Mushroom Hunting

We woke up bright and early. Not because we were excited to hunt mushrooms as much as the fact that my tent, which was all the rage in the 70's (where they apparently didn't believe in water proofing shit in the 70's), was soaked. And since I'm a dick and didn't want to be up alone I woke up Paul.... Ooops!

So we headed to the lodge to get our bearings and set off on the hunt. There we ran into the biggest cowboy I have ever met. He was wearing skinny jeans (and not because they were ironically cool but because he had been wearing them since the 60's), a fu man chu and chops that screamed "mess with me... I dare you!", and a leather vest. He was drinking coffee and had a look on his face that said "This coffee is chasing the whiskey I was drinking not three hours ago.

So we said, "Hi!"

Cowboy: "Howdy! (he replied in his best impression of John Wayne.) Where are you folks from?"

Me: "Wisconsin!"

Cowboy: "Oh! Your must hunt and fish all the time!"

Paul: "Actually we haven't done either."

Cowboy: "Well that's just a hangeable offense..." Uhh.... sorry? I hope he knows there are cities in Wisconsin. We don't just shoot shit.

Me: I awkwardly respond, "This place is beautiful!"

Cowboy: "Yep. This is where God spends his summers... Truuuuueee story..."

I instantly wanted to jump on a horse and ride into the sunset. This dude reeked western. But enough of this dude, time to hunt! for mushrooms that is....

This was no easy hunt. The trail was sloppy from rain, we didn't know what we were looking for, and it was 6 god damn 30 in the morning!

But we persevered! We hiked through the slop. We pushed on even though we hadn't had our starbucks fix. It was rough! We had to leap some logs....

We finally found what we were looking for. Check out the haul! For your experience to be closer to ours please play this song in the background while looking at the pictures. This is what we sang for about 3 miles of hiking....

Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger...


Mushroom! Mushroom!

Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger...


Mushroom! Mushroom!

Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger...


Mushroom! Mushroom!


A snake a snake! Snaaaaake a snaaaaake! Oooooooh it's a snaaake!

Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger...

Mushroom! Mushroom!

But the real find was this. Crazy!

It's the mushroom from super mario bro's! But more importantly its actually a hallucinogen called Amanita Muscaria growing in Arizona. Crazy!

Hannagan's Meadow

The day after Carlsbad Caverns, Paul and I set off to a place called Hannagan's Meadow. It didn't take a scholar to figure out that we were looking for a place with a meadow. I was excited. The terrain since Big Bend had been boring and I was excited to get into the White Mountains of Arizona. This specific place had been recommended by my uncle who had lived in Arizona for the greater majority of his life.

The Garmin starting dinging telling us we were close. We saw a sign! Business area!

Then we saw a lodge! Then we saw another sign! "End of business area. Next services 86 miles".... seriously? That was it?!?! That was Hannagan's Meadow?!? I honestly believe that 100 years ago a dude named Hannagan lived here. He would call up his friends and say "Hey dude's, come up here and visit me! I have a meadow!" He was so insanely popular that people started just simply saying, "Yeah, I'm going to Hannagan's Meadow!" This is the entire meadow, nice but nothing I'd name a "city" after!


About 10 feet past the sign we saw a campground.


So we pulled in to see if this was the place we wanted to stay.

Signs of an adventure:

#1 The sign below.

Seriously? Pay what you want? Sweet!

#2 We were incredibly excited to be somewhere beautiful and to be camping outside of a desert. We grabbed my frisbee and went to explore. Drugs couldn't have gotten us higher than we were at that moment.

#3 We decided to stop and talk to the camp host "Cliff."

Me: "Hey Cliff, my name is Nate and this is Paul."

Cliff: "Don't expect me to remember that...." Alright..... "you guys have tents?" Well.... we are camping.... "Get ready for some weather tonight...." Seems like he knows it's going to rain... "You always expect rain up here. I'm actually freaked out that the weather is so nice right now!" You could actually see the joy sink out of Paul and my face.

Me: "Well we are just excited to be in nature amongst trees. What trees are we in right now?"

Cliff: "I have no idea.... but that one's a ponderosa. So is that one. That one over there.... that's a ponderosa too." Alright Cliff, we get it. You know what a ponderosa is. Time to move on.

#4 Paul and I setting up out tents looking over at each other mentally saying "Dude, if you want to go rent a cabin I'm game." But neither of us has the balls to be the first to break the silence.

Well, instead of frisbee we went and bought 12 beers and a bag of ice. Now Paul doesn't drink any more because he is to busy stroking genitals (errr orgasmically meditating) in San Francisco. So those 12 beers were hypothetically for me.

Cliff hadn't lied. EVERYTHING was wet. And we hadn't brought any fire wood with us. This is a job for .... duh duh duuuuhhhh! Fire MacGyver!

We ended up finding some dry kindling, I chopped apart a tree with my 12 inch hatchet, (Ok, calm down ladies, it's actually a hatchet and it's only 12 inches long...) and we set up a complicated drying to burning system with stones, leverage, and maybe even a pulley.

We had been so nervous about the rain that we started the fire at 4:30. About an hour later Cliff came by and said, "Holy shit! You guys really got that going! Good job. Last week I brought an entire wheel barrow of my fire wood over to this guy and he couldn't get anything going." Wait... we could have gotten an entire FREE wheel barrow of fire wood from you?!? Dammit Cliff!!! No matter, things were looking up. We got a compliment rom the stoic Cliff, if didn't looks like it was going to rain, and we had fire!

Well, if you are a fellow camper (and I use that term loosely because I am including myself amongst us) we had gotten to the point of the fire where we were burning an entire tree. at 11:30 at night the skies suddenly opened up! Armageddon was upon us! We ran into the car to try to wait it out. You may ask why. It was late, we were tired, it was a perfectly good time to call it a night!

To that I respond, "You are obviously a chick." We had a tree burning!!! You don't walk away from those moments!

I personally think a man's instinct consists of three things:
#1 Have as much sex as possible and
#2 BURN SHIT!
and the third thing came shortly after. It was obvious the rain wasn't going to stop. So Paul and I came to the next conclusion. We were going to run out of the car, kick over the logs, and piss all over the fire. Now I can hear you saying "Eww... that's gross." to which I respond "If God didn't want men to piss all over things he wouldn't have given us a fire hose attached to our person! What do you have to say to that?!?!

Needless to say we had given into the rain. But that didn't kill the morning! You see, from the fellow campers that night we had learned that this was mushroom country! And we were determined to hunt!

Carlsbad Caverns

After we left Big Bend we ventured out of the way to see Carlsbad Caverns. It's one of the biggest public caves in the world. It was also one of the biggest tourist attractions around. Luckily with my National Parks Pass it was all free. Bring on the tourist trap! Being the avid hiker that I have become (I've been on three whole hikes since the trip began, oh yeah!) I threw on my hiking boots, strapped on my camel back, did a quick Hoohaa!, and set off. Turns out the entire walk is paved with handrails. A 12 year old girl did the entire hike in a walking cast. I was a bit over dressed.

Unfortunately I don't have a ton of pictures to show you because it was (BOOB!) to dark. Most pictures, even with a flash, didn't turn out. But here are a few of my favorites. It seemed like this cavern was Jim Henson's wet dream. I can see it now "ONE NIGHT ONLY! FRAGGLE ROCK ROCKS OUT IN CARLSBAD CAVERNS"


The opening just drops straight into the earth.


A bitchin' column where a stalactite met a stalagmite. I am creating a new word for this. A Stalagmiteictite. I think it's going to catch on.


This is called a lions tail. They say it's because it's like a lions tail, but it's obviously rock, not the tail of a lion. I don't know who they are foolin....












You can't tell me that you can tell the difference between these two pictures. Maybe carlsbad cavern's is suing Jim Henson for copyright infringement.


This is a forest of rocks. A Forock if you will.


This is the begining of the endless pit. It falls down 1300 feet from the surface. This picture was taken at 750 feet below the surface. Prett-ah Prett-ah Prett-ah Prett-ah Cool.


Stalactites, Stalagmites, Stalagmiteictites, dude flexing... You don't see the dude flexing? Third column in, roughly the middle of the picture. In Wisconsin we'd call that guy a Dooooouche baaaag....

After the caverns Paul and I grabbed lunch at the city closest to the Caverns. Check out the name of this city.


Racist much?

But I did find this street sign cool. It's like it knew where we had come from!

Big Bend

Left hand turn off the interstate. 123 miles to Big Bend and what can I see? Nothing! Just flat flat ranch land. Viva la Texas! A short 97 miles later we saw our first mountain! Paul and I were ecstatic! It was like I was 13 all over again and had just seen my first boob thanks to National Geographic's Africa issue. Just like that first boob, this was nothing to write home about. But we still stared and stared and stared and stared... anyways. We didn't have to get so excited. There was much more in stock. As seen from the picture below that is a view from our campground!


While walking around the campsite we met Richard and his sons who have been coming to Big Bend for 15 years. We asked him if he only had a day in Big Bend where would he hike. He told us first to hike the Lost Mine Trail then in the afternoon to hike The Window. But he warned us that we should leave for the first trail by 7 am to avoid the hot weather. We told him it wouldn't be a problem. We were jacked, ready to attack, and soon to be in the sack.... So 8:30 am rolled around and Paul and I were just about done with breakfast and ready to roll out. If you don't know, Paul is one of my best friends since the 3rd grade. That was when we invented the cricket trap. It was brilliant! Technical scale drawing below.

Paul had since moved to San Francisco to get a job and had started embracing his inner hippie. But I still loved him!

We set out on the trail and it was beautiful! It was well worth the hike. The strange part is that I had Paul in every one of my pictures. So I finally asked him to take a picture of me. Look how good it turned out!

Dick! He decided it looked better with a tree in front of me!

So we reached the summit and who did we run into? Richard! We sat down and proceeded into each other's life stories. Now as I mentioned Paul has embraced Peace, Love, and Sex since moving to San Francisco. If you don't already know , here is the weirdest thing he has embraced: it's called Orgasmic Meditation.

We are now into life philosophies and Richard, who is closer to 60 than 50 by the way, is pretty into meditation. Paul's eyes just lit up! He jumps into his thoughts saying "Well there is sitting meditation, moving meditation and floating meditation. We perform floating meditation where we..." Oh no, please don't. Not here, not now... "Stroke Genitals." For a second you could literally only hear crickets chirping. No I'm serious, we were in nature, crickets were actually chirping...

Richard handled it like a pro responding "Well... that sure is something. You know I used to have sex with a lot of beautiful women till I realized they are all terrible in bed. So now I sleep with women who are comfortable." Richard! There is a little bit of Dick in you after all! If you are more of a visual person, below is a thought bubble rendition of the talk. Conversation is approximated...


All in all Big Bend is a beautiful place. It should be on everyone's list of National Parks to visit!

Human Made Ridiculousness

I took off from St. Louis and started driving. In about an hour I saw a billboard that said "Would you like to see the worlds largest rocking chair?" Why yes, yes I would! So I drove 10 miles out of my way and got to see one of the best man made attractions ever. If you don't believe me check this shit out!


Totally worth it! Back on the road I figured out that I would be driving directly through Branson, Missouri. If you don't know what Branson is all about think Wisconsin Dells on crack. There is one main road filled with weird attractions. There is a large scale Titanic ship just chillin' in a parking lot, a wax museum, freak shows, everything you would want to spend 30 bucks. So of course I was going to stop. The real question was what is going to be the most absurd thing to stop at. Very early on I found it. The Hollywood Wax Museum!

The stop let me hang out with some beautiful women. I tried chatting this one up but she was pretty quiet in her response.


So I went to the biggest womanizer I know to ask for tips....


He didn't have much to say. So I decided to move on. The weird thing is that they had a bunch of movie characters. But their movie choices were strange. Like this one:

Really? Nic Cage makes sense. But you choose Ghost Rider?!?! Really?!?!

I know when I think of Jackie Chan or Owen Wilson I think of the movie Shanghai Noon! Such a great flick.

What really surprised me was how life like they made things. Look at how real Donald Trumps hair piece looks in this wax figure.


Luckily they saved the best for last. Making sure no one was around me I spent some time with one of the better actors. Someone that makes me feel like I'm the king of the world!


Oh Branson.... I love you so. But only really three hours at a time. After this I left for the Ozarks, which would later be derailed by rain. Duh Duh Duuuuuh!

The City Museum

My last stop in St. Louis was the City Museum. I found the address and set off arriving at the destination around 4:20. Which strangely was a very appropriate time to get there. This was no museum. This was a stoner's dream gym. I walked up to the gate and asked to pay admittance. The lady informed me that unfortunately the museum was closing in 40 minutes and that I should come back in the morning. I then informed her that I won't be even near the city tomorrow so back off and let me in! She was nice enough to cut my admission in half and told me that if I do anything I need to hit up the "Art City" and the "10-story slide."

I felt like a contestant in great amazing race. I was running around searching for clues. What is art city? A City made of Art or Art of a City? I had so many questions, so little time. I found Art City. It was a bunch of weird stuff clobbered together. It was pretty interesting. But the coolest thing was a fully functional giant rock 'em sock 'em robots machine! I wanted to play but I would have been about 2 feet taller than anyone else in line. Plus time was limited!




Not wanting to delay I quickly set out to find the 10-story slide. But the building only had stairs up till the third floor. Using my amazing deductive reasoning I figured this slide had to be on the 10th floor! See how I did that? So I approached a man wearing a city museum T-shirt and asked him where I could find the said slide. He told me to go to the elevators. I told him I got here 5 minutes ago and need to see everything because I am leaving on the rest of my trip in the morning. So he told me to follow him and walked out the exit. Thinking I had been duped into leaving the museum I was starting to get nervous. But he looked at the security guard, thumbed back at me, and said "Special request." And we were off. We got in an elevator with a bunch of other people, pushed floor ten (aha!), and then another secret button. When we got to the tenth floor he told everyone to get out, but then held me back. We get to go to the secret floor! So he started telling me about the building. A very rich man bought the building and started outfitting it. I asked why he wanted it to be so weird and he informed me that the man was pretty into The Wacky Tabacky, Lady Ganga, Gongo Bongo, Mary Jane. If you aren't hip to the cool those are all words I heard, or made up, for marijuana. It suddenly made sense why it felt like I had stepped into a real life Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Turns out all the material in the building is found art in St. Louis. Definitely a place that when I get back to St. Louis is somewhere that I will visit and thoroughly explore. So sit back and enjoy a couple of pictures that I to to try and catch the atmosphere.


All of the wire tubes you can CLIMB THROUGH and explore the things it leads to, which includes a Bus, a Plane, a trolley car, and a giant Praying Mantis.


Totally normal. Just a giant squid like thing. Would you like to slide down this slide?

This is one of the first things you see when you come in the building. It really sets the mood.

Tree. Check. Elephant head. Check. Silver streamers. Check. Do you really want to tell me someone wasn't high when they put this exhibit together?

The Sculpture Garden

My friend who used to live in St. Louis told me about a sculpture garden in the middle of the city that I needed to check out. Figuring out that I was planning on walking right by it I stopped by to give myself a little culture and look at art. I had a much more fun time than that. Here are some of my favorites!

Now it took me awhile to figure out that these were rabbits... It must be abstract art. But once I figured it out I just fell in love with the big fat one sitting in the background.

This one made me laugh. So obviously phallic. The dude doesn't even have arms!!! But he has a dangle! This reminded me off a story my sister told me about my nephew. He walks up to her one day (he's three (four now)) and says "Mommy! Boys are sooo lucky! We have penises aaand butts!" My kind of man! And I agree with him. I hope this piece of art inspired many boys to make the same realization and tell their mom's about how lucky it is to be a boy.


Now with so much art and life being phallic I loved finding this piece. As a society we show how important things are to us by giving them a lot of names. You've probably heard the saying "The Eskimos have 52 words for snow." Well we have a lot of names for the penis, it seems like many testosterone fueled men like to remind everyone they have one by driving sports cars or "erecting" giant buildings. If you disagree then please tell me what the point of a cigarette boat is. So I was pleased that my favorite euphemism for the female parts was apparently on show at this scultpure garden. The Little Man in the Canoe! And it's so anatomically correct! There is the little man at the top of the boat. And what's that laying at the bottom of the boat? Why a cat of course! So I google'd popular other names for cats:

Main Entry:	cat
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	feline animal, sometimes a pet
Synonyms:	bobcat, cheetah, cougar, grimalkin, jaguar, kitten, kitty, leopard, lion, lynx, malkin, mouser, ocelot, panther, puma, puss, pussy, tabby, tiger, tom, tomcat

Brilliant job Jean-Michel Folon!