and humidity.
3.         Move around to the back side of the building to get some shade and snack on some food.
4.         Realize that we really are getting nothing done plus we can’t get access to the wifi at the back of the building so maybe we should go see if we can find the Missouri river.
5.         Wander aimlessly through town with a vague idea of the direction we should be going.
6.         Run into a random wall of trees in the middle of town and try and make our way through the brush eventually finding ourselves in a heavily wooded patch of land right in the middle of the city, eventually get out and back to the road.
7.         Decide to go back and get the cars and drive to the river.
8.         Get waylaid by stumbling across a whole bunch of Monarch Butterfly Chrysalises.
9.         Run into Katt when she gets home, find out we can check out the pool and community center there at the apartment complex
10.       Check out the pool and community center at the apartment complex
11.        Do a tiny bit of writing.
12.        Have a small little party to celebrate my birthday as we slip into September 6^th

Wow, that is quite a few words I wasted on nothing. And that was even with breaking it down to bullet points. Anyway, my birthday, September 6^th, came in with everyone waking up late and then once everyone was awake Katt treated us all to my birthday lunch. It was at a popular Kansas City chain restaurant called 54^th Street Pub and Eatery. The sandwiches there were beyond delicious, and the local beer I tried was delicious—very smooth, slight hint of fruit, and only a bit of bitterness on the finish. Once again, major shout-out to Katt for being the best hostess ever.

After hanging out for a bit longer we got in our cars and drove a few hundred miles to Jefferson City where we met up with Aaron, an old roommate of Tweedy’s and Eric’s (since I had hung around those two constantly I knew him as well). He offered us a floor to crash on in a room that had enough air conditioning to keep us at a decent temperature to fall asleep at—a rare thing to find in the state of misery… I mean Missouri. Our time at Aaron’s only extended through the night, then we were up and on the road again the next day on the search to find a cave.

Missouri is known for being the cave state and so we were hoping to find some cave that did not have any of the tourist walks in it, so that we could just go spelunking in it without anyone constantly staring over our shoulders, unfortunately that was not what ended up happening. We found Meramec Caverns on the map and so decided to head towards that cave since it also appeared to be near a state park. Our reasoning was even if Meramec Caverns was a tourist trap then at least we could wander through the state park and perhaps find a cave that was free of the irritating tour guides and regulations and planned routes through easily accessible segments of cave.

We reached the outskirts of Meramec and Eric and Tweedy had the keen desire to rinse off beforehand because they had been traveling through the land of endless humid heat in a car that had no air conditioning (personally I felt great, which will surprise my family since they all think my car has a horrible air conditioning system—turns out that all you have to do for it to work at 100% is fill the car with a whole bunch of stuff and drive through states with high humidity). So we stopped off at a river and swam around for a bit before going on to the cave entrance.

Meramec Caverns was indeed a tourist trap, and the price for a single adult was high above what we agreed to turn down ($15 had been our agreed maximum, the price was $23). We tried haggling with the tour guide behind the counter along with trying to figure out caves that we could go into without paying a fee. He mentioned a few places (actually he mentioned ten different locations, though didn’t include any directions to any of them) along with some encyclopedic type knowledge about the caves and types of caves in the state of Missouri. Though despite all of his knowledge we ended up skipping finding a cave to go spelunking in and instead headed on to a nearby state park called Elephant Rock.

To sum up Elephant Rock—it looks like a little bit of Colorado in the middle of Misery, I mean Missouri.

We hiked all over the rocks and even all the way to the opposite side of the park while we were in search of one of Jesse James’ hideouts that one of the people there told us about. He was going to give us very specific directions, but Tweedy didn’t want to hear them for some reason. Because of that we never found his old hideout, but we did find two old granite quarries that had since filled with water. If it hadn’t been sitting water we probably would have jumped in.

We stayed there until the sun dipped down below the horizon, even made some food at one of the park benches, and then we were on the road for Illinois.

For video check out these channels on YouTube: Eat2Pigs and itawtidid

Living Like a Husker

Kansas—due to being rather flat and uninteresting—took just a few hours, and rather late at night we ended up crossing into Nebraska.

Eric’s Great Uncle Harry had offered us a place to camp on his property, and so we were bent on getting all the way to Burwell, Nebraska that night. Get there we did at a little past midnight and set up a super spacious five-person tent. I have just a 3 or 4 person tent so it is nowhere near as luxurious, especially with three big dudes sleeping in it. We would all run into each other and end up accidentally spooning or something. Thank goodness that Tweedy found the five-person tent. My big ol’ memory foam pad gives me all the space I need and I sleep on that like a baby. Eric and Tweedy don’t have nearly as comfortable of sleeping pads as I do, but then they’re trying to keep all of their stuff in an even smaller vehicle.

So there were pulling up to Uncle Harry’s property at nearly 12:00 in the morning. It took a moment taking care of everything in the dark, but eventually we were all in the tent and passed clean out. I mean as far as non-athletic activities go, driving ranks pretty high up there for quotient of exhaustion to time spent doing the activity. I say this to try and legitimize the fact that we did not wake up until nearly 11:00 the next day, and we were woken up by Uncle Harry.

Uncle Harry will remain one of the legends of the trip and will be spoken of with a measure of reverence by all of us for years to come. This in no way means that he was a reverent individual, almost anything but (though he did have us come to church with him on Sunday morning). He was sarcastic as could be and loved spinning tales. Picture a nearly eighty-year-old man who has spent his life working the soil—sun worn, hands callused, and entire body still strong and wiry. This was the man that shouted into our tent to get up and quit being lazy. He made a very legitimate point that we were letting the day slip away. It took a moment to drag our groggy butts out of the tent, but then we got to have the grand tour of Uncle Harry’s property and chat with him about all of the ventures that he had a hand in throughout the years.

I think most people have heard of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell—the technology that could replace the gasoline combustion motor—well he had created conversion kits for combustion engines. They only would cost the consumer $2000 with installation and managed to improve the gas mileage of a Ford SUV to 100 miles per gallon. Unfortunately, this entire venture was shut down by the government, both by legal indictments and restriction of contracting and money flow. I’m not really one to believe in conspiracy theories, but I have been wondering why in the world I have not heard anything else about Hydrogen Fuel Cells after Honda did a test of a vehicle in Sacramento, CA and a city in Japan as well. It would all make sense if the oil companies that run the government just wanted the project shut down… just throwing that idea out there.

The crowning piece of Uncle Harry’s property was the river. We spent the greater majority of the day there by the water, and for good reason. Swimmable water is hard to find outdoors in the home state. In Colorado the water is always cold because it is only supplied by snowmelt and cold mountain springs. This river was warm, at least warm in comparison. So we waded through it and rinsed in it and just hung out in it for hours.

After that Uncle Harry took us out for lunch at a fun little cowboy bar in town. That little place had more character in it than any of the commercial bars I’ve ever been to. Plaques and pictures hung all over, including snippets from local newspapers. All of the paraphernalia served to remind the attendant that he or she was indeed in the country. The burgers that we had tasted delicious as well, of course that was the first thing we had eaten aside from beans, oats, or dried fruit. Back on the farm we helped the women set up for something called the Junk Jaunt that covers over 200 miles in Nebraska. This is an annual event where people from across the country visit different properties where antique pieces are sold that were collected during the previous year. Apparently it’s a pretty big thing. The property that we stayed on had a huge yard, 4 car garage, and a two story shed that was about 900 square feet and all of that ends up getting loaded with the antiques that will be sold to the people touring through.

Of course once that work was done there was one thing left to do. Go back to the river! And the river is where we remained until about midnight, cooking up a pot of the beans which are already becoming the favorite treat of the evening. I’m the chef on the trip, and I try to do the best I can to change up what goes into the mixture every evening. That particular night we had fresh vegetables from the garden, some bits of apple from the apple trees on the property, wild herb, and a dash of hot sauce. All of that was mixed into a base mixture that included baked beans, a can of chili, and some instant potatoes (those add salt and act as a thickening agent as well as a filler). Trust me, it tasted good. Good enough that I could not stop shoveling the mixture in until there was nothing at all left in the pan. Maybe it was just that I was hungry from playing in the water all day though. Or maybe it was an affect of all the smoke off of our little fire by the river.

The next day we woke up and broke down the tent. There was a moment of joining our hosts at the church they attended (a nice catholic church there in Burwell) before we went back to say thank you and goodbye before heading on for Lincoln, Nebraska. We were going there partially because Tweedy knew someone there and partially because, hey, it’s me. It really was just a stop off on the way into Kansas City. We arrived in Lincoln at the University of Nebraska at around seven o’ clock at night just to find out that Tweedy’s friend was not feeling good and so we had no one to see. With that being the case and the sun already on its way down we decided we would book it for Kansas City so that we could sleep inside that night.

Once again we crossed a state line when it was dark out.

The drive continued until about midnight when we met up with an old friend of Tweedy’s and Eric’s.

As far as chill and hospitable people go I’m pretty sure Katt would rank in the top 100 in the world. She let three guys roll into her place after midnight and set up camp in the living room of her apartment, not to mention that she made us some bomb tacos when we arrived. Once again it was the exhaustion of a long night of driving and we found ourselves crashing pretty hard just to wake up the next morning in our third state: Missouri.  

Kansas... Yeah

I decided that the way to handle the road trip across the nation would be to give at least one blog post for each state. And our first stop was Kansas.

The day was September 2, 2016. I got up early and packed up my car then picked up David Tweedy and then met up with Eric Tedesco at his place in Parker. We said goodbye to our families in turn and snapped a photo to commemorate the beginning of the trip.

First stop was the great state of Kansas.

Now I spent a while considering just what I should say about Kansas since there is just so much in this state. I mean it’s Kansas.

So, Kansas… Yeah. It’s flat.

That’s all I’ve got for you as far as Kansas goes.

Next stop, Nebraska

Cliff Hangers

Now I don’t know how many people have ever woken up inside of a national park, but I would recommend putting it on the bucket list. Up in the mountains it had been a bit too chilly for me. Out there on the edge of the canyon I woke in weather that I felt comfortable going around in a t-shirt with. (That’s really saying something for a guy who needs four layers to go out in 32° weather.) It was a beautiful sight to see and hear in the morning as well: the crashing of the river several hundred feet below with great dark rock rising out of it.

I took the first hour of the day to admire the highly underappreciated canyon before heading on to complete my collection of the four National Parks in Colorado. This meant driving for another four and a half hours down to Mesa Verde National Park. This drive included a winding road that was one of the best drives I have ever taken. If my memory serves me correctly (which, quite honestly, is a long shot—I hardly ever trust my memory myself, so I would encourage you to approach it with the same trepidation) it was Colorado Highway 92. The curves were beautiful hairpins with hills ascending and descending. I got to really slam through all of the gears in my little Honda CR-V. This is a rarity because I am already up into fifth gear by 35 miles per hour. Honestly, there is hardly any horsepower in that little engine. Still love it though.

After the 4.5 hours of driving I managed to pull into the park around 3:30, but I had no idea how huge the park was. It was a 30 mile drive in to get to the hike that I wanted to go on. That was about an hour of driving just to get to the trailhead. Not to mention that I was only 40 miles from hitting 400 miles on my tank, which is much further than I’ve gone on a single take before, but I was not about to turn around and go back five miles down the road to fill up my tank. That would take even more time, and all the sky around the park was already looking dark and ominous. In I drove, taking advantage of every downhill—riding it with my foot on the clutch—which made my approach to some of the hair pin turns a bit faster than they should have been in an SUV. Still, I made it alive and that is all that matters.

Usually Mesa Verde is one of the more crowded parks, so I was expecting a huge crowd of people, but instead there was hardly anyone there when I arrived. One of the park rangers told me that things die down during August for some bizarre reason. Because apparently it all picks back up again in September when a whole bunch of tourist groups start coming by in bus loads. But in August things are slow. So I got two National Parks almost all too myself, at least there were no other people on the trail with me so I got to take my time reading the signs and learning about the different parts of the architecture. Most people think of the cliff dwellings when they hear about Mesa Verde National Park, but before the natives ever lived on the face of the cliffs they just lived on the top of the mesas. Which is what I saw first. The best part are the Kivas.

I can’t help but imagine Native Americans tripping out on something while holding religious rituals inside of these earthen pits. The interesting thing is that they were most common during the older generations and later generations just filled them in, sometimes even using them to dump trash in. There’s one way to really rebel against the faith of your fathers.

After touring the ruins on top of the mesa I went to check out the cliff dwellings, and honestly that is where the real excitement lies.

Look at those places! Who gets it in their head that just living on top of flat ground doesn’t sound exciting anymore. They were probably all sitting in the Kiva passing the peace pipe and one guy just said, “Ever see those holes in the cliffs around here?”

“Yeah man, those look pretty cool.”

“Wouldn’t it be awesome to put one of these Kivas in one of those holes?”

“Dude, that would be sweet! It would be like underground, but also above ground, and then there would be this epic drop right outside of the door. And then only cool people who can climb like bosses could get in there.”

“Totally! We should definitely do that man. Then we wouldn’t have to have around all the old and sick people and the women and children while we were hanging out and smoking the peace pipe.”

And then they made the kiva and then the women, children, and sick people started just busting up the party and then they just decided, “Heck, if everyone is going to keep on coming down here to bug us we might as well build the entire town into the cliff.” There, that is my story of how and why the cliff dwellings came to be. There were no wars or anything like that, just a few guys trying to get some guy time, failing, and then everyone moving in because they all thought it was pretty cool.

Personally I would not have been one of the cool people who would be capable of making it to the Kiva. Good ol’ Darwin would have snatched me out of that gene pool in a second. I preferred snapping pictures from afar. And after my pictures I managed to get my car back out of the park and to the gas pump without the fuel light coming on. Then I continued driving until I got into Durango and pulled my car over into a Walmart parking lot where I slept the night after spoiling myself and buying some doughnuts, a sandwich, and a Lunchable. That is getting spoiled when compared to just eating packets of salmon or tuna along with a can of beans occasionally.

Next morning I woke up with a text from my Mom telling me that my little sister needed to see me update my blog, so I went and spent the morning getting a blog post written and pictures uploaded at the public library (the Durango library is a bumpin' place) before going and taking a ten-mile hike. This hike started at a random pull off on the side of the road. I saw a sign that said trailhead, and the way I am with constantly craving a hike I decided to pull over and give it a look. Turned out it was supposed to be a mountain biking trail, but I went hiking on it any way. Something tells me that mountain bikers hate having people just hiking on the trails—just an extra obstacle you have to watch out for and all. Still, I didn’t much care, it was a beautiful day that was just begging me to go hiking during it. And so I wandered around for about 4 hours. Found some good lookout points too.

It was a huge system of trails, which made the sign at the foot of the trail a liar, because it claimed that it was just a single loop, but the map up the trail a ways said quite differently. The red is the route I ended up taking.

After the hike it was back to more driving. Right as the sun was setting I ended up just pulling up a random road that claimed to be National Forest access. I found a nice overlook where I could watch the sunset and then I kicked back and smoked a very nice cigar while the sun fell behind the mountains. It was the perfect end to the evening, and almost an end to all of my adventures by myself. The next day I would just end up driving home, but not before waking up and finding giant elk hoof prints going around my car. Apparently something about my car got it’s attention, or maybe I was just snoring way too loud and it showed up to see if it could shut me up. Whatever the case, those were definitely some giant hoof prints.

And so my lonesome wanderings came to an end. Stay tuned for the post going up tomorrow about the beginning of the wanderings of the 3 Men on the Bummel.

Random Things and Hot Springs

I woke up warm and comfortable AND… miracle of miracles, DRY! I cannot tell you just how happy Rachel letting me sleep on her couch made me. Not only that but the angel made me toast and eggs in the morning! That was the most gourmet meal I had during all of my lonesome ramblings, even when I let myself splurge near the end of the week. However, don’t let me get ahead of myself.

At one point I had planned to go and hike to Conundrum Hot Springs, but it was a Saturday and that trail was already known as one that got way too busy. Not to mention that I had driven down to it the night prior and at night the trailhead for a sixteen-mile roundtrip hike was already almost completely full. Sure hot springs sounded excellent after tearing my legs to pieces during the twelve-mile hike that I had done the day prior, but crowded trails weren’t really my cup of tea. I had heard though that on that particular weekend all the National Parks were free because it was the 100^th Birthday of the National Parks on August 25, 2016. Which means that everyone needs to get out to the National Parks this year to celebrate 100 years of National Parks, along with the fact that they are considering putting limits on the number of visitors each park allows in each year. Get in while you still can!

For me there was also another reason to go check out the other National Parks in Colorado. I had already gotten to Rocky Mountain National Park and The Great Sand Dunes National Park earlier this year and now I wanted to complete my collection of the four Colorado National Parks (that’s a pretty high number for a single state too, just in case you didn’t realize—Colorado for the Win!). The closest one was the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and it looked like I would be able to stop along the way at another ghost town—Marble, CO. I set the course and hit the road. 

It took me nearly thirty minutes to realize I was on the same road I had taken a couple years prior to get to Blues Recess in Paonia, Colorado. I have to throw in a little aside here about how freaking awesome it is to Blues and Fusion dance on the top of a bus in the middle of beautiful mountainous country. (if anyone wants to know what either of those types of dancing are just say in the comments and I'll find someone on my road trip to do a demo of both that I will record and I'll make a post specifically for explaining them). Unfortunately they have since stopped coming through Colorado and I would just like to make my personal plea… PLEASE COME BACK TO COLORADO, RECESS!!!! Now back from my aside—on our way to Recess that year we had stopped at some random, undeveloped hot springs that were just on the side of the road. I began to keep my eyes peeled and my windows rolled down so I could catch the scent of sulfur. Turns out neither of those things were absolutely needed since the pull off had a few cars there already (though I did smell the air for that sulfur scent just to verify that I had found the place).

I descended the little path to the side of the river that the springs fed into with the goal in mind of just soaking my feet and calves, which did still ache slightly after the excursion up the peaks the previous day. The big pool had a couple guys hanging out in it and I plopped myself down at a distance that was close enough to hold conversation but not so close as to appear creepy. (At least that was my intent, but wearing a straw fedora and purple rimmed sunglasses might have made the vicinity I had chosen still a little creepy.) Once again I had found people that were not natives and were in fact part of the great post-marijuana legalization migration, though honestly those that stick around in Colorado don’t just do so for the prime herb. As a nearly native individual (I spent the first five years of my life in California *gasp*) I understand that Colorado is just intoxicating and impossible to leave forever. My mom would disagree, but then she hates snow, wind, cold, winter, things losing leaves and dying, hail, lightning storms, and pretty much every part of the year in Colorado aside from June to July (maybe May and August can be thrown in if it is a warm and dry year). But anyway, these individuals came from the Midwest, one from Wisconsin somewhere and the other from Chicago, Illinois. So after either of those places Colorado is just about a perfect paradise. I say this before I’ve spent much time in either place so really it's just me being my generally offensive self.

I chatted with these two for a while and then a somewhat hippie looking girl joined us (my generation has done its best at reviving the hippie aesthetic, and sometimes I think we’ve even done a more complete job of it then the flower children of the seventies). But yeah, eventually the guys left and then the hippie girl asked if I was just going to just sit there and soak my feet or actually get in. It took no more goading, I was soon stripped down to my boxer briefs and into the little rock pool. (It almost always only takes that much encouragement, my older sister would know—just suggest the idea and chances are I’ll do it.) Turns out the hippie girl had a name, Christine, and then we were joined by some people from North Carolina and another hippie type boy who didn’t say much and then a snowboard “jock?” and a couple friends that were visiting him from out of town. The place was a party, beer included, I even got one from the hippie girl. It was a very good Saturday afternoon, but I had a National Park to get to before the sun went down. Eventually I got back on the road  and even maintained the intention of stopping by Marble, CO.

I did indeed get to Marble, but I did not even bother trying to locate the quarry, though I saw lots of beautiful marble sculptures that the residents had created. Still I did not even get out of the car to snap any pictures so… click here to see other people’s pictures of Marble, CO. I know, it’s just as bad as the Trump Campaign using the first picture of a Black Family they found when they Google searched the term, but you have to remember that I had a National Park to get to.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is the National Park that apparently hardly anyone knows about, especially the North Rim. So if you want to see a beautiful National Park without having to deal with those pesky things that the world knows as your fellow human beings, then you should definitely check out the Black Canyon. It was just a little after five o’clock when I parked my car and got out to go for the seven-mile round-trip hike that followed the north rim of the canyon. Some people might consider this too late for such a hike, but I’m awesome… and also rather stupid, so I set off, and got back to my car before eight o’clock. And that was with a big old backpack on my back and a big old camera hanging from my neck. I even managed to snap some great pictures for you all.

At the end of the hiking I decided to stay there at the park overnight, though I would not be camping since my tent was still soaked. Still I got to sit down at a park bench to read and do some journaling, and no one looked at me weird as I resituated my car so it could become a sleep-able space.

I did not have very many pictures for you all for this part of the trip. I hope the writing by itself was not too droll, but don’t worry, I should have more pictures for the next post. And don’t forget, not the next post, but the one after, will begin the Bummel of my friends and I.

Land of the Gods

Just in case anyone was wondering, waking up wet cold and achy in the front seat of a car is not the way you want to start off the day right before you go and hike a couple fourteeners. And of course less than an hour before I began hiking at the Missouri Gulch trailhead that was the exact state I found myself in.

It took a little while to pack up the soaking wet tent and to reorganize my car so that I would be able to find everything in it, but eventually I found myself with the car all packed up and standing at the foot of a trail that I was planning to summit three fourteeners on that very day.

The reader should know that I hate being cold. Absolutely hate it! I will be the biggest sissy and wear upwards of five layers in the winter just to keep from being cold. Add being wet into the mix and I usually then decide that it really looks like a great idea to stay inside underneath several blankets reading a book or binge watching whichever random TV show I happen to stumble across on Amazon. Well that morning I was cold and wet and facing the prospect of some major physical exertion. Thankfully if there is one thing that overpowers my hatred of physical discomfort it is my bullheadedness when faced with a difficult physical task. (Not mental task or something that will take more than a few days though, if faced with something like that I pick the couch almost immediately, as the incredible lack of completed homework assignments over the years can attest to.)

My hatred of being cold and wet is still present though. Instead of five layers I only had four (it was only August after all): T-shirt, Sweater, another sweater, and a heavy jacket. Not to mention the rain suit that I had in my pack just in case the clouds that were still lingering decided to tear asunder and let the rains (or—God please no—snow) drown me. I ran into a couple from New Mexico as I started up the trail. They were celebrating the husband’s fiftieth birthday. My goal for my fiftieth birthday is to be hiking a 14er, and they were even aiming to do all three. I don’t know if they managed to accomplish that goal because after a few minutes of chatting and hiking along with them I began to drastically out pace them. That whole bullheaded issue when it comes to physical tasks started kicking in.

I love hiking, just have to get that out there, any kind of hiking--BUT hiking a 14er puts just about every other kind of hike to shame. Any other hike I can just go out there and do. I can (and did on my little excursion) do a seven mile hike as a short little sunset hike. When you go to face a 14,000 plus foot mountain though you have to prepare mentally, physically, and (heck, why not throw it in) spiritually. Then there is the way the world changes as soon as you break tree line. The air is thin and invigorating, there is nothing standing between you and this vision of massive peaks standing all around.

This is the Land of the Gods. Those behemoth peaks are the image of divinity. The way they always have their very tops stuck in the clouds as if chatting with the heavens. When you reach the summit you get to join that conversation, and it is awe inspiring. No high compares with the high attained on the summit of a 14,000 plus foot mountain. I guess that is why it has become a bit excessive of a past-time. It’s hard to tell people to cut back though, because it really is something of a spiritual experience. It puts you at your limit in every way with a very real goal that is attained at the end of it.

The first summit I reached that day was that of Mt Belford (after passing two more individuals on the trail, both probably around their fifties as well), where I ran into three young guys from Denver who get a paid day off once a year to hike a fourteener. If I had gone into finance in school I would definitely work for that company. I can only remember one of their names, Cameron, but they were all three cool people, though they decided to start heading down after just attaining that one summit, and I felt like I had bigger fish to fry. At least they were able to snap a photo for me though.

The next peak to summit was Mt. Oxford. It was only about another two miles to reach its summit, but that two miles included dropping into a saddle and then hiking back out of it. The drop in was steep, and I just about ate it and rolled down the side of the mountain a couple times, but the ascent up to the summit of Mt Oxford was nowhere near as difficult. I mean, aside from the cold, oxygen free wind that whipped across the ridge and the reflection of the sun off of the snow that left my cheeks a beautiful bright red color for several days afterwards.

However, I did make it from the summit of Mt Belford to the summit of Mt Oxford in an hour, which was my goal in order to keep up the pace to bag Mt. Missouri as well before descending to the trail head. And my it was beautiful! Not to mention perfectly lonely. I had to set my camera to take the summit picture for me.

The hike back down to the base of the saddle was easy, like I was expecting. It was the ascent back up to the opposite ridge that scared me, and rightfully so. I reached the ridge fighting the urge to just collapse down on my hands and knees and start pulling myself down the side of the mountain. It was at this moment that I first began to question my initial decision to hike up Mt Missouri as well. According to the map I had to follow another trail that descended for about two miles before reaching the base of the 1.6 mile trail up to the summit of Mt Missouri. (For those that are not big fans of math that would be adding a total of 3.2 miles to my hike for the day, pushing it over 15 miles, and adding another nearly 2,000 feet of ascent.)

Pain as keen as what I was currently feeling in my thighs as well as the fact that my calves had almost locked up and cramped several times already is a sensation that is easy for me to recall, but now as I write this I still think I should have tried to get to that last summit. But I used the excuse that it was starting to snow (barely) and the encouragement of the group of four guys that I passed on the way down to the intersection of the trail, who all felt I should skip it. Now all I have is a picture of the peak that got away.

Something that is unfortunately one of my dominant traits is losing things. This whole trip seems to be in jeopardy every time I think of just how often I lose things, and that hike was no different. That map I was talking about that told be how many miles each part of the trail was… yeah, I lost it somewhere in the Land of the Gods, so I headed into Buena Vista to see if I could find a map to replace it (because I really did like that map, I had used it to find the trailhead and to hike up Mt Yale just a few weeks prior). After I found a couple maps that offered a half decent replacement I found myself reflecting upon the possibility of sleeping on my wet mattress pad that night and I just could not handle the idea. A friend of mine from Denver had moved out to the Aspen area a little while ago though, and the hike that I was considering to do the next day was in that area so I gave her a call. Thank the heavens, Rachel came to my rescue and let me crash on a warm dry couch that night. I will forever remain in her debt.

Once again I find myself rambling on, so I will have to call it for this post. I’ll have a couple others set to go up for the next couple days though, and tomorrow the rest of the crew will be joining me. Things are about to get epic people. Hold on to your hats! 

The Highs and Lows

At the behest of my little sister I have taken some time off of my solo Colorado ramblings to sit down and document at least a little of what I have seen and experienced so far. Just to give the reader a little survey as to how far I've gone and how much I have seen in the past four days:

• ·       Car Mileage: 814
• ·       Hiking Mileage: 27
• ·       Highest Elevation By Foot: 14,203’
• ·       Highest Elevation By Car: 12,096’
• ·       Lowest Elevation: 5,756’
• ·       Lowest Temperature: 19°F
• ·       Highest Temperature: 81°F

All of that was in just a single state, believe it or not. One of the beautiful things about Colorado. Well beautiful and at times frustrating. That’s the thing about Colorado—it definitely has the highs (pun only partially intended), but it also has the lows as well. That being said my trip has had some highs and lows as well, and I’ll let you in on the full spectrum.

First and foremost, you have to understand that I have had absolutely no idea as to what I was going to do the next day and sometimes the next hour during this entire excursion. So when I left my parents’ home in the Springs I thought that I would definitely like to hike some 14ers, but I knew I was leaving too late to do that on that particular day. Aside from that though I didn’t even have any distinct sites to see, so I decided to check out some of the ghost towns that were listed on a Colorado road trip my friend had sent me the link to.

The problem with this was that it was designed to start from Denver and so I had to actually make a decision myself. Como, Colorado was the closest. I went for it. Como is not near as ghostly as the website had made it out as being. There were residents’ vehicles all over, and while I was reading the plaque in front of the train station there were a couple workers walking in and out of the building just a few feet from me. So much for one of Colorado’s most abandoned places. Of course nowadays it’s hard to find anywhere in Colorado that doesn’t have people living there or visiting there with all the people moving into the state.

Still Como has some interesting history, and a very unique building. The round house

is one of the last remaining in Colorado that retains all of the original pieces from its construction in the 1800’s. The old train station is quaint and attractive as well

though my talents at taking selfies create a much less attractive image.

Next stop was St. Elmo-- a town that I was hoping would prove to be more ghostly than Como (it just felt weird driving onto a community’s road just to take pictures of their buildings, though I guess Parisians deal with that junk all the time… maybe that’s why they detest Americans so much…)

St. Elmo was indeed a much more abandoned town, though it has become a major stop along the Colorado touring route for many individuals. Because of this there are always tourists' cars parked along the main street. All the people coming through also means there is a place to purchase souvenirs and food at the first two buildings on the road. Thankfully the rest of the town is very much deserted, aside from one quaint little pink home that I suppose holds residents at least during part of the year due to the signage hanging around it.

The town of St. Elmo was once again closely dependent upon the railroad for its vitality, quite like Como, so when railroads because less needed the town dried up. However, due to the tourist interest in the town, there have been many efforts to keep the town in good condition. There is even some restoration construction going on now, because or course the town is old, as the sign observes.

There is a nice little foot traffic only road in front of some of the old homes as well that all seem to be kept in pretty good repair.

If you drop in, I’d suggest making a little donation by the information plaque so we can keep this town around as a ghostly museum of our past. If you want to know more feel free to read this little flier that sat in the window of the local hotel (no longer open of course).

On the way out of the town I felt in dire need of some hiking. St Elmo was nestled back in on the South West side of Mt Princeton, which had made me crazy in need of hiking as I drove past it. On the way out I found a random little trail and pulled off to go explore. It was a very short trail, the Cascade Creek Trail. At least the loop is very short, but the hike up to the waterfall adds a couple more miles so it becomes somewhat more exciting. No matter what the arid landscape with the creek running through it is beautiful to see.

I met a couple other hikers along the way—Carl and Manning—they had come up from Austin, Texas, though Carl had initially been a Coloradan at one point. I hiked up to the waterfall with them and chatted a bit. After several hours in the car alone it was nice to have some friendly conversation. The extra mile or so of hiking to the waterfall was definitely worth it.

Going to St Elmo had put me right near the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, which was the area that I had a map of the surrounding 14ers for, including a trail that could bring me to the summits of three different peaks in a single day. I decided to drive to the trailhead and most likely just sleep in my car before taking on the peaks the next day. But when I got on the road that led to the trailhead I found numerous campsites littering the side of the road, and no sign saying that I needed to pay for them or anything! So I took my CR-V down a nice hill that would probably qualify as a trail for 4X4 vehicles. (Gotta love a high clearance, AWD, manual vehicle!). There I made myself some delicious dinner

set up my tent, and then laid out inside it and began to read just as the rain started to come down.

The rain freaked me out a little. I had no idea if my tent was waterproof, but it stayed dry inside so I decided to relax and let myself fall asleep.

Now if it had only rained for three or even three and a half hours it would have stayed perfectly dry inside the tent, but it rained for four and a half. At four hours I found myself waking up and I reached out to check the border of the tent to make sure no water had gotten in. It had. So I moved all of my stuff back into my car, leaving the tent up to be taken down the next day, and then I was too lazy to resituate my belongings in the car at 1:30 in the morning in order to sleep in the back so I slept very fitfully in the driver’s seat until the next morning.

And that was day one. This post is getting a bit long so I’ll fit in the rest of the happenings in another couple blog posts that I’ll get up on the 31^st and September 1^st. (Hope this is good enough for you for now Jade ;p)