COFFEE FUELED EXCURSION INTO THE NIGHT - 11:30 pm- 12:18 am

Nothing screams MENTAL PATIENT like a man shuffling around town in the middle of the night in a pair of house slippers, but I'm not the type of guy to worry too much about appearances. I like my slippers a lot, and if it were not socially unacceptable I would wear them all the time.

If you were with me on my last excursion into the night I brought attention to the trash can outside of Village Market which was overflowing with refuse at that time, and concluded that they did not run a tight ship over there. In the interests of fairmindedness, I just wanted you to know that this time everything looked ship shape outside of village market.

The town was quiet as the grave. Not a soul was out and about. Not even so much as a single pair of headlights illuminated my bearded visage as I trudged along Idyllwild's deserted streets.

I enjoyed sitting on the deck of the Higher Grounds Coffee shop for a while. It was a crisp night, probably in the low 40's, and that heady aroma of wood smoke was wafting across the deck from the chimneys over at the Idyllwild Inn. That's a smell that transports. The only thing that would have made the moment more enjoybale would have been the procurement of a steaming cup of joe from the coffee shop, and some company, but alas the shops proprietors had long since gone home, and, as I stated earlier, the center of town was a deserted no man's land.

I swung by the parking lot in the middle of town to see if there were any shopping carts to return to Fairway Market, but found none. I did stumble onto a mystery atop the pay phones by the Idyllwild Pizza Company- an abandoned carton of milk about 3/4 full. I sniffed the contents but didn't smell anything amiss. Hmmm...

Using my abilities as a super sleuth, finely tuned by the Vermont State Police Academy, I observed that the carton had expired the day prior, and concluded that my nose must not have have been a delicate enough instrument to detect the funk of slightly spoiled milk. Case closed.

I checked in on the BBVA Compass bank to make sure everything was okay. After all, my money is in there! I looked around for suspicious characters in ski masks, and looked in the windows for the movements of furtive flashlights, but finding none and feeling satisfied that all was well, I sat on the bench out front enjoying the surreal quiet of a deserted downtown.

Hungry for company after all of that lonely wandering I stopped by to see my old friend, Smokey, outside the ranger station.

The road home took me past a place that rents U-Haul. I always read the descriptions of faraway places featured on the sides of u-haul trucks, and ask myself, which would I be most interested to visit.

Did you know for over 4,000 years, stone structures known as Inuksuit have dotted the vast Canadian landscape? Who built them and what vital roles did they play in survival?

Did you know concealed beneath the last great ice sheets, Maine tells a unique story of a past world unknown? What evidence of ice age marine life did the retreating glaciers leave behind?

Did you know strange flora, previously unknown to science, were discovered in the hidden Ketona Dolomite glades, an area often referred to as a "botanical lost world?" Why do these mysterious rare plants grow only over this unique cambrian rock?

I have to say that I was ignorant of the fact that Akron is the bowling capital of the world, but it does fit with my understanding of the place (although I've never visited Akron personally).

Check out all of U-Haul's Supergraphics here.

Of those four locations, Nunavut, Maine, Alabama, and Akron, I would most like to visit Nunavut I think.

As I left the u-haul trucks behind and walked back home, with plans for a family vacation to Nunavut rolling around in my mind, I surprised a coyote on the drive leading into the camp. It loped off towards my house, and I caught one last fleeting glance of its shaggy form trotting along the road beneath the flood light in front of my house before it vanished altogether. As I neared the spot where the coyote had been, however, I detected a foul, acrid odor in the air, and realized with surprise that I was probably smelling a coyote fart. How many people can say they've smelled a coyote fart? I am a lucky man, you know? I guess I was just in the right place at the right time.