the rabbits of the night

i've been trying to find the right time, and more importantly the right words to describe a 4,000 mile roadtrip, and have failed on both accounts. so here, i'll give it a try.....

tourist-y highlights:
-the rock and roll hall of fame in cleveland.....awesome! two things i couldn't take my eyes off of were the big, unruly looking reel to reel machine that creedence clearwater revival recorded everything on, and the torn scraps of metal from otis redding's plane, with his name in a greenish painted script. the place is a treasure hunt.....hand written beatles lyrics, the wide shoulder suit david byrne wore, grade school drawings by jimi hendrix, a shit-ton of guitars.....it's really just perfectly done, and we had a blast. special thanks to sue and tim for being great hosts, and perfect rock hall companions.

-the louisville slugger factory and museum.... i held an unfinished bat destined for the hands of manny ramirez... how cool is that!?

-churchill downs....easily one of the coolest places i've ever seen. we took a guided tour of the whole damn place, got to see lots of horses running a lot faster than it looks on tv, and i rode a fake plastic horse and looked like a jackass.

-meramec caverns in west stanton, MO....my first experience in a cave of any kind. we were the only ones in our tour "group" (though we were joined later by a british motorcycle gang... no, really), and our guide was one of those people who deals with the public so much, he doesn't even remember why he hates dealing with the public. he was a little scary, and it occurred to me more than once that i only had my keychain and a bottle of water to defend myself with. oh yeah, the cave was cool.

-the petrified forest national park in arizona...a 93,500 acre state park. 26 miles of road cutting through painted desert, logs that magically turned into rocks, and more pound for pound untouched prettiness than we saw the whole trip.

-las vegas. holy shit. i mean, oh my.....

food-y highlights:
-tamales and chile poblanos at el nopal in washington MO.....far and away the greatest mexican food i've ever had.

-some wonderful and bizarre hybrid of chicken salad and guacamole at the country dove tea room, a froofy, off the beaten path type place in elk city, OK.

- i feel like i can now speak with authority on the subject of fast food hamburgers... we tried 'em all... sonic, carl's jr......but fatburger in l.a. was stupid amounts of good....special thanks to jon and jay for showing us the ropes.

-yum yum donuts....mmm.....donuts

anyway, i could easily be forgetting so much....what struck me most was just the incredible amounts of nothing that's out there....and truthfully, that's kind of what i set out to see. i wasn't disappointed. the unexpectedly pretty state award goes to oklahoma. i loved driving through it, and tulsa was a pretty cool town. what else... we saw some vacation movies: "red eye" in cleveland, "the exorcism of emily rose" in amarillo, and "lord of war" in los angeles. i should also mention, if you've gotten this far, that kristin and i got engaged on a beautiful and lonely stretch of american highway....it was really kinda perfect. i think people assume i'm lying when i say we didn't get on each other's nerves the whole trip. she was a perfect navigator (i drove the whole time....i'm a bad passenger). our rented ford escape held up perfectly, my ipod was a little champ (if you want to think of our trip in terms of songs, it was around 900 on shuffle, plus a few cd's), and as much as we had grown tired of sleeping in hotel beds and the make-your-own-waffle machine, and were really happy to get home, i wouldn't trade the trip for the world.