…beat the shit out of them!
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The Doclopedia #2,178
Hot Spots: Mount Tromagor
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Located in the northwestern corner of Driamus, Mount Tromagor is a 13,000 foot tall volcano covered in gas vents, geysers, mud pots and several small flows of fast moving lava. Every hundred yearsor so, it erupts, sending lava and a pyroclastic flow down the mountain.
The sides of the volcano are always hotter than the surrounding area, by 75 to 125 degrees. The mountain and the area around it are home to lava elementals, fire imps, flame wolves and other fire loving creatures, It is unknown if the Greater Red Dragon, Jakrolativax, still lives on Mount Tromagor.
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The Doclopedia #2,179
Hot Spots: The Black Desert
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On Earth 14-K, it is the year 2550 and the Earth has been ravaged by pollution, war, environmental disasters and plague. Only now is it truly recovering from all of that. This Earth would be both familiar and very different from the Earth we know.
In what was once Argentina, you’ll find the Black Desert. Made up of volcanic sands and carbon waste from 400 years earlier, this desert is long, wide and very hot. Surface temperatures in the summer are seldom below 130 degrees. Unlike other deserts that get cold at night, this one stays between 60 and 80 degrees all night in the summer, and only a bit cooler than that the rest of the year. Almost nothing lives here above the surface and whale lives below are mostly insects and blind legless lizards.
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CritterCon 13, Trip Day Four: In which we discover some unnerving shit, view a swamp monster, go to a better depicted Hell than last time, see the Vallhalla of breakfast cereals, and see possibly the coolest Giant Jesus yet.
Robotica
We stopped here three years ago and I wrote this.
About a half hour later, we reached San Francisco and our third stop, Robotica. Now, this was a cool place to visit, being a big former Ralph’s grocery store, re-purposed to show off a few hundred robots, from the very tiny to one the size of a car.
Amazingly, entry is free, although if the parking lot is full (it will be), parking across the street is $10.00.
This place is hella cool! The robots do everything from mimic ant behavior to actually play rock riffs on a Fender Stratocaster. There are plenty of helpful young geeks to explain things to you and a couple actually recognized Spike and I by our names, asking “Are you Doc Cross and Spike Y Jones?” From there we moved into about 20 minutes of gaming talk, which ended with Spousal Staring.
Now, due to the fact that we are traveling through 2019 on our current trip, we actually visited Robotica for the second time only two years later. It was still the cool robot filled place we had gone two before. They had even expanded to a second floor where they had lots of old robots and automatons from the past, plus several from movies and TV.
(Sadie M: Those old robots were very cool.)
(Pixie: Yeah, I’m a big fan of Robbie the Robot.)
Things were going great until we got up to that second floor. Everyone else was touristing along when every hair on the back of my neck stood up and my spider sense tingled like a five alarm fire. Then I noticed that Sasha, despite being in an android body with her real body floating in goo on Sweetie, had a look of mixed anger and surprise on her face.
“W’prull!”, we both shouted before robots began attacking us.
(Leon: Shit got real then, folks!)
Had we been alone, we may not have escaped, but when several of your companions are wearing tough android bodies and all of them can port in ottopus arms and your wife & granddaughter carry magic wands AND you gave all of your human friends phasers “just in case”, your odds of survival go way up.
(Penny: Okay, those ottopus arms are just incredible!)
(Lettie: I’m a lover, not a fighter, but I wasn’t going to let some alien worm/centipede attack my mom.)
(Amy: I was totes impressed by Grace and Cakes double Stupifying one of those aliens.)
(Leon: Those aliens were FAST. Which is pretty much why the whole place got wrecked.)
(Roxy: So much phaser fire!)
Once things were done and the place was full of robot parts and surrounded by about 900 cops, we placed the three W’prull troublemakers in a ziploc bag and had Sweetie beam us back on board. Sasha froze the W’prull in carbonite and now they are on the wall in her lab.
(Goldie: Those cops did not look happy.)
(Cupcake: No, no they did not.)
(Tucker: Never a dull moment with the Cross Family.)
We decided that we needed a bit of a breather after all that excitement, so Sweetie drove up on Telegraph Hill and we all had cold drinks and watched the wild parrots for a couple of hours.
Once everyone had calmed down, we took off for our next attraction, another new one for us.
(Mark: Now I see why you were SO insistent that Sadie get checked out on the full android suite. I wasn’t sure that she should be involved in combat ops, but I think I saw her move just before you and Sasha. I know Sadie is quick, but dayumn… You do NOT get to recruit her for any of your covert ops crews!)
(Brownie: Covert ops? When the hell are we ever covert?)
(Spike: And now you see why I was so insistent that even the noncombatants on the bus be trained in the basics: how to use their phasers, how to react to the order “Back to back,” how not to stun (or worse) your own group.)
The World Famous Swamp Monster Roadside zoos and other, similar, animal attractions are not often on our list, except for when they do serious breeding or preserve endangered species. Animals simply displayed in less than good surroundings will not get our money and will, in fact, end up getting a visit from the NHTA Freedom Team. (Cupcake: Founded by our late Auntie Silky way back in 1975!) This stop, somewhat off the main highway in East Texas, is a legit breeding center for several species of endangered Texas & Louisiana reptiles & amphibians. It’s a great looking fully modern place. But you can’t tour it. What you CAN tour is the place that upened in 1940 with a few rattlesnakes, a couple of alligators and some turtles. One of those turtle was an Alligator Snapping Turtle (Macrochelys temminckii) named Butch. He was hatched in 1935. He is the Swamp Monster. Folks, not only is Butch 85 years old in 2020, he is the biggest and heaviest Alligator Snapper ever! At 48 inches long and 415 pounds, he is very impressive. He lives in a really large tank with lots of fish that he feeds on, as well as whole chickend, ducks and the odd small hog. He seemed pretty contens, which is good because he could live another 120 years. (Leon: Holy crap! He could eat a cat my sizr in two bites!) (Sadie F: That was a ginormous turtle! I may never swim in a pond again.) (Sasha: That reminds me, we need a couple of Archelons for the Dino Zoo.) The place also has some damned big rattlesnakes and copperheads, but Butch is the star. Well worth the $3.00 each to see him, plus the $ worth of t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc. We decided to take another short break, mostly so we could check our emails and such while enjoying all of the still warm cookies Julia and Alton had baked for us. After the cookiefest, we were off to see an attraction we had last visited in 2012. (Lettie: They even made fish flavored cookies for us cats!) (Pixie: And cookies with jerky bits for us dogs.) A Trip To Hell This is another church run attraction, about which 2012 me wrote…
When we woke up this morning, Data (our autopilot, if you are just tuning in) had us parked at our final roadside destination: A Trip To Hell. No, it’s not a recreation of my first marriage. It’s a sort of ride created by the Lord’s Church Of Jesus Christ, of Wango, Texas, to show sinners what they can expect after they die unless they straighten up and fly right and get some of that old time religion.
We laid down two bucks each and got on the little train that was actually being pulled by a converted electric golf cart thingy. To an alternating background of gospel music and scripture quoting, we saw all manner of scenes of hellish torment, with each one geared towards a different sin. Many of these sins had to do with sex of one type or another, which I’m pretty sure was meant to scare local young people into terrified celibacy. The one of a “Chronic Masturbator” getting his genitals fried by demons was pretty funny. Actually, most of the ride was pretty funny because this trip to Hell was done on a tiny budget.
When we were done, we bought the t-shirts, but declined to confess our sins (not NEARLY enough time for that) and accept Jesus. Grace got a good laugh from the group by saying “No thank you, my husband and I are from California”. I’m pretty sure that was enough to convince the preacher that we were doomed to damnation.
I had read in “Roadside Attraction Fans Quarterly” that the trip to hell had been upgraded in 2017 thanks to a parishoner dying and leaving a wad of cash for said upgrade. I decided we should check it out, since the first visit was funny as well, hell. The entry fee is now five bucks and the ride is about ten minutes longer. Our critters all decided to stay on the Bus and play “Human Crossing” because, as Cupcake put it “We are animals and therefore without sin.” I will note that certain of her fellow NHT, while technically sin free, certainly have pushed the envelope. (Amy: If animals could sin, there would be few on this bus that are without it.) I don’t know how much money the dead guy left them, but it must have been substantial, since they went from golf carts, plywood, high school kids in costumes and a boom box sound system to something reminiscent of Disneyland around 1970. Anyway, we piled into the snazzy new electric mini train and off we went. The ride was pretty much the same as before, but better looking and they might have added a few sins. The actors were better and the music was improved. We all particularly liked the teen boy & girl in the backseat od a car being pitchforked by demons. Also, the Chronic Masturbator now gets his hands, as well as his junk, fried by demons. One new scene told us how rock & roll and rap music were SATAN’S MUSIC and would put us on the highway to hell. I’m surprised nobody in the congregation pointed out the irony of that particular warning. Like before, we were offered a chance to confess our sins and I gave serious thought to taking a few hours to confess mine, but alas, we old guys have to pee frequently. We did buy t-shirts. Since we all wanted lunch, I had Sweetie pop us up to Kansas City for some truly great barbecue. After that, we popped over to a place that may well have eclipsed the Candy Bar Museum as our all time favorite stop. The World Famous Breakfast Cereal Museum (Cupcake: WOOHOO!) (Sasha: Noting here that my simian mostly vegetarian daughter is the only NHT on who can eat cereal (generally unsweetened) on a daily basis. Not even the raccoons can have it that often.) (Amy: Trust me, they’ve tried.) Located in Gnurkville, Iowa, this is an attraction I have wanted to visit for over a decade, but it was closed to the public since 2006. But in June of 2019, thanks to an infusion of cash and a new building, they re-opened. We were getting there less than 2 months afterward. We have some serious cereal fans in our group, and everyone was wanting to see what nostalgic memories they’d have of past breakfast cereals. We paid our $7.50 at the door and spent the next 2 ½ hours looking at boxes of cereal. Even better, all of the boxes all have fake bowls of cereal next to them, so you can see what a bowl of 1902 Rice Flakes looked like. The building is large and three stories tall, with the top story being cereals from countries other than the US and Canada. That was both really cool and educational. I can’t even begin to do justice to this place. I mean, they had 39 varieties of Cap’n Crunch alone! We kept seeing cereals we remembered as kids and seeing many we’d never even heard of. Who knew there was a Bob Ross cereal? Or one called Moonstones? Sir Grapefellow? It just went on and on. It was great. I don’t to think of how much we all spent on t-shirts, etc, but we dropped a bundle. (Tucker: Everyone who’s surprised by that, raise your hand.) Back onboard Sweetie, we spent a relaxing couple of hours talking and stuff, then went to our last stop of the day, which turned out to be really cool. Giant Jesus On A Harley Yep, a new Giant Jesus and perhaps the coolest one of all, for several reasons. First off, the Christian Bikers Club that built it are more bikers than Christians and actually, more woodworkers than bikers. Second, this whole Giant Jesus and the Harley he’s riding are made of wood! Third, this thing is BIG. (Sasha: It’s like it was custom made for Daddy.) It seems that this whole project started back in 2013, when the members of this club went on a long bike ride that happened to take them past two rather unimpressive Giant Jesus statues. They decided they could honor old J a lot better, so they began carving and milling and all that other stuff woodworkers do. They used a wide variety of woods and basically built the pieces to a humongous model. Then they put it together and holy shit is it great looking. It’s 85 feet long and, if Jesus were standing up, he’d be 70 feet tall. The whole statue is not painted, but it is stained and sealed. You can’t go up in it, but you can go up on a walkway to see it from two levels and 360 degrees around it. Best of all, they charge nothing to see it. We did buy the hell out of t-shirts and other stuff, tho. The Bus popped us back on the road just west of Amarillo, Texas, where we will be spending the night. Dinner was at the Big Texan Steakhouse, where most of us did eat steak, although none of us took on the massive 72 ounce steak challenge. (Tucker: Even in my canine body I could not have eaten all that.) (Sadie F: Nope, me either.) (Pixie: But we’d all give it a try! Hahaha!) Back onboard Sweetie, we watched a couple of movies from Earth 2-L. The first was “Pirates of Mars” and the second was “Sinbad and the Island of Monsters”. Both featured stop motion animation by Ray Harryhusen and both were lots of fun to watch. (Omar: Both of those movies were great swashbucklers with really cool creatures.) Tomorrow, we begin our last day before hitting the con on Wednesday. We have four stops, with maybe a surprise or two.
Destination Sign When We Left: The Black Pearl Destination Sign When We Stopped: 77 Sunset Strip Radio Station: Old Time Pulp Adventure Radio
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