The International Cryptozoology Museum & Other Random Sights of Portland Maine

On Saturday night I had gone to pick up my friend Katherine at Old Orchard Beach. She’d attended a wedding earlier that day and invited me to have dinner with a bunch of the wedding guests and various friends. I figured why not. I drove in around six o’clock and the town was BUZZING. I had been here off season before, when all the rides are shut down and the whole town is a deserted vision of the apocalypse… but on season? WOW. There were so many people!! And noise! Shops bustled, bars boomed, restaurant were full, and the rides were whirring. Parking was a nightmare and I had to be guided into a spot by a sweet old lady – thankfully and coincidentally it was right next to her hotel!

Anyway, dinner was lively with a wonderful bunch of very sweet and passionate people who were very kind in welcoming me into the group. At some point conversation meandered into what Katherine and my plans were for the next day. We were planning on going on an adventure but where to… I suggested the cryptozoology museum which got this reply, “That place is just two big rooms and one guy following you around them because he REALLY BELIEVES in Bigfoot.” Both Katherine and I agreed that this less than raging endorsement made it all the more tempting so the next morning, after having a good bye breakfast with the same group of people, we left for Portland.

Portland is a sweet little port city, not nearly as much of a tourist town as Old Orchard Beach. I had enjoyed walking its streets before but now it was nice to return to a different portion of the city. My GPS led me to where the International Cryptozoology Museum used to be, but not knowing this I placed the Prius in a nearby parking garage and we started to walk. Portland is a city of very mixed architecture – some which appeared very Dutch, some which looked like Lego bricks, and others which seemed more relevant to Maine. I took a few snaps here and there. Katherine kept herself entertained finding ninja’d stickers posted throughout the city reading fiercely critical liberal sentiments. The graffiti seemed almost sweet and added another layer of entertainment but where was this bigfoot museum?? Nowhere to be seen. We stopped in a used bookstore instead and oddly it had a map to the new location of the cryptozoology museum which was a seven minute car ride. So off we went to reclaim the car… only to find the parking garage would not let us out. I tried paying for my ticket but the machine kept spitting out my card, not telling me why, and asking me to re-insert the ticket. I was at a loss but with no one behind me I backed out of the toll lane, parked again, and found a machine inside to pay. With this new pre-paid ticket the toll gate actually worked. FWEW!

After driving to the shore we parked in another lot we thought was close by not knowing if we’d find anywhere closer. Parking mistake #2. We ended up walking and walking and walking. We found a greyhound station. Was it in the greyhound station?? No. More walking, across the tracks, we finally found a set of buildings with a food truck parked out front… a deep fried peanut butter and jelly food truck…. “After we go through the museum we should eat there.” “Agreed!”

We spent way longer than we should have continuing to walk around all these unmarked buildings to find nothing. It was getting annoying so we circled back to the food truck and finally found Bigfoot standing around the side of that building, guarding a chicken shack and a brewery. It was a scene that was just so Maine.

We both went in and it’s a two level (but still two room) museum filled with just the most goddamn bizarre things… The bottom floor was for sea monsters and various beasts which was capped off with a five foot tall plastic ninja turtle for no reason I could see. In the display cases there were Fiji mermaids, labelled as hoaxes, but smattered aside things like a GI Joe standing next to a stuffed beaver with a plate reading, “Do giant beavers still exist?” It was completely mental. We were both getting quite a kick out of this place and I was so happy to experience it with a friend instead of going alone as I had planned a few months back.

Upstairs Bigfoot stood with all his associated kin including a display case full of baby dolls which had wads of hair glued to them… baby big foot? And why did I find the red-headed one all the creepier?? There were casts of footprints, random artifacts, and things I think were clearly sold to a shmuck on ebay for shits and giggles like a random rusted out light fixture from some town which had a cryptid incident. Whhhhhy? Just why! Here too was a whole wall dedicated to the museum’s founder. Little cultish – still funny. Totally worth the trip… if you’re a little off in the head like we are.

PS the deep fried S’moares from the food truck, made with New England Fluff, was to die for!

***I apologize for any missing photos and galleries as I continue to work getting Catching Marbles fully migrated to a new host. Please come back soon for restored photos and thank you for your patience!***

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

SIGHTS OF PORTLAND:

INTERNATIONAL CRYPTOZOOLOGY MUSEUM

August 22, 2017 3

Graceland, Nashville, & Memphis

I went to Memphis because I’d heard of it and it was in a state I hadn’t yet explored. I had no idea what was there but someone suggested I go see Graceland. OK. So I parked at a little strip mall right next to Graceland and spared myself $10 parking. Oddly enough I was the only one smart enough to figure this one out. I perused the stores… ELVIS ELVIS ELVIS! And nothing but. So much tacky and garish things… I wandered over to Graceland a few yards away. This place was by far the honkiest place I’ve ever been and likely will ever be, at least I damn well hope so. People swarmed the place and paid $34 a person to see Elvis’ mansion and airplane. Seventy year old women with Elvis tatooes teetered in and out of the gift shops clutching bags filled with glitter and shot glasses. I stared at the postcards… Young Elvis, old Elvis, civilian Elvis, military Elvis, thin Elvis, puffy Elvis, Elvis in normal clothes, Elvis giving a young Elton John some fashion hinters, Elvis, Elvis, Elvis!

I can’t say I was ever that fond of Elvis. Why was I here again? Better yet why is the blasphemous Harley shop down the street listening to Cher? I bought a few postcards, if only so I could write indecent things on them…

While I was looking at the postcards I noticed one said “Beale Street, Home of the Blues!” I insisted on going there to even the honkiness out a bit. So I went to Beale Street, which wasn’t terribly far away, and I noticed immediately it beat Graceland hardcore. There was a voodoo/headshop here, BB King’s Blues Club, lots of places to eat, and music notes like the Hollywood stars lining the sidewalk with notable Bluesmen (and a couple of women.) I took a photo of BB King’s note, and was taken inside by a barker who offered to show me Lucille. So I went in.. and looked at one of four replicas of Lucille. He told me Lucille was BB King’s guitar which he auctioned off for charity, but which 4 replicas were made of. It was signed by all sorts of interesting people and the guy told us how Lucille got her name. Apparently BB King had been in a bar fire. He got out of the burning building only to dive back into it to save his guitar. Later he found out the fire started when two men were fighting over a woman. One smashed open a bottle of booze and threw a match to it. The woman’s name was Lucille and if Lucille was good enough to fight over than that was the perfect name for the guitar!

I had a soda and chatted up the bar tender for awhile. Being a hot day with little people in here he seemed happy to talk. He’d done a number of interesting travels in his own day and I compared notes. I gave him a few ideas of where to go next. I left soon after to catch the parking meter. All and all it was a fun street with friendly down to earth people. Much better than Graceland. Less creepy too. A lot less creepy. Especially the voodoo shops. I’ll take those over eighty year women in skin tight leopard spots any day.

After Memphis I went to Nashville… why? Because. I went to find the Grand Ole Opry, again just to say I’ve been there as country music is yet another thing I’m not fond of (for the most part – a little Cash is always good though…) I found out it was currently being swallowed by a shopping mall that was being built and for the most part was gated and fenced off. The rest was blocked by trees. Whatever. I left not too broken hearted.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

July 14, 2011 0

Mesa Verde National Park Colorado

While I was camping I came across a pamphlet to Mesa Verde. I had known there were old cliff dwellings somewhere in the area but I mistakenly thought it was Chaco Canyon and I skipped it the last time I was here because of that little mix-up. I decided to go check it out… it was phenomenal!

Driving in I asked the woman who took my entrance fee if it was a hike to see these things. She said yes but otherwise was of no help with my questions, only saying there was an additional guide fee to these places. I really hadn’t the energy to hike into the middle of nowhere and the idea of paying an additional fee for a guide annoyed and confused me. When I ended up at the visitor center everything was cleared up. Basically there is an auto road, free where you can see a lot from a fair distance. Then there is a cliff dwelling you can go into for free, but it is a short hike down and then back up the cliffs. The rest, the guided tours, were to get into all the other dwellings and have someone teach me about them. Each tour had a group of 50 people and were an additional $3 per site to see.

I went into the Spruce Tree House, the free cliff dwelling. There was lots of people. The structure was still a ruin but a very interesting one, there were windows and different rooms, corn grinding stones, and an underground kiva that you could get to by ladder. There was a line for that and I watched as an impossible amount of people file out of it like a clown car. I waited and went in after they came out, making jokes with the girl aside us. “This is the first time I have waited in line to get into someone’s basement.” It was a round and very dark room, reinforced by a number of logs. There wee little niches here and there but all and all it wasn’t that big of a place. After this group of people went in, probably numbering twenty or more, we all filed back out. It was interesting.

I walked back up the cliff. I was huffing and puffing. Hikes straight up hills and cliffs always get to me. When we got to the top we took some photos. I accidentally got in the way of an Asian couple taking a photo (I hadn’t seen them there.) I backed up, smiling.

I entered the museum after this and I fell in love with their black and white pottery which looked so much like some of my own artwork it was a bit eerie. Here they had all sorts of things on display, a set of dioramas displaying the engineering of the structures. The fact all the Indians were depicted wearing loin cloths made me quite tweaky because if they really dressed that way they’d freeze their asses off in winter! Surely enough the next display was on a bunch of clothes remnants archeologists had found… full clothing, head to toe. SIGH. White people are so racist. It reminded me of my grade school text books where the Native Americans celebrating the first Thanksgiving were also prancing around in loin cloths… as if! As much I am in support of such liberating clothing I’ve been in Massachusetts in November. Suffice to say if you don’t want to get frost bite on your balls you better cover up.

I also got to play “guess what the object is for” with a bunch of little items that still baffle anthropologists. I think I had good guesses… rings, game pieces, etc. It was a neat little museum.

Afterwards I decided to take the auto road, with thunder booming in the background and threatening me with rain. The first stop was an overlook of The Square House. It took all my breath away. It looked so perfect and serene sitting in the middle of a cliff. I pondered how they even got into that crevice to build it in the first place, it seemed to be a sheer surface both above and below it. The other tourists remarked how amazing it was and what a lovely surprise.

The next stop I got to see the evolution of the pueblos. They hadn’t always been on a cliff. Apparently the Anasazi were one of the first cultures out here to settle down and make permanent residences instead of living nomadically. At first they built homes underground. I got to see what was left of them. Some still had pottery in tact and venting systems. It was really neat.

I drove around and looked at these things, all under modern structures to keep them preserved. This was fortunate as by now it was pouring. The rain finally let up at the end of the road when I reached the Sun Temple. I could walk around the outside of it and then there was the most amazing thing of all… an overview of almost all the structures here in the park. There before me in the cliffs, hidden, were whole little villages and homes, scattered everywhere. It was like seeing something completely camouflaged come to life. I took photos and gawked for a very long while. The sheer engineering and beauty of these structures was more than enough to marvel at. I was very happy with the trip here.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

July 5, 2011 0

Ashfall Fossil Beds – Nebraska

The Ashfall Fossil Beds was something I found looking at the pamphlets in other fossil places. I had no idea what to expect but it looked neat.. Apparently they had a rhino barn. I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything but that’s alright, I was about to find out.

It was a $5 admission fee per person, plus an additional $4 Nebraska parking permit fee. I guess the Jeep needed admission too. The place was small but had very nice specimens of all sorts of things. They had the evolution of the horse hoof, a fossil turtle, and pieces of diseased bone fragments. Outside I walked a very short path listed with the evolutionary timeline. Soon I found myself in the rhino barn, lined with posters of weird creatures I’d never heard of that they’d found here. There were saber toothed deer, several species of American camels, tons of dog species that there’s no longer an equivalent to, several species of horse, and even a horned rodent that looked almost like a rhino and a gopher got together one strange dark evening.

At the end of the rhino barn three paleontology students worked to brush aside the sand and reveal a mass mortality of rhinos. Apparently a super volcano went off ten million years ago and killed the whole herd, adults, babies, even a fetus. As morbid as it was it was fascinating. Another student loitered at the sides, desperate to be doing something. She said if I had any questions just ask. Her high strung energy was a bit much but I suppose.

Outside was another small building, another girl worked here to pick tiny bones out of the sand, salamander vertebrae, bits of turtle shell, the toes of a desert mouse, the tail of a rattlesnake. I asked her if there was a favorite critter she likes to find. She replied the salamanders made her the happiest. We talked for a while. She seemed enthusiastic and sweet. After this I left. It was a neat little place, definitely worth checking out, even though it made me trek through the most boring stretch of grasslands in the country for hours on end…

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

June 29, 2011 0

Museum of the Rockies

The Museum of the Rockies reportedly has one of the best fossil collections of any museum in the country. I had wanted to check the place out for years.

Outside the museum there’s a large bronze T-rex skeleton. A cryptic sign to his side reads, “Don’t climb on Big Mike.” Inside I was given stickers to identify me as I paid my admission, they were in the form of a fingerprint that was doodled on to look like the head of a T-rex.

The first exhibit, and a rather large one, was a set of vivariums, all with bizarre frogs in them, many even I hadn’t seen before, with a few familiar faces peering through the poison dart frog and American bull frog habitats. They were adorable, even the odd pug-faced one. I realize frogs are great indicators of the health of an ecosystem and are studied by many universities but I still wasn’t expecting this.

I moved on and found a little local history section of the museum, complete with horse buggies, a Model A, a surplus army buffalo hide coat, buffalo hide mittens that looked like they’d been sloughed off Big Foot, and a number of strange devices you had to guess what they were. Here in their mock up of an 1880 kitchen I recognized a familiar tool, one part of my own kitchen, a set of hand crank egg beaters. Maybe I am old fashioned but I still far prefer these to the electric beaters most people have which are big, clunky, need room to store, and are a pain in the ass to clean. Besides, how else am I to work up my arm muscles if not making home-made whip cream?

Next I came across a section in the museum where photography was expressly denied. In the pamphlet it read, “Learn about the people who came before us.” I am not sure they could have worded that any worse but I winced going in. There were wax figures of Indians, and descriptions of their gods and beliefs. I don’t know… I can see why photography was forbidden. I had a strong feeling this would piss people off. Sort of like if I made an exhibit of an alter and put a plaque up about the crazy shit Catholics believe…

Finally I got into the dinosaurs, and fish, and sharks, and various other fossils. The largest T-rex head was here. She was impressive (though if I remember right had a male name, “Big Al” or something similar, poor dear.) One of the more impressive displays was that of the growth of a triceratops. They had the smallest little baby to the biggest adult. They also had baby miasaurs, and a baby pachycephalosaur which stole my heart. In the good old days paleontologists thought these baby dinosaurs were completely different species because they looked so drastically different from their parents, especially pachycephalosaur, whose babies were once called Draco Rex because they look exactly like a dragon. I was thrilled. I had known growing up that if you want to go into the paleontology field you get schooled here.. where research continues to be ground breaking, no pun intended. Montana remains the most fossil rich state in the union and routinely provides rarities like nesting sites and baby dinosaurs, rare sharks, and other dazzling little oddities. There were three women working in the lab here, dissolving rock in acid and extracting the bones. Another woman took some children around for a tour, making a big show of a dinosaur found with raptor teeth scattered all around it. Apparently it’d been lunch at some point in time.

I had fun, this place was neat, although I must admit they really overdid the feathers on some of the little dinosaur statues. One of them looked like a reptilian drag queen. C’est la vie.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

June 27, 2011 0

Ulrich’s Fossil Gallery, Kemmerer Wyoming

After Fossil Butte I passed this sign that said, “Fossil Fish Gallery” and of course had to stop. It was someone’s house, granted it was a large one. Out front there was a huge set of dinosaur footprints and some petrified wood. This promised to be interesting.

Going in there was a huge slab on the wall with dozens of fish on it. I climbed the stairs into the shop and saw a teenage girl tending counter. There were fish everywhere, big ones, little ones, delicate ones, all beautifully displayed. There was an absolutely enormous gar, its scales still visible. Not long after entering another woman appeared and started talking with us. She had the brash fast-talking ways of a Yankee, but claimed to be homegrown here in Kemmerer. She told us that she grew up near here on a ranch and that she never knew what treasures she was sitting on top of, stating as children she would lob the fossils like Frisbees at each other’s heads. She claimed many thousands of dollars of fossils got ruined in this fashion. Now she made a living off them, saying her husband was part and partial to setting up Butte National Monument Park itself, and that is why they were allowed to keep the massive gar. (State legislations require all “rare” fossils to be surrendered to scientific institutions.) She was a funny woman, showing us around, and showing us the difference between the fossils in the “18 inch layer” and the surrounding layers. Then she told us she took people up to the quarry seven days a week, from 9am to noon to dig, for a fee slightly higher than that of Fossil Safari. She had nothing good to say about Fossil Safari. She brought us to her basement where she had a number of fossils dug up at fossil safari. Apparently a couple people had come in the day before with these uncut, mediocre fossils they had dug up at Fossil Safari. She said she wasn’t even sure if they provided tools for these people but they didn’t provide any means of cutting them down to size. The fish dug up here were in better condition, they were at the dead center of the ancient lake, and preserved by petroleum seepage. They did not look like the silhouettes of fish that were sitting sad and neglected in this basement, donated for the young children to find in the rubble pile out back.

Penny, the woman answering all the questions, turned to me and inquired if I was always this quiet. Pretty much. This should be taken as a compliment, I found the conversation hat fascinating. Before I knew it I was booking an appointment with “the boys” to go to their quarry. It was slightly more expensive but way more personal, with only four people going up with each guide. And to add to the charm I was put in a group without children as, “There must be a reason you don’t have children!” What a funny comment.

I had to wait two days for the appointment and after the dig I bought a little “grade A” kit from them. It contains a fish fossil so deeply embedded in a piece of rock from the 18 inch layer that it has to be neatly and carefully chiseled and scratched out to see it. This sort of tedious work has always relaxed me. I very much wanted to try it.

June 21, 2011 0

La Brea tar Pits – Los Angelas California

LA was on the list of destinations although I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why. It seemed like another stinking apocalyptic urban wasteland to me… It took me days to realize it was probably marked off because of the La Brea Tar Pits. I have wanted to see the La Brea tar pits since I was a tot. I drove in and found the tar pits parking lot. It was almost full with maybe four or five spaces that could only fit the tiniest of cars, not a bloated Jeep. I drove around in circles around and around until the parking attendant made us a spot that didn’t technically exist before. We thanked him and headed towards what looked like a park.

There were kids swarming everywhere but I couldn’t have expected any less. The whole place reeked, a stench like no other. It was the tar pits bubbling away. I walked over towards it. There was indeed a big nasty mud puddle of a pond, it’s top layer covered in thick black goo, and bubbles belching from the deep. It really did smell as bad as it looked. To one corner there was a recreation of a mammoth getting stuck, it’s little mammoth family on shore going, “Noooooooo!” I could tell the mammoth that was stuck was actually floating…

I went into the museum and was told I was getting free admission because it was the first Tuesday of the month. This explained why there were so many children. I walked in and was greeted by a giant ground sloth skeleton. He was a huge beast with very odd feet. I walked around and read the signs and looked at the skeletons. They had everything here from every type of scavenger birds to hundreds of dire wolves, saber toothed cats, jaguars, weasels, mice, amphibians, mammoths, and even one woman.

There was a large laboratory in the middle of the building surrounded by plexiglass so that visitors could watch the paleontologists do their work. There was a woman in there separating grains of sand, one at a time, with a paintbrush, picking out the most minute of bones. She had managed to find maybe four or five minuscule little mice bones. I moved on and saw a mammoth back on display. Poor dear had arthritis of some kind. There was another display showing a mammoth bone next to an Asian elephant bone. I had no idea mammoths were so much bigger!

I stopped to watch a 16 minute documentary that was playing in the theater. It explained how most of the bones came to be here, with one animal getting stuck and then scavengers and predators trying to eat the stuck animal while getting trapped themselves. It also had interesting little tidbits about what the tar pits actually were… raw asphalt basically. Apparently the local Indians used the substance to waterproof their living quarters.

I ended up in the gift shop and decided to buy a magnet. As I sat in line I watched a baby in a stroller play with a blob of black goo, apparently some sort of mock tar toy. I laughed as I said, “Watch her eat that thing.” There was jars of the stuff at the counter and I decided to look at it to see what it actually was. There was no ingredients listed, only a label saying non-toxic. There was a sample smushed in a petri dish with two little dinosaur toys stuck in it. I poked at it and a bored cashier came by and started talking. I don’t really remember what he said initially but someone asked if the woman was on display here. He said she was taken down seven years ago due to political strife from local Native Americans. Seems right.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

June 7, 2011 0

Mystic Caves – Arkansas

I am not sure why I went to the Mystic Caves… it’s not as if they were world famous or anything. I mean as far as caves go this one was taking a bit of a piss but in the spirit of writing down every adventure here I go…

I was guided through both Mystic Caves. During the first tour I was with a small group of quiet adults and I took time to listen to the guide and take photos. Apparently the cave was used by local Indians who found one of the chambers sacred and used some slime growing on the wall for medicinal reasons.. Then the white man came along and used it as a moonshine distillery during prohibition… at which time they sooted up the ceilings, broke off a lot of the stalactites to sell during the depression, annnd caused damage when their distillery just up and exploded one day. The place was a mess, a great illustration of how destructive man is, but little else. It was also tiny.. and the staff kept naming the formations after food. “This is our wedding cake, over there is our carrot patch and don’t miss the curly fries!” There was however a number of fossils embedded in the ceiling so go fossils! Woo! I’m sure they were edible once…

Our guide ended the tour by telling us some hogwash story about a monkey being brought down in the cave and then getting stuck to the ceiling somehow. There was indeed something gnarly-looking dangling from the ceiling but a monkey it was not. Everyone listened like, “yeah whatever.” Our guide kept pausing midsentence, as if he were expecting us to say something or laugh. We were a boring bunch and didn’t.

The Chrystal Dome was a little better. It was only recently discovered, in the late 1960’s, and only on active tours since the 1980’s. It was only one set of stairs to the bottom of the dome where you could look up and see intact stalactites and stalagmites starting to form on the floor. This time we were accompanied by a Biblical swarm of 13-14 year old Christian boys, either boy scouts or from some boys only Christian school, who the hell knows. They all had flashlights and were fairly loud and obnoxious. Our tour guide said very little about what was actually known about the cave, instead he started telling stories about a guard Yorkie who got stuck in the rocks, and then a guard turkey, and then a guard alligator, and then a fucking octopus. I wandered off and took photos on my own of this weird slimy orange thing I found, too old to be amused by this, though on the way out I did see the Virgin Mary but I guess that’s to be expected. She’s everywhere. Our tour guide merely called her an angry wife, pointing to another formation that looked like a guy and two critters, dogs or fish depending on which story you could visualize. Coolest thing here was a little salamander in the rocks and a wolf spider nearly as big, both of which were actually real…

Though it was amusing I doubt I would suggest this cave to anyone outside the local area. There are just a lot of better caves to go to and $14.50 a person seems a bit steep for such a little place. In any event the gift shop was beautiful, had amazing minerals, rocks, and fossils.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

May 26, 2011 0

Arkansas’ Largest Natural Bridge

I saw a number of really huge signs aside the highway reading, “Arkansas’ largest natural bridge!” How could I not want to follow them like a lamb to slaughter? So I took the heavy, overloaded Jeep, and pursued a dirt road that zigzagged in every direction worse than San Fran’s famous Lombard Street. Did I mention it was a mountain road so I was also going down hill at an increasingly uncomfortable angle. I think the Jeep may have been crying, or at least slightly whimpering. Jeeps are tough after all.

Finally I ended up at a tiny ramshackle little mock-up of a pioneer house and a tiny parking lot. Where’s the bridge? I walked in and the attendant, a young guy, jumped up seemingly all happy to see another living soul. He rattled off everything there was to see here and the $5 fee. Then he instructed me to sign the guestbook and seemed not to know what to say next so I meandered out, only after noticing that in the middle of the day I was the only visitor here and had come from the farthest distance by a long shot. I walked out and saw the little recreation of an Ozark classic, the moonshining still, complete with scary wax figurine armed with a shotgun. Above there was another pioneer house, complete with artifacts from the era, including a coffee grinder the size of a dormitory fridge. There was even an antique fly trap! It looked remarkably like a hanging beekeeper’s hat.

So I walked out down this path in the middle of the woods and there it was, signs reading, “Do not climb or cross bridge! Stay on path!” Above that of course was a strange site, a bridge made of stone, a seemingly natural formation but still somewhat unsettling as it did indeed look like an intended bridge. I took a few snaps, walked up the path as far as I could, goofed around a bit, and came back.. Interesting detour.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

May 26, 2011 0

Coral Castle – Miami Florida

The Coral Castle is one of those quasi-obscure tourist attractions that didn’t start out as one. I had heard about it on a documentary when I was child and always wanted to check it out. Basically it’s a castle created by a five foot tall one hundred pound man. That’s not that interesting. The interesting part of this story is the fact he built the castle in the 1920’s with no modern technology or equipment and since he worked on it in the dead of night he also had no witnesses. Some of the stones used to create the outer walls are as much as 30,000 pounds and no one has any idea how he managed this feat on his own. Some people blame aliens. Because that’s clearly what I’d do if I were visiting earth for the first time – I’d appear to one random old man and tell him to build me a castle in the dead of night!

The castle itself is beautiful. He managed to carve moons, stars, and other planetary shapes all around the place, not an easy thing to do in the particular stone he was using which is actually coral. There are three moving stones on the premises, a rocking chair and huge door and a triangular gate that weighs 6,000 pounds and can be pushed by any visitor who wants to try it. I of course decided to try it and believe or not it didn’t take much effort at all, the whole thing just slid as easy as could be (and I am not that strong!)

Of course when you look around you realize this was made as this man’s home. He had a tool shed and a bedroom in a structure that looks very normal and house like (other than the materials it’s made out of ) and then he made all sorts of open air rooms out and about. There were living spaces, a table shaped like a heart, writing desks, a repentance closet with another chair, a bunch of little pools, a bathtub, a drinking well, a kitchen, and a bedroom, complete with adult and child sized beds, including a crib, which freaked me the hell right out, especially knowing he didn’t have any real children – just the ones he imagined up. Apparently there were five of those…

Of course the most interesting part of this whole thing was the fact the man who created it was completely fucking crackers. He had a crush on some heiress, who probably didn’t know of his existence, and he believed she was sending him messages through a newspaper comic. He also was a recluse, pretty much only dealing with people when they came to his little castle and paid ten cents to look around. He must have done this little tour a lot though because by the time he died he managed to amass several thousand dollars. It gave me a lot to go over in my mind. I have yet to figure out why a creative and super intelligent mind is so often disturbed.

The place was small but amazing if you’re one to ponder. The little automated tours were long-winded and boring but the rest was cool. It was also covered in lizards, both native and not and it took every ounce of my willpower not to try and catch one. When I was a kid I spent so many hours learning to catch everything I could… chickens, turtles, frogs, wild birds, you name it. A lizard would have been fun… but I captured them in photos instead. They were adorable and fast.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

May 21, 2011 0