Hey! I’ve been driving all day long! We made it all the way to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and are recovering in a hotel room. We’ll be finishing the journey to St Louis tomorrow morning.
We made a few stops along the way, looking for spiders. Didn’t find many other than a few jumpers. We did find a strange painted rock at a rest stop near Owatonna.
All I could find about it was a closed facebook group for a rock club in Oklahoma, and I don’t do facebook. Apparently they paint these things and leave them hidden in various places, and it turns out that spider hunting is a good way to induce one to look in odd little crevices.
Skepticon tomorrow!
I believe this fun little pass-time started on Whidbey Island, Washington about a decade ago with “Whidbey Island Rocks”. The aim is pretty basic: paint a rock and “hide” it. The canvasses are cheap and abundant and it’ll occupy kids and adults for hours. You get some pretty amazing bits of art to “keep or re-hide” as well as a great reason to take short people on walks!
I’ve been noticing these “rock facebook groups” in CZ the past few years as well. If you find a rock on your travels you’re supposed to carry it to another location and post a photo to the FB group. It’s like those “journeying” teddy bears that people used to do, except for hikers.
At the halfway point, start looking for Bon Jovi.
A library in Surrey, British Columbia, has been finding painted rocks hidden among the books. They don’t know who has been leaving them but they have a nice little display of them.
I learned about “peace rocks” a few months ago. Great fun for kids and adults. Find a smooth rock, paint it (I learned to use acrylic paint pens – just shake and paint!), spray with a gloss enamel, and hide, give as gifts, etc. I have no artistic ability, but made a beautiful butterfly by following a video I found online.
As you may have heard, flash floods have messed up the St Louis Metrolink and lots of places I would usually recommend are coping with the clean up. If they are open, Terror Tacos on South Grand is an all vegan place with horror movie decor. No rain expected today.
Ah, Ponca City, I lived there for a few years in the early 80’s working for Conoco Oil. City Moto: “We’re not the end of the world, but you can see it from here.”
These allegedly-painted alleged rocks are actually some of the larger pieces of a galaxy-sized jigsaw puzzle commissioned by the marketing planet of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as a promotion to buy robots: “Your friendly tin assistant with the galaxy-sized brain will help solve our galaxy-sized jigsaw!” The jigsaw promptly exploded, and is claimed by some to be the origin of Sagittarius A*, but the explosion is thought more likely to have swamped Atlantis (with flaming jigsaw wreckage) and, after traveling through time in an allegedly-freak wormhole, disabled the navigation and landing systems of the B Ark. It’s unclear what happened to the smaller pieces of the jigsaw-explosion, albeit they could easily have been the first peas — nasty, tasteless, etc.
Hi LeftCoaster!
We lived in Midwest City in the 80’s, when my husband was stationed at Tinker AFB, and I was also familiar with Ponca City.
Our kids swam in a junior swim league, and I remember driving to Ponca City for swim meets.
I haven’t thought of that place in years!
Like you, we now live on the west coast.
blf@8- You had me all the way up until the nasty, tasteless peas crack. Peas are the vegetable version of candy, damn it.
Erratum: peas are the legume version of candy.