File under "Day 5, April 6 morning." I forgot to add this: we kept the window open in the hotel that night, even though most other guests used their air conditioners. I like the feel of natural air, and since we were on the 2nd floor and no one could see in, I also kept the drapes open. I woke up in the middle of the night and looked out at the sky, and again i saw the strange circular formation of stars that I saw in Montrose, CO this past fall. I have no idea what this phenomenon is. Is there really some strange formation in the sky? I think the window in the motel faced east, but in Montrose it faced south. Is it my eyes playing tricks on me? I vote for that one, except wouldn't they play tricks at me at home when I wake up and stare into darkness? It only happens with open windows. Stan says it has something to do with the spirit world getting in touch with me. I don't know.

------

Sunday: In the morning we went to Colossal Cave which was a little tourist area southeast of Tucson. We got there bright and early to first do some touristy sluicing before an onslaught of brats got there. I'm sure the little packets of rocks you buy are all pre-measured with a good amount of quartz and bits of sodalite and aventurine all pre-planned to make the unknowing think they might get a precious emerald or sapphire. After that, we took the cave tour. This was the first cave where I sweated! All the caves I've seen--Crystal Cave in South Dakota's Badlands, Manitou Cave near Colorado Springs, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Glenwood Cavern in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and Cave of the Mounds in my own backyard, have all been living caves, the stalagtites and stalagmites still in a state of formation, moist with water. They have been cool, 60 degrees or less and have left me with a cold nose. This cave is a dry cave and was a constant 70 degrees, the warmest cave I've ever been in.

After that, we took a drive through Saguaro National Forest on the southeast side of Tucson. Still with some time left in the day, we decided to take a chance on finding the Mineral Museum at the University of Arizona in Tucson. After all, it was a Sunday, Easter, so it might be closed. We were in luck! It was open (but closed on Monday and Tuesday, so this was our only chance!) plus we got to see an interesting Planetarium exhibit as well, although the mineralogical displays were more than worth the price of admission just by themselves. So many beautiful minerals, you could look for days and each time through see something different. But the one thing that will stick in my mind is a gem-cut piece of Calcite. I don't know how many karats, but it was about an inch wide. The remarkable thing about this gem was the way it sparkled. If you've seen iridescent Aurora Borealis coated Cubic Zirconias it was something like that, but it was not man-made. It was Calcite, common but flawless, clear white rainbow Calcite. The way it sparkled was more pastel, but still very rainbow, pinks and greens and purples and yellows. Gorgeous. Why haven't I found any for sale anywhere?

Since it was Easter, the only place to eat was...Denny's. I had a salad. Stan had the cholesterol special.

Monday: Went to Tombstone in the morning. Not much was open, so we got a bite to eat at a local cafe. It said "family restaurant" so I assumed it was a tourist spot, but in fact it was more a locals spot. It was scary. We got stared at. I could only order coffee because I didn't feel like eating under these circumstances, but somehow Stan managed to wolf down his second cholesterol special. While we were getting ready to leave, a tour bus with Oriental calligraphy on the window pulled up to the corner and unloaded Asian tourists. This was one of the oddest sights, all these tourists on a chartered tour from a country far away snapping photos of this rough western town with a facade preserved for tourists. So as a tourist myself, I shot a picture of the tourists shooting pictures. The rock shop we went to Tombstone for was very small, and very closed. So we went on down to Bisbee. The mineral shop we wanted to see, although supposedly open, was also very closed, but I was able to find a couple beautiful and quite inexpensive rings (turquoise and azurite-malachite) at a different rock/jewelry shop. No luck with finding beads with which to *make* jewelry, however, which is really what I wanted to find. We did happen upon a store in a basement of an old town mall which sold beautiful Chinese antiques. Way beyond our price range, of course, and very beautiful.

We had an embarrassing lost tourist moment when we accidentally got on the road to enter Fort Huachuca. It was not clearly marked that civilians could not enter, I mean, after all, the brown highway department signs pointing to Fort Huachuca could be signs pointing to some old historical fort from centuries ago, one of those tourist points of interest, and there was no place to turn around once we realized we were headed the wrong direction. We stopped at the entrance where we had to present our ID for clearance, and when we told them we were lost and wanted to get back on the highway, they stopped traffic the other way for us to turn around and exit and I heard them say "We got a turnaround". They probably get several of those every day. We headed back to Tucson to see the Botanical Gardens. It was not scorching heat, maybe high seventies/low eighties with a partly cloudy sky, so I was able to tolerate being outside to look at all the pretties. Lots of lizards running across the sandy footpaths, and one gave us the time to shoot him, even offering us different poses. But when some nattering chattering clattering older women came by, he quickly knew he was not in friendly territory anymore and skirted under a bush. We ate a good mini lunch at the Gardens' cafe (Stan helped undo his cholesterol madness with a salad), and we stopped at some greenhouses on our way back to Benson. For dinner we actually manage to locate the Beijing Cafe that we couldn't find the previous day and had a small meal (Stan ordered more veggies this time, further reducing the damage of his two previous Heart Attack Special meals).

Tomorrow we leave Arizona for New Mexico for a day or two, and then back home.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

This was quite a disturbing dream. My dad had died. I don't know if he died while I was visiting them, or if he died before I got there. They had agreed (pre-death) to do the cheapskate funeral where they embalm him at home. I guess he's embalmed at this point, and my mom wants me to go see his body. He's wrapped in a bathrobe, not a good suit (which my dad doesn't really have anyway, unless you count an unintentional retro suit from a bygone era a good suit). He will be buried in the bathrobe. My mom is keeping him under the covers in a bedroom. I think that I am supposed to cry, but I don't feel sad at all when I look at him. Then later in the dream it's like he's alive and talking to me about being dead, but he's still dead. Days go by and he's not buried yet, and there's a strange sweet odor coming from the hallway that I suspect is the embalming fluid leaking out. Where there is cupboards at the end of the hallway IRL, there is a blank wall with rust on it. The whole place is freaking me out, especially when I go into the room my dad is buried in and I see leaky fluid on the mattress. I wake up from this dream and feel quite disturbed about the whole thing.

Labels: Dreams, Route-66-Part1

April 4, morning, McLean, TX: The Cactus Inn. No, we didn't stay there (the motel isn't in the picture), but the sign was photoworthy.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

This has to be one of the most WTF?!?!? dreams I've had in maybe forever. I was in a small western town somewhere and went into a small bar/music hall with Stan (as if). Hurley, yes, big Hugo from LOST was there and it was like we knew eachother. But that is not the WTF part of it. See, I *watch* LOST so characters from the show might pop up in a dream or two. The thing is, the only other dream I had with a character on LOST was with HURLEY! Why? I have no clue. Personally, I'd like to have a dream with Desmond because then it would probably be very weird with seeing into the future and weird dejavus and things. Plus, he's from the British Isles. Yet I digress.

So we're sitting there and this typical western southern-styled band is playing, something like you'd hear in one of the Olde Towne saloons in Fort Collins back in the 80s, something that kept Stan and I away from places like that in droves (well, I don't think two people count as a drove, but you get the picture). This guy comes on stage and someone announces something about Dicky Betts and that he had played with the Allman Brothers.

OK, first of all, I know practically nothing about the Allman Brothers, I don't listen to them, I don't hate them, but they're not my kind of music. But Dicky Betts? How did I even KNOW in waking life that Dicky Betts was in the Allman Brothers let alone while dreaming?

So back to the dream, Hurley is sitting in front of us, and I lean over and tap him on the shoulder and say, "Is that Dicky Betts?" Hurley says yes, and we both concur, "what is he doing here, isn't he more well known to be playing some hole in the wall somewhere?"

So then I "wake up" from the dream, but not really, I only wake up in so far as that I wake into another dream, but I think I'm awake, and I'm going online to verify who on earth Dicky Betts is, and if indeed he played for the Allman Brothers. I find pictures online, and yup, sure enough, that's the guy who was in the other dream.

(I also had a dream later that night about my mom being mad at me about something or other.)

Then when I actually truly do wake up from my dream, (I really am awake at this point), I do go online to check out who this Dicky Betts fellow is (thank goodness my hotel has wireless or I'd be puzzling about this for days), and sure enough, that was the guy in my dream, and yes, he did play with the Allman Brothers.

W. T. F.

The only thing I can think of was that I was "lost" in the dream and really it should've been Sawyer in my place because it was like the kind of music he would listen to.

Labels: Dreams, LOST, Route-66-Part1, WTF

April 4, morning: One of the many iconic images of Route 66, The Conoco building in Shamrock, TX.

I just realized that my camera doesn't give accurate readings of the time these pictures were taken, so I'm just guessing at the general times now.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

April 3, 3:23 PM: Commerce, OK. A little glimpse at a ice cream stand from a bygone era. The only thing giving it away as "now" are the cars parked out front.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

I feel a little silly still titling this "Route 66" when we've been off of Route 66 for a couple days now. Nonetheless, the towns we're staying still have some of that older, mid-century charm. And this really was our "Route 66" trip even though much of the destination was far away from it. Sometimes the trip itself is also the destination.

Well, if you can't afford to spend the night there, at least you can eat there. We ate breakfast at the Space Age Restaurant, attached to the Space Age Lodge. I REALLY WANTED THEIR FLATWARE. It was white with cobalt blue trim and a little flying saucer on the rim. It was so me. Unfortunately, they don't sell their flatware, pity, the colors, the theme, and the fact we desparately need a new set of flatware would have been the perfect souvenir item to come home with. We had to settle with some Space Age Restaurant coffee mugs instead.

We spent a short time in Organ Pipe looking at the pretty cactuses. The Occotillos (sp?) were the only large ones in bloom, and they're not a cactus by scientific definition (most people don't know, though). Some smaller species that were planted by the visitor's center were blooming, however.

It was a long drive to Tucson through an Indian Nation, and we did manage to find a really good cactus supplier in Tucson. Stan took a long time buying plants while I wilted in the car away from the scorching arid sun. Although we managed to hit southern Arizona on a cooler day than I thought we would---well, relatively cool for this location, which means in the 80s--it's still a scorcher because the sun is more direct than what I'm used to "back home." It is actually fortunate I do feel so hot and scorched so that I do take cover and not try to spend much time under the sun. Had it been 60 degrees outside, I probably would have a severe burn right now. Birth control pills, my blood pressure medication, rosacea and light skin are not a good combination when mixed with sun. I've always been sensitive to the heat though. One time in 5th grade I almost fainted on "earth day" when our class spent the day at a park. My face turned colors and they took me back to school to the nurse's office. Same thing happened a few years ago at Arches. My face turning pink is a sign to get me into shade ASAP before it turns purple and yellow and white and red and blue and green. Yet I digress.

Go with your gut. Lodging looked grim in Tucson. Overpriced, sleazy, poorly placed near road construction and by the interstate (which was fine in Oklahoma City, but it was different...hard to explain). We decided that even though there are things we still want to see in Tucson, to drive about 30 miles down the interstate to Benson, AZ, a town on the highway. Rooms were cheaper, the setting was prettier, the desk clerk friendlier, and I could hear crickets outside. We'll be here for another day or two, using this as our base instead of Tucson. Sure, there's still things we want to see in the bigger city, but I don't want to stay there. Smaller towns are so much better to spend the night in when you're doing the roadtrip. (Unless they're REALLY small and only have really scary rundown motels). Benson is actually midway between Tucson and Bisbee, which supposedly is THE place to get copper-based rocks like Malachite, Chrysocolla and Turquoise. It's also near Tombstone, where I've always wanted to visit. I've been to Arizona twice before and never got to Tombstone. Third time's a charm, I guess.

Remember earlier when I said we only ate at Denny's the entire length of the trip thus far at that point? I forgot to mention the IHOP we ate at in Springfield, MO. Service there was very good, unlike Denny's, which we ate at again tonight (what's wrong with me?) in Benson. Well, they gave a 10% discount with the hotel we're staying at, plus, it's right next door, so... It keeps pulling me back IN! I feel like such a tourist.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

April 3, 3:00 PM: I do feel really stupid now for not having any pictures of the Ozarks from Missouri, esp. the Redbuds blooming on the hillsides. It was just very hard to pull over it seemed, and then when it's gone you don't realize you have nothing from it. Oh well. The irony is that I do have a picture from Kansas, and Route 66 only goes for 13 miles or so through Kansas! It loops around through a small southeast corner, where stands this restored Marsh Rainbow Arch Bridge (shown with our van in the first picture for size reference).

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

April 2, 3:39 PM: The "Bel-Air" sign with a bell. Bell Air, get it? Clever modern stuff. All that remains is the sign with a blank, airy message. The motel, or restaurant, is gone. The land is for lease. Soon, there will be a strip mall or some other hideous postmodernstrosity. This is somewhere outside of Saint Louis on the Illinois side, I think. Or was it in Missouri? I'm confused now.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

It was a hot one today in Phoenix. And road construction was unbearable. We ran into it coming in to town, so we quickly exited and found our way to a non-existent gem and mineral museum (directions put it in a bad part of town...it probably got robbed) and then a cactus greenhouse. Stan filled up on pets and retailers and breeders (pets we keep for us, retailers he resells, and breeders he uses to make seeds/offsets). We tried locating some other greenhouses...one was unfindable and the other didn't have what he wanted. At the end of the day, we decided we should find a motel. They're a bit hard to come by, so we decided to head on down to Gila Bend...tomorrow we'll see Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Traffic got horrendously bad on the westbound interstate...totally backed up more than usual, but the eastbound lane was completely empty. Was it some road construction detour? Worse than that--it was an accident. A horrible accident with dead bodies covered up that left such a sad feeling with me...I was holding back tears. Our westbound lane was backed up only because when people stop and stare at an accident, it causes a backlog for hours and miles.

We almost got a $99 room at the Space Age Lodge in Gila Bend. Part of me wishes we would've splurged just to get to spend a night at a funky retro modern landmark, but $99 is an awful lot, especially since this trip is expensive with gas anyway. At least we're saving money eating! We only spent $16 today on a restaurant meal. We ate at an Asian Indian restaurant for late lunch...a couple Dosas and two Lassis cost a little over $16 not counting tip. We are saving money on lodging too...we're spending the night at the Yucca Motel. Not as funky modern, but it is a restored Mom 'n Pop motel, now run by an Asian Indian family (I'm encountering lots of good curry smells today!) And guess what, here's the weird part, 20 years ago, some time in early June of 1987, Ann and Stan spent the night here coming back from California! Now how romantic is that? Plus, it was half the price of the Space Age Lodge. Bill will be disappointed because I think he stayed in Space once and is probably expecting us to, but...$99? That's like Hilton mint on your pillow prices.

Anyway, I've labeled all the Route 66 stuff in its own special category to make re-reading this easier (just click the "Route 66" label). I'm way behind on Photos, yes, I know, I still need to post photos from the past 5 days. It's just that even though the Arizona clock says 8:47 pm, my Wisconsin body say it's 10:47 pm.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

Weird Dreams from Last Night

Dream 1: Stan and I were talking to Bill and he had to leave. he was in a small import car that might have been electric. As he left us, we saw him exiting an on-ramp to an interstate. The car was not running, so he took it out of gear and let it coast down the incline to the interstate. Somehow this was supposed to charge it to make the motor start, but it didn't work in his case because he only coasted to a stop. I saw his car, stationary at the bottom of the onramp. It looked like a police car came to help him out, but I also walked down to ask him if he was ok and if I could help.

Dream 2: This is really odd one. Stan and I needed to move a dresser or some large piece of furniture that was in my parent's basement. We couldn't do it by ourselves, and we needed someone else to help us. For some reason, in our twisted dream minds, the only person that we knew of who could help us was someone I knew only very briefly from Graduate School, D*v*d K*e*s. He was really reluctant to help us, but he did so anyway, and said something like, "It's always good to help out the homeless". Then I felt bad because he must've thought the looks of my parents basement was so meager that it made us look like homeless people squatting there.

Labels: Dreams, Route-66-Part1, WTF

Not that much to report on today. Left Santa Rosa fairly early and headed toward Albuquerque. We *were* planning on skipping Route 66 in New Mexico's biggest city because of the problem that I described with losing the route easily in big cities, BUT some really awful backed up road construction on the interstate on the east side of Albuquerque had us making an unexpected exit anyway, just to get away from the backlog. This was very fortuitous, as Route 66 is really easy to stay on in this city. There were a lot of mid-century relics along the way on Central Ave throughout. We didn't stop to shoot them (this would've taken forever as there was a lot) but we did pull over to buy Piñon from a roadside vendor. Mmmmm...Piñon. There is something about the kind roasted in the shell found only in New Mexico that is so delicious, but they are high in fat. Oh well, that's pretty much all I ate today. We didn't go to any restaurant at all...just munched stuff in the car. Surprisingly, I didn't stop in Gallup at all, although I thought I would. I really don't need jewelry, what I really need is beads to *make* jewelry*, but I didn't see any stores for that, so maybe I'll try Tucson.

The biggest photo op of the trip is actually a bit embarrassing. It has to do with a certain town in Arizona and a song from the 70s. And I feel like I lost all my indie punk cred for taking such an opportune moment to shoot it (which I probably lost years ago anyway), so maybe this was the nail in the coffin of my cred. I had the worse bad hair day today too...I don't know what I did to it in the shower last night. Maybe it's the dry air straightening it out. All I know was that I was standin' on a corner in Winslow Arid-zona with bad hair, shooting silly statues and street art with Stan, and looking like a total dork.

And thus concludes the Route 66 portion of our travels. Had we stayed on the route, we would've ended up in California. But we have cactus places to see and rock shops to visit in southern Arizona. Pictures to follow, but not yet...I haven't even gotten to Missouri with posting photos! I'm a bit backlogged.

I'm now in Camp Verde, AZ and dealing with a backlog of emails. Hotels were too $$$ in Flagstaff, so we went down the road (literally...steep drop in altitude) a way. Most expensive room I've stayed in (to me, $76 is expensive) but it beats Flagstaff and it beats driving all the way to Phoenix tonight. But it's got two queen size beds...I plan to stretch out a lot. Oh, and the towels are nice...they're an ecru color, not skinny white like most of them.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

I had a slew of dreams the first night on the road:

I was with Stan and someone we used to now, let's call him Fred, and Bill. Stan was really leary about being around Fred, but I was reassuring him it was ok. Stan was leary of my positive assessment of Fred, as he should've been. Bill was there too, and I was really glad to see him. He was leaning against a car, and I was hugging him so that he leaned back onto the car. We were all in Fort Collins...there was some strangeness to the town as there usually is in dreams, dealing with vacant houses in the western side of downtown.

I was using my desktop computer, but the monitor was black and white. The hard drive was filled to capacity, and was starting to malfunction because of it. A message came onscreen that said it needed my password and that it was shutting down because there was no more room left. I had to enter my password and then the computer acted really strange and the monitor looked like a non-Mac system from the late 80s or early 90s.

Stan and I were at his mom's. They were talking about how someone had stolen her pictures. I looked on the wall where she had a bunch of framed pictures/paintings (some of which were by Stan and me), and they were all cut out of their frames. There were these bare frames on the wall with no art inside. I couldn't understand why someone would break into someone's house and steal art that way without taking the frame too....it's not like they were bolted to the wall. Weird.

Stan was behaving oddly. He had a hump in his shirt in back, and I figured out he was hiding a book back there. I asked him why he was doing that, and he refused to tell me, which was really weird. I started getting mad at him, and I wake myself up by breathing/fuming heavily.

Labels: Dreams, Route-66-Part1

April 2, 1:56 PM: I call this one "Meth Lab School."

Stan calls things like this "Scare the Girl Stuff." (Girl = Me) Yes it's creepy, but it's also too bad these architectural relics couldn't be preserved.

This is in Nilwood, IL.

I'm dead tired now...so I'll post more when I have time and internet access. The Cadillac ranch pictures turned out great! (Thanks Stan!)

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

April 2, 11:53 AM: Who could resist Giant Hot Dog Guy? He stands, well, I don't know how tall, but there's a tree and a truck bumper there for comparison. We found him in Atlanta, IL.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

April 2, 11:42 AM: This was one of the first old "relics" on route 66 that I saw after we got on the route shortly after Normal, IL. It's in McClean, IL, and I don't know what it was. I realized if I photograph every single relic we find, it'd take us about 33 years to get through our trip, so I decided to limit myself quite a bit after this.

P.S. with all these pictures, click on them for a larger view, then use your back button to return to this page.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

Forest Gump: Sometimes the only thing to watch on TV is Forest Gump. I believe it was that way when we took our short Wisconsin trip last spring. The first night we spent the night in Hudson, WI. Forest Gump was on TV. And this Monday in Lebanon, MO, that was the ONLY thing on TV (other than veddy veddy bad network TV). Forest Gump. How weird is that? Because I was a basketcase that night because we'd been up since 4:30 am that morning, and I was dead tired and couldn't even function to read maps anymore and was having plenty of stupid moments, Stan said it fit my frame of mind (Yeah, thanks, Stan :-P). But I wasn't so stupid that I didn't realize the connection between Forest Gump and Route 66. Gary Sinese plays Hank's buddy, the amputee Vietnam vet. Sinese was in the movie "Of Mice and Men", the book written by John Steinbeck who also wrote "The Grapes of Wrath," which features "The Mother Road" which the Joads travel out on from Oklahoma to California. Somehow, it made sense.

Car Trouble: It was about 5 pm or so on Tuesday when we pulled into a Walmart (yes, I went into a Walmart in Oklahoma...please don't laugh) because we had to use the facilities really badly. Sometimes when interstate restrooms aren't aplenty (as it has been in Oklahoma, very much unlike the generous facilities along I-80 which I am used to), one has to make due with McDonald's or large discount department stores. Those I prefer to places like gas stations which I will only use it's life or death. Since we needed some Coke anyway, we decided to stop at the first place we saw where we knew would be restrooms: Walmart. (I know, Walmart. But we were desparate) Before Stan got back in the car, he noticed his tire was getting flat and that there was a nail in it. We quickly tried to find a place to take care of us, but it was a small town and daytime was running out. We stopped at a car dealership, but they didn't fix tires. They gave us directions to another place that we couldn't find, but in searching for that place we found an autoparts store about 10 minutes before they closed. We asked there if they knew anyone. The owner gave a call to a mom'n'pop traveling tire repair business, and within half an hour, they were there to fix our tire! It was fortuitous beyond belief. That's why we got into Oklahoma City so late. That, and trying to find the right "hotel row" off the interstate.

Musical Motel Rooms. Strangely, the last time I was in a Super 8 motel before this was in Winterset Iowa (Madison County) when we went to see the covered bridges last April. They had internet access, but in the room they put us in, I could not get it. So they moved us to another room. Dejavu. The same thing happened last night. At a Super 8. Weird.

-----

This morning I woke up at 5, but my blind eyes couldn't see the motel alarm clock too well, and I thought it said 6. So I've been up since way early again. I felt dead as a dog traveling through the remainder of Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, and eastern New Mexico. But we did manage to stop at the famous "Cadillac Ranch" and "Bug Ranch." Actually, Bug Ranch is sort of a "time to unpimp zee auto*" parody of Cadillac Ranch. Most of Route 66 is on the frontage road in these western states, so much of the way we didn't even bother and just stayed on the interstate. Yes, we took pictures. I still have to unload zee camera.

*VW ad from last year featuring Peter Stormare (Fargo fame) playing a German car engineer. Very funny ad.

We got our motel room (Super 8 again) early tonight in Santa Rosa, NM so we could shower tonight and be hunkered down in time for LOST. I've not eaten much but Denny's salads lately where the service is always lousy, but dependably lousy.

Labels: LOST, Route-66-Part1, Vacation

It's 6:33 am on Wednesday morning, and this is the first chance I've gotten to write the whole trip thus far. The only reason I can do it now is because it's still dark outside and I can see the monitor in the car (unlike during the day when the monitor is not viewable). Internet access has not been an easy commodity to come by.

There's also been some strange dejavus and allusions to other trips...Forrest Gump, Car Trouble, and Musical Motel Rooms. I'll get to that later. Or maybe not....looks like the sun is starting to lighten the Oklahoma sky.

One thing before I go...the Ozarks really impressed me. I didn't even realize I would be traveling through the Ozarks on this trip...I guess I'm a bit geographically challenged to that part of the country. This week in April is like the equivalent of mid-May in Madison. Redbuds and lilacs were blooming, but not just in people's yards. Redbuds were WILD blooming along the hillsides. WILD Redbuds! Freerange Redbuds, uncontrolled, unsupervised Redbuds!!! How cool was that? This is such a pretty region of the country, it's just a pity there is such poverty as well. We saw more trailer homes and burned out/collapsed buildings along the roadside than in the past 18 years of living in Wisconsin combined. I guess it would be a good place to retire too, as the standard of living is probably much less than in the north and one could live cheaply. It would be interesting to see the Ozarks in the fall as well, to see if it is just as pretty. Topographically, it is more similar to western Wisconsin with the rolling hills and limestone cliffs. Northern Illinois is boring beyond belief, flat as a pancake. But I already knew that. Southern Illinois is more interesting...Springfield seemed an attractive town. Got lost a bit driving through the outskirts of St. Louis and only glimpsed the arch from the distance. Note to anyone who ever wants to travel route 66 and doesn't have endless time to do it or want to be a purist about it: Skip it in the big cities...you'll just get confused and lost. Just take the interstate and bypass the city and catch back up with it again in the country. The country stretches of the route are more fun anyway. We also spent too much time going through Tulsa and getting confused. Too much time wasted with the larger city parts of the Route.

Motel/Hotel rates have been cheap so far, no more than $50 so far per night before tax. Monday night we stayed in a motel in Lebanon, Missouri. She gave us the "Route 66 room" which had photos on the wall. It was quiet, but had no internet access. Last night we got a Super 8 in Oklahoma City. It was amazingly quiet considering all the cars there. That was the first time I was able to check my internet, but considering it was after 10 pm by the time I got to do that, I didn't have any time to post anything. I wasn't able to get many pictures either...sometimes it's hard to pull off or even find a place to pull off. Sometimes it's best to just keep going and leave the image to memory rather than pixels. The few pictures I do have i'll post, but only if I have time.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

The dogs and Caligula are now off at camp. Plato is probably barking his head off and Lucifer Sam is probably purcolating alongside him. Caligula is probably freaked out and hiding in his kitty kennel, that is if the boarding people put it in his kitty room. All that is left is Persephone, and she's loving being queen of the castle. Although she gets along fine with other animals, she'd be the only pet of ours that would be perfectly content to be the only pet. She loves being the sole possessor of the house, and last fall when we returned from Colorado, she *stopped* eating for a few days, although she ate fine when we were gone (she put on weight during that time, which is a good thing). Go figure. We're the only people in the world who have a reverse problem like that.

OK, there's probably people reading this wondering why we have 3 of our animals boarded, and 1 not. Here's a little explanation:

First of all, we have to board the dogs, no two ways about it. We will be in hot weather in places where dogs are not allowed with no where to keep them except the car. This is not a dog-friendly trip.

Second of all, ideally we would leave the cats at home with a big dispenser of food and water and have the neighbors check in on them every few days, but this is not possible because Persephone is medicated. She takes medicine for hyperthyroidism, along with Potassium and some stinky fish smelling stuff for her joints. Stan mixes up a prorated batch of this concoction up along with pet food in a blender and pours it into an ice cube tray. Every day we feed her a cube, which contains the equivalent of a day's dose of medication. We do this because, despite her petite size, she is very strong and squirmy and impossible to medicate traditionally, i.e., popping a pill down her throat. Plus, this makes it easy for the neighbors who feed her, all they have to do is give her a cube a day. And since she is medicated, we can't have Caligula eating her cubes, so that's why he's not staying home with her. And, like with the dogs, it would not be a trip we could take him on either.

I am missing the other animals a lot right now. It's sad. I know once I'm on the road I'll get over it since it'll break the routine.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation

It's always so sad to leave the dogs behind when we travel. This time we're also boarding Caligula...it will be the first time he'll be boarded (unless you count leaving him at Stan's mom's in the nice window room for a few days being boarded). Persephone will be taken care of by our neighbors.

We had a tornado warning last night, here, in Madison, when the temperature had hardly gotten above 50 all day. Sort of a WTF weather moment. Tornados mostly go *around* Madison. I think it's a lake effect thing.

Since I'm not a purist or a retropolitan, we won't start our Route 66 tour from Chicago. Who needs that headache or the needless backtracking. After all, we're not going all the way to LA either. We'll take I-39 down to Normal, Illinois, where it meets up with the famous "Mother Road." If we had an extra week and extra money to spare, maybe we'd take the full route.

Stan thought we could leave this past Saturday, but upon checking with the kennel, we found we had made arrangements to bring the dogs in this afternoon. Just as well, had we left yesterday and heard of the tornado warning in Madison, I'd have been a basketcase worrying about our animals. Not that I won't worry about them on the trip anyway.

We will be driving into unchartered territory...Oklahoma and Texas...two of the four western states I've never been in (the others being Nevada and North Dakota). Once we get into New Mexico, especially central and Western New Mexico, I know I'll be a lot less nervous. The four corners area is one of my most favorite spots I've been to, and the area between Arizona and New Mexico, with its red cliffs is the stuff of flying dreams.

Just hope gas prices don't go up so much during this time that we won't be able to get back home to our animals.

Labels: Route-66-Part1, Vacation