Vacation images - Jellico cliff

As you've no doubt figured out by now, a recurring theme of our travels is the relative frequency with which we must stop so that our kids can use the washroom. Our eldest child was blessed with the constitution of a camel. So we naively figured all kids were similarly easygoing in this department. Yeah, right.

When we heard the furtive "I need to go..." call from the back, we pulled off the highway in a desolate place called Jellico that was stuck hard up against a hillside within a broad valley. Lovely scenery in nature, but the human presence in this area was anything but pretty, or intelligent.

In a fit of bad planning, the gas station/convenience store sold more fireworks than I've ever seen in my life. As we walked past the long rows of gaudily-packaged explosives on our way to the washroom, my daughter told me what a bad idea it was to have fireworks so close to gas and matches. A seven-year-old's wisdom: priceless.

We had parked the van at the edge of the parking lot, facing a fence half-covered with peeling white paint and a fading "Stuckey's" logo on it. To our left, an ancient and rusting truck trailer, its best miles clearly behind it, sat right next to an add-on to the store that was clearly not built according to any recognizable building codes. All told, this little anti-oasis was old, worn out, and badly in need of a do-over.

[Hint: here come today's questions...]

Yet beauty still abounded in a cliff face that towered over the fence and diverted our attention away from the murk. Even now, I'm not sure what I saw in these rocks. Perhaps you can tell me what this is supposed to be. Any ideas?

And while you're answering questions, I hope you'll help me with this one as well: what the heck was I thinking parking next to the bubba's equivalent of an ammo dump?