Farmington

In Farmington MO you can sleep in the city parks if you check in with police. Just as it was getting dark, a young man appeared in the pavilion where I was staying. As my grandpa would say he was no brighter than the law allows. I engaged him in conversation out of politeness and a little boredom. His questions kept coming back to the types of animals I had seen. He would ask “have you seen any moose?” and I would politely explain there weren't any along the route that I had taken to get here. I would try and draw out some semblance of an interesting conversation, then he would ask “have you seen any elk?”. After maybe 5 repetitions of this I was through and did my best to look busy doing something else. He finally left after another 10 more minutes of the questions. During the course of the conversation I found out that I was not the first cyclist to have been way-layed by this gentlemen. I believe he came by this park regularly to check to see if there was anyone spending the night. Finally I was alone and the mosquitoes had died done a bit. They had been nearly unbearable earlier. Just as I was beginning to enjoy my peace and quiet a group of 8 girls in the 12-14 age group rolled up and asked if they could sit down. I thought hell why not, it's not like i was trying to relax or anything. All of a sudden I found myself in the midst of a barrage of questions “where are you from?”, “don't you get tired?”, “how old are you?”, “how do you like Farmington?”, “what time in the morning are you leaving?”, and many more. To the age question they guessed 23 then as I pointed up, 25, and then 26, finally I said 28. They all exclaimed that I definitely didn't look 28. This I took as a compliment and
began to laugh to myself as I realized I was being sorta flirted with. At the question of when I was leaving one of the girls piped up that they should get up at 5:30 and see me off as a cheering section. I did my best to squelch this idea because not only was I trying to limit my interactions with young girls but I probably would not be especially sweet if I was fallen upon by 8 giddy girls at 5:30 in the morning. It was getting dark and I was acting disinterested so they eventually left. Sleeping out in the middle of an urban area is a very interesting and odd experience.