Tuesday 4 August 2009

a white russian for a vegan.

I started thinking about south dakota today and when we met wayne in april.
this past april we went out west again on our family trip, our plan was to get to south dakota, all the way to the southwestern edge to rapid city and custer. i wanted to make a stop up at Carthage, where Chris Mccandless went through on his journey in the early 90's. It is such a small town, you drive down this deserted road and finally see the water tower and signs weloming you to carthage. the whole town is tiny, with dirt roads going thru it all. there is the cabaret, a general store...I snapped tons of pictures and we parked. Dad went into the Cabaret and found that the owner is a big Packers fan

, so he came back out with no news of Into the Wild, just that. Mom and I went in and started talking to the owner about why we came thru there. There was into the wild memorabilia covering the walls.
He eventually said, "well there's the guy over there, Wayne."
so we actually met Wayne and dined with him and his family that night. He put us up in an old victorian bed and breakfast. I slept upstairs in my own room, with a window overlooking a white house that Alex/Chris had stayed in when he was in Carthage.

He painted it, but it had been repainted since then.
Our plan was to meet up with Wayne the next day to see some of his things he had, we ended up driving to Madison, where he lived. We ate at a chinese restaurant and I rode with him to his house.
He showed us videos and the photographs from Alex's camera, and all his original journals. He made me a white russian at his bar, and I sat in the seat where Emile had sat when they had bunked out there.
We had a blast, and everything we did after that seemed to pale in comparison.
*bus photograph from Ed Plumb-blogspot.