Vernon, CT

Is very strange. I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life.

Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.

Thank you all for reading! And thanks especially for your blog comments, phone calls, emails, and text messages along the way. I know this must have looked like a great long vacation, but there were a few (mostly unblogged) tough times out there, and communications back from the real world really helped keep me going.

Another big thanks to those I met up with along the way: Mike, Mayor Mike, Dan and Laurel, Glen, and Alice. These were amazing times, and were honestly the highlights of this whole adventure.

Here is the final Trip Computer:

Miles driven: 15,855
States visited: 39
National Parks visited: 32
Geocaches found: 26
Number of days gone: 43
Oil changes: 2
Last MPG check: 28.4
Live rattlesnakes seen: 0
Dead rattlesnakes seen: 1
Scorpions seen: 0
Giant squirrels seen: 3
Big Wallnuts seen: 2
Chocolate-covered walnuts eaten: 1
Tarantulas seen: 1
Amount won in Reno and Las Vegas: $975
Amount won in Tunica: -$60
WRX top speed: 135 mph
Cost of National Park Pass: $85
Total entry fees of National Parks visited: $334
Photos taken: 1392
Movies recorded: 54
Police cars seen while driving through ND, SD, WY, MT, ID: 2
Weight lost: 16 lbs

And here are some lessons learned:

• You can get great sushi in Boulder, CO
• Blue states have the worst drivers. For that matter, the bluer the state, the worse the drivers.
• Red states have more ADULT superstores.
• The earth is about 6,000 years old, unless you believe in that wacky collection of theories known as "Science."
• Padding is a great idea when in a tent.
• "Camping" means RVing to the rest of the world.
• I hate RVs.
• They might have to rename Glacier national park soon due to global warming.
• The Kum and Go stores aren't what they sound like.
• Northern Idaho is Aryan Nation territory.
• Dry heat is much more tolerable than wet heat.
• Unless you're in Death Valley.
• It's just too hot there.
• Panera Bread is great. Come for the mediocre food, stay for the free wireless internet.
• Illinois is made up of two things: Chicago and corn.
• There are no real killer 40-foot dairy cows.
• Massachussetts is the only state in the union that disables those things on gas pumps that enable you to pump the gas hands-free.
  

Lastly, here are some photos that didn't make it in the blog:

Acadia:

Badlands:

Yellowstone:

Glacier:

Mount Rainier:

Olympic:

Rocky Mountains:

Thanks again! I hope to see all of you soon.

Shenandoah

D'oh! A deer! A female deer!

I was about a half mile into my first hike at Shenandoah National Park, and I almost walked right into a deer. That's right, at Congaree, you walk into spiderwebs, but here, you walk into deer. I don't know whether the poor thing was blind, deaf, couldn't smell me, or a combination of the three, but it seemed almost oblivious to my presence. I could make noise, and talk to it, and it didn't really care; it just would occasionally perk its head up and look around, and usually in the opposite direction. Maybe they are that used to people here? Or maybe she was employing the "I'm so thin, no predator would eat me" defense.

Or maybe it was a cyborg deer. That's what I'd believe from the photos, anyway. In every pic I took that had the deer's eyes, they look like they're glowing white. Any of you photoshoppers out there know why this is? (and how to fix it?)


Shenandoah was a lot like the Smokies, but there were far fewer tourists, meaning less traffic and quieter trails. Even the mountains were "smoky":

I'd have a long way to go if I were hiking the Appalachian Trail, but as it is, I'm almost home! No more national parks between here and Vernon, CT.

Congaree

Congaree National Park, formerly Congaree Swamp National Monument, is a swamp in South Carolina. It was, as you'd expect, hot, humid, and buggy. As you might also expect, it was not very crowded, and rather quiet.

I hiked the Weston Lake Loop Trail. Had I been responsible for naming it, I would have called it the Trail of Spidery Death. Congaree is not a place for arachnophobes! There are spiders everywhere, large and small. And there are magnificent orb webs everywhere, often stretching for four feet across the trail path at various heights. And sometimes you don't see them until you walk into them.

I'm not afraid of spiders. I'm probably as unfazed as it gets for a typical civilian non-entomologist when it comes to creepy crawlers, but I was pretty wigged out after about an hour of brushing webs and spiders off my arms and face and wondering how many of the damn buggers might still be crawling around on me where I can't see 'em.

Last Thanksgiving, in a swamp in Tampa, we saw a bunch of these weird knobby things growing out of the ground and had no idea what they were. At Congaree, I learned that they are the "knees" of the Bald Cypress tree. They are actually parts of the root systems of the parent trees. Weird.

Anyway, here are some more spiders for your viewing pleasure.

Great Smoky Mountains

Some of you have noticed a slight delay in my blogging over the last few days. That's because I found Alice in Charlotte, NC, and we went camping in Great Smoky Mountain National Park over the long weekend!

According to my National Geographic National Park Guide, this is the most visited National Park, and the most crowded during the summer. We got there at about 6:00 pm and were fortunate to find an open campsite. As we drove around and saw other people's campsites, I tried to explain to Alice that my tent is designed for ultra-light weight and compactness, for backcountry backpacking trips-- i.e., it's very small. So I kept having to answer "Is it smaller than that one? How about that one?" as we drove around the campgrounds. And the answer was always "Yes."

Please don't read any innuendo into that.

Anyway, like I said, we found a campsite and set up camp. There was a trail nearby, and we had a few hours to kill before sunset, so we hiked for about a mile up a steep hill, and unfortunately, did not see any wildlife. I did find a metal cage, whose purpose I would not learn until later on in the trip.

We learned something fairly quickly when we got back to camp: it's not easy to make fire in the Smokies. (ironic?) It's just so humid! Even while tearing the newspaper, I could feel it getting damp. Anyway, I failed in my first two attempts to light a fire, and then Alice stepped in and lit one. For all of you who already know Alice as the great outdoor hunter, camper, and survivalist, I say "HUH???" but I was happy there was fire and didn't ask questions. We roasted hot dogs over the fire and had a great time.

We started the next morning with a quick walk up Clingman's Dome, one of the highest points in the park. Most National Parks are aptly named, and we found out that this is true here as well (although Great Foggy Mountains would be more accurate.) All the mountain peaks were shrouded in clouds, so the view was rather hidden from us on that day.

Drove into the Tennessee side to Gatlinburg for lunch, and then drove toward Cades Cove. We found another campsite here and set up the tent for later, and here we found what we had missed the previous night: marshmallows! and graham crackers! and chocolate! We stocked up...

Drove to Cades Cove, a driving loop section of the park that contains about a dozen restored buildings from the late 19th century. Three of them were churches, which went defunct during the civil war due to parishoners' sympathies being divided between the Union and the Confederacy. About midway through the loop, we found a trail that lead, according to my National Geographic book, to a "stunning view of a waterfall." So we hiked the 2.5 miles to the waterfall, at which time our reaction was: "eh." And then hiked back. Later on at a mill site, I saw another one of those cages, and this time, there was an exaplanation: it's to catch wild hogs, which are non-native and are dangerous to the natural wildlife of the park.

Saw lots of deer on the way home! Back at the campsite, we again tried to make fire. Alice had the Firestarter title from the previous night, so she got to try to make the fire this time. And try. After she had sufficiently heated the wood in the fire ring, I stepped in and lit the fire. And this time, after cooking hot dogs, we toasted marshmallows and made smores! YUM!

Found Laurel Falls (no relation to Laurel) the next morning and hiked. These falls were not that impressive either, and there were crowds of people playing around in them, but the hike was fun. After that, hiked a few nature trails and headed back to Charlotte. We were both pretty tired from the previous day's hikes. But we survived three days in the great outdoors (more or less!) without internet service or cell phones coverage! (er, 2.5 days without Alice's Blackberry...) Amazing how people survived twelve years ago.

Georgia

Before going to my brother Glen's place in Augusta, I found the Georgia Guidestones. Someone apparently thought it was a good idea to put up a 19 foot high stone monument in basically the middle of nowhere, with inscriptions in eight languages telling us how to live. It's a preachy mix of common sense, socialist (or world-government) propaganda, and some downright sinister philosophy, such as "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature." I guess the first step to world domination is to murder 6.1 billion people. Like I said, common sense.

Glen's house is great, but I got there the day his air conditioning died. Living in Georgia in the summer without air conditioning is like, well, probably the first step toward maintaining humanity under 500,000,000. Nevertheless, I had a good time while I was there. It was the first time on this trip that I got to spend some time doing absolutely nothing, which was great. I also got to play some Halo.

Glen said that this reminded him of some bloggers he knew. I wonder who?

Walked around the scenic area of Augusta and found a "Japanese Pocket Garden." Seemed like a fitting place for a photo, even if it seemed totally bizarre to me that such a place would exist in Augusta.

The last night I was there, after some beer and some tequila, we decided to play a duet on his piano. We haven't played it in about 20 years. If you watched, you probably would have guessed we haven't played it in 30 years. Or maybe ever. Apologies in advance. Video Link.

Fall Creek Falls

I wouldn't have thought this would happen, but as I drove through Arkansas, I started to feel like I was back home. There were rivers instead of dry creek beds, forests instead of deserts, and high, oppressive humidity instead of that wonderful dry heat of the southwest. The most noticeable difference between Arkansas and Connecticut is that on the back roads in Arkansas, you see the unfortunate remains of an armadillo every seven miles or so on the side of the road. Sorry, no pics. Makes me wonder if, upon seeing a car approaching, the armadillo curls itself into a ball to stay nice and safe.

On to Tennessee. Elizabeth suggested that while in Tennessee, I should check out Fall Creek Falls State Park. I got there fairly early, and it was already very hot and humid. But I figured that was a good thing, as it would keep the trails free of hikers other than myself.

For the most part, I was right, and the people I did encounter were slow and sluggish and quiet. Even the deer I ran into seemed oblivious to me! The hike down to the main falls was steep and somewhat slippery, but the bottom was a great place to spend some time on a hot day.

Later that day, a geocaching trip in Georgia took me to two civil war sites, one of which was a graveyard containing over 500 gravestones, mostly looking like this:


This marker appears farther into the cemetery:

The inscription reads:

Georgia Confederate Soldiers
We sleep here in obedience to law
When duty called we came
When country called we died

West to East

Sorry for the lame poker post. Here is the map of my west to east drive to date. The stops are: Crater Lake NP, Redwood NP, Lassen Volcanic NP, Reno NV, Yosemite NP, Death Valley NP, Las Vegas NV, Zion NP, Grand Canyon NP, Bryce Canyon NP, Capitol Reef NP, Canyonlands NP, Arhes NP, Mesa Verde NP, Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP, Boulder CO, Rocky Mountain NP, Great Sand Dunes NP, Carlsbad Caverns NP, Guadalupe Mountains NP, Hot Springs NP, Crater of Diamonds State Park (AR), Tunica MS, Memphis TN, Fall Creek Falls State Park (TN), Georgia Guidestones.

The path isn't exact; in fact, it misses my trip through Oklahoma and my accidental visit to Kansas. But it at least shows the main destinations.