Water ripple, swamp near Cypress Creek Visitors Center, Perks, Illinois
With luck, I’ll wrap up the Big Trip series this week. This afternoon was a rare day for Southern Illinois: low seventies, sunny, not very humid. Too nice to stay indoors. The shot above was taken from a boardwalk just south of the Cypress Creek Visitors Center. Pentax K-50, 100mm macro lens.
Mini splash park, Pearl Street mall, Boulder, Colorado
Rag-dog street performer, Pearl St Mall, Boulder, Colorado
Painted piano, Fort Collins, Colorado
Alley mural, Old Town, Fort Collins, Colorado
CSU trial gardens, Fort Collins, Colorado
Detail, painted electrical box, Old Town, Fort Collins, Colorado
Days 7-11: Boulder, Loveland, Fort Collins.
After my day recuperating in Fort Morgan, I headed toward Fort Collins but found that I would get there by mid-morning on a Sunday. So I detoured down to Boulder first, where I spent far too much time and money at the Pearl Street mall. It was a recapitulation of sorts: I went to exactly the same shops as when David and I were there, and I got a veggie panini at the same place we’d eaten. I was disappointed to see that the contortionist who folded himself into various containers, such as a little, clear plastic box, was no longer among the street performers. I wanted to donate to all of the performers, but my cash is dwindling alarmingly fast. I didn’t stay to watch the torch-juggler act, and I didn’t tip the guitarists or the accordion player, and I arrived too late to see a very popular act involving a performer balancing atop a tower of chairs, and I walked past an older gentleman in cowboy garb painted to look like a copper statue, and I skirted the guy in an African-type mask who was playing the bongo drums, and I felt terrible that I wasn’t leaving money for any of them, but there were just so many.
Eventually I sat down near one of the street performers to drink a lemonade and rest my aching feet. This particular guy—I believe it was a guy, though his act was mute—was impersonating a sort of ragdoll dog. His costume was made of tiers of short, pastel-colored pieces of fabric, so he could shake like a puli. He sat like a dog and looked hopefully at passersby. He’d try to attract children by getting up on all fours, or rolling on the ground. A couple of women with a little boy were taking pictures of him, but not leaving any money. That isn’t nice, I thought. I approached the performer and, looking over at the little boy, said, “I think this dog wants a belly rub, don’t you?” The “dog” promptly rolled onto his back. I reached down and rubbed his belly and he made some appreciative doggie-like grunts. “And maybe some scratching around this ear,” I said, still looking at the little group. I scratched one of his “ears” and he pumped one of his legs the way dogs often do when you’ve hit the right spot and they’re just loving it. “See?” I said. “I made him kick his leg.”
I dropped a couple of bucks into the performer’s bowl and then realized that a number of people had stopped to watch this joint act. In one last attempt to get this endearing performer some tips, I put out my hand, and said, “Shake?” He lifted an enormous foot so I could touch the bottom of it. It was more like a fist bump. Still no action from anyone in the crowd. It was a hot day and the street performer must have been terribly uncomfortable underneath his shaggy costume. I felt like whispering to him, “Well, I tried,” but I wasn’t sure if he could hear a whisper inside the doggie head he was wearing, so I just walked away. Ineffectual! Alas.
On the plus side, I was thrilled to see that the problems I’d had with the altitude in 2012 were gone. Three years ago, I’d walk a few feet, then have to rest. Walk a few more feet, then have to rest. Sit down repeatedly. Lean on David’s arm. This time around, I could walk without resting. The iron infusions clearly get credited for this improvement. I sat down only because my feet and legs began to ache almost unbearably. I haven’t built up my endurance very much yet, and they’re not used to this much walking. Added to that stress was driving much of the day without cruise control (I was on a variety of roads, from city streets to the interstate, and the traffic was very heavy everywhere).
In Fort Collins, I was forced to take yet another rest day on Monday. This time I didn’t even leave the motel. I am frightened of my debilitation and I am ashamed of being frightened. I know why I’m here and at the same time I feel I’ve lost sight of why I’m here. I’m reading a book where a man is being “reprocessed,” via amnesia-inducing injections, over and over; we don’t yet know why. Now he has been reprocessed to the point where he has no ambition or autonomy beyond his basic daily functioning, and he will be left to live the rest of his life in the “reprocessing village” (one of many) because he is considered cured. I.e., he no longer poses a threat. To what or whom, we don’t yet know. (To himself, it turns out; the book is called “A Cure for Suicide,” and the cure involves losing all the complexities and nuances and worries of life. I can divulge this because no one ever reads books that I recommend.)
Probably I should not be reading this book right now. It is beginning to affect me strongly. I think that I am like this man, not living a meaningful life. I worry that I’m breaking down, and that would constitute a great failure in my eyes. My sister suggested something I’d already thought of, that I could fly back home and that there are people who will drive your car back for you. But how do you know whom to trust? I would start driving back tonight; since I’ve slept all day I’m confident I could drive all night if it weren’t for the fact that my legs are swollen and hurt very much.
———–
After this, I didn’t do any more writing during the trip, so I’ll sum things up briefly. On Tuesday I felt well enough to continue. I toured three independent-living facilities for my sister, two in Loveland and one in Fort Collins. Then, during a phone conversation with her that evening, I discovered that she didn’t want to live in the Fort Collins/Loveland area, she only wanted to live in Denver, and not in an independent-living facility. This would have been nice to know before I left Carbondale. I was completely open with her about my ideas and my agenda, so I was simultaneously vexed and confused. The trip now seems to have been misguided and misfocused. I considered heading to Denver for the next three days, then realized that Denver would involve a lot of upfront Internet research in order to focus a search. In addition, everyone I’ve talked to has told me that Denver is much more expensive than Fort Collins. Finally, I realized that my energy and navigational savvy simply didn’t extend to a big metro area like Denver on this particular road trip. So I decided to treat the rest of the journey as a vacation.
On Wednesday I met up with my friend David M., dedicated Marlovian and self-described “world’s oldest white rapper.” We stopped by Colorado State University’s trial gardens, where new varieties of garden flowers are being tested, on the way to the big Campbell’s soup can replica that CSU art students constructed to Andy Warhol’s specs and that he signed on a trip to Fort Collins. Dave kept mentioning some black-and-white photos in a gallery that he wanted me to see. Turns out that the gallery was the Center for Fine Art Photography, one of the very places I’d hoped to visit in Fort Collins. Although we arrived just at closing time, one of the curators kindly gave us a personal tour. Then it was on to an Italian restaurant and a quick drive west of the city and up a steep, winding ridge to Horsetooth Reservoir in an attempt to catch the sunset. We were a little late, but the view was beautiful nonetheless.
The arts scene seems to be thriving in Fort Collins and also in Loveland, just to the south. Public sculpture abounds in both cities. Both have taken to painting those big electrical boxes you see all over the place in fanciful, colorful designs, turning them from eyesores into attractions. Fort Collins also paints old pianos with whimsical scenes and leaves them in public places—even alleyways–for anyone to play. In one of the photos above, Dave is trying to talk me into playing the piano so he can get a video of it. So great is my performance anxiety that when I finally sat down, I began “House of the Rising Sun” in the wrong key and never did get straightened out. (Dave, I hope you’ve deleted that video.)
On Thursday I broke my new “vacation-only” rule in order to tour one more facility in Fort Collins, in the interest of doing a reasonably thorough job of what I’d come more than a thousand miles to do, and then toured an apartment complex just across the street. Afterwards, I headed for Estes Park, where I’ll pick this up in the next installment. The writing will get shorter from now on; I promise. We’re on the home stretch.
Dirt road, northwest Kansas
Barn, northwest Kansas
Hay bales, northwest Kansas
Wind turbine, northwest Kansas
Wild sunflowers, northwest Kansas
Steak ‘n Shake light fixture, Goodland, Kansas
Sopapillas, Acapulco Café, Fort Morgan, Colorado
“No Escape”: Cover Theater, downtown Fort Morgan, Colorado
Days 5 & 6: Hays to Fort Morgan.
Everyone who has flown across the Great Plains has seen the crop circles made by pivot irrigation. They are a potent reminder that we cannot truly grasp the way humankind has remade this planet without seeing it from the air. But we also must see it from the ground—and we can, a little bit, in this case. When you’re driving in Kansas, anytime you see a pivot irrigator near the road, watch as the edge of the crop circle recedes from you on the far side. Often you can see the edge on the front side as well, if you’re paying good attention.
Irrigation circles are plentiful after Hays, which is high-plains country and where you begin to see gates at the entrances to the interstate, to close it off in case of heavy snow. I exited I-70 at Goodland, took an inordinate number of photographs at a Steak ‘n Shake (of all things), and drove back roads north to Haigler, Nebraska, right at the corner of the state. The last part of this drive finally satisfied my need for isolation.
One of my hopes for this trip was to see the fields of sunflowers, the flower that Kansas has made one of its state symbols. Eventually I saw two fields of cultivated sunflowers, but their heads were all bowed down, like a crowd of penitents. Drought? Too close to harvest? I’m not sure. The roads are lined with wildflowers that look like native sunflowers, rather small and not very tall growing, but I was able to get only one decent photo of them.
The county roads in Kansas, or at least this part of Kansas, are lettered rather than numbered. CR X amounted to a pair of barely discernible rutted tracks mounting an arid hill. CR Y seemed like a lament; a few miles later, CR YY seemed like a command. CR Z felt like the end of the world. After I headed west from Haigler and crossed the border into Colorado, I saw that the county roads here are numbered. One of them was CR 92 1/2. I am still puzzling over this and have come up with no plausible explanation for it. How can you have 1/2 of a road? I was hoping things would deconstruct even further, to 1/4 or even 1/8 of a county road, but I never spotted so much as one other 1/2.
I made it to my intended destination, Fort Morgan, Colo., but then I crashed. A pattern seems to be emerging: two days driving and/or seeing “attractions,” one day in bed at a motel. My do-not-disturb sign at this absurdly expensive Hampton Inn in Fort Morgan, Colo., says “Resting.” I noticed that someone else’s, however, says “Relaxing.” They’ve got me pegged. I’m surprised mine doesn’t say “Recuperating” or even “Restructuring.” The door plates here each have a black-and-white photograph next to the number. Mine shows an old-fashioned air pump from a filling station. I’ve checked out eight or nine other rooms and so far each photo is different. A pile of horseshoes. An old church bell. An antiquated alarm clock. A little boy sitting against a bale of hay. A parking meter. I like these.
As usual when I’m exhausted and hurting, depression sets in. After sleeping all day and then texting a good friend for encouragement, I finally pulled myself together around 5 p.m. and went out to eat. At the Acapulco Café I had my biennial BLT (no more bacon for me for two years), which came with fries better than anyplace in Carbondale makes them. And then for dessert I ordered the sopapillas, which can’t be had anywhere in C’dale as far as I know. These were served on a monstrous plate with a mountain of whipped cream in the middle, and they were the best I’ve ever had, even better than the ones at the diner in Santa Fe that I can’t remember the name of that’s just off the market square. I offered to share my order with the only other diners, a young woman and her little girl, who are staying next door to me at the Hampton (I recognized the woman’s dress). She turned me down and apologized in advance for her girl, who was talking incessantly, interspersed with shrieks that reminded me of the birds in Hays. So I ate almost all of them myself. I thought I’d regret it, but I didn’t; I felt just fine. They did me a world of good, I think.
Then I went a block down Main Street (which does not seem to be thriving here in Fort Morgan) to the old-fashioned movie theater. I could have seen “Straight Outta Compton,” which seems like a hilarious choice out here on the high plains, but instead I went with “Ricki and the Flash.” It isn’t a well-written movie—1970s rock ‘n roll really isn’t the quick fix for a rock-bottom relationship with the mother who deserted you when you were young—but Meryl Streep is a good singer and she learned to play the guitar for this movie, at least enough to get through the 11 songs she had to perform. Her singing was the part that interested me enough to pony up the eight bucks this small-town theater must charge just to survive—that plus the fact that I didn’t want to see any of the other three movies playing. I talked to the theater owner for awhile; he and his movie house are hanging in there, he says.
And then I did my laundry at the Hampton. Given that I plan to shorten the trip considerably, I may not have to do laundry again until I get home. So hurray for that.
I’ve been plagued with memories ever since I left Lawrence. I crossed Kansas once with my first husband, several times with my (now-deceased) second husband, and once with a (now-deceased) boyfriend, and it saddens me greatly to think of all of that potential life lost. Two of those trips were occasioned by my parents’ deaths. It will soon be September 8, the day Mom died 18 years ago. If I had had a baby that year, that child would be going off to college now. It’s a fact that almost stops my breath. I’m a ruminator by nature, and the comparative isolation of the Great Plains reinforces that tendency.
Konza Prairie
Grasses closeup, Konza Prairie
Giant Sonoran Centipede
Giant Wingless Walkingsticks. There are at least seven walkingsticks in this photo.
Giant Wingless Walkingsticks. Although this photo is mostly out of focus, I’m including it to show how much the insect can bend its body. These two look like they’re doing a ballet.
Indian Domino Beetle
Pumpkin Patch Tarantula
Bowl Plaza mosaic, Lucas, KS
Courtyard sculpture, Grassroots Art Center, Lucas, KS
Courtyard sculpture, Grassroots Art Center, Lucas, KS
Cloud lit by sunset, Hays, KS
Day 4: Lawrence to Hays.
My hair has been whipped into a Medusa-like appearance thanks to the high winds here in western-central Kansas. Tonight I’m staying in Hays, and although one thunderstorm developed behind me as I was heading west, more storms are expected. I’m used to Kansas being windy, but this is unusual, and high-wind advisories have been issued.
I left Lawrence at 8:30 a.m. and got on the tollway headed for Topeka. The land opened up to the sky and I began to feel I could breathe freely. This landscape suits me much more than the landscape along I-70 in Missouri, which feels overgrown with trees and stifling. I hightailed it to Manhattan and the Konza Prairie. For years, on trips to see my parents in Broomfield, Colo., Steve and I noted the big sign along I-70 that announces the Konza Prairie. But I didn’t know much about it until I interviewed SIU plant biologist David Gibson, some of whose research involved prairie restoration out at Konza. This is a Nature Conservancy site administered in cooperation with Kansas State University. I walked for about half an hour along the main nature trail. It wasn’t far enough to get to the true prairie section, but it was peaceful and pleasant. Thinking of nature reminds me of how loud the cicadas were in Lawrence, even in heavily commercial areas, whereas here in Hays there are some kind of screaming, squabbling birds. I’m not sure what they are; they look something like crows, but their heads are differently shaped and they splay their tails.
After that short spell at Konza, I headed for KSU’s insect zoo, which specializes in tarantulas, walking sticks, katydids, cockroaches, and scorpions (the latter I passed by; reading “The Pearl” did it for me and scorpions, which I despise). Now that I think about it, more than half of the critters residing in the insect zoo are not insects at all. They’re other types of arthropods—arachnids (tarantulas and scorpions) and myriapods (centipedes and millipedes). (In confirming this online, I discovered two odd facts: Because all centipedes have an odd number of pairs of legs, no centipede species has 100 legs. Furthermore, no known species of millipede has 1,000 legs. So neither type lives up to its name. I feel compelled also to quote this from the Wikipedia article on centipedes: Even nonvenomous centipedes are considered frightening by humans due to their dozens of legs moving at the same time and their tendency to dart swiftly out of the darkness towards one’s feet. A 19th-century Tibetan poet warned his fellow Buddhists that “if you enjoy frightening others, you will be reborn as a centipede.”)
Lunch was a turkey sandwich with cranberry relish at the Bluestem Bistro, and a couple of chocolate-covered pretzels at Cold Stone Creamery. Then I headed out of town, intending to take a secondary road all the way past Salina to Lucas. But K18 was detoured onto I-70 because of road construction, and a good thing too. If I’d taken it, I never would have gotten to Lucas in time to make a quick tour of the Grassroots Arts Center. This quirky little museum preserves and displays outsider art (the more common term than grassroots art, and a better one, I think, for these self-taught artists truly are outside the mainstream, and their art often takes the form of large outdoor assemblages).
The docent told me that the museum is in Lucas because four such artists had lived and worked there. The museum tries to track and save outsider art installations across the country; too often, upon the artist’s death, these pieces, which are typically made of unconventional materials, are discarded. Two of my favorite pieces at the museum were full-size replicas of a car and a motorcycle made of thousands of aluminum pull-tabs from soda cans. Not for nothing is the artist, Herman Divers, described as “the master of pull-tab construction.”
I took many photos here and also at the town’s Bowl Plaza, which is the entrance to their public restrooms. (“Bowl” refers to exactly what you might think.) The mosaics in the plaza are made from pieces of colored bottles, bits of old porcelain plates, and other miscellaneous objects. The restrooms themselves also have mosaics; they’re supposed to be gorgeous and are actually listed in the AAA tour guide as among the state’s attractions. That sounded laughable until I saw the beauty of the outdoor mosaics. I wonder if these are the only restrooms in the United States so honored. Unfortunately, they were closed for repairs when I was there. But I hope to return to Lucas on the way back home.
This region of Kansas is called Post Oak Country due to the use of quarried rock posts instead of wood for fenceposts. The interstate from roughly Manhattan to Wilson also is paralleled by hundreds of wind turbines. As I drove a back road up toward K18 and Lucas, these gradually petered out. In a couple of places an old-fashioned windmill to bring up water for stock tanks was juxtaposed against the landscape of turbines. The drive from Lucas back to I-70 winds through sculpted bare hills reminiscent of some of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings, though in a different palette. Trees line the creeks and cluster in hollows; at Konza Prairie I learned that these are called gallery forests.
Then the road curves around the east end of Wilson Lake, which had whitecaps today from the wind. To the east the land drops off from the road into a huge valley; to the west is the lake. There are two or three parks and wildlife areas here that I’d like to check out on the way back. The light from the hazy sky—today has been very hazy, I suppose from the high winds picking up dust from the gravel roads—gleamed off the lake. (Note: The haze, which persisted to the Rockies, turned out to be pollution from the wildfires in the West Coast states.)
I stopped in Wilson, “the Czech capital of Kansas” with “the world’s largest painted Czech egg,” for supper, a piece of pecan pie. I didn’t have to go out of my way to drive by The Egg, which was propped up on a corner lot with what looked like makeshift, rusty metal braces. The world’s largest painted Czech egg should have a better setting than a weedy lot, it seems to me. Say, a corner-lot-sized park with some flower beds. That would be a big improvement.
Then it was down the road to Hays, with clouds and sun ahead of me and dark thunderclouds behind me. My legs and feet are sore from driving and walking. Road-trip fatigue has set in early, since I’m toting a ridiculous amount of stuff into the motel each night, even while leaving things in the car. That’s the biggest disadvantage of a solo road trip. Well, aside from the mixed-up jumble the suitcase becomes as dirty clothes mingle with clean clothes. And not knowing the good places to eat. And road construction. And the driving itself. But otherwise, I love road trips!
Day 1: From Carbondale to Boonville.
Good lord but that A&W root beer was sweet. Most of that is going down the drain. I’m in the Comfort Inn in Boonville, Missouri. I’d hoped to make it to Independence today, but I hit the wall in Boonville. I didn’t sleep last night, and today I drove several hours after dropping off the dogs at the kennel.
Utter exhaustion led to utter lack of will power, which in turn led me to order fries with my fast-food sandwich for the first time in…well, I don’t know when. And I drove three miles into town to get the root beer, because who knew that A&W restaurants still existed? But I can’t drink things that sweet anymore, it seems. This town is built on hills; it must be close to the Missouri River. (Later confirmed that yes, it is.) Even the drive-throughs are hilly. I noticed in passing that Yummy’s Donut Shop sells kolaches. I’ve forgotten what those are. Must Google it, since nobody in Carbondale, to my knowledge, sells kolaches. Are they Polish? (No, Czech.)
Nothing of note appeared on this leg of the journey, with the exception of two blue state highway signs between Wentzville and Columbia that said “ATTRACTION EXIT XX” but then had nothing listed underneath. Did these benighted places once have an attraction which then eroded, got up and left, or in some other way disappeared, or is the Missouri Department of Transportation unduly optimistic that an attraction will someday appear in the vicinity of these exits?
The only other notable thing is that I spent a good chunk of change before I even crossed the Mississippi by stopping at a Best Buy in Fairview Heights to purchase the iPad Mini 2 and keyboard folio on which I’m writing this, under the illusion that I will actually document this trip. My other excuse was to use the iPad to serve as a backup for the photos that I will ostensibly take. So far I’ve only taken some iPhone photos of the right front end of some monstrous pickup or SUV that parked next to me at the Boonville rest stop. (See example above, which I like despite its technical flaws.)
Some of my vacation photos may be a little different from the norm.
Reflections of the fishing pier at Wolf Creek Causeway, Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge. Pentax K-50, 50-200 zoom lens. I cropped the images and bumped up the saturation slightly.
I’m guessing this is some variety of coleus, but I’m not sure. iPhone photo.
Blue Sign
This is a detail of the engine block at the interface with the exhaust. I call it “Totem” for, I think, obvious reasons. I did just a little teasing in Photoshop to brighten the washers (I suppose they are washers) around the bolts.
Speaking of teasing, I realized yesterday that I’d forgotten a crucial exchange in my recent post God’s name is George, so I felt compelled to rewrite the ending (for those of you who read the post and are interested). Like Dave Barry, I didn’t make it up.
Back to Gator Automotive now with this detail shot, probably taken with a Pentax DSLR.
VAPOR AND FLOW 