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Previous Challenge Entry (EDITOR'S CHOICE)
Topic: DEVOTED( 02/04/21)

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TITLE: Zany, Arcane and Obscure | Writing Challenge By Corinne Smelker 02/11/21

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“Are you ready?”
Jake, who was putting his seatbelt on, flashed the smile that had won my heart just over 30 years before. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
I put the car in gear and turned out of our driveway, down the long, winding road to the main interstate.

Three years earlier our youngest, then 22, had moved out, leaving us home alone for the first time since we had married. One morning I looked up and realized that 27 years of our lives had flashed by – and now at least another 25, maybe more, stretched in front of us. We had faithfully dedicated our 20s, 30, 40s and part of our 50s raising decent human beings, now what?

As I reflected, Jake asked, “Where to first?”
“Waco, Texas” I responded.
“Ok.”

Last summer we had traveled Route 66 from Illinois to California. This year we decided to try something a little different, just to keep it spicy. After listening to a podcast during a workout I commented that I had learnt there was a museum in Austin, Minnesota devoted to SPAM!
“Spam?” Jake echoed.
“Yep, Spam.”

From that an idea germinated and bloomed. We loved to travel, we loved to visit weird things (as evidenced by the fun things we had documented on our Route 66 trip), why not combine the two? So, this year Jake left it up to me to plot a route from Texas to California, stopping at museums devoted to the fun and zany, the arcane, the obscure and the downright weird. He said he didn’t want to know where we were headed until we hit the road.

“Here’s the list,” I said. “First stop is the Dr Pepper Museum in Waco. Then we drive north to Frisco, and check out the Video Game Museum…” I chuckled as Jake pumped his fist in the air. Once a gamer, always a gamer, I suppose.
“Then we head west, young man, and hit the Devil’s Rope Museum in McLean. Did you know there are over 2000 types of barbed wire?”

“We haven’t left Texas yet,” Jake complained. “Those are going to take two or three days alone!”
I laughed, “patience, my Padawan. Next we retrace some of our Route 66 path and then veer off to Roswell. We have to see the UFO Museum there.” Jake nodded. That had been a childhood dream of his, and we were finally going to fulfill it.
“Well I just hope the final two museums are not boring after Roswell,” I said. “We are going to the Neon Museum in Las Vegas and our final destination is the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, which brings us right to San Francisco.”

“Sounds perfect,” Jake settled back in his seat. “I can’t wait to plan our trip up the eastern seaboard next year. The Spy Museum in Washington D.C., and the Bad Art Museum in Massachusetts – can you imagine, an entire place devoted to bad art, who judges that – to mention just a couple…”

He reached over, took my hand and gently kissed it. “There’s absolutely no one else I would rather go and visit unusual museums with than you.”
“Me neither. But I think I might draw the line at the Museum of Funeral History in Houston!”
Jake laughed, “Yeah, too weird, even for me.”

As he continued to hold my hand, we drove north for the next leg of our adventure called life.

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