Boogie Like Your Butt Is On Fire

…unless, of course, your butt does catch fire

DogCon 3: The Trip Home, The End

We are home. Naps were taken, imaginary stuff was put away, Sharon left for home, The Girls napped some more, Flash is sleeping in his imaginary cat tree, Abby is imaginarily browsing on the shrubbery on the yard and Joe and the Magic Bus are both back in the secret underground Doc Cave.

For those of you that stuck all of this out to the end, thank you. I am flatly amazed that I’ve spent nearly a month doing these reports. I think we can all safely assume that my LJ gas tank is full again and I shall reume regular posting.

I think we can also agree that Uncle Doc REEEAAALLLYYY needs a vacation. At least a 2 week driving vacation. Hopefully to GenCon next August.

We shall see.

The Lady In The Car Was Loaded In Every Sense Of The Word

…and so was her gun

DogCon 3, The Trip Home, Part 2

We are stopped for dinner (cooked on the bus) in Seligman, Arizona. By midnight, we should be in Barstow, where Joe says we have to stop for some sort of calibrations. We’ll be there an hour, then we’ll head for Bakersfield and then north on I-5 and home. We should walk in the door of stately Cross Manor around 8:45 am.

There are a whole lot of Route 66 fans here in Seligman tonight, as there often are in the summer months. They are heading east in classic 1950′s era cars and have been doing this since 1976. Classic Rock fills the air and so does the smell of BBQ.

More bloggage later.

My Life In The Land Of Crazy Ladies

…many of whom I am related to

DogCon 3: Epilogue

For the third year in a row, I attempted suicide by pie at the “Post Con Cool Down Party”. I think I came closer than ever this year. Grace, Sharon & the critters also overdosed on pie and are, even as I type this, fast asleep.

We are 4 hours out of Wilted Springs and headed west. The autopilot, Data, is driving and will stop in Amarillo, where we will sleep until it’s time for breakfast at the Big Texan Steak Ranch. After that, I will drive during the day and Data will take over at night. It won’t quite be non stop, but I still estimate us being home in under 40 hours.

And now, I’m off to bed.

Whovian Firefly Trek Galactica 5

…once again, a subject line causes fanboys & fangirls to orgasm

Trip to DogCon 3: Day 13, Part 1, In which we see several UFO’s, visit with a whole bunch of harmonica players, take yet another temporal detour and finally reach Wilted Springs.

(Note: All comments in italics are by non-humans)

Continuing where I left off yesterday, I drove from 5:00 AM until we entered Wichita Falls, Texas about 7:00 AM. At that point, I rousted everyone for breakfast at The Sausage House. By the time we left, stuffed full of eggs, toast, sausages of many kinds and our favorite caffeine delivery systems, it was nearly 9:30. Time to go to The UFO Graveyard.

(Lucy:Sausages rule!)

Just west of Wichita Falls is yet another temple devoted to science fiction and some goofy fucker with way too much free time. In this case, the goofy fucker is Bobray Hingle and the subject is crashed UFOs. Bobray and his equally free time endowed friends have built replicas (not full size, but big) of a whole bunch of spacecraft from science fiction TV series & movies. The Enterprise? Oh yeah, 5 versions. Klaatu’s ship from the original “Day The Earth Stood Still”. Yep, with Gort lying in pieces beside it. The Jupiter 2? Earth Vs The Flying Saucers? TIE Fighter? Firefly? The Tardis? Yes! And there are about 30 others, including some from anime and cartoons. It costs $5.00 a head to see the place, but it’s worth it. They also have the spiffiest t-shirts I’ve seen so far.

(Winker:Our guild is still kicking ass in WoW!)

We left about 11:30 and decided to stop in the little town of Graham to have burgers & shakes. Well sir, we did that, true enough, but we also got to see 152 harmonica players in action, because it was the annual Graham Harmonica Week Festival.

There were old & young bluesmen, cowboys wailing out country & western tunes, rockers, soul men (and women), gospel players and more than a few folks playing classical music. It was, as they say, a wonder to behold. It also kept us in town until near 1:30.

(Abby:There were also very tasty rosebushes growing along the sidewalk in one spot.)

(Flash:Some of those old guys had been hitting the catnip pretty hard.

Now, that would put us into Wilted Springs about 4:30-5:00, a bit later than I wanted, so I called up Joe and asked him if he could do a bit of fucking around with space & time. He said ok and crawled under the dashboard and began doing his mechanic thing.

About a minute later, we were driving through Los Angeles on a rainy day in 1933. We were on Sepulveda Boulevard and getting some serious stares. Then two cop cars lit up and I told Joe to get us outta there, but I’m not sure he heard me over the yelling of the rest of the people on the bus. Grace alone was drowning out the police sirens.

(Winker:Mom told Dad she was gonna put her foot up his butt! Hahahaha!)

Before I had to go into high speed chase mode, things shifted and we were driving along a tropical, yet rather Arabic looking, city street. We were, in fact, the only motor vehicle of any kind. There was more yelling from the back of the bus, so Joe dis something and there we were, passing the familiar sign that said Wilted Springs was only 10 miles away. Local time: 3:10 PM. Score one for Joe & Doc, except that Joe got outta there and left me to explain things to everybody.

(Flash:Joe is no dummy.

We checked into our hotel, the Hilton, at 4:00. Our rooms were on the 15th floor and, because we Crosses had pets, came with a small yard/balcony (glassed in, to prevent falls) and a “pet bedroom”. After a couple of hours, during which I think we all napped, we met up with the Jones Gang for dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. I had a lamb vindaloo that was delicious, but pretty volcanic on the Spicey Meter. After that it was time for some wandering about and then relaxing.

(Everybody but Winker:Holy Shit, we are up way high!)

(Winker:I’ll have to take your word for it.

Although the con does not officially start until Thursday, tomorrow will see a huge influx of gamers into town and the 3:00 PM opening of the Open Gaming Hall, which will easily fit 100 tables. The Boardgame Hall will also be open and roughly the same size. In addition, there is a Pre-Con Party for Guests of Honor, Featured Guests and GMs, so Spike and I will be there. Of course, there is also the getting of badges and swag bags and event tickets (for humans and animals) and seeing friends as they arrive (like the Mystery Family, my home gaming group, John Kovalic family, Steve Jackson, etc, etc).

(Lucy:Ooh! I love this con! I’m gonna play in as many LARPs as possible!)

(Flash:There’s a spa here just for cats? I may never leave.)

(Abby:A theme park for animals? Oh yeah!)

(Winker:I’m gonna go to the waterpark with Sharon!

It will be a busy day. More bloggage tomorrow.

The Amazing Steam Powered Battle Duck

…funny looking, but deadly

The Trip to DogCon 3: Day 12, Part 1, In which we do a whole bunch of stuff and don’t get much closer to the con.

(Note: All comments in italics are by non-humans)

Oy vey, was yesterday packed with activity! I shall list it all below.

1: We at the KOA’s free pancake breakfast. Yum!

(Everybody:Mmmmmm…pancakes!)

2: Visited the Bicycle Ranch. It looks sorta like the famous Cadillac Ranch, but with nearly 100 bicycles. About a 3 on the Roadside Cool-O-Meter, but free to look at.

3: Stopped at a Target store to pick up some items. Miranda helped me walk the animals in the parking lot while everyone else shopped. We attracted a fairly large crowd of onlookers.

(Abby:We be walkin’, they be lovin’!)

(Winker:There were lots of nice people petting us!)

(Flash:One guy smelled like old socks.)

4: Went to The (you guessed it) World Famous Tulsa Zombie Cartoon World. Now, this actually started in 1948 as just plain old Cartoon World, with the founders, Pete & Muriel Ginswaker, just making 6 foot tall chicken wire and plaster versions of famous cartoon characters. Apparently, from about 1952 until the mid 1980′s the place was a must see roadside attraction. Then the new highway alignment moved over about 5 miles and business plummeted. A few years later, the Ginswakers moved to Florida and the place sat unattended until 2005 when Jeff & Karen Zbrowski bought it.

(Lucy:We stayed on the bus and played The Beatles Rock Band)

The Zbrowskis are both horror movie fans, so they could not help but notice hoe the 126 cartoon characters, now in varying stages of disrepair, looked like zombies. A bit of paint, some resin coating and Bada Bing Bada Boom: Zombie Cartoon World was born. It’s kinda sick, kinda funny and very cool. We spent an hour there. Favorite character: Betty Boop with a 2X4 stuck through her chest (thanks to a tornado in 1993).

5: Visited the Tulsa Zoo, which is a very nice zoo indeed.

(Flash:Great Ceiling Cat above, there were some scary smells coming out of that place! Bears and wolves and bigass cats and shit!)

(Abby:I’m SO glad we were safe on the bus!)

6: Stopped by The Skinny House. This place is only 10 feet wide, but 90 feet long and 40 feet tall. How it has resisted being flattened by a twister over the last 47 years is beyond me.

7: We ate lunch at Happy Hank’s Tulsa Barbecue, which was mighty tasty and had a small sculpture garden with sculptures made of beef & pork ribs.

(Flash, Lucy & Winker:MMMMMMMMmmmmm…rib bones!)

(Abby:MMMmmmmm…leftover salad bar stuff!)

8: Found a pretty great used book store that specialized in science fiction & fantasy. After an hour, we had to force Spike & Grace back on the bus at gunpoint.

(Flash:Man, they bought about 200 pounds of books each!)

9: We finally got out of the Tulsa area and all the way (just over 100 miles) to Oklahoma City before we did our next tourist trap stop. This one was The Bar J Miniature Cattle Ranch. Sure enough, it’s a 250 acre cattle ranching operation that specializes in miniature cattle. The vast majority of these little bovines barely stood waist high to me. I felt kinda giantlike.

(Flash & Lucy:Beef on the hoof! We could take one of those cows! Rawr! Woof!

10: Being as how it was hot and humid, we finished our day at a waterpark near the South Oklahoma City KOA. A splendid and refreshing time was had by all of us humans.

(Winker:We played WoW on the bus computers. Our guild kicks ass!)

We all sacked out around 10:00 last night, but I was up at 5:00 AM to get us down the road and into Texas. We still have about 450 miles to go and a few more stops to make before we hit Wilted Springs late this afternoon.

More bloggage in a few hours.

Destination Sign: Planet of the Apes

Green Clowns From Under Your Bed

…they’ll recycle your trash, then eat your face.

The Trip to DogCon 3: Day 10, Part 1, In which we go on a roadside attraction binge, our critters get lost on the bus and we eat more corndogs.

(Note: All comments by Flash are in italics)

We are scheduled to visit seven roadside attractions today. We already have 4 of them crossed off the list. Here now, the listing of today’s misadventures so far.

1: At the rather too early hour of 8:00 AM, we viewed the wonder & splendor that is The World Famous Candy Bar Museum. This was a fun (it’s always fun to see assloads of candy), enlightening (there are candy bars from all over the world) & nostalgic (Milkshake Bars!) tourist trap. We spent 45 minutes there, looking at the 7,358 candy bars, some nearly 100 years old.

(This place smelled great, but we were locked up in the bus…with a goat!)

2: Next up was The World Famous Beer Can Museum. You think there were a lot of candy bars? This joint has 15,912 beer cans from all over the planet and some of them are near 150 years old. My fave beer name? Hung Dong Beer from China.

(Still locked up here, but the goat seems to have opened a door. Might have to check this new room out.)

3: When we came out of the Beer Can Museum, we found the bus strangely quiet and devoid of animal. Then I saw an open door which hadn’t been there when we left. Going through the door, I found myself in a really big room (and I mean warehouse big) full of crates that all seemed to contain parts for Hudson automobiles. I found Winker within a minute or so, but didn’t find Abby for another 15 minutes and it took nearly another 20 to round up Flash & Lucy. They all seemed ok, but were apparently having a good time exploring.

(Now that was fun! We had a hella good hide & seek game going until Dad busted it up.)

4: After the Great Pet Hunt, we drove over to The Red, White & Blue Garden. This place was one of the best gardens I’ve ever seen, with tons of beautiful plants, most in bloom. Also, very patriotic. I expected the owners to be Republicans or Tea Baggers, but in fact they are both Green Party members. YAY!

(Oh, man, were there birds in that garden! I am so hungry now.)

5: Yet another garden visit was Waterfall World. A truly beautiful example of what a gardener with lots of time (and, one assumes, plenty of money) on his hands can do. There are 14 ponds, 8 streams and 32 waterfalls here, all lushly planted with a dazzling array of plants. There are also 3 aviaries, chickens, ducks & geese wandering around and about a zillion koi carp.

(Shave my tail and call me a possum, that place had FISH just swimmin’ around! And birds…tasty tasty exotic birds…confined to cages! Oh man, if I could have escaped from this bus, I’d have been eating good in the neighborhood!)

6: We are now back at the Cozy Dog Drive In, fortifying ourselves with corndogs before seeing the next three attractions and then heading to St. Louis. More bloggage later.

(Mmmmmm…corndogs! Om Nom Nom!)

Destination Sign: The 8th Dimension

Jenny, The Lap Dancer Who Saved The World

…who knew lap dancing kills aliens?

The Trip to DogCon 3: Day 9, Part 1, In which we give you a quick run down of the events of the day

(Note: Flash is still not in a writing mood.)

1: Early on, we saw The Marble Sculptures Of Great Americans, which were not carved from marble, but made out of marbles. There are 23 sculptures, all life size and looking very…strange is the only word that fits. It’s places like this that will make you realize you don’t need LSD to hallucinate.

2: Then we went to look at The Giant Duelling Lumberjack Statues. Yep, they are big, lumberjacks and hefting axes at each other. Took us all of 4 minutes to see, including picture taking.

3: Stopped at a feed store to buy Abby a bag of Goat Chow and some dog & cat treats.

4: Ate lunch at a hot dog joint that advertised with the slogan “Our Weenies Are Huge!” How can you not love a place like that?

5: Entered Illinois near the town of Roscoe, in honor of our late dog.

6: During a grocery shopping break in Rockford, we stumbled upon yet another room inside the Magic Bus. This one seems to be a full sized roller skating rink. No skates, but there is recorded organ music.

7: Stopped to see The Pie Tin House. I am beginning to think that somewhere in America, you will find a house built out of every sort of thing most folks just recycle the normal way.

8: Stopped for the night in Springfield, Illinois, birthplace of my fabulous wife and home of the Cozy Dog Drive In, where you’ll find the best damned corndogs in the world! We ate dinner there.

9: Watched several alternate reality movies, including a proper big screen version of The Wild Wild West, which was heavy on the steampunk gadgetry.

Sleep now, more roadside exploration tomorrow.

Destination Sign: The House On Haunted Hill

Marshmallow Peeps As A Deterrent To War

…first, drop humongous Peeps on your borders

The Trip to DogCon 3: Day 7, Part 2, In which we see a stampede of old people, view a pyramid and let our critters run free.

(Note: All comments by Flash are in italics)

In Minot, North Dakota, we had to buy a few necessities and, finding nowhere else cheap to shop, were forced to go into a Wal-Mart. Since this is a wholly distasteful thing for both Grace & I, we were determined to make it as fast as possible.

Once inside the place, we noticed a great number of old folks, Turns out, it was “Senior Appreciation Day” and seniors were getting discounts on stuff. We went and got what we needed and were heading towards the checkout line when some doofus came on the loudspeaker and said that all prescriptions were now just $1.00. Holt fuck, the old folks went crazy! A huge mass of them started heading towards the pharmacy at the front of the store. They were yelling and fighting for position and they didn’t hear the doofus clarify that he meant prescriptions on just one type of medicine were $1.00.

I don’t know about you, but seeing a surging tsunami of old people heading towards us scared the hell out of Grace & I & a couple of cashiers. We all ran out the front doors just as the tidal wave of senior citizens broke on the pharmacy. Even worse, as they found out about the mistake, the old coots started getting angry. Next thing you know, there was a full fledged riot going on! I looked at my Sweet Angel and we both decided to haul ass back to the bus and get the fuck outta there.

My sisters and I could smell old human smell all the way out to the bus. It was not pleasant.

We were a good mile from the now burning & surrounded by cops Wal-Mart before we realized that we had not paid for our stuff. Score!

Some 87 miles down the highway from Minot, we came to yet another roadside attraction, The Pyramid Of The Prairie. This thing is build entirely out of old flattened cars ans is 60 feet on a side and 70 feet tall at the peak, which is, if I saw correctly, a squashed red 1964 Chevy Corvair.

I smelled like, maybe 1,000,000,000 mice at that place!

For three bucks you get to look at it up close and even go inside to the “Great Chamber”, where a perfectly preserved gold 1959 Cadillac Eldorado sits in a huge open sarcophagus. It was cool and at the same time very strange.

We took lots of pictures, bought t-shirts and postcards (no fridge magnets) and then got back on the road. A few hours later, we arrived in Fargo. When we went out to eat at a Golden Corral, I asked the server if she knew where I could rent a wood chipper. She must have A: seen the movie and B: never been asked that, because she started laughing so hard she had to sit down.

It is always pleasing to have one’s humor appreciated.

After dinner, we returned to the RV park, which has a very large fenced in dog park. We let the hounds and Flash run loose and wouldn’t ya know it, a squirrel fell out of a tree into the enclosure. In the wink of an eye, Lucy, Flash and a terrier named George were after the bushy tailed intruder. They did a couple of laps around the fence line, then the squirrel shot up the fence. That stopped the dogs, but Flash was still in hot pursuit. He chased the squirrel along the top of the fence, but it jumped onto a low hanging tree limb and was gone. Still, Flash seemed pretty pleased with himself and we all praised his fine effort at rodent control.

Dude, that squirrel was all like “oops!” and I was all like “oh hell yes” and then he was all like “SHIT!” and me and the dogs were like “yer dead, bitch!” and then it was hella crazy and then I was like “I’m on yer ass, squirrely” and then he was like jumpin’ and dude, it was hella cool!

As we often do, movies were watched (“Big Trouble In Little Jamaica” and “Willy Wonka Goes To Mars”), chocolate eaten and then beds were climbed into. Tomorrow, we venture into darkest Minnesota and whatever strange things await us there.

Destination Sign: The Cobalt Club

Gone Fission

…I’ll try to get to church for critical mass

The Trip to DogCon 3: Day 6, Part 2, In which we support small local & wierd business, are boarded by the police and see our critters eat for free.

(Note: All comments by Flash are in italics)

Well, it took many hours and 438 miles, but we are finally in North Dakota. Williston, ND, to be exact. The Buffalo Meadows RV park, to be exacter. No, there are no buffalo or bison here. There are three Holstien cows not far away though.

After we left the field full of pronghorns, we stopped 4 times at various tourist traps and once for lunch. The list follows…

Havre: We stopped here for gas, sightseeing and to visit The House Made Of Whiskey Bottles. There is actually no charge to see it, since the city of Havre owns it. I was expecting a small bungalow, but no, this place is 7 rooms and 2 stories tall, plus it has a 10′X 15′X 8′ shed next to it. That all took a shitload of booze bottles to build. Of course, I reckon there wasn’t a hell of a lot to do but drink whiskey in Northern Montana in 1880-85, when it was constructed.

Malta: Here, we stopped for lunch (burgers & shakes) and to visit The Lighthouse, which is in fact, a lighthouse. Now, as you might imagine, lighthouses are few and far between in landlocked states like Montana. Nevertheless, there it was, 75 feet high and looking like every New England lighthouse I’ve ever seen a picture of. Which figures, since it was built by a former fishing boat captain from Maine who moved to Montana and made big money in cattle. Both Grace & Sharon declined the heart attack inducing climb up to the top, but being not of sound mind, I trudged up. The Girls couldn’t go, but Flash did by riding on my shoulders. The view from the top was great, once I sucked in enough oxygen for my vision to clear.

I really enjoyed the trip up, despite Dad wheezing and gasping for air and calling himself a halfwitted idiot.

Wolf Point: This is the home town of The Famous Performing Albino Mules and sure enough, we paid $3.00 each to see a 35 minute show featuring 10 of the best trained mules I’ve ever seen, all of them albinos. After the show, we were allowed to pet them and sit on them for pictures (an additional $5.00 each). To avoid anything remotely like the “Squirrel Incident” all of our critters were on lockdown until we left.

Whatever happened to “paid you debt to humanity, now you are free”?

It was also in Wolf Point that we had an encounter with the local police. When we got back to the bus, there was the Sheriff waiting for us. My first thought was “what the fuck did the critters do now?” and my second was “or is John Law gonna just check out them hippies?”.

Turns out, I was wrong on both counts. He just wanted to see how we had the bus tricked out because he had a line on a used bus and was nearing retirement. I showed him around outside and inside (after switching off the TARDIS unit, because some shit is just too hard to explain to mundanes) and he was pretty impressed. I had to make up some off the cuff technobabble to explain the paint job, but he bought it.

Culbertson: This was our final tourist stop in Montana and it only took a few minutes, because it just doesn’t take long to look at an 80′ wide, 20′ tall mural of Montana settlers made out of pop bottle caps (circa 1958).

By the way, for those of you keeping tabs, we bought 9 more fridge magnets, 3 t-shirts, 16 postcards and a ball cap with a white mule on it.

By the time we reached our destination in South Dakota, it was 6:15 PM and we were all hungry as starving tenrecs. With that in mind, we went to Bob & Patty’s Family Buffet. Business was slow, so they told us if we sat on the patio, we could bring the critters with us and they’d give them something to eat at no charge. I have never seen dogs & cats eat so much pasta, fish, veggies, beef, pie and cake. By the time we left, they all looked like furry basketballs.

I love those people! Sweet Ceiling Cat above, they were the most generous humans on Earth! I ate a slab of cod as big as my head, then a slice of cherry pie, then a bratwurst…oh man, it was great!

Beat as we were from the long day, it was early to bed for everyone. But as per usual, I woke up later and decided to write this.

More bloggage tomorrow.

Destination Sign: Altair 4

The Mysterious, Yet Oddly Romantic, Story Of Mostly Purple Patty And The Haunted Shopping Mall

…co-starring her pet emu, Walter

The Trip to DogCon 3: Day 5, Part 1, In which we quickly recap yesterday, drive on a twisty mountain road, view scenic panoramas and watch tourists behave stupidly.

(Note: All comments by Flash are in italics)

Recap of yesterday: I was not feeling 100% ok yesterday. In fact, I was feeling somewhere around 30%, with dips as low as 12%. Still, one must press on, if only to get one’s travelling partners to shut up so one can peacefully die. We left Missoula and drove through very scenice areas on our way to Kalipell. We stopped at two roadside attractions: In Ronan, we saw the Miniature Indian Village, which is big, covering an area about 100′ by 75′ and pretty detailed. It cost $2.00 to go through and yes, they sold a variety of souveniers. You can guess which ones we bought. In Big Arm, we visited the Big Arm House, which looks like the right arm of some enormous giant who is showing off his bicep. The interior of the house has a necessarily odd layout, but the view from the fist room (65 feet up) is pretty impressive. The inevitable t-shirts look pretty good, too.

Once we arrived in Kalispell, we did some sight seeing after I ate a hearty bowl of antacids mixed with aspirin, chased by about 30 gallons of water. After wandering about looking all touristy & shit, we went back to the KOA and pretty much goofed off. By dinner time, I was able to eat real food.

That big funny looking house was full of mice! I could smell them all the way out in the bus! Curse Dad for putting steel security mesh on the windows!

Glacier National Park, so far: To start with, I need to point out that our Magic Bus is 32 feet long. This meens that it cannot traverse the Going To The Sun Road, the only road that bisects the park. This is because, due to the narrowness of the road and the steep dropoffs and the lack of guardrails along much of it (due to winter avalanches), no vehicle over 21 feet may go all the way through the park.

We did not know this in advance and so there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth this morning…but only for a few minutes. As always, our trusty onboard mechanic, Joe, solved the problem. With a small bit of (possibly illegal) jiggering to the TARDIS unit, he reduced our bus to a mere 15 feet long externally. Inside, nothing changed and we were off on the road to adventure.

Unfortunately, the narrow road and very steep dropoff along much of the road to adventure (and we were on the dropoff side most of the time) caused much nervous agitation and panicky comment among everyone but Winker and I. I was secure in my driving ability and Winker has no depth perception. Everybody else made terrified noises, barked or hissed, depending upon their species. When we stopped at the first scenic viewing area, Flash had hidden in a cupboard, Grace & Sharon were nervous wrecks and Lucy had peed on the carpet. At least, I’m assuming it was Lucy.

It was Lucy. Also, Dad…YOU ARE INSANE! WE COULD HAVE GONE OFF THAT EDGE AND BEEN KILLED!

Things are indeed scenic and wonderful and natural and fucking near glacier free here. Thanks a bunch, global warming. We saw a fair amount of wildlife on the way up (we are now at about 8,200 feet altitude). Well, I saw wildlife. Everyone else was busy screaming and stuff.

Stupid Tourist Tricks: We saw a guy with a rope tied around his waist that had the other end tied to his car. He did this so that he could lean way over the edge to take pictures of deer way down in the valley. His family cheered him on. Perhaps inevitably, his name was Bubba.

Another pinhead was racing his friend downhill on one of the steepest grades on skateboards. I regret missing their crash a few minutes later, which a fellow uphill driver described as “bloody & bouncy & taking about 300′ to stop”.

Finally, there was the woman who was feeding peanuts to the marmots. After a few minutes, there were about 50 peanut jonesing marmots around her. Then she ran out of peanuts. You’d be surprised how fast a chubby middle aged woman can run when pursued by a seething horde of high altitude rodents.

Yeah, you know, I loves me some rodents (as a snack or a meal), but those fuckers weighed more than I do and there were a shitload of them and they were all batshit crazy for either peanuts or tasty tasty human flesh.

Right now, we are getting ready to finish our drive through the park and then Go on to Cut Bank, where we will spend the night. More bloggage later.

There’s more of that road ahead? Oh, hell no! I’m off to my cupboard!

Destination Sign: Asgard