The Glorious Saga Of The Ice Cream Dwarves

…and their great voyage

Critter Con 14

Trip Day 3: In which we get to see more license plates than we imagined, eat pizza cooked without fire, visit another tiny village, and play a rousing game of D&D.

About 10 AM, after breakfast and a leisurely stroll around the small community of Skull Valley, we re-boarded Sweetie and headed off to our first stop outside Prescott. As we rode along, some of us enjoyed the desert scenery, while others played with guinea pigs or watched TV. Actually, as we watched the desert go by, Spike and I came up with a half dozen RPG scenarios, including one about a sentient road that changes to keep you lost.

We’ve stopped at dozens and dozens of roadside attractions over the years, but our stop north of Prescott was a first. License Plate Farm is, you guessed it, home to tens of thousands of license plates from hundreds of countries, going back well over a century.

This is a working small family farm, but every building is covered in license plates. The parts of buildings that get the really harsh weather are covered with relatively new plates that are coated in a clear protective plastic. Rarer plates are on the north side of buildings, and the really rare plates are inside.

Bedsides being colorful, the license plates are like a history lesson, from states up to nations. The farmer who started it all, George Armanino, died at age 101 in 1980, his son Tony continued the tradition until he died in 2007, and now Mary Armanino is about to hand things off to her youngest daughter, Kay. That’s some family tradition.

We looked around for over an hour, then bought a few t-shirts and headed out. Our next stop would be in Sedona for lunch, but we planned a couple of stops for desert sightseeing along the way.

We rolled into Sedona about 1:30, ready for lunch at Happy Ann’s Solar Pizza. This unique pizza place is owned by our old friend, Ann Darrow, a transfer over from Earth 89-V. If you recognize her name from King Kong, you are right. If you think she was the damsel in distress, you are wrong. In her reality, Ann was both a scientist and a film maker, more like a combination of Carl Denham and Jack Driscoll than a helpless actress.

We met Ann while she was on the run from pretty much everyone from a bunch of creditors to the Feds. Kong did not get killed in New York and had caused a massive amount of damage before reaching Brazil and the Amazon jungle. Ann needed our help and we needed hers to…well, do some necessary stuff. When we offered to bring her here, she jumped at the chance.

We caught her up on all the latest in science, politics, etc, then let her off in 1980. She ended up in Sedona with a passion for both solar power and food. And so, we ate pizza cooked in a solar oven without fire, just the concentrated heat from the sun. It was great pizza, and it was great chatting with Ann.

We left Sedona about 2:30, but since our next destination was 4 hours away, I told Sweetie to cloak up and go aerial. We went up to about 2,000 feet, pointed toward Springerville and took off at a decent speed.

We made it there in under an hour.

We’ve seen a bunch of tiny villages, so why not add another to the list? Especially if this tiny village is actually a tiny city populated by…

…LITTLE PLASTIC DINOSAURS!

And not just dinosaurs fresh out of the bag/box. Oh no, my friends, these 11,000 dinosaurs have been painted, tinkered with, remodeled and dressed up as the citizens of Dino City.

The city is in a big Quonset hut and you get to both wander around looking at it normally, plus you can sit down, put on VR goggles, and ride the Dino Metro through town. I cannot tell you how cool it is, but trust me, it is probably one of the best non-sexual 30 minutes I’ve had in 10 years.

Of course, this place is located way off any main freeways or highways, but it still gets 50,000 visitors a year. And yes, we bought all manner of stuff, including little plastic dinosaurs.

Once we were back on the road, it was time to start up a D&D game that I plan on running at the con, but needed a bit of a shakedown cruise. So it was that everyone except Flora and the guinea pigs got handed character sheets at random and we started “The Great Reverse Dungeon Crawl”.

Our daring and panicked 7^th level adventurers were…

Spike as Meldoff, a human mage
Mary as Sister Zeema, an elven cleric and skullcracker
Grace as Hyopia the cunning half elf thief
Sasha and Cakes as Falon & Lali Grenderbal, dwarf fighters
Sam as Uncle Obo, halfling wizard
Tucker as Arivella, dragonborn paladin

I gave them a 3 page backstory of how they raided the Dungeon of the White Bull 12 years earlier, which had made them very wealthy. Sadly, they, along with every intelligent creature within 1,000 miles, have recently been informed that the White Bull God has returned and is not pleased that his dungeon/temple has been defiled.

So Our Heroes have 1 year to put back 12 items they stole, AND get several of the dungeons previous residents to return.

I decided to only run the first 6 items, because I thought they might be too easy. I told them they had 6 real time hours to find the 6 items and put them back…AND THEY COULD NOT SPLIT THE PARTY.

You may now try to imagine the PCs using a teleport globe (think a Wizarding World portkey), and a flying carpet, to get from place to place as fast as possible so they can beg, borrow, buy or steal the 6 items they need.

Now, I did stop the clock for bathroom breaks and dinner, but while the clock was running, it was MADNESS! HAHAHAHAHA!

They did get all 6 items and put them back with 1 minute 23 seconds to spare. At a couple of points, I was expecting either fainting or heart attacks. The three 6 hour sessions at the con are going to rock!

We arrived at our destination, Pie Town, New Mexico, just after our dinner break. After the game was finished, there was about an hour of discussing the game and then we all turned in for the night.

Tomorrow: Pie and adventure!

Starting Destination Sign: Nova Vaasa

Ending Destination Sign: The Old Dark House

Radio Station: KGAM, Gamer Radio, Seattle, WA, Earth 1-G