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Wild boars in Georgia - grunt grunt

I finished all the sites I could legally or logistically collect in the first trip and skedaddled home, making it from Greensboro, NC to Chicago in about 13 hours and arriving home last night. Of course woke up in the middle of the night not knowing where I was but convinced I was in the woods and in danger somehow. About the time those dreams fade, I'll have to go back out. Oh joy.

Checklist at the more or less halfway point:
Sites visited: 10
Leaves collected: not sure yet; ~100?
Miles driven: 4940
Insect bites: 15-20 that I'm very aware of
Tick bites: 5 (UGH!!)
Exceedingly tanned arms: 2
Fast food meals eaten: about 12
Dunkin Donuts iced coffees consumed: 1 (but only because DDs are hard to come by)
Weight: N-2 (woo!)
Max temp: 102 (South Carolina)
Prettiest state seen: North Carolina
Cubs record: 41-24 (still best in baseball! woo!)
Number of Democrat candidates for President: 1 (woo!)

I was chased around the car in South Carolina for a while by a very jumpy spider. Every time I stopped, it leaped onto the passenger window triumphantly. Every time I tried to usher it out of the car, it vanished under the seats. The driving was very tense because I was painfully aware that there was a spastic spider lurking below me. Eventually I convinced it to terrorize a hotel parking lot instead of my car. I didn't kill it, which probably means now I've transported some horrible invasive pest dozens of miles from its native habitat and destroyed an ecosystem. Oopsy.

In West Virginia, which is having its outbreak of 17-year cicadas right now, mere minutes after laughing to myself that it would be funny if a cicada flew into the car, a cicada smacked into the door frame right next to my head, exploded cicada guts all over me, and landed in two halves in my lap while I zoomed down the road at 70 mph. I made an appropriate comment which was probably something like "AAAAIEEE!", mopped off my face with my sleeve and gingerly tossed the two bug-halves out the window, then got out at the next rest stop to scrub dried guts off the car interior. I drove with the windows up after that.

Took today off to do laundry and veg out and remind the dog who I am. Tomorrow, back to work. I'm home until the 20th though I may do a couple of short trips as long as I'm in the midwest. Remainder of pictures to go up later on. Right now I have calamine lotion to apply.

ETA: photo link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bintie/sets/72157605437297532/
- posted by Diane @ 3:09 PM