The Last Night

Mike, our KOA guy and buddy from Minnesota: "Get out of here as fast as you can!"

 

 A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. --Lao Tzu

The days have just flown by (har har) since I last chronicled our misadventures in Rawlins. We have seen some nature here and there. There's gophers:

And looky there: a birch tree! And Scott got all excited about some dandelions that came out where our water spigot was because of all the water we've been using!

Yesterday was a wild storm day. It got so windy that Scott freaked, yanked the trailer around at a 180, and hooked it up to Vanita so that it wouldn't blow over.

 Last night, Scott and I sat and listened to Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun, talk about meditating and "not scratching," just being present. Being unable to sit still, I worked on Scampi's curtains, which currently have a button theme pretty much.

Scott told me he had to get a spider out of the men's bathroom. All he could think of was how it needed to escape. He also poured water around the poor little tree. I am married to St. Francis.

Today was the Big Day. First, while I worked, Scott hiked down to the print shop so that I could get about 100 pages of student work printed out. (I don't have to be online.) So looking forward to that.

I was absorbed in a discussion on dharma with the myth class when Scott came back. Unfortunately, this then evolved into a two-hour thrash with AT&T over trying to figure out why they can't set me up with an online account. I was bumped up to level 3 and had to hang up to return to it another time. Joy! (Part of this is that I get a union discount that they haven't wanted to apply.)

But then: Deliverance arrived in a cloud of silver glory. (Our friend Dave said just to make sure not to get brown. That's as far as I'm going with that one.)



One of the drivers was my age and from Connecticut, so we got into it--such a familiar hard luck story of pension revoked, moving out here to be near grandkids, sickness, inability to find work due to age.


Scott managed to nab a mistake (hmm, maybe) and saved us $800! They said they double charged for the trailer hitch, but that doesn't quite add up. And this was the GOOD car dealer. Sigh.

Scotty watched every little thing--I'm horrible at that as you all know unless it's editing. So we seem to have done alright.

Deliverance drives beautifully, and the stow and go seats are very cool, but I have to say that Vanita had more comfy seats and less plastic. Of course, she was a classic. I got all emotional when our tow truck buddy, Dave Keller, came to pick her up and give us some traveling money. He'd been up to Casper for his wife's doctor's appointment and then found that the doc wasn't there.

Dave Keller, our towing buddy. RIP Vanita.

Bye bye, Vanita! Sob! (Great video to come, maybe.)

Tonight some huge trucks pulled up with pictures of motorcycles and flame and crosses. http://www.jumpforjesus.net/ I think we're getting out of here just in time.

But Deliverance is packed and we are ready to go! We're planning to head out in the morning and go do us a truck stop breakfast, but down the road from here. Maybe in Rock Ride--I mean, Rock Springs. We plan to be out of Wyoming tomorrow! (However, we now that plans make fate laugh.)

As Uncle Dave Macon would say, "Hallelujah Glory! Palms of victory! Deliverance will come!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEua85M_JA

(Blogger is not letting me embed this. In fact, more pictures will have to come later since all the big honkin' motorhomes are sucking down all the bandwidth.)

(I'm learning this tune.)

It's Just Money, Honey!

Monday was a work day for me, and we waited and waited to see the used 2005 Town and Country van. What a let down! It was a gutless wonder. Great turning radius, and it was cool to cruise around town and see that there are nicer parts of town. I don't say "nice."

We both agreed that gutless up a small hill was not for us.

The kind Kevin who wanted to sell it to us did take us to the store and we bought all kinds of apocalyptic canned things so that we could hold out. We even found organic lettuce and carrots. My bowels started singing, "Hallelujah!"



Horrible night--both of us hacking away with the colds. Not much sleep, but hey, for five seconds, I've caught up with New Yorkers and am really enjoying the new Egyptian Myth book! Hope my class likes it this fall!

But today, Tuesday, we had a dreamy, sunny, warm day. It's our summer! At least until August. But the big breakthrough was deciding we were just gonna have to be irresponsible and buy a new Dodge Caravan. Consider skipping the next boring paragraph.

The DC is actually the way to go if you're towing a little trailer--better than the Toyota or Odyssey, lots cheaper. Bigger engine, better torque. I never thought I was going to Car College, but I just have.

OK. So...we got this cool bidding war started between Jason in Rawlins and Virgil in Fort Collins. (I congratulated Virgil on his Roman name.) Scott and I have this deal: I start the ball rolling and then he jumps in to micromanage. It doesn't always work for us, but with this stuff, it really has.
We both got flurries of emails, phone calls, I worked on school, and then took breaks out in the sun with T-Lou. He's pretty happy and has his routine down now.




Scott and I even had a fun C tunes break and I noticed how pretty some of the little ground covers and our poor tree and the chem trails looked.

Now, as it grows dark, we look forward to clinching the deal tomorrow and then entering a life of penury. We're both coughing. And it will have been one week tomorrow! Supposed to be 75 degrees tomorrow, then lower eighties on Thursday. Low wind. Yeah!

I Want to Go to Map Land

So, today, my dear buddy Moe posts this on FB:

Did you ever see that Twilight Zone where this couple's car breaks down in some little town, or the one where they drive to the edge of the town and it always ends in the fog, or the one where they wake up in a little house they don't recognize with fake bread and it turns out they're now pets of some outer space child? Did you?

This is it. We are in The Twilight Zone. Or maybe The X Files.

Before we left, my brother  showed us this great X Files episode in which Scully and Mulder go to a gated community with a covenant from hell. If you don't follow the covenant (spoiler alert!) a Tibetan monster kind of like the monster in that beloved classic Forbidden Planet comes and eats you up (in gory ways.

Put up those pink flamingos or drive a weird little trailer and you're toast. Broken down, we sit and wait while the car dealers, KOA people, other cmapers  all act as if everything were normal, and on Facebook, the favorite post I've made has been one of Spock playing the banjo, not the updates about Creepyville.

We took a walk today since the winds weren't blowing so much. We found a lizard!




The winds! I'm looking for the equivalent of Ray Bradbury's Sun Domes ("The Long Rain") but these would be Calm Domes, where you can open a trailer door and it doesn't slam into the trailer side.

We walked and walked and kept hoping it was going to get better as we hit the main drag.

It didn't get better and I was all asthmaey from the cold I've caught and the dog was limping from thorns in his feet. We saw the grocery store far off in the distance and gave it up. This is what the main drag looked like:

HELP ME!!!!

We saw a Haliburton pickup truck. We saw an Amtrack type station, but found when we got back that train service was cancelled in May 1997. There wasn't a sidewalk anywhere that did not turn into broken rubble.

Scott went to do laundry and found this map in the KOA room:

Map Land!

I want to go to Map Land, where there are green trees and everywhere it's cute, even the bar and grill. But of course, you follow the map and bwaaahaahaa! You're in the dry roaring winds and the rock monsters are coming, driving screeching trucks and yelling. 

Scott just found little marks on T-Lou and freaked out about ticks.



Yeah, ticks and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. We're right in tick season, but we didn't see any, we don't THINK. When I Googled "Rawlins, WY ticks," I got a list of Rawlins' domiciles: Quality Inn, West Way Lodge, Bel Air Inn Restaurant and Lounge! The invasion of the ticks!

We want to go home. We want to go home. We want to go home. We are trapped! They're coming....

The Waiting Games

You've heard of The Hunger Games. Now, welcome to The Waiting Games! The Weekend approacheth, and verily, we are stuck. At least no centurions are coming to kill us that we know of. But maybe I should get me a bow and arrows and start practicing.

We are still checking to see if the Town and Country 2005 van is the real deal. We're holding firm, asking for extras (such as tow hitch, switching over the brakes), and we got them down to our price after quoting blue book, etc. Still checking some details, but we may leave with a van.

But we're not betting on it. We now have the Greyhound bus schedule figured out if we can get to the bus station. We're on the wrong side of the tracks here (as usual for us), so Scott will have to hike it while Jeanie watches the pooch and works online. (Wonder what my students would think if they knew?)

We're planning to go to Salt Lake City and see my old friend Sandra Sanders from our Shiloh commune days in San Francisco. If we have a van, great, but if not, shopping there is lots easier!

The soonest we could probably leave is Wednesday.

Today, after I got some work done, we decided to take a stroll in the sunny gale winds. We couldn't figure any way out of the "campground" (I use this term with reservation--yes, very punny). Finally, we climbed a fence, which involved lifting a dog and other embarrassing moments.

 

Fences everywhere

We strolled around the crumbling sidewalks, HUD apartments, desperate attempts at tiny yards and shivering trees down to a park, a valiant attempt at grass and kiddie toys. There were even actual kiddies playing on it.

In the park was a monument to one Isidore Bolten, who was responsible for the park and died the year I was born. A Russian who came over here at 20, he ended up making a fortune in livestock. He wanted the park for the south side children.

A quote: It is remarkable that there is a place in this distressed world where a penniless alien, knowing not a word of the language can work out a place for himself....I would be grateful to America even if she had given me nothing, but she's been kind to me beyond my wildest dreams. I've been most fortunate.

Suddenly, there was gravitas for me, though I couldn't help thinking of just how bad things must have been in Russia. He might have come over around the time my grandfather's family booked out of the Ukraine.

Rawlins was all about the railroads, and we've seen some great trains. It also seems that the big industries are prisons and outlaws. There's an old prison, and a Halloween night tour. Drat--I think we'll miss it if we can.

In wild contrast to Isidore Bolten, there's was a "famous" outlaw was Big Nose George Parrot, and they hung him. Check this out from Wikipedia!





The death of Big Nose George faded into history over the years until May 11, 1950, when construction workers unearthed a whiskey barrel filled with bones while working on the Rawlins National Bank on Cedar Street in Rawlins. Inside the barrel was a skull with the top sawed off, a bottle of vegetable compound, and the shoes said to have been made from Parrott's thigh flesh. Dr. Lillian Heath, then in her eighties, was contacted and her skull cap was sent to the scene. It was found to fit the skull in the barrel perfectly, and DNA testing later confirmed the remains were those of Big Nose George. Today the shoes made from the skin of Big Nose George are on permanent display at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins, together with the bottom part of the outlaw's skull and Big Nose George's earless death mask. The shackles used during the hanging of the outlaw, as well as the skull cap, are on show at the Union Pacific Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. The medicine bag made from his skin has never been found.





There's a death mask of him in the museum that maybe we can get to if we stop being sick and the wind gives us a break.

Scott sat outside and worked on carving his boat cleats. Right now, he's doing marlin spike work which is basically a kind of macrame but very fancy and cool. Me, I write blogs and grade students. We did sit on the porch of the main building (it's sheltered) and play some Cajun tunes together. Way fun, but we've gotten rusty!

This evening, the beautiful moon came out, and we saw a white-tailed, blond colored deer way off. We had binoculars and after looking at him, we scanned the town far down the hill, realizing that there actually is a better part of town with trees and stuff. Now I'm itching to get down there.

      Mmm, dinner!                        Huge moon should be up tomorrow night!

 
The cooler is finally getting low on food (a good thing since there's no ice), but we have lots of cans of stuff and candied ginger. Where's that bow and those arrows? Gotta channel Katniss and go kill us a deer or prairie dog or somethin'. Not going to be picking up any shoes, whiskey, or medicine bags here. But there's always Isidore--a chance to be grateful, and we are for all of you who have been in touch.

Night, night, T-Lou!

Crawlin through Rawlins

Well, kids, yrs trly is crawlin' with altitude sickness. Turns out we're at about 7000 feet, and so both of us are kind of dragging about, me especially.

I feel like Pip in the mud (Great Expectations) except here it's all wind, all the time. Open the trailer door? WHAM! Throw the ball for the dog? Wheeee! Roaring trucks, sagging houses, the inevitable white "R" on the hills above. The KOA lady hides; you have to call her on the phone. She avoids her office. I would too.

Last night, Dave said he'd park us by a tree at least. Oh, it's a sad little blighter. 

However, they do have awesome hot showers and we took 'em. And cleaned up the trailer. We had been awakened by a phone call at 7:45 a.m. (!!!) from the eager car salesman that Dave had tipped off. We put him off for a while so that we could feverishly check things out on our 'puters, trying to decide what our options were.

Turns out they're pretty slim. You really don't want to be in Wyoming without a car. Not in Rawlins, anyway.

We can either buy another used van or we can U Haul it back with Scampi. Both options have problems and cost money. We've been bouncing it off people. Most go for the U Haul idea (except for our sister-in-law Victoria who says we should start walking).

We schlepped over with Kevin to see printouts of the vans they have: two Town and Countries and one Caravan, and I was armed with about a zillion car notes on what I'd found on www.cars.com, none of which were in the state of WY. Poor Kevin.



He told us that wind power isn't looked upon well here because it's all coal and fracking and jobs and mosquitoes. Yup, mosquitoes. The wind turbines mash up the bats who eat the mosquitoes. Well, OK, maybe. Solar didn't even get a nod. He drove us through Magwitch land, dry mud, dusty tears, rusted out indescribables, and always the tearing wind.

We got back and hid in the trailer. Scott actually kind of washed the outside of the trailer. (I wiped some green slime off a while back, but just the worst little part.) But I hid, feeling pretty listless and funky. Trying to do some school work. Made the mistake of peeking out the door:

I love this picture, but the video!

Tomorrow we dicker with Kevin. Or figure out how to get to Caspar to get a U Haul. Or lie around in listless disbelief. I get the sense I should probably end this misnamed blog about now.

(By the way, I am taking all these pictures and videos with my WONDERFUL l'il iPod that my WONDERFUL Phoebe child gave us! Thank you, Phoebe!)

Love and Death in Rawlins

Well, this was quite the day.

We started out in buttery sunny weather with birdies chirping. And look--lilacs are out!

We drove from the KOA to go to Shoshone Falls but dropped our respective jaws as we drove over this bridge that turns out to be the only bridge from which you can legally parachute down to the Snake River. Drat--and I forgot mine!

Down below was a whole 'nother world within a world, very eerie and cool. I liked the walls too--don't these look like little stone age (literally) people dancing along?

The chamber of commerce types there were great--they had an old dog, so T-Lou could come in and they could have a snifffest. (Ooo, three "f"s in a row!)

Shoshone Falls was just overwhelming with negative ions singing in our ears. Scott and I had done a Valentine's waterfall hike/tour around the Olympics, but this made those things look like trickles. Check it out!

 

So, we got on the road kind of late, but we buzzed along through Idaho:

 Our ritzy potty vs. T-Lou's interesting potty.

It's all about scale.

then Utah, 

 

 At last! I knew I'd find it! Actually, this is Idaho still.

then Wyoming. 

Yeah, it was pretty at first...

We saw signs for Little America and I suddenly remembered that I had been on this highway back in 1964 (yeah, 48 years, ack!) and that there had been penguins and ice cream involved. Their penguin logo was barely there now, but the red brick buildings with faux colonial roofs were still going, along with the 50 cent ice cream cones! We also found a nice little neck pillow. Turns out we didn't get a chance to use it.

Cruising along, we passed a nasty fracking kinda place where the smell knocked you out, other nasty places of utter barreness, and were happy we'd make Rawlins soon.

Only...40 miles or so west of Rawlins, Vanita started going "clack clack clack" and scott pulled over and tried to go a little ways, and that was it. She gave up her oily (or lack thereof) ghost. Probably threw a rod or some other unintelligble thing. I always think "head gasket" myself.

The next hour or so was terrifying. We were barely off the road, and big semis were roaring past us like dinosaurs swimming on a thunderous current. Vanita shuddered (a little after death experience) while we called the police and tried to get a tow. The first place was going to take two to three hours, and it was getting dark. The second place couldn't come because their truck had broken. Finally, we got Jack's with Dave Keller, who jammed right out. (Kim, is this a relative you didn't tell us about? Scott says he was nice in the same way Floyd is.)

Finally, he came with a monster truck, winched Vanita's sad corpse up, attached Scampi, and off we went.

 

T-Lou had a bit of a job hopping up into the cab, but it was roomy in there. Our host was taciturn but in a friendly way and did manage to let us know that he had been totaled just where we were last winter and that four other people had died in various accidents around the area. But he gave us names of people, instantly hooked us up with the local car dealers, shops, etc.

He brought us into the KOA as neatly as you please, and we gave him a CD. It was about 9 p.m. and we spent the next few hours sorting ourselves. Basically, I didn't sleep, but Scott got some. We were both thankful, though, to be alive, to be together, and to be tucked cozily in Scampi, drinking tea and surfing the InterWeb.

May 1: In Love with LaGrande

People: La Grande, OR is gorgeous! How did I miss this place?

This morning when we finally got up, it was sleeting a little. Actually, I got up pretty early after a night of wrestling with the camp mat and realizing it was too full of air! (Finally figured it out in a blur at some ridiculous hour.) We had a nice breakfast of eggs and fruit, and I got to go on a little jog with T-Lou around the campground.

We cruised out at last to the amazing La Grande, home of Eastern OR U and the kind of place I fantasized living in as a college prof with a Piled Higher and Deeper (that I never managed to get). OK, a little run down in spots, but with that wonderful old fashioned town center all plunked down into a green valley with sweeping pillow lava and sculpted mountains around it.

We were there so that I could quickly get some school stuff done at the public library. Let me just say that I have always been a huge fan of public libraries since hiding behind the red velvet curtains in the window seats of the one in my town. But with wifi needs, there's no better place. St. Elizabeth folks know I live at the Poulsbo library (why do they not have a picture--it's beautiful!) when down that way (a paragon of libraries!)

"Quickly" turned into hours. My laptop couldn't get itself online. After messing around with Device Manager and going through countless paths to fix Windows or Lenovo's connection devices, I gave up and used the library machines for school work, which turned into an hour's worth of work. Then, thankful that a computer store was just kitty corner to the public library. There, La Grande became the great epicenter of human kindness.

If you are ever there, visit these fabulous folks at eoni--Eastern Oregon Net. Their motto is "The Internet Done Right," but what they do right is help travelers and refuse to take any money for it. Yes, I don't lie. The tech quickly gave me a workaround (yes, Lenovo is evil), and we could finally get on the road.

The lush green gave way to drier stuff, but once again, that Tolkien flash of ruins hit me. You can kind of see it in this photo, the "wall" at the top of the cliff. But it's river carving, not human. 

Somewhere in Idaho

Sadly, we were in too much of a rush for me to get tons o' photos, but we did finally make it to the Twin Falls, ID KOA, where I am typing this at a ridiculous hour and must go to sleep! (Had to do school work first. My myth students this quarter are just fabulous, but I hope it is also at least a little that I shifted some things around in the class in new ways based on some student suggestions. Oh, well, then I guess students get all the credit.)

Here at the KOA they have a funky miniature golf and kiddie area but trees and howling coyotes. We like it. And it's DUSTY, not muddy. The novelty of that alone is worth it.

Scott is getting sicker with his cold, so things are getting interesting. T-Lou is snoring in his Dog Cave under my bed. In fact, I found out today that Avery (our granddaughter) wants to buy T-Lou a welcome bone. See, it's all about the dog. He just brings us along.

A shout out to my wonderful Phoebe who gave us an iPod for Christmas. Or did I already shout out? I'm loving it except for the fact that I've only been able to load Don Quixote on it so far. But I love my apps: temple bells for meditation timing, calendar, camera, microphone. But iTunes is the devil--just remember that.

Tomorrow, we have a gut buster day, hoping to get to Rawlins or Laramie, WY. It ain't gonna be pretty inside the car, but I hope it is outside!