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Voych’s Poetry Of the USA


Kentucky: Mammoth Cave is indeed the mother of all caves. Crazy to learn that 100 years ago pre-national-parkhood businessman vying for tourists destroyed during the night each other’s 1000 years old stalagmites and stalactites.
Tennessee: At Grand Ole Opry Kelsea Ballerini sang I MISS ME MORE and that’s how country music loving Tennesseans that might travel feel about their state. Also there be Hobbit houses!
Georgia: Can a place with cloudy canyons and covered with Spanish Moss be described as anything other than mystical? Only if you live to tell of a few freezing and wet nights in a tent while there. Thank God for cousins’ wine to warm you afterwards.
Florida: Space shuttle Atlantis hanging from the ceiling at _______ degrees. Swimming in the ocean with manatees and without manatees, but not with alligators because they are not snuggleable. 
Louisiana: An entire wedding danced down the centre of our narrow street with band blaring — Wonderful and honestly not sure if this is a normal occurrence for New Orleans.
Texas: Alamo flag said COME AND TAKE IT. I bought that on a bumper sticker but Amy won’t let me put it on our car. We sledded on desert sandhills and slept there too in a place where the wind can mutilate your tent.
New Mexico: Earthships of Taos define sustainability. Enormous drip castles are called Tent Rocks at Kasha-Katuwe where they reside in Walt’s backyard.
Four Corners: Not a state but how often do four territories meet at one spot? Seldom enough that it deserves its very own line in a poem among the states we traveled to.
Colorado: It taught me that I could live in a hot spring. Not kidding. Especially if it was like the place we went where there was more than a dozen ranging in temperatures from 94 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit and I could hop from one to another as I please.
Utah: Words and language cannot capture what Arches, Island in the Sky and Dead Horse Point have to offer so you’ll have to go and see for yourself. DHP isn’t even a national park for Pete’s sake.
Arizona: Above description pertaining to language can be applied to the Grand Canyon, except you can easily imagine mule convoys passing you on the trail to the Colorado River. It is unbelievable that Saguaro cacti exist for real outside of cartoons and that wild donkeys come to your campsite for petting. I want to know the mind of a Saguaro so he can tell me why he decided to put his arms where he did.
Nevada: Las Vegas has many bright lights and unusual human behaviour, also narrow trucks that drive up and down the strip for the sole purpose of carrying LED billboard advertisements. I think we all know what David Suzuki would think because it is all a big environmental bad.
California: It’s hard to beat the beaches and almost impossible to get a prime camping spot on one unless you’re married to Amy or you bring your blind and deaf dog, put a SERVICE ANIMAL vest on him and camp in the prime handicapped only spot. See Utah/Arizona for why Yosemite can’t be properly described. Among enormous 2000 year old Redwood trees there graze hoards of untouchable elk due to supposed danger that make me want to prove everyone wrong by becoming The Elk Whisperer.
Oregon: Amy’s haiku says it best:
If rain’s what it takes
for a place to be so green
we can forgive you.

Washington: Mt St Helens is really pretty AND provides super useful safety tips about surviving a volcanic eruption. Such as: When a volcano starts to rumble, get the hell away, possibly even much farther away than what the government experts say is safe so that you don’t get lavad like 53 people in the “Safe Zone” did in 1980.

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