My apologies for not blogging much lately.  My computer is ill and I am facing a long, long drive from Ontario to Alberta without the internet.  (This mandatory break from facebook is a welcome respite, but whether I need to beg, borrow, or steal the blog will carry on).  I will valiantly continue blogging the old-fashioned way—paper and pen—and update whenever I can.

Me strikin' a pose in Ottawa.

I have been in Ottawa with J.T. for the past week, doing Ottawa-type things like checking out the Hill and eating Beaver Tails.  Tomorrow, J.T. will board a plane for Kamloops and I will pack the van and start out alone for the first time.

I actually haven’t been alone in the van before…  I had Jenner from Van City to San Francisco, Jagmo during the holidays, and J.T. ever since.  Now it will be all TJ all the time—which means music of my choice and long bouts of talking to Bebe for company.  (I like to cheer her on if she hits a higher gear properly and makes it up a hill).  I’m more curious than nervous—how long will it take?  How flat will the prairies actually be?  How much more can the van take?  These are all important questions.

Beaver Tails in the Byward Market are good eating. Nutella = TJ's best friend...

I have absolutely no idea where I will sleep nights or how long it will take to hit Alberta, or what will happen when I reach it, but all one can do is check the oil, fill the tank, and carry on, right?  I guess-timate six days before I show up on my friend Miller’s doorstep in Calgary—totally broke but absolutely blissful!   

It is time to work again for awhile.  To pick up a regular joe-job and save up again for Van Plan round 2! (During which I again disappear into the US and other parts of Canada for further shenanigans).  But don’t worry!  The blog continues, always.  There will be fun times ahead—and regular times, too.  I have to fix the van up a bit before the next round.  It has leaky windows and a broken fridge—and I very much enjoy cold beverages and the feeling of waking up with dry feet.

So wish me luck (or at least interesting moments), and I will write to you from some prairie place real soon.

It’s time for me to write one last post before the border, and I have a funny story to share with you all.  I’ve been on the road for three and a half months now, and I’m starting to miss Canada ever so slightly.  A few hours ago, J.T. and I were on I-71 North—just plugging away to eventually reach Erie, PA—when suddenly I spied a Tim Horton’s on the side of the highway.  Tim–freaking–Horton’s!  In Ohio!

Lex, TJ, and J.T. discover Nashville's first official citizen was a French Canadian guy!

And I wasn’t seeing things.  It’s actually here.  In fact, I’m writing this post with a Double Double in my other hand.  Sigh.  Home away from home—or just home on the way home?

I took a picture of the rogue Tim’s location for evidence purposes and then asked the girls behind the counter what Tim is doing way down here.  Turns out, this place is owned by the cousin of a famous Canadian hockey player—someone who just won a gold medal at the Olympics, but whose name the girls here couldn’t quite recall.  That makes sense then, doesn’t it?  A Canadian opening a Tim’s in Ohio?  Spread the love, right?

This Double Double and the fact that I just left a good Canadian friend of mine back in Nashville are enough to tide me over until I reach the border in two days’ time.  J.T. and I visited my good friend Lex in Nashville this past weekend, and it was so good to see a familiar face in the midst of a (mostly) unfamiliar state.  As we walked through downtown Nashville one afternoon, I turned to Lex and said “What the hell?  We’re in freaking Nashville together!”  Unbelievable where one can end up after graduation.  Sometimes, one can even end up in a van…

Final fun fact: halfway through my sandwich the Tim Horton’s girl remembered the famous hockey player’s name… Sidney Crosby.  Go figure, eh?

And just so you know, Lex… the closest Timmy’s to you is on 71 North in Grove City, Ohio.  This is valuable information; no need to wait ’til you’re north of the border!

Look out Canada… I’ll be back (and in Ottawa for a spell) in two days—or about 845 KILOMETRES!

Well, I’m not going to give away the surprise either, dear readers.  You’ll have to use Wikipedia or visit Tennessee some time.  The house is quite surprising though—in part because hip interior decorating from 1974 is downright weird by today’s standards.  There was pleated, paisley fabric on the ceiling, and mirrored fireplaces.  My camera and laptop are partially on the fritz right now, so check back here in a week or two.  There should be some lovely pictures posted by then.

Of all the things a million dollars could buy, why did you put this in your rec room Elvis? Why?

I tried really hard to wrap my brain around the Elvis factor while walking through his house.  (It was full of other tourists though, and any traveler knows that the biggest flaw in most tourist attractions is sharing them with so many other tourists.  Ironic, but terribly true).  Staring at his first pink Cadillac, looking at his mega-sequined jumpsuits, and walking around inside his giant plane (The Lisa Marie) were awesome Elvis-infused moments, but it wasn’t until I was in his father’s little backyard office watching a video of him doing a press conference inside the same office that it finally hit me where I was standing.  But don’t worry, I didn’t get all King-crazy like those cute old ladies with the big, big hair—I’m saving my raving fan phase for the old Cavern Club in Liverpool some day…

I had jumpsuit overload at Graceland...

However, I do have to rave about how Tennessee was such a rad state—right up there on my faves list next to Louisiana.  The state sign I drove past looked like a vinyl album, and I drove into Memphis in the dark one night on Elvis Presley Boulevard.  Ten minutes straight down the road and I was rolling past the white gates of Graceland anyway.  (Graffiti-covered white gates, at that.  How many times does one really need to write “Tina and Elvis 4ever”?).

Even the garbage is Elvis'd!

But the morning after Graceland was the terrifically exciting part of Memphis for me.  I dragged J.T. to Sun Studios with me, which one can tour for about ten bucks.  Sun Studios is the place where Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee-Lewis (among many other awesome others!) recorded music way back in the day.  The amount of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia packed into that (original!) tiny building is ridiculously awesome, and listening to original outtakes from artists like Elvis and Howlin’ Wolf is part of taking the tour.

Same microphone! I'm touching it! Squeal!

I have seen some great tourist attractions in my life, but the Sun Studio tour actually made me a little misty-eyed.  My tour guide played a recording of an 18-year old Elvis recording one of his very first songs ever—the one for his mother’s birthday that a canny secretary named Marion made studio owner Sam Phillips listen to.  Even the floor tiles inside Sun are original, and there’s an “X” marking the spot where Elvis stood to record his first single.  I heard that Bob Dylan once took the same Sun tour, and kissed the X before leaving.  I stood on those old tiles too, and then I touched Elvis’ microphone…  I’m never washing my right hand again!  Ha!

After finishing the tour, I heard from my tour guide that some other Canadians had also been part of my tour group.  Turns out, the band Big John Bates and the Voodoo Dollz were with J.T. and I inside Sun.  I can now recall seeing some other traveling folks pull into the studio parking lot in a big old red Dodge van.  Small world!  What other Canadians are touring the U.S. in old Dodge vans right now?  Not a clue,  but I’ll let you know if I find them!

J.T. and I finally made it to New Orleans last Wednesday, and what a time it’s been.  It looks and feels exactly as it should—old crumbling buildings, steamy heat, flowers, jazz, and narrow little cobbled streets.

For months now, people I’ve met on the road have been asking “Where are you going?” or “What’s your goal?” and I’ve always answered that I’m just trying to make it to New Orleans before I run out of time and/or money.  A Canadian sans working visa has only six months at a time to gallivant through the States, and this particular van girl’s got to go North soon.

So let’s try simple and chronological to get through the hazy joy that’s been New Orleans.  Thursday was my first day in the French Quarter, and it was no easy feat to navigate the tiny little streets in the big bad van.  After wedging it into a pay parking lot space (how I will never know), J.T. and I went off to shop and explore.  We sat in a sidewalk cafe having cafe au lait and beneigt (terrific little French donuts), and made a plan to put a dent in our New Orleans bucket list.  Somehow, over the next three days, we would have to find a voodoo museum, see the big cemeteries, ride a streetcar, ride a riverboat, and have our palms read.  I’m happy to report now that we were successful in all five endeavors!

Fun Fact: New Orleans’ liquor laws are very, very different from what I’m used to.  One can purchase booze in a to-go cup and then wander the French Quarter on tipsy toes.  It was recommended to me by a friend of a friend that I needed to try a ‘Hurricane’.  Rather than being in bad taste, I think the way New Orleans has marketed its Katrina trouble is admirable.  There’s a dose of humour there, as well as a will to make some much-needed dough off the problem and slowly fix itself in the process.

Funnier Fact:  On my first night in the Quarter I watched J.T. grow steadily drunker from said Hurricanes.  Inside the Snug Harbor Jazz Club (which was recommended to me by someone I met many moons ago in Jasper), she excused herself and then never returned to the table.  Oops.  Not to worry though.  I found her in the ladies loo and peeled her off the floor—forcibly feeding her a giant sandwich before returning to the van.  Never did get to hear the Snug’s jazz though…

On Quarter Day two, J.T. and I hopped on the Canal Street trolley and went off to find the St. Louis cemetery.  Above-ground crypts are just as creepy in cheery sunlight as they are in Hollywood films, and the fact that some of the doors are crumbling away so that one can see inside is terrifying!  Zombies totally escape that way and wander around at night.  I’m sure of it.  We then explored the history of Voodoo in a dim little back-room “museum” complete with gods, offerings, and a wishing stump (I can’t ‘fess up to what I wished for or I won’t get it!).  We topped off that day with a ride on the ‘Creole Queen’ paddle wheeler, which took us up and down the Mississippi River.  I can’t think of a better, or more rock ‘n’ roll, place to have ridden on a river boat.  I have been humming Elton John’s “My Father’s Gun” ever since.

And now comes the lost weekend part—subconsciously (but completely unintentionally) I must have wanted to pay J.T. back by making her play babysitter to an extremely intoxicated Moi.  Since my sauced Saturday, I have had many, many locals shake their heads and say “careful girl, they mix ‘em strong in the Quarter (pronounced Qwar-tah)”, and I wholeheartedly concur.

I remember brief and colourful snippets, which I shall relay in order (as close as I can!):

-There were lime margaritas and a celebration because it was the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day.  Being Irish, I wore a green “Pale is the new tan” t-shirt and donned a single set of green beads.

-J.T. and I strolled around Bourbon Street, I filmed some stuff, and then she got hungry.  I waited with her at a sidewalk hot-dog cart and noticed that an extremely drunk girl next to me was smearing her boyfriend’s shirt with a bright mixture of mustard and ketchup because her hot dog just wasn’t quite making it into her face.  I felt bad and tried to help by grabbing a handful of napkins and cleaning up his shirt sleeve—for which he drunkenly shoved a two dollar tip into my hands.  I refused.  He insisted.  I came away with two crumpled ones in my back pocket.

-There were more drinks and a trip into the dirtiest little sidewalk bar ever (I cringe now but didn’t particularly care at the time), inside which there were more Hurricanes.  (Even now, my stomach is protesting these memories).  J.T. and I had the most wonderful, laughing conversation with the bartender (who was older than dirt and didn’t find us the least bit funny), and then continued our Bourbon Street wanderings.

-Beads were flung at us off balconies, and I have a foggy recollection of running into an exuberant Cuban woman named Mercedes Fernandez who thrust some Jesus pamphlets into my hands and began praying profusely for my soul as she laid her hand on the back of my head. Being two—if not all three—sheets to the wind by now, I became belligerent and decidedly un-religious—asking her all sorts of questions about why she was accosting me in the street during a party in order to discuss my imminent entrance to Hell if I didn’t correct my wicked ways.  J.T. had to drag me away…

-We ended up inside another sidewalk restaurant where J.T. ordered some food, some big glasses of water and (against her better judgment) another Hurricane for TJ!  Then it was my turn to excuse myself from the table and never come back.  I do not remember this.  I do remember hugging the porcelain god– then lying on it, near it, and possibly in it.  No amount of poking or prodding by J.T., or any of the strangers she claimed were there, induced my prostrate form to become upright.  Hours later, only the annoyed manager’s threats of fines and tickets for public drunkenness got me on my feet and back to the van—fine and ticket free, I might add.

Dat's J.T., with my poor little foot in the bottom left corner. Before J.T. realized how bad I was, she took a fun party picture in the bathroom on Bourbon St.

-the rest of that night (and the next day) was spent horizontal in the van (so thankful that I can live and sleep in my vehicle anywhere!).  It cost a bit, but I was camped in that pay lot on Decatur St. for a long time.  Semi-conscious in the heart of the Quarter.  Hours later when I woke up, I vigorously questioned J.T.:

“Why do I remember praying with a Cuban woman, and where the hell did I get all these other beads!?”

Sigh.  I said I would write about it—good, bad, and ugly—and there it is, folks.  I think I’ve had enough New Orleans for awhile.  Tomorrow I head North for a change.  It’s been a long time coming, but for this first long leg of the Van Plan, I am finished with East.  Look out Canada, I’ll be back by the end of the month!

To debunk some common space rumours: rocket scientists really are terribly smart, I did see robots, the Ground Controller’s name was Bill and not Tom, and there is such a thing as ‘Astronaut parking only’.

During my fancy-pants “Level 9” tour of the Space Center (for which one pays through the nose, but is then given an all-access VIP pass and allowed to go basically anywhere), I saw so many radical things that my socks were thoroughly and completely rocked.

This is the GOOD tour for NASA

While on my tour, I saw people from the regular tours filing in lines through glassed-in walkways above my head.  I’m afraid I had the most intense smirk on my face as I looked up at them from the floor amongst the rocket modules.  Oh man, I touched space things!

I saw three versions of the Mission Control Center: a simulation for training, a modern new one in which the crew were communicating with the five astronauts that are in space right now, and the original one from the first moon landing and the Apollo era.  J.T. and I were in the real Mission Control just as the astronauts were going to sleep for the night.  Images of the space station were up on the screen and we saw them pass from light into darkness.  Astronauts that are in space witness a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes.

pictures of the darkening space station on the right and the map of where it's located in the middle.

After seeing the real Mission Control, my tour group was taken into the old Mission Control room, which is now a national historic site.  The old building still looks like the seventies inside.  It is lit with fluorescent tubes, and the white paint and faded linoleum have a yellow tinge.  It also still smells like cigarettes and burning coffee.  Once inside old Mission Control, we were allowed to touch and photograph whatever we wanted.  My extremely privileged rear end took a seat in the very same chair someone sat in for the first steps on the moon… and for the Apollo 13 incident.  I tell you, that was one mind-blowing sit-down.  Nothing has been changed from the way it used to be, and I got a good look at the rotary dial phones, the bright red direct line to the White House, and the vacuum tubes for sending mail.  And just in case you’re wondering, yes—I definitely sat there pressing buttons and pretending I worked there.  Who wouldn’t?

Me pretending to work at NASA

Other highlights of the tour included, for me, seeing a Dutch astronaut training in a space suit inside the giant pool, seeing all the mock space modules that the astronauts train in, seeing “Charlotte”—the Spidernaut robot, and admiring the size of the Saturn 5 rocket (which was built and then never launched due to previous budget cuts).

Sadly, every NASA employee we ran into (a ground control guy, a training person, and both our guides) was apprehensively waiting to hear the final conclusion concerning Obama’s budget cuts.  Obama has proposed cutting the cash flow for continuing manned missions into space.  There are lots of funds for continued scientific work and robots, but not for any more human astronauts to lift off.  There are only four missions left before NASA retires its Space Shuttle, and the last launch will be from Florida this April.  If I wasn’t absolutely intent on hanging out in New Orleans to hear some jazz and then heading for a good friend of mine in Nashville, I would be truckin’ on down to Florida to watch.

As for other fun facts about space that are stuck in my brain, here they are:

-It takes three days, at present, to reach the moon—but only two to get to the space station.

-It takes six months to reach Mars

-Someone near NASA right now is developing a plasma engine that could make a rocket reach the moon in 90 minutes and reach Mars in 39 days.

-NASA wants to return to the moon, look for water sources, and possibly put an outpost on the South Pole because the moon has temperate climates.

-Astronauts watch movies in space when they have some down time and their favourites really are Space Cowboys, Armageddon, and Apollo 13.  They also got to see the new Star Trek movie before it was released on Earth (and I can’t believe I just got to type the phrase “released on Earth” in a serious sentence… ).

I asked my tour guide if the astronauts ever watched the X-Files movies, and he said that was “really more of a ‘Building 16’ thing.”  What!?  I KNEW THEY EXISTED!

Me and the Apollo guys... just hangin'

1 Just before entering Texas I broke down and bought a cowboy hat in TorC, New Mexico.  Not a lame, gas-station variety stiff white one though.  It’s more of a bad-ass brown leather Indiana Jones chapeau with some ‘tude to it.  I know what you’re probably thinking, but no it does not look ridiculous.  Pictorial evidence will follow…

2  While still in Truth or Consequences, NM I was inside a museum viewing a wall of cowboy hats and was finally able to pick out mine from the  display and figure out what it means:

A museum display in TorC New Mexico

“Known as ‘North Country’ or ‘Up North’ crease, it’s a big hat and the man who wears it usually has big ideas.  He probably rides a big horse, has a full-size, extended-cab diesel pick-up, and lives in a big house or at least a double-wide.  He likes foot-long hot dogs, his beer in tall boys, and women with big hair.  His favorite team is the Denver Broncos.  His favorite singer is Dolly Parton, and his favorite actor is—you guessed it—John “The Duke” Wayne.”

… I do live in a large van and have been known to enjoy beer and hot dogs now and again… Close enough, right?

3  While staying in Abilene I heard about this town called Hico that was famous for having been the KKK headquarters once upon a time.  I heard, in particular, about the Koffee Kup Kafe…  Former (hopefully!) white supremacists that make really excellent pie.  Personally, I was so horrified and amazed that such places are still out there that I had to check for myself.   Now it’s called the Koffee Kup Family Restaurant.  No racism; just mind-blowing pie!  (And I don’t compliment the pie lightly; I have taste-tested pie across six states now).

Formerly Koffee Kup Kafe. Tolerance for all sorts of pie, at least...

4  After being in Abilene for a few days I noticed a lot of religion around.  You can’t find a school that doesn’t have the word “Christian” in the title, and there’s a billboard on the side of a main road that display’s “God’s Stimulus Package” idea as a gift-wrapped box of babies.  Yeah!  Boxes of babies!  Too weird.  I am definitely not in Canada here, am I?

This Sunday, J.T. and I will be trying to smuggle a camera into the “Osteen” church to check out a preaching man that turned a basketball stadium into a place of worship so that he can make 15 000 people at a time go nutty over the New Testament.  What a spectacle!

5  But fear not!  There are forward-thinking cool people down here in Texas too.  J.T. and I befriended some fantastic arts students and hung around them for a few days enjoying their liberal and progressive “art-ness”.  I even attended an art gallery screening of the film Factory Girl—eating lots of popcorn and watching sexy and psychadelic drug use in the company of people possibly old enough to be my parents.  Wasn’t weird at all…  Like being in a hip little painted oasis in the midst of the Lone Star State.

6  After being in Abilene for a day or two I learned something very important:  Don’t park big vans under pecan trees.  This is a good rule of thumb for any traveler unless you want to have your van covered in copious amounts of bird poo.  Oh… so much poo.  Unreal.  I felt a little sh– upon by Texas by this point, (pun absolutely, without-a-doubt intended!), but revenge was coming…

Bebe gets crap-tastic in Abilene, TX

A quick trip to a carwash on the way to Houston.

7  Last Sunday I managed to find a place to watch the hockey game in Waco, Texas:  Fast Eddie’s Sports Bar, but silly Canadian me thought that hockey would be considered a sport down here!  Nope.  Texans don’t give a damn about a sport unless it’s played on pavement, shiny lacquered wood, or grass.  No hockey.  Not even when their own country’s playing.  Not even for a gold medal game in the Olympics.  J.T. — in her “True North Strong and Free” t-shirt—and I intruded upon screens full of roaring Nascar clips to insist on hockey.  We watched without sound, rued the fact horrible music was playing right over our game, and cheered quietly amongst the sounds of table-pounding and chants of “U-S-A!  U-S-A!”

I had a silent smirk as I exited the bar.  You might have sh– all over me the other day Texas, but my country whooped your country on skates!  Ha!

8 To stick with the Canadian theme:  I have been trying to do all things authentically Texan— sayin’ “y’all”, buying a hat, and finally eating “BBQ”.  I put that in quotations because I’ve no idea what I actually ate.  There were all sorts of miscellaneous meat piles covered in the same red sauce.  I just sat at the wooden picnic table, hummed along to Cash on the jukebox (seriously!), and ate whatever was in front of me.

But post-BBQ adventure, J.T. and I thought it would be really funny to see the “Canadian” pub here in Houston.  It’s called the Maple Leaf, and it sells Molson’s, has hockey on the television, and has a penalty box that you can sit in!  Oh to have been there four days earlier instead of in Waco.  Sigh.  Can’t win ‘em all, eh?  But I can play table hockey and win while doing so!

Video:

The Good Old Hockey Game

J.T. and I in the Maple Leaf Pub's "penalty box" in Houston, TX

That’s all, Y’all.  I will be back with stories of outer space in a day or two.  I still need to wrap my brain around the awesomeness that is NASA before I can write about it.  Big. Giant. Rockets!  Coming soon!

So here I am in the southern US in my little old camper van, with no plugs, no heat and a broken fridge.  I’m a recent university grad and I look it; dressed in sweat pants and huddled under old quilts—reading Margaret Atwood books at night by headlamp so that I can live under the warm blankets.  Glamorous?  Hardly, but it’s fun nonetheless.

The comical thing is that in most towns I’ve seen, the other snowbirds are retirees.  There are many north of 60 down here in the Lower 48.  There are frosted perms, matching track suits, and big, BIG RV’s with satellite dishes on the roof and shiny cars hitched to the back.  It’s not the RVs’ size that bugs me—as I’m quite satisfied within my van— it’s the generators!  I sleep at night curled in a ball with three mismatched socks on each foot and white wisps of breath curling toward the ceiling, and I have to listen to generators pump those huge RVs full of heat.  I’d be green with envy if I wasn’t already blue with chill.

The first time this freezing business happened, I was on the Oregon Coast during an unseasonably cold week and there were many jokes made to the tune of “it’s your fault Canadian girl… You brought this with you!”  The next time the weather tried to spite me, I was in the desert in Joshua Tree, California.  Joshua Tree hasn’t seen rain and flash flooding like what I saw since 2005.

Which brings me to the third time:  a snowstorm in Roswell.  I came for the aliens, but all I saw in the sky were flakes.  Many, many flakes.  And snowdrifts, and icicles on the van’s bumper, and people that had clearly never driven in snow before.  It was horrifying, and I took refuge inside an IHOP for awhile and ate my feelings.  I dislike snow;  love pancakes though.  My waitress pointed out that she hadn’t seen it snow that much in Roswell in 16 years.  Maybe it is my fault.  Perhaps I have brought winter with me…

But no snow got in the way of me exploring Roswell.  Aliens!  Crash-landings!  An honest-to-goodness UFO Museum!  Happy TJ!

Coolest museum ever!

There was a lot of information on display inside the UFO museum; a lot of court documents, affidavits, and old photographs.  How could sworn court documents lie?  I’m now thoroughly convinced that aliens exist!

In 1947, a UFO crashed somewhere outside Roswell in the Capitan Mountains.  A guy who was camping with his girlfriend saw the lights and gave a detailed statement in court about how he went to find the wreckage.  He claimed to have seen a destroyed ship, a lot of metal-like debris that was flexible to the touch, and a few bodies in silver suits with tight helmets (he tried to remove a helmet and couldn’t).  They had conical heads, large black eyes, and three long fingers.  This man and his girlfriend loaded up a truck with debris and took it back into town.  He showed it to some of his friends and then left it in the truck. for safekeeping  The truck was stolen, the girlfriend died, and his friends all ended up dead too.  I smell a conspiracy…

And whatever happened in Roswell in 1947 was really good for tourism.  Even the streetlights look like little green men, and the Wal-mart has a flying saucer painted on it.  Capitalism’s a strange thing sometimes.

Anyhoo, I feel I’m satisfied with New Mexico now;  done with snow and ready for Texas!  Back in a few days with new tales from the Lone Star State.

The streetlights in Roswell are cashing in on the crash

An alien body constructed for some old sci-fi film.

Artwork featuring Mulder and Scully has a place of prominence inside the UFO museum.

TorC used to be called Hot Springs, NM until 1950.  During that year, the game show Truth or Consequences had some sort of contest across America to see if any towns would change their name to the name of the show in exchange for the producers promising to film an anniversary episode from that town every year.

Copy of the 1950 Newspaper about the Hot Springs name-change.

Hot Springs soon became Truth or Consequences, NM, and the show’s host Ralph Edwards visited every year until he died.  I suppose that story is more cute than odd, but there are some other weird things about TorC that I noticed as well.

There are little rocket stickers on some of the road signs, and when I inquired what that was all about I was told that TorC is the closest town to the spot where Sir Richard Branson is building one of his fancy space ports to launch other uber-rich people into orbit.  Before you even get excited, let me tell you that the site is indeed 30 miles outside of town, but visitors are totally unwelcome there, townsfolk are very tight-lipped about it, and consequently I have no pictures and only tall tales to tell.  Sorry about that, but I can tell you about some other weird things involving TorC that I did get to behold with my own eyes…

For instance, I left the van parked and unattended downtown for an hour whilst I went in search of coffee.  When I came back there were two evenly spaced cassette tapes resting on my windshield wiper with a note written on one of them in black sharpie.  It said “Alert more than 50 others!  Spread the word!  Begin!”  One tape had classic rock tunes and was called ‘Road Trip Volume II’, and the other was some tacky version of Jingle Bells…  I’ve thought a lot about this, and I still don’t get the joke.

The Mystery Tapes

Secondly, I woke up the morning after the tape drop to J.T. handing me a dirty sheaf of papers that she had found outside the van’s door.  They are conspiracy theory articles, and they are also emblazoned with black letters saying I have to spread the word and alert people.  Wtf?  Who sends the Canadian in the van these messages?  I don’t know, but the papers said it’s my duty to spread the word… and the tapes said so, too.  Perhaps I can just combine the messages?  Here goes:

There’s a lot of crookedness to be exposed in Russia today!  Wake up, Americans!  Tell 200 people!  I’m doing my share and telling you that I believe!  JETHRO TULL IS AWESOME!

Sorry it’s been awhile, but J.T. and I are just relaxing in the sun in Arizona City while we hang out with her dad, so not a whole lot has been going on.  The only thing I do feel a need to talk about still is Roadkill!  Yes.  Really!

Here’s a fun fact:  J.T. is traveling all over the continent with a stuffed bear named Roadkill Bobby (aptly titled because he is so very flat and old now that it’s like he’s been run over a few times).  I don’t find it weird that Bobby hangs out in the back of the van… in fact, I’m rather used to him now.

This is Roadkill Bobby

While we were in Bisbee, Arizona, J.T. and I were invited to a film festival at a bar called Hot Licks (or something like that).  During the festival, a local filmmaker called “Roadkill Bill” would be showing his three short films.  J.T. and I took it as a good sign of coincidence that this man had a similar moniker to her bear, so we went.

Turns out, Bill is not referred to as Roadkill for being flat, stuffed, or old;  his name comes from the fact that he made a short film using real roadkill as marionettes.  Seriously!  Un-treated, non-taxidermy, rotting-in-the-movie-while-he’s-making-it-talk roadkill!  For 12 minutes, my mouth hung open and I was stupefied!

Here’s a clip from Youtube so you can see what I mean: Roadkill Clip

The plot is that a certain squirrel keeps borrowing everybody’s stuff and never giving it back, so this angry rabbit wants to put together a vigilante gang to go and beat the crap out of the squirrel and teach it a lesson.  Fising line is threaded through jaws and wings etc in order to animate the carcasses, and I got to see a flattened possum with a broken jaw (which still flapped about eerily as it “talked”), a super-squished and partially mummified weasel, a pig’s head, a rotting duck with a moving bill, a rabbit, and some snakes.  There’s even a house party scene where all the animals are in a little, diorama-style living room with tiny booze bottles stuck to their appendages.  Weird!  Bet you’ve never seen a dead rabbit curse like a trucker before!

These are the interesting things one can do while living in a van and mingling with locals in a small, artsy town.  Back in a few days with more tales of Arizona!

THE Tombstone—full of cowboy ghosts,actors recreating the O.K. Corral gunfight, and souvenirs that say “Earp”.  Man, I was so excited upon properly reading the map that I cursed like a sailor and then drove straight to Tombstone from Oro Valley and unknowingly arrived an hour before the Ghost Tour started.  Un-be-freaking-lievable!  Horseshoes, Miller!  Horseshoes!

This may be a long blog post, dear readers, as I intend to rave about how ten dollars bought me the opportunity to hunt ghosts!  It’s now kind of  ironic that J.T. and I made so many jokes about Supernatural and then filmed a video mockingly pretending to investigate The Thing in Benson—as we later got to truly investigate The Crystal Palace and the O.K. Corral.

But first, I feel a need to write about a faux-dead person that I can see.  Pre-Tombstone, J.T. and I spent some lovely days in Oro Valley with a guy who’s just started his own photo blog where his gimmick is to photograph himself looking deceased in a variety of places.  To answer your possible immediate questions: yes, it’s a little strange, but it’s an original idea.  No, he isn’t really dead.  Yes, I let him inside the van, and no, I did not kill him in it—I just took the picture for him.  You can check out the photo at http://deadat.posterous.com/

Anyhoo, last Saturday night I rolled into Tombstone just past sunset (har har—guess I took too long looking at The Thing…) and took an educational walking tour of Tombstone in the dark.  A local guy who works as a paranormal investigator (yes, there are such people, and no… he did not look a bit like Jensen Ackles) took a group of us tourists around town and told us some true lore about the town.

He said there are three types of hauntings:  Residual, Intelligent, and Demon—as well as some sort of side dish involving an imprint on time where a moment in history repeats itself without an actual spirit continually haunting a certain spot.  He told us about a man named Justice Jim (someone who, whether officially or unofficially, “ran” the town back in the late 1800s) and how he was shot in the front office of the O.K. Corral.  Since then, a lot of people have seen a spirit with a balding head and bushy beard walking down the main street, peering out the window of the office, or standing in its doorway looking contemplatively at tourists.

The Investigator also told of the infamous Bisbee Massacre, where five men from Tombstone rode into Bisbee to rob the general store where the copper miners cashed their paychecks.  The men unfortunately arrived before the paycheck money, and decided to rob everyone in the store (as well as anyone who happened to walk by) as a sloppy Plan B.  When one of the hostages looked as if they were reaching for a weapon, the men executed everyone against the back wall of the store—including a pregnant woman from Tombstone.  A posse was sent from Tombstone to round up the men and one of them later experienced a little vigilante justice when an angry mob of locals strung him up over a telegraph pole near the Tombstone Courthouse as a symbol of what happens to a man that kills one of their own.

Apparently, the hanging of John Heath over the telegraph pole left an imprint on time, and a little old lady who lives near the site often wakes in the middle of the night to the sounds of a crowd outside in the street.  The Investigator said that one night, the woman made it to her window in time to see a hazy crowd of folks wearing old-fashioned clothing.  Too cool!

After the walking tour, J.T. and I got to explore the O.K. Corral in the dark.  We were encouraged to use sound recorders, camcorders, and cameras to pick up paranormal activity, and at one point I was totally alone in the Corral—not counting all the mannequins dressed up like Wyatt Earp.  Yes it was creepy, but also completely cool, and during moments where I should be nervous my brain goes on autopilot anyway.  It may not be that I have a lot of guts… it’s probably that I leap first before over-thinking.

I took a lot of photographs, shot a lot of video, and took a ride on Champion, the “ghost horse” of the O.K. Corral.  There’s more than one ghost tour available in Tombstone, and our Investigator man told us that one of them leads a crowd to the wall outside the Corral and says that if they all listen closely, they’ll hear a ghost horse whinny in the night.  The ghost horse is actually a children’s pony ride named Champ that costs fifty cents…

After walking around the Corral and relocating J.T. near the Blacksmith’s shop, I got to participate in a seance-type thing inside the office where Justice Jim was shot and his bearded spirit was later seen.  We stood in the dark and one of the other Investigators (who is himself haunted by a ghost named Johnnie) asked questions like “Is there anybody here with us” and “Can you tap on something or move something to let us know you’re here?”

I waited in complete darkness with my camcorder going.  I’m pretty sure I forgot to breathe and it was at that belated moment—after the walking tour and the solitary exploration of the Corral—that I finally realized just what the hell I was doing, and my brain said “Christ Kelly, what the f—?  You’re waiting for a bloody ghost to talk to you in the dark… who does that!?”  It was entirely too late to back out though, so I stood there and listened to the Investigator as he tried to provoke the ghost to do something—including inviting it to speak directly into my camera and telling it my name! You can all watch the video footage—which is mostly of blackness—but the goings-on are still cool to listen to.

Nothing big—according to me—happened in the office.  Others say that after the Investigator’s invitation to use my camcorder as a communication device, they heard a slight whisper or shuffle, but it’s barely audible in the footage.  I suppose a spirit may have been about six inches from my face, but I prefer not to think about it that way… There were also a lot of tapping noises near the ceiling (which I thought were cooling fluorescent light tubes), and another man with us in the office was adamant that he heard something moving inside a display case.  I did not see anything concrete though, and for that I’m almost sure  that I’m grateful.

As if it wasn’t nerve-wracking enough in the O.K.’s front office, I then stuck around Tombstone until one a.m. in order to participate in another two-hour paranormal investigation of an old bar called the Crystal Palace.  The lights went out and again everyone was told to use camera equipment to pick up orbs, EVP (the voice phenomenon thing) and any wispy spirits that might stop to pose for pictures.

J.T. and I looked for ghosts in all the Palace’s known-to-be-haunted areas; the men’s room (yes, really), the roulette wheel (on top of which sits some old patron named Angel’s ashes in a can…), the pool table, and the basement.  It should have been really terrifying but we were put into a group with two dudes, and one of them was That Guy—the loud, un-funny, comedian-type windbag that ruins it for the rest.  There’s always a guy like that guy, eh?  Like a glitch in the matrix or a black fly in your Chardonnay—he’s unavoidable, really.  Piss off a writer and they’ll immortalize you as an idiot in their novel… Do something idiotic around me and I’ll display your douche-baggery on Youtube.

At the end of the Palace investigation (when the witching hour was well and truly past), the Investigators told us to tell any spirits that may be present not to follow us home.  Apparently it’s possible for dead folks to attach themselves to live ones and follow them around.  Because J.T. and I are ridiculous, we left the Crystal Palace and were so preoccupied with the idea of taking a three a.m. stroll around empty Tombstone that we forgot to say the key phrase and save ourselves from future freaky moments.  Oops.

We strolled through dark, windy streets listening to the reproduction tin signs creak and headed for the Courthouse to check out the area around Heath’s  telegraph pole.  It was absolutely thrilling in a terrifying sort of way, and everything went smoothly until J.T. looked down and saw a crazy little black cat cross her path.  This “cat” (I use the term loosely based on its subsequent behavior) started to moan and growl at us, and that was the end of our Courthouse adventure.  We walked (almost calmly) back to the van, and the growling continued to echo and follow us up the street, around the corner, and back towards the Crystal Palace.

At that point, J.T. and I both remembered to say the line about not following us and then the growling stopped.  Needless to say, I got the hell out of there and spent the night parked on the side of the highway near the Bisbee Tunnel.

Stay in Tombstone; don’t follow us to Texas!

Video:

Black Cat Moan

One Night at the O.K. Corral

That Guy

So there's an orb by the guy's elbow... These were all taken in darkness in the Crystal Palace's basement. I'm going to tell myself it's a dust ball!