There was a time when I would lament a weekend that didn’t involve at least six hours of video games and considerable languorous indulgence. This is not that time.
Saturday I was party to a fine roadtrip with Stephabee, A-Cool, and Catmanuel, who I can now say even more emphatically, are awesome. Roadtrips have a way of clarifying relationships and I am quite fortunate that what lurks behind the jungle foliage of my traveling companions is not a horrible tiger-boar amalgam but a waterpark! I am further convinced of my considerable good fortune. Massive Framage had intended to join us for the day but withdrew upon waking up to leprous resurgence.
We set out for Lloydminster, being the purported home of a most odd and extensive collection of taxidermy. As far as roadtrips go, a 2.5 hour drive each way is pretty much ideal. Everybody gets a chance to share some music, conversation flows naturally, and you can still enjoy the evening upon your return. Additionally, as A-Cool put it, a day trip is really just an excuse to snack constantly. More than one day and you get a little saturated with sugary FatSnax™.
This museum (which I will not name for fear of being tracked down by them for covertly shooting pictures in their no photography allowed areas </paranoia>) was incredibly bizarre. Every exhibit took the shotgun approach of displaying absolutely everything in the collection, making for a very dense, and in the case of the taxidermy, overwhelming presentation.
Take this, for example. OH GOD LEG TABLE. This is the single most unsettling piece as far as I’m concerned. Well, maybe this or the coat hooks which were actually bent deer feet. I would estimate that this fellow had on display upwards of six hundred taxidermied animals, all jammed in and wholly terrifying. I unfortunately did not get any snaps of the horribly twisted faces on a lot of these creatures, though let me assure you that a lynx is not supposed to look like Chowder.
Oh, and for good measure, let’s do some anthropomorphization! Yeehaw! These remind me a little bit of Mr. Keith’s awful D&D horse beasts, horses whose bodies had been broken and reshaped into humanoid form by the primal forces of chaos. I still hear their whinnies.
We all felt a little bit nauseous after our run through the repackaged wilds, though we did check out the other galleries. There was quite a bit of history in the form of hundreds of painted portraits and thousands of old-timey artifacts, but as I said before, the presentation was a little excessive. Oh neat, an old sewing table. Oh neater, nine of them in a row! I guess it beats having to pay for storage.
After we’d all taken in our fill of history and bemangled wildlife, we grabbed some food and turned our ship back home. There is an important thing that happened in the car, but I don’t want to deny it full justice by appending it to this post. You will see it in its entirety very soon. Finally, with about an hour left in the trip, I revealed my secret plan: trunk sundaes! Yes, the ice cream was a little soft having spent the day in the trunk cooler, but with some chocolate sauce, bananas, broken up Skor bar, and animal crackers, it was damn grand.
Thank you friends, for being up for awesome times. There will be oh so many more to come.
I’ll leave you with a few pics of my lovely entourage as everybody would like that.
Tags: lloydminster, road trip, taxidermy
April 28, 2010 at 12:03 am
That is some wacky taxi! Dermy! Seriously though, deer leg table and card rabbits? I feel cold.
Check your “chowder” link.
April 29, 2010 at 1:46 pm
A++ WOULD DO BUSINESS AGAIN.
Excellent write-up! I look forward to your rendition of the epic car-zoofights.