One Giant Long Motherfucking Drive

So, it started on Wednesday in Montana.

It was snowing, lovely sleet snow. I was sick, really fucking sick. Candice drove the ENTIRE width of Montana in sleet snow that day, but we made it across the border into Wyoming. Unfortunately, that left us in 32 degree snow, but we had factored this and had planned to get a motel room. No point being sick and cold at the same time. We bathed that night, just beautiful.

The next day, Candice drove again, all the way to Nebraska, across the corner of Wyoming.
Wyoming, even though the weather was disgusting, is a pretty dismal place. Temperature wasn't much better when we got there, still snow, still cold. But, we managed to stay in a really seedy motel that had a nice collection of drunks scattered around, and what I think was a crack den in the next room. Oh, and I was still sick, getting worse, and finding it hard to do anything and breath at the same time. So much fun.

Friday, even though I was sick and unable to breath and move, I decided I could drive, so we split the driving through Nebraska. Thank fuck for that. Candice told me her dad had driven through Nebraska and never, ever wanted to do it again.
I share his feelings on this matter.
I NEVER, EVER want to have to visit Nebraska again, let alone drive any part of it. It's flat, depressing and boring. So much so that there was not one bumper sticker in the TWO State Parks, or any gas station we stopped at. Apparently, even Nebraskans think their State isn't worth celebrating on the back of a car.

Once into Kansas, it was getting late and we needed to get to a campground. This achieved, I started to set up the tent. It took me 10 mins to get two tent pegs in as I just couldn't catch my breath. Candice had to help me finish putting the tent up! She made up Chicken Noodle soup, I was hungry but I didn't have any appetite. Four spoonfuls and I was done. I looked at my phone and this was when we realized we would be in for a long night.
Wunderground said the temperature was going to get down to about 25, with winds up to 25 m.p.h; oh, and freezing rain in the morning.
We went to bed at 5 pm knowing it was going to be rough. And it was. I got half hour naps here and there, huddled under all the blankets with Treacle, constantly worried the tent was about to tear off the top of us! When we woke in the morning there was a sheet, yes a sheet, of ice covering the whole tent, and it was seriously fucking cold.
I was a mess and couldn't even help her put down the tent, I just had to sit in the car as it warmed up, trying to catch my breath. We then just started driving again and made it through to Missouri, and warmer temperatures.
We stayed at this massive campsite, filled to the brim with giant RV's. Even thought we were exhausted, and needed the rest, we could only stay one night there because they were booked up for the weekend. We decided to hit up Branson, and then camp just over the state line in The Ozarks, Arkansas.
"Just over the state line" ended up being a three hour drive through The Ozarks, but we eventually found a campsite in a forest on the top of one of the hills in the mountain range. It was great until we couldn't light a fire because all the wood around was wet from the previous week of rain, and then the next installment dumped on us. We spent the next 36 hours in the tent, in varying degrees of rainfall, but we needed to not be driving. By the second night, everything in the tent was wet, sorry, soaked. We sat reading, I read Bill Clinton's autobiography, which worked out handy the next day! By 7 in the morning we were done and just threw everything in the car and headed to Little Rock.

In Little Rock is the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. A seriously Fucking Awesome place!
I can't explain here how great this place is but I URGE you to take time out of your life to go there. (Those of you who know me know that I don't say that about very many places at all.) It is an experience that person should have. They have his Mustang and Presidential Limo, correspondents between him and many famous peeps, and a recreation of his Oval Office and Cabinet Room! When you look at how much he achieved in those eight years, it's truly humbling, and gives hope for the next eight years.
We dried all our stuff at a laundromat and stayed at a motel in Hot Springs, childhood home of Bill Clinton.

Hot Springs is run by the National Park Service. It's a strip along the street that contains the bathhouses that used to operate there. They were more like old school spas that catered to rich people wanting to fix their ailments. One of them has been restored to look like it did at the peak in the twenties and is a museum you can wander around. It's interesting to get a snap shot of life at a different time.
Although it was a pretty warm day, it was not going to last and we were completely done with the weather by now and decided to head to New Orleans, and bizarrely the quickest way was back up through Memphis and then straight down. So off to Memphis we drove.

We stopped there for a drink on Beale St and talked to a bartender who told us a few things we should see in New Orleans then it was back on the road again. The weather report said it was going to rain, again, pretty much all night, so being limited on funds and tired of getting soaked, we slept in the car and a State fishing reserve. Not the most comfortable nights sleep, but we were dry when we woke up. Funny enough, so was everything outside, it hadn't rained at all. Fucking figures! I got out the car to make us some coffee on the burner in the crisp, cloudy morning air. The water was just about to boil, when everything around me went completely silent and then I heard a hiss getting increasingly louder. "Oh no," I thought.
Yep, you guessed it. The heavens opened and ten tons of rain dumped on me. I ran under a tree, and that didn't help at all. A minute later it was over, I was wet, and it was another great start to the day.
If we weren't done before, we certainly were now. Candice was getting sicker, I was getting better, and we had both had enough of the God damn world.

After finding a State Park in Louisiana, we drove on, preparing ourselves for another happy night in the tent. We made it to Tickfaw State Park, dealt with the retard at the front desk and paid $15 for a campsite in the middle of a swamp.
I know that I am prone to exaggeration, but unfortunately, I'm not this time.
The guy at the front desk was really simple, let me recount the story:

We pull at the office and I wind down the window as he opens his window.
"Yes?" he asks.
"I want a campsite for the night," I reply.
"Tent?" he says inaudibly.
"What?" I need him to repeat.
"Tent?" he says again.
"Yes," I reply, looking out behind the car to make sure I haven't been dragging someone else's RV across two states.
"OK," he gives me a look like I'm seriously insane, asks for I.D. and then stares at his computer screen with a look of confusion and constipation. "Have you been here before?"
"Nope."
He sighs, not the answer he wanted, "Would you like to be near the bathrooms or... not?"
"Near would be fine," I answer.
Lots of sighing, clicking and constipated looks follow. "Here's a map, and the gate combination."
I was slightly confused as to why I needed a combination to a gate I had already entered through, but I didn't want to trouble his already overloaded, simple brain with the question, and so on we drove to find our campsite.

It tuns out that the campsites are in the middle of a swamp and arranged in a circle, so technically everyone of them is close to the bathrooms. When I say swamp, I really mean swamp. I could stand by the tent and spit into the middle of the swamp. The swamp had been fitted with overflow pipes to keep the water level down, very handy, but the overflows poured right into the campsites. There was a small square sand box for us to put the tent on and everything else all around us was stagnant swamp, filled with mosquitoes. They weren't west coast mosquitoes, you know the small annoying ones that buzz around you head and occasionally bite you. These were mother fucking giant African mosquitoes, the size of thumbnails, that given the chance would suck every ounce of blood out of you, and they try to!
The campsite we had been designated was just too damn swampy for us to even put a tent on, so we moved to the next site along. Whilst getting some stuff together, the guy from the front desk dove by us and I flagging him down. He looked confused and in pain even before I had said anything. I told him that the site was way too swampy and that we had moved over one site. He looked at the two sites, got even more confused, and then informed me that I had to go to the front desk and tell them we had moved. I figured that this was only because his little brain would explode if he had to try to retain this small piece of information for more than a few seconds.
Fine. I got in the car and drove back round to the front desk. No sooner had I walked in through the door a chubby blonde girl screamed at me.
"Can I help you?!"
"Yes. I'm staying in site 32, and I've moved next door to site 34. I'm just letting you know."
A look of pure disgust covered her face, "You just can't do that. Let me see if it's free."
Baring in mind that we were the ONLY people staying in the campsite, I didn't foresee this being a problem, but you never know when dealing with such simple people.
She clicked away at her computer and without even turning round to face me said, "36 is taken."
"Excuse me?" now I was confused.
She sighed, they must get training in sighing here. "You're in 34 and want to move to 36. 36 is taken."
Did this really have to be this hard?
My turn to sigh, "No. We're in 32 and want to move to 34."
"Oh," more sighing, "I didn't understand you. That should be O.K., but don't do it again."
On any normal day I would have happily spent the next 20 mins berating her on her stupidity, but luckily for her, I just wasn't in the mood. I just left and headed back to the tent.

Candice is really sick, I knew how she felt, I'd been there a few days earlier. She just crawled up in a ball in the tent whilst I made beef stew for dinner, and the mosquitoes feasted on flesh. By this time it had got dark and I looked up to see half the sky periodically lit up with the impending thunderstorms. It looked beautiful, but I knew we were going to be in for another rough night. Tired of being dinner for another life form, I climbed into the tent and started to write this blog entry. I managed to get to Arkansas before i had to stop. There was a lot of clattering going on on the table where I had left our dinner bowls.
I wasn't aware of the wildlife situation in Louisiana, and didn't know what was outside finishing off our stew. I got my boots on, grabbed my axe and flashlight, and looked outside. Thankfully it was only a racoon munching away on the beef Candice hadn't eaten. I shooed him away, stuck the bowls in the car and headed back to the tent, but I had lost my inspiration to continue writing.
I don't know what time the thunderstorm got to us, but it just lit up the sky and dropped bucket loads on us for hours. Within no time at all everything in the tent was wet, yet again. We huddled together on the only dry part and tried to sleep. When morning came everything was again soaked through, but there was a laundry room by the bathrooms which allowed us to dry it all out, once Candice had driven miles out of camp to get change because they didn't have any at the front desk. Fucking retards.
This done we packed up and headed to New Orleans and a few nights in a hotel. Typically the weather was now getting better.