The Great Migration: Day 3: Great Bend

Location: Great Bend, Kansas
Status: waning gibbous
Listening To: Billy Idol - Whiplash Smile
Been Listening to on the Road - Ben Bova - Mercury
Been Reading: Elizabeth Haydon - Prophecy

As per the every time I write one of these news posts, click "read more" or the title for the full scoop.

Forgive yesterday's lack of a progress report. Our lodgings in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, were without internet service, though they did have ample parking for our truck with La Chupacabra in tow.

Well, New Mexico saw more rain...as did Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Fortunately, these were not the inky tempests we met with in Arizona, but merely gray splatterings, hitting the windshield with loud splats and leaving the appearance of wet moon craters against the glass before the drops were swept aside, business-like, by the truck's shield wipers. Watching our own approach towards clouds, where their gray tendrils twisted through the sky unevenly, I thought immediately of how my wash water looks when I'm watercoloring, when it is clean and met by the first touch of a dirty brush. It looked exactly as the first pull of the pigment spiralling down into the clean water, and for the first time in my life I became truly aware of Earth's atmosphere, in what was, to me, a great revelation of real understanding of the nature of things.

In Santa Rosa, we met up with my Grandpa and Grandma--my father's father and stepmother--who were on their way back to Tucson from their Summer travels. We shared dinner and breakfast, and 'twas pleasant. My Grandpa gave me a surprise gift...of newspaper clippings he'd found about the San Diego Comic Con. He'd been very amused to hear that I'd been going and then to find that it was an event to important as to be mentioned in USA Today. Heh heh.

This morning began with what augers would probably call an ill omen; a bird shat in my eye. That bird had some aim.

New Mexico was chaparell country...grassy scrub dotted with clumped yuccas, and craggy mountains gave way to rolling hills, and then to flat plains as we passed into Texas--where, incidentally, the roads became much more nicely-maintained. We cut up through the Panhandle into Oklahoma--unfortunately a bit far from Paducah (hometown of Wyldfyre's Johnny Voltage.) =(
*Le sigh.* At some point, provided I have the travel resources, I want to take trips to both Paducah, Texas, and Cheboygan, Michigan (the latter I have been to once before) in order to wander around, taking oodles of pictures, and generally getting the real feeling of the places, for "Wyldfyre"'s sake.

In any case, we passed a great many cows. A great, great, great many cows, in their "finishing" stage--where they are moved from a grass diet to a more deliciously fattening feed of corn and soybeans--before slaughter.

Hole-in-the-wall cafes with bad late-60s decor and mediocre food are SO winsome. It's one of the reasons why I love small towns, and travelling through them.

Oklahoma was uneventful as we breezed through it into Kansas. Passed through Liberal, which Wizard of Oz fans might remember as Dorothy's hometown. Finally, we came to Great Bend, to pause for the night. The motel is undergoing renovations, which makes it a little "huh??" and we have to slam the door pretty hard in order to close it. Eh.

To pass the time on the road, we've been listening to this Ben Bova book, Mercury, on CD. It's...pretty darned lousy, actually, but we're determined to finish it. Well, one more disc to go, and it's done.

Tomorrow: more straight-shot driving down the flat highways of America's heartland, Northward, Northward, Northward...

Peace, yo.
~JoJo on the Go-Go