| [Prologue - I decided to participate in the MO. Dept. of Conservation's Nature Scramble - the MDOC divided the state into four regions, eacho one has two conservation areas and a Nature Center. The object is to go to both of the conservation areas, find the sign with the scrambled word, and then unscramble them, go to the nature center and descramble the word there and then using key letters, you have to complete a phrase. Once you do this for one region you gt a pin. Complete two regions, you get the 2nd pin, and some coolie cups and a conservation atlas, 3 regions and you get a six pack cooler. If you get all 4 done you get a tote bag, 5 dept of conservation videos, a cd-rom game and a copy of the Missouri Nature Viewing Guide! Plus everyone who competes all 4 get entered in the Grand Prize Drawing for a camera a tent, binoculars and a GAZEBO! So anyay... that's why i'm doing this road trip thing...] 12:26 pm After only 3 hours of sleep I got up and took off in my car, three hours later (give or take some) and i'm sitting in a rest area, 20 miles out of St. Joseph, eating lunch. I'm really happy, I just unscrambled one of the words for this region (CESPNLIA)*! Now i only have two more stops to make, two more words to unscramble and one phrase to decode before i can go home. Like I said, it's a fun trip and i've really been enjoying hte day! The sun is out, it's nice and warm, and there's a great smell in the air. Best part of all.. I ahven't thought about Marie! Well I'm off again... more to come throughout the day 1:35 pm Well I blew a bunch of turns and stuff andnow it's taken me 1 hour to go thirty miles! Anyway, this place (Bluffwoods conservation Area) is TRES STUPIDE! All this place is, is a freaking gravel lot and a picnic shelter, supposedly there are some trails around here, but I don't see them ANYWHERE! At least the word was easy to get - EOTVLI! 2:07 pm I've now wasted another half an hour fucking around, and I nearly ran out of gas! Luckily I was able to get to Rushville and they had astation threre although they didn't accept credit, so I ended up using the three dollars cash that I had with me to pay for the gas. [I started the day with only four dollars cash. I spent .75 for a soda at lunchtime, and then 3.00 for gas at rushville, pop. 303 and then I used my remaining quarter when I got back to eldorado, so I could call (Brian?) Taylor's house] Anyway, I'm getting back on the road, and now I've got to make some SERIOUS time... 3:36 pm KICK FUCKING ASS!!! Got to the Western Region HQ and got my booklet verified! SWEET! QISREUSRL posed NO challenge for me. I have my western region pin (sea otter) and now I'm going on a hike! P.S. My left arm is very sunburnt for having it hanging outside my car all day! (OOPS!) 4:46 pm Just got done with the hike, it was pretty cool. I came across a turtle lying in the middle of the path, so I took a picture from about two feet away (hee...)! Somehow I don't think he enjoyed the flash... The path made it's way along a raviene and then it wound through some really big moss-covered rocks there were tons of bugs that kept buzzing me, so when I was done with the trail I went to the restroom to clean a few of them out of my eyes... While I was in there, I discovered that the left half of my face is burnt (yeah, I'm looking pretty cool, let me tell you!) 5:45 pm Stopped at a gas station because a radio station was doing a live broadcast and they were gving away stuff... I almost bought some fireworks but didn't. 7:42 pm Ok, so now I'm sitting front and center at the Eldorado Springs Town Park. The band is supposed to be playing in just less than 20 minutes, but the only sign of them is this really old hunchbacked lady sitting in the gazebo. earlier i saww her running about putting music on the stands, so I'm assuming that this is the right place. Eldorado is a pretty goofy town. It has the looks of an old-time quaint little town circa 1940 maybe the fifties or even the twenties... I'm really not sure now that I thinki about it. I can almost guarantee that it definately wasn't the 1930's - everyone was too damn depressed back then, and they probably didn't have a lot of money to be putting towards nice town parks. Anyway, getting back to the point of eldorado Springs being peculiar - I had to stop at McDonalds to ask for directions, of the eight or so people in the resturant, only one had an idea of their actually being a park in the city, and even then she wasn't all that sure of where it was! After following her rather vague directions, I came across it, it couldn't have been more than two miles from where McDonalds was! Ok, some chick just asked me if I was doing homework... WHAT THE FUCK BITCH, DON'T YOU KNOW I GRADUATED?!?!?! Well, now I'm just sitting here enjoying my dinner of planters corn chips, raisinetts and Nestle's Chocolate milk (make that Nestle's Quick). It's pretty sad, I spent the rest of my money back at Rushville, so I ended up having to find a convienience store, here in Eldorado, that accepted credit cards... which was by no means an easy feat. The dumb thing was that they didn't have a charge machine inside the store, so I had to go to the island by the gas pumps so I could pay for my food! PART 2 |