01/14/08

This update is already history, but I'm passing it along anyway. I didn't finish it until I was at Big Bend National Park , but there was no way to send it. We've actually already left Big Bend and are heading for home. I have one more to send and that will be coming soon.

The Wal-Mart Super Center City

Tonight as I write, I'm looking out the back window of the van at a Wal-Mart Super Center parking lot in Del Rio Texas . There's nothing scenic, beautiful, mysterious or inspiring about it. It is funny to me though and for a couple of reasons. If I was back in Chicago and someone said, “Let's pull the van into the Wal-Mart parking lot and crash for the night” I would think it's one of the most retarded, ridiculous ideas I've ever heard of. Yet while on the road like this it seems perfectly normal and fun and that's why I find it funny.

The other thing that's funny is the Wal-Mart Super Centers themselves. These are relatively new ones, and you can get your eyes checked, your car checked, your finger and toenails done, your haircut, do your grocery shopping, banking, and they even have a small McDonalds inside for all the McFreaks. They're becoming so self-contained that I'm guessing eventually you'll be able to live inside the Wal-Mart Super Center and never have to leave.

There will be Wal-Mart town homes, condos, trailer parks and Wal-Mart Realty for your renting and home purchasing needs. Club Wal-Mart and the Wal-Mart fitness center. The Wal-Mart academy and military school, The Wal-Mart Medical Center, and last but not least, there will even be the Wal-Mart Non-Denominational Church to meet all your spiritual needs. All of this will be under one roof of course at the Wal-Mart Super Center City. Most of you will think my concluding remark about Wal-Marts is absurd, but you haven't lived until you've spent at least one night camped out in a Wal-Mart Super Center parking lot; its a real trip

Ok, enough of Wal-Mart; we left the coastal waters of Texas and are now in the desert and mountains about two hundred and fifty miles from our final destination Big Bend National Park . We hope to spend a week or more there and then slowly make our way back home.

With Big Bend being as remote as it is, it's not likely I will have wireless internet for sometime after this, so goodbye cruel world. If you listen hard enough though, you may hear my voice echoing down some canyon as I'm looking over the Rio Grande .

Adios,
John