I think we’re back?

So wtf happened?

Two hours before leaving for the airport, my isp, iinet, decided it was going to fail. I checked everything my end, I can see traffic is leaving my apartment, and hitting a device outside my apartment. I definitely have connectivity. I give them a call, and they think everything is working, except something did fail overnight. Huh, that’s odd, if they look closely they can see a device (in my complex?) has no signal. But they can’t restart it and have to have someone else do it, or something. I’m not sure.

But there’s nothing I can do, I trust them with it. So I setup some retries, and off to the airport we go. At the airport, they try to call me, but I missed the call. They do send me a message, asking when it’s convenient to receive a callback. I reply that I’m available immediately, and wait for the next 2 hours for them to call again. They don’t.

After landing, I have no service, which is understandable, I don’t have roaming setup. I figure I’ll deal with it at my final destination. Another quick flight to Indy, and I’m done. Time for some sleep.

Fortunately my buddy picked me up without issue, seeing as how I have no contact.

With no phone, the only option to contact iinet at all is via their online sales chat. For some reason they only have sales chat, I guess when your internet is down, you can’t use a browser on your phone or anything like that, you would only want to call someone, right? Sales is super unhelpful. A true master class in not comprehending the situation. They have no visibility of tech supports system, and don’t have any sort of internal chat system to engage tech support. So the conversation goes something like this:

• Is there a number I can have support call you on?
• Sure (my hosts phone number)
• We don’t call international, do you have a local number support can call?
• Sure (my buddy Seans number)
• Great, since you have an Australian phone, can you please call us?
• No, I’m not there, that’s my friend in Australia, I am not in Australia, and you just asked for a number to call.
• Ok, I’ll have support give him a call. Is there anything else we can help with?
• My phone is with y’all, can you enable roaming?
• We don’t have roaming.

Support calls my buddy, confirms that he isn’t me, and refuses to provide an update on the case.

I guess they do have some sort of communication from sales to support, just nothing that’s not completely useless, as they’re unable to provide the additional context of “user is out of the country for 6 weeks and needs an update on the support case, because his 6 week trip that he is already on depends on it.”

There’s a part of me that feels that if I was involved, more would be done. Like uh.. maybe understanding and explaining the situation to support. Something that demonstrates that I don’t huff paint, at the very least. Like it should not have been a surprise to support that they weren’t talking to me.

Oh well, back to sales I go to try and explain the situation using single syllable words, maybe getting an escalation, and… “you are not authorized to use this service”.

My ISP, iinet, has blocked my only avenue of contact.

Welp.

I’ve basically spent the past 10 days, 1/4 of my trip, recovering what I can. Maybe tomorrow I’ll drop an updated plan.

Today was a day of visual spectacle. At least, I assume. It’s been a while since I created the draft of this, and it’s just called “Scenery”. Let’s find out together what happened, as I re-acquaint myself with the map.

We wake up in a Loves truck stop, in Hooker, OK. It’s probably chilly, but not snowing. I don’t remember snow. Reviewing the footage, it’s dark. So incredibly dark.

Hello?

We must drive on, until it is light. As the sun cracks the horizon, we stop to fuel up, before resuming our endless trek. We round the next corner, and there it is. US Highway 512. The longest straight road in America. At least if you believe our travel guide.

It’s kinda hilly though. It might be straight, but at no point did I think “I can see forever”

I don’t recall if it was planned, however after the road we spotted “No Man’s Land Beef Jerky”. Turns out this is actually their HQ and where they make stuff, but they don’t actually distribute much from here, they just have a small shelf. They did have some samples on the counter, and we found a couple of great flavors and bought some from their small shelf.

They also had a bunch of cats.

For reasons unclear, we stop just after crossing in to New Mexico, which is also a couple hundred meters past the corner of Texas. I didn’t even realize. There was a whole segment of the Santa Fe Trail here too, but looking back on it, it’s just… road.

Then following the theme of doing things but not knowing why, we went to the Springer, NM police office. I think we were looking for maps, or the visitor center. To get maps. This certainly seems logical, given our history. I’d like to say we succeeded, since we did stop at the visitor center in Springer, NM, but we did also stop at the next rest area, so who knows… who knows…

Eventually we ended up in Las Vegas, NM, which is not as interesting as you might think. We did get hit up an antique shop there, where I got a couple of things. One of which being the book The Last of the Mohicans – the movie adaption of this has one of Purples favorite soundtracks, and we had been listening to it over the past couple of days, so when I saw the book, it seemed right to get it for him.

Since we were sorta following the Santa Fe trail, we stopped at a memorial near Pecos National Park. I picked up a cool rock.

Our next stop was one of those “hey, that looks cool, turn around and go back” deals. The Canoncito Sculpture Garden is some art stuff that’s just… there. There’s a lot of welded artwork, depicting horses and hearts, and a lot of things carved out of rocks.

Finally, at long last, we arrive at Home of Eternal Return, the highlight of the day. Home of Eternal Return is an art installation by the collective known as Meow Wolf. Basically they just got like 100 artists, and a big warehouse area, gave them a theme+story and said “make something”. There’s a whole thing about different dimensions and time travel and stuff, with an interactive plot woven in. Once you collect all the information, you should have enough knowledge to open a safe at the end for a final piece of the puzzle. Lots of newspaper article, books, lights, and just stuff. We spent several hours wandering through and exploring, but I didn’t get many pictures.

The art never stops, of course, they have a great gift shop, which stocks keychains, and a giant robot outside.

That mostly sums up our trip to New Mexico. We headed out, and backtracked across a lot of the road already traveled, eventually diverging at the previously mentioned Springer, before stopped at a truckstop 10km north of town. That’s probably where the NM keychain came from.

That just about wraps this one up, only a few more to go, if you’re still reading, big thanks.

Summary

• Daily Distance: 811km / 504 miles
• Total Distance: 5044km / 3134 miles
• Keychains: 2 new, 15 total
• Maps acquired:
  • Georgia
  • Alabama
  • Florida
  • Texas
  • Louisiana
  • Arkansas
  • Oklahoma
  • New Mexico (new!)
• Days behind live: (days until June 14)

It’s been Spooktober most of my trip, and today is peak Spooktober: Halloween. We had 70 Trick or Treaters. One was dressed like a dinosaur.

Flying out tomorrow, I’ll be landing Friday morning. Then hopefully I’ll get my Internet back up, and post some more blogs.

Waking up it was time for another shower. 2 showers in 12 hours, sheer luxury. Strange Brew opened at 10, but we were awake, and heading back this way after the next stop anyway, so next on the checklist was the Chaffee Barbershop Museum. This place is famous for being the place Elvis got his haircut when he joined the army, but it’s also generally a small military museum. Not much to say, but my buddy likes Elvis, so we went.

Back to the Strange Brew, and it was keychain time. Also random miscellaneous gifts for other people.

Moving on, we dropped in to a truckstop for refueling and another keychain.

Next up, we found a visitor center to finish our pizza, and pick up another keychain and the Oklahoma map. Not much of note here though, just very windy, and some dogs.

Ok, that was a lot of not much really fast. Today was all about the next museum though – The Museum of Osteology, also known as The Skeleton Museum. This was definitely the best stop of the trip so far. Basically this kid was turned from the path of collecting animal bones to the part of collecting animal bones professionally. Instead of the alternative, which is collecting human bones.

It has highlighted that extended walking/standing can be problematic with my ankle though. I sure hope I learn that lesson. But we’re not done yet.

Next up was a long drive out to the intersection of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado. We’re not getting to 4 corners on this trip, so this is uh.. the best we can do.

Getting here involves a spoiler warning for tomorrow, as we’re going halfway down the longest straight road, but whatever. So we rolled up on the marker, took some photos and headed back to a truck stop for the night.

Summary

• Daily Distance: 962km / 598 miles
• Total Distance: 4233km / 2630 miles
• Keychains: 4 new, 13 total
• Maps acquired:
  • Georgia
  • Alabama
  • Florida
  • Texas
  • Louisiana
  • Arkansas
  • Oklahoma (new!)
• Days behind live: like, all of them

Wake up. Drain the swamp. Feed the blog. Acquire coffee and a keychain. Depart for Magazine Mountain (highest point in Arkansas).

See something shiny. Rocks and glass and crystals. Seems pretty cool. They also have keychains.

The railroad spikes are free. You can take them. I have 2 railroad spikes in my trunk.

Hang-glider launch? Sure!

Finally, at long last, the highest point.

Ha ha! Time for Popeye!

All the recent activity, combined with it being warm, means it’s time for a hotel. The plan was tomorrow, but the plan isn’t my supervisor. We check in, have a shower, and go wandering to find some food.

Crossing the road to see some building art, we find the Strange Brew Occult Shop. It’s full of interesting stuff, but we don’t want to be carrying things around, so we continue on, but make plans to come back in the morning.

Wrapping up the day we got pizza and a whole bunch of cider, before heading back to the hotel for real sleep.

Summary

• Daily Distance: 318km / 198 miles
• Total Distance: 3271km / 2032 miles
• Keychains: 2 new, 9 total
• Maps acquired:
  • Georgia
  • Alabama
  • Florida
  • Texas
  • Louisiana
  • Arkansas
• Days behind live: 3

Quick day today, because I am behind on the updates. We pick up in Lake Charles, and we pick up a scorpion keychain. It glows in the dark. Not the scorpion, that would be too realistic.

Crossing in to Texas, we grabbed our first map of the day, and took a wander through the visitor center. It’s basically built on swampland, and out the back they have a boardwalk where you can walk out in to the swamp. It definitely set a high bar for future visitor centers. Speaking of which, we turned around and went back in to Louisiana to grab the map from there which we missed on the way in. They also had a swamp boardwalk. Unlike Texas though, they had interesting animals. No ‘gators though.

We really only had one planned stop in Texas, a burger from Redacted Burger. Which was a pretty damn solid burger. The dude behind the counter appreciated my shirt, #winning.

Moving on from Redacted Burger, we turned north to Arkansas, however passing through Huntsville, Texas, we spotted a Good Will store and stopped in to pick up a mascot and a pair of shoes. Not the mascot I wanted, but the mascot we deserve.

There was also a Hobby Lobby next door, so I grabbed a keychain and some velvet rope for reasons. Maybe some other gifts. It all blurs together, we’ll find out when we empty the car.

At this point our next stop was 450km away, so we made the decision to add a new rule: unless we have a reason not to, we should take interstates after dark. It’s faster, safer (less chance of animals), and there’s not really much to look at after dark anyway. So it’s fine to cover miles, and cover miles we did, all the way up to the Gurdon Lights, which is meant to be a place where you can walk down the disused railroad track, and see mysterious lights in the sky, which are always visible.

After driving to the middle of nowhere, we park the car, grab our flashlights, and start walking down the tracks. It’s not clear where the lights are meant to be though. There’s a followable trail, but it’s not great. After crossing two sketchy bridges, the trail opens up to a well maintained, 2m wide trail. We’re not sure what to expect, but so far we haven’t found anything, although it’s quite creepy. Especially when in the distance we can a small shack in the center of the trail comes in to view. But we persist, cautiously approaching the shack, which turned out to be a hunters blind. Moving past it, we follow the trail until we hit a section that’s completely blocked off. At this point, all the information we have says we should have seen the lights by now.

Not much to do except go back, every 20 meters or so we turn off all the lights and stand in the dark, hoping to see something.

We never did.

Summary

• Daily distance: 1140km / 708 miles
• Total distance: 2953km / 1835 miles
• Keychains: 2 new, 7 total
• Maps acquired:
  • Georgia
  • Alabama
  • Florida
  • Texas (new!)
  • Louisiana (new!)
  • Arkansas (new!)
• Days behind live: 3

Waking up was not the greatest. It was a cold night, which means that the car turned in to a swamp, even with the windows cracked open. But as the saying goes: “when life gives you swamp water, microwave it and feed it to your blog so it can maintain a healthy and shiny coat.”

We went through all the standard POST steps, and headed back to the Peanut. The Peanut itself is kinda underwhelming. I mean, it’s pretty cool, but it’s next to a gas station that doesn’t even have keychains. It’s literally just a gas station that we would actively avoid in any other circumstances. I’ve now put more words in to describing the gas station than I have the Peanut. But still, it was pretty cool, and a treasured part of Americana history. It deserves the capital P.

Moving on from the Peanut itself, we drove a block or two to the actual Jimmy Carter National Historical Site. We’re still not sure if it’s part of a school and there’s a school break on, or if the site just lives at an old school. There was no students, either way. The tl;dr is that Jimmy Carter really loved peanuts. The gift shop, despite being part of a Peanut based economy, did not have a Peanut based keychain. I got a Terry the Bison instead.

Next on the list was the optional objective of Providence Canyon, which is like a mini Grand Canyon made in a sand pit, made over the period of a couple hundred years, instead of tens of thousands of years. Basically a couple hundred years ago they didn’t properly take care of the land, which resulted in uncontrolled erosion. Even now it’s an active process, with obvious signs of viewing platforms collapsing and such. At least they had keychains though, I got one with a geode.

Backing carefully away from the edge, we didn’t have much of a plan, the next planned event was to cross the Lake Pontchartrain bridge out of NOLA, which is probably the only common objective between this and other trips. This would take us through Alabama, Florida, and (duh) Louisiana. Alabama was largely uneventful, except there was a National Peanut Festival, which we took a look at. Because peanuts.

Not sure what is normally there, but it looks like a huge festival grounds, which we assume is also used for things other than the National Peanut Festival. If it’s not, that means that this huge area exists purely to support a yearly event. But there’s a lot of empty space in Alabama anyway, so maybe it does.

Next stop was getting my mate added to the car, so he can do some of the driving. That’s Florida though, which means another map. Florida map in hand, we headed to Pensacola, did some paperwork, and moved on with our lives without taking any photos. It’s a Budget shop-front. You don’t need photos. When we hit Louisiana, the Visitor Center was closed, which means acquiring a map would be difficult. Problem for tomorrow though.

Getting to the bridge was a bit of a mess, but we made it. It was a bridge. Long bridge. 30 miles or so. We had some time to kill, so we started to discuss dinner. I had a simple idea, and a bit of a plan. The idea was simple: find some food at the end of the bridge. The plan was even simpler: drive to the water and eat it while enjoying the watery view. It’s not the most precise plan, but my mate was willing to see how it played out.

Driving down the drag, we passed the usual chain fast food joints, none of which were appealing. All the local stuff appeared closed. There was a Mexican joint which was a possible candidate, but I had high hopes for a cluster of restaurants right next to the water. Turns out this was the correct option: the Beach House can best be described as a stereotype from a movie. An open air bar, warm sea breeze, great food. It was like something out of a movie.

A poboy and waffle fries later, and we’re back on the road, heading vaguely west. Around midnight we stopped at a Love’s in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and bedded down for the night.

Summary

• Daily distance: 1213km / 754 miles
• Total distance: 1813km / 1127 miles
• Keychains: 2 new, 5 total
• Maps acquired:
  • Georgia
  • Alabama
  • Florida (new!)
• Days behind live: 3

We got off to a slow start, because you gotta have breakfast, innit. Breakfast was burgers, seems like a very Southern thing.

After a shower and breakfast burgers, we got on the road heading south-ish. First stop was our optional objective, the Red Top Mountains. It was uh.. false advertising. I don’t know if it can legally be called a mountain. It was a nice area though, and given infinity time we’d definitely do some trail hiking. But, we don’t have infinite time, so all I got was a keychain, a little something special, and we extended the line on the map through to the next park.

At this point mild panic started to settle in, as I couldn’t find the rest of my keychain. After some hunting and contacting people, it was located safe and sound in Indy, and the panic subsided.

Late afternoon, we hit out second optional objective, the Heechee Chattahoochee Bend state park. There was a scenic overlook. Somewhere. We couldn’t find it, but it was a nice detour, and we got to do a turn-around down someone’s driveway in the middle of rural Georgia. The park itself was a nice place once we found it, but we also didn’t get anything, or go for a hike.

Next up, we knew that when we left Georgia, we’d be going through Alabama, but we also knew we’d need a route planned ahead of time when we got there. So before it became an issue, we drew a red line on the map to the state exit, and back in a little further south.

Then we did what the line said.

We must always do what the line says.

All hail the line.

With our Alabama map collected, the next line segment was to Plains, GA, to find ourselves a giant peanut. As it started to get dark though, we found a random Walmart in Columbus, and made sammiches while eyeballing the river.

By the time we reached it though, it was after nightfall, so we drove past to Cordele to find a nice truckstop, and bed down for the night.

Summary

• Daily distance: 600km / 373 miles
• Total distance: 600km / 373 miles
• Keychains: 1 new, 3 total
• Maps acquired:
  • Georgia
  • Alabama
• Days behind live: 1

Like all good adventures, this one starts with a birthday that isn’t actually part of the adventure. It’s like a framing device, except there’s cake. In accordance with the prophecy, my buddy’s grand niece has aged, and so it must be recognized.

But before the birthday there was breakfast, which at a restaurant would probably be classed as a “if you can finish it you eat free” type deal. Some card games, a walk of the property, and then off to the birthday.

There was cake, there was presents, there was explosions, there was confetti, there was a broom, there was singing, there was a fire, there was marshmallows, there was hotdogs. It was just all around wholesome fun for the whole family, and a couple of people from the local BJJ club. If you’re reading this… hi.

So that wraps up our first day in GA, stay tuned for day 1 where we hit the road in search of peanuts.

The elites don’t want you to know this but the maps at the visitor information center are free. You can take them home. I have 2 maps.

I headed off for GA this morning, got here around 930pm or so. It was mostly uneventful, except for two noteworthy events.

The second: the GA visitor information center where I grabbed a couple of maps.

Having arrived in GA, we started working out a plan. Now the original plan was a little messy, but overlaid on historical and future trips, it looks something like this:

Now I know this is a lot to take in, so we can simplify it a bit.

Let’s break this down:

• Peanut
• Bridge
• Burger
• Spooky
• High
• Popeye
• Museum
• Museum
• Museum (unknown)
• Road
• Road
• Meow
• Road
• High
• Gallery
• Wire
• Sculptures
• Salt
• COSMOSPHERE
• Henge (maybe)
• Goose
• Chair
• Icebox
• Henge
• Birds
• Machinery
• NASA
• Oil
• Mid
• Whale
• Weird shit
• Guns
• Jesus
• Naked Joe
• Crystals
• Swamp (but not wordpress, it’s a different swamp, no microwaves)

All this and more in just two weeks? Maybe. Who knows. I haven’t written it yet, but we’re going to avoid phone based maps generally, and stick with paper and hope. Here’s what we have so far for GA and getting to the Peanut:

There’s a pretty low quality image, so here’s what we’re gunna try and do:

1. We mark where we are / where we’re going (the farm and the Peanut).
2. We find optional places to visit, using the general rule of national parks are pretty and we don’t want to be stuck near Atlanta during rush hour.
3. We make a plan from green to pink to green, to figure out our final targets.
4. We assess the roads between targets, aiming to minimize interstate, and maximize pretty roads using local knowledge and the list of scenic byways.
5. We put in a red line along the road.

Once the red line is in, that’s it, we’re committed to that road. Will we always make it? Who knows. Also this took like an hour of planning to figure out how to get to the first pink dot. We’ll figure out the next step at the next dot, because if there’s one thing that sounds like fun, it’s going to *checks notes* Red Top Mountain, and trying to plan a route on a paper map.

It’s going to be a disaster. Oh, and I’m allergic to the kitten.