I’m almost done with the pictures from my road trip. Promise! This one was too much fun not to share.

When we left Eureka Springs, Arkansas, heading for home the last day of our trip, we were barely out of town when we saw a sign for “Quigley’s Castle”—not something we’d heard of before, so naturally we had to stop! We followed a gravel road, all the while humming the theme to Deliverance.

We pulled into a small gravel lot and saw this sign. After about five minutes a very grumpy woman showed up at the gate. Again, I watch too many horror movies. I immediately saw her as a gatekeeper to a Hell Mouth, and wondered if we should worry about the fact no one knew where we were. However, I was too curious at this point and followed her anyway while she led us inside a secret garden and to a shaded area in front of the “castle”.

There we heard the story about the house, which she told in a monotone without a single expression. After she finished her little story, she told us to make our own way through the house and the gardens, and then she disappeared. I just knew she hurried off to sharpen her ax!
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After spending a very pleasant time in Des Moines (I’ll post tattoo pics another day!), we headed home again. Next destination: The Crescent Inn Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It’s one of the most haunted places in America. Ghosthunters episode #13 was filmed there.

Wierd things happened even before we arrived. The Crescent lies in the Ozark Mountains and sits on the crest of a hill. We had the address plugged into the Garmin. The GPS worked fine the whole trip, up until the point when it took us up a goat trail of a narrow, gravel road. Halfway up the rutted trail, we met a Hummer. There really was only room for the Hummer, so he had to climb a hill while we squeezed by with our wheels on the edge of the trail. It was a nail-biter staring down the long drop into the ravine.

This is the Crescent Inn Hotel. Built in the 1800’s, it’s had many lives—as a resort hotel for the rich, as a school for girls, a cancer treatment-torture facility, and again as a hotel.

This is our room and the very first picture where creepy things happened. I have a very good little Cannon camera that takes crisp, clear pictures. I took hundreds of pictures on this trip and this is the first one that’s blurred this way. But here, you can make out a shadow. Do you see the outline of a head and shoulder? As it turns out, our room has a ghost that plays outside the door. A child died from a fall and is “seen” playing and “heard” to say “It’s not fair!” when he sees people dressed comfortably because he hated his own fussy clothing.

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I know I’m getting the photos of my trip up slowly, but my life’s crazy busy. The 6-year-old had a birthday party yesterday, so she’s no longer “the six-year-old”, and she had a list of favorite things she wanted to do: get a manicure with the girls, eat at McDonalds, and swim in the moonlight. Today, there’s the Red-Headed Hellion’s wedding to get through.

I still have pics to share, as well as some spooky happenings to relate. Wait until you see what my camera caught! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, which I did when I posted about Powell Gardens and Joplin, Mo.

What makes a good journey?

Great travel companions who are as eager to explore as you are.

Coffee. Lots of it. We didn’t even make it out of our own home town without stopping for breakfast and getting two to-go cups to take with us!

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The contest winners are listed at the bottom of this post!

Another of our stops (this one planned because the Red-Headed Hellion knows I love dinosaurs) was Powell Garden in Missouri. It’s a lovely outdoor botannical garden which I might have stopped for anyway, but this summer they’re featuring the “Jurassic Exhibit”.

Plenty of pretty flowers and trees. Love them. Took pics of them.

We walked the couple-mile trail to find the dinosaurs lurking in the bushes. Rawr!

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I was away for a week on a trip that I wanted to be purposely spontaneous. Does that make sense? We had a destination—my brother’s house in Des Moines—but we wanted to be able to stop and explore whatever struck our interest.

The first day out, we drove north from Arkansas and were barely into Missouri when the sign off the Interstate read “Joplin”. We’d watched the newscasts of the aftermath of the powerful tornado that hit there and wondered just how bad it really was.

It was worse than we’d imagined.

Pigs flew. Don’t know why this struck me as wrong, but the only sign of damage at this restaurant was to…well…the sign!

Home Depot had their act together. Their entire store had been flattened, but they’d already had the wreckage pushed to one side of their huge lot and erected this large tent to provide building supplies for the area.

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Although I was sick for most of the conference last week, I did manage to stir from my room to meet friends. It’s the best part of conference, seeing old friends and making new ones. Here are some of my favorite pics.

Of course, I had to meet the man on my Moonstruck cover, Jimmy Thomas. This was his display at the booksigning on Saturday. You can see Moonstruck on the upper right corner!

I shot this after one of the panel discussions I participated in. In the picture are my BFF Kimberly Kaye Terry and the fabulous L.A. Banks!

More KKT and me! Doesn’t she look amazing?!

L.A. at the booksigning!

Just to prove it’s not all female authors at RT! I bought Jeremy’s book, Hungry for Love—what can I say? I can’t get enough of zombies!

The promo princesses themselves, Megan Hart and Lauren Dane!

I sat next to the very sweet and funny, HelenKay Dimon at the booksigning!

Richelle Mead is signing Frostbite for me!

Another very sweet lady—Taige Crenshaw!

You never know who you’re gonna meet at conference. Here’s my beta-buddy, Virginia E taking a pic of me while I’m taking a pic of her!

Virginia without the camera. 🙂

Kimmie with the rockin’ Vivia Anna!

Yesterday was fun! I went with the red-headed hellion and her family to nearby Hot Springs. We shopped like mad at our favorite haunts (Tillman’s and Romancing the Stone), then made our way to the Wax Museum. It isn’t “Madame Tussaud’s”, but rather “Josephine Tussaud’s”, which is a hint that all is not quite right with the attraction. Judge for yourself.

The two year-old wasn’t scared of the werewolf crashing through the wall.

My favorite!

Needed more blood and guts, I think.

Jack Sparrow didn’t look grimy enough.

This one creeped me out. I kept expecting them all to turn toward me with their vacant stares…

Here’s my baby and me.

You’d think a wax museum would do casts of shrunken heads. But I did find a Hillbilly calendar to give away to one “lucky” reader. It’s full of helpful holidays and appointments, like “Pay Pa’s Bale”, Ma shoe the mule”, and “Shoot snakes at swimmin hole”. I’ll be sure to toss in some Delilah goodies too! Comment to win this great prize! 🙂