Dead Dogs, Gorillas, and The Bat Mobile

This is Lucky Lisa's Dead Dog Saloon. I am not sure if the dog died from karaoke poisoning or not…

This weekend Dianne decided to clean. This meant that I needed to, “get the hell out”. You see, the reason for this is that when she is cleaning, I am “touching things”. This makes them “unclean”. So I was commanded to vacate the den and find entertainment/beer elsewhere. The strange part is that the dog is never banned from the house even though he jump in mud puddles and sniffs….well, you know what dogs sniff. I decided that a nice drive would be in order. I could kill about 4-5 hours and see some interesting sights. This drive would only take me about 145 miles, but oh the places we would go, and the things we would see…

Off I went. The first thing I decided to do was go to the state fair. I figured that it was relatively close, and would offer me plenty to do while Dianne sterilized everything. As I approached an off ramp every car seemed to be getting off on, I decided not to take it. As it turns out, that was the ramp I was supposed to use. The backup seemed to be around 3 miles. Now I have been to some fairs, but they must be giving away some good stuff for someone to sit in a 3 mile long backup. At least I think that was the fair. Either that or there was a REALLY serious accident. I think it was the fair.

So off I went, past the backup, past the fair, on to the great land of the unknown. Awhile later I came upon good ol’ DEAD DOG SALOON. Now no self respecting tourist/wanna-be plumber could pass up this jem. Unfortunately I was neither hungry or thirsty, nor did I want to sing karaoke. Since I thought that just wandering around taking pictures would seem kind of weird, I decided to pass on further investigation. Than again, with a name like the Dead Dog Saloon, who knows.

Further down the road I passed several fireworks stands. I made a mental note to stop at one on the way back. On I went, past the big hill, and over the small ones. One after another they became part of my rear view mirror. Then I saw it. It was a sign for a garage sale. The garage sale is not really what interested me. It was the fact that it pointed up a dirt road into the middle of nowhere. I had to stop. I turned the car around and headed back. Up the dirt road I went. I parked in someones driveway and hopped out to scope out the garage sale scene. Being this far out, I expected to find things like trap lines, shot guns, and other really great stuff. I found that most people have the same crap. It seems that it really doesn’t matter where you are, if you are throwing a garage sale, you are getting rid of the stuff that you and nobody else wants.

The lady that greeted me was very nice and they did in fact have some good stuff. There was some very nice Canon camera equipment, and I think I may have seen a chain saw somewhere. What caught my eye was not the aged computer equipment, but the wax apple candle. Yep, this was garage sale gold. Not every day do you come across something that you can buy from a garage sale that is pretty and meant to be burned. This was almost as good as grandmas owls, except much less expensive. I haggled with her for the best wax apple price, and walked away one wax apple richer. She got a dollar out of the deal. I think she may have won that one. In any case, she was quite friendly and asked if I needed anything else. I looked around and decided that one wax apple was enough for one day. I hopped in the car and headed back to civilization.

I kept asking myself, “where does one go to get a Bikini for a gorilla”?

One the way back I stopped at a fireworks stand. It had a large black gorilla in a pink/orange bikini. This was the reason I stopped. I thought about buying fireworks, but then wondered to myself where I would set them off. Anchorage is not really spread out as far as housing is concerned, and I could just see me setting a house on fire. I nixed the idea of fireworks due to lawsuit reasons. I took some pictures of the gorilla, and the bat mobile. Yes, they had a car made up to look like the bat mobile. Either that, or it really was the bat mobile, and the bat cave was really in a fireworks stand. This place was strange in a very strange way. After the photo session I was on the road again. Just an easy 2 hour ride and hopefully Dianne would have the house spotless. That is until I got home…

This is the original Batmobile. It was sold on e-bay for $3.63. Jerrys Discount Fireworks is in the background (they do not have a giant gorilla).