Blogapalooza Fun

It is Blogapalooza Day here at Rare Rocks! This is Angela’s blog party at Just Go! On her blog you’ll find the other partipants in this cyber party. The party game is simple: “Tell us the story of your strangest or scariest trip ever.” (The picture of Claire is so other Blogapalooza-ers can find the right post – mine is a picture of a pumpkin carrying a pumpkin! Look at little Claire!)

My strangest or scariest trip started out just fine. Not normal, mind you, but fine. I believe youth group leaders are some of the craziest people in the world, and mine were no excpetion. (I loved them of course. But, now, looking back, I can see they are a crazy genre of people.)  Our trip was a weekend excursion to Mexico. (Only without airlines or beaches.) We were going to make the nearly 27 hour drive to Monterey, Mexico, and be home by Monday. Crazy, I tell you.

But as youth group trips go, the trip is fairly uneventul on the way down. As a high school senior, I am excited about doing something (anything) adventerous and out of the ordinary. I even get to take a shift driving one of the vehicles for a middle of the night shift! (Did I mention the C-R-A-Z-Y?)

Our destination is a beautiful Bible College campus in Mexico. Once there, we spent nearly two days soaking in the humble hospitality and being reminded of the blessings we take for granted in middle America. We learned to speak what Brother Andrew calls the language of Agape by using Scripture verses to communicate our new found brotherly love between friends who don’t share a spoken language. I rolled out my first real tortilla in their dormitory kitchen and ate real tacos at a roadside cafe.

The trip home is where this story takes its strange and scary turn. Of course we’re exhausted. Of course we’re driving through thunderstorms. Of course half of our travelers battle digestive issues associated with out-of-country travel and we are forced to pull over often and at less than desireable facilities. But it gets worse.

During the first few hours of that drive, we are scheduled to go through Waco, Texas. This is when David Koresh and his followers are under investigation by the U.S. government. (Now I know that Waco is a nice Texas town with plenty of good things going for it, but at that time I only knew of Waco as the place where that weird guy lives with a stockpile of guns.) I hate traveling in bad weather. I hate riding with people who are sick. Just when it seemed that nothing could be worse, someone notices a huge glow on the Waco horizon.

The Branch Davidian ranch we’d been hearing about in the news for several weeks is burning! CNN is broadcasting live the veiw we are seeing from our minivan windows. It is too much. A few people in our caravan mention historic event and we can always say we were here. I just want to be home RIGHT NOW!

And of course we made it home just fine. I can say I was there, but it really didn’t turn out to be the kind of thing that very many people remember. Still, for a girl who usually finds any kind of travel a joy, this one was ruined by that strange midnight drive in the glow of Waco’s infamous cult.

Happy blog-reading today, friends old and new! I hope you’ll come back sometime!