Rhode Island doesn’t exist

After over 9000 miles of driving on this trip, it has been confirmed. Rhode Island doesn’t exist. How is it possible that in all the time spent in the car in the past 5 weeks (3 for me) nobody has seen a RI license plate? We’ve seen multiple Alaskas and Hawaiis but no Rhode Island? I must admit West Virginia was very elusive for a time but somewhere in Ohio, all those mountainmen came out of the woods and showed off their beautiful blue and yellow plates. We’ve got two more days left to spot someone from the smallest and clearly least traveled state in the union. We thought we saw a trucker from RI somewhere in Utah but we passed him without being able to confirm the plate and slowed down to 20 mph on the highway without the truck catching up to us. The battery on the camcorder failed us just as I zoomed in to check the plate, so the report remains as inconclusive as sightings of UFO’s, the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot.

In other news, Denver was our stop after Zion. We stayed with the Pearsons, though only saw mom and pop for a combined total of 15 minutes. We met Howard at his dad’s restaurant and had a fantastic dinner complete with sesame chicken, dumplings and Chinese beer. That night we hit up downtown Dtown with some of Jake’s highschool homies. He Taphouse provided us with some fancy local microbrewery pitchers. It was here that we learned about Sloshball. This is not a recreational game for those faint of heart. This is an all-out athletic competition between two teams that have a hunger to win, and a thirst to drink. To the untrained eye, the game might be mistaken as kickball. However, upon closer investigation, the onlookers will notice that the offensive players always have a drink in their hands. Also, second base isn’t so much a base, as a keg, from which you must chug a beer before advancing to third. By the end of the game, the score is forgotten; the winners are clearly everyone involved. We plan to play a bunch this summer.

The next day, we at a delicious breakfast at Pete’s Kitchen, a staple of Denver dining, got the dog and headed up to Jake’s cabin. Here we grabbed some fishing poles, a BB gun, a hatchet, and a shovel and headed up the creek. After digging for worms and discovering the gun was broken, we dropped our lines in and sat back, waiting for dinner. What we got made us lose our appetites. Jake caught a small brook trout and promptly, the fish swallowed the hook. After many an unsuccessful attempt to free the fish, it drowned (do you call it drowning when a fish dies from being out of the water?) Jake, wanting to get his hook back, determined the only logical solution was to make use of the hatchet. Sadly, Jake decided to turn his head away when swinging and cut through the fish’s head, leaving the fish headless and Jake hookless.

After a few games of poop stick, we packed up and headed home, stopping at Cari’s for dinner and beer. (Side note: We’re driving through Jersey right now and it sucks. What a horrible excuse for a state.) The next morning we picked up Howard and began driving east on Rt. 70, a highway we didn’t get off until Maryland. We stopped in Kansas City for the night, smuggling 3 of us into a room for 2. We got some fantastic BBQ dinner with all the necessary fixings. Mmmmmm cornbread! We then hit up a sketchy casino, where Rezzie managed to drop $20 on craps in 4 rolls.
Well, enough from me. Pittsburgh and DC too come.

Sinking Log