Notes from a Traveling Jedi
Get your kicks on Route 666…. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may be in Utah… Things are not always what they seem…
It’s always struck me as a little odd that most of the planets in the GFFA have a singular climate… Hoth is an ice planet, Tatooine is a desert planet, Dagobah is a swamp planet, Endor is totally forested… only Naboo seems to have more than one environment on its surface…but here on Earth we have everything…
I’ve made two trips to Endor this summer… this last trip we took the time on the way home to get the heck off the Interstates and see some things for a change…
Traveling is a great way to learn a lot of inconsequential facts… For example:
In Utah they call all their weigh stations “Ports of Entry” no matter where they are located in the state…
The Navajo language, when translated into written English, seems to contain a lot of apostrophes, so when Science Fiction writers use that trick to make names sound alien, they aren’t creating anything new… Navajo is the most alien language on Earth, if judged by its complexity…
Things are not always what they seem, either…. The Green River is brown, “Clean” and “Comfortable” are relative terms, and “Scenic Viewpoint” does not necessarily indicate something you really want to look at…
“National Forest” does not necessarily mean there are trees… they are really preserves for the natural vegetation of that particular area…. It’s just that “National Scrubland” or “National Wasteland” doesn’t sound as inviting…
Towns with the word “Falls” in their name don’t really mean there are waterfalls there…
You can flavor almost anything with Huckleberries, and antlers make a fine chandelier…
Driving a hybrid electric car on top of a mountain range during an electrical storm brings up a lot of interesting thoughts…
There are a very few neon signs left… who decided that a sign made of cheesy plastic with a fluorescent light inside looks better???
Local eateries are almost always superior to national chains… I had awesome breakfasts, the world’s greatest tuna melt, Montana’s best burger, and the galaxy’s most fabulous tomato soup, all at small local places…(OK, the soup place was a chain, but they only have 5 locations and they’re all family run)… the Shake Shack in Monticello, Utah made a shake so thick I had to eat most of it with spoon…
So what happened to all the frosty shops? Before the Interstates, and their evil cousins the hamburger chains, there was at least one in every town… heck, my home town had one CALLED “The Frostie Shop” but here’s all that’s left of it now… {Frostie Shop Sign}
What really disturbs me is the ones that have been turned into Coffee places… don’t get me wrong, I love coffee in the morning or on a cold winter night, but are we all in such a hurry that we have to charge up on caffeine 24/7? And miss the fun of a frosty cone or a chocolate shake on hot summer night…
US Highway 666 has been renamed US-491… it had been number 666 since it was first planned in 1926, since it was the sixth branch of the famous Route 66…nothing sinister about it… what a bunch of superstitious nonsense… Sticks and Stones… What’s next, no 13th Street? Will we have to call Devil’s Tower “A Really Big Giant Rock?” I’m afraid of big bugs, I think I’ll start lobbying the state of Arizona to change the name of Big Bug Creek…
So now I’m on my way home… we’ve just gone through the remains of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, which actually DID have trees in it until the summer of 2002 when some idiot set it on fire so he could get a job as a firefighter…(he’s in prison)... It’s very, very sad to look at… Imagine Endor crispy fried…
Young Ani told Qui-Gon he wanted to visit every star… too ambitious for me, I’d be happy to see very National Park & Monument, Historical Marker and War Memorial in the US… and all the waterfalls, with or with out a city name…
