We are three weeks in, with only two short weeks to go, and we have run into more kindness in strangers and friends than we can possibly carry in our small car (getting ever more covered in tortilla chips and gluten free banana bread crumbs as we go).
Taking the long drive from Sacramento, through Nevada and Wyoming, with a stop in Denver, Colorado was perhaps more strenuous than expected, albeit beautiful. We rolled into Denver a little before noon at our friends’ abode with a broken chord organ, no clean clothes, one can of dog food, and sleep adequate for no one. Cole and Rachel Pauley, with their two charming kids, turned everything but the dog food around for us (don’t worry, the story continues, and Butter always gets fed). Not only did Chordy-Chord finally make it back into the show that night, but our psyches were completely restored for the event thanks to one kind family in Denver.
Somewhere in Utah, where salt sits like snow, and a folk band can’t stop stopping for all the beauty.
Floating out in the great United States for this long can make a folk band feel unreachable, sometimes. And yet, we’ve had a gas card sent to us all the way from Ohio to California (thanks, Ann & Tom Lawson), a post card of encouragement from Australia (thanks, Tony), and a little autumn greeting– complete with changing leaves– from Virginia (thanks, Phill), all finding us at one of our many-and-ever-changing addresses along the west coast.
We are going to keep floating east. We find ourselves now in Omaha, but tomorrow night in territory we’ve traced before– North Manchester, Indiana. It’ll be good to see familiar faces in familiar places, but maybe we’re already missing the vast unknown of those larger western states, and the element of a kind surprise.
Thanks to the Camp residence for a very human experience:
This morning, we ate off of ceramic plates and metal cutlery in a warm country house, with soaps that smell like pumpkin bread and cupcake icing. The world is a strange and creative place.