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Posted: 2/19/2017 5:23:58 PM EDT
Last summer my son and I were traveling across America on a 4,200 mile drive about. I was inspired by others trips with wonderful pictures. We left Texas and Drove to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas.

We then went through Branson Missouri, and had dinner inside a giant chicken. Then on through Illinois, and up into Indiana, and then we hit Sturgis Mi. My families home base sort of. I went to the grave yard and saw my family all laid out. The Diggins, and the Bradly's.


Then we headed north to Grand Rapids and went to the Zoo and museum.

From there we crossed the Mackinaw bridge, and crossed the UP passing by quietly through Escanaba in da Moonlight. (movie refrence) and slept in the truck in Menominee WI. We rose early and drove to my old home area and stayed a couple days with my ex sister in laws family. Still family in my heart. The Fox's.
In the west side of WI. When we left we went to Wall Drug just for laughs and onto Rapid City S.D. and Deadwood for a night.

From there we headed north to my old rattle snake hunting gounds a place called White butte were we went to look for dino bones and found some.

.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:24:39 PM EDT
[#1]
It was here at the Custer battle field that things got weird. This is the national monument that has do not walk on the grass signs. I took the picture because I couldn't believe it. Asians doing a photo op on it and one lady sitting on it to text. How nice
So we left wanting to go th Glacier Park but my tablet wasn't getting any signal so we stopped at the 1st small town exit looking for some Wifi. Nearly nothing there so we go into a mom and pop gas station and the girl at the counter in her mid 30's says hi is you name searcher for truth and your wife is mud? I said how do you know that and she said i was in the youth group you led back in WI. This was of course nearly 20 years ago and she recognized me I was stund. She was about 16 when I knew her so she looked way different after 3 kids and 18 years. weird huh? Then we went to Glacier National park.

Then to Yellow Stone Park
.
Grand Tetons

Grand Canyon

Tombstone, my son with Doc and Wyatt on the real streets of Tombstone.


The real Birdcage theater, kinda gross but still pretty cool.
                                                                   From there to the Chiricahuwa National Monument a park, and then to Big Bend National park in Texas, a drive in movie near Ft. Hood and home.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:27:07 PM EDT
[#2]
I knew that would happen a new
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:33:17 PM EDT
[#3]
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:41:55 PM EDT
[#4]
Wife and I did a dive trip to Roatan a few years back and they took us to dive site quite a ways from the resort so the boat dropped us on this semi-private dock to walk around for a few during our surface interval.

My wife is looking at the flowers in a planter box or some shit and spots this woman walking towards her.  It was her cousin,  hadn't seen her in 20 years and had no idea she lived on Roatan.  She was just heading down to get something out of her boat to take up to her condo.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:47:16 PM EDT
[#5]
No I havent but theres a few I would like to run into in a dark alley sonewhere as well as a few I hope to never run into. 
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:51:07 PM EDT
[#6]
Ran into a hood friend randomly walking by at the airport in Charlotte. I was heading to Cincy and he was flying up to MN.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:52:20 PM EDT
[#7]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
It was here at the Custer battle feild that things got weird.
View Quote


....
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:54:11 PM EDT
[#8]
I was on a dock on Holbox Island Mexico waiting to go on a whale shark trip.

A guy I used to work with years before was there at the same time.  Different boat trip but still there at the same time.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:55:54 PM EDT
[#9]
I was in Seattle airport at 2AM, (from Ohio) waiting on the rotator to okinawa,  going down a moving walkway,  not a soul in sight for a hundred yardsin either direction.  So Im standing there letting it move me along and a spec of a person gets on it from the other end.  Over the next 2 minutes we get closer and closer,  and im thinking,  that guy looks like Dimitri (moms best friends husband).  Finally we're feet away from one another staring trying to figure the other one out,  sure enough...
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 5:59:49 PM EDT
[#10]
what if there really isn't a whole lot of different people in the world just multiple copies of a few people?
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:02:38 PM EDT
[#11]
Looks like a cool trip, OP. You look like a dude I rowed with in college.



My story:

1987, Taiwan, Shi-Tou Shan Monastery (Lion's Head Mtn).

I was there with my girlfriend (American Born Chinese). We hiked in - the deal was you made a donation of few Xin-Tai-Bi (Taiwanese currency, about 50c) and you could have evening meal and spend the night on the floor on a mat. We had a big (vegetarian) group meal with monks and visitors, and there were three da-bizi (westerners - means big nose) in the room. Me, and two women about 8-9 years older than me. They spoke zero Chinese, so were struggling. At the time, I was nearly fluent, so I went to help them. Turns out, one of them had been my babysitter when I was 5/6!

Talk about meeting in an unexpected place. Baby sitter was definitely not hot, which was too bad because my GF at the time was into experimentation.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:10:24 PM EDT
[#12]
I was in the Mall of America in Mn, guy walks by and smile toothy at me. thought he was gay and when he turned a second time I figured he was going to hit on me. he said I know you, I said yeah? He said you were in the Corps. on Pendelton right. He was in a company near my company. I bumped into the same Marine in Amery WI 2 years later standing in line at the Dairy Queen. Freaking weird.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:16:29 PM EDT
[#13]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
Ran into a hood friend randomly walking by at the airport in Charlotte. I was heading to Cincy and he was flying up to MN.
View Quote


What hood did you grow up in?
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:23:27 PM EDT
[#14]
Not a friend, but on the way back from Yellowstone we took a very scenic route and drove back some random dirt road next to some random road in the middle of federal land in Wyoming to camp for the night.  Arrive near this creek, so we stopped and set up campforthe night.  An hour later, an even comes rolling up, and it turned out that the couple in it were doing basically the same thing as us, and lived about 5 minutes from us.


Another time I was walking through some village near Huai siao Thailand, and somebody in English said "Hey Bettis" I was wearing a Jerome Bettis jersey.  Turned out the guy was a college student from a hour north of me, studying abroad in Khon Kaen, and was doing research for some civil engineering paper on bridges or dams or something.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:27:17 PM EDT
[#15]
Ran into an ex girlfriend after a jump at Eglin AFB. I was on main post goofing off as we were only there for from Bragg for a few days on an FTX.
I see the ex from high school on post and say hello. She immediately goes off on some crazy rant. Yep, you didn't change. Told her I remember why I broke up with you now . Turned around and left.
She was crazier than when we dated in hs. Damn she was beautiful though.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:35:40 PM EDT
[#16]
I was TAD to NAS Miramar in the early 80's, staying at the transient barracks.
Next to the transient barracks was the Navy's "Dry Dock" for people going through NASAP (no drugs back in the day).
I was watching a group of guys marching to the mini-grinder that was out front of the barracks when I saw a guy that I went to high school school with, he was one year ahead of me.
He was going through dry-dock and was going to get booted at the end of the class.
He had been a frocked AO1 on the Independence out of NAS North Island, now he was a newly promoted Airman.
Never saw him again.

I went to the US Festival in 1983 on Heavy Metal Day.
Right after Judas Priest I went to one of the beer tents to get a beer.
While waiting in line I saw the high school cheerleader that a friend had dated, she was two people in front of me.
We hung out until after Triumph played, then I went to find my friends.
Never saw her again.

I was riding dirt bikes (motorcycles) with a group of friends near Lake Chelan, WA on a trail system called "Devil's Backbone".
We stopped for a drink of water, as we were resting two groups of dirt bikers went past us within 10 minutes.
A few weeks later I was talking to my brother and out of the blue he asked if I had been riding my dirt bike up near Lake Chelan the week after the 4th of July.
I told him yes, he told me that one of his friends from high school (two years behind me) had seen me up there when he was riding up there.
I didn't personally know the guy, he remembered me.
He lives about 3 hours from me.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:36:40 PM EDT
[#17]
I attended the first grade in a very small town in TX. At the end of the year, we moved away.

After a chemistry exam my freshman year, I walked out of the building with a guy who turned in his test at the same time. We were talking about the test and ended up talking about our homes. He told me his name and the town he was from. I then asked him how his twin sister Wilma was! Yep, we were in the first grade together and hadn't seen each other for 12 years.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:43:42 PM EDT
[#18]
Changing planes in Atlanta and I ran into a guy from my hometown that I knew as a regular at the local bar I'd visit when I would spend weekends at home in NC.

I had friends from school touring Europe decide to stop into McDonalds in Paris, where they ran into some more high school classmates of ours.

After I had been in the AF three or four years I went to the base hospital for an appointment and one of the medical techs I dealt with the brother of my younger brother's best friend.

Strange world when things like that happen.  Not to mention the times I've met someone for the first and struck up a conversation to find out they knew someone I knew years ago at a different location thousands of miles away from where I knew them.  One was another guy who retired from the AF who came to work where I was working right after the AF.

We got talking and he described a guy who was AF that served as an MWR guide for tours around Germany where they were stationed.  The Germans thought the guy as another German because he spoke such fluent German with a Bavarian accent.  I asked him if the guy's name was Andy.

Turned out he was talking about an AF buddy of mine who had grown up in Munich where his dad was stationed and married his German national mom.  Guy would be having a phone conversation with his mom and be switching back and forth between English and German absolutely seamlessly.

Small world.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:45:27 PM EDT
[#19]
I was at a Greatful Dead concert in Alpine Valley Wisconsin back in 87?   I was standing in the parking lot, and a guy walked up to me and said hello to me by name.   We had gone to grade school together in Illinois.   I had since moved to Colorado and had finished up high school there.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 6:47:53 PM EDT
[#20]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
what if there really isn't a whole lot of different people in the world just multiple copies of a few people?
View Quote



      Wow, they should make a movie about that.


.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:07:22 PM EDT
[#21]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
Changing planes in Atlanta and I ran into a guy from my hometown that I knew as a regular at the local bar I'd visit when I would spend weekends at home in NC.
......................................
View Quote

Back when I traveled for work I bumped into acquaintances in the Atlanta airport so often I started scoping the place for familiar faces as I went through.

After I got out of the Army I went sailing. I tied up at the Everglades National Park marina and started chatting with a guy and his wife next to my boat. They invited me over for drinks and it turned out he had served with my platoon sergeant years before.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:10:31 PM EDT
[#22]
Friend and I were following the source of a large swamp we were trapping. The creek took us a long way as it was in the winter in WI everything was frozen and snow covered. As we finally came out on a lake I saw a man with his back to us about 100 yards away sitting on a 5gallon bucket ice fishing. I called out, catching anything and he stood up and turned around as he answered and it was my dad. We were about 15 miles from home and there are tons of lakes in the area.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:24:24 PM EDT
[#23]
My wife's ex-boss worked for a bank out of New York on his previous job. Was on a business trip to Hong Kong. He's waiting on the 19th floor for the elevator to take him downstairs. Elevator doors open and standing in front of him was an old friend from college.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:33:09 PM EDT
[#24]
When I lived in Maryland, a friend from college (Arizona) flew in to visit and we went to DC for the weekend. We were walking around DC and ran into two other friends from college who had flown in from Washington and California. 

Another time I was in Colorado for work and on my day off decided to ride the Cumbres and Toltec railroad. The train stops at the half way point for a cafeteria style lunch. I'm sitting there eating and I think "that looks like my friend's (in New Mexico) daughter. Then she sits down and I see it is her, with her grandparents. I guess it was really only a couple hours away from where they lived, but what are the odds they would be on the train that day? Pretty cool shit. 
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:46:18 PM EDT
[#25]
A father and son trip across the land, very nice.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:51:59 PM EDT
[#26]
Talk about the middle of nowhere.  I was recently in Antarctica and I ran into a guy who worked for me as a drill helper 2 years ago.  I was really amazed.  He is a great guy and all I could think was "holly fuck, it's a small world".
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:56:01 PM EDT
[#27]
Landing at Wadi-something outside of Khartoum, I de-planed to go meet the load team...and found out it was being led by my buddy from boot camp 18 years earlier.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:57:54 PM EDT
[#28]
I was at the highest point you can drive at Mt Fuji, Japan when I bumped into my Des Moines, IA friend's parents who unbeknownst to me were also visiting at the same time as me. 
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:58:49 PM EDT
[#29]
Was fishing on the beach at the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. Nobody within 20 miles.

Girl walked down the beach and sat down near me.

Dated her back in high school in NH back in the 90's.

Neither of us could believe the odds.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 7:59:22 PM EDT
[#30]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
A father and son trip across the land, very nice.
View Quote
Thanks, I raised him from when he was 6 to now 19 by myself. A public break up posted here in 2005. I am the ARFcom divorced! Now I'm finaly getting a wife as soon as our k-1 visa is approved, and he is starting his own life or has for a few years. he was a pleasure to travel with never a single complaint in 3 weeks and we slept in the truck a lot, lol. Sometimes driving more than 24 hours straight to get to where we wanted to go. Left the Grand Tetons around 8AM and drove the the Grand Canyon. woke up and drove to Tombstone. Left the Chiricahua National Monument and drove to Big Bend non stop baby!
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 8:00:38 PM EDT
[#31]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
Was fishing on the beach at the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. Nobody within 20 miles.

Girl walked down the beach and sat down near me.

Dated her back in high school in NH back in the 90's.

Neither of us could believe the odds.
View Quote
Crazy shit man, that's all I'm saying. I wonder what the actual odds really are. Two people who dated 20 years ago or so meeting on the deserted beach of a foreign country. The odds must be astronomical.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 8:00:46 PM EDT
[#32]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
Talk about the middle of nowhere.  I was recently in Antarctica and I ran into a guy who worked for me as a drill helper 2 years ago.  I was really amazed.  He is a great guy and all I could think was "holly fuck, it's a small world".
View Quote


Were you working in McMudhole or were you out with the fucking poindexters in the field?
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 8:11:02 PM EDT
[#33]
Another one,  had been in okinawa for a year,   standing in the orderly room signing BAH paperwork for the commander of Airmen who where usually too afraid to talk to an officer.  One came up and said my first name in addition to my last, made me look up.  Dude went to my high-school 2 years behind me in a super small high-school in ohio.   Both assigned to the same unit in okinawa.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 8:14:59 PM EDT
[#34]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
A father and son trip across the land, very nice.
View Quote
Thanks, I raised him from when he was 6 to now 19 by myself. A public break up posted here in 2005. I am the ARFcom divorced! Now I'm finally getting a wife as soon as our k-1 visa is approved, and he is starting his own life or has for a few years. he was a pleasure to travel with never a single complaint in 3 weeks and we slept in the truck a lot, lol. Sometimes driving more than 24 hours straight to get to where we wanted to go. Left the Grand Tetons around 8AM and drove the the Grand Canyon. woke up and drove to Tombstone. Left the Chiricahua National Monument and drove to Big Bend non stop baby!
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 8:19:11 PM EDT
[#35]
My wife and I were eating dinner at a small restaurant in Switzerland, in the middle of nowhere. A couple leaned over to ask what I had ordered because it looked good. We chatted a bit longer and realized both they and us lived in Omaha and that the guy was best man at my wife's bosses wedding. We hung around for a day together then went our own ways. Two weeks later we're at the Octoberfest in Munich and ran into them again. Grounds in Munich are HUGE, so the chances of the second meet were extremely slight too. Small world.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 8:20:25 PM EDT
[#36]
Just happened today in fact.

Someone I haven't seen in ten years.

Near a hiking trail I often go to.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:25:44 PM EDT
[#37]
Vietnam in 68 or 69.  2nd Plt., Hotel Co., 2nd Bn., 3rd Marine Reg..  Humping west on route 9 and a jeep slamned on his brakes and backed up to where I was.  Guy from my class.  Later I was in the rear for something and ran into him in the messhall.  He was in B Co., 1st Bn.,3rd Mar. Reg..  Later I was going to college in Pittsburg Ks..  Walking home from a girl friend house one night about midnight, and a police car pulled up next to me and opened the drivers door and the driver said," Hoover get in here."  It was the same guy. I worked at a gas station/lanudrymat  in Pittsburg, and a woman came in one afternoon.  It was his wife.  She turned out to have had my aunt as a teacher in Willow Springs Missouri and somehow had married Bill.  
I saw his obit. in the KC paper a couple of years ago.  He had retired as a Capt. from Pittsburg PD, and had become mayor of Pittsburg.
Ran into two others while in Viet.. Was climbing up on the side of a engineer dump truck near the drivers door and Jim I guy I grad. with was driving.  Had a minute to talk and never saw him again.  Ran into another guy while in Viet., can't remember where it was.
Tipy
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:33:51 PM EDT
[#38]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:


Were you working in McMudhole or were you out with the fucking poindexters in the field?
View Quote View All Quotes
View All Quotes
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
Quoted:
Talk about the middle of nowhere.  I was recently in Antarctica and I ran into a guy who worked for me as a drill helper 2 years ago.  I was really amazed.  He is a great guy and all I could think was "holly fuck, it's a small world".


Were you working in McMudhole or were you out with the fucking poindexters in the field?


Way the fuck out.  2 hour Otter flight north of WAIS.  Pirrit hills.  Drilling holes through glacial ice and coring the rock under the glacier.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:40:09 PM EDT
[#39]
Ran into an old buddy's dad in the middle of a state game land deer hunting.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:41:45 PM EDT
[#40]
I'm from Oregon and I ran into someone I know at the FBI building in DC.  I had no idea that he was going to be there with his wife.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:45:17 PM EDT
[#41]
I ran into a kid from my neighborhood in the mess hall at MCAS Iwakuni, Japan. He was a couple of years behind me in school.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:47:09 PM EDT
[#42]
When I was in Rome, Italy I went to get a bottle of wine to share with two Quebecoise girls I met at the hostel.  When I came back, some dude was sitting with them and I was like "Dammit I don't want to share with this guy...." until I recognized it was a guy I went to college with 4 years ago in New Mexico.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:53:45 PM EDT
[#43]
Yes, an old college buddy I knew in Louisiana in the 1980s. We lost touch over the years.
In 1997, I was covering a TV news story about flooding in a rural Georgia town, and the first house we checked on turned out to be  my old buddy's house! Talk about a shock to see him open the door. I had no idea he had moved to Georgia.
What were the odds of me randomly picking his house out of all the thousands of houses that were affected by the flooding?
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:54:01 PM EDT
[#44]
Wifey ran into a grade school teacher in Africa.  Small town market on the side of the road.  Then, she literally bumped into her neighbor in SF, CA.  We live in Indiana.  Wierd shit always happens to her.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:57:00 PM EDT
[#45]
I went to college out of state and had a class with a kid. We sat next to each other for two semesters freshman year. Not much communication outside of class.

He was from WI (also out of state college attender).

He left school after his freshman or sophomore year.

3 years after I graduate I am back home in Ohio and literally run into this kid at a Cleveland Indians game. He said he was doing an internship somewhere in Cleveland.

2-3 years after that, I am at a Milwaukee Brewers game, drinking Miller and eating $1 hot dogs with Arby's sauce on them (I guess it's a Milwaukee thing, but not bad) and this kid is two rows directly behind me, and says hello.

Haven't seen him since.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 9:59:08 PM EDT
[#46]
Never bumped into someone I new, but did bump into someone I slightly used.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 10:03:01 PM EDT
[#47]
I've randomly met people that knew people that knew people I knew... resulting in me knowing enough about them to screw with them pretty good.

Link Posted: 2/19/2017 10:08:08 PM EDT
[#48]
In 1985 I was at MCAS Futenma in Okinawa as a CH-53 crew chief. Our squadron was doing some shit to support an amphibious group passing by on a west pac. At some point during  the day we needed to refuel so we landed on an LKA to gas up.

The the deck crewman who dragged the fuel hose to the helicopter was a guy that was a year behind me in high school and was a close friend of my sister. Really odd running into somebody you know in the middle of the ocean.

It has kind of a sad after story though. The next time I was home on leave I told my sis that I had run into her friend Mike. She replied with how classless I was to make a joke like that.

I was all ????. Then she told me when he had got back from his deployment he was t boned at an intersection off base and was killed. I was probably the last person he knew from home that he personally talked to.
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 10:10:28 PM EDT
[#49]
Eye don't no anybody I new any moor. 

We all got old and died. 
Link Posted: 2/19/2017 10:40:45 PM EDT
[#50]
A guy I grew up with is my bil and sil's next door neighbor in new Braunfels TX. Something like 1800 miles away.  They had a party and I'm out back drinking beer  and I hear a guy say hold the fuck up!!! Is your name Peter Paul Sanchez the 8th!!!??
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