Day 21... Missouri Ghost Hunting

Drove about 115 miles. Saw the Missouri State Penitentiary and thought, that sound fun. The only tour available yesterday was a night 'ghost' tour. OK. $25 dollars later, I was trying to figure out how to kill time til 8pm in the 104 degree day. I shopped in an antique flea market for three hours (both cats in one box by the front door); I bought more birds. We sat in McDonalds for two hours. I bought a bunch of ice at Walmart, thinking it would cool down the ambiant temp in the trailer. No.

At 8pm, the trailer was still 101, and the cats were hot. I shoved each between two ice buckets and left. Torah rested his chin in the ice bowl and licked the melting water.

The ghost tour was fine. The penitentiary was more intetesting. I guess as a dedicated sceptic, I expected more spookiness in the story telling to get people working up enough to see things. Instead, the stories were focused on who saw what on some other tour and how that must have been because a guy in that cell was stabbed in the eye. I was more interested in the dead guy and why his fellows stabbed him than some woman feeling ill because she sensed his presence.

The last stop was the gas chamber. 40 people had been put to death there. Wanna sit in the chair for a picture? No I do not. The percentage of people who sat there, then suddenly died is to high for me to tease statistics.

Day 20: is it hot or is it just me?

Miles: 353.

The problem with it being so hot, other than the spontaneous fires starting every where, the droughts and dying crops, and the eminent decline of the planet due to climate change, not to mention the guilt of taking road trips like this in a gas dependent vehicle, is you can't actually enjoy the journey. I don't mean the fear and guilt, though you can see now I have that too.

I mean the cats.

The trailer stays the same temperature as outside, up to 10 degrees hotter if it's sunny. The cats get pretty distressed above 90, and can't escape to a cooler place in the confines of Alice. With eastern Kansas dancing at 110 all day, it's been a tough day. I was able to stop for a couple 15 minutes intervals if I parked in the shade and left the windows rolled up. Yes, up. The AC cooled air would stay cool about that long. If I rolled them down, the car quickly heated to above 90. But mostly, I didn't want to risk it.

I had made a list of all the nifty places I wanted to stop today. Somehow, time got away from me. I skipped Brown v Board. I drive to "Oz", but was met with a town with no parking, and no good mural to photograph and no shade to risk going into the museum. That 20 mile excursion pushed me past my deadline to make it to the marble factory for the demonstrations, even to the point when I realized I wouldn't make out there before they closed.

Frustrated, I sped.

I'm now at the difficult part of every road trip. With only 453 miles left, there is a temptation to hurry. This is why I have no pictures of Missouri or Illinois. I always hurry. I had planned to arrive on Friday, meaning I have three more driving days. But as you can see with today's mileage, when it's hot, I can't stop til it cools of enough to cool the trailer.

And there's no way I would stop with only 100 miles left. Which means I can't drive more than, say, 275 miles tomorrow. How will I pass the time?

Meremec Caves, Missouri

A tourist ploy rumored these caves to be the secret hide-out of Jesse James. Hundreds of freeway billboards call to passing drivers to see the kitschy phenomenon. I chose to not go to those caves, instead opting for the state park of the same name, with a large, wet cave stripped of all strange artifacts. It did have a paved walkway, courtesy of FDR and the CCC.

Large caverns with the tips of their stalactites chipped off (for head-clearance) used for dancing in a bygone day. The only remnant of these activities, other than the chipped rocks (some whose white-bone centers still gleamed as though only exposed yesterday) was a carved-wooden head, hidden behind a rock that had one time been set up as a type of ghost-guardian of an ancient graveyard.

The woman who gave me the tour was in her early twenties. She had a pixie haircut, and her arms were covered in ivy tattoos. While I wanted her talk to be more adult-educational, I was satisfied with the facts she had learned to teach the various school groups who come through the caves. (She compared everything to a soda can, which many times lacked in accuracy. An adult has a broader range of simile objects that would explain the movement of water and carbon more clearly.) As I was the only one on the tour, we talked around many subjects about the woods, including bugs and spiders.

"I was once bitten on my back by a brown recluse," she said brightly. "Do you know what the bite does?"

Picturing the images I have seen on the web of flesh around such bites dying, flaking away to reveal the bone of an unfortunate man's hand, I said, "Yes, it makes the flesh die."

"That's right," she said, glancing at her hand, and I knew we had seen the same pictures on the Internet. Her's apparently didn't progress as bad as those bites, only causing a small amount of skin to turn grey and flake away when scratched.

When I first moved to Indiana, I had been looking for pictures of the recluse spider so I would know what to look out for. I knew about the "violin marking" but was always vague about the rest of the spider. I can pick a black widow out of a crowd, discretely covering her belly to try to hide her true nature, but a recluse is more elusive. Hence, my web searches which revealed the bites more than the spiders.

Later that day at Meremec State Park, I went on another hike, saw another cave, then broke camp for what I knew would be the last time on the trip. I had to go to the bathroom, and went to the camp restrooms rather than use mine (since I will have to think about emptying and winterizing soon). The first stall was filled with flies, the second was wet with muddy foot prints. The third seemed good, and after I sat down and looked ahead of me from the stool, I thought, "Ah, that is what a brown recluse looks like." Just like that, I knew it and could tell. It had made a web between the top of the stall door and the wall, and was hunched on the door hinge waiting for what might fall into its ugly, cottony web. It seemed to stare at me, the little violin shape on the throax, it's legs splayed out, with something of a slimy look to its texture.

I left the bathroom carefully, then told the rangers. They said I could keep it free of charge.