Yesterday I finished my photo shoot in Page, Arizona, and had some time before I needed to head back to Las Vegas.
A normal person would have gotten in the car and driven home.
I decided to go on a photo safari.
This is what photographers call continuing to work after you’re done working.
Page makes this particularly dangerous because you can pretty much point a camera in any direction and something ridiculous happens.
[INSERT IMAGE: Page AZ (1 of 1).jpg]
There are cliffs.
Mesas.
Clouds.
Lake Powell.
Basically the entire landscape looks like somebody got carried away designing the loading screen for an Arizona tourism commercial.
So I started wandering.
Eventually I ended up at the Glen Canyon Dam.
This thing is enormous.
And because apparently looking at an enormous dam from a perfectly reasonable distance isn’t sufficient, there’s an overlook.
Which requires this.
This is awesome.
Except I had to walk up about ten stories.
I don’t know how many stairs there actually are and I’m not counting them because I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life.
I just know that at some point I stopped being a photographer and became a contestant on a very low-budget version of The Amazing Race.
But eventually you get this.
[INSERT IMAGE: Page AZ (1 of 1)-11.jpg]
Fine.
Worth it.
Mostly.
Then I got back in the car and headed toward Las Vegas.
And somewhere along the way, this appeared.
Let’s examine what we’re being offered here.
AMERICANA MUSEUM.
Thousands of authentic items celebrating American history.
BBQ restaurant.
Full bar.
1880s-style saloon.
All advertised on a sign sitting on a trailer next to the highway.
There is an extraordinary amount of America happening on that sign.
I had no choice.
I turned left.
The place looks exactly the way you’d hope it would look.
Smoke Wagon Saloon.
Whiskey.
Hay bales.
American flags.
If a bald eagle had flown over carrying a brisket in a hubcap, I wouldn’t have questioned it.
I went inside expecting the usual roadside museum stuff.
Old guns.
Whiskey bottles.
Cowboy memorabilia.
Maybe somebody’s collection of spurs.
Possibly a photograph of Wyatt Earp standing next to a guy whose historical importance was apparently having met Wyatt Earp.
And there was plenty of that. PLENTY!
Then I walked around a corner.
And there was this.
Abraham Lincoln’s top hat.
Not an Abraham Lincoln-style top hat.
Not a reproduction.
According to the museum, Abraham Lincoln’s actual top hat.
Now we’re operating at a different level.
This is the sort of object I expect to see at the Smithsonian behind seventeen inches of bulletproof glass while a federal employee watches me breathe.
Here it was in southern Utah, a short walk from the Smoke Wagon Saloon.
And apparently the museum’s organizational system is simply:
America happened.
Because not far away from Abraham Lincoln was this.
Michael Jackson’s signed hat.
Of course.
Lincoln.
Michael Jackson.
Why wouldn’t they be neighbors?
At this point, I stopped trying to understand the collection and just accepted that I had entered the physical version of somebody clicking SHUFFLE on American history.
And then I found this.
Three taxidermied woodland animals playing poker.
For money.
There’s a fox.
There are raccoons.
There are playing cards.
There are actual dollar bills on the table.
I have questions.
Mostly, I want to know which one of them suggested this.
Because the fox looks extremely confident and the raccoon on the left has the unmistakable expression of someone who has just realized the fox has been dealing from the bottom of the deck.
And this is where the entire photo safari finally made sense.
I started the morning surrounded by some of the most spectacular scenery in the American Southwest.
Millions of years of geology.
The Colorado River carving through sandstone.
One of the largest engineering projects in the country.
I climbed approximately fourteen thousand stairs to photograph it.
And somehow the picture I’m still thinking about is:
three dead woodland animals playing poker.
Photography is weird.
Museums are weird.
America is extremely weird.
Apparently that’s why I keep bringing a camera.
Yesterday’s Sports Mess
Yesterday went 2-1, with Cleveland and Tampa cashing while our favorite, Detroit F5, got flattened by Minnesota. The Tigers loss did give us another useful rule: if we’re betting an F5 around a particular starter matchup, we need to check for opener/bulk-pitcher shenanigans before booking it. That’s two straight days where the pitching arrangement changed underneath our original handicap, so it officially goes on the checklist. Two wins, one loss. We’ll take it.
THE GIANT SCOREBOARD
ALL SPORTS: 1,040-1,071-7
Recent journey:
1-8 → 4-0 → 0-3 → 1-2 → 1-2 → 1-2 → 2-1 → 3-1 → 1-3 → 2-1
Meanwhile:
TENNIS: 0-1
Untouched.
Protected.
Occasionally dusted by a Smithsonian employee wearing white gloves.
Today’s Picks
Today we’re going with Brewers F5 ML, Padres ML and Yankees ML. Milwaukee is the favorite because Jacob Misiorowski gives us the cleanest starting-pitcher edge on the board, while San Diego gets the full game because Cincinnati’s Williamson/Burns pitching arrangement makes the first five unnecessarily weird. Cam Schlittler and the enormous team-quality gap get the Yankees onto the card, although Reid Detmers keeps them firmly in third place. Three picks, and no fourth one dragged in by its ankles just to make the furniture symmetrical.
This isn’t called Pick What I Pick.
It’s called Don’t Pick What I Pick.
Please wager accordingly.
