The photo album for this entire trip can be viewed here. The pictures are in chronological order, with captions. All the pictures in this post and the succeeding two posts are part of that album.
THE PLAN, ORIGINALLY, was to leave San Antonio on Saturday, June 5, and drive to Pittsburgh in a leisurely fashion, with a number of stops along the way to stretch legs and see the odd second-tier tourist attraction. Saturday was the chosen day because we had to take Carly to the kennel that day, as they weren't open on Sundays. And once the dog's away, there's no point hanging around at home, is there?
But Sherry's team had a soccer match scheduled for Sunday, and she doesn't miss those if she can help it. So I revised the trip plan into a slightly less leisurely route, which would allow us to still reach Pittsburgh at the proper time while keeping the highlights of the original trip intact. Basically, we cut out our planned sightseeing in Little Rock, and cut back on what we would see in St Louis. We still had a full day of sightseeing there, and it turns out that a number of the planned destinations there were closed anyway.
I don't feel like we really missed much. I'll go back to Little Rock some day, maybe by myself, and see such sights as there are. It'll be an excuse to drive the backroads of East Texas again, and southern Arkansas.
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After that, we headed straight up to Sulpher Springs for the World Famous Glass Bathrooms. Located on the courthouse square, these two public restrooms are built out of one-way glass. I can now assure you that using them, with all those little kids running around and playing in the adjacent fountains, is a disorienting experience.
We spent that first night in Texarkana, at a Ramada Inn on Stateline Avenue near the interstate. Checking in was an ordeal, as I did not speak Malay and the clerk didn't speak English (turned out that the two regular desk clerks had gone to fetch their dinner, and one of them had lost his wallet). The room was reasonably clean and the price was good, though there were some issues: no hand towels, no bath mat (and a very slippery bathroom floor), a fire alarm (false alarm) just before ten p.m., a security door that wouldn't lock, and a housekeeper who looked like he was booked to play Suspicious Character Number Two on some true-crime series. And yet I got a better night's sleep than I had gotten in months. Go figure.
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| Elephant Rocks |
We blew through Arkansas without seeing anything but highway and rain, and got to our next planned stop at a good hour, and just beyond the rain. That was Elephant Rocks State Park, in southern Missouri, where there's an eroded granite outcropping. It's a short, easy walk around the outcrop, and we enjoyed the view. The rocks themselves are interesting to see, as are the elaborate graffiti carved into them by 19th-Century miners.
From there it was only an hour and a half to St Louis, by way of Washington County (the next-to-last Missouri county for me). We checked into our hotel in Illinois and spent the evening decompressing, with dinner at a mediocre Italian place close by.
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| an example of the better stuff |
The second category was represented by a giant eyeball, very similar to the one we saw in Dallas last year; a flat, white shape that put me in mind of a leaf or a Viking ship; some orange-painted oil barrels arranged to suggest a Greek temple; steel balls representing certain molecules and forming a baloon-animal poodle; and steel strings tied in knots. Sadly, even the interesting pieces prompted eye-rolling if you read the placards describing the work. Artists should not be allowed to write descriptions, and they should never be quoted on the subject. Meaningless drivel, every word of it.
After the Sculpture Garden we went to the Missouri Botanical Garden. (I will tell you now that, between these two venues, I did a whole lot more walking than I'd planned, and there was more to come.) The Mo Bo is the oldest botanical garden in the US, and probably the best I've ever seen. (Not that I've seen that many: San Antonio's, Corpus Christi's and Fort Worth's are pretty much the whole list.)
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| Water lilies |
There were a few parts of the garden that were closed, but what remained was interesting almost to the point of being overwhelming. And it goes without saying that Sherry enjoyed everything many times more than I did. I just thought it was all pretty, and well-designed, and that the sculpture in the garden was orders of magnitude better than the sculpture in the sculpture garden had been. There was a temporary exhibition of "origami" sculptures being shown, ranging from the whimsical squirrel-eying-acorn to the surreal horse-balancing-scissors to the simply beautiful leaf-caterpillar-butterfly; but there were also elegantly beautiful permanent sculptures than had evocative power far greater than the oil-barrel temple that is the Laumeier's "signature" work.
From the Garden, we went on to our last must-see stop of the day, the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. Built in 1922, this bridge used to carry Route 66, the "Mother Road," across the Mississippi River. It was replaced in the 1960s, but rather than being torn down, it was left up for bicycle and pedestrian use. So we could walk all the way across the Mississippi River from Chouteau Island on the Illinois side to the West Bank in Missouri. Along the way we could look out on the St Louis skyline in the distance; the actual Chain of Rocks, an underwater ledge that causes the river to run rough just below the bridge (and forces all the river traffic into a channel east of Chouteau Island); and two old water-intake towers, standing sentinel on pedestals. They look like wonderful party venues, except for being pretty much inaccessible.
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| Water intakes and the Chain of Rocks |
That night we had dinner at a charming little tavern in "downtown" Collinsville, Illinois, where we were staying; and in the morning, we set out across Illinois and into Indiana, where we wandered properly, and as a result I'm able to cross Indiana off my county-counting list. The last county came right after we stopped in Alexandria to set the world's record by putting the 27,334th coat on the World's Largest Ball of Paint.
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| World's Largest Ball of Paint, before we set a new record |
We spent the night in Lima, Ohio, where we got to see the US Women's National Team beat Portugal in a surprisingly close match. Then it was on to Cleveland, home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where we spent several hours. The exhibit starts with "influences" -- jazz, gospel, country music of the 1920s and 1930s -- then gets into true Rock & Roll of the '50s and early 60s; the rock music of the 60s and 70s -- my kind of music:
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| a typical exhibit |
On Thursday afternoon, we cruised out of Cleveland in the pouring rain. On an impulse, we stopped at the Pennsylvania Welcome Center to pick up some brochures, and absolutely made the attendant's day. First she suggested that most people went to see the elk herds, or the "Grand Canyon", I said we had a week, so maybe we'd do both. Well! You've never seen anyone so excited. She came out of her booth and started pulling out brochures and making recommendations so fast we couldn't follow. We left with a sack full of cards and pamphlets and booklets, so many that, now, we're having a hard time remembering which is which.
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| the fountain at Point State Park |
On Friday morning we walked up the street to a breakfast place Sherry found that came with very strong ratings. I don't know why. There was nothing wrong with the place, but there was nothing exceptional about it either. If it were a college student it'd be earning Solid B's. But it was a nice stroll, and afterwards we wandered farther up the hill to what turned out to be the county courts building and jail, which looked exactly like a 19th-Century jail, except that now it's county offices with a pleasant courtyard where the prisoners' yard used to be.
After that, we still had some time to kill before going out to the airport to meet up with Nancy & Jeff. I wanted to get some more cash out, and there was a bank branch with a (nonfunctional) drive-through just across the Allegheny River. When we got there, we saw a sign for one of the small museums we were interested in; it was across the street from the bank. But even though it should have been open, according to the posted hours, it wasn't. A man loitering nearby told us the guy who ran it wouldn't be in for a while because he'd had dental surgery that morning. We decided not to wait, mainly because it was a kind of sketchy neighbourhood. Instead, we drove over to the Frick Car & Carriage Museum, in a leafier part of town.
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| Stanley Steamer's steam whistle |
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| 1932 Cadillac Phaeton |
Nancy & Jeff's flight had been changed and was getting in an hour later than we'd planned, so we had plenty of time to find the baggage claim. It was a pretty good walk from the car, but it's surprising how small the Pittsburgh airport is. It appears to only have one terminal, but about 16 baggage claim carousels. (I compare that to San Antonio's three terminals with three baggage claim carousels.)
Nancy & Jeff arrived, their bags arrived at almost the same time, and the rent-a-car agency was close by. We did the paperwork and found our vehicle and went back to my car ... except we couldn't get to it. We drove all over the various long-term lots, but the one I was parked in seemed to be guarded by fences and barriers and berms. We finally got there by going the wrong way through an intersection. Fortunately, the first hour in long-term parking is free.
Fully laden, we wound our way through narrow streets to the freeway that would take us to our condo north of DuBois, a couple of hours away.
