there and back again...part one

oh lord. it's been two weeks of non-stop, wall-to-wall fun. i am completely overstimulated. i have seen mountains and valleys, mystery lights and historical buildings, 40 cousins and baby sonograms, burros and antelope, fat kids with snorkel fins and skinny grown-ups with beer cans. i have been in the world's largest national park and the world's largest spring-fed swimming pool. i have had my toothpaste spit eaten by a wild pack of javelinas and have snuck drinks of wine and beer from my coffee cup. i have eaten about 9 thousand hotdogs and floated the shortest river in texas with my baby cousins. i have heard stories about when i was little, and gave fodder for stories about what i was like in my 20's. but that's the short story. the long story, well, here it goes...

derkirita got into town on the 2nd. kk came over that night, as well, and sacrificed a night in her own bed. we three watched "lonesome dove", packed, and caught up on each other's stories. and we had our last real showers ( mine was glorious). we slept right through all three alarms the next morning, and instead of leaving at 7, we left at 8:30. go figure... after taco shack and a gas station run, we were on our way to the wilds of west texas.

we made decent time and arrived in ft. davis at around 3pm. we made camp, found out about the program at the state park interpretive center, and got ourselves firmly ensconced in camping mode, complete with a drive by from rat-tail man. i think rat tail man had been camping for a while, if the length of said rat-tail was any indication of duration-- kind of like the buttons on a rattle snake tail...it was highly entertaining, and he definitely had the biggest grill in the entire camp.

we decided to take in the interpretive talk at the park hq--what a doozie. the park ranger was hilarious! she had a side kick that was all dressed up like an officer's wife, who handed out bookmarks to everyone who answered a trivia question correctly. other than that, i'm not too sure what purpose the side kick served. comic relief maybe, because that park ranger was nuttier than a fruit cake. the ranger's talk was all about medical technology in the late 1800's. she just kept repeating things like "in 1891, we didn't even have things like aspirin" or "people would just die of diarrhea" or "we had to give heroin to people with hayfever". needless to say, the three of us used those sweet lines for the rest of the whole trip. and embellished them for our own purposes. so, after the ranger finished her talk, we headed back to tent, sweet tent for some dinner and adventure planning.

on the way there, we ran into the person we affectionately referred to as "skippy the stoner" for the rest of the week. we were walking to our tent, minding our own business, when we were approached by this young kid. "hey, i know this seems like a weird question, but do you guys have any pot? i mean, maybe you're looking to make a sale, or something..." seriously, this happened. the three of us just kind of looked at each other, and were like, "uh, no, sorry man" and we just walked away. the funny part is that i don't think he believed us one bit. in hind sight, we should have sold him the oregano in our spice kit. i think he put a gris-gris on us, (that's a cajun word for a curse) because we broke mr. derkits' leatherman when we were trying to make dinner. oops.

after dinner and a very sneaky cocktail hour that consisted of us pouring beer into our coffee cups and coughing loudly to cover up the sound of the pop top, we put on our jackets and headed up to the star viewing area of the park. it was amazing. it felt like you could have reached up and grabbed a handful of stars and put them in your pocket. and there were about a million and one fireflies all over the place, so it was like a million and one tiny flashbulbs going off all around you, which proved to be helpful when we were almost attacked by not one, but two skunks. yuck. kk thinks they are cute and insists that if you have them de-smelled that they would make wonderful pets. no way, jose. we got kicked out of the sky viewing area by the park hosts because it was after 10pm, but i think that since they almost ran us over (ok, we were lying in the middle of the road...), they could have let us stay for 30 more minutes. and then we went an brushed our teeth and went to bed for the night, which passed uneventfully.