We left Sarasota, Florida, on 1 April for what would turn out to be a six month camping trip. We circled the United States, living in our small motor home and towing a 2,400 pound Toyota. We would see many odd and beautiful places.

Part One

I got up early to take pictures of the mounds and walk the trail. An odd feature of the walk though the woods was the use of yellow police tape to warn you away from trail offshoots that lead to nowhere.

The Kolomoki Mounds in Southeast Georgia were probably constructed during the period 350 BC to 650 AD. The population of Native Americans in this location is thought to have been, at one time, the largest north of Mexico. One mound is 57 feet tall and covers an area larger than a football field.

Mound 'A' contains over 2 million cubic feet of clay and dirt. The mound is so solid with clay that early archaeologists joked that dynamite would be needed for excavation. There are dozens of mounds in the area. Some contain pottery that describes:

• A solar calendar divided into twelve months including equinoxes and solstices.
• A star map of the night sky including constellations.
• Representations of the paths of Mercury and Venus in the eastern predawn sky.

Around 550 AD the mound building activity and population of the area declined. There is a theory that this decline corresponds to the eruption of Krakatau, the most severe volcanic event of the last 50,000 years. As the weather worsened and food supplies declined, increased competition for dwindling food supplies led to an increase in warfare and to the development of the bow and arrow.

We're back in Arkansas to see our old friends, Paul and Diane. The first morning I raid the laundry fund for two quarters and head down to the Wal-Mart to buy a Baxter Bulletin. The news in Mountain Home always has a different flavour.

On the right side of the front page I read that a local lady has been sentenced to three years in the Arkansas State Prison for rustling 20 cows. The left side of the paper has several pictures of a man being wrestled into a police car by five burly state troopers.

The man left the road at high rate of speed, leaped over a culvert and crashed into a fence. When State Troopers arrived on the scene, the man refused to get out of his car and responded to the officers with a stream of obscenities. When the officers attempted to forcibly remove the man from his vehicle he responded by biting one officer in the hand. I prefer biting ears or noses, but he probably couldn't reach one of those. The motorist is now in the Baxter County jail. Apparently local bail bondsmen have declined to help him post bail.

The property next door is for sale. It is 25 acres of woods and pasture with a four bedroom home and a four stall red horse barn. The asking price is only $250,000. Paul says he will give me $60,000 to title over the 15 acres closest to his property. I imagine making a workshop out of the big barn.

I borrowed Paul's library card yesterday. They were updating records and asked my address and telephone number. I had to confess it was a borrowed card. They asked me Paul's wife's name to make sure I really knew Paul. In a less trusting place like New York City, I probably would have been spread-eagled on the ground by armed security guards.

The restaurant is by invitation only. While this sounds exclusive, don't overdress. They want you to call in advance because they need to know how much prime rib to cook and because too many biker gangs were showing up and getting into drunken brawls.

The prime rib is very large and tender, rubbed with a thick coating of black pepper. The menu still says the meat is hand-cut by John, but this seems improbable since he has moved back to California. You get horseradish sauce without asking.

The restaurant décor is rustic, as befits a fish camp on Lake Norfork. The overworked owner/waitress had a new tattoo on her arm. Paul and I ate there during the week. We killed two bottles of Merlot at dinner and brought home about half of the huge chunks of tender prime rib that arrived on our plates.

We were looking forward to the blackberry cobbler, but the boomers have been complaining about getting seeds stuck in their dentures so they switched over to cherry cobbler.

The lake is at record levels with all the spring rainfall. It's been a tough spring with days of downpour and one tornado that carved a record 120 mile swath of devastation between Clinton and Gasville.

We drove down to Conway yesterday to help Carolyn and Jason get their house ready to sell. I got to drive a big Toro lawn mower. It was pleasing to see the Barrack Obama stickers on the back of Jason's SUV. His friend Chris had one, too. We had expensive sandwiches for lunch.

We're heading northwest this morning as soon as we can get organized. I've managed to set up the new satellite dish so Mrs. Phred can watch the tennis channel on the road. In Arkansas, the state bird is the Razorback Hog, a rough looking porker.

Yesterday we went to Blanchard Caverns in the Ozarks National Forest. It's the only cave system run by the US Forest Service. I'd rank it right up there with Karchner Caverns, Carlsbad and Mammoth Caves. They do a good job with double airlocks and lights that only go on when there is a tour group to see something.

We tried to take a shortcut on a US Forest dirt road, but had to double-back when roads that were on my GPS proved to be elusive. We had lunch on the White River. Trout fishing is very popular here. We visited a hatchery that releases 1,784,327 eleven inch trout into the local rivers each year. The hatchery and the caverns both prove that some of our tax money is well spent. Apparently at least one bureaucrat is devoted to counting trout....there's one...There's another one.

We are alone with Big Brutus in the gathering darkness on the windswept plain. Tornados and three more inches of rain are expected tonight. We're microwaving TV dinners tonight. If a tornado approaches, we need to run 100 yards and stand between the treads of Big Brutus. If you look very closely, you can see me standing by a tread in this picture.

The treads of the Bucyrus-Eire earth mover are seven feet high and five feet wide. You could surround this thing with German 88's, fire at will, and be perfectly safe between the treads. Each tread is powered by a 250 HP DC motor. Brutus has a top speed of 22 mph and each of the four treads had 2,200 gallons of gear oil. If you look closely, you can see me standing by a tread.

I stood inside the scoop. It measures 12'x 15'x15'. One scoop holds 90 cubic yards or 150 tons of coal. The power plant provides a peak of 15,000 horsepower to drive the various electric motors. Brutus is 160 feet tall and weighs 11 million pounds. I climb into the machine and explore. The walkway to the tip of the boom is no longer accessible because of insurance. It took 52 men a year to assemble Brutus in 1963. The parts came in on 150 railroad cars and cost $6.5 million dollars.

But these are just dry statistics. Tonight at midnight, Mrs. Phred and I will climb to the top of the boom and kiss the sky while the tornados stalk the land. We dress in black and check our equipment.

Mrs. Phred and I dress all in black and check our equipment list:

• 200 feet of rope
• Stakes
• 3 foot planks with attached ropes
• Laser pointer
• Protractors
• Night-vision goggles
• Camera

We decide on dinner at the Texas Roadhouse before heading out to the wheat field. It's really crowded for a Thursday, so we drive west of town and find an empty restaurant called the Siesta Lounge for dinner.

After dark we park the Toyota and unload our gear. It's going to be hard minimizing footprints in the muddy field. I follow her and step where she steps.

Suddenly, we look up and see a huge glowing saucer shape materialize in the clouds. We feel a strange floating sensation and lose consciousness. When I wake up I find myself naked and strapped facedown on what appears to be an operating table. A group of small grey creatures with large black eyes approach. One appears to be holding a probe of some sort.

Somehow we can understand their thoughts. They are tired of being blamed for cattle mutilations and crop circles. We've been swept up in an alien crop circle interdiction program. The implant devices will make us very sick if we even think about making crop circles again.

We lose consciousness once more and awake next to the Toyota. We dress and go back to the RV. Everybody Loves Raymond reruns are on the TV.

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Phred Firecloud

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