The Lost Prince of Death Valley
It happened in Death Valley, although I can’t confirm the contents of this story to be entirely true. Time has a sneaky way of covering up details with a filmy layer of haze. Over the years, my gaps in memory become all too susceptible to excesses of an overactive imagination. As a result, history becomes not so much about a record of actual circumstance; but rather a daisy-chain of fractured fairy tales linked together with real-life events. In any case, I will tell things the way in which I remember them. The reader can make any necessary distinctions separating facts from fiction.
Death Valley, Nevada (Photo courtesy of wiseGEEK)
It was the late summer of 1984, we had entered just Death Valley and we were two hours into our drive outside of Vegas. I was just eleven years old then. Christian was twelve; Shannah was nine; and Aaron was at the tender but mischievous age of six. We had spent the entire summer with our dad in Anaheim, California and we were heading back to Iowa in one of those Malibu Classic wood-paneled station wagons. (more…)
Posted in North America, Tall Tales and Big Fish Stories and tagged death valley, Nevada by Big John with 12 comments.
Hungry as a Hog inside Jamestown Colony
Yesterday we drove along the Colonial Parkway in Virginia. The fall foliage is so beautiful this time of year and the colorful drive really carried with it a certain spirit of the seasons. We had originally planned to visit all three points of interest: Yorktown, Jamestown Colony, and Colonial Williamsburg. After getting off to a late start, and then getting lost, we had to curtail our schedule a bit and ended up making it to two out of three places. This is my unfortunate tale of being hungry as a hog inside Jamestown colony.
Jamestown Colony, America’s First English Settlement in the New World
This was a return trip for me ; although it had been several years since my first visit. Upon our arrival, we first visited the reenacted settlement before going to see the original one. I must have been a lot hungrier this particular visit since the first time going there; because once I got inside the park all I could think about was food! When one of the park actors in colonial garb began talking about the amount of settlers that died of starvation the very first year in the colony; well I started to get even hungrier… you might even say that I was scared hungry!
As luck would have it, I came upon a deerskin hat lying on the ground outside the makeshift Indian village. I just knew that a Powhatan had lost it and now they were going to have to do some real bartering to get it back. (more…)
Posted in Adventurous Places, North America, Tall Tales and Big Fish Stories and tagged colonial jamestown, colonial parkway, jamestown, jamestown colony, jamestown colony virginia by Big John with 35 comments.