The traveling side-show rolls on

I am no longer Taya. I have become my road-trip alter-ego, Stinky Girl. I put on my last clean traveling outfit two days ago, and have been sweating into it ever since. My shirt seems to be trying to return to its primordial soup-y roots; I think new life forms are developing somewhere in my vicinity. I'm fairly sure my skirt crawled away from me in the tent this morning.

I make a mental note not to stand too close to anyone until I can find a shower, and an industrial size container of laundry detergent.

We stop traffic now. It's like a little side-show. We pull up with my car and the dented van, smeared with deer blood and fur. My dad applies a new layer of duct tape around the plexiglass that doubles for a window. One by one, five large hairy dogs pile out of the vehicles, and mom and I set them up in a series of pens. (You try managing 250 pounds of dog going in five directions at once.) When I bring out the cat on a leash, the sidelong glances turn into outright stares. Today, one of the patrolmen at the rest stop watched us unload for a duct-tape-and-lunch session, his eyes getting bigger and bigger as the dogs and the duct tape and the pens and the cat all materialized. He strolled over, keeping a safe distance. "We've got a two hour limit on visits here. Just so you know." We'd been there twenty minutes. We nodded, smiled brightly, promised not to exceed our allotted time. I was sooo tempted to pitch the tent for the remaining hour and thirty-five minutes, though.

Lunch today was rice cakes, peanut butter, and tomato chutney. It is officially time to get off the road.