Category: Adventure Time!

Today’s the day we packed the RV and came home. I didn’t really miss it. The RV was pretty comfortable for the past four, going on five days. The only things I had waiting for me were the cats, fish, and work. I really almost didn’t want to come back.

The trip didn’t feel long from the back of the motorhome. It didn’t really feel like a long trip on the way up, either. It’s nice being able to stretch and move around on a trip. It made me really think I might be able to pull off living on a boat. I played Link to the Past most of the way home on my old Game Boy Advance. Now I don’t know if I’ll ever finish the game, because that’s my habit – play a game for a while, and then never pick it up again until I’ve forgotten where I am and have to start over.

Dad made the mistake of packing my pillow away in the RV, so it didn’t make it home. Fortunately I bought a pair, but I’m a bit worried I’ll bring fleas home with it when I finally get it back. Bác Vân called just as I was unloading my suitcase from the car and offered some egg rolls, so I went next door to pick them up, then came inside to do a bunch of laundry. I left my suitcase and duffle bag outside for now, just in case they got covered up in fleas. Things like that just make me hate having pets even more.

I still haven’t had much time to compose my time lapse video from the eclipse, but it’ll happen soon. I guess for now I should try and get some sleep.

It just doesn’t feel like home.

Today was the big day. The day that has been in planning for over a year. The day that I just barely even asked to attend. I didn’t realize how big of a deal the eclipse was until late in the game, probably much like many others around the country that found themselves making the migration at the last minute.

I managed to get my GoPro up on the camper to record a timelapse of us running around on the ground. Next time, I’d like to have a drone to get a higher vantage point, but this worked surprisingly well. Dad had a camera taking pictures, and I managed to get a few through the telescope. Unfortunately it was extremely difficult to get pictures of totality with the equipment we had in the arrangement we had set up. Lessons for next time.

Leading up to totality, you could feel the air getting cooler and the sunlight getting darker. Eventually the birds and other wildlife got quiet. Except the cicadas. They wound up in a hurry as they do in the evenings. Until they stopped, and the crickets came out. The darkness came swiftly in the final moments before totality, causing automatic lights to come on all around us. And then it hit us.

Total eclipse.

I’ve never seen anything so incredible in my entire life. The other sensations of cooler air and evening sounds were amazing to take in by themselves, but then the entire horizon went to twilight, and the sky above us went to a deep violet color. Suddenly you could see planets in the sky. Jets that would normally be too high to be seen in the daylight suddenly came into view in a criss-cross pattern surrounding the sun and moon. But it was no longer a display of the sun and moon. It was a black hole in the sky surrounded by a ring of fire, and three ethereal, spectral arms of the corona reaching out into space as if to cradle our solar system in its warm embrace.

Looking through the telescope, you could see the fire of the solar flares peeking around the moon, but the real sight to behold was with the naked eye. The way the rest of space came to light around the dance of these two celestial bodies was impossible to capture with any equipment we could have possibly packed. It was as though the universe had come to witness the first dance of this newly married couple on stage, and it was glorious. The human eye is capable of such dynamic focus in this mixture of light and dark that this type of event simply must be viewed in person.

Totality lasted barely over two minutes and the diamond ring returned. The sun’s dazzling light spilled out from behind the moon and hastily flooded the whole world around us, as though she scooped us up out of the cold dark and wrapped us up again in her warm blanket.

Anticlimactic.

It was over, and nothing could ever compare to those two minutes of totality.

It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed, yet I frustratingly feel unchanged in the end. I didn’t have any profound thoughts or feelings. If anything, I just felt a little alone in my usual ways. My problems didn’t feel smaller. My worries didn’t go away. I still have to go back to work on Wednesday.

Life goes on.

But I won Catan.

Today was a bit of a mixed bag. We were all up super late last night, particularly for them. I woke up earlier than I wanted to because apparently the trailer absorbs all visible light. We had pancakes for breakfast before eventually getting out into town. We first went to the McGregor Park Riverwalk, where the Queen of the Mississippi happened to be docked. It wasn’t open for tours or anything, since it’s actually a riverboat cruise ship, so we ended up leaving that park relatively quickly.
 
The next few stops were a couple of thrift stores without anything of significance, but then we went to Fort Defiance. They had an American Civil War museum/walkthrough that had a couple pretty neat models and dioramas. Outside, they had a couple cannons set up along a winding walking path that we chose not to travel. I encountered a Cookie Monster rock. That’s when shit got weird.

They decided they wanted to go eat at the Tilted Kilt, which is more of a bar than a restaurant, and more known for the short skirts and low tops than the beer or sports. I don’t know if it was by mistake or just awkward circumstance, but this visit actually happened. Shae (Shay? Shea?), our waitress, introduced herself to me as a 19-year-old that didn’t drink, and then spent the rest of the visit regaling with us about last night’s party that left her hungover for today’s work shift. I guess I should count myself lucky that Dad only made one awkward comment to her, but the whole ordeal was just a little too surreal for me. I would have been fine with friends, or even by myself, but it was mostly Dad that just made it feel weird. Her story really did make me miss my early friendship with Brandon though.

We finally got out of there after some mediocre bar food and stopped by Electronic Express with my hope that they could pick up a part for one of their radios. This store was a weird amalgam of a Best Buy and a furniture store. They not only had computers, TVs, and appliances, but also mattresses, couches and chairs, and outdoor cooking equipment. It wasn’t a bad store, but it felt like stepping back into the 90s with a modern twist on that decade’s technology.

When we finally got back to camp, we went for a quick swim and then headed back to the motorhome to each sit on our own laptops in silence for several hours. I cracked open one of my BlackHorse Brewery Vanilla Cream Ales and shared a splash with both of them, but had the lion’s share to myself. It didn’t help a great deal.

Tomorrow’s agenda should eclipse anything we’ve done so far. Teehee.

Today started slow for me. I slept later than anyone else and only got up close to breakfast time. Dad made bacon and eggs outside. After breakfast, they stayed outside to play with the ham radio, and I came inside to catch up on email and listen to some mad chunes.

We eventually decided to leave camp to find some beer to take home for my cousin Ernie. He wanted some Vanilla Cream Ale from Blackhorse Brewery. I went ahead and picked up a case myself in spite of the price because it sounded delicious and came in overly large bottles. While there, we walked around downtown and I was reminded of my hatred for traveling with family with an affinity for photography.

When we finally herded out of there, we traveled to Fort Campbell to visit the army museum there. The actual museum was closed, but they had an outdoor display of several aircraft and other machines of war that was pretty neat.

We left there and ended up at a Baskin Robbins, where the girl surprised me with some peach and cherry ice cream in a banana royale that was just spectacular. Uncle Rick wanted to go to another civil war park that ended up being closed for the day, so we went to the Dunbar Cave park and met a couple ladies that were literally locked inside of the cave and couldn’t get out. They were there with a child’s birthday party tour and decided to turn back when one of them was feeling claustrophobic. I waited with them for several minutes until the group finally returned from the tour and let them out.
 
After the cave, we came back to camp and went for a swim before cooking dinner. I made some penne pasta with meat and tomato sauce that turned out okay. We had some more red leaf lettuce that I decided to turn into a salad with some carrots we picked up on the way back to camp. I also burned some garlic toast after trying to juggle everything in the tiniest kitchen ever. Everything turned out surprisingly well, and I ate way too much.

When we finished eating, I got them to play Settlers of Catan with me. I’d never played before, so it was a pretty steep learning curve for all of us. Now that I’ve played, I think future games can be explained much more easily. Uncle Rick ended up winning without realizing it. I really liked the game. Overall, this went pretty okay as far as days go.

I hate making these beds though.

Today is the day we’ve been waiting for. I got up after too little sleep, and started packing the best I could for our eclipse trip. Dad came and picked me up around 10, we went and took Mom some breakfast/lunch, and we headed to Cabot to my Uncle Rick’s.

It was a pretty comfortable ride being able to get up and move around. No telling whether that’s really allowed while the vehicle is in motion, but I live my life a quarter mile at a time. We stopped at Sonic on the way out of town so we could load another vehicle on a tow hitch. When we finished, everyone was hungry, so we stopped to eat in the parking lot. We finally got moving out of town around 1:30.

We had to stop at a Walmart in Dickson because Dad forgot to pack all of the dinner type meats, and we weren’t satisfied with lunch meat for four days. Uncle Rick also thought there might be something wrong with the RV, but ultimately decided we were in the clear, and we finished our journey.

We made it to the campsite next-to-last, with our envelope taped to the front office door. It took us a little bit to get settled into our spot, but we got all the utilities hooked up and the awning pulled out the side. The stall showers here aren’t too bad, though I’m not certain there’s an abundance of hot water. I’m waiting until morning to find out.

HOW ARE A DOZEN EGGS ONLY 30 CENTS?!?

I got up a little later than I wanted in order to make it down to Magic Springs as they opened. Michael came over at noon, and we stopped by Taco Bell in Dardanelle for a quick bite before heading down Highway 7. His bike needed a cam chain tensioner, so he took the Corvette, and I rode the R1. We made good time, but it was super hot and sweaty by the time we got there, so we took a few laps around the lazy river to cool off. Afterward we went down a water slide, then got pretzels.

While we were eating, a guy named Gary chatted us up, and then joined us for a couple roller coasters. He was really proud of his sobriety, and kept talking about his church. It’s nice to see someone actually getting something positive out of it, though it still makes me leery. He was super nice though, which is nice because he stuck around until we finally broke out for dinner. We ate at this little Mexican joint in the park. The food wasn’t bad, but I feel like it could have been a lot better without much effort.

After we ate, we went down to the amphitheater to catch the last bit of Moxy before Bret Michaels came out. It was a good show, but it seemed way shorter than the others I’ve been to in the past.

We actually got out of the park pretty quickly, and I made short work of the trip home, only nearly dying twice. The first time was a near miss with a large piece of roadkill, and the second was a near miss within about six inches of a live armadillo that was sitting on the line in the middle of the road.

Everyone made it back home safely, but I had to go pick up the stuff I left in Michael’s trunk. After that, I played a round of Battlegrounds with Johnny, Clint, and Josh. Now I’m off to bed as a crispy critter.

Though it’s been a while now, I can still feel so much pain.

I woke up this morning with just barely enough time to get showered and out the door to meet Clint for breakfast in Fort Smith. I was running a bit behind by the time I got on the interstate, and was admittedly driving way too fast. I almost made it all the way there, but was pulled over by the very first state trooper I saw, camped right before my exit. I exited and pulled over in a parking lot, and it was a female officer that approached me. She introduced herself, and asked for my papers. I mentioned that I had a concealed carry license, but did not have a weapon on me. She, like many others, asked why and told me I should get one. I told her the brief story of how I had only gotten the license with my dad and sister as a family affair, and then she left to run my papers. She came back with a warning for my 15-over the limit. I was shocked but grateful. She was all smiles throughout the interaction. Even pretty cute. I rate this a 10/10 – Would get pulled over again.

I made it to Clint and Johnny’s, and nobody was awake. I called Clint and got him to at least meet me outside when he was ready to go eat. He, Landon, and I went to Furr’s Fresh Buffet, which is always excellent. I love their variety, and the food is always super fresh. I guess it has to be when it’s a part of their name.

After breakfast, we went to Cashfish to clean up some old junk that was left in the building. He never asked for help, but I still left wondering how I ended up in that situation on my weekend. From there, he had some other errands to run, so I went to visit Jesica and ran in to her father and Skye as they were taking a truckload of things to her apartment. It was super humid outside, so I broke a major sweat trying to piece together an annoyingly and unnecessarily heavy particle board dining table for her, and then left.

While sitting in the parking lot mapping out my next adventure, Jae pulled up and knocked on my window. We chatted for just a bit, but then I had to leave to meet Clint at Walmart to pick up Johnny to go to Jack and Nichole’s. Clint couldn’t decipher the map, though, and ended up going to the wrong place. Rather than have me backtrack, he came to me, and then Johnny and I continued our quest. When we got to Jack and Nichole’s, I asked Johnny if they knew we were coming, to which he responded that he thought I had made plans. Surprise! Jack came down to let us in, and we hung out there for a while. I finally got to see his projector setup, which was awesome, and Penny was pretty fun for a baby. I also got to pick up Jack’s unused motorcycle communication set, so I can put it to use again.

When Johnny and I left there, we went to Rolando’s Restaurante for dinner, and I had an awesome burrito. It was really tasty, but the presentation was probably the most impressive part. It’s not often I eat somewhere that any care has been placed into plating the food. The salsa was more of a mix of corn and beans, and was a little bland, but nice that it was different.

After we ate, I dropped Johnny back off at home, and I went to watch Wonder Woman at the Carmike. I couldn’t get anyone to go with me, so I just went alone. I really enjoyed the movie, though I really wish I had gone early enough to catch it in 3D. I’m going to have to revert to my 2010 self and just start doing things alone, because it’s the only way I can reliably get anything done. It’s lonely, but it beats sitting around at home like every other weekend.

That drive home from the Fort is just brutal, though.

I didn’t sleep much last night, which is usual for a stay away from home. I stir at the first peek of light from the sun through the curtains, and from there it’s go-time. The breakfast at Branson’s Best Motel was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, Michael and I had miscommunicated our breakfast plans, so we each ended up going down separately to eat. Then it was on to the park.

We parked and waited for the bus for a while, but then decided to walk up the hill to the park. Out of shape as I am, I must have shed about 20 pounds in sweat. Once we got into the park, it felt pretty awesome. I’d never been, and didn’t realize how much tree coverage there was. Everywhere you went, you had shade and the cool breeze over water fixtures. I had always been told that it was mostly gift shops, but it really didn’t seem out of line from what I would expect in any theme park.

We rode a couple of the coasters, a pendulum ride, and a log flume where I got absolutely drenched. Afterword we found lunch in the form of some delicious skillet potatoes and sausage. I had just finished my food when the downpour came. It didn’t rain for super long, but the hills in the park made for several heavy streams of water running down the walkways that filled my shoes. The rain was heavy enough to penetrate my backpack as well, so I convinced him it was time to leave before we got hit by another wave of the rain.

The sky cleared up enough for us to stop by Andy’s Frozen Custard where we had a couple delicious strawberry and blackberry shortcakes. As we sat there, a couple missionary-type guys stopped by to quiz us on spirituality. Given the conversations Michael and I had been having, I took the bait and had a fair conversation with strangers. They had us pick out pictures that could represent how we felt about different things, and I expected there to be some sort of story attached to them, but they insisted it was just there as a conversation starter. When it was all said and done, I ended up feeling about the same way I expected. They were there to stir up conversations about faith, and remained grounded in righteous vindication. I could only hope to inspire them to think freely and to challenge everything.

By then, it was time to come home. We tried to stop by Mack’s Pines for dinner, but ultimately ended up at CJ’s Butcher Boy Burgers back in town. I had a grilled cheese, which was surprisingly good considering it was cheese between two inside-out hamburger buns. Once back home, Michael came in to check out my home theater experience. I think he left impressed.

Yeah they was dancin’ and singin’ and movin’ to the groovin’.