Missouri, Illinos, India

The summer before we each were seniors in highschool, my parents took my brothers and me on a huge cross country road trip, stopping and touring all the colleges we had even a fleck of interest in.  The summer after 6th grade, June of 1995, was our maiden voyage; oldest bro Burke was to be a 12th grader the next year so the entire family hit the road in our blue Chevy Astro van.

My mom called it "The Great American Road Trip," which shortened to GART.  The main thing I remember was being obsessed with the Pocahontas soundtrack (of "Paint With All the Colors of the Wind" fame) at the time and listening to it non-stop on my little walkman.  To get a better sense of just how uncool this was, my best friends were listening to Aaliyah and Ace of Base that summer, and my other favorite CD was the Cirque du Soleil "Alegria" soundtrack (for years I nurtured fantasies of being one of those sexy singing clowns.) 

I kept a journal of the whole trip.  It's not quite as dramatic as my dispatches from the school year, but there are some fun tidbits.  Like on the scrapbook page above the Mr. J's Coffee Shop business card, you'll see I saved a piece of my sunburn peel from our end of school trip to Wild Rivers.  On double stick tape.  I PICKED OFF MY DEAD SKIN AND SAVED IT IN MY JOURNAL ON DOUBLE STICK TAPE.  And then I labeled it using one of those pens where you wrote an invisible message and "decode" it with another marker.  I think I bought it at Sanrio.

My heart aches a bit reading about how I wanted to meet "someone at camp that is nice & sweet & good looking."  What really happened at camp that summer was my that my cabin-mates cornered me and accused me of looking at their boobs.  I was 11.  Did I mention it was Christian camp?

Oh Well!  Bu-Bye!  <3, Anni