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.

The Car and the Challenge

Welcome to 3 Men on the Bummel (I completely stole this name from a book written by a little known English humorist who lived at the turn of the century) in which I will share the tales—both majestic and questionable—of the road trip that I and two of my closest friends will be taking over the next year across the 48 contiguous United States.

First and foremost: no, none of us are millionaires, independently wealthy, living off of trust funds, or being funded by parents or others in any way. I just have to get that out there because everyone seems to be jealous of my decision to just live on the road and usually their first excuse for not doing the same is because they are way too poor. I worked as a mover for the past three and a half years and had an income well below the poverty line—it hasn’t stopped me. Just saying. All it takes is a little will power to consistently save some money and some guts to be willing to give up the normal life, live out of a car, sleep in tents, eat foraged and hunted food combined with cheap canned beans and vegetables, and a desire for something new and different in life.

Now there are some certain tools that can make the prospect of a yearlong road trip without money for hotels a bit more appeasing, and one of those is the car you choose to take.

Forewarning: I am about to go on a rant as to how I believe my car is just about the most perfect road trip vehicle in existence. Despite this being the case I am in no way sponsored by Honda (but I feel like they should at least give me a little bit after what follows… Honda? You out there?) and in fact did not even have the vehicle gifted to me, I just love it.

Just look at it! Doesn’t it just look like a little puppy that is all ready to see you with its CB antenna sticking up into the air like a happy little tail? Okay, that was taking it too far. Sorry, I get a bit excited over it, but enough about the way it looks, that really means nothing as far as it being a perfect road trip tool goes. What does matter is the fact that it has All-Wheel Drive, which any Subaru owner will tell you is just about the best thing for driving around a car in the snowy mountains. But those Subaru’s never have a full-size spare tire on the back, and, well… I do! Haha you Subaru suckers! I’ve blown enough tires or had them punctured by stray pieces of metal or nails to know that sometimes that tiny little doughnut spare is just not going to do for getting me to the nearest tire shop. If you have a full size spare along then you don’t even have to pause the adventures. You can get the tire fixed whenever you run into the next town that has a Discount Tire.

While we’re on the subject of spare tires might as well throw in this little addendum. Through all of my tire havoc I have always fortunately had tires from Discount Tire (once again, no sponsorship, though I think they might want to consider it too). Sure they cost a bit more, but then you get free rotations, air-checks, repairs, balancing, and (if you get the certificate) replacements from any of their several shops across the country. There is some pretty cool fine print to that certificate as well, if they do not have a tire shop conveniently close they will reimburse you whatever you end up having to spend on the replacement tire, and if it doesn’t match the set they’ll remount the originally purchased type of tire for completely free! Sorry, just geek-ing out about that a little. Anyone who has had as rough a time with tires as I have will get it.

So full size spares, not only are they incredible useful, but they also give one the opportunity for a little self-expression.

The artwork is entirely credited to my little sisters, and for those Sherlock Holmes fans out there, yes I know it should be 221 B Baker Street, just haven’t had the chance to add the 1.

Another great thing about the CR-V is the space that you get. Most all-wheel drive vehicles are sedans or hatchbacks, which can give a person space for luggage but there is no extra space for sleeping or for additional passengers. In the CR-V I can load everything I need to survive for a year and still be able to load in 2-3 passengers—and that’s with seat belts on. Not to mention the seats can all be folded completely flat, leaving space for a nice little sleeping area. Once again I had to add some personal touches.

Gotta love that Colorado Pride! The dragon on the left is perching on the Welsh flag, which is the country where about a quarter of my heritage comes from. When you’re an American mutt you pretty much get to open a catalogue of heritage and pick out the top three contenders to throw in with.

Having all of this space is usually equated with a drop in gas mileage, not at all the case with the CR-V. The engine is the same 2.2 liter straight 4 cylinder that you find in the EX and LX Honda Accords, which means that you get great gas mileage and have all of the horse power you need to pull you up the side of a mountain. For those of you that just fell asleep, that means cheaper to travel and you’re also not going to end up cruising on the side of the highway with the hazards flashing while everyone else races by.

Despite all of the amenities that come stock with a 2000 Honda CR-V there were a couple things that needed to be added, such as an am/fm radio receiver with Bluetooth and a CB radio. A CB radio is a radio that you can receive and broadcast on that is used by semi-drivers on a day to day basis. The CB stands for citizen band, because it runs on the radio wavelengths specifically reserved for the use of the public. That is what that big ol’ white antenna is attached to, and this is what the receiver looks like:

So I’ve got the most essential tool of all primed and ready to go along with a few thousand dollars saved up in the bank. Now all that remains is to listen to the wisdom of  Yoda:

I hit the road tomorrow for my own short little road trip before being joined by the other two guys come the first of September. The next post should be up within the next three days. I’m looking forward to having you all along for the ride.