Arkansas sure is pretty but the trees are different and there are so many of them. I can now appreciate the tales of trees reaching for cars and devouring them when no one is looking. Crunch!
PS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huorn
Archive for April, 2012
Ozark!
April 25, 2012Not only fun to say, Ozark also has petrol. Though now Ozark has 14.66 gallons less than Ozark did before we got there. But we gave Ozark $55.11. (It really is fun to say, especially after the fourth or fifth time.)
We’ve travelled 334.7 miles which puts us as 22.07 mpg. Not bad given what we’ve been setting cruise control at.
(I’m late posting this since I was driving, it should have been posted around 1:30pm Arkansas time or two hours ago if you are only here virtually.)
Need cheese sauce
April 25, 2012On the waitwait NPR news game radio show, one of the players said something like, “I like broccoli. I feel like a giant eating trees.”
I understood what he meant (and laughed) but California trees don’t really look like broccoli. Not like these do.
Now that we have left grass plains, there are a lot of trees. Trees of all sorts. Everything smells so good, like honeysuckle. I’m sneezing a lot.
Anyway, I like these trees but they make me hungry.
Missed picture
April 24, 2012I have shared some pictures here but I’m still trying to figure out the balance between words and photos. I don’t want to bore you with vacation slides, droning on and on. And since C showed me how to balance my pics for better exposure, they should be getting better.
Some of the pictures I’m taking for later, to illustrate ideas I know I’ll want to express. Like the dandelion in the forest outside Flagstaff. There is some idea there about weeds and belonging. Eventually, I’ll sort out my thoughts on that but they are thoughts that were brewing before and will be interesting later; it isn’t part of this adventure other than it happened on the trip.
Sometimes the pictures I didn’t manage to capture are the most interesting. When I miss those pictures, it is more of a loss than the lovely, here-I-was-and-it-was-pretty shots. A thousand words aren’t enough to capture the goal ethos of these non-vacation photos.
One photo that I foolishly thought I’d get another chance at keeps haunting me.
We were headed into Barstow. Earlier, we’d driven though California’s breadbasket, seeing the poetry inspiring vineyards, acres of almond trees and the never ending fields of crops. It makes me more of a even more of a locavore to see all that food, even in April when the plants are just waking up.
Then we’d hit the desert after Bakersfield, all that open space. It was the tan, dry desert with not much alive, just an occasional yucca tree and not-quite-brown shrub in the distance. It was the sort of place you could look at and know you wouldn’t survive an afternoon in. I like the clean, rawness of it but it is clearly vicious. The admonishment to carry a gallon of water per person seems like too low of a bar, particularly as the air wavers from the heat, clocking in at more than 100F.
I thought when I saw the bright green, Irish green, it was an odd mirage. But the house near it was not shimmering. They were growing something leafy and low growing in a neatly plowed field. Whatever it was, it looked ripe. The rows were visible but the plants were nearly touching. It looked lush. It made me crave a crisp salad and ripe tomatoes.
California has a lot of water issues, there just isn’t enough of it. Throughout the central corridor, there are billboard decrying the new laws and the rise in food prices they will cause. The propaganda repeats about every mile so clearly it is an issue someone cares a lot about.
So how can the Barstowians be growing leafy greens in the desert? This isn’t the edge of the desert but the full-on scary desert.
I should have taken the picture of the ragged edge of the wild dry sand with scrub brush and the neat, green farm.
I want the image where the home of the rattlesnakes meet a blithe humanity adapting their surroundings to their comfort. I want other wonder what the rest of the story is: is this some wonder crop that grows without water, poised to feed a new world? Or are these humans truly unaware that actions have consequences? I could have used that image to show a lot of things. But I missed it.
Grinding spirals
April 24, 2012We didn’t sleep much last night (Best Western Rio Grande in Albuquerque, I do not like you). And you may remember that C didn’t sleep too well the night before.
Thus, we are pretty tired. Forgive me if I’ve lost what little coherency I had.
Today was a pretty hard day, the view was relatively monotonous, at least it was in Texas. Oklahoma is pretty, especially the new green grass on the red soil, a nice contrast. But nothing like the Painted Desert.
Oklahoma is the first state we are in that I’ve never been to. Well, I didn’t set foot in Texas since that was just an airport layover. So maybe that was first, depending on the rules. Both are crossed off now.
I thought Oklahoma seemed like the biggest lawn ever. Then C said they were actually farming sod. The conversation today has not been stimulating.
Anyway, eight hours of driving is more than is comfortable. And I am not getting any work done. I was supposed to write an article, create an ad for my book, and work on that list of more technical blog posts. Oh, and I promised weeks ago to write a post for another blog.
I think the radar detector may be what is keeping us awake.
Oklahoma City has a Whole Foods. I tried to find a hotel near it but ended up several miles away. Still, stocking up on animal cookies should help a lot. And sleeping, that would help even more.
The problem with getting so tired is the difficulty of rebuilding the reserves. Once we get tired, it is hard to get untired. I think we need two consecutive good nights of sleep to make up for a bad one. Unless we get that, we’ll keep digging the hole deeper. Poor food and hotel choices happen because we are tired. Spirals.