Wednesday, December 12, 2012

It Weren't Nuns on the Bus...

It weren't On The Road...It were two strong-willed, Type-A, big people in a fiberglass space pod about the size of your bathroom, blasting off on a 4,600++ mi. loop around the underbelly of southern America.
It's rough out there amongst the 99%. There ain't any places out there to work, to speak of. Pickups & poverty galore, with a pinch of divine decadence here and there--big house on a hill way off the highway; winding driveway; three bay garage. Saw a single-wide with all its aluminum siding gone--sold @ the recycling plant--just pink insulation between the studs & the lights were on inside. And child with a stick was running in a circle around the bare yard.
But then there was goodness--with people laughing and clowning around and slapping each other on the
back. And women hugging and talking about secret things.
And then there were enough sights to last a hundred lifetimes. Big Bend is a mind-bending experience but it's way the hell away from everything else in the lower 48. Maybe you'd want to fly, rent a car, and stay in the lodge. You'll need a week to experience the parks 800,000++acres. We've seen a bunch stuff, but this takes the cake. We'll never be the same.
The photos in previous Big Bend blogs were all taken with smart phones--lazy, but quick equipment for photos.
I'm outta here. Spent all day yesterday cleaning oily road film, bugs--even part of bird from the EGG. Birds were pooping on her as I scrubbed. They're eating some kind of red berry, making for vicious, hard-setting poop. Got her back in storage away from trees & she welcomes the rest, as do we.

Love to all,
Dick Randall/Ann Franklin
Back to our loop (loopy) trip: Both Ann and I feel like it morphed into a sociological field study. We stay in state parks because they're cheap, they have elec., H20 & sometimes sewer hookups, but....I repeat, but...they're often located in the heart of poverty. Real estate is cheaper there, thus a state park rather than a business site. The folks in these parks & adjacent areas are salt of the earth, bare bones Americans. We'd get that "Y'all ain't from around here, are you?" look every now and then. It was our weird EGG camper, our license plate & it was simply the different way we dressed and looked--maybe our accent was a little less southern. The upshot was that everybody was nice--often, in spite of their drab stake in life.







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