dart trippin'
It's about the journey, not the destination
From top, Carolyn Tharp poses with the Mount Zion Mo. Sign Tharp, with boyfriend Jason Shaad, 2006 graduate in Branson, Mo. Tharp stands in front of a heifer marquee board in Joo-lin Mo. Shaad with a bovine statue in Pittsburg
It's Thursday night, and my boyfriend has a black t-shirt wrapped around his eyes like a blindfold. I spin him around three times — the way kids do at birthday parties before hitting the piñata — and position him facing the map of Missouri that we've taped to the wall. He takes his first shot. The dart misses the Show-Me State altogether, hitting the map's index that Rand McNally so nicely provides. I retrieve the dart and reposition him."Aim more toward your left," I say. He shoots again, this time barely missing Missouri and hitting the only inch of Kansas shown on the map. I pick up the dart, put it in his hand, get out of the way. He fires again. This time the dart sticks, right in Mount Zion — just southwest of Springfield, Mo., close to Arkansas.
a weekend road trip. The catch? We had to determine the location by throwing a dart.
Jason and I had the idea of a dart trip a month ago. We love to travel and spend time together, so the two of us planned to take
Looking for something to do for fall break or even just a weekend? Grab your best friends and toss a dart at a map of any state — or, if you're really ambitious and have more time, a map of the entire U.S. — and hit the road.
Jason and I negotiated where we would go. I refused to go anywhere in Iowa
DART TRIP (SEMI-OFFICIAL) RULES
(too boring) or Kansas (too flat), Jason nixed Oklahoma and the Texas, panhandle (too far). We settled on Missouri, and I brought home a road map. Laying it out on the kitchen floor, Jason and I looked at all the terrain in the area. We decided to keep the trip as inexpensive as possible and camp, so we looked at rivers, state parks and the Mark Twain National Forest that stretches across Missouri.
take the smaller, scenic highways and avoid the busy interstates. We couldn't eat anywhere we'd ever heard of. We had to stop whenever I wanted to take a picture (I tend to take a lot). And we couldn't make any plans, except to get to Mount Zion — somehow.
Pittsburg
1. Can't eat anywhere you've ever heard of. This lets you experience all the greasy spoon, Mom and Pop kind of restaurants.
We left on Saturday morning in Jason's red Jeep Cherokee, singing along to everything on my iPod from Clara to Broadway musicals. By noon, we decided to stop in Pittsburg. A giant heifer statue next to a real estate office greeted us. We got out of the car and examined the massive bovine idol. It was larger than one of those hideous Hummers, with a marquee board on its side advertising a Rock'n Roll Cycle and Car Show, Including a Blessing of the Bikes. For the next 10 minutes Jason and I snapped photos of us with the giant cow, trying to climb
3. Don't have an agenda. The key is spontaneity. Stop whenever you want to take a picture, smell a flower or check out a flea market.
2. Stick to the back roads. They're much more scenic than the main interstates, and you'll see more small towns. They have the most character.
We set rules too. We had to
On our way out of town, we ran into what looked like a cheesy carnival meets outdoor craft show. We had to stop.Turns out that
on it and posing like it was kissing us. Cars zoomed by, and the drivers probably thought we were nuts, but who wouldn't stop for a heifer that big? I don't quite know why a real estate office would need something like this. I gues anyone would want an oversized bovine for a sign.
Pittsburg celebrates Little Balkans Days during Labor Day weekend, as was marked by the banners hanging from the street lamps. A band on a giant stage at the end of the blocked-off street played a cover of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi," which sounded more like a rendition of Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer's Saturday Night Live "The Culps" sketch, complete with off-key, quivering vocals.
Booths lined the road, selling
homemade ice cream, children's train rides and wooden crafts. Carnival games were scattered around the block, including a haunted house, pony rides and a large inflatable slide that resembled a NASA rocket. A little girl walked by with a puppet that looked like her very own puppy, and she took good care to make it walk next to her like a real dog. Jason and I visited the chill cook-off, which started that morning and went on until 2 p.m. Participants decked their tents with colorful fabrics of chili peppers and donned flashy aprons. Because I'm a vegetarian and all the chill had some sort of animal in it, we decided to eat the food we'd packed. We moved on to the vintage car show, where the hoods were open so you could check out the massive engines. One hot rod, sported orange and yellow flames along its black body, and a skull smiled at us from the gearshift. After a bag of homemade kettle corn and some stale nachos, we decided to get back on the road.
Joplin, Mo.
We took old Route 66 east, hoping to find a '50s-style diner. There were none, unfortunately, crushing my hopes of being served a chocolate malt from a lady in a pink poodle skirt. I was pleasantly surprised, however, as we pulled into Joplin, Mo., and saw our second giant heifer statue. Just like the first one, this was enormous but it was a darker shade of brown and advertised Joplin's Best Country Party.
We stopped for lunch at a quiet park filled with fountains. Jooplin was a nice contrast to the busy Pittsburg streets. We sat peacefully in the park, unpacking the squeezeable peanut butter that had awed us into buying it at the grocery store so much that we had to buy it.
We picnicked on a bench by a large circular fountain, wider than the Chi Omega but not as tall. Sculptures of children who looked like cherubs were poised in the center of the fountain and coins gleaned from the bottom. I told Jason about the Trevi fountain in Rome and how I had thrown a coin into it promising me a return trip
to the city. "Let's do that for Joplin," he said. He dug in his pockets and found some pennies, and we threw them over our shoulders and into the fountain. I guess we're going back to Joplin someday.
Branson, Mo.
We needed to find a place to camp for the night, especially before it got dark, and Jason suggested just outside of Branson, Mo., because it was on the edge of the Mark Twain National forest, near Lake Taneycomo and had a state park. On the way to Branson we passed the Kel-Lake Motel, where each room had its own rocking chair outside the door, and the Springfield Denture Center. Around 5 p.m. we pulled into beautiful Branson and stopped at an information center on the edge of town. The man at the counter couldn't be a day under 80, and he tried to sell us tickets to shows like Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, ostrich races and Tony Roi's Elvis Experience. We politely declined but accepted a free map and rolled into downtown Branson.
A newly developed shopping district was situated along the river, and as we parked our Jeep we heard Van Morrison's "Moondance" ringing in the air. "Oh, it gotta be good if they're playing Van Morrison," I said. We walked through the pedestrian zone that was lined with stores and resembled an outdoor shopping mall. Jason and I bought warm soft pretzels and took them down to the river to try to escape the crowd. We ate on the bank of the river, then headed to the Compton Ridge campgrounds.
We set up our tent and unpacked our stuff at campsite 124, which cost $23 a night, but had a swimming pool and indoor showers. Jason's more outdoor-savvy that I am, so he built the campfire — with only one match. We feasted on veggie burgers and hot dogs and told stories of high school bonfires as it got dark.
2m
On Sunday morning we hiked the neighboring trails up to Susie's Lookout and got a view of a nearby valley and treetops. After our trek, we decided to go out to eat at the Belgian Waffle and Pancake House that we had seen in town the day
PHOTOS COURTESY OF CAROLYN THARP
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09.28.2005 JAYFLOW <11>
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