Good Morning, Baltimore

I’m back on the East Coast, where the sky feels smaller, cluttered as it is with suburban trees and strip mall neon, and where Amtrak trains are delayed. My summer and this blog are coming full circle--back on the train, instantly annoyed, still feeling restless, feeling less-than-thrilled about the next few weeks, months, etc., planning the next road trip.

The last few days blew me through the south and Midwest--Oklahoma City to Tulsa (a ghost town) to a smalltown steakhouse where we stuck out like sore thumbs to St. Louis and the top of the Arch to somewhere just west of Columbus to fried fish sandwiches and red velvet cake ice cream in Wheeling, WV, and finally to Baltimore and now on to New York.

I’m not sure how to sign off, and years of summer goodbyes have proven sucky, so I’ll just leave it at that for now, hoping for the next big adventure…

Amazing things keep happening

I'm writing this from the Best Western Carlsbad, where the Blue Cactus Lounge is hopping on a Friday night (there's a bouncer and girls in the parking lot who are not staying here dressed to go Out with a capital "O"). Regardless, it ain't the Lodge at Cloudcroft, that's for sure, but it'll do for the night.

Today, we went to Carlsbad Caverns. We missed much of the caverns because we had to stop at a brewpub in Artesia to sample every beer they had. Kris says this is what we'll look like in Hell:



Nevertheless, we got the chance to see 300,000 bats fly out of a cave for the nightly feeding. With the exception of the overly chatty softball team behind us, we could hear nothing but bats' wings and crickets.