Happy Birthday, Father Extraordinaire

Father Figure, Fad, Daddy-boy, Fath, T.O.M., Dad -- collector of broken motorcycles and all things mechanical, space out extraordinaire with hands so tough that you can pick up fire and not get injured, I salute you.  "I couldn't have ordered a better" dad.  You may have "put the clamp down" when  necessary but you always supported me and built me up.  The nicest thing that any dad can do for his daughter is give her self confidence and instill good morals without sacrificing her freedom.  You did that for me and I appreciate it.  Afterall, how else would I know "you have a head, use it.  If not, you might as well be all ass".  I do, however, blame my excessively loud talking that I still maintain to this day, on you.  "Dad, dad, daaad!"  Are you still listening!  Like you, I "visit other planets" in my mind on a daily basis.  I think it's good for the soul.  I have not yet picked up the unconscious blurting out of the F dash, dash, dash word, but I fear it's coming.  Who are you talking to anyway?  I've always wanted to know.  We all want to know.  You are one strange and interesting dude, Dale Clark.  "I don't care what anybody says, you're alright."  I've always been proud to call you my dad.  I'm lucky to know you, I'm lucky to have you in my life, and I'm especially lucky to have such a great person to model my life after.  You really are the best.  I always felt loved, I always knew you supported me, and being in your home was and still feels like the safest place in the world.  Thank you for that security and thank you for giving me the courage and confidence to go out in the world and share my gifts with others. Generosity is your greatest gift and you've definitely passed that on to Zach.  You would do anything for anyone and you never want anything in return, even when you can really use it.  You have to be pretty crafty to give Dale payment for a favor.  You are not just a good man, you're one of the greats.  I love you with my whole heart.  We picked well when we picked each other.  Happy birthday, dad.  I look forward to many more lessons in life from you.   

Pecos National Historical Park, New Mexico

Do stink bugs smell like poop?  If not, I have a much larger problem on my hands.  The van currently has a hellacious stench.  It can only be described as musty, funky, cat lady, grossness.  I'd like to think that I don't carry that odor with me when I exit the van but I probably do.  You know how your olfactory adjusts to unpleasant odors and after about ten or fifteen minutes you no are no longer bothered by the unpleasant smell.  Well, that doesn't happen here.  It's a very persistent and nagging aroma.  Where is it coming from?  What I need to do is tear everything out of the van, track the stink bug hotel down and exterminate the queen.  It could also be a deposit left by one of my feline traveling buddies.  Either way, I suspect the culprit is somewhere under the extremely packed bed.  That will be my project first thing tomorrow.  I will probably hit up the Dollar General for about ten pounds of air fresheners on the way out of town too.  Today, after a visit to Pecos National Historical Park I broke my ten day monosodium glutamate, cornstarch, dehydrated, pesticide ridden eating streak when I found organic, vegetarian bliss.  I was unfortunately falling subject to corporate America's attempt to turn me into a big, fat ear of corn.  It was a close call.  The Tree House Café in Santa Fe was just about to close for the day when I arrived, ravenous and ready to tear some veggies limb from limb. I ordered a fresh spinach and mozzarella sandwich with chili pesto on toasted whole wheat bread, a market salad, a cup of saffron vegetable soup and a summer salad to go.  I consumed my food with the fury of ten men.  It was incredible.  The animals watched as swirling carnage of leafy greens flew from my lips.  I shoveled and slurped and chomped my way into one fantastic food coma.  Gosh it was good.  I'm going to go back and do it all over again tomorrow.  Anything to get me to put down the strawberry fruit snacks that are oh so delicious after they have been baking in the sun on my dashboard all afternoon.  Peeing on my athlete's foot in the shower didn't help, wait, that's for jellyfish stings.  Never mind.  So, Pecos National Historical Park was the first national park to accept the eighty dollar national park pass that I purchased for this trip.  The cost to enter today was only three dollars but my virgin park pass was ready and waiting.  I want to say that I loved the park but I'm not going to.  The fact that the dogs were welcome in the park was absolutely wonderful.  The desert landscape and the trail through the ruins was incredibly beautiful and very well maintained.  As far as ruins go, I found these as I have previously found other ruins, very dull.  I have a hard time picturing what it used to be and I'm not a history buff so I appreciate the exercise and nature surrounding me more than the ruins themselves.  The Pecos Pueblo Mission Church was the only structure still standing in the park and it is still amazingly intact considering it was built around AD 1100.  I did really enjoy exploring this structure and I loved the one hour and thirty minute stroll through the park.  I can see why New Mexico is known as "the land of enchantment".  It's gorgeous here.  Santa Fe is a really cool place.  Before I even saw the town I had a notion that I would probably want to live here someday.  That assumption was incorrect for only one reason, grass.  The grass is ugly.  It is a desert after all.  I love big leafy, green trees and thick, rich lawns.  I was getting a kick out of Mac today.  He apparently appreciates a nice patch of grass just as much as I do but in a completely different way.  Every time he had to go potty he would choose the closest thing to a grass patch that he could find, usually a prickly weed, and circle it until he closed in on his target.  Fleetwood got a thorn in her paw during one of her bathroom breaks and was a very cute but squirmy patient during the removal process.  I visited Santa Fe National Forest today only to find out it was a reserve and not a place to really be explored.  I observed the St. Francis Cathedral from a far today and would love to get a closer look tomorrow.  The town is very cute with colorful boutiques, museums and all types of restaurants scattered throughout the very clean and inviting streets.  I enjoyed admiring all of the adorably modest adobe homes as I drove through the very family friendly neighborhoods.  I'm not into shopping but I may explore some museums tomorrow after the van cleaning extravaganza.  There is something very magical about the New Mexico sky, especially at night time.  The stars are so brilliant that they seem to be just an arms length away.  My first night in New Mexico I stood outside of my van in Santa Rosa awe struck by the magnificent stars.  The day time skies are remarkable as well with either very plentiful, white, fluffy clouds or very angry, gray, flat clouds.  Tomorrow another full day of exploration awaits and I'm up for the adventure.

Amarillo, Texas - If You Listen, We Will Come

Cadillac Ranch was glorious.  It was everything I hoped it would be and the highlight of the trip thus far.  In a land where erect cars shine in a multicolored splendor toward the heavens and the threat of being caned for spray painting cars is not a concern how could one not be excited.  With each car delicately slathered with three inches of neon colored paint and spent spray paint bottles littering the sparse landscape, I was alive.  The Ant Farm artists, Lord, Marquez, and Michels were genius.  My two day hiatus at the KOA campground in Amarillo, Texas consisted of contracting athletes foot from the camp shower, consuming a perfectly balanced diet of salt and sugar from the selection of food in the camp store and coming dangerously close to adopting a third feline traveling companion with a bum hind leg.  Canned, mild cheddar flavored cheese dip is not as good as I remembered but I still love artificially flavored strawberry fruit snacks.  Upon waking, operating under the assumption that if I broke down at least I would be somewhere picturesque, I decided to visit Cadillac Ranch before heading to the car repair shop.  The first mechanic informed me that my van needed a five hundred dollar repair and the mechanic at the second repair shop confirmed this diagnosis of which I will blatantly ignore.  Happy and deluded, I will continue to drive this extremely loud and slow, twenty three year old, amazing machine into its rusty automotive grave.  Where that may be, I have no idea.  Thank goodness I have AAA.  The level of noise that this van produces is reminiscent of my very first car, a three toned blue Pontiac Grand Am.  I loved that car.  You could hear me coming from miles away.  The van has some large shoes to fill but I am confident that it will prevail in sound and distance traveled.  New mystery mildew smell and all, Santa Fe, here we come!  Yee haw!

We're Okay in OK

I've been marinated, basted and smothered in country music and all things pop.  Other than NPR I do not listen to the radio while driving unless there is a threat of falling asleep at the wheel or in this case a threat of being gobbled up by an angry, swirling vortex with the outcome not resulting in Oz.  Having the car radio off is my way of sneaking in a few moments of quiet in an otherwise noisy world.  I listened to the radio for one reason alone today, to stay up to date on the severe weather happenings in the area.  All day today, with furrowed brow, I experienced the feeling of impending doom.  Tornado Alley is not the place to be, in a van, sleeping or otherwise, with the threat of a severe tornado looming.  I've learned the hard way that springtime is the season for tornados in the Great Plains, particularly Kansas and Oklahoma.  I have never seen a tornado, I do not have the slightest idea what to do in the event of a tornado and certainly hope I never have a first hand experience with one.  The thought of seeing a tornado while I am driving sends my mind into a tailspin.  Eyes scanning and rescanning the horizon, checking the rear view mirror, heart pounding, hands sweating, spine erect, pedal to the metal, wheel clutched, country music blasting, horizon of all encompassing gray, trees blowing sideways, birds flapping helter-skelter in the sky.  To see a bird flapping wildly and being tossed like a rag doll through the air is an utterly terrifying sight.  Each bird sighting equally as scary as the last.  I clearly saw the yellow, feathered underside of a determined bird that came just inches from my windshield and lingered in an airstream for a fleeting moment before being torn in another direction.  Being blown all over the road, my van was also falling subject to the wind.  I spent last night in my van in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with a severe tornado warning in effect.  Upon leaving Hot Springs I knew I was going to run into some storms but I had no idea the severity.  Thank goodness I slept right through the tornado warning siren that occurred at the campground at 2:30am because I would have gone into a hysterical frenzy.  The manager of the campground said that I "must have been really tired because those sirens are very loud and scary."  The severe weather warning was still in effect today so I grilled the employees of the campground about all things tornado.  I wanted to suck the knowledge from their skulls and transplant it into my brain.  I learned that if I did see a tornado while driving I am to pull over and hide in a ditch.  Right!  The only reason I stopped in Oklahoma City at all was to see the Oklahoma City National Memorial honoring the deaths that occurred during the 1995 terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.  So, I zoomed to the memorial, parked the van in an empty public parking lot and sprinted to the monument.  I was moved by the items that loved ones had attached to the chain link fence surrounding the exterior of the monument to commemorate their lost.  I really wanted to take it all in as well as visit the museum but my feeling of unease was pressing me onward.  There were very few people visiting the wind blown monument, a few scattered cars on the road and only a handful of people walking around town so that was even more of a reason for me to keep moving.  With a click, click, click of the shutter and a dash back to the van, we're on the road again.  Zero to sixty in five minutes flat.  The van had stalled a few times in the days prior to this and I have seen the check engine light a time or two but surely today it is going to run like a champ.  After the first eighty dollar gas top off of the day the check engine light came on and with all of my weight on the gas petal the beater would not even hit sixty.  Just like in the movies, I took the first exit to a gas station ghost town.  Totally freaky.  What a cool shot that would have been but not today.  I'm just trying to get out of harms way.  I hobbled on to a steakhouse parking lot where I enlisted the help of an older gentleman.  To my horror the engine coolant had turned into a rusty soup.  Going the minimum speed of forty miles per hour on the highway, with the heat cranked on an eighty-one degree day, the rapidly panting animals and I made it fifteen miles further to the next town.  All windows closed except for a crack on the driver's side so the cats would not jump out, I had to dump a bottle of water on the dogs as they were sitting in the front seat because they were clearly not fairing well in the van's one hundred and thirty degree interior.  The first four car shops were closed at 3:30 on a Saturday and one shop was no longer in existence.  Some shops  didn't even open on Saturday at all.  I finally found a car shop that was not closed.  Well, they were closed but the garage door was open, so that's fair game.  I wandered inside and found someone to help.  The guys at Word's Radiator Shop were my saving grace.  A total flush of the coolant, some additional oil and fifty dollars later, I'm back on track to Amarillo, Texas.  I asked if it would be better to find a place to stay in town but was urged to keep moving, told that I would be safer in Amarillo for the night.  The sky seemed to clear the further west I moved but the winds were relentless.  I was feeling a little better, a little less like I was going to die.  An hour later, I almost peed my pants out of sheer terror.  I have never been so scared in my life.  I thought, well this is it, it's my time to go.  The black cloud in front of me suddenly smeared down out of the blue sky around it.  It was a hideous site.  I was sure that it was going to turn tornado, if it wasn't already, and sweep me up.  The people at the campground told me that tornados can be kind of hard to spot sometimes and to look at the base to see if debris is flying.  I didn't see any debris flying.  I learned that sometimes a tornado can hide behind a cloud that looks like just like the one in front of me.  They also said that tornados are usually accompanied by heavy rain.  Then, the heavy rain came which turned to hail.  I was swallowed by the black, unstable atmosphere and another wave of terror wafted over me but I did not die.  I prayed.  It was not my time to go after all.  I am now in my cozy, partially broken down van on the outer edge of the storm in Amarillo being steadily rocked to sleep in my metal cradle by the thirty plus mile an hour winds.  I'm on the outer edge of the storm now and should be safe for the night.  Tomorrow is Sunday in the Bible Belt so my furry friends and I will sit tight and wait for the auto repair shops to reopen on Monday.         

                        

Hot Spring National Park, Arkansas

I had to smile as I entered Hot Springs, Arkansas.  The conspicuous "welcome to the boyhood home of Bill Clinton" was very funny to me.  What was I expecting of Hot Springs National Park?  Well, something very organic, I guess.  I was secretly hoping for a hippie reservation with naked people soaking in pools of mud but thermal mineral pools of gradually decreasing temperatures with hues of green and blue with steam rising in a fog before a magenta sunset with people pollinating the natural rock tubs against a vast beautiful landscape would have been nice too.  My expectations may have been a bit too ambitious.  In reality, the town itself seems to be the national park.  All of the hot mineral springs are for hire and contained in numerous boutiques on Bathhouse Row.  A plentiful array of massages, facials, hot stone treatments, steam rooms and soaking tubs are available.  And here I just wanted to jump into a pool of hot mud with fat, old naked people for ten dollars.  What was I thinking?  Not quite what I was expecting but I can work with this.   I chose Quapaw Baths & Spa and promptly purchased the cheapest item on the menu.  For eighteen dollars I received all day access to four communal mineral pools and unlimited hot or iced mineral drinking water.  I was, however, forced to purchase a pair of old man slippers with fit perforations for three dollars.  "Flip-flops are required".  A day at the spa for twenty-one dollars, not too shabby.  I soaked fifteen minutes on and fifteen minutes off in one hundred and four degree water for several hours.  My skin now feels like sandpaper but it was worth it.  I'm hoping that the "power vortex surrounding the mineral pools", that a nice lady who incidentally happens to be living in an alternate reality explained to me, starts to kick in soon because that would be cool.  So far, the only thing that has started to kick in are the outdoor bathroom breaks that I have been taking every fifteen minutes due to all of the hot mineral water that I chugged today.  After the vortex-pool experience, the dogs and I took a forty-five minute stroll on the beautiful Grand Promenade which  traverses the center of town.  To my delight, I saw a natural hot spring along that path.  This was my favorite part of the day.  In other news, stink bugs have been appearing in the van.  I've seen five so far.  Where are they coming from?  I hope not the power vortex because that would be bad.              

Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky

The owners at Valley Breeze RV Park in Grayson, Kentucky could not have been more accommodating when I rolled up after 9:30 in the evening.  I was pleasantly greeted, welcomed and regretfully informed that they do not have a toilet or a shower house.  That's no problem, showers are overrated and I just hit a rest stop about 30 miles back.  Plus, I've peed in the woods and dug my fair share of cat holes so I think I'm okay on the bathroom front regardless.  I didn't tell them that though.  Anyone that has never experienced making a deposit of that nature in the woods is really missing out on life.  There is something very liberating about the whole experience.  Be sure to dig a hole at least six inches deep.  Remember, moss covered areas are your friend as the soil under the moss tends to be very easy to dig.  Trekking poles actually serve many purposes and are a great digging tool.  Here's a bonus tip, and my favorite kind of cat hole, find a loose rock about the size of your head, kick it loose, remove from ground, deposit waste, replace rock.  It works like a charm.  If no head sized rocks are available you must resort to digging and often times these bathroom breaks have a sense of urgency, so dig fast.  After you deposit waste, fill hole with the previously expelled dirt and press the dirt firmly back into the hole with your foot.  When possible place a rock over the site.  The rock will help prevent the loose soil from washing away in a storm.  Now that you have been schooled on the art of cat hole digging I will explain my morning at Valley Breeze.  Things are going smoothly.  I had packed up early, chatted with my neighbors for a bit, had breakfast and was giving my animals some time out of doors.  Honey, on a leash and a harness at this time, got spooked by a passing car and removed herself from the leash and harness as well as the collar which is inscribed, "I'm lost! Please call my mom."  She's naked and down over the embankment she goes.  You know the story.  Things seemed to spiral out of control after this.  After capturing her I may or may not have had to use the litter box.  Now, we must be ready to go, but no!  The door on the driver's side of the van got stuck shut while I was sitting in the driver's seat.  I began to roll down the window to attempt to open the door from the outside.  Upon rolling the window down halfway, a spider dropped and was hanging from it's silken thread just a few inches from my face.  I attempted to blow on the spider to remove him from my vehicle but instead blew a quarter sized glob of spit onto the window.  The spider then dropped to the floor inside the van.  I climbed over the passenger seat and exited the vehicle.  I yanked the jammed door open at which time a spring, that obviously was not doing its job anyway, fell to the ground.  The door is now in working order again.  I located the spider and removed him unharmed from my home.  Things are looking up.  Now, I just need a moment to relax.  Ahh, let me just sit here for a moment and enjoy this succulent orange.  Nope, I inhaled a piece and choked.  After violently hacking up the bit of orange, we're off to Mammoth Cave National Park. 

When I arrived at Mammoth Cave I was very pleased to discover that I made it in time to purchase the very last ticket for the very last Mammoth Cave Frozen Niagara tour of the day.  The Frozen Niagara tour is supposed to be the best tour for photographing the cave.  Although my national park pass did not work at this park the tour was only $10.  The cave was gorgeous inside and out.  Dogs are welcome anywhere outside of the cave provided they are on a leash.  I enjoyed a nice long outdoor stroll with Fleetwood and Mac after my tour.  It was a great day after all.

Fallingwater, Bear Run, Pennsylvania

The unexpected but surprisingly worth while stop at Jellystone Park of Mill Run, PA is just eight short miles from Bear Run, PA which is home to an exquisite piece of twentieth century architecture.  Fallingwater was completed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1938 for Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., a wealthy department store owner.  The Smithsonian lists this residence as "one of the 28 places to visit before you die".  The home harmoniously blends into its natural wooded surrounding.  The property, complete with hiking trails,  explodes in an array of green and pink trees.  The indoor tour was sold out on Easter Sunday but I was able to take a tour of the grounds for $8.  It was definitely worth the trip.  Many guided whitewater rafting trips are also available in the area.  A stay at Jellystone Campground, a whitewater rafting trip and a visit to Fallingwater would be a perfect weekend getaway this summer.