Two or Three Months later...

Welll, it's sure been awhile - nearly 3 months. Why haven't we updated our blog? Well because we're bums, that's why. Gussie did a bunch of work in the sunshine state while I dug a hole in my folks basement (sump-pump-pit).
We're back on the road now, and enjoying the sunshiny weather dished out daily by the great state of Oklahoma. I was recently told by a friend that every state has a state song, but not every state's song was written by Mr.'s Rodgers and Hammerstein. Yes, nearly 65 years ago those two fine gentleman penned Oklahoma, which as far as I can tell is a play about the state in which I currently sit. I've even heard the song once on local radio; it was strung together with what I'm guessing were college-football songs and a bunch of whoops and hollars. Very festive. It was apparently being played in celebration of the end of the work week.
Either way, I've learned a thing or two about Okla-homey's. They like neck tatoo's, for instance. Or at least they do in the local Wal Mart's. They love strip mall's. They value AAA baseball, and while they shun pornography establishments in the area we're staying (Oklahoma City), they have a boatload of stripclubs. This place is THICK with stripclubs. So now you're in the 'know'. Everybody have a great weekend! We'll see you 'sooner' then later (oklahoma joke). Keep your chin up United States of America! We'll publish more next week!

1200 Miles later!

3 states in one weekend! To the left you can see our weekend drive - we had a great 4th.
But hey, we skipped a week there. Wyoming was stunningly empty. I shouldn't be surprised - it's entire population could fit in one of Chicago's smaller suburbs, but that doesn't mean it didn't have it's charms. I saw at least a thousand miles of snow fence, which are huge wooden structures which have been placed at crazy angles to the interstate (depending on where the wind pushes the winter snows). That's novel, right? Gussie thought the landscape was gorgeous. I pointed out that it was very dry. She pointed out that I wasn't allowed to talk when sitting in the back seat.
Most shockingly, the JC Penny's "mother store" is located in Kemmerer Wyoming. If you were to see Kemmerer, you would be as shocked as I was. The Internet says the town has a population of 2,651, and sits on 7.5 square miles of dry, hilly land.
When Gussie and I first drove through town, we were charmed to the teeth. The place has dubbed itself "the fossil fish capital of the world" on account of the zillions of fossilized fish in the sourounding countryside (additionally there's Fossil Butte National Monument about 15 miles away) and had all the accompanying touristy fossil and bone shops you could want. Plus there were cafe's, coffee shops, all the cutesy yuppie stuff we like. However, when we actually got out and walked the town, we found most stores were either closed (I had to do without coffee for an hour), or staffed by the most horrifically rude people I've encountered. Now if you're from Kemmerer, I apologize. I'm basing my experience on only two direct encounters with two different shop-keep's. The fact that they were separated by 2 blocks may only be a coincidence (creepy).
Anyway, the JC Penny's mother store was funny in that it was extremely tiny, yet carried a small portion of the "typical" JC Penny's inventory. As an example, they had 4 t-shirt options for young adults. I think that was their entire t-shirt section. Having grown up being driven to JC Penny's every school year, I've walked into their stores and been absolutely devastated by the sheer number of choices for everything; 32 flavors of shirts, pants, swimming trunks, jock straps... It was almost refreshing to look at a Penny's, and in under a minute determine "there's absolutely nothing I want here". Easy.
We spent the 4th in Colorado and had a smashing time. Now we're back in Utah, in a town called St George. My brother commented (and I agreed) that he had no idea there was a St George, which shows what he and I know about churchy stuff. The internet says he was murdered (or martyred if you prefer) by a Roman Emperor named Diocletian for being Christian in the 3rd Century. If you ever see a biblical figure fighting a dragon on the back of a horse, it's probably him.
That's it for this week. As I haven't had much of a chance to check out the town I can't in good faith report on anything about it, other then the fact that it's extraordinarily hot (108F) and has at least one excellent sushi/thai restaurant (Benja Thai and Sushi).

Wyoming? Just becuase.

Currently Gusser's and I are still in Layton UT. But if you were to look for us in Layton, let's say... tomorrow? You would find NO TRACE OF US. Like smoke-pellet throwing ninja's, we'll be absolutely GONE from not only the town of Layton, but Davis County, and in fact the entire state of Utah! Screw it! We're heading for Wyoming!
That's not to say we haven't enjoyed our time here. We went camping at the North Fork Campground last weekend (in the Wasatch Mountains), and it was fantastic. Zero pictures were taken, which as time goes on will only allow the memories to ferment, and grow stronger. Bolder. It was like a beer commercial; our site had a mountain fed stream which kept our water and beer ice cold, we had waterfall-laden hiking, and we had roaring camp-fires. And almost no bugs, which was cool.
But I'm reminiscing. Tomorrow we head to Wyoming, which Gussie and I have never ever been to. Do they wear cowboy hats there? Do they eat with their feet? Who knows. Probably no one. We'll find out tomorrow, and you'll find out next week!

Action Packed Weekend

Gusser's and I witnessed several disturbing events this weekend; as my personal anti-favorite I'll pick on man's closest genetic relative - the monkey. We went to the Hogle Zoo and saw a lot of animals doing animal stuff. Giraffe's using their silly purple tongues to get hay (or something) out of troughs, black bears shadow boxing each other, and a white-alligator just sitting around like it's dead (which is what every alligator I've ever seen in my life has been doing - just sitting there waiting for a baby to stroll by then BAM!). But then we saw a Mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx) doing something not as much funny as it was absolutely disgusting. And you guessed it; it involved poop.
Do I even need to say more? When people think monkeys, their very next thought often includes "poop". Like, "Uh-oh, is there any poop flying through the air?" or "Is that poop I smell?". Now I think that this is because humans are genetically wired to fear poop-tossing monkeys. Luckily for Gussie and I, this Mandrill was behind a thick pane of glass. But that also meant that we had a unobstructed view of this particular Mandrill, who appeared to be attempting to write a message in his own feces. Then, almost as an afterthought chose to... I can't say it. It was gross though, real gross. We walked away and focused our attention on the 3-toed sloth, who was peacefully sleeping in a sling. Much cooler.

Seamonkey Lake City

Okay, we all know that the United States if full of mysteries. Sometimes you'll do some traveling, and those mysterious aren't so mysterious any more. You're all like, "Ooooh, I get it. That's how they make paper!" or "So that's where babies come from!" and you're a better informed, more well-rounded individual. But sometimes, you learn something, and it makes you wish you were born with no brain...
As happened to Gussie and myself this week. As we're staying about 20 minutes away from the "great" salt lake, we figures we would go and check out this sweet island that they've turned into a sweet state park. There's a road extending from the lake's edge to the island itself, and after paying the crazy-high fee to get in, we were hit my a magnificent sight; the lake's humongous, and the water is very still... the mountains are cleanly reflected in the lake, and where the lake meets the sky on the horizon, you can't see where one stops and the other begins. In short, it's a magnificent sight to behold... and then the smell hits you. "Oooh Lord, what is that stink?" we asked ourselves, only slightly distracted from the view. The offending odor soon faded, and we happily made our way to the visitor center. It was there that the horrific learning took place. But before the horrific learning was some normal learning. Turns out that the reason the greater Salt Lake City area is constantly pestered by Seagulls (feel free to take a moment to look at a map of where Salt Lake City is as compared to any ocean or sea - the nearest as far as I can tell is about 590 miles away in the LA area) is that a huge percentage of the US bird population hangs out at the "great" salt lake on their trip's north and south every year. "Why do they do that?" I wondered. "Isn't it all salty? They don't have fish in there, do they?" Well it turns out that no, they don't. What they do have, what does grow in the lake, is sea monkeys. God awful amounts of sea monkeys. And when Gussie and I kicked off our shoes and approached the surface of the water, we had to step over hundreds of thousands of washed up and stinking sea monkeys. And when we did wade into the water, we were abruptly stopped by a reddish, rolling and impenetrable mass of disgusting, exposed-ribcage-looking sea monkeys. So that's what the stink on our drive in was; a billion dead sea monkeys. I... I can't write any more right now...*sniff*... more next week...

Spring camping

I grew up in Illinois, and I'm no spring chicken. I have no right to be surprised by what the weather happens to be doing within the confines of my home state. So while I'm not exactly shocked by the amount of rain and lightening I've seen since returning to Illinois on May 24th, I'm certainly impressed.
Now I may have been influenced by the fact that since returning home, every night there has been a thunderstorm Gussie and I weren't sleeping in a "fortified environment" or "house". We were tent camping the first weekend back, and this most recent week we were staying in my folks RV. This has highlighted for me a very important principle of camping in the spring; take an RV. See, on two occasions this year we've been tent camping and found ourselves nearly floating away! In this most recent go-round, we could actually press down on the floor of the tent and displace inches of water! Inches I tell you, not centimeters but inches! It was amazing.
Gusser's is already in Salt Lake, and described a stormy land with snow-capped mountains. I'm looking forward to it, but sad that I'll be leaving behind the humidity and heat of Illinois. But what the hell are you going to do? The high desert is calling.

Beautiful day!

Seeing the family - done. It was a short visit but we had a great time. My Aunt, Uncle and their families couldn't have been nicer. And I ate one of the best barbecue pork-chops of my entire life. No joke - it's seriously changed what I consider to be "good" when it comes to a BBQ pork-chop. Now those things that I make on my grill are "bad" instead of "awesome". And that's what family is for.
I'm going to take a bus downtown today! We'll be leaving town soon enough and it's my last chance to see a bit more of Raleigh, or as I call it, The Jewel of the West-Central North Carolina.
This holiday weekend will involve a whole helluva lotta driving, and hopefully some camping. I will most likely skin my knee or something.