Gone Fishin' Part III

The final part of Vacationfest Aught Eight found Emily and I driving over ten hours to Eureka Springs, AK at 5:30 a.m. on Monday morning, July 14th, about 12 hours after we landed in Minneapolis.

My mom turned 70 this June, so we spent the week with her and my two sisters' families to celebrate. The town itself is like Stillwater, but built on a bluff.

Highlights included...

going to Thorncrown Chapel



swimming and bumming at a nearby lake...




and visiting Pea Ridge National Military Park. I neglected to bring my camera to Pea Ridge. It was the first Civil War Battlefield I've ever been too.

When I was in college we ran a cross country meet in Virginia. We were not actually on a battlefield, but we must have been close to one. So for some reason in the hour leading up to the meet, a bunch of dudes dressed as Civil War soldiers (some were blue and some were grey) fired off a cannon every ten minutes. And then there were some Revolutionary War dudes there as well. They had their own cannon which they also fired off. So pictures that one: a bunch of skinny dudes in running singlets warming up on a golf course and then a bunch of other guys dressed in old military garb shooting cannons for no damn reason. Random.

But I digress. This was my first up close look at the Civil War. It was grim. When we were leaving the park, I stated the obvious to one of my sisters: I was glad I didn't have to fight in that war. And if I did get drafted, I would have gone AWOL, runing full speed backwards before you could even say, "Damn the torpeedos!"

And then I added that even though my sister wouldn't have had to fight, life would have sucked for her too. To which she added, "Yeah, like I'd wake up one morning and wonder what the hell I was going to do with 300 dead bodies in my front yard."

Which brings me to my point. Ever since I was a kid I have always wondered and never asked, what happened to all the bodies in the Civil War? Was there an agency to recover and bury people? Did soldiers go back later to get their fallen comrades? So I posed that question to a very informed volunteer at Pea Ridge, and he recommended this book. I don't know if I want to read it, but for some reason I feel I should.

Top Five Things I Learned On Trip #3
5. David Sedraris is a morbid dude. Maybe it's fitting, given that we spent a day at a Civil War battlefield, that I learned that David Sedaris can be just as grim as he can be funny. I bought a eight disc CD set of him reading latest book. We listened to most of it on the way to Arkansas and back. But I couldn't take more than 100 miles of it at a time when he got down dark and deep.

4. My family loves cake. Emily still has fun saying, "The Nawrockis... the family that has a cake a night." Indeed, we did bake a cake for each dinner for the week we were there (except the last night because we had to finish all the leftover cake). That's how we roll.

3. Smaller government is a good thing. I'm not about to start listening to conservative AM talk radio, but leave it to big government and beauracracy to ruin a good idea. Lipton Tea has sponsored a program to get people having a healthy experience in the national parks. So far so good. Wal-Mart chipped in on Lipton's program, at Pea Ridge, and donated a bunch of bikes to the park. As a result we could bike the eight mile loop as a family, rather than drive in a car. So far, so awesome.

The hiccup? Most of the bikes were in disrepair (missing any combination of pedals, gears, and brakes) and no one at the park was in charge of bike maintenance. And to be fair, they shouldn't be. They are park rangers, not bike repair pros. And that's what got lost in the shuffle. When this many huge companies are involved in a very local program, who amongst them is going to step and say, "Oh yeah, we'd love to supply the bike mechanics as well." That buck is just too easy for all three players to pass.

2. You get what you pay for. I'm not about to write flaming left-wing Letters-to-the-Editor crying out for more government spending and taxation, but leave it to our business and politcal culture to underfund a cool program like bikes in the national parks.

1. When canoeing in the fog, be alert for crazed jet skiiers. I went canoeing in a dammed river with Emily, my mom, and one of my sisters. It was really cool to paddle through the morning fog. Well, until we heard and eventually saw three jackasses blazing past us on their jet skis. There's no way on God's green earth they would have seen us, which is why we canoed over the river bank.

Add canoers vs. jet skiiers to two cultures that will never get along.