Like a Beacon in the Great Plains

Somewhere in the twenty minutes between our missed Illinois exit and first opportunity to turn around we passed an rest-stop called "the Oasis." I'm pretty sure we ignored the significance of that name the first time we saw it, but on the back side of our u-turn its meaning became abundantly clear. Yet even that rest-stop was just an oasis for a 20-mile stretch of uninterrupted interstate. If you're in the heart of a 9000-mile journey you're going to need an oasis on a completely different order of magnitude. We found that sanctuary last night in Gresham, Nebraska. 

It is convenient that just past the midpoint of our trip we would find ourselves in Nebraska, a state whose conventional reputation is that of the classic flyover state. We know it better, however, as Philip's home. Having met Philip's family a number of times before, I was completely expecting our visit to be greeted with not just open arms but an abundance of com-

fort food and a peaceful, relaxing place to spend the evening. It helps that this was the first night where any of us got more than four hours of sleep, but I think it's fair to say that we're all both rejuvenated and extremely grateful to the Romohr family for taking us in.

 Now it is on to the northern great plains. 

P.S. Updates may be fewer and farther between, because out here the cell towers are definitely fewer and farther between. 

Thanksgiving Break

Only a three hour drive separates us from Thanksgiving Dinner. Till then...

International Efficiency Day

Today has been all about the time crunch. We have long planned to stop for thanksgiving dinner in Philip's hometown of Gresham, Nebraska and now that people other than ourselves are counting on our schedule, it was imperative that we follow through with efficiency and celerity. We got our usual late start, which didn't help, but our real problem today came as a result of a missed turn in Illinois, quite possibly our first of the the whole trip. A simple missed turn is usually not a problem, but in this case the next exit wasn't for another...18 miles. I honestly don't know if I've ever seen a longer gap between exits. And of course we didn't actually notice the missed turn until the brink of that exit, forcing us to turn around one stop further down the road. It would be another 9 miles. So, in order to get back to where we started we had to drive a total of 54 extra miles (remember, that's two exits), with an accompanying time penalty that was and is almost impossible to make up. After all, we can't really drive any faster, and it's not like we can sprint those miles. As such, we've adopted a temporal austerity plan, meticulously going through every step of our process and shaving our time down minute by minute. We had one particularly impressive gas stop this morning that would have looked to an outside observer like a NASCAR pit crew on vacation. It still looks questionable as to whether we will get to Nebraska at a traditional Thanksgiving dinner hour, but we're doing our best. 

Just Like They Drew it Up

Expectations are a funny thing. Yesterday two of our stops far exceded anything we had hoped for. The remaining three stops were not quite a disaster but certainly not quite what we had in mind when sitting at home last month browsing through atlases and Google Earth. It was a day with such stark extremes that the morning seemed like some vacation taken in 8th grade by nightfall. And then there are days like today, when pretty much everything we did exactly met our expectations. Aside from a single GPS issue in Tennessee everything operated like clockwork. Deadlines were met, destinations were interesting and easy to access, and my pictures came out (for the most part). Even our one blip, where our GPS led us astray in search of a TN state park, was easily rectified when we stumbled onto a civil war battlefield on our way back to the highway. The trail at Mammoth Cave, while not totally earth-shattering, was peaceful and enjoyable. 

I found the William Henry Harrison Gravesite

 particularly rewarding. The approach the site was exactly like it had been drawn up, to the point that I probably could have found the obelisk from the highway even without a map. We even got in just under the wire, beating the sunset by mere minutes. Once walking around the site we found not only an ornate grave to perhaps our most obscure president (he only served for a month before dying of pneumonia) but also a perfect vantage-point to take in the sunset over the Ohio River. Across the street, I was taken by the grave yard for a long forgotten city, the last remnant of a failed attempt to make "the capitol of the Great Northwest." Our trip is all about seeing America. Part of seeing America requires an appreciation of the starts and stops that were necessary to get us to where we are today. And I cannot think of a better way to appreciate them--the stops in particular--than by going to the beautiful tomb of a 30-day U.S. president and the graveyard for a city upon a hill that never quite took hold. 

Next up was a town park in Batesville, IN. Again, it was nothing out of the ordinary (aside from a large above-ground resevoir), but it's hard to argue with the inherant Americana of a town park gazebo. 

Our Niles, Michigan walk was similarly peaceful, as we walked along the shores of an icey river and again were greeted by near-perfect conditions for our standard walk-site's typical requirements for quick access, public parking, safety, and some level of memorability. 

Finally, we were able to pick up Nishant, the newest member of our travelling band. After carefully coordinating a place and time to meet, we decided on a whim to walk around Chicago. It was again not anything out of the ordinary, but part of me felt like we needed to walk in at least ONE "big" city. That's America too, after all, and we were not going to lose a lot of variety in abandoning tomorrow's plans for South Beloit, IL. We will still be walking in Beloit, WI, after all. How different can they be? That's my expectation, anyway. Yesterday's experiences told me that perhaps my expectations are not the most accurate predictors of future endeavors. But today told me that on some days, some charmed days, they hit the nail on the head. 

We Don't Make the States, We Just Walk in Them (and yes, they are different pictures)

Well, it couldn't last forever. To this point all of our state walk experiences have been a net positive. True to their states' reputed spirit, last night's walks in Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma appear to have rebelled from this trend. Our excellent experience in Fonatinebleau State Park energized us enough to try to make Texarkana, our destination for both Texas and Arkansas, by sundown. Unfortunately Louisianna's motorists did not cooperate. In fact they seem to have planned a coordinated effort to block our path just enough to guide us into the city limits at dark.

When we got there it was immediately apparent that this would not be a friendly nighttime stroll through a quaint town, as had been our experience in the New England states. It would not even be a depressing stroll through a town far past its prime, as had been our experience in Martinsburg, WV. No, it was readily apparent that the primary emotion we would connect with this particular stroll would be fear. Perhaps there are better, shinier parts of town, but the area around Stateline Road and its famous dual-state post office was dull, decrepit, and just populated enough to make it thorougly dodgy, to borrow a term from our British friends.

And dodge we did. After taking our two state pictures in record time ("switch!") at the bisected post office we decided to haul oursoulves AQAP--As Quickly As Possible. So we marched past one liquor store, two check cashing places (including a quaint abandonded drive-through called "Check Mate," complete with Knight logo), another three liquor stores, and then a few bombed out buildings for good measure. The street was far from abandoned--in fact it was well-seasoned with a cross-section of the dodgy demographic.[FN 1] We were approached a number of times, including a particularly memorable experience with a man making kissing sounds at Dan. To make matters worse, our extroardinarily brisk pace and its lengthened stride threw off our trusty but antiquated pedometers. It is also worth pointing out that the pace was brisk enough to cause my neurologically impaired left leg to seize up. I considered this a partial positive, because the exagerated limp probably made me look .0001 % more badass to the distant observer.

After Texarkana we drove as fast as possible to Oklahoma, where we had picked Tom, a tiny town at the extreme southeastern corner of the state for our walk. We had anticipated that this would be another questionable walk, but we didn't anticipate exactly why. Even when we reached Tom's single intersection--possibly the junction of the town's only two streets--and got out nothing seemed overly overwhelming. And then came the barking. First one dog, then another, then what seemed like dozens. The barks seemed to increase in violence with each passing moment. We decided to make this "a fast one" and picked the segment of the intersection's cross that had the most light. Not 100 yards in, however, we were faced with the blood-curdling snarls of a particularly ferocious canine. He seemed to enjoy playing a game where he would sprint, fangs barely gleaming in the nighttime light, directly at us, stopping at the extreme edge of his owner's property. He would then run back a few yards and repeat the process. What made this particularly intimidating is that given the darkness we could not really get a good look at the dog other than a sillouette that indicated he may have been a product of the Michael Vick puppy farm. We quickly turned around and chose instead to walk up the darkest segment of the cross, a completely uninhabited stretch with essentially no light of its own. This didn't really help, as we could still hear enraged dogs chargingat us through the surprisingly dense trees (who knew that Oklahoma has a national forest?). Just to make the experience perfect I twisted my ankle in a pothole filled with freezing cold water at the very apex of our distance from the minivan, aka the sanctuary from cerberus and his 18 closest allies. [FN 2]

Oh and then we had to drive six hours, well into the wee hours of the morning, to make Memphis. We were all a tad grumpy when we finally got in, perhaps in anticipation of our projected three hours of sleep. The beautiful beaches and bayous we had seen earlier that day seemed like a distant memory. But it is the quality of that memory that keeps us going. With an equally long day ahead of us today we will undoubtedly encounter something--anything--to renew our elation with the great 48-state adventure. As I said on our way out of Texarkana, "Hey, we don't make the states, we just walk in 'em." [FN 3]

[FN 1] It should be noted that we intentionally chose the street populated by a Whitman's Sampler of questionable characters--the side streets, while quieter, were even more sinister.
[FN 2] Although the twisted ankle had the interesting side effect of temporarily balancing out the exagerated limp I developed traipsing across Texarkana.
[FN 3] BTW this probably goes without saying but we don't hold our thrilling-for-the-wrong-reasons trips in TexArHoma against the states. We know it is largely a factor of our extremely tight schedule and demanding route. Still, little solace when faced with a hellhound or questionably-amorous drunk man.

Fontainebleau Ramblings

As I've indicated before, different people have different reactions when they hear about our trip. We just encountered someone at Fontainebleau State Park with a good reaction. After walking around the ruins of the former sugar plantation and a swamp boardwalk overlooking Lake Pontchartrain, we all headed for the restroom at the visitor's center. When we got there, though, we found the restroom locked and everything else shuttered. As some of us were about to explode, it was an unfortunate situation. All those acres of thick vegetation offered a tempting option, but we had just seen warning signs about cotton mouth snakes...stay on the path, they said. And while I don't know a lot about cotton mouth snakes, I know enough to know that's not something you want sneaking up on you while you answer the call. 

Frustrated, we were about to leave when we saw some motion inside the darkened visitor's center. We knocked, and out came a young park ranger. He graciously unlocked the bathroom for us, and while we went in one by one the others talked to him about our trip. He seemed truly fascinated, and in turn he told us to follow him into the 

visitor's center. It turns out that it was a brand new building and they were just putting the finishing touches on the exhibits and store inside. Excitedly he showed us a 600 year old 18-foot long dugout canoe that somebody had just found. It was still in its packing box, and as the son of a museum curator (who has had a long professional interest in Native American art and archaeology), I was very impressed. Not just by the amazing quality of the artifact, but by the way the ranger opened up to us when he heard our story. 

The Pack Loses a Top Dog and Other Notes

Sadly, last night we had to drop Brian off at the Atlanta airport, as he needed to go back to New York for work. To say that we and I in particular appreciate his efforts in joining us up till that point would be a massive understatement. So, Brian, <-- this one's for you.

We are currently driving from Biloxi, MS to Fontainebleau State Park in LA. Although we got a late start, this morning has gone swimmingly. The cross-border walk in Atmore, AL and an unincorporated area near Bratt, FLA was excellent. We found a sm-

all side road with virtually no traffic, beautiful skies, and even our white whale, public parking half a mile from the border. It was simultaneously a peaceful and invigorating way to start the day. Except for the dogs. All along the Alabama portion of our walk (where, unlike the Florida portion, there were houses) dogs of all shapes and sizes took a keen interest in our journey, or at least an interest that we stay as far away from their little kingdoms as possible. Most of dogs were not overly threatening, although on our return we encountered a--I almost want to call them a pack--of big, snarling dogs. Needless to say, the dog photographed here was not one of those dogs. 

Also, wanted to mention the context of last night's "ghost" picture. Our plan had been to take a nice leisurely stroll in the Georgia woods during the late afternoon. Unfortunately, mother nature didn't play along. When we got to Tugaloo State Park it had just closed for the evening. But, intrepid trespassers that we are, we found a trail starting near some lit tennis courts and heading up into the hills. Armed with a few flashlights we cheerily marched into the woods. We only had to walk a half mile, right? Ah, but what a dark, creepy, and strenuous half mile. After a few hundred yards everything was pitch-black. To make matters worse, the steep path was completely obscured and made slippery by the thick cover of fallen leaves. The important thing to take away from this: the Blair Witch Project is coming off my Netflix queue.