Tour Diary 17

Tour diary 17  Sunday 18.4.11 – Bare bums – Mountain men and trees, trees, trees…..

I hear a storm is heading for North Carolina.  We shall be there in June.  When we were in South Carolina last time we caught the tail end of a hurricane, which was also very exciting like the storm we had a few nights ago as it was so extreme, but now we hear that 14 people were killed, mainly by falling trees on their flimsy mobile homes or cabins! And so it is not exciting but very sobering…

How much longer everything takes to drive that what the little lines on a map would have you believe!

We made the journey from Fayetteville to Paris and it took the entire day.

Steve, as always, wants to go the quickest route, which he believes are the straight large motorways and this is what he programmes into Sat Nav.  I’m here to see as much of beautiful America as I can, which is not seen from a motorway.  So there was a heated discussion where Sat Nav won for the first 50 miles which saw us heading directly west to pick up said biggest motorway and THEN heading south, so already half an hour was lost just getting on to the motorway.  Now that men, and apologies to any man reading this, have their new toy of automatic/voice/guided/routemaster, they have abnegated any interest in looking at a map.  I absolutely love looking at maps and as I am very common-sensical I can tell straight away that if you need to head directly down south it is not sensible to do that via going back west to Oklahoma.  The thing I had to convince Steve of, is.. that even the slowest, worst road in America is superior to the M25 in England both for road surface, speed of route and lack of cars getting in your way and hindering you.  Americans also seem to drive with such care, slowly and appear to have passed their driving tests, so you do not encounter continual accidents and hold ups.  Therefore any road we were on was going to be fast.  We don’t want to go over 60 or 70m.p.h anyway.  In the end he agreed to go through the OUCHITA Mountains as I thought it would be really scenic.  It was.  It surpassed anything I was hoping for.

On the map it is a little band of mountains with white caps and takes up about one inch by half an inch on the page. 

In reality it is 3 hours of pristine forest, hardly another soul on the road and such incredible shades of every kind of green.  We have been so lucky to have started our journey at this time of the year.  When we arrived in the snow in NYC all the trees were completely bare, everywhere… and in Aztec there is little foliage anyway.  But as we got to the Ozark region all the trees started to blossom and bloom and as always in spring growth that is the most exquisite lime green colour added to whatever colours the blossoms are.  On a daily basis there the trees were filling in and so every day to me walking out and about, is a total delight. By yesterday through the forest, almost every tree was in its full foliage but still such vibrant lime greens and just slightly darker hues.  Within a few weeks now all that will deeper to the usual summer emerald green colours, which I feel are nowhere near as interesting as the daily changing hues of spring and even better.. autumn.

The roads were clear ahead, like going through the Nevada desert and so did not cause much hassle for Steve to drive, especially now that we have finally worked out how to use the cruise control.  Steve loved it.  He said if he could eventually work out how to make it go whilst he closed his eyes for a nap at the same time, it would be perfect.  Automatic, ..cruise control, …what is there to drive?

We stopped off for a bite to eat and to stretch our legs half way and ended up in the Vegan restaurants with the big yellow M on the outside.  They can be seen for miles and are in every single city in every country in the world.  Most people don’t know they do vegan food, as they think that the insides of a big Mac are made with meat.  But for my vegetarian husband who only eats organic, these places are a god send.  Somehow this amazing Guru picks up the said Big Mac and convinces himself (but as yet, never me) that this meat is entirely Vegan.  He can also do it with a Nathans hot dog, swearing no meat is made in the production… which we all can agree on ….and sometimes even with a doner kebab.  Who knows what substance goes into those.. Yukkk!!!

If I can only get him to be able to transmute base metals in the same way into gold, our problems will be over.

We had finished our meal when the door opened and two mountain men came in.  Steve’s eyes nearly popped out of his head and as always he says… ‘Don’t look now but…” To which I immediately turn around and as he says.. Stare!!

There were two men dressed entirely in skins of animals with the most flamboyant hats with exotic feathers in the bands.  My eyes must have lit up as Steve immediately said ‘Let’s go quickly and pleeeeeeease don’t start up a conversation with them’.  I think he said this because they were both sporting the biggest Bowie knives (Jim not David) tucked into their back pockets.  The trousers were obviously one whole side of a dead cow skinned, and then just stitched straight up leaving about 10inches  of flapping – uneven – excess skins either side.  These I think are called ‘Chaps’.  Then the shoes were just another skin, thankfully of a much smaller animal so there wasn’t so much excess, and just roughly stitched around in a foot shape.  ZZTop facial hair and a definite lack of any sign of having been near washing water for quite a while.  I smiled and they smiled back at me as Steve had me gripped by the arm and out the door before you could say Jack Robinson.  But there to my delight was another one just getting out of his car.  However, here… even I baulked.  Still dressed in the same ‘Chaps’ he leaned into his car to get something out.  Now, I have grown up in love with Daniel Day Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans and it is to this day my favourite film of all time. What woman could not go mushy at the sight of the famous hockey match with him and his brother where their lovely long thighs are exposed as they run and play.  Well, the lovely long thighs were exposed on this man yesterday, complete with a thong and bare bum but as he was quite overweight, the impression was not the same one at all, as we see up there on the big screen with Hawkeye and Unquos…aaahhh Unquos…. Sorry… distracted again…..

I suppose it might have been one of those incidents where they were at a re-enactment of an era somewhere and had just popped out for a bite to eat, but I want to believe that these 3 men do somehow still live in this way up in the woods somewhere.

The main thing the trip through this fabulous forest gave me was again, the awareness of how much land is not lived on and is in fact pristine.

I had spoken with one of the new friends we made the day before, on the so called problem of ‘vast overpopulation’ and whether ‘those faceless men who control us all’ really are trying to kill us off with Chemtrails, food pollution and atomic bomb testing to try to get the numbers of the populations down… I told him what Betty always said every year in class when someone would say… so sadly…”Betty what are we going to do about the overpopulation of the planet?”  She would always smile and say…”In your 6 times on this planet where you have nearly wiped yourself out, you had many more people living here than you do now.  The trouble with you all, is that you insist on all living around the same watering holes, which makes you believe there are too many of you.  Get out into your desserts and tap into the massive lakes of fresh water, which are underneath the sand dunes and make lovely new forests… Move on out into your huge tracts of forest lands and build yourselves little spreads and move on out of your cities.  Then you will see how much land is out there which you don’t use” 

Going through this tiny 1” by ½” area on the map showed me so clearly what she was talking about.  Vast, vast spaces with no-one around for miles…bliss…

Race,  my new friend and I were saying that if an ET landed here and had never been here before, depending on where he landed he could well believe this planet to be unpopulated.  Imagine landing in the middle of a vast ocean, he would not be aware of land anywhere.  In the middle of Antarctica, he would not have an awareness of sea or land and in the middle of the Sahara, no sign of sea, vegetation or people!  In the middle of the Amazonian rain forests, lots of different animals, but no sign of humans.  All these wonderful places would give an impression that would not match up with landing in the middle of Piccadilly Circus!!   Another interesting thing would be if he was asked to describe what the indigenous people looked like.  He could be looking at a beautiful tall Nordic person or a tiny pygmy in Africa, an Aboriginal or a Japanese person or an incredibly thin Masai warrior next to me!!

How would he know which one was the basic earth human?  We are all so varied.. as are the types of lands and oceans we have.

We popped out last night to try to find somewhere for a snack or a drink, but I think we are coming to understand that if you book a hotel just off the motorways in these ‘Hotel parks’ where  all the Hotels seem to like to congregate.. they are very far away from the hearts of these little towns.  I’m hoping that is the case anyway, otherwise I have to accept that all these towns are looking the same.  Exactly the same bland food chains selling such plastic foods all looking the same shade of beige/orange no matter what it purports to be.  We have been so blessed to find one or two little treasures of places to eat well, and even organically but they are so few and far between.

On to Dallas.  Steve claims to have found a gem of a hotel, where I will have to get out my ‘glad rags’ and where he will not allow me to carry in all my plastic bags full of different things.  I have a system where each thing I need is in a different plastic bag but he hates it and wants only to walk in with a smart suitcase.  At least I have now finally persuaded him to put the few things we need into one small carry-in bag so that he doesn’t bring it all in every time.  So exhausting.  We are worried about the car though, as the windows were open again this morning.  How does the alarm not go off?!  Obviously because he wouldn’t buy me my rattle and headdress for the ‘making-the-car-safe’ ceremony each evening (where I go round and tap each window to make sure it is up), it’s not working!!  You have to have the right tools for the job.  The Gremlin has added another touch, which is to leave the boot open too, even though Steve is so careful to lock everything.  So…(whispers here again..) our suitcases might go off on their own for an exploration of life with someone else.

There is absolutely nothing in the manual, which says anything at all about the windows let alone why they would wind themselves down to half way once the car is locked.  Where do they get the electrical energy to do so, without a key in the ignition.  One of life’s great mysteries.

We caught an episode of the Borgias last night.  A family history, which I have always been so fascinated with, almost obsessed with… as a child. Betty took a look for me into my past life histories and indeed I was one of the Borgias.  I had such a sense whilst watching it of déjà vu, especially the manipulations of the women for the grandiose schemes of the men.  They were really just a commodity to exchange for power, control and more land.  I look forward to obtaining the series and maybe watching it all in one go.