You ain't crashed into a ravine 'til you've crashed into a ravine full of panthers, boy. Mess you up.
Randy and I are driving up to
Crown King tomorrow for the weekend. This will be the second time we've been there and the first time that we've been there on purpose. That first time we accidentally ended up in Crown King after I steadfastly refused to attempt a turn around on the narrowest, most treacherous road in the universe. I
did try to turn around about a half-hour in, but then Randy screamed something about a rattlesnake*** and I bashed the fender into a mountain. After that I was pretty staunchly committed to our current direction which, happily, eventually led into Crown King and not into a 400-foot ravine full of panthers or a blazing wildfire or a Super Walmart.
Reasons why Crown King is the most awesome hidden ghost town at the end of the worst road to fucking nowhere ever:
1) The public library is open on Wednesdays from like 1:00 to 3:30. We've got eleven books, motherfucker; get in and get out.
2) There are three (3!) year-round students enrolled in the town school. Although, that may be old information. One of them may have since dropped out, someone may have succumbed to the temptation to sit around open-mouthed all day, staring at the AIR.
3) Every time there's a fire (which according to the informational paper menu at the town's one restaurant is obnoxiously often) the whole town burns to the ground while everyone hustles to save the bar.
4) The bar. It's ridiculously old, it's ugly, there are dirty hooker rooms upstairs that you can rent, and it smells suspiciously like it's on fire all the time.
5) When I called the hotel just now to make a reservation, it went to voicemail: "You have reached the voicemail of... 'Crown King'. Please leave a message." Dude, I got THE TOWN'S voicemail.
6) That first time as we were driving around in nine-wheel drive trying to figure out where the hell we were, we passed this random family who was out looking for their dog. It turned out that Randy and this guy actually knew each other, so they invited us back to their cabin for a drink. For the rest of the afternoon we sat on their porch drinking cold beer in the woods, watching the kids run around laughing and catching fireflies and ladybugs and shit, and just as the sun set over the mountains and a soft breeze came up out of the east to stir the leaves around a bit, just as I was closing my eyes and leaning against Randy and thinking to myself that life didn't get much more perfect than this,
their goddamned missing dog came home.
Yeah. Exactly. I could go on and on, but then you'd just be all jealous and bitter because you're not going to a tiny badass ghost town and, ipso facto, your weekend's going to suck.
Okay! So, see you later!
*** I originally typed "rattlesnack". Ha ha! Rattlesnacks.
