Leaving

Tomorrow I am leaving :(
I'm getting up at 8, and mom and Will are driving me to the airport where I will go away forever :(
I've had so much fun here, and I'm going to miss everyone so much :(
(for the rest of the post just assume there is a sad face after every sentence.)
I've had so much more fun than I ever expected too, and I've seen so many crazy and awesome and beautiful and interesting things, and it's really going to be a downer leaving, especially since I have one day after I get back and then school starts. It's going to be difficult to concentrate on my studies when I know that half of my family is gallivanting about the country going on adventures and having fun. I guess that the best I can hope for is that they all have a really rotten time once I leave :D
(There was no sad face after that sentence btw. Because if there was it would have been :D :( and that would have been weird. :D + :( = :) and I don't want to say :) I want to say :D. Anyway)
The hardest part of leaving is not going to be thinking about all the awesome times I'm missing out on (although that will be a hard part), the hardest part will be leaving mom, and Ben, and Will, and even Charlie and Maggie and Libby and Bodie. Just so that there's a permanent copy of this message somewhere for you guys to see: I'm really going to miss you guys. And I'll be thinking about you all the time, and calling and texting. I love you!!

And now, since this post was such a tear jerker, I'll give you something to make you laugh:

Goodbye!!! :(

Back to Nebraska

We started packing up today to head on up to Nebraska, to revisit a great camp we only spent one night at before. We figured Ben and Abi would both like this place, and since Abi is about to head back to school, she could use a little excitement. Or at least as much as Nebraska has to offer.

We hustled around and packed everything up, and I sat down and started up the RV.

Well, I turned the key in the ignition.

Nothing.

Sigh.

We had an ex-battery.

Now, this has happened before, and that time we had to wait for AAA or the Good Sam guy or whoever it was to show up and boost us. Which is a serious buzzkill when you are just heading out.

So, I'd bought an extra truck battery, and I've been keeping it stowed below, fully charged. A quick swap of the batteries, and we went roaring down the driveway. Nobody came out to wave goodbye, but Ben gave 'em a blast of the old train whistle anyway.

We journeyed on down the road, through rainstorms and Abi telling us old Greek myths which we misheard and reinterpreted in our own way. Then we decided we needed to use our field names - these are the names we bestow on research associates in the field. It's an initiation ritual. Since Abi and Ben have been in the field before, they had already been named Lucy and Scooter. Isn't Scooter a great name for Ben? Ya.

I'm not sure how Abi got the name Lucy (or is it Luci?). I think she just liked it. Or maybe it's her Australopithecine side showing through.

Anne decided she needed a PG name for a family site, (you should see her original field name!) so we pronounced her "Chuck" in honor of her Chuck Norris like ability to snatch hummingbirds out of the air with her bare hands. Seriously, I've never seen anything like it. Didn't bend a feather.

My name, of course is "Zephyr: Wind of the Prairie," but you already probably figured that out.

Chuck spent most of the trip digging ticks out of the dog's fur and crushing them, putting them in a cup of water.(not the dogs) The water slowly darkened with each bloated tick's interior contents. After about thirty ticks (Charlie had THREE on his penis alone) she finally slowed down.

By the time we got to the camp, the glass of water swirled darkly with tick juice and shattered bits of bug bodies. Truly disgusting to behold.

So we made the kids drink it.

Dances with Golf Cart

I took Abi out on the golf cart tonight. Ben and Will were doing target practice with their new Red Ryder bb guns, shooting at an old cup perched on top of the hay bales.

I asked her to use my iPhone to video the dogs running with us. It was sunset, so the sky was red and gold, and a balmy breeze was blowing. Gorgeous. But she didn't enjoy it much, too terrified by the dogs' (especially Charlie's) gung ho behavior.



Here's a bit more footage of Charlie playing Chicken with the golf cart while Abi looks on in terror. Note that Bodie is nowhere to be seen. He is as scared of the golf cart as he is of the vacuum cleaner, which is a lot. We try to get him to go out with us, but he usually stays well behind, or trots back to the RV and crawls under it until we return.

SPAMARAMA

SO many awesome things have happened over the past few days that I haven't even had TIME to write.
Okay, that's a lie. I probably did have time.
But we really have been doing AWESOME things!



The Yogi Bear Jellystone Camp RV Park was totally bitchin' (am I allowed to say that on the blog?). It had waterslides, and an 8 foot deep pool, and golf carts, and tricycles, and a mini golf course, and panning for gold, and a petting zoo, and an island with a bridge, and yogi bear stuff!!! They served us really good hamburgers and we took the dogs on a couple romps to the island. Then, me and Will went in search of a grocery store while mommy wrote like mad. We didn't find a grocery store, but we did find a beer depot, a dorky kid on a vespa, and some moldy spam vats. Just goes to show, sometimes you go looking for one thing and find something even better.
Or worse. Sometimes it's worse.



Then, on Tuesday, we went to.... THE SPAM MUSEUM. I think that would probably be the coolest thing I've ever done. They had a giant wall of Spam cans, a life size model of Spammy, Spam movies, Spam shirts, Spam facts, and Spam samples. Try saying that five times fast! Spam samples, spam samples, sam spamples, slam stamples, spalsdkmf;alkwepogiahdsl;fkjasldkfj. :D They had a long conveyor belt of spam cans winding through different rooms, they had giant Spamburger hamburgers hanging from the ceiling, they even had a room where you could put on a Spam factory uniform and practice packaging fake Spam in Spam cans!! It timed you, and apparantley the Spam factory can can 146 cans of Spam in the time it takes me to can 1. D: I feel inadequate.
Insert lots of Will's pictures of the Spam museum here:





After the Spam museum we went across the street and ate at the SPAMARAMA! I ordered a chicken tenders sandwich, which had nothing to do with Spam. It was delicious. :D

Scratches

We're in Minnesota right now - I'm not really sure where. But while walking Bodie we came across this little spot - you can see scratch marks of a bobcat or lynx - I'm not sure which species it would be here.

You can see Anne's feet in the image for scale. We found five different places like this; where it had scratched up the ground and scattered dust, all within a few hundred feet along the path.

Cower

None of the dogs care much for lightning storms, but Maggie in particular hates them. A storm finds her running to the back of the RV and looking for something to hide under. Here you can see Maggie and Livy both wrapped up in a towel at Anne's feet, doing all they can to ward off the louds booms of thunder.

I'm here!

I'd call this a guest post, but I'm going to be here for the next two and a half weeks so it's more than a one time guest post thingy.

First off let me just say that I am SO HAPPY to be in the RV. I had a wonderful first day, and I'm looking forward to two and a half weeks of crazy fun times :D The only bad part about coming here was the flight, which was not only a red-eye, but what even the PILOT called "intensely turbulent".

Momma and Will were waiting for me at the airport, and I crashed as soon as I got home, and didn't wake up till probably 12ish. After that Mom and I went to go shopping at the Mall of America, or Mall of the Americas as she likes to call it.

When we got there we went to get a motorized wheel chair, since mom is still recovering from pneumonia, and walking around a four story incredibly crowded mall for 5 hours probably wasn't the best idea. The motorized wheel chair was so. totally. awesome. I ran over a SHARK in that wheelchair, and even the SHARK thought it was so awesome that he jumped up and gave me a high five. Enough said. And I didn't even make that up.

Anyway, mommy also got me some really cute clothing, and probably would have bought me an entire new wardrobe if I hadn't drawn the line. After shopping we came home to a delicious "RV first night meal" of tortilla chips with chili and cheese dip, and then settled down with a big bag of Twizzlers to watch Field of Dreams. Then it started POURING, and Will made us steaming cups of cocoa to drink while we enjoyed the warmth of the RV, and listened to the rain and thunder outside.

All in all, it was a very good first day :)

King. Of the Stupids

You have to say it right, and I don't know if I can get that across well in text. You say it loud, "King", and then you pause, but it's not really a period kind of pause, more of a pregnant pause, but there's no punctuation for that. Then you say "Of the stupids" and you kind of say it real fast, like you knew you were going to say it all along. You can even slur it together. Or drag it out slow, I've done it both ways. Probably hard for someone else to do; it's kinda my thing. Hey, everybody has a talent. Anyway.

Bodie is King. Of the Stupids.

Did you say it right? Don't just read over it real fast thinking that you've got it. I know you're doing that, because that's what I do. But you gotta do it right - real bold and dramatic on the first word, pregnant pause, then quieter and quicker, with a kind of self satisfied tone on the follow through three words. King. Of the Stupids. Now you're getting it.

You can see Bodie in the picture above. He's the big guy on the left. I'd say he's with two of his subjects, but you're probably already there with that. So. You can see Maggie and Livy eating out of the bowl. Charlie is gone in this picture - he scooted off to the bedroom to sleep on Anne's clothes while she's out shopping at the Mall of America with Abi.

Bodie does puppy things; he's still a puppy, and he comes off kinda goofy sometimes. Or stupid. So whenever he does something really, well, brain dead, I'll reacquaint him with his title. Maybe even lift up a front paw and intone "Undefeated and stillllllllllllll Champion.....Bodie!"

Did you do that in that announcer guy voice? Cause that's important too. This post is all about doing the voices right.

Anyway, the title and it's mythos have evolved. Whenever I see someone doing something stupid on the highway, like passing on the right or cutting blindly through lanes to get to an exit or whatever, I'll call out "Look Bodie, someone's after your crown!" Same thing if Charlie or Maggie does something stupid - I'll warn Bodie that they are after his crown.

Now, Bodie has a few likes and dislikes. He HATES the vacumm cleaner, and any thing that looks like it could be a vacuum cleaner. And he LOVES ice cubes.

And I like to give him stuff to play with that keeps him busy; I don't want him to get bored.

Now, look at the picture above again. See that white donut on the right? That's their water bowl - it's designed to not slosh out when you're driving. Bodie can only get his tongue into it, the opening's pretty small.

I'm about to give him some ice, and I think "I bet Bodie would find it challenging to fish it out of the bowl." I'm thinking he'll fiddle around and trap it with his tongue and his teeth somehow and fish it out, but it will take him a few minutes to figure it out. So I drop some ice into the bowl for him.

Bodie looks at the bowl.

Then with one paw he flips the bowl over and dumps the ice and water out all over the carpet, and promptly snaps up a piece of ice amidst a rapidly spreading puddle..

Dang.

I'm after his crown.

Don't send Will to the grocery store alone

My cousin Linda posted this on Facebook, and I thought it was hilarious. It also reminded me of how much I really LIKED the people I knew when I lived in Georgia (Jeanne Robertson is from North Carolina). Everyone I met in the South was unremittingly friendly and polite. My ex-husband once said "Why do they ask "How y'all doing?" ALL the time?" I said my feeling was that they actually wanted to know. I know it's also that they are very polite (my students there insisted on calling me "Dr. Anne" when I asked them to call me Anne; I was only 32 and I felt oooold), but they always made me feel like they also really hoped I was doing well, that it mattered to them.

Why am I posting about the South when we are now in Minnesota? Well, I watched the above video a couple of days ago. Last night, Will went to the grocery store alone. I'm sick again (call me Job) so I stayed in the RV with the dogs. Will was going to get: potatoes, yogurt, apples, blueberries, green beans, zinc tablets and my hair conditioner. Oh, and steak.

Remember that we have a tiny, tiny kitchen. Here, I just had Will pose in it to show you, although I don't think a picture can do justice to how small it is. Especially with the dogs hanging out with him there, which they are wont to do (as you can see).



Anyway. Will comes back *two hours* after he left. I was getting a bit worried and of course he didn't bring his cell phone - he only brings his cell phone if I hand it to him and watch him put it in his pocket. He walks in the door with EIGHT bags of groceries. Where on earth will we put eight bags of groceries??? The kitchen is already full. Oh, and he does NOT like anything on the precious little counter space we have.

Here's what he got: ten pound of potatoes, a dozen cups of yogurt, half a dozen apples (only because I said to get that many), blueberries, green beans, 2 packs of zinc lozenges, a lovely T-bone steak. That's everything on the list, except the hair conditioner, which he couldn't find. But he also got: a toothbrush, because he doesn't like the way his tastes (we have a dozen toothbrushes in my "extras" storage bin outside), 3 pounds of chicken thighs, sugar snap peas, strawberries, sauerkraut, 4 Hamburger Helpers, 2 cans of chili (we already had 4 cans), cheese, and a passel of different meds for me to try out.

I was especially surprised by the Hamburger Helper since I had bought one the other day and it took some convincing for him to try it, although he ended up liking it. I thought it made sense for the RV since boiling pasta is so much work. But we are about to get the kids again and he thought they would like it.

The chili was for our "first night in the RV" dinner with Abi tomorrow. We started a tradition that our first night out we have chili with melted cheese on top and tortilla chips to scoop it up with. Very easy, very messy, very congenial. It's important to the kids so Will wanted to make sure we had enough.

This is not an isolated incident. The other day he came back with 3 pounds of hamburger and a gallon of Jack Daniels, among other things. When he went to the pet store he bought five new leashes, two of which hold two dogs each (and that is a story for another time). We only have four dogs, and we already had four leashes. Not the kind of leashes he wanted, apparently. I think I need to go with him when he goes shopping from now on.

PS On the travel front: We are on the north end of Minneapolis, heading to Camping World in a couple of hours to get a steering stabilizer put on the RV. I am beginning another writing stretch, so may not post for a few days.

Change of Plans

We enjoyed ourselves in the Black Hills so much that we decided not to go on to Montana and Wyoming. Instead, we stayed here for two more days and will head directly to Minneapolis tomorrow.

Well, that's not exactly the way it happened.

Remember my last whiny post? I was kind of surprised by my general weepiness, although a migraine can sometimes precipitate that kind of mood. However, I was sick again. On Sunday, we went into Rapid City ("the Rapid" as they call it here) to find an Urgent Care center. It turns out my pneumonia had flared up again and I had some kind of virus/bug that seemed to thrive in my throat and ears. I have been pretty sore and weak and miserable for a few days. Plus I had a chapter due yesterday, and I hadn't been able to get onto the internet at all in Custer State Park to do some of the background research I needed to do to complete things.

So we didn't leave town Monday and head for Wyoming and then Montana to see Little Bighorn, as we'd planned. Instead, we moved to a Koa campsite in Rapid City. Not nearly as pretty and wild as our site in Custer State Park, but good to wrap up my work and do a little healing in the jacuzzi. Oh plus some fun shopping at a couple of Black Hills gold shops. Will I ever get used to a man who enjoys shopping and likes to buy me things?? I got a new wedding ring! (The ring I was using as a wedding ring, an antique, broke and the jeweler told me I shouldn't be wearing it every day.) Plus we got some presents, including something for Amy for quitting smoking (you go girl!) and various Christmas presents.



Tomorrow morning (Wednesday) we are leaving bright and early and driving to Sioux Falls, then on to Minneapolis on Thursday. Friday morning we are having a steering stabilizer put on the RV (which I have tried to have done in...Orange County, Albuquerque, Kansas and Iowa; major frustrations and I will not believe it is really going to happen until it's done). Saturday morning (6 am!) we pick up Abi at the Minneapolis airport and then head down the Mississippi. Very, very excited to see my baby girl.

Custer State Park was incredible, by the way, as was Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands. Will's last post, while a bit on the melodramatic side, accurately captured the excitement of driving the Wildlife Loop. We saw hundreds of bison and honestly could have touched some as we drove along with them (couldn't get through the herd) for over an hour. I am attaching a short video I shot with my iPhone as we drove through the herd (I also posted this on Facebook).

As we were driving through our first small herd of about 30 bison, a couple pulled up coming from the other direction. The woman leaned out and said "There are THOUSANDS ahead of you! It's going to take HOURS to get through them!"

I was a little alarmed, because I needed to get some work done before noon. As they drove away, though, I realized that a) it was 7:30 and the sun had risen at 6:30, so they clearly hadn't been driving through bison for hours, and b) the entire park herd is 1,500 bison so there couldn't be thousands of them. Will laughed at me when I pointed this out and called me his "science thinky girl".

Incident on Loop Trail Road

The first thing you see are the signs warning you of danger.

Danger.

We laugh at the word and drive boldly along still damp pavement, squinting as the bright sun rises slowly over the shattered stones and fractured cliffs. We have seen the mists part on better days, to reveal sights more terrifying than these.

We see a pronghorn. Then another. Before long they graze in twos and more across the forbidding hills, but we fear them not. We seek an other presence. And what is a pronghorn but a few dozen pounds of bouncy fleshy strapped under two horns? We seek a massive presence. And greater numbers.

As we pull up near the crest of a wooded hill, only a moment's effort would have us bounding to the top, to peer out across the hilly lands below, and to scent the air carelessly, tracking, learning, and finally, knowing where our quarry wandered wild and savage along the trails below.

Of course we did no such thing.

We bravely remained in our car and pushed onward.

Sure, we saw signs. Footprints, droppings, stray swatches of hair torn from a passing flank. All these could only mean one thing.

If we had seen them, anyway. Those weren't the kind of signs we saw. We saw stop signs and stuff. Those only mean one thing too. Well, actually, stop signs really mean stop and go again, but they never put the go again on them.

Soon we would understand why.

Well, not really. I still think it's kinda weird, but I digress. Back now into the entrails of danger we went.

And then we saw one. And then another, and then many.

Bison.

And not the effete latte sipping bison you might see around a mall or delicately looking over the list of services at a Korean nail salon. No indeed.

Wild bison.

Well, wild bison that live inside a park without any predators, so that's kinda wild, and anyway they are free range and all that.

So again, wild bison. Lots of them, on each side of the road at first.

Then.

They blocked our path.

A small calf wandered curiously up to the car, and then ominously wandered off again, like some kind of signal to the whole herd.

They pretended they hadn't seen it.

But I had seen it, and I was wary now. I knew there was trouble afoot, or ahoof anyway.

With lightning reflexes and white knuckles I slowly maneuvered the car along. They pretended to ignore me, but I knew it was just a matter of time.

And then this, this ugly mean mass of fur and eager horns holds us with his glittering eye.


This is bad.

Very bad.

This is a male bison, hoping to get lucky with the female at his side.

He is cranky at our intrusion, and also knows in his bones that female bison go mad for males that crack human head.

This is a tight spot. He bellows repeatedly, his grey tongue distended like some foul harbinger of something foul. We ease on past, like those kids in Jurassic Park when they realize that when they stand still the T-Rex can't see them, which was really a pretty stupid plot device, plus we aren't standing still but gliding by in the car.

Exactly like they did.
The air is tense with silence, except for the constant loud bellowing of the aggressive male. He and his would be wench both turn and watch us move on.

Incident avoided.

Heady with success we drive headlong down the road like Daisy and Gatsby himself, flinging shirts and crying. No, wait. Not the shirts and the crying, but still with the carefree ebullience of twin millionaires only days before the bubble burst on Black Thursday. Or Tuesday. I'm not good with names.

We edge slowly past a large docile male walking along the road, just outside of Anne's window.

He becomes, in a matter of moments, remarkably less docile.

And probably not even moments. This guy was good - I'm thinking maybe three moments, possibly even two.

He swung in front of us, big, mean and ugly.

He crossed the road and moved aggressively towards, on my side of the road now. What had only seemed like an amusing encounter while he remained on Anne's side of the road now became alarmingly distressful.

Thinking only of the animal's safety, for who knows what I am capable when my blood is up, I sought to go forward, but the way was blocked by the others.

Of course.

I should have recognized their plan, and too late I saw the trap sprung.

But there was more to me than they realized, and I put the car in reverse.

Of course, no matter how terrorized, there's always time for a picture, and I took the one below with one hand, while I controlled the madly reversing car with the other.



I laughed at the danger.

Anne mistook my laughter for whimpering, but I can now assure her it was only the confident, heady laughter of a warior who knows he faces destiny, and he alone can determine his fate.

Or maybe Anne could, if she could scare the thing off.

I reversed, and stopped a good ways off.

But the thing came on.

So I reversed again.

It followed.

I was rapidly running out of room. Others now blocked my retreat.

Which was just as well, for now that I had lured him forward I was ready to surge ahead in a wild, reckless assault that would settle the day once and for all.

And there he stood, glaring at me.

He came forward, and like they say in so many stories of ancient valor, he edged to one side as he approached, and left me daylight on one side.

I moved the car forward, and he seemed by now to have forgotten just what it was he was after, and ambled after some other bison.

As I pressed past him now, onward, ever forward, to... to ...

To Victory!

Badlands

Got into the Badlands yesterday afternoon, and after walking the dogs etc., set out to get a few pictures before dark, and hopefully find some food to take back to Anne. Pretty remote area here, not a whole lot of choices.

I got my shot early (a panorama I have yet to assemble), so I started heading back home, just grabbing what the light gave me, and what life strew across my path. The picture above is off a little path at the top of the badlands wall.

I still took a few hours to get down from the wall, so I headed into Interior, a small settlement not far from the base.


A drive into the down brought me to a very tough looking squat windowless aluminum building that proclaimed itself a bar. A ways past that I found a small grocery store, but the weathered old Indian folding up the blankets out front told me it was closed.

I zipped down a side street, and saw two buildings I needed to shoot.


Awesome little town - a real gritty feel to it. I could live here.

Finally found a little darkened store that was still open, and got some food for Anne as well. I'll let her decide it if was worth the wait!

Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead and a Whine

We spent last night on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood home, the site of Little Town on the Prairie and four other books. It’s where she lived when she met and married Almanzo Wilder.

I woke up several times during the night and looked out through our bedroom windows, thinking that Laura had lived here, had seen this view, had likely stood on this spot under this same sky.

At dusk, after everyone had gone home, we walked the north end of the land, where they built their home and where the people who own it now have a few old buildings. They had a quarter section, 160 acres, and you could see pretty much every inch of it, it was so flat. Except for the hill in the northwest corner, where the RV was set up (they have hookups for four RVs, and there were three of us there.)

A couple of barn cats – barn kittens really, teenagers – followed us to the vegetable garden, to the prairie garden and to the old horse barn. It was windy and I guess it is always windy there. The cottonwoods lean northwest, and the wind was coming from the southeast all through our stay. The moon was full but obscured by clouds that poured across the sky. We got wet a few times but not soaked.

When we got back in, Will made a late dinner and I read to him from Farmer Boy, my favorite of her books.

This morning I woke with a migraine, of which I have been blessedly free since leaving California (correlation, not causation). During our long drive to the Badlands, where we are now, I tried to get some work done that needs to be completed by Monday. I wasn’t able to get online at all (via my iPhone), in fact I was only able to get phone service for a frustrating few minutes, through another carrier. I had one of those awful conversations where you just get rolling, talking through a situation, and then no service. Call back, begin talking tentatively, gain confidence and…lose service again. Curse, say you’ll just call back to arrange another time to talk, but – gee, the connection is really good, start working again - and they’re gone. The triumph of hope over experience, as they say about second marriages. *shakes her fist in the general direction of AT&T*

This is my second day without internet or much cell phone service. As a field biologist, I have spent a lot of my life in the boondocks – in Australia, in Algonquin Park in Canada, lots of time in the desert, even time on a tiny atoll (Kure) in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. I have seldom felt this isolated. I started to say I’ve never felt this isolated, but I think frustration has made me lean toward hyperbole. Surely I must have felt more isolated on Kure Atoll or the Australian outback. Maybe the difference is that I expected to feel isolated there. Besides being geographically distant from anything, I was there pre-cell phone and pre-internet (yes, Abi and Ben, your mother is that old).

But South Dakota is a U.S. state, for goodness sake. And I have had no AT&T coverage for the entire length of this state. And I have a lot of work to do. And two more days in this godforsaken state, and then a day in Wyoming and a day in Montana and a day in North Dakota, all of which have the potential to be even more godforsaken than South Dakota.

On the other hand, it's absolutely gorgeous. Will has just left to photograph the Badlands and I'm sitting in a grove of cottonwoods in the Koa campground outside the national park. A Koa campground that advertises WiFi. Hahahahahahahaha. Not so much.

I told Will not to come back until it's dark, to make sure he got the good light for photographing. He's going to look for some dinner in the rinky-dink town here, Interior. I don't think he'll find anything, I think all it is is a biker bar and a gas station. But it is possible that I have a bad attitude and he will come back with something delicious.

I guess I probably sound like a whiner. But traveling isn’t all sweetness and light. Did I mention that I’m annoyed about not having cell phone or internet access? I know, intellectually if not emotionally, that I will be able to get onto the internet (for one thing, I already have for tantalizing moments and for another thing, you won’t be reading this if I don’t ☺) and I know that I will get my work done. But for now I’m just going to pout for a little bit. Thanks for listening.

PS I will ask Will to add a pretty picture to this post when we have better uploading ability, and I will update our map then too. It will probably be a coupla days at least.

Stage Two

We got up at 6:30 today for the second leg of our road trip, after a few weeks spent at the Houtman farm. We went with Anne's folks to the Linn county fair, and had breakfast there at the American Legion, and talked to a couple of interesting people there.

A goat checking things out. They seemed able to get out of their pens easily enough, but the one we saw hop out hopped back in when several guys started to surround him.

A pig getting hosed off.

After our visit to the fair, we packed up and headed out up to Nebraska, near Omaha, by way of Missouri and Iowa. Iowa is a pretty impressive place - lots of corn fields and the like.

Tonight we are in a park in Nebraska, and tomorrow I check out a military museum before we go on. We will see a lot of stuff this trip, including Wounded Knee, Mount Rushmore, Little Bighorn, Laura Ingalls Wilder home in De Smet, the Badlands, the cornfield from "Field of Dreams, the headwaters of the Missisippi, Anne's old place in Galesburg, as well as picking up Abi and then Ben as we circle back to the old farm again for a few weeks there with the kids. Probably take a trip down to the ancestral grounds in Arkanas too with the grand folks!

Over the Fields We Go

Anne's folks have this great gas driven golf cart we use to bomb all over the 80 acres, especially since Anne is easily tired after her pneumonia.

Now, it's seen a few years, and tends to be a bit mule-like in behavior. The past week has seen it standing out in the fields a few times overnight, after refusing to go any farther.

Anne's dad and I worked on it, and we managed to find and fix a fault in the wiring, so the motor no longer just dies on us, but the choke still seems to be having trouble. Typically, it will crawl along at a few feet a minute, then suddenly roar and bound ahead at full speed for 10 or 20 seconds, before slowing down again, only to repeat the process. We tend to leap frog our way across the fields, which is fine because we aren't in any hurry.

Now, if you drive with one hand down under the seat and fiddle with the choke as you go, you can sometimes get it to go full speed, as long as you carefully adjust the choke as you go. Let go of it, and it will die out again.

Yesterday was a blistering hot Kansas summer day; the temperature up about 17 million degrees. They said it on the news, I don't remember if it was Celsius or Fahrenheit - probably whichever one was hotter. And Anne wanted to go for a ride to see the back forty.

That's a long way for a golf kart that creeps - across the front of the acreage to the abandoned road, up the hill and along the road to where it drops down past the abandoned quarry, over the gravel flats past the explosives, through a thick batch of scrubby brush, and out onto the back pasture.

Plus it was a million billion degrees out.

So.

Anne stocked us up with a couple of glasses of diet coke and ice, which she held one in each hand as we started jouncing out across the field.

Jouncing very slowly at first, as I fiddled with the choke as we crawled. Occasionally we'd burst into speed, and she'd struggle to keeps the coke's from spilling, while the five dogs swirled around us excitedly and tried to fling themselves under our wheels.

What is that with dogs? They can run behind us, beside us, or well out in front. but instead they try to run out just in front of the golf kart, and then stop. Seriously, what are they thinking? What is it in the canine mind that says "Look, a large massive object moving at high speed. I think I'll run out in front of it, then stop and look around for a while?"

The dogs are panting madly, and as we slowly lurch across the fields, we finish off one glass of coke, apparently spilling some onto me at one point. I don't remember this, but Anne does. It figures in what comes later.

As the motor warms up I'm able to fiddle with it and get longer bursts of speed. As we head down the hill past the quarry, it hits a sweet spot and the motor just purrs, moving us at full speed, the dogs frantically trying to keep up, and no longer able to treat us like a juggernaut. But juggernaut we are, and we blister across the baked gravel meadow and hurtle towards the explosives as Anne jostles beside me, and instead of holding on to the side bar, uses that hand to hold the coke out and away so it doesn't spill on me.

We're making good time, and I don't have to steer around the dogs, so it's going well, even though I'm hunched over hanging on to the the choke pull switch. However, we are rapidly running out of gravel and heading towards some thigh high scrubby grasses.

I've been here before, on foot, and I try to remember if there is anything here that could be troublesome. I take us down an overgrown patch of gravel and through the thinnest section of tall grass, maybe thirty or forty feet of it before it opens up into pasture. I'm going full speed, and reluctant to slow down, because who knows when I'll get it zipping along like this again?

We blast through the tall grass, blades whipping to one side and crunching over the stalks and hurtle through to the open pasture beyond.

Well, almost.

Turns out there was a little ridge hidden in the grass. We bounced over that, arms and legs flying, barely managing to hold on.

Ah.

Then we hit the big ridge.

We slammed into that ridge of overgrown gravel, and suddenly Anne seemed to lean forward, and stretch out over the grass, hovering as it were.

This seemed odd to me, as we lurched and pitched over, and Anne then left the golf cart entirely and sailed out into the tall grass.

Alarmed, I could only think of one thing.

I was going to have to stop.

Actually, I'd already stopped, the kart had hung itself up on the ridge. In fact, the kart and I stopped, while Anne had neglected to match our pace, and now rolled over and over in the tall grass, still holding the glass of coke.

She came to rest, covered wonderfully in burrs and dried plant pieces, the dogs bounding excitedly around her for a moment, then trying to climb onto the seat she had just vacated. Heartless opportunists, they hate to run when they can ride, and they were quite happy with the exchange of places they felt she had just offered.

I coaxed the kart the few feet forward it needed to go to reach the pasture, figuring on getting the dogs out of the burrs, and saving us (ie., Anne) additional hours of grooming time later.

Sure, a more gallant man might have let Anne back on the kart, but she was rather covered with burrs, and who wants burrs on them?

She staggered to her feet, on;y moderately injured, and together we plucked the burrs off her, as she proudly handed me the glass.

Still had coke in it.

Writing writing writing writing writing

I have pretty much been writing from 7 am to 10 pm every day for the last week or so, with breaks to walk in the fields or soak in the jacuzzi or peek in on the chickens. Today we went for dinner with Mom and Dad - great Mexican food at El Charo's - in Fort Scott. Fort Scott is a beautiful old railroad town about 25 miles south of the farm. My Mom's father (PaPa to the grandkids, Big PaPa to distinguish him from my father to the great-grandkids) was based out of Fort Scott for most of his career as a conductor on Frisco Railways, although they lived outside Kansas City, Kansas a couple of hours to the north.

When we got home, Dad had a smoke while Mom went to check on eggs, and some of the barn kittens came out to greet us.

Photos by Will, naturally : )

Jacuzzi

A quiet day at the farm today. Had a brief time out for a soak in the Jacuzzi, then Anne worked on her writing all day, with a short visit to an abandoned factory in Centreville that is up for sale. I didn't take my camera, so I'll need to visit it again.

Evening

Kansas

The Trip to Kansas

This is my first attempt to embed a Google map, so let's see how it goes! For brief comments on each of the locations on the map, click on the marker. Anne


View The trip to Kansas in a larger map