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Date:         Tue, 11 Jul 1995 22:38:34 -0700 (PDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         David Schwarze <des@teleport.com>
Subject:      GNATT report part 3

Wednesday, May 24th Awoke at 9 am (mile marker one in Oklahoma). Took a shower, which was located inside an adjoining restaurant. Stopped for gas outside of Oklahoma City. Added 1/2 quart of oil, first time I had needed it on the trip. It turned out that over the course of the trip I consistantly lost about 1/2 quart every 1,000 miles, with a slight oil leak. Not too bad, I think. Cruised up the turnpikes, listening to the truckers talk about the OK City bombing on the CB. Drove most of the day, and made it to Merrimac State Park, where we planned to stay the night. Well, almost made it. One mile before our exit, we started hearing excited chatter on the CB about an accident ahead. Sure enough, over the next hill the traffic was stopped dead. From listening to the CB we find out that a truck coming the opposite direction through a construction zone had failed to navigate a bend in the road correctly. He hit the center median, which was one of those concrete barricades like the tank got stuck on, and knocked it across the Eastbound lanes. Both of them. Oh, the truck rolled over too. What a mess! The truckers were complaining about the slow response time of the emergency vehicles... "I gots a schedule to meet - Ahm billing the state of Missouri for dis sh*t!". An hour or so later, they finally moved the slab of concrete out of the way and we exited the interstate. Unfortunately, the park entrance had closed at 10 pm (15 minutes before - DOH!) and we were forced to camp outside on the road. At least we saved $12. :/

Thursday, May 25th. Since we were so close to St. Louis, and since we didn't expect anyone to be at Busses By the Arch until the next day, Shelley and I decided to stop at Six Flags, which was right off the highway outside St. Louis. It was a lot smaller than the one outside Los Angeles, but the lines were shorter too, and we rode Batman the ride - woohoo! Late that afternoon, we drove into St. Louis and got ahold of Sami and Maria Dakhlia. We parked in town near Sami's house to use the phone - I needed to call my relatives and let them know I was in the area. While I was standing on a streetcorner at this payphone, trying to hear my aunt at the other end of the line, some guy comes up to me and says something to me. I didn't look closely at him, and didn't hear what he said cause I was struggling to listen to my aunt. I cover my exposed ear with my hand and turn away from him, thinking he was a bum asking me for some spare change. Thankfully, he turned around and walked away. Going back to the camper, which was parked around the corner, I see the same guy talking to Shelley in the camper. I run over, trying quickly to decide whether or not to grab the club from between the front seats before I try to scare him off, since this guy was a lot bigger than me. Then I notice Shelley is smiling, even laughing, and looking at me. When I get to the bus, Shelley tells me this guy is Joel Walker, who just happened to be driving by and spotted my bus! DOOOOOHHHHHH! How embarrassing! Sami and Maria were nice enough to treat us all to pizza and beer at a local restaurant for dinner, where we all got to know each other a little better. I had met Sami and Maria before, but the rest of us had never seen each other before. Felt a little strange for some of us, I think. After a most excellent meal, we followed Joel out to Fort Zumwalt park, where we set up camp. There was almost nobody there, except for a small group of guys with a few split window busses, who had come from New York. One of them had gotten stuck in the mud (all of us did before the weekend was out!) and Joel broke out the hand winch to pull them out. We (Joel, Sami, and I) picked out a spot in the corner for our busses that was relatively high, and next to a power outlet. Good thing, too. We didn't know it yet, but Inspector Gadget (Pete Sellers) had a lot of 110V appliances along. Lots of mosquitos and wet grass in the campground - gonna be a soggy weekend!

To be continued...

-David

============================================================================ David Schwarze '73 VW Safare Custom Camper (Da Boat) San Diego, California, USA '73 Capri GT 2800 (Da Beast) e-mail: des@teleport.com '87 Mustang Lx 5.0 (Da Sleeper) http://www.teleport.com/~des '93 Weber WG-50 (Da Piano) ============================================================================


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