River

A pre-teen girl was preparing to go on a camping and fishing trip with her father and crazy uncle, the mother and brother staying back at the crazy uncle's house. The crazy uncle was more or less Doc from back to the future. There was something about sleeping one night in the crazy house he lived in, but I don't remember - in any case, the girl was excited to go camping rather than spend another night in the house. They weren't bringing much food, and she realized that that's because they would catch fish for dinner, which made her more excited (but her brother teased her about it, saying she was going to be living like a cave man or hobo or something along those lines).

The truck they took was full of unusual equipment, which the uncle set up once they got to the river. There was a bridge that was out. The girl soon found that she had a strange power to manipulate the river. She could make things happen by wishing. This was due to a combination of the uncle's machine and the favor of the river spirit. She tried asking for a bridge, and a bridge appeared, but it was built below the water rather than above it, so didn't look very useful. The uncle asked for the water to go down, which she granted, but she told him it was not a good idea because pushing so much water down took a lot of energy from his machine (she seemed very aware of the energy cost of different wishes); she said the machine would explode. The uncle didn't seem to take this seriously, but he soon realized that the lower water level meant the water wasn't serving as coolant for the machine and a key component would soon overheat (the name of the part was given, but I forget).

He sent her back to the house to get a replacement part. (It was not explained how she returned by herself.) She wouldn't say anything about the situation to her mother and brother. Her brother inferred that the camping was terrible, and said that he understood that her silence meant it was a hostage situation and that he'd get her out of it (and he said it so seriously that it wasn't clear whether he was teasing). There was something I can't logically fit in about her trying to communicate something with a drawing of a figure with yellow French-fry hair. Then I woke up.

Truck

There was a long path through the wilderness from where me and my brother were staying to some really interesting town. We decided to walk all the way, which was somewhat crazy (would take all day) but doable. We got involved in an armed conflict which at first involved knights vs dinosaurs. When we were almost to our destination, we decided that it would be wise to turn back and stop at a grocery store which we had passed a little way back, to get some food. At this point the path transformed to a kind of long back-alley path through a city rather than a path through the woods. The route was a kind of "underground railroad" for the faction we had fallen in with in the conflict. It was important that we get back to the grocery store to retrieve supplies quickly, so we stopped at a safe-house along the path to retrieve bicycles. The safe-house was an artist's residence, and also a frequent host to large and wild parties, to avert suspicions about large gatherings there. The architecture makes me think it was a church renovated to turn it into a house -- large entryway with multiple double doors, to facilitate potentially large crowds coming in. We got the bikes and the host was happy to be of service to the underground militia. We retrieved supplies from the grocery store.

Due to an accident, there was a semi truck stopped in the middle of the road. For some reason it was more important to take care of the truck than the trucker, who was unconscious by the side of the road. Maybe I was taking the truck for use of the underground militia, but that was unclear; the battle was more or less forgotten by this point in the dream.

I wasn't very good at driving the truck, so I missed the turn-in for the gas station I was trying to take it to. I looped around and came to a service station specifically for trucks, which was much more expensive. Somehow this seemed like the better option anyway. The place used a truck-lifting device to raise the truck to where it could be fuelled. While I was talking with the employee there, the truck driver (still laying unconscious by the side of the road) began to wake up. I hoped that it would be obvious enough that he should come to the nearby service station. (There was no justification in the dream for why I shouldn't just go to help him.)

I think at some point I discovered that there was already an extra tank of fuel on board the truck which I could use.

It turned out that there was a famous tech startup in the top floor of the service station. There were a lot of cool people who I knew. The space was set up kind of like a university computer lab, with rows of computers on desks, but everything was exceptionally nice; antique varnished-wood tables and sort of a hipster coffee shop vibe. There was a slightly more private space in one corner where the actual work was getting done (somewhat walled-off between computers). The rest of the space was open for anyone to come and hang around.

Art Show

We (ambiguous group of people) were walking from Dad's house to Mom's, and noticed an art sale taking place in Joe's yard (out on the lawn - I was a bit worried about what would happen if it rained). There were primarily lots of copies of two different paintings. They didn't look like prints; they looked like re-paintings of the same thing. They were watercolor. I thought they looked very familiar, like Mom actually painted those a long time ago.

One painting consisted of four or five poppies, viewed from above/side (45 degree angle). The other was a garden, but painted in a geometric way; there were a lot of interlocking triangles to represent plots, in an orderly grid (looking somewhat like a quilt design).

We walked into the show. In addition to the paintings, there were vegetables on sale film Joe's garden. I was trying to figure out if the paintings were Mom's. The layout of the show was very confusing, and I never managed to get close to the paintings I recognized to examine them.

We left, briefly being very renaissance-themed in terms of clothing and surroundings; the exit was a nice brick stairway up to a university street.

At the university, we became modern again. The art show was now all a dream, and my obsession was no longer whether the paintings were Mom's, but whether the people who were with me had dreamed it too. One person readily admitted to that, but I was trying to get details com her/him (the person remained ambiguous) to confirm.

We had to go to a class on morality, which had a very strict/domineering teacher. I was too curious about the dream to pay much attention. We were supposed to bring some props yoto this lesson; I prepared a mental image in preparation for claiming that she hadn't specified that they needed to be real physical objects, but it turned out she had spares for the forgetful. The lecture was about Gods.

After the class, I continued trying to get information about the dream from this person. They started to seem uncooperative. We were now visiting Britain, and it seemed it was some kind of business trip. At an outdoor table, we had a chummy conversation with people we were visiting. I noticed a girl coming down a walkway, who was making a big show of acting as if she was controlling a tendril of fog which happened to be drifting along. I caught her eye and she continued the performance just for me - or that's what I thought.

After the meeting broke up, I went and looked for the girl, who was indeed still close by; but, another meeting attendee had found her first, and actually knew her. There were some introductions, the content of which I have forgotten.

I then tried again to get information about the dream with the paintings from the person I had been trying with before (who was now definitely female). She asked what I thought about dreams. I told her that I try to regard them shamanistically, because it's simply more fun that way; wondering if the dream means something and so on. She was offended by this and no longer had any interest in telling her part of the dream.

After this there was a portion in a very rainy, run-down place. Mom had moved my clothing from out of where I had piled it in a shower, and I was quite upset about this for some reason (even though I recognized that it would be necessary you move the things in order to take a shower). Then, I found some guy's keys in a makeshift drain (made of black flexible tube); but, it seemed a lot of keys had been dropped in there, so it would take a while to sort them out. The guy was big and muscular; I though if him as a security-guard type.