Las Vegas – Nevada

Las Vegas is the birth of human depravity, or at least the continuation of such. But you know… when in Rome, might as well fiddle while it burns. Wait, I think I got that one wrong… anyway!

The place was as to be expected, there were tacky glitzy casinos galore, and in between them there were tattoo parlors, strip joints, wedding chapels, and pawn shops. Whatever. I could care less. Though there was one place that I thought would be funny to go… the pawn shop… but not any pawn shop, the pawn shop on Pawn Stars. I had no idea the place was so tiny! And packed! Half the store had been turned into a souvenir shop for people who watch the show. There were far more people buying T-shirts than jewelry. There wasn’t much here, some old guns, a few sabers, lots of jewelry, a few odd things here and there. I left sans magnet. Too embarrassing…

I took some photos of the strip. I stopped by the world’s largest gift shop and got a magnet. The cashier was the most adorable four and a half foot tall elderly woman I have ever seen. She wore HUGE glasses, smiled, and spoke with a very bronzy voice. I thought that was great… probably the only thing here I thought was the bees knees… the rest of the time was spent dodging crazed drivers who clearly lost a ton of cash gambling and were bent on taking that out on… the Jeep! Damn that unlucky Jeep! How dare it make them lose!

On a side note, I saw a big bulletin board advertising a concert for Vanilla Ice. Really? I mean I know Vegas is where old singing stars tend to go to die but Vanilla Ice? I kind of figured he’d be living under a rock or calling himself John Smith or something….

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June 7, 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

San Diego Zoo – California

Since we had gone to one of the country’s best aquariums I thought I should go to one of its best zoos. I ended up at the San Diego Zoo. It was already 1PM. I had read somewhere it closed at 9PM so we were good. We parked and went in. It was $40 admission, per person, to get into this place so it better be good!

The place was absolutely clogged with children and strollers. I have to wonder why parents with children young enough to be in strollers, and no older children, would even bother bringing them to the zoo. They’re not going to remember it! But anyways, I was off to see the reptiles and the bugs first because it’s just rude not to remember the little guys. I was rewarded by seeing a number of baby Komodo dragons. They had lots of cute little lizards, even a gila monster, who may or may not have been venomous – several signs nearby contradicted each other on the subject.

Most of the reptiles I’d already seen at that pet store in Houston… The bug house was next. They had cockroaches, a disturbing amount of assassin bugs, I imagine with most unemployed, a windowed bee hive, and some diving beetles, nothing fantastic. I was only impressed by their leaf cutter ant colony. You could see them finding their leaves, cutting them up, dragging them underground, chewing them up into pulp, and growing fungus with them to eat. It was neat. One wonders where you even get such a large leaf cutter ant colony, complete with every type of occupational ant, meaning there must have been a queen in there somewhere… perhaps the one wearing a feather boa.

After a brief hello to the amphibians I was finally off to see something with warm blood. To the mammals!

One of the first things I saw was a fossa, an animal so weird that I was probably the only non-zookeeper to know what the hell it was. It was sleeping on a branch, its lovely chocolate paw pads dangling in mid air. I was thrilled. I was even more thrilled to be on my way to see the tapirs. I’d wanted to see them when I was twelve at the National Zoo. I walked five miles around the park and came to their exhibit almost last only to find they’d been loaned out to another zoo for the summer. It was time to make up for that! And boy did I! They had the biggest tapir there, just wiggling its weird nose and sitting there in the sun. He was so cute and weird! Later on I’d see another tapir laying against the plexiglass, literally an inch away from me. It was awesome. I would have been happy with just these but they also had okapis, animals I’d never heard of (and that’s amazing as I know a LOT of obscure animals) all the usual crowd pullers, and monkeys galore. There were monkeys everywhere. I could care less. I’ve seen enough of the buggars, though I did like their ring tailed lemur male who was running around his cage anxiously meowing, yeah, I said meowing. Apparently they meow like wee kittens. It was adorable.

I passed by an Asian Leopard Cat enclosure and man, now I know why my Bengal cat (a house cat Asian leopard cat hybrid) smells so bad. That exhibit alone smelled worse than the whole zoo combined. After this I met a pissy mongoose. Now mongeese eat cobras for breakfast, they’re not an animal you want to be on the wrong side of. This one noted the camera was right against the bars of its cage and it charged, hissing violently and baring its teeth. It nearly grabbed the lens cap with its paws. It was a quick little beastie!

I was really hungry so I decided to get something to eat before checking out the last leg of the zoo. Though it was supper time all the little cafes were closed or closing. Annoyed I left to check out the walk-through aviary, the big one, as I’d already been through the hummingbird aviary and the budgie aviary. It was very neat and had all sorts of African pigeons and weird birds. Then a keeper showed up and told us she was supposed to lock up half an hour ago and I shouldn’t be here. So I left… and when I reached the main paths I realized the whole zoo was empty. A single gorilla watched me, obviously having waited to go indoors he probably was watching me thinking, “Every day there is at least one group of these fools.” It was creepy, like something out of a horror movie, no one was anywhere. When I got closer to the exit I started seeing more weary travelers, all with similar expressions. I found the Jeep really easy after this! It was sitting cold and lonely in the parking lot wondering where on earth I’d went to.

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 6, 2011 0

Joshua Tree National Park California

Disappointed by Vulture City and the Petrified Forest I had to wonder what was in Joshua tree. I imagined it to be someone’s back yard where a small child hugged a tree it had named Joshua. Can’t be disappointed if that’s how much you expect from something.. then again, I have been to the birthplace of Johnny Appleseed.

Joshua Tree is actually another park in the middle of a desert. When I saw that I expected another Big Bend horror story but I was so dead on my feet I needed to stay somewhere. I also hoped for showers. There were none. “Did your bathroom have a light in it?” “No.” “Did yours have soap and paper towels?” “Nope, none of that either, but the toilets did flush, that’s a plus…”

I talked to the personnel there who told me one of the main attractions to Joshua Tree, besides the elusive Joshua Trees themselves were the tortoises. Apparently it is home to a large population of endangered tortoises. I asked were we could see them and the woman claimed they were everywhere. The park itself was huge though, and didn’t have any gas stations so before settling in I left to find gas. The only place nearby did not have its prices advertised and only when you started pumping did you realize they were charging $4.20 per gallon. There were kids everywhere infesting the place but they weren’t just any kids, they were the kids you see in apocalyptic sci-fi movies. There was a van full of teenage girls here with their minister on some Christian mission. They’d written in marker all over the van’s windows with a number of suggestive things, “Hot Chickas on Board.” “We kneel for Jesus,” “Honk if you love Jesus!” I am not sure if their minister was just that out of touch with his flock that he had no idea they were treating this outing as a practical joke or if he just didn’t know how to control them. Either way the boys were even worse than the little prosti-tots.

The place was swarming with tween boys as well. A number of them smelled as if they had never known the word shower. One ten year old boy had bleached permed hair and since he probably already had curly hair to begin with… well he ended up with completely bleached kinky hair, standing straight up, decorated sparsely with a bead here and there. All the kids here were rude, obnoxious, and insinuating. A whole swarm of baby douches. I don’t really approve of that wording but what else could I call them? These kids reminded me of all those stereotyped spoofs of New Jersey.

Have you ever met someone who has had such a traumatic and fucked up childhood that you know they have no chance in hell of functioning normally as an adult in society? I think this godforsaken corner of the desert is where these runaways ended up with their seven children, who all devolved through successive generations until these little treasures came into the world… and ministers, naively, try to save them.

The store itself wasn’t much better than the kids who infested it. There was a shelf labeled “souvenirs” which only contained obscene bric-a-bracs, an Indian woman holding two pots in front of her boobs, a little cactus growing out of each, and a cowboy and Indian man each holding their britches open, a cactus jutting out from them. “What the fuck is wrong with this place?” Bizarrely there was no firewood on offer and the only water being sold was as a nearly solidly frozen two liter bottle of “frozen water,” what us sane people would call ice. I got out of there as soon as I could.

I returned to Joshua Tree so tired, but determined to at least see a tortoise to make it worthwhile. I stopped at the visitor center to pay and get everything settled. I walked back to the car where I found a couple Brits discussing the Jeep.

“Look at that license plate, it says New Hampshire. I’ve been there. Live free or die! I love that!”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? What’s so free about it?”

“I don’t know, I have a T-shirt that reads that.” I was standing off to the side waiting to get into my car, without saying a word, silently laughing to myself that live free or die actually refers to the revolutionary war… live free of the British crown and their taxes or die. I could have said something but I was still a bit shell shocked from the last place we were at and didn’t feel like talking. Besides this guy’s accent was rough! I don’t know which town he originated from but I can tell you it was working class. I waited patiently for them to move out of my way to get back into my car.

I set up the tent in another gusty wind, fighting all the way, trying to get the stakes to actually stay in the loose sand. It was a challenge but when I finally managed the sucker was standing as strong as a tent can stand without use of cement.

I drove around part of the park looking for tortoises. I saw a lot of vaguely tortoise shaped rocks and nothing else. I drove through the cactus garden and checked out the Joshua Trees themselves, which were basically yucca trees with lots of different branches instead of a trunk and some leaves. Eventually I ended up at the springs. I’d hoped to see the oasis but it was a seven mile walk. There was no way I would have survived that, not today! I walked up to the springs and there was some HUGE palm trees, and tangles of plants. I could not keep my eyes open to enjoy its beauty until I heard an impossibly loud HISSSSSSSSSSS and saw someone jump three feet in the air. Rattlesnakes… They were here, thick as my fist and almost as long as I am tall.

I couldn’t keep my eyes open on the way back to the tent. It was 4PM and time for bed. I was toast. I slept like a baby on morphine. I got up to eat dinner a few hours later and went back to bed, not waking up until my alarm went off unexpectedly at 7am. I got up and did some cleaning and took a little walk. On my walk I saw a Jack rabbit, a weird bug, some odd birds, lots and lots of cactuses, evidence of a lapdog, but no tortoises. I took some photos and enjoyed myself, making sure not to wander off the path that I found that seemed to lead straight into the desert for no apparent reason. It led back to the campground. I returned after 30-45 minutes out there. The day before I was told (after setting up the tent) that this loop of the campground was going to be closed for the season today and I had to be out of there by 10, maybe 11 o’clock.

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 5, 2011 0

Vulture City – Arizona

Vulture City is an intact ghost town and mine I thought would be a hoot to go visit. I poked around all day so that I could arrive at dusk or after dark. I learned the hard way that someone had claimed the town for their own, fencing it off and charging admission for tours which only ran until 2pm during the day. What’s the point of a ghost town if you can’t go when the spooks are out? Disappointed I decided not to stick around until the next morning and drove towards our next destination.

June 5, 2011 0

Globe Arizona – LAVA!!

While driving through Globe Arizona I noticed something really bright glowing through the trees. It was an intense red and the closer I drove it to it the more intense it became until I couldn’t look directly at it without burning sun spots into my eyes. As I approached it not only got brighter but I could feel heat. Driving at a crawl I approached a gate and several hundred feet beyond there was a live lava flow. I could feel the heat from the car as if I was standing next to a hot stove. It was all encompassing and set off a primal fear. I shouldn’t be near this. It oozed and glowed and proved quite a mystery. I asked locals about it… none of them had any idea they lived on an active lava flow… what had I witnessed?!

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 4, 2011 0

Tuscon Arizona

I drove to Tucson to find a place to sleep, grocery shop, do laundry, and take it easy for a day. I didn’t really realize that this is the perfect city for that. All the buildings are one or two stories high and everything is very spread out. The roads are not crowded, there isn’t any traffic, the people are friendly and relaxed. I stopped at Wal-Mart to restock on food. I used the bathroom there as well and found a girl with an uncontrollable bloody nose. She was an older teenager, trying desperately to get it to stop. She’d filled the waste basket with blood soaked paper towels. I asked if she needed me to call someone. She declined so I left her. I had heard of someone else who had a nose bleed like that… she ended up at the hospital where she tangoed with a cauterizing tool.

I drove on to find a battery store (to get a battery tester) at goodwill, and then the Laundromat which was right across the way. It was called Dean’s Village Laundromat. The place was almost empty, spacious, and very bright. We were immediately greeted by the attendant and set up doing two loads of laundry. There was a nice little spot outside to go, with a playground for the kids. Inside was a lovely little waiting room with two vending machines, lots of magazines, and a TV. I also used their bathroom and it was very clean.

I sat back and just lounged for awhile. This was a welcome respite, not to mention a cheap one. This was the cheapest Laundromat I’d come across at $1.25 per load of laundry and $1.00 (four cycles) to dry my clothes.

The store owner came in to refill the vending machine, which soon became possessed and decided it’d dispense two of every snack it had onto the floor as he tried to figure out what was wrong. It also beeped angrily. This went on for quite some time and I was both laughing and joking with the poor guy, along with some of the regulars who had come in. Apparently the guy changing the vending machine was the owner of the place.

I ended up talking to the regulars. They all had travelled various amounts to and pointed out some places I could go. When asked where I going next a slightly fuzzy-sounding “Phoenix?” was offered, to which they replied with disdain, “Phoenix, why on earth would you want to go there??” This is never good, when locals from a surrounding town give such a vividly concerning response. On that note, Hi Fitchburg MA! God knows I love ya!

I finished my laundry and went on my way to check out the local park, Saguaro National Park. Apparently they had cactuses, lots of them, the kind you see in cartoons that stretch to the sky and have two outstretched arms about to hug any passerby. However driving there I saw in residential neighborhoods every cactus conceivable even these big iconic ones, which as it turns out, do not look anything like they are normally depicted. Instead of two perfectly symmetrical arms they had arms jutting out from every corner and angle and growing in such odd fashions, some growing sideways, some upwards, and some even downwards. These cactuses looked like the eight-legged frogs that kept showing up in the 90’s. They looked like mutants! Still they were very big, some stretching over telephone poles and roofs. People had cactus gardens in their front yards filled with bright pink cactuses and all sorts of odd shapes and funny colors. I even found one house, surrounded by a six foot fence, which seemed to be in the process of being eaten whole by a huge forest of overgrown cactuses.

In any event when I finally reached the park there was a $10 admission for seven days but I didn’t want to stay seven days and I saw everything there was to see just driving there. I turned around and instead spent the $10 to help pay for a dinner at Chipotles. This was my first time there and I was so hungry I ate it all! Life was good. I moved on.

June 4, 2011 0

National Petrified Forest – Arizona

I didn’t know what to expect from the National Petrified Forest. I knew I wouldn’t be walking into a bunch of trees, then again, maybe these trees were really scared.

I drove into the gift shop first. It was not actually in the park but outside of it. This place was a huge gift shop filled with every sort of fossil, mineral, rock, and shiny thing you could have ever asked for, all at double the prices as Sedona. Still, they had neat things like marbles, (for $4 per marble…) and lots and lots of petrified wood in every variation…. Big pieces, little pieces, polished pieces, rough pieces, pieces with bark, slices, giant slices made into tables, whole segments of tree, and in every color and series of colors under the sun. I looked around and walked out again.

I drove on to the Petrified Forest, paying $10 for the Jeep. I was told not to take any of the petrified wood and given flyers stating that taking any would result in $375 fine and that they could search our cars. Its just as well, most of the pieces lying on the ground here were enormous stump-sized chunks. You couldn’t drag one of those off without a forklift. It was basically a field of these shiny pretty rocks lying dead on the ground. There were paths weaving in and out you couldn’t leave. All and all it was rather unimpressive. I returned to the gift shop and bought a few tiny colorful pieces, both rough and polished. I left realizing the gift store was far more impressive than the actual forest (not to mention it had a virtual graveyard of geodes in the back, I mean thousands upon thousands of the suckers all thrown in giant piles.) It was interesting, and I was rewarded by seeing a teeny tiny jackrabbit baby springing away from me. Real cutie. SIGH.

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 3, 2011 0

Meteor Crater – Arizona

Alright, this time I was guilty of seeing a sign and going, “let’s go!” It’s not my fault though, as it was something I wanted to see, just something I had completely forgotten about. Apparently Arizona is the home to one of the most well preserved meteor craters on the globe. It’s 50,000 years old and absolutely huge. I paid $15 to see it and peruse their little museum. That was a bit pricey but whatever. Might as well see it now I’m here.

The place was huge, I walked around it on the little concrete steps and tried to grasp the enormity of it all. It was so wide I had to take two photos, one of each side, in order to get the whole thing. There were little periscopes labeled with different things. I looked through the one that said “house sized rock” and indeed, on the other side there was a house sized rock. They claimed the meteor that hit was 140 feet in width when it struck.

As with any of these attractions it was full of children. I didn’t stay long but it was very neat.

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 3, 2011 0

Sedona Arizona

After driving through the desert for God knows how many days I were delighted when I once again came back to civilization. Sedona was adorable. It was a little artistic hippie community in the middle of gorgeous scenery of red rock mountains and canyons. Here I found galleries, fancy cafés, a chocolate shop, a place that just sold various caramel apple combinations, lots of very affordable T-shirt and dress shops, and too many little galleries and gift shops to count, all displaying locally made creations, some pretty out there. There were creatures made out of welded scrap metal, horses and bunnies made convincingly out of chicken wire, plenty of pottery, blown glass, bric-a-bracs, and anything you could have possibly wanted. This place made me very happy, it filled me with a sort of joyful warmth.

Every so often I’d come across a statue of a peccary and its baby and each time it was painted another crazy psychedelic scheme of colors. There were also statues of horses and old western figures and a place where some old western stars had left their handprints. I didn’t know who any of them were but that’s OK, I don’t think I have ever watched a whole Western from beginning to end without falling asleep anyway. In any event the people were friendly, everyone was laid back, there were pink jeep tours and helicopter rides going on to see the local canyons. It was all very nice. Even the buildings were unique, two story pueblos that went all the way down the street. The only way you could to the second floor was taking the stairs at the end of each street. It was very neat. They even had a little rock and fossil shop that sparked the interest in the nerd in me. A $12,000 trilobite fossil made my mouth water and my eyes glass over.

June 2, 2011 0