Miles: 68.6
Total Elevation Gain (ft): 1469.8
Weather: Sunny, Hot
Hillbilly Insults: 1
Roadkill: 16 (1 Chucken, 3 Frogs, 1 Turtle, 3 Raccoons, 8 Unknown)
Bugs Swallowed: 0
Mean Dogs Chasing: 1
Animal Rescue: 0
My thirty dollar motel room in Le Roy, MI is just an afterthought attached to a bar. It smells of sulphur, New York subway piss and mold. It's not worthy of a guard shack at a Romanian gulag, but it's my home for the night. Ah, how I pine for my fifty dollar palace at the Vista Villa! Hoping not to step on used condoms buried in the foul recesses of the filthy shag carpet.
The terrain was nice today. A few farms, but mostly tree lined roads through the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness within the Manistee National Forest. This stretch through the center of the state is dotted with very small towns that cater to weekend fishermen.
I'd forgotten about the Michigan Militia survivalist nuts until I stopped for a rest in the town of Free Soil. The main strip of this place was the most blatantly arrogant and distasteful display of dumb patriotism I've seen in a very long time. I counted 23 flags on six houses and one store. Three flags were POW/MIA, two were Confederate and one was plain white with a crucifix in the middle of it. A right-wing radio fantasy theme park!
I did a double take when a black lawn jockey caught my eye. I went back to snap a picture of "The Faithful Groomsman." I worked fast because I suspect the hounds around here are trained to smell "Jew Blood." I quietly entered a little gas station, bought a soda and got out of town. I worked all winter in Augusta, GA and not once did I find anything as overtly racist and dopey as the dreck on display here. I put on the headphones and turned up the Public Enemy--"...I smell a riot comin' on!"
It'll take a few days, but I don't think I'll see such displays when I cross the border in Ontario. I can't imagine a Chipewyan lawn dwarf on a Canadian farmstead.
RSS Feed