The Walkabout

walk·a·bout (wôk'ə-bout')
n.
1. Australian: A temporary return to traditional Aboriginal life, taken especially between periods of work or residence in modern society and usually involving a period of travel through the bush.

Well, I'm not Aboriginal but the overall concept fits. Theresa and I recently returned from a twelve day journey from Montana to Upstate New York and back. We went to see dear friends of ours who live there. We took three of our SIX (yes I said six, 6, VI) pugs: Ugga the Commander, Daisy the Apparent Travelin' Pug and Sammy the Potentially Schizoid Force of Chaos and Entropy that is Called PUPPY! Five beings in sum, approximately 5,000 miles roundtrip and enough luggage to start a mercantile. I will refer to this trip as the walkabout.

Couple'a things you should know about me before I recount this:
A) I hate the "road" part of roadtrip. Being a passenger through farmland that surrounds me for miles and miles and miles and miles and mil...sorry, I dozed off momentarily. Let's just say that the 1500th cow you see looks exactly like cow numero uno except cow 1500 talks to you as you go by. (Moooo...uh, mooooo...yup, mooo-eroni...okay look, you gotta get me outta here silver van dude...they feed me GRASS and leave me outside ALWAYS and I think they might be plotting something BAD for my future...HEY, where you goin'? HEY, COME BACK. HEEEEYYYYY!)
B) I had to go without TV for THREE (3, III) days. THREE! I had a slight psychotic break after day two but the Methadone helped me with the shakes. Still, I lost track of whether Craig would stay with Carly even though Carly's Ex Jack hates Craig and Carly's sister Rosanna, who Craig tried to murder, thought it was bad for Carly and Craig to be together especially given Carly's RAGING alcoholism which Craig didn't know about which was happening on my soap while TV deprived.
C) I swear to God my IQ dropped instantly when we entered Wisconsin and Indiana. Suddenly, I wanted to say words like "feller" and "okie doke." I mean, WHAT THE HELL?! Oh and the entire radio dial layout was COUNTRY COUNTRY CHRISTIAN COUNTRY POLITICS CHRISTIAN and ONE STATION THAT PLAYED SHOWTUNES! Theresa had to strap me in the van to stop me from hurling myself out of the vehicle.

Well, here's we go. Monday, June 22 we left home. We made it to Glendive, Montana (565 miles) around 10:00 P.M. Notes? East Montana wasn't as scary as I thought. I was only chased by crazy sheepherders ONCE for like 50 miles. No biggie. Oh and the hotel we stayed in fronted as a DVD rental place.

Tuesday, June 23 is labeled NORTH DAKOTA cuz that's basically where we were the WHOLE day. I was dreading this part because it was flat and the freeway goes STRAIGHT across the whole state. You could attempt land speed records on the road because it was THAT straight. However, the western 1/10th of ND was palatable because of The Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt Natl. Park. Think of the Badlands as like the Grand Canyon except 20 feet deep or so. Still, it was scenic. We stayed in Alexandria, Minnesota (495 miles worth of driving) that night.

Wednesday, June 24 we had "fun" or so Theresa (T) tells me. We navigated through the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) without causing a major traffic incident. Minor one's don't count. Anyway, we entered Wisconsin on the lookout for red barns which were EVERYWHERE. Aside from that, Wisconsin kinda reminded me of the location of the movie Deliverance. I got concerned anytime we even got NEAR a stream. (Say, I gotta right purty face....) We exited Wisconsin unmolested and stayed in Rockford, Illinois (467 miles).

Thursday, June 25 started well because we got Chicago deepdish pizza (yummy). By the way, Rockford is an awesome town. Nice place to settle if not for the attack of the killer tornadoes occasionally. So, we start well...until we hit the labyrinth of Dante's hell also called CHICAGO! We went 50 miles in FOUR hours. Eventually I could've driven my WHEELCHAIR faster. After escaping the labyrinth (and Minotaur) we still had a ZILLION miles to go to make Cleveland where our accommodations were. It was like 7:00 P.M. when we entered Indiana. Now I can say this, if you want to go through a city QUICKLY, do it at 3 in the morning. We CRUISED through Cleveland. I'm talking 50 mph DOWNTOWN cruising. Awesome! Except for the 3:00 A.M. part, of course. We stayed in this creepy burb of Cleveland called East Lake (name's straight outta Friday the 13th) and in a creepy hotel that T and I SWEAR was a refurbished asylum. It had wards and a monolithic dining hall. Coming in at 3:30 in the morning made it so much more creepy that I think I just peed my pants. Before we went to sleep, I estimated a measly 58.3% chance of "disappearing mysteriously." Never happened. Rockford to East Lake was 458 miles.

Friday, June 26 we left "creep" lake ASAP. We went along Lake Erie through a sliver of Pennsylvania into New York where we rode the southern border of the state to near kinda close to our approximate destination. I'm describing it this succinctly because I, uh, kinda slept through the Pennsylvania part. I did awake to see Jamestown, NY with a beautiful view of a lake. Then we drove through a little town called Cuba, NY which had Ye Olde Cheese Shoppe which we procured cheese from. There were a couple cool lookin' churches there. Then we went by Corning where they make Corningware. Then the sun went down, the humidity went up and it rained earlier which equals FOG. Fog like in the movie The Mist type fog. Finally, at 1:00 A.M. we rolled into Newburgh which was still like a THOUSAND miles from where we were supposed to be. Well, we called our friends for guidance and they promptly told us to GET OUT OF NEWBURGH! Bad hood apparently although East Missoula was scarier than that place. Finally, they drove out and guided us to...some weird place cuz they lost us. Anyway, we figured it out and made it to camp alive kinda. Creep lake to camp=504 miles and 14 cents.

Apparently, this is gonna be a two parter. I be stopping now. I'm tired and well tired and uh tired. Yeah. That. Tired. Whew. Hard work.