I'M BACK BABY

I have been away, a long way away, so far away that ... I have no idea where this is heading so I'll stop this chain of thought right now. I've been hanging out in the USA for most of September. Hence a serious lack of blog posts of late, that will all change now as you are all inundated with travel pics, prepare yourself, I'll be gentle, it'll be fun.

I was thinking of posting in chronological order, but that's a bit horrifically like a travel blog format and I wouldn't subject that on anyone here. Instead it'll just be random stuff as it comes to mind or as I post photos to Flickr. I have a lot less photos this time round, mostly because I made a conscious effort not to view my holiday through the lens of a camera, something I witnessed a lot of people do. I mean honestly, I could never take a good photo of Old Faithful in full blast, I can see than in google images anytime I want, better to enjoy the moment. Well I would have if I could have seen through the thousands of arms and cameras doing exactly the opposite.

So where to begin? Three exciting moments included, being chased off of a property by the owners despite it being a tourist stop, being involved in a pharmacy robbery in San Francisco and then enjoying a gunmen siege 2 blocks from my hotel, again in San Francisco. I have no photos of the later two events but I sure do of the first, albeit bad ones.

This trip was a continuation and completion of the Route 66 trip I and two mates began back in 2012, we did the LA to OK City leg then and this one was the OK City to Chicago section. So a few days into the drive we arrive in a place called Union, Missouri and we spot a couple of tacky Tee Pee structures off to the side of the road, we are big on kitsch so these looked like an awesome spot to get some. As we pulled into the neat driveway that turned out to be the car park for the Indian Harvest Trading Post I heard some yelling. Then I deciphered the yelling "Get the fuck out of our car park"...

Huh? What? Why? "Get off of our property before we call the police" 

Now this took a bit of comprehending, because this is a tourist stop and we're bona fide tourists and well, just what the hell was happening? Then I saw her, a crazy looking woman screaming at us as she exited one of the Tee Pees, then I saw another person, this time a guy armed with a video camera, walking straight at us very quickly and yelling at us to "get out". I yelled at my buddy to "GO!" and we hauled arse out of there, I managed to grab a few quick and bad pics of the incident as we left. It was after we left that we realised that the guy was now following us in his pick up truck. Eventually he stopped and we kind of calmed down from our nervous laughter fits and continued along Route 66.

So what the actual fuck was that? Well it wasn't until I got back home that I did some research and it seems that this is a common experience for everyone who visits this place. Have a read of the Tripadvisor reviews of this place to see what I mean (Including mine, which is likely the most recent one). Every review pretty much mirrors this story. These two people obviously have some mental health issues and whilst it's funny looking back, it isn't really fun for anyone at the time. I mean if that camera had been a gun... well I don't want to be overly dramatic, but still. Ahhh America, you never fail to disappoint.