Well, as sometimes-threatened, we lead off today's installment with another revelatory visit to the Kamping Korner! In today's Korner, we get a serious lesson from Kristanne in how to keep it klean on the road. When you're chewing up the asphalt and spitting out the mileage markers, even the most hygienic of Kampers can find themselves packing some serious funk. You need to fear that funk -- it's a bad funk. It's the kind of funk that can scuttle an Odyssey faster than you can say, "honey, hose me off with the rear sprayer." Here we see Kristanne giving a timely lesson in how to avoid just such an accident. See that pot of water she's using to wash her face? That's no cold tap water -- that's the hot water left over from making our morning coffee. It's exactly that kind of innovative thinking that makes this Odyssey work. It's also the kind of thinking we feature regularly here in the Korner.
The Kamping Korner -- where Jack Horner would hang out if he weren't just a character from some fable.
Shortly after the Kamping Korner photo was taken, our site was invaded by the
little mugwump you see there at the right. After several raids on our van, we
took preemptive action and placed our bread outside the van, hoping to
avoid further incursions. But the
chipmunk wanted no part of this rapprochement. The way he saw it he had a
fait accompli in the van and saw no reason to cede his seat of power. He wanted
to keep us under his bootheels. Given Kissinger's
late-term failures viz-a-vis Chinese trade policy, we thought the old carrot-and-stick approach
might be ill-advised in this scenario. Plus, we were pretty sure
chipmunks don't like carrots. What to do? We were in imminent danger
of Finlandization -- we had to protect our position or risk irrelevance.
We chose life. We packed up the van and headed south for Colorado, but not before Kristanne managed to get the Scenic Shot of the Day. That's Indian Paintbrush down there, and you can be darn sure that it's the state flower of Wyoming. How about that -- we not only entertain, we also educate.
Today was scheduled to be a short day driving. We had decided to get a hotel room somewhere in Colorado so we could have uninterrupted access to a phone, a shower, and some outlets to charge our batteries. We also had a number of nagging little errands that needed to be taken care of online (for example, advertising this site on various bulletin boards and sending some emails to request reciprocal links with a couple other sites). Plus, we wanted to read our email!
So, we crossed into Colorado and headed down to Fort Collins. My brilliant line
of the day -- "Fort Collins is a military town?" -- caused Kristanne no end
of glee. Once we saw how close Fort Collins was to Boulder (our eventual destination),
we decided there was no reason just to keep on going. But first, I needed to check
my work email at Kinko's. And that's where we find the Extreme Shot
of the Day.
You might recall a mention in an earlier installment of the 'Extreme Hand Gestures' that Kristanne and I sometimes exchange when things really get wacky and out there. You know -- Extreme. Well, at the time, I dismissed the whole thing with an offhanded, "long story." I'm still not getting into the story, but here's an example of some Extreme Hand Gestures. Practice them. Learn them. It's how we know our Extreme Fellow Travellers.
Total Miles for 6/13 = About 80