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Published: October 23rd 2007
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Posted by: Onaxthiel: We tried for an early start out of Clair to clear MI as rapidly as possible. There were only a few stops along the route we wanted to make on our way to Pennsylvania, and they were things that looked like they had potential to be interesting on our big map. The first stop was sleepy hollow state park. Usually we wouldn't have bothered stopping, but since it's getting towards Halloween, our curiosity (and the fact that we needed some breaks in our driving after yesterdays marathon driving session.) got the better of us. Sleepy Hollow state park looked like any other that was charging us admission to spend almost no time in, so we bypassed it and drove back to an unused church nearby for some shots of it with the autumn foliage. That's right, you are being spared a second day of my drawings.
Back on the road we continued our drive down towards Jackson. Thanks to the movie Walk The Line, I couldn't get the song “I'm going to Jackson.” out of my head for the entire morning. Darn Johnny Cash for his catchy proto-pop/country fusion! Darn him to Heck!
The entire day
in the car was spent with Obfuscator helping me practice medicine and A&P. Since I have been out of the game a few months, my skills had begun to deteriorate. Obfuscator would ask me about the counter indications of medications, symptoms for differential diagnosis and where to find certain bones or organs. I did somewhat better than I had expected. Next time I'll practice neurological assessment while he drives. Should be fun.
In Jackson itself there were two stops we wanted to make. The first was listed on the map as Illuminated Cascades. Since we kind of think that waterfalls will eventually give us all the knowledge that we seek, we thought that an illuminated falls would be even more enlightening. Boy were we wrong! The cascades are a long series of concrete terraces built into the side of a hill and lit up at night, and was temporarily closed for the season. I thought at first I was looking at a war memorial, and I am still not convinced that this was an inaccurate assessment. Down below, near the base of the falls, were memorials to September 11 and one commemorating Jacksonians killed by murder. Considering that most
of them were about our age, and most of the dates of death listed were on the recent side, we decided that perhaps we should move on to our second stop.
We drove out towards what our map called the Michigan Space Center. We took the turn our map indicated, and began looking for signs indicating where to find this mission control center we had never heard of. After a few miles of driving, Obfuscator thought we might have missed it, and I joked that the local community college had taken it over after NASA gave up on Michigan. Obfuscator asked a gas station attendant for directions while I topped off the tank. Jackson had the best prices we found in the state. A few moments later Obfuscator emerged “She says it's located at the community college.”
I almost lost hope for a moment. But we had driven this far, and I was going to BY GOD SEE THE SPACE CENTER! Thusly did we begin our drive out to the Jackson community college (...and space center?!?) When we arrived, there was, as we had anticipated, no sign of a space center. There were some very, very big flags, and a Columbia memorial plaque, but no one we could begin asking about locations of Nuclear Wessells. Thoroughly disappointed by every aspect of Jackson but its gas prices, we continued on into Ohio.
Since Obfuscator attended graduate school in Ohio, he really wanted to skip this state too. Since I still had hopes of meeting up with a friend of mine from the Army, I was willing to concur. We blazed from Toledo down to West Virgina as fast as traffic and the accursed eyes of the Ohio state patrol would allow. All this mileage finally brought us to the town of Washington, PA. A small town outside of Pittsburgh, Washington is a much nicer town than my buddy B had ever let on. I think it has to do with everyones distaste for the familiar. He always had talked about the town as economically depressed, and generally not very nice. Instead we found am imposing court house in the midst of a renovation, the lovely campus of Washington and Jefferson college (who have a completely hetero statue of their namesakes holding hands on their campus.) and a downtown that if not exactly packed, was certainly well enough occupied on this Saturday evening to keep our attention. After hitting a few spots downtown, we retired to B's home for a few more hours of hang out time and discussion before bedtime.
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