Polaroids! (Part Deux)

1. Clark spent most of the first two days hiding under the stove/crying for Sophie. This is a rare appearance on the couch. A little dusty, I bet!
2. There is lots of mysterious stuff around the farm. There's a smokehouse (that we couldn't find the key for so we couldn't explore) that is full of glass bottles and tin cans and all kinds of fun stuff. Who knows what all this stuff is for!
3. Ruby is looking like a regular Texan (and I will forgive her because she looks so cute) in her new bandanna. We picked it up for a couple bucks at Wal-Mart (where else?)! I think she'll need one for every holiday.

-C

Polaroids!

1. Bye house!
2. Mom eating breakfast with the dog on the porch of the new house.
3. Good morning, new house!
4. This adorable owl shelf paper was in every cabinet in the kitchen. It was too mousy to keep, sadly, so we kept one piece and trashed the rest.

-C

Things I Ate (that I normally couldn't/shouldn't)

-Cracker Barrel (period)
-McDonald's breakfast burritos
-A pound of chocolate covered peanuts
-A 4-way Skyline chili
-Biscuits and gravy
-Hash browns, scattered and smothered
-A coney chili dog at Skyline
-Baby back ribs
-Frito pie
-Cheese curds from Culvers
-2 root beer floats from Sonic
-Bag of mini chocolate donuts

Pittsburg, TX

On the side of the highway in Pittsburg, TX is the Pilgrim's Pride Chicken company headquarters. Emphasis on head! Out front is the giant bust of the founder, "Bo" Pilgrm. Apparently his hat used to be the roof of the family restaurant. Now it is an important part of Mom's favorite roadside stop. Pictures cannot even begin to portray the majesty of this... this... thing. It was a shock equally akin to the giant picnic basket.


Here Bo reads the Bible to Henrietta, the company's chickeny mascot, while Mom and Ruby look on. It is very important that chickens receive a spiritual education before being eaten!

We tried many, many times to get a shot of me jumping. They were all equally late and unflattering. I guess I'm just not meant to jump for chicken joy!

Bo's back!

This was the last of our stops on the trip, sadly. Our schedule got all messed up so we missed a few - we'll just have to do it again for Thanksiving or something. I'll be posting photos of the new house once I get stuff scanned and developed. Probably Wednesday, because I start school tomorrow!

-C

Road Dog

Ruby got tired of being in the car after a while, I think.

-C

Seen on the Road

-The Blue Suede Shoes Antiques Mall
-An ad for a hotel that read "Lincoln never slept here, but you can!"
-The Most Awesome Flea Market in the World (which was sadly closed)
-A truck that was apparently "Haulin' Liquid Chicken"
-3 dead armadillos
-A man named Marvelous Lee

Texarkana, AR/TX

Here we are in Texarkana, which (as the wonderfully creative name implies) straddles the border of Arkansas and Texas. There's a road that runs along the border that has Texas and Arkansas flags on either side so you can be sure to walk on the right side of the street.


The Post Office in Texarkana is apparently the only building in the US that is divided down the middle by a state line! Word has it there is a library in Vermont that's half in Canada, though.



Our visit to the Texarkana Post Office was shorter than we would have liked, as it started POURING the second we got out to take photos. I think it was a sign that it was time to get the heck to Texas!

-C

Redfield, AR

We stopped for lunch on Thursday at the Mammoth Orange Cafe in Redfield, AR. It is pretty much exactly what the name implies! Eating lunch in a giant orange has always been hit or miss for me, but this time was a definite hit. We had The World's Biggest Frito Pies and man, were they delicious!

If you don't know what a frito pie is, I suggest you educate yourself by going to the Mammoth Orange and ordering several. I guess if you can't get to Arkansas, I can tell you that it is a bowl full of a bag of fritos, sometimes lettuce, topped with thick chili, cheese, and tomatoes. Holy cow.

-C

Things Ruby Barked At

-Two giant Pennsylvania Dutch
-A field of giant ears of corn
-A Chihuahua
-A fox on the other side of the road already
-A man dressed as a packet of french fries at Sonic
-Every cow
-A yellow concrete cow
-Three horses standing around
-One horse running majestically through a field
-A silver moose (or maybe a horse toaster)
-Nothing

Back in Boston

I have made it back to my apartment in one piece, and am celebrating Labor Day watching Dirty Jobs. I will be making a few more photo posts now, and later I will scan some polaroids/hopefully get some film developed. Hooray!

Word has it that the moving truck made it to Whitt today. World's Biggest Pile of Boxes!

-C

Good morning from Whitt, TX!!!

No internet here so I'll update later, but we arrived late last night, all in one piece.

-C

Updating our Itinerary

Right now we are in a hotel in Memphis, TN, about to hit the road for the FINAL day. We had to axe our stops in Tennessee due to our late start/slow pace at first/stupid sunset. It's okay, though, because we're already planning another road trip from Texas to Nashville for a music history tour de force (Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, then Memphis, and Nashville) without a car full of animals. Then we can spend all day in Graceland if we want!

We put on book 3 of Lemony Snicket and rode like the wind to Memphis last night, stopping only for baby back ribs. Now we'll hopefully get some Waffle House and drive through Arkansas and straight across Texas to Whitt. We'll be making a few cool stops in Arkansas hopefully! There's some good stuff in Texas too, but it will have to wait until this weekend.


We've been updating our trip mascot collection as we drive along - pretty soon you won't be able to see the dashboard! So glad we bought that tape!

On the road to Arkansas!
-C

PS - there are more pictures up on the flickr page too!

Literary Park

Hopkinsville, KY has a pretty cute little downtown area, or it used to. Most of the buildings were shut, and it was a pretty quiet place except for the frequent trains. Just outside of the downtown area, the Community College is home to Hopkinsville's greatest attraction, Literary Park.

As the plaque which I stupidly forgot to photograph proclaims, the Round Table and Sword in the Stone are timeless representations of the Chivalric Age that the students and residents of Hopkinsville should aspire to emulate in their daily lives. And they make for a good photo op. Not pictured, though, is the dog trying to jump up on the round table and failing miserably. I guess it was a no dog knight (ba dum cha).


The Literary park is also home to the Acropolis (duh), an amphitheater, and a couple of piles of rock that maybe used to be a pool? There are also several creepy statues that have almost no explanation. Things here at Literary Park are looking a little sad. It seems that literariness is not a high priority for the Hopkinsvillians after all.


Ruby really enjoyed honing her jumping skills in this park. If you stage it right, though, you can pretend that you vacationed in Athens and not Kentucky!
-C

Lynn's Paradise Cafe

Lynn's Paradise Cafe in Louisville was pretty much the perfect stop for us. Mom even called it "Ruby's Paradise Cafe" by accident (wishful thinking!) They had a giant red coffeepot that was bubbling happily (reminds me of the fountains by the dorms freshman year), but that was only the beginning. We met with the king of bears, who will substitute since we can't go to Graceland this time, and saw all kinds of wonderfully painted animals, like a silver moose.

We also discovered that in a pinch, an orange elephant's trunk does just fine as a tripod. We're getting really good at the self-timer.

We took a bunch of photos, spent some dimes in the wonderful gift shop (zombie finger puppets? Okay!), and Mom got the Best Iced Tea She's Had the Whole Trip. Louisville looks like it's a really fun place all around. Next time!

-C

PS - Here's the cafe's own prized throroughbread. Yuk yuk.

World's Largest Bat

Yesterday we stopped by the Louisville Slugger Factory/Museum in--you guessed it--Louisville, Kentucky. Now I will admit, I was a little disappointed when I found out this was the World's Largest Baseball Bat, and not a creature with wings and fangs and all that. But this was pretty darn cool! Turns out it's made of concrete, not wood, because as my mom noted, no piece of wood has a grain /that/ big. So hats off to whoever the master wood grain painter was!

The cool thing about going to all these "World's Biggest"s is that it is always astonishing when you see them. I mean, doubly so for mom since she has no idea where we are going, but even though I knew we were going to the World's Largest Baseball Bat I was still shocked when we turned the corner. Next time we'll have to go without the dog and cat and actually take the factory tour.

Batter up!
-C

5-Way

When in Ohio, it is important to eat at Skyline as much as humanly possible. LOOK AT THE CHEESE!

-C

World's Largest Horseshoe Crab

Welcome to Freedom Worship Baptist Church in Blanchester, Ohio, the home of the World's Largest Horseshoe Crab (never living, of course). Word has it that he was deemed too ostentatious for another Creationist Museum in Oklahoma or something so he made his crabby way to Blanchester.


The horseshoe crab is important to the Freedom Worshippers because he apparently disproves evolution by not having changed at all. Oh and he's real fun to jump a motorcycle over through flaming hoops!

Say what you will about Crabby over here, but it was on TV!
-C

Clark

Clark decided somewhere in Ohio that he had seen enough of the inside of the cat carrier, so he came out and shed an entire cat on my lap for a while!

-C

Yesterday

-We learned just how huge Pennsylvania can be, especially when split over two days.
-We saw a sign that read "Buckle Up: Next Million Miles".
-Ruby reunited with her mom, Mindy at my Uncle Jim's house. There was a lot of sniffing and running in circles.
-We had 4 and 5-ways at Skyline Chili with JP, Kimberly, Sadie, Uncle Greg, Ashlee, Daniel, Aunt Mary, and Uncle Jim. Delicious! Mom expects to see you all in Texas post haste!
-We visited the World's Largest Picnic Basket, the field of giant ears of corn, and a topiary recreation of a Seurat painting.
-We discovered that apparently all of the Houlihan's locations are shut; the one by our hotel was becoming a mexian restaurant. Mom is in mourning for the peanut slaw.

We are now on our way to the World's largest horseshoe crab, and we'll bust on down to Memphis by the end of the day!
-C

Giant Corn Ears

Here is (obviously) a field of giant ears of corn in Dublin, Ohio. Apparently these are a tribute to Sam Frantz, the inventor of Hybrid corns, but whatever they stand for, they are the best for photo-ops! We raced to get here before the sun set and took a /ton/ of silly photos. I am only going to post a few -- the rest I am uploading on our new flickr page here!




I am exhausted and we have a lot of driving to do tomorrow since we are so behind schedule! Time to snuggle up with the cat and dog and fall asleep. More photos tomorrow!

-C