Sun Moon Stars Girl )-(

Welcome to my little place to vent…

Yes, that about says it all. Sorry, Kris, I had to steal the cool graphic.

Anyway, I got my trip-tiks in the mail today! Woot! I had to do a little extra highlighting and re-arranging of the inserted maps since I realized the order of places we would be visiting was out of order. But all three, yes, three, of them are here. And as cool as ever!

They’ve got the same old stuff - with some added extras. All the state info now includes cell phone usage laws - something that we didn’t even think about or have in 1996, or whenever it was the last time I got a trip-tik was. They include these huge region maps of about 10-12 states each, with the overall trip highlighted in green. I can’t wait to piece them together on a wall in California.

By and large the route we plan to take is the ever classic “Mother Road” - Route 66. We plan on making a few stops at theme parks across the great US - wherever our trusty Six Flags Season Passes let us in, and a few other places. We’re going to hit a few big cities (Las Vegas anyone?), US landmarks along Rt. 66 (Cadallac Ranch, Midpoint Cafe), as well as National Parks (Grand Canyon), and just a few places the two of us would like to see. Mine is Lake Havasu - a big spring break party area. And there’s Palmdale, CA - the location of The Rim of the World Rally - a well-known rally Kris is likely to participate in one day.

I’m very excited about our trip, and I’m trusting Kris to have everything hooked up so that we can blog right from the road!
Keep your eyes peeled for updates as the summer rolls along!

I keep forgetting to ask my mom is she’s done this yet. For the last few weekends, I’ve been up in NH, and I noticed an abundance of gypsy moth caterpillars roaming around. I have unpleasant childhood memories of these gross fuzzy things all over everything.

I remember the gypsy moth outbreak causing a lot of the vegetation in our area to die, and it being so bad that they had to spray to control the population.

I also remember my mom “doing her part,” and enlisting anyone she could to help her out. The deal was to get a stick and a coffee can. For the moths, if you saw them, squash them. If you saw an egg sac, or a cocooned caterpillar, squash it and scrap into coffee can. The grossest part was the caterpillar elimination. Once again you’d get a stick, then find yourself a caterpillar, and poke it through with the stick. Make sure you see the bright yellow-green guts squeeze out! I’m nauseous just thinking about it.

At the end of the summer said coffee can would be thrown away. We haven’t had a big outbreak recently, so I haven’t come home to the fuzzy black bodies oozing green, or the dreaded coffee can. I can only hope they haven’t started swarming, or I know the next time I visit the coffee can and stick will be around. Ew!