Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Calling Scott’s Bluff
Dispatches From the Road: Part 12By Bob Wire, 7-25-08
 |
|
 | |
| Especially if you're throwing away bear poison. | |
|
After a welcome night in a motel, where we got some laundry done and the kids watched some George Lopez (who’s about as funny as a Tijuana hand job. And yes, I would know), we drove all day until we found Weston Bend State Park in Missouri. After a quick supply run at the little grocery store, we secured a snug campsite punched deep into the dense woods near the Missouri River.
As usual, we’d gotten a late start out of the motel that morning. [Side note: as we left, Barb, while driving, explained to us the difference between a hotel and a motel is if the doors open to the inside or outside. Inside, it’s a hotel. Outside, it’s a motel. Rusty and I exchanged a glance. “You mean, you can upgrade your motel into a hotel simply by rehanging all the doors?” I asked. She said no, she meant the doors were FACING either and inside hallway, or the outside of the building. Oh.]
A late start meant we’d have to drive until it was getting close to sundown, which meant a frantic set-up, and eating dinner by lantern light, joined by whatever variety of bugs that part of the country had to offer. In Weston Bend, it was spiders, moths, mosquitoes, centipedes, ticks, gnats, no-see-ums, and the worst insect of all, see-ums. Those bastards can bite.
Quite welcome, though, and very novel to our family, were the fireflies. We’d encountered them in other parts of the southeast, but here in the thick foliage on this humid summer night, the woods were ablaze with them, swooping and blinking, putting on a spooky, thrilling light show as Barb and I sat near our fire, sipping illicit beers while the kids bunked down in the tent, giggling and farting.
Most nights camping we’d simply collapse into our sleeping bags after cleaning up from dinner, but we were both still a bit restless from the road, and it was really a nice break to just sit and be with each other, talking quietly as we finally got to burn the bundle of firewood we’d bought at a Rapid City grocery store two weeks earlier. When the fire finally was reduced to embers, we buttoned up the campsite and crawled into our zipped-together sleeping bags. A half dozen fireflies had congregated on the roof of the tent, so we doused the lantern and drifted off watching their luminescent Morse code.
The next day we quickly broke camp and were on the road by 9:40. Much better. We stopped for gas and to mail some postcards at the local post office. After being cooped up with each other in the truck for so long, we all craved outside contact. We’d found that the people in the South were mostly very cool. They’re friendly, helpful, and God-fearing. So I just went around acting like God, and I pretty much got everything I wanted.
“I’m mailing these to Missoula, Montana,” I told the clerk at the post office. “But Bob only knows how long it’ll take to get there.”
The clerk nodded gravely. “Bob only knows,” she said.
Our destination was Scott’s Bluff, an intriguing State Park on the western edge of Nebraska. We got as far as North Platte, where we pitched the tent at the odd, lakeside campground at Lake Maloney reservoir. We got there in time to actually cook dinner and sit down to eat before the sunset. I say odd, because the place was a smallish loop surrounding what looked like a golf course driving range. Wide, rolling knolls dotted with occasional picnic tables and fire rings right in the grass. “Just drive wherever you want,” the campground host had told me.
So we’d made camp at a spot next to a huge elm, a couple hundred yards from the fish cleaning station and bathrooms. Pungent. As we cleaned up from dinner, the wind began to pick up. I moved the truck around so it provided a little windbreak next to the picnic table. Handy. Then, after I made a quick trip to a nearby Sinclair station for a support group of Corona, we climbed into the tent for an evening of cards. Cozy.
The wind continued to stiffen, though, and there was a storm moving in from the southwest. I moved the truck around in an attempt to provide some protection, but the wind kept shifting enough to make it pointless. The howling wind made card playing difficult (“I SAID DO YOU HAVE ANY FOURS, NOT DO YOU KNOW ANY WHORES!”). We finally gave up on the cards and hit the sack. Then the rains came. It was another wracking, Midwest thunderstorm, with lots of nearby lighting and molar-rattling thunderclaps. Speaker slept through the whole thing.
Then, around 4:30 in the morning, the winds picked up to the point where the tent was shuddering madly, threatening to fly apart at any moment. If that happens, Bob help us all, I thought. I’d forgotten to Velcro the rain fly to the tent frame, and the fly was flapping madly around the outside of the tent, held only by the elastic cords at the corners. The windward side of the tent was collapsing inward, smothering the kids. Speaker was beginning to snore. I could hear some soft whimpers coming from Rusty, then I realized they were coming from me.
“Are you afraid of tornadoes?” Barb asked. I nodded my head, which was a futile move in the darkness. The wind continued to hammer at us, and our ten-year-old dome tent wobbled like a jello mold on a paint shaker. I thanked Bob that I had asked Rusty to put in the stakes, and so far they were holding. Exhausted from fear, we finally fell asleep.
The morning broke calm, sunny and beautiful. Rusty and I walked across the campground loop, collecting the stuff that had blown away from our site in the night (chairs, ice chest, the picnic table, etc.). I decided to take advantage of the coin operated shower, so I grabbed a towel and a handful of quarters. It worked like a car wash: you put in 75¢ for three minutes, $1.00 for five minutes, and so on. I opted for the undercarriage deep clean and a coating of hot wax, and I was ready to face the day.
From Maloney Reservoir it was a short drive to Scottsbluff. They had a pretty decent zoo there, and we wandered through that before proceeding to Scott’s Bluff, the limestone outcroppings that served as important—and encouraging—landmarks to the pioneers and soldiers who’d come through in the mid-1800’s. We hiked around the top, which afforded a near-360 degree vista of the surrounding area. I called Rusty and Speaker over to the panoramic overlook. “Kids, you remember you mom and I telling you we’re going to see America?” They nodded. “Well,” I said, gliding an upturned hand along the horizon like I was showing off a new living room set on The Price Is Right, “there it is.”
“Oh. My. Bob,” said Speaker. She catches on quick. Must be all that sleep. After two nights in the tent, we’d earned another hotel, so we headed west. My navigational hope had been to make it to Casper, but by the time we got down off the Bluff, we decided that Douglas, the next burg of any size (shockingly, not ending in “ville”) would have to do.
Little did we know that another fulfilling day was about to come crashing down around our ears, like so much dirt thrown by a Scottsbluff Zoo chimp.
[Next: Custer’s Vietnam, a killer brew pub in Sheridan, and more black light action.]
http://www.top-blogs.com/cgi-bin/rankem.cgi?id=ednor59
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments