mile 1666 - 2325

On Friday morning Nancy and I set out for Denver. We had done some research and since the drive was going to be a pretty long one, decided to stick with the major highways, but make it worth every mile.

The trip began before sunrise, as it often does, and we pointed north toward Kansas, where apparently the cops are real speed sticklers. (That statement is not relevant to any other part of this story, but if you plan to drive through Kansas some day, might be good to remember.

I think Kansas is under-rated as far as the scenery it has to offer, especially the eastern side of the state. The fields stretch to the horizon and they range in colors from green, to your classic amber, yellow, and a really rich red. I was a little disappointed because there were giant patches of sunflowers that you could tell had just started to fade, with their heads starting to bald and look at the ground. I should have stopped anyway, but instead I took note of their precise location and will go back in the future when it is earlier in the summer and they are more ready for me.

Our first mini-destination was Mushroom Rock State Park off Exit 225.

One of the great things about taking these detours was that when you got off the highway, you were driving on a two-lane, no-one-else-around-but-cows road. The sign for the park pointed left down a dirt road. We took it. (Inner dialogue. Good thing Nancy came along. I am not a ninny, but I don't know if I would have gone down that road alone.) The park was a little ways down, and again, when I say the only other breathing souls for miles were cows, I mean it. And then we found our rock. It's kind of like the STLB of the geology world, but reverse. Shorter on bottom and longer on top.

Anyway, it makes for a pretty incredible site. And the road to get there made it that much more fun. I would not recommend seeking it out after heavy rains. That mud would suck your tires down before you even knew what was happening.

We left Mushroom Rock feeling like we'd seen something that probably few have and kept on.

Exit 206 wasn't too much farther and there they have the Garden of Eden. Lucas is a little town with a lot of art. We didn't have time to explore nearly enough of it, but it's the sort of place where you are greeted with a giant dinner plate-looking sign that is painted with bright colors and different designs greeting you and people's mailboxes are sculptures.

The Garden of Eden is a house and the whole thing is a piece of art.

"Abel was a shepherd and he raised he raised sheep. He is offering a dandy little buck-merino. Got hold of the horn pulling it up. The Lord like good mutton, so Abel has a crown on his shepherd hook. Now this made Cain mad at Able, because Abel's good mutton was more acceptable to God, than his old rotten pumpkin, and he killed him."

—S. P. Dinsmoor, the cooky man who built this place and his explanation/description of one of the sculptures

On the way back to 71, we stopped for a picnic lunch in a dam pavilion overlooking Wilson Lake.

Wilson Lake Happy utensils to eat with

In Victoria, KS, there is a place called Cathedral of the Plains. It is a cathedral and it is in the plains. It is about a mile off the highway, but you can see it's twin 141-foot rock towers as you drive by. Officially named St. Fidelis Church, it was built by the Germans in 1911 with native Kansas stone.

Once inside, you could easily forget where you are.

Fast forward about 200 miles, and we've entered Colorado and are gearing up what is likely to be the most wacky of the roadside attractions.

It's advertised like the freak show at the carnival: two-headed calves, an eight-legged pig, 75,000-year-old skeleton of a mammoth, 20 rooms, and more old stuff than you could shake a stick at.

To cap the experience off, there's a tight staircase that leads to the top of a tower with views of six states! How you know you are looking at six different states is beyond me. I get a vision of the future where there will be floating graphics of state lines in the sky, with arrows pointing down from the name of the state. But for now, I guess we just have to trust Old Man River who runs the place.

a couple of the six states

This is the second time that I was incredibly thankful for a companion. First of all, we drove through the most run-down and deserted town to get to this "Wonder Tower", and secondly, we discussed our good fortune at escaping alive after we left. The possibilities for a horror movie turned real seemed too high. This should not dissuade you if you are ever passing through Genoa with someone else, but your creeped-out sense should be strong enough for you to not knock on that door if you are alone.

More than happy to be back on the road, lives in tact and no missing persons reports to be filed, we pedaled to the metal for Pam's House, Denver. The best part of that drive was how Justin sounded drunk when he said,

"Turn right on Colorado Avenue."

For more pictures, click here.

mile 1295 - 1665

Let me start by saying I am using Ponca City wifi. Free wifi for the entire city. Genius.

Fast forward to now, which is the day after the previous line was written. There were clouds in the sky causing technical difficulties. Still pretty genius though.

As promised, here is the rest of my team.

First to join was Justin, my Australian road guide.

I don't think I need to do an advertisement for Garmin, but it's pretty special. Today I was an eagle flying down a pink road toward a sinking sailboat. And I'm just talking about the icons I have chosen to represent me and Nancy and Clayton's house (he's a sailboat captain and she's his first mate).

Then came Leeny, the Saturn (that's pronounced suh-TURN. Ask me next time I see you for the pronunciation lesson.), who was previously owned by Grandma Frost, aka Eileen. When asked what I was going to name the car, I suggested I call her Eileen. She said no because Eileen is a weird name (thank you, Grandma, it's my middle name), but that her sister used to call her Leeny. Ta-da!

Clearly I enjoy naming things after who I got them from. Thank you Justin and Grandma. It also makes it easier to talk to them, which I might or might not do frequently. I also found myself saying, "Hey, Hay!" anytime I passed afield of haystacks...

So my team and I drove to Ponca City behind Aunt Nancy. I know this is not seeming like a typical road trip so far, with my family members so closely involved, but there's a road and I'm on vacation. So boo yah!

It was my first time spending any real time with Leeny so I got a chance to get to know her a little better. She works great, windshield wipers and all. We got lucky with rain for about a third of the drive.

rain time clearing up

exit to Ponca City

Now, since she is the official vehicle of the trip, I think it is important to note a few things about my driving style. It goes without saying that the number one must-have on a long drive, 30 miles or 3,000,000,000, is appropriate music. I've got that covered. It is also important to have an assortment of sunglasses. You never know what the situation may call for and it's always better to be prepared. And finally, the most often forgotten, is a quick disguise. My choice, the versatile bandit bandana. I can be a lion one minute and a tiger the next. Again, you just never know.

today I choose lion.

We stopped at the U.S.S. Batfish to get a hat for my uncle. It's in Muskogee and I'd go back. Mostly because it was closed and I did kind of want to see the old submarine. All we managed to see were a few things over the barbed-wire fence. Not a total loss.

The evening was spent eating dinner, seeing what was new around the place, and relaxing. I was telling Nancy how I planned to do as much as possible by bike once I got back to Richmond, and was hoping to find a junker to ride. She presented me with this old piece that she's had in the garage for years:

Could my heart have leapt for joy any higher!

So the next morning I filled her tires with air and went exploring. I took her for a stroll around Lake Ponca. Not all the way around, but over by the spillway, East Dam, and the recreation area. It was pretty swell. As I was riding, I had a little laugh to myself because I thought, I should call her Nan. Go figure.

Lake Ponca the spillway Recreation Area

In the afternoon, Nancy and I went into town for some sightseeing. This place is small, but there is something new every time I come to visit. It's like its own little roadside attraction.

We started with the Standing Bear Museum.

Then went to the Conoco Museum.

Both pretty interesting and free!

I also can't neglect mentioning the nature I have seen while in dear old Ponca.

There are now four of these spiders living around their house. They are called zipper spiders because of the web, they aren't dangerous, but the can have 14,000 babies! Holy majoly. And they are quite large, about 2 inches.

We went down to the gate on Tuesday night to go look at one of the spiders and saw this little frog just resting on the bars. He was cute.

While riding around Lake Ponca Recreation Area, I came across all these ducks and geese. I was hanging out with the white ones when Mister Ugly came waddling over, too close for my comfort, so I left.

And the last bit was the prairie dogs in the prairie dog field. I requested to go there because they are so funny. Did you know that when they make their little squeak, their tale goes up simultaneously?

That concluded the Ponca sight seeing, but here is the complete set of photos if you must. And I suggest you might.

A note: In previous posts, I have planted links to the photo albums without so directly calling them out. They will show up as orangey-colored type and change when you run the cursor over them.

mile 332 - 1294

Driving with my mom (and cat) from Richmond to Little Rock didn't seem like much of a deal for many reasons. One, I used to do the drive (well, from Fredericksburg) a couple times a year going to and from college. Two, I lived in Little Rock for 18 years so it's slightly more difficult to get excited about the place your from. Just slightly though. Three, mom drove 11 of the 15 hours that it took.

So we set sail on Friday morning. The sun wasn't up, there was a chill in the air, and literally hundreds of miles of road between us and our destination. It was funny to leave after just spending a week getting my apartment all perfect for living. But that will just be nice to get back home to in the end.

morning, noon, and night

We were in a suburban (thank you Aunt Marie for the use of your spacious vehicle), so it seemed silly to make Zissou stay in her tiny mesh cage. We let her roam, and after about an hour she got real comfortable. She helped mom drive and sleep and didn't even get antsy when I held her for too long.

(She is NOT a lap cat. Except when she is in a car apparently.)

Another thing about the drive from Virginia to Arkansas is that it's really long, but only because Tennessee should have been cut into thirds, at least. One of the best parts about driving across the country is all the Welcome To... signs you get to pass, and for the amount of hours spent in the car, there's just not much state signage payoff. While Tennessee is long and has a boring Welcome To sign, they do redeem themselves with these other classics: Bucksnort, a town in TN; the sign that gives you both the miles and kilometers to Knoxville; and the Entering Central Time Zone sign.

But Arkansas has a really good Welcome To because it's on a bridge that goes over the Mississippi River.

Trust me when I say that is the Welcome To Arkansas sign

As we entered the home state, I started to think about how I was treating this stop differently than the ones to follow. And I did not want to do that. I needed a touristy activity, or at least something I had never done and should. So we tossed the Little Rock classics back and forth. River Market, state capitol, Clinton Library, Old Mill. Done, done, done, done.

I have not, however, been to a Razorback football game or the epic tailgating that precedes (and goes on throughout) it. Shameful, I know. Lucky for me, the first home game of the season was on Saturday. PERFECT! And I even had a red tank top I could wear.

Mimi and I ready to be team players, I mean supporters.

Needless to say, it was so much more than I expected.

Tents as far as the eye could see ,

red people, smokers for meat, giant coolers, and it was all on the golf course!

It was a good time. Partially for the spectacle of it and partially because my dad fixed us up with one of my old soccer jugs filled with cosmopolitans. I think that was high class.

After I satisfied my urge to be a "tourist," the weekend went back to normal.

Small breakfast with the family turned into big breakfast with the family, hanging out with friends, meeting new babies, and running errands that wore me out.

Grandmothers! Friends!

Oh yeah, it also meant picking up my car! The car that I will introduce you to next time because she will be my partner in crime for the next 4 weeks.