Chain of Fools -- Pictures AND Music

It has been my experience that any time I take a Road Trip, the cooler will leak, the car will break down, and I can expect no cooperation from the elements.  I think those things are what makes Road Trips great—and we’ve certainly had these experiences…  We left Branson the next morning, on our way to the Johnson’s Shut-ins.  We arrived in Farmington, MO on Friday evening—the only town of any size nearby, and Thank God we stopped there and not some place way out in the hills.  We were both excited about the Shut-ins!

I know what shut-ins are, but they are difficult for me to define, so I looked it up.  A shut-in is an Ozark Mountain term whereby a robust stream is hemmed into a narrow gorge, as it meets harder rock that is resistant to weathering.  (THIS, I would believe.)  The Johnson Shut-ins are a fork of the Black River, as it comes down out of the mountains.  The hard rocks are granite, rhyolite, and a diabase, (in a hard igneous dike, like a wall).  The stream bangs it head against these rocks, hoping to wear it down with rapids.  The black speckled rocks in this picture are rhyolite.  Basaltic with a few unknown crystals of some orthoclase feldspar.  The blueish rocks are diabase, and the whiter rocks are granite.  Other than that, I know that rhyolite is a mafic, (high in iron), igneous rock, formed way down below the surface.  I remember little else.  The red in the rocks is also an orthoclase feldspar, but I can't remember its name...

Truly a fascinating place!  I was there over 40 years ago, as a young geology student, and BOY, has it changed.  The gift shop ranger told me that about 10 years ago, a dam upstream somewhere, burst, and the resultant flash flooding cleaned the shut-ins out of a lot of the small rocks and boulders that made up the rapids.  Instead, the rocks were picked up and heaved up onto a small plain near the Visitor’s Center, gift shop, and camp store.  (When I was last here, there WAS no Visitor Center, gift shop, or camp store.  You were on your own—and there were genuine rapids.  The campground was primitive and came equipped with super hard rocks to camp on, in a two-man tent with 3 young women, only two of whom were gay—and one of whom had just rejected the other one, not me.  I was driving my Pinto and it was a real treat.  We turned over like sardines in a can.)

It is certainly hard rock, and it hurts just as much to trip over hard rocks as it does relatively soft rocks…  Ask me, I know…  They are also really SLICK rocks.  Especially when tilted up.

This is what is left of the diabase dike-- which is like a wall, down under the ground.  It is an igneous rock, intrusive formation...  Anyway, this is about all that is left of the original shut-ins.

After checking in, at the local hotel, we decided to go and see if we could find the Shut-ins, our goal, and Elephant Rocks, our other goal.  Matthew and I got on the main road, (a mistake), and Rosalie, the car, lit up like a Christmas Tree.  We had gone about 2 miles…  The Check Engine light came on, the ABS light came on, the Skid control light came on, and the BRAKE light came on…  The CRUISE light was flashing at me, too.  EEK, Rosalie!  (In case you’re wondering, all my cars have names…)

I’m sure my hair stood up on end, but we made it back to the hotel in one piece and, of course, I called my husband, who immediately said, “Check all of the fluid levels.”  Fine, I should be able to do that, right?  I taught Auto Mechanics, right?  Well, that was 40 years ago, and I couldn’t find the hood latch switch.  Feeling like an idiot, I told him I would check all that after the car cooled down, and got up under the dashboard to try to find the little hood switch thing.

Rosalie is a Subaru Outback, and the Japanese symbols for things don’t always match my thoughts about the English view of things…  I mean, I can read the lit signal that says BRAKE, but I couldn’t for the life of me, find the hood latch. 

There was a golf outing going on at the hotel, so I asked one of those kind gentlemen, if they could point out the hood latch to me.  THEY couldn’t find it either, so I felt less stupid, if not less worried.  At any rate, my husband walked me through where it was, via a marathon phone call, Kavika helped, via comments here, and I found it and popped the hood.  It’s right below the dang parking brake and its symbol looks NOTHING like a hood opening…  In fact, it is a black, UNLABELED pull thing.  Helpful, isn’t it?

Next, what is all this?  What do you mean check the transmission fluid?  Where is the darn Transmission Fluid reservoir?  Does it have a dip stick?  Yeah, I know that I’M THE DIP STICK , but I couldn’t find that either…  (Once home, HE couldn’t find it, either, as it is a closed system, so I felt better.)  We checked everything we could find, carefully, the next morning, and tootled off down to the Walmart Service Center to let them check all the fluid levels, in case I screwed up somehow.  I didn’t, and they would check NOTHING without an oil change.  It was at this point that the CD player began to play songs like in a Sound Track for a movie…  It was playing Chain of Fools …

So, I got my oil changed again…  Twice in two weeks…  All the fluid levels were good, they said, and if I wanted Rosalie diagnosed, I had to go to Auto Zone—This they naturally told me after I had the $36 oil change.  Man, there is nothing like being a woman with car trouble…  So we found Auto Zone— up this road and down this lane, you can’t miss it.  The oxygen sensor had gone bad, but he didn’t know which one, if not both, so I bought one, as that was all they had, and we tootled off to Meineke Muffler to get it installed.  Back up this lane and down yet another road.  When I got there, they said that the chirping noise I’d been hearing was the rear brakes, and I desperately needed new rear brakes RIGHT NOW.  Thankfully, I hadn’t hit a bird, after all...  I wish they would standardize all these warning noises.  My last car, the brake pads made a creeeee, creeeee noise.

Also, the front brakes would be ok for a bit, but I desperately needed new front brakes, HAD to have rear brakes, and an alignment, TWO new sensors, etc.  They were smart enough to not mention another oil change.  It would take two more days to get all the parts in…  About $2000 worth of work.  I got new rear brakes, for $500 and felt lucky to get out of there with my shirt still attached.  This was pre-approved by my husband, via phone call, who felt I could make it home, no matter what was going out.  He was right, but still…  He hadn’t been thinking he had hit a bird for about 1000 miles, and I felt like I had done my share…

Immediately thereafter, same Saturday afternoon, we went back to the hotel, saying WHEW!, and rested.  Again.  My back was killing me, as we had sat at Meineke in hard plastic chairs for 4 hours.  Enough of that!  (Little did I know but they didn’t bother to clear the codes on the car, and it’s only one oxygen sensor that’s going bad, the inexpensive one, and that is under warranty, and there was no need for hysterics…  Thanks to my husband, who can soothe the feelings of any car…  AND his wife!  Rosalie blinked at me the whole way home.)  I was so whipped, I offered to take Matthew to the hotel restaurant, but we made “do” with peanut butter sandwiches, and snacks from the cooler in the car…  I also ate the rest of my ham salad, and what’s a road trip without ham salad steeped in water from the cooler?  I will never know, likely. 

Finally, Sunday morning—the day we’re supposed to get home-- after taking two wrong turns, and searching desperately for the N highway, NOT the NN highway, we found the Shut-ins.  The CD player was hammering out the Theme to Deliverance …  Scary!  It was hotter than the hinges of hell, and if not for PowerAde from the camp store, I would NOT have made it.  We found a cooler spot to sit, and dangle our feet in the water, but it was slicker than dog’s snot, so I carefully maneuvered my behunkus down to the river, to a nice granite ledge, took off my shoes and dangled my feet.  Matthew was doing good until he tried to sit down.  SPLASH!  Of course, I had to say, “I told you it was slick…” 

In fact, I warned everyone coming down to that spot that it was slick.  I offered my hand to help them balance if they needed it, but no, they could manage on their own.  Sure as bears crap in woods, they all fell, one at a time, splash, splash, splash, splash, and one guy fell so deeply into the channel that his hair was dunked.  His wife yelled at him, GET THAT BAG OUT OF THE WATER, DUMBASS, but he paid her no never-mind.  She wouldn’t hold my hand either, and slid down the underwater granite embankment with a giant SPLASH!  Speaking of Chain of Fools …

Needless to say, after this flash flood, they had to build a wooden boardwalk over what used to be the rugged trail, and THAT was 10X hotter than the hinges of hell, so I made it about 50 feet, gave the camera to Matthew and said, go take some pictures for me, please—get the rapids if you can…  I’m going to find some shade to sit in…  I managed to park my pudgy, breathless, sweaty little carcass up under a tree, and simmer in the heat quietly, until he came back.  Thank God for PowerAde.

So Matthew took pictures for me, and all the lovely old rapids are gone, strewn about the plain in front of the camp store, and we never made it to Elephant Rocks, because I needed to get as close to KY as I could and it was a LOOONG drive, to me, anyway.  About 1/3 the height of the state and over…  LONG way!

Almost to KY, on the drive back, we nearly fell for the sign that read:  Toll Ferry, KY- à .  We turned in, then the next sign said:  Fulton, KY 31 miles.  EGADS, that is the far bottom left corner of the state!  I don’t want to go that far!  If we go that far, we can take a train to Chicago and fly back…  Tempting, but not.  The CD player was telling me to Keep on Trucking, Baby—just keep on truckin’ .

So, we made it to Kuttawa, back across the rivers at Wickliffe, and got some good pictures this time, to the same hotel we stayed in a week before, and felt lucky to be alive, etc.  We are still laughing about our “Sound Track”!

The mouth of the Ohio River into the Mississippi River... YAY, we finally got to get a good picture!!!

Thanks for coming by!