Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 1

Part One: The Trip Up

Friday, May 10

 Strong storms passed through Texas just before we left on this trip: tornadoes and flooding and torrential rain. East Texas got over two feet of rain in a short time, and these storms continued to dump water across the southeastern part of the country. But my calculations were that we would be behind the bad weather, and further and further back each day, and it seems I was right. Not a drop of rain so far, and after the first day of clouds, we've had gorgeous spring weather. 

 Carly went to the kennel early on Friday, and as usual was thrilled to get her paper collar. If we could bring her on these condo trips, I'd gladly leave the Jag behind and drive the Subaru. And in fact, now that I'm so much fatter than before, despite still being only 49 years old, I'm close to the point of giving my little convertible to a car museum anyway. (If I thought any of my heirs were the least bit interested in it, I'd give it to them, but they're not. It's not their style.)

 So we were off. We stuck to I-10 all the way through Houston, listening to The Ink Black Heart, the sixth book in J.K. Rowling's "Cormoran Strike" series of mysteries. Like her Harry Potter series, each book is longer than the one before. This one -- the first we've listened to rather than reading -- is 33 hours long, so we won't finish it until the return trip. We enjoy the series: the regular characters are well-developed and likable, the plots are complex without being impenetrable, the language is precise and the tone is just slightly erudite. They're written for people who paid attention in school.

 East of Houston, we stopped for lunch in a Vietnamese noodle house called Vietnamese Noodle House. It was simple and downscale but the food was good, plentiful and cheap. Service was so-so and the restaurant itself was utterly unprepossessing, but I'd go back if I'm ever looking for lunch around there. (I won't be.) I'd planned, at that stage of the trip, to take the old highway as far as Beaumont, but Google Maps showed some kind of blockage ahead on that route, so back to I-10 we went. (That stretch of I-10 between Houston and Beaumont still holds the title of Dullest Freeway in the US, as far as I'm concerned.) We got off the interstate just east of Lake Charles and headed up through Alexandria to Natchez, where we spent the first night in a reasonably priced hotel that claims to be a 3-star place but really only gets two. We got our room key and found a parking spot nearby, then opened the room to find somebody else's luggage and shopping all over the room. The desk clerk blamed housekeeping, and I'm not giving a lot of thought to how it could be their fault. The replacement room was in the same general area, so it was no trouble to unload the car from where it was. 

 Then we headed Under the Hill. That's the part of Natchez, right along the riverbank at the bottom of the bluff, where the riverboats used to dock. Well, they still do, and there was actually one in the port, a stern-wheeler whose name I didn't catch. Lights were on in some of the rooms on board and you could tell that they were elegantly appointed. Makes me want to try a river cruise, but I would like to do that somewhere with less humidity and fewer mosquitos.

sunset on the Mississippi at Natchez

 Anyway: Natchez Under the Hill, years ago, was what we would call a red-light district: whorehouses, and saloons, mostly, plus warehouses and flophouses. Now, of course, it's all gentrified. Not a big area, but big enough for a few nice bars and restaurants, it's the center of night life for upscale Natchez. I hadn't been down there in about 40 years, so I was curious to see it again. We had a very pleasant dinner at a sports pub called The Camp, then went back to our hotel, where we were slightly relieved to find our own belongings undisturbed. 

Saturday, May 11

 In the morning I had a cup of very bad coffee, most of which I threw away because of the bugs swarming around me while I tried to drink it, then we drove up the highway to Port Gibson, to see a goldfingered church steeple and grab some breakfast. Found the steeple, but turns out there are no restaurants in Port Gibson. (McDonald's doesn't count.) So we dove into our ice chest and had hard-boiled eggs and apples for breakfast while lamenting the primitive resources available in rural Mississippi. 

 After a drive up the Natchez Trace we got off to go see the Mississippi Petrified Forest, a privately-owned attraction that, from the descriptions I found on line, smacked of tattiness. Yet it turned out to be quite a nice little diversion: about a half-hour's fairly easy walk through low forested hills with lots and lots of 30-million-year-old petrified logs lying around. The signage was good, making the natural forces at work easy to understand, and there was plenty of (living) flora and fauna to interest us on our slow progress through the park. At six bucks each (senior rate; regular adult tickets are $7) it felt like a real bargain.

 I had some trouble getting Google Maps to take me along the route I wanted, and we ended up passing through Jackson first on freeway, then on a six-lane divided highway. We stopped for lunch somewhere along the road there, in a new-ish cafe in a strip center, where the service was excellent, the menu was very short and the prices were reasonable. We each ordered salads, but when the servers carried the daily special fried chicken plates by for the folks at the next table, I knew I'd made a mistake. I'm still suffering. The salad was okay but, Man! did that fried chicken look good! I suspect it will backfire on me at some point in this trip.

 After that, we made a stop in a podunk little town called Shubuta (or Shubula; sources disagree) to drink some red water out of their "famous" red water artesian well. Shubuta (or Shubula) isn't actually a town, it's more a community that used to have a police force (we saw the car) and now is a convenience store, a bunch of abandoned businesses, and this artesian well. Iron-laced water bubbles up out of the ground into a 30-gallon pot, then flows into a small concrete coy pond, then drains into the ground, forming a nice breeding ground for Mississippi's state bird, the Mosquito. 

 The water was not as tasty as the iron-laced water we used to get from the pump at my grandparents' farm in Pumpkin Center sixty years ago. And not as much fun, because you don't have to pump it yourself.

 So that was as much of a roadside attraction as I could find to justify taking the back roads across Mississippi and Alabama. From there we drove over to Monroeville, Alabama, the "literary capital" of that state, so called because both Harper Lee and Truman Capote were born there. There is, it appeared, nothing to see after business hours, because the Old Court House, which we were assured would look just like the courtroom set constructed for the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird shuts down at 5pm. We didn't really care. We had dinner in the Court Cafe -- I had an excellent shrimp po-boy and fries, and we picked up scones for the next day's breakfast -- and drove up the road to Montgomery, where our hotel was.

Sunday, May 12

 Last time we went through Montgomery we stopped at the Peace and Justice Memorial, a very moving place, and then went to the Legacy Museum; but we got there too late to see the whole thing. So our plan was to stay the night in Montgomery, then finish viewing the museum Sunday morning. That's exactly what we did; we got there just after it opened at 9AM, We were there until about noon, and still kind of rushed the last part of it.

too on-the-nose

 Since last year's visit, the organization behind both facilities has added a third campus, this one a sculpture garden along the Alabama River, a few blocks away. We decided to go there before getting lunch, and honestly it was kind of disappointing. We expected art but got three-dimensional preaching. But we were both very hungry by then, so maybe it's better than I'm giving it credit for. (Not.) After waiting for a long slow-moving train to unblock the crossing, we got to the spot we'd picked for lunch. It being Mothers' Day, we wanted a place that wouldn't attract families taking mom out to eat after church, and we picked right: NYC Gyros, a tiny little storefront that felt like stepping through a wormhole into Brooklyn. Excellent middle-eastern fare, unexpectedly cheap, with a small dose of Noo Yawk sass from the owner. I'd give it four and a half jalapeños if I still did restaurant reviews.

 We drove top-up to Auburn, where we wasted half an hour seeing the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. There was no fine art there, just a few small galleries of postmodern race-sensitive crap. I'm sure it's very popular with the white-guilt woke arts community, but it's nothing I'd look twice at. Well, there was one sculpture, a wall-mounted piece with an old sailing ship model stuck into a lobster trap. If it had had a title like "Slave Ship" I'd have thought it was an excellent metaphorical representation of how 250 years of the slave trade, and its later consequences, still traps all of American society; but no, it was called something that related to a protégé of the sculptor, and so was meaningless to any large purpose.

 It was too early for dinner when we passed the Whistlin' Pig Cafe, which is reputed to have the best Brunswick Stew in all of Georgia ... why that should be a thing, I don't know ... but it's OK; it's closed on Sundays anyway. We drove up the mountain to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt's favourite picnic spot, right behind the CCC-built headquarters building for FDR State Park. (He used to come to that spot when he was at Warm Springs, which is just a few miles further east from there.) It was, as you might expect what with the presidential imprimatur and all, a nice view, but I didn't consider it photo-worthy, as I already have way too many photographs of indistinguishable broad forested valleys dotted with the occasional unidentifiable building in the distance. 

 For reasons I no longer remember, I'd decided to bypass Warm Springs, so we got on the freeway and headed north, hoping to bypass Atlanta traffic congestion completely while Mothers' Day was still in force. We didn't entirely succeed at this, as apparently one of the big things to do in that area on Mothers' Day is go watch the Braves play wearing pink gear. We also had to go right past Harts Field, the world's busiest airport, so there was a stretch of traffic to deal with. But all in all it wasn't that bad. We got out to the northwest suburbs while it was still broad daylight, and headed for Morgan Falls Overlook Park, which turns out to be a popular city park with a playground stuffed full of little kids, more than I've seen in one place since I was one myself. Unfortunately it has no waterfalls, and thus no overlook thereof. There used to be a waterfall, but it's now under the reservoir formed by a dam erected by the local power company on the Chattahoochee River. Well, I gor some exercise while making this determination.

 We spent the night in Roswell, not quite beyond the reach of the Atlanta Metropolitan area, after having a late supper at a very good place called North River Tavern. It seemed about to close when we arrived, but by the time we left it was pretty well hopping, except that everyone was out on the patio. We were the only customers sitting inside, I think. I had a side salad and we split an order of hot dogs. (I don't know why I've been craving hot dogs lately, unless it's because I keep passing the Dog Father restaurant on San Pedro and wondering how it can have stayed in business for so many years.) My side salad ($2.95) was more like a chef's salad, and I could barely eat my hot dog afterwards. The dogs (two in the order) came with fries, which were, dare I say it? I dare: perfect. They were perfect. Crinkle cut, perfectly fried, and not too much salt. 

Monday, May 13

The cabbage patch

 In the morning we found our perfect travel weather had come to an end. It was drizzling, and it drizzled all day. And my carefully planned excursions for the day ended up out the window for the most part. Horsetrough Falls, supposedly in the town of Helen, turn out to be somewhere else, somewhere up in the mountains northwest of the town. (The town itself, by the way, is widely known for having remade itself in the image of an Alpine village. It looked farcical.) In searching for Horsetrough ("Continue straight," the Google Maps lady says, at a T-intersection.) we passed a sign directing us to another waterfall that was supposed to be about 20 miles away. When we couldn't find Horsetrough, we decided to go there. It's on federal lands, so free for us with our lifetime senior passes; we found this out after paying $5 for a Georgia State Parks daily parking pass. I need five dollars worth of vengeance against the State of Georgia. (When I think of Marjorie Taylor Greene and what she's doing to this country, that five bucks goes way up.) The Gourd Place (museum and studio) is only open by appointment, which we did not have. And Babyland General Hospital, the creepiest place on earth, smacked too much of cultishness. It looks like a plantation house, with extraordinary landscaping. Somebody made a pile of money on Cabbage Patch dolls.

 (Which reminds me -- the MTG reference, not the cabbage patch: in three days' driving across the Deep South we've seen exactly one Trump sign. I take it as a hopeful indication that, this close to a presidential election, the people who avidly supported the Great Orange Child in the past seem reluctant to let their neighbours know. May God bless and save the United States.)

Anna Ruby Falls

 We hiked up to the falls. Half a mile, not too steep but a long way up. Took us not quite half an hour going up, a little longer going down (because the tarmac was a little damp and my shoes don't have the best grip; I should have thought to change into sneakers for the hike.) Worth every gasping step. Anna Ruby Falls is actually two waterfalls, side by side, as two creeks (each of which has as much water in it as the San Antonio River) come together. One is about a 50-foot drop; the other is easily twice as high. They have a nice arrangement of viewing platforms built so you can get a good look at this natural wonder.

 Well, that was a really nice interlude, with more exercise than I've gotten since my heart attack last Christmas. I was relieved to make it to the top, and I was relieved to see that they had frequent benches available all the way up (though I only needed them twice, if I recall correctly.)

 After that, we stopped in at the Northeast Georgia Folk Pottery Museum, which has a nice, albeit small, exhibit showing the history of pottery in the area, which has been going on for about 200 years. In the earliest days, pottery was a basic necessity. "If a man couldn't put up 50 or 60 gallons of syrup" (the only sweetener available back then) "his family wasn't gonna make it through the winter." Later on, as glass storage jars and factory-made pottery became available, and new products like granulated sugar and molasses made it into the hills, pottery became more decorative, less of a necessity, and relatively cheaper.

 On the other side of the building is a series of art galleries. I walked into the first room and found eight things I wanted to buy. I stopped looking. That makes nine artisan works on this trip that I regret not having bought. Of course, the decisive question in my mind has become, Where would I put it? And there, I have me. I have no place left in my house to display a vase or a pot or a small wall hanging. I live in too much clutter. (I will, at this point, refrain from specific critiques of the habits of other members of the household in connection with available flat surfaces at home.) (Yes, Carly is something of a slob.)

wooden Model T model

 Then we went to the Miles Through Time Car Museum, in Clarkesville. This museum is run by the guy who maintains the Automotive Museum Guide, an essential part of my trip planning now that I'm running low on new counties to visit. (By the way, I visited my planned four new Georgia counties today.) It's located in the back part of an antique mall that his wife operates. The cars are arranged chronologically, and the exhibits include auto-adjacent topics like the development of service stations and auto repair shops; toy cars; and model cars, including unbelievable full-sized hand-made wooden models. I'll say this right now: this museum easily has the best explanatory signage of any I've visited so far (about 40, maybe?). I spent so much time reading things. Just as a fer-instance: I didn't know, and I bet you didn't either, that the Coca-Cola company tried to get the US Treasury to mint a seven-and-a-half-cent coin, so it could raise its prices above a nickel a bottle without requiring customers to use more than one coin for a purchase (this, at a time when five cents was real money), and that, when the Treasury declined to do so, for a brief time the company made its own seven-and-a-half-cent tokens, which were a flop. (It also tried a scheme where a small number of empty bottles were loaded into vending machines, so that some unlucky customers would have to spend ten cents for a nice cold Coke, thus raising the average revenue per serving to 5.62 cents. Wow. Is it any wonder business in this country needs to be regulated?

 It was too late in the day to visit Tallulah Gorge State Park, which from the descriptions I've read is a must-see sort of stop; but it shuts down at 5pm sharp. One wonders why. So we didn't get to use our $5 Georgia State Parks parking pass, and I still want vengeance for that.

Tuesday, May 14

 First thing this morning after breakfast (at a popular cafe called The Rusty Bike, where I decided I didn't have to eat the entire breakfast burrito) we drove up the road to the one attraction on the trip that Sherry has actually gotten excited about seeing: the Foxfire Museum, in the tiny town of Mountain City. I'm sure all the world of a certain age remembers the Foxfire magazine that recorded the history and lifeways of the Appalachian Mountain settlers and their descendants; it was put together by a bunch of school kids in the Rabun County area of Georgia, kids who were concerned that these ancient ways were being lost to modernity. The magazine's articles were collected in a series of best-selling books; the royalties from the books enabled the group to buy some land, relocate a bunch of Appalachian buildings -- cabins, barns, mills, etc. -- and those buildings now comprise the Foxfire Museum, a sort of Living History project where people can come and see how to grind corn or make buckets or do smithing and whatever.

 Of course, early on a rainy Tuesday morning there weren't any volunteers there to man the various buildings and studios, so we just walked slowly up the hill, the only people there at that time of day, looking in each building (if it was unlocked), then back down the hill. It took us not quite an hour. Sherry enjoyed it pretty thoroughly; I was nonplussed, as (1) I'd never been a fan of the Foxfire stuff as a kid in the 1970s when this was all popular, and (2) after a year and a half living in West Virginia, where time moves much more slowly, so a year and a half counts as twenty-five years of normal life, I'd seen all the ramshackle cabins and 'shiner stills and axe handles I care to see. I've been in enough log cabins, barns and sheds, most of them much older that those at Foxfire, and most of them still in regular use, and cluttered with people and things, and seen enough of the lifeways of poverty-stricken Appalachians. And I've been to enough Living History museums, from Louisbourg to Sturbridge to Acadian Village, to keep me satisfied for the remainder of my days.

Bridal Veil Falls

 Following that, we crossed into North Carolina and went by Bridal Veil Falls, which is right next to the highway. As soon as we came 'round the curve and saw the falls, we realized we'd been there before. There's a roadway passing under the falls themselves, and I have a picture of me driving my old blue Jag convertible through it. The road under the falls is closed to traffic now, I hope only temporarily, so we just got a pic with the car in the distance. It's not the same.

 From there, it was up to the airport at Asheville to collect Nancy and Jeff. We are now ensconced in an Asheville hotel for the night. We had dinner at a nice restaurant a couple of miles down the road and will get an early start tomorrow, driving in a roundabout way to Knoxville, where we'll spend three nights before heading to our condo week east of Asheville. Tomorrow will start Part 2 of this blog post. 

And by the way, as usual all my pictures from this trip are available for viewing in my Google Photos albums, "2024-06 Lake Lure Trip".

Tulsa? Can it Really Be?

All the pictures from this trip can be seen online by clicking on this link.

The Trip Up 

Wednesday, October 25

 This is the fourth time I've planned to go to Tulsa. The first time, last year, I ended up skipping it because of the timing of things. I was coming up from San Antonio on the way to Michigan, & the mechanics of the drive meant that I would have gotten to Tulsa less than an hour before everything I was interested in closed, and nothing opened early the next day. So I figured it'd be best to leave it for another time.

 That 'nother time was supposed to be last June, when I was wandering around with my friend Roland. We went through Little Rock and the Ozarks and up to St. Louis, then back down through the Ozarks with a plan to drive the Talihena Scenic Route before heading up to Tulsa for a couple of days. Well, let's just say that, after a good long trip, neither of us was interested in extending it when it was a hundred degrees every day. So we went home instead, by the most direct route. Strike two.

 Then I made plans to do Tulsa and Fort Worth during my August-September travel window, when I had a five-week gap available to go somewhere. The weather was extremely uncooperative with that plan, so I shelved it with little reluctance. I mean, it was f'ing hot back then, and not just in Texas and Oklahoma. (That plan to visit Tulsa and Fort Worth was a fallback; initially I was going to spend a couple of weeks in Quebec during that window, but there were all these wildfires going in Canada, and after checking air-quality reports every day, I finally decided that plan was out. I would have been more reluctant to abandon it had it not been a five-day drive up, and a five-day drive back, and wicked hot.)

 So now, here I am, just back from the Huntsman Trip, and finally on my way to Tulsa. I would have started out Monday, but I had an issue with the car that I decided (late last Friday) I could not deal with myself, so the car was in for a repair to the rear window regulator, a steel cable with a cheap piece of plastic on it that apparently is going to break every 3 or 4 years. Anyway, got it back first thing this morning -- my mechanic had quoted me a cost of $4,000 a few months back, but that was because Jaguar charges $3,000 for the replacement parts. Turns out they only sell the entire assembly, including window glass (didn't need it), regulator mounting panel (didn't need it), regulator motor (didn't need it) and regulator. I bought an OEM regulator on line for $21, and took it in for my mechanic to install when I realized I couldn't do all that stuff myself. (There were 20 steps to get to the regulator, and 22 to put it all back together, and I don't even know what some of the words mean in the instructions. So I let them do it.)

 Because I have an appointment back home next week, I dropped the Fort Worth part of the trip; I'll do that some other time. I'm sure it'll be a maudlin trip down memory lane anyway. But because there are so many things on my List of Things to Do in Tulsa, I added an extra day to my stay there. 

 The trip started today. Because of the car-repair timing I got on the road about an hour and a half later than I'd planned. There was a huge line of storms moving into my route from west Texas, but I decided to go anyway. The rain caught me around Hamilton, Texas, west of Waco, and slowed me down pretty badly. I haven't seen rain like that outside of Louisiana in ... well, my entire life, as far as I can remember. It was biblical. But I made it to Hico for lunch at the Koffee Kup, which has been The Best Place for decades, though I hadn't been there in the last 20 years. I had the best cheeseburger ($3.29) and excellent steak fries ($3) and a slice of Doctor's Office Pie ($5.29, and don't ask what's in it; go have some yourself). I strongly recommend the place. When I was done the rain had stopped and I headed off.

 The only problem I encountered otherwise on Wednesday was that, south of Dallas, my phone lost the GPS signal, dumping me in downtown Dallas with no idea how to get out. Dallas is a maze to me, even though I used to live there. I finally thought to re-boot my phone, and it found the GPS signal for a while, then lost it again. I re-booted it again & the problem has not recurred. (Well, it did, but the phone quickly re-acquired the signal that time.)

 I had hoped to get to Broken Bow on Wednesday, but only got to Idalou ... which is only 12 miles from Broken Bow, so I guess that's not something worth complaining about. And the hotel I found turned out to be a great deal: extremely clean, very cheap, with very good linens and very quiet.

 I've been listening to an audiobook called 150 Glimpses of the Beatles. It's reflections from various people of the group's early years, and it's very interesting to me, who vaguely remembers Beatlemania mostly from old clips on TV. Unfortunately it's read by three people, and whenever they read quotes from anybody, they do voices. They do passable imitations of the Fab Four, whose voices are familiar to everyone of my generation, I'm sure, and they do passable voices for British celebrities and politicians (as far as I can tell). But their American accents are just horrible. In their estimation, everyone from fangirls in Denver to Baptist preachers in Florida has a Noo Yawk accent; they all sound like Brando in On the Waterfront. Very irksome. But still an enjoyable book, a mix of history and trivia. Brings back memories.

Thursday, October 26

I slept through the night last night for the first time in years. Don't know why, but I did. And felt more refreshed today than I have in an age. Wunnerful.

It was pouring rain again when I left, about 6:30, while it was still dark. I stopped at a gas station/restaurant/car museum called Gasquatch, which I'd been to a few months ago. All muscle cars, so nothing to get excited about. Had coffee and a breakfast sandwich mainly just to kill time, hoping that dawn would come and I could see. It didn't, at least not soon enough. When I got back on the road it was so hard to see that I actually pulled over and got out to make sure I had two working headlights. (I did.) I puttered along into Broken Bow (12 miles away, if you'll recall) where I stopped for another cup of coffee just to kill some more time. I was a little more successful that second time. 

While I was waiting for the sun to come up I opened Google Maps and set it to take me to the eastern end of the Talimena National Scenic Route. Then I set out. The road going up was very pretty: winding, recently resurfaced, lightly travelled, with alternating light rain and fog. After about an hour and a half I arrived ... at the western end of the drive. So I turned off Google Maps, got out the road atlas I was given for Christmas, and headed east across the ridges. Despite the occasional fog, it was a pretty drive, with some nice views of the valleys on either side. Then I headed north to check out Mike Fuller's Car & Gas Museum in Inola.

Mike Fuller's Museum

 It proved to be, in essence, an old garage building filled with about half the man's collection of old cars (mostly from the '20s and '30s, but a few from the '50s), along with hundreds of glass finials from old-style gas pumps, gas station signs, and toy cars. The cars are in various states of repair; he has restored a couple, but most of them are in the condition they were in when he acquired them. I spent probably two hours looking over the collection, and then nearly another hour sitting outside chewing the fat and getting scratched by his very friendly, very chubby dog Nellie.

the Correll Museum's car collection

 From there, I headed just down the road a piece to the Correll Museum in Catoosa,  a suburb of Tulsa and pretty much the next town along from Inola. I of course went only for the cars, of which there are only about a dozen, but also found myself fascinated by the displays in the first building, chiefly local geological samples and toys. Then, as long as I was in Catoosa, I figured I might as well go by and see what the town is most famous for: the Blue Whale of Catoosa. Fabulous.

 Then I drove into Tulsa proper and found my hotel. 

 When I was looking for a place to stay in Tulsa -- a town I knew nothing whatsoever about -- I thought that I would stay in a nice hotel downtown. I can afford it, I thought. And I found a nice hotel downtown, which was more or less reasonably priced and part of the Wyndham group, so I'd get Rewards points, which actually does make booking that group of hotels more attractive. But I have to say it's getting less and less attractive with the passing years. Now, it happens that the downtown hotel I found didn't have a room available for the three nights I planned to be here, so I started looking further out. And when I had to choose between a room 6 miles from downtown for $117 a night, or a room 5 miles from downtown for $76 a night, I decided that, if I couldn't be downtown, I might as well save $120. I thought, Super 8? It's a good enough chain. It'll be fine.

 It's not fine. It is barely adequate. The motel itself is passable: a little on the tatty side. The bathroom counter, mirror and shower are made for short people. The room's lighting is inadequate. The towels are left over from a Civil War army hospital. The switch that controls the only light in the room also controls the switch where I had my computer plugged in. I did not know that. So when I woke up the next morning I found my computer had drained its battery substantially. 

 Worse is the neighbourhood this hotel is in. There was a homeless guy in the parking lot when I arrived, trying to affix the front of his shopping basket to a skateboard. There are people who appear to be homeless wandering the streets throughout the area. And of course there's a lot of noise from the freeway at the front of the hotel. (It gets better at night, thankfully.) (Also from the 20-something idiot girl pounding on the room next door and threatening to break the window if they didn't open up.) This is not exactly a common experience with Super 8, but it is becoming increasingly common. Which means I'm less & less interested in Super 8 motels, and in Wyndham. (I also had problems with their mobile website for most of this year, but that seems now to be fixed. Still, it has a place in the calculus of preferences. Likewise my experiences with both La Quinta and Super 8 in Amarillo, going to Colorado and returning every year.) I think when I use up my Rewards points I'll switch loyalty to another chain; maybe Marriott? (I've already found that the Best Western in Deming, New Mexico, is a better deal than the La Quinta there, so now I have a Best Western loyalty account.)

 Enough of that. Nobody but me is interested (though Wyndham should be) so I'll move on to the Main Course of this trip.

Tulsa Itself

Day one: Friday, October 27

 I lucked out this morning, and found a good breakfast place half a block from my hotel. I knew rain and colder temperatures were expected, and I walked as far as the corner before I noticed just how close and just how threatening the clouds were, so I walked back to the hotel and loaded up the car for the day's explorations (i.e., I got my city map) and drove over to the restaurant. Good coffee, one slice of wheat toast and one egg over easy. Not many people there, but everybody seemed to know everybody else, which made me feel very much the outsider. No matter; I drank my coffee, ate my breakfast and left, first for a branch of Chase Bank, then to the Philbrook Museum, Tulsa's local museum of fine art. 

hand-carved

 The museum is located in a former private mansion with extensive gardens in the nicest part of town. Reminds me a lot of the McNay, surrounded by Terrell Hills and Alamo Heights: big, expensive houses built by the Pillars of Society. Only the Philbrook house was much nicer than Lady McNay's place. The museum has added on extensively, with kind of half-assed attempts to match the style, but the additions still end up looking like Postmodern Corporate Committee Choice. Too bad

 Anyway. Naturally, being in Oklahoma, you'd expect that this museum's collection is fairly heavy on the Native American artists; and it is. I saw works from Lakota, Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo, Blackfeet, even Chemahuevi artists in abundance. But there's only one small room with perhaps a dozen pieces by artists from Oklahoma tribes. That surprised me.

 There were a number of pieces that caught me up in them in the three hours I was there. One thing I noticed in particular is how ugly the baby Jesus is portrayed in early-Renaissance paintings. In some He looks like a nude Fred Mertz, in others He just looks morbidly obese, and with a tiny head. I thought about taking pictures to illustrate it, but apparently I forgot.

 I did, though, take pictures of many works, which (again) can be seen in my online photo album for this trip. But three in particular interest me enough to present here.

1. Fanon Mask by Joanne Petit-Frère. This is a head made out of (synthetic) hair formed into a face and mounted on the lower part of a stone bust remnant. According to the accompanying placard, it has something to do with Covid 19, so I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to what the artist is saying. I mention it here just because I found it fascinating: initially startling and repulsive, then merely disturbing, then (I flatter myself) meaningful and even ... well, not entirely ugly.

2. Two Generations, by Rose Kuper. According to the painting's placard, "two women appear to be dreaming." That's not what I see when I look at it. I see a young woman staring wistfully out the window at a life she cannot access, while next to her, her grandmother prays. To me the painting shows the frustrations of youth and the frustrating complacency of age. 

3. A Day at the Beach, by Martha Walter. This painting is remarkable to me only because it was painted in 1930 or so, and yet clearly shows the image of the Starship Enterprise in the sky above the beach. I can't explain it. 

 There were a number of other beautiful things at the museum, but those three, I thought, were a little out of the ordinary. 

Tulsa skyline, 1906 & 1928

 One of the things Tulsa is known for is Art Deco architecture. The city experienced its greatest boom time during the height of the Deco era, and as a consequence many of the major buildings are exemplars of that style. I found a listing on line for the Tulsa Art Deco Museum, so naturally I wanted to go, as I'm a fan of that style of architecture. The museum, formerly located downtown in one of those Deco buildings, has relocated to a shopfront on 11th Street (Historic Route 66), where it consists of one room, and a tiny room at that, in one of America's more interesting and eclectic gift shop. The Deco stuff on display is mostly mundane, and no effort is made to protect it from curious hands, yet it seems to be in good condition. The museum artifacts, however, have to share space with inflatable dinosaurs, fridge magnets, Lego Star Wars kits, Disney princess dolls and oddities like an inflatable tiara ("for formal emergencies"; I very nearly bought one as a gag gift). The shop sells everything from complex 3-D puzzles and elegantly bound classic novels to t-shirts, taffy-by-the-pound and Christmas decorations. While I was disappointed in the Deco Museum, I take advantage of the opportunity to start my Christmas shopping. (Spoiler alert: you're all getting stuffed animals or resin boxes in the shape of Anubis.) (Just kidding.)

 By the time I finished lunch today (at Tzatziki's Mediterranean Cafe on 15th Street: good but not great) I felt like I was coming down with something. It was in the 70s when I got up this morning, but dropped soon into the 50s and is going down to the 40s tonight. I prepared for the weather as best I could, with a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans and a windbreaker, and since I was indoors substantially all day, I thought I was ready. But now, at 10pm as I write this, I'm pretty sure I'm going to feel like crap tomorrow. Fortunately I've done almost all the main things on my list of things to do; what remains is a small car museum west of Tulsa, and the aforementioned Deco buildings downtown, which are basically point-and-shoot occasions. Consequently I have decided (just at this moment, in fact) that I'm going to check out of this crappy hotel tomorrow morning instead of the next day, stop and look at the downtown buildings, go see the cars, and then start for home. I will skip the Bob Dylan Center, I think, as I'm not all that interested in it (mainly I'm curious as to what the Hell it's doing in Tulsa, Oklahoma); and I'll probably skip the Woody Guthrie place in his home town (the name of which escapes me at the moment) for the same reason.

 That was an aside: stream-of-consciousness typing. I don't want to forget to mention that I also went to the Jewish art museum and the Blue Dome District. These were both on my list.

wooden vessels by Donna Matles

 The Jewish art museum was interesting in a provincial way. There was the expected Holocaust display, which I found (having seen others in several cities) oddly sanitized. This one was arranged to show the life of European Jews in chronological context as their place in society descended from vital elements of their various communities to hated outsider to victims of unfathomable cruelty. There was an attempt to relate the shoah to modern hate movements (the KKK, white nationalism) but I found all those presentations failed to arouse much in the way of anger or revulsion in me. Maybe I'm just too enured to it; maybe I've seen it all too often already. 

 Otherwise, the museum was dedicated to the local scene, or modern pop culture. There was a section on Synagogues in Oklahoma; there were explanations geared either towards children or utterly parochial non-Jews about Jewish holidays and a little about Jewish (biblical) history: how to play with a dreidel. What order the Channukah candles are lit. What Rosh Hashannah is. Interesting, maybe even enlightening, but essentially mundane.

 On the other hand, there were two things of particular interest to me in the Jewish art museum. One was a small display of stunningly beautiful woodcraft by a now-deceased local artist named Donna Matles; the other was a huge stained-glass synagogue window built about a hundred years ago by the Tiffany Workshop. It was of major interest to me because, unlike every other such window I've ever seen on display anywhere, this one was mounted in such a way that I could see the back of it, and so now I understand how it was done. Not that I will now go home and build stained-glass windows in the style of Tiffany, but at least now I feel like I could do it if I wanted to. I like that feeling.

Tulsa skyline at night, including the Blue Dome

 Finally, tonight, I went down to see what the Blue Dome District is. It's like St Mary's Strip back home: a bunch of clubs and bars and restaurants catering to young people. I had dinner at the Dilly Diner (I don't know why, but I recognized the name from somewhere) -- excellent pulled pork nachos -- and saw the Blue Dome, which is unimpressive, and went back to the hotel. It was still early and I'm damned if I wanted to be out there late on Hallowe'en weekend. Especially the way I'm feeling.

 Day Two: Saturday, October 28

 Definitely a sinus cold. Oh, well. I checked out of my sleazy hotel and had breakfast down the street (they got my order wrong -- ham instead of bacon in my omelet -- but I ate it anyway), then went to see some of the Art Deco buildings downtown The South Boston Avenue United Methodist Church was easily the most beautiful; the others were kind of meh. (And of course there was the Tulsa Marathon to contend with; those damn marathons seem to just follow me around the country.) Following that, I went to the supposed location for the Greenwood Memorial, a little storefront by the baseball stadium, but it was vacant. Then to the Center of the Universe, a spot near the train station. I got out of the car and wandered around but couldn't figure out what was supposed to be special about it. It was just a few rows of bricks in a circle around a bit of broken concrete, on a bridge over the train tracks. I tried yelling, to see if maybe it had special acoustics, but if it did only a dog can hear it. It was cold and drizzly and so I didn't investigate further. Nor did I bother to take a picture: it was that not special.

 From there I headed out of town to Sapulpa, to see the Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum. Not huge, but some nice cars, and I took lots of pictures. Of course I like the museum: they had both a 1955 Jaguar XK-140 and a 1971 Jaguar E-Type. What more could a body want? There were a couple of dozen other nice cars, but too many of the displayed vehicles were fancy modifications or other one-off models, like a "Maserati" built by a local guy in the 1950s from parts of a bunch of other marques, and a mid-1950s Ford Custom with a fancy paint job. And a lot of muscle cars, which, I'm sorry, seen 'em enough.

 There would appear to be some problem on Interstate 35, because when I asked Google Maps for directions home, first it told me there might be flooding in Dallas, then it gave me a route that takes me down into Fort Worth, around the northwest side, and out I-30 west to pick up 281. Later on, it changed the route to avoid I-35 altogether, sending me west at Ardmore, Oklahoma, and then south. I actually preferred that route anyway, and spent the day on just the kind of roads I like to travel. But I didn't sleep well last night, and by 4pm I was barely able to stay awake. I stopped at a convenience store for a break, thinking I'd close my eyes for a few minutes -- that usually solves the problem -- but instead I decided to just get a room for the night in the next town, Bowie, and that's where I am now, finishing up this blog post. I'm about five hours from home, and it looks now that I-35 is the fastest route to get there. But 281 is the most eco-friendly route, and only takes a few minutes longer, and it will take me by the Koffee Kup in Hico once again. Mmm, pie! That is worth the extra time!

Postscript:

I finished the Beatles audiobook on the drive from Bowie to Hico on Sunday. The very last "chapter" consisted of a single quote from some 1967 article by someone who was not a fan, to the effect that no one in their right mind could think that, in 50 years, the Beatles' music would be a regular part of life. I think an extra layer of irony is added by the fact that, in the next week, the Beatles will have yet another new Number 1 hit.

Fact Check

 One of the more trivial news stories of recent months has to do with the push by interested parties to increase the number of direct flights from around the country to Reagan Airport. Other interested parties oppose the proposed changes.

 Reagan Airport, if you're not familiar with it, lies on an island in the Potomac River at the edge of Washington DC. It's very convenient to the National Mall and all the offices near there. Some years ago the government built Dulles International Airport, half an hour west, in Virginia. In order to push the use of the inconveniently located Dulles, they adopted some complex regulations that limit the number of flights that can use Reagan.

 Consequently, a number of major cities around the country can't get direct air service to Reagan Airport. There are none, for example, to Reagan from San Diego, Tucson, Albuquerque, El Paso or San Antonio. People in those cities, all of which have populations in excess of half a million people, have to fly to Dulles, or have a stopover in some intermediate city. 

 This makes no difference to me. I don't fly to any place I can reach by car. But other people seem to like flying places. And as a Republican (a real Republican, not one of those Libertarian lunatics at the fringe of the party) I think that the question of which flights can go to which airport ought to be determined by market forces, unsullied by official favouritism, which is a form of corruption. 

 So. Changes to gate allocations at Reagan involve Congress, so there's really no chance the resolution to this manufactured controversy will be fair or logical or even sensible. Both sides are investing some money in advertising, presuming that someone will be persuaded to pressure their congressman to support one side or another. Which brings me to the point of this blog post.

 One side -- I presume it's the side trying to avoid change, but I could be wrong; I don't actually read the ads -- is claiming in its advertisement headlines (the only part that I do read) that Reagan National Airport is already at capacity and can't handle additional flights. I see that ad usually once or twice a week on a news update I get each weekday morning. And I thought, I wonder if that's really true; so I thought I'd check.

 Now, I don't know how many flights in and out Reagan Airport can handle, so I started with the assumption that it's no more than they actually handle now. So I looked at the airport's website yesterday, and found that there were 50 flights arriving, and 58 flights departing, in the two-hour span between 5pm and 7pm. So the airport's capacity is at least 52 flights per hour. 

 Then I looked at the flights between 10pm and Midnight. In that two-hour window, there were only 25 arrivals and 23 departures. (I also happened to notice that there were only two flights arriving between 9pm and 10pm, though there were still 27 flights departing in that hour.)

 So clearly, Reagan Airport is not at capacity.

I Was More Right Than I'd've Thought

Memphis, home of the worst drivers

 A couple of months ago, I wrote in a post about our trip to Williamsburg, Virginia that "there are only three people in Tennessee who know how to drive on the freeway." 

 I thought I was just exaggerating for humourous effect.

 But today I read a read a report on TheHill.com entitled "Here's Where America's Worst Drivers Are Found: Study," and it said that:

Tennessee had the most cities appear among the top 20 at four, including the worst-ranked city. In fact, Tennessee had 34 deadly crashes per 100,000 people in 2021, which is a significant increase compared to the national average of 12 deadly crashes per 100,000 people.

Topping out the list was Memphis. According to ConsumerAffairs, the majority of deadly crashes in Memphis are caused by bad driving, causing 203 deadly crashes in 2021 — more than any other city.

Tennessee’s three other cities on the list were Knoxville (12), Clarksville (17), and Chattanooga (19).

 

Don't I feel vindicated. And prescient!
 

A New Wander: Last Installment

 

  This is the final post in a series. You really should read them in order. You'll find Part One here, and here's a link to the photo album for this trip. 

 Last night, at the restaurant where we had dinner, the TV was silently playing the weather channel. It was all about some storms affecting New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina at that moment. But in between what appeared to be tediously repetitive reports that rain was falling and wind was blowing, they briefly showed a map of Oklahoma and Arkansas, all swathed in bright, scary colours, with the legend "Travel weather dangers." No idea what they were saying, but it looked ominous. 

 We had no TV in our room, because a storm the previous night had taken out the satellite dish for the hotel. So we never saw another local weather report. (Yes, I could have gotten one on my phone if I wasn't a Baby Boomer and was accustomed to such things. As it is, the idea never occurred to me.)

 This morning dawned bright and clear. Our first planned stop, about 30 minutes away, didn't open until 10AM, so we were in no rush. I walked over to a truck stop a quarter-mile up the street for some coffee, then later we decided to have breakfast at a place downtown called Big Cuppa. An excellent choice; a nice small-town coffee shop owned by a young couple who roast their own beans and bake their own pastries and basically do everything themselves. Then we went to a bank to get some cash (even paying the $4 ATM fee, because there's not a Chase within 40 miles of where I was, and nowhere along the route, and I was down to like $5); and then we headed out.

Petit Jean's grave

 Along the way, as we drove to the top of Petit Jean Mountain, we saw a sign for "Petit Jean Grave and Overlook." So what the hey, let's go see what that is. Turns out it's the grave of the woman for whom Petit Jean Mountain (and the Petit Jean River and Petit Jean Valley and a number of other places) is named. Her real name was Adrienne Something, but when her lover came to explore the area she disguised herself and came over as a cabin boy on his ship. According to the legend, the idiot didn't recognise her until she fell deathly ill and they discovered, then, that she wasn't a boy at all. Stop me if you've heard this one. Yada yada yada she died and they buried her up on top of this mountain for some reason.

 Anyway, a pretty place, with views across the Arkansas River. A little less smoke in the air today, but still the visibility is reduced. 

 A short distance down the road is the Museum of Automobiles. You can tell from the building and its expansive grounds that there's some money behind this collection. Some guy named Rockefeller, apparently, lives in the area, and he helped set the thing up and contributed several of the cars. The facility only has room to display about 50 vehicles at a time, but they do a pretty good job. I'm at the point in my car-museum-going that I pretty much skip over the Model Ts and Model As and '64 Mustangs and '57 Chevies; I've seen so many of them already, and I have places to go and things -- new things -- to see. 

 Well, okay, not new; we are talking antique cars here. But novel things.

 So I went through the museum looking mainly at cars I don't see often or ever. They display a number of makes that I've almost never heard of, like a Star station wagon and a Metz runabout, and models that I don't often encounter in museums, like the 1952 VW, the 1954 Chevy Bel Air or the De Soto Airflow. The cars are well-lit and, for the most part, positioned so that I can get some good pictures of the fronts and sides, but as is common with car museums, the back ends, facing away, are out of sight and can't be photographed in some cases. The only way to solve that problem is to place the cars where visitors can walk all the way around them, but that would mean fewer cars can be displayed. It's a trade-off.

 After the museum, the plan was to drive up the scenic route past Hardy Falls and the Petit Jean Valley overlook, then down to the Talihena Scenic Route in Oklahoma. At that point, we were going to head home. But there were no falls that we could see at Hardy Falls (and no place to pull over on a winding mountain road), and at the Petit Jean Valley overlook the weather was so threatening, with rain starting and lightning all around, that I decided not to get out of the car on the highest point in central Arkansas. I put the top up and we headed on down the road. (Plus, the view was mostly obscured by rain in the valley.) We stopped in Paris, Arkansas for lunch at a bar and grill -- the rain had eased enough that we could get from the car to the door without getting soaked -- and then I decided it was just time to head home. I plugged in a route, calculated that we could make Dallas today, and we went off to do that. We started another audio book, the second in the Junior Bender series. I think we should finish it around Austin or San Marcos tomorrow (unless Dallas has resolved the issues concerning rush hour on Central Expressway) (which I doubt).

A New Wander, Day 7: St Robert, Missouri, to Morillton, Arkansas

  This post is the sixth for this Wander. You really should read them in order. You'll find Part One here, and here's a link to the photo album for this trip. 

 This morning's drive from St Robert, Missouri was exactly the kind of driving I love, the main reason I come on wandering trips like this. Good, well-maintained winding roads, not much traffic, a little up-and-down elevation, clear skies and cool-enough temperatures. The first few miles were a little tense for me, as the dashboard indicator said my engine coolant level was low. I just had the sensor for that replaced (because it would show me that message all the time without actually being the least bit low), so I kept an eye on the temperature guage, which didn't budge, and before I came to a place where I could pull over, the idiot light went out. If it happens again I'm going to have to have the sensor replaced again.

 We didn't have breakfast this morning; neither of us was hungry. I stopped for some coffee at a convenience store, then we headed on down through rural Missouri to the town of Hartsville, where we located the marker showing that a local spot (actually out in somebody's field a little northeast of the marker) was the center of the United States' population at the time of the 2020 census. (I assume that if they'd accurately counted all the minorities in Texas back then, the spot would be maybe 30 or 40 miles to the southwest, but hey, this spot's official and it's all really not worth discussing.)

 We continued listening to our audiobook, Crashed, and finished it just before we got to our hotel this evening. Not great literature by any means, but an entertaining whodunit. There are a total of eight books featuring the same "detective," a professional burglar with, of course, a heart of gold, so we've checked out the next in the series to listen to starting tomorrow.

Buffalo River Canyon in the Ozarks

 We cruised back into the Ozark Mountains, stopping first at Arkansas' "Grand Canyon." It's actually the Buffalo River canyon, about two thousand feet from the tops of the surrounding mountains to the mean water level. There seems to be a lot of smoke in the air; maybe from those Canadian wild fires? I haven't heard any more about it since it stopped affecting our national media centers in New York City and Washington DC. Makes me feel a part of the Great Ignored Center of the nation, places to be dismissed as insignificant flyover country. This is why the Radical Right fringe of morons is so ready to dismiss the national media. One of the reasons, anyway: their own gullibility combined with stupidity and ignorance helps, too, as they sit on their home computers "doing their own research."

 But I digress. 

 We continued south through the mountains to a dirt-road turnoff for Falling Waters Waterfall. (Yes, these hillbillies spend a lot of time thinking up names for things.) It's where a small creek drops about eight feet over a dramatic precipice into a pool that's deep enough to permit diving and swimming. Despite its remoteness, there were about a dozen people there. It looked like a very nice place to spend an afternoon, but of course we weren't interested in spending much time there. Just went to see it, & take a couple of pictures.

 Coming away from there, we had no internet signal. I'd picked out a route on my paper map, but unfortunately the area was right on the fold and the fold had torn, so I couldn't read the road numbers. We got back to a pavement and headed south, but that road eventually turned east and then north. At one point we passed a county line, and I could locate our position on the map from that. I continued going what was actually the wrong way (because, by then, it was the shortest way back to where we wanted to go) and we arrived in Morillton, Arkansas, where we're spending the night. There's a car museum here that I want to see. It doesn't open until 10AM, but we figured we could do our laundry in the morning while we waited for it to open. (Tuesday is the day I'd planned on doing laundry from the start of the trip, as I always pack enough for one week. Today is one week on the road.)

 We checked into the Morillton Motel and cranked up the AC. There's no TV in the room because, apparently, there was a hell of a storm here last night. We noticed big puddles of water and some trees down in the area. The restaurant we'd picked first for dinner, not far from the hotel, was closed, apparently because they've lost power. (The power poles along the road leading to the restaurant are being held up by the lines; they're leaning away from the road with big cracks a few feet above ground level.) 

 The hotel, for other reasons, is something of a dump. We had no towels; when they provided some, they proved to be of the lowest possible quality. There was no handle on the inside of the bathroom door; the toilet ran and ran unless you reset the handle; the keys didn't work and had to be re-done. But the beds were clean and comfortable, so that was the main thing. But you kind of expect more for the not inexpensive price they charge.

 While I was waiting for Roland to come out and go to dinner, I checked the weather for Tulsa. My plan was that we would get to Muskogee (or so) tomorrow night, then spend Wednesday and Thursday nights in Tulsa. But Wednesday's high is predicted to be 109, and Thursday's will be 104. We discussed this over dinner and have decided to cut our trip short. I believe we will get into Oklahoma tomorrow evening, probably to around Talequah, maybe even farther; then we're a day's drive from home. I may even be home in time to see the US play St Kitts & Nevis in the Gold Cup at 8:30 that evening. 

 Fingers crossed.

Click on "Newer Post" below for the next installment of this gripping story.

A New Wander, Day 6: St Louis to St Robert

  This is part five of many. You really should read them in order. You'll find Part One here, and here's a link to the photo album for this trip. 

 This turned out to be a very easy-going day. Unfortunately, it was hot enough when we started that I didn't bother putting the top down at all, but other than that and a problem with access to downtown St Louis, it's been a relaxing day.

 I started off by trying to go see some of the sights of downtown St Louis, which I've never been to. I figured that, it being Sunday, there'd be very few people down there and it'd be easy to park near things like the sculpture garden and the city garden and the other park-related places they have there.

 Google Maps routed us along Collinsville Road. Turns out that when I thought I was telling it not to avoid highways, I was actually turning on the "avoid highways" instruction. My bad. Apparently there are no frontage roads for it to direct us down. Anyway, I finally started ignoring its proposed route until I got to the exit for downtown off Interstate 70; from which it directed us down a road that was closed for construction. Then it took us two blocks over and south, and all the cross-streets going to the area I wanted to go to were closed off with barricades. After circling around the area for fifteen or twenty minutes, I finally saw a sign saying that today was Pride Fest. So the area was off-limits to mere tourists who didn't want to pay to get in; and of course parking required a hefty fee.

 Okay; so the attractions of downtown St Louis will have to wait for a future visit. I drove off to get a carton of cigarettes, which are cheaper in Missouri than Texas by about $10. Sadly, the place I stopped only had one carton of my brand, so that's all I could get. Then we headed off to the west, and for the first time on this trip, we started an audiobook, a slightly glib murder mystery called Crashed, which involves a professional burglar who gets blackmailed into providing security for a porno film being made by the heir to an organized crime syndicate. We're 20 chapters in after today's drive, and it's amusing but cliché-ridden.

 One of the first stops I'd planned after St Louis was a big model-train exhibit in some town west of the city. It doesn't open until noon on Sundays, so we skipped that. I drove instead across the river into Warren County, the last county to visit in the state of Missouri. So that makes 39 states now where I've been to all the counties. I stopped at the first gas station I came to and checked the map for a route to the next planned stop, and as a result we crossed all of Warren County, then headed south, back across the Missouri River, on local highways. 

 For lunch, we found a Greek restaurant in the town of Belle. Before we left, I posted this review on Google Maps:

Wow. Can't believe the best gyro I've ever had was to be found in this quaint little family restaurant in the middle of Missouri, just over the hill from the edge of nowhere. The pita had a slight sweetness to it; the meat was I Mean perfectly done; the veggies were as fresh as can be, and the feta tastes like Granny makes it out back.

 It really was that good. Apparently I'm not the first to discover this; there are several reviews by people from St Louis that indicate they think it's worth the 90-minute drive from the city. Well, I wouldn't go quite that far, but it is excellent.

 

 After lunch, we moseyed south and west to Ha-Ha-Tonka State Park, where there are the ruins of a castle on a bluff overlooking the lake. It's not actually a castle, of course, just a big-ass house some rich guy from Kansas City built around the turn of the last century, because he liked the lay of the land. He bought 5,000 acres and put up his country palace, finishing it just before he died in a traffic accident in 1906. Then, during World War II, the house and stables burned and the house was abandoned. The water tower he had built burned in the 1970s, and at some point soon after that the family gave the wreck (and the 5,000 acres) to the state of Missouri, which cleaned it up and made it a state park and tourist attraction. 

 

Castle Ruins

 It sits, as I said, on a bluff overlooking a lake. The bluff is perhaps 700 feet high, so it's quite a sight, and they've put in a number of overlooks. I could hear loud music playing on the beach by the lakeshore, and see dots that I think must've been kayakers far below. It was about a five-hundred-foot walk up a slight rise from the parking lot, but Roland felt unable to make the trek, so I went alone.

 

 After that, we headed down to Lebanon, Missouri. There's nothing in the way of attractions there, but I had calculated that it was about as far as we'd be able to get after leaving St Louis (when that was going to be on Monday) and still get a hotel. Beyond Lebanon are a lot of miles of very rural highway with no major towns, and any motels we might come across would be hit-or-miss. So we stopped in Lebanon at a Denny's and looked up local hotels, and found that almost all of them are 30 miles east, near Fort Leonard Wood, a huge army training base; I guess all the trainees have family always coming to visit, so all the motels are there.

 

 And now so are we. 

 

 We decided on dinner at Ruby Tuesday, which is either very good or very bad, depending on the flip of a coin. Close by that restaurant, though, we spotted a "pizzeria & pub" called Poppa's or Pappa's or Pappo's or something. We neither of us wanted pizza but we figured that the "& pub" part ensured other things on the menu. It turned out to be a good choice. I had a meatball calzone while Roland had a meatball marinara bowl. Both were very good, and the service was outstanding. We were content and able to return to our room to watch Jason Bourne movies. 

Click on "Newer Post" below for the next installment of this gripping story.

A New Wander, Days 4 and 5, but not 6: St Louis

  This is part four of many. You really should read them in order. You'll find Part One here, and here's a link to the photo album for this trip. 

Friday, June 23:

The Best Breakfast in Farmington, Missouri, according to whatever web sites I checked, is at the Factory Cafe, which has two locations: one out on the highway and one downtown. I picked the one downtown. It's located in an old factory building, along with a number of other shops. It did have excellent food and good prices, though the service could have easily been better. 

 It was then only about an hour and a half to St Louis. Since I'd decided the night before not to set my usual 6AM alarm for that reason (why bother?) and had slept until 7:30, then had a leisurely breakfast, we didn't get into the city until after noon. We made the Third Degree Glass Studio our first stop; when I visited here a few years ago with my friend Marty, I found it had some novel and inspired works of unusual quality. This time, not so much. There was still the quality, but almost everything had a derivative quality about its design, and the colour choices of the various artists fell only into two categories: mundane and garish. After a good look around the gallery, we had a pleasant lunch at Blueberry Hill. So, that was two boxes ticked. That left us with a few hours to kill in the city before we headed across the river into Illinois, where our hotel is.

1931 Chrysler Imperial

 Roland has no notion of what there is to do or see in St Louis, and seems to have no ambition in that regard; so I decided to go to the St Louis Car Museum and Sales Company, about ten minutes west of the Delmar Loop. It's a big warehouse-like space where individuals who own special cars can have them stored in a climate-controlled environment, and offered for sale if they desire. The paltry entrance fees for gawkers like me (Roland waited patiently for me in the lobby) only help defray some of the costs of keeping the cars for their owners. More than half the cars on display were for sale. A couple were reserved for pending sale; others were just being stored.

 With the exception of one ragged-looking 1960 Volkswagen Beetle that seemed to have been fresh from the barn, all the cars there are in excellent shape. Many of them were of no great interest to me: muscle cars such as I've seen over and over in fifty other places (including on the street). And while I love certain muscle cars -- certain Chevy Malibus and Pontiac Grand Prix and GTOs -- I no longer get excited by them. Commonplace classics like '55, '56 and '57 Chevies. The kind of angular supercars that titillate the twits on the old Top Gear series, Lamborghinis and Ferraris and later-model Corvettes: Lambos have always been ugly; Ferrari makes mostly ugly cars, though with some stunning exceptions; and Vettes haven't really been pretty since the third generation was discontinued in 1984; each one since (4th through 8th, so far) has gotten progressively uglier. 

 There are lots of mid-engined sports cars with poorly balanced proportions, like Audi R8's and Porsche Cayennes on display; and ubiquitous models like Porsche 911s. Seen one, seen 'em all, or don't care because they're not really that attractively designed. They're just powerful, loud and fast, and I don't care about that because they're just sitting there on the floor. Maybe if I were driving them I'd be more interested, though I doubt they're as comfortable on a road trip as my gorgeous little Jag. And there are cars that are only remarkable because they're expensive, and therefore relatively rare, like the 1996 Rolls Royce Silver Spur, which has nothing beyond the nameplate to make it desirable. And there are some vehicles that are clearly held as bets on future value, like the Hummer and the gussied-up Dodge Durango.

 (The Rolls, by the way, is for sale with an asking price of less than $23,000. Keep in mind that anyone who sees you in it will assume you bought it new for six figures.)

By the time I finished going through the museum, it was nearly 4pm; too late to do anything else in St Louis. So we crossed over to our hotel in Collinsville, Illinois, where we're booked for three nights. It's the same hotel I've stayed in on both previous visits to St Louis. I really wanted to stay on the Missouri side this time, but the hotels over there are so much more expensive and not really worth the added costs. That, and in one case, a hotel I was all set to book despite the price wanted to add nearly a third of the price in "taxes and fees", but wouldn't tell me what the "fees" were. ("See our Terms and Conditions." I did: the information wasn't there.) And after we checked into our hotel, I started work on this blog, finishing up yesterday's post on Day 3, and writing up the start of our St Louis sojourn. After getting to this point, we went downtown (Collinsville) to find a place where my wife and I ate when we were here a couple of years ago. It wasn't quite where I remembered it, and even now, having just been there, I can't remember the name of it; but we found it and had dinner there and I've decided it will be a good place to watch the US whoop up on Jamaica tomorrow night (fingers crossed).

 Thus endeth the first day in St Louis.

Saturday, June 24:

Gateway Arch from Illinois

 We slept in until nearly 8:30 this morning. Well, I slept in. Roland appears to have woken up at 5:30 and surfed Tik Tok posts for two and a half hours. We got ready for the day and went first to the Mississippi River Observation Deck, in a scary part of East St Louis. There's a ramp there that takes you above the river levee so you can see the Gateway Arch unencumbered. Roland insisted he couldn't walk up its gentle slope because of his knee. I had already been up there on a visit here before, but went up anyway. The river, now, is way down. There are roads and parking lots along it that were under water last time I was here. It was kind of surprising to see.

 Afterwards we crossed the Eads Bridge into St Louis and went to see the Graffiti Wall, a stretch of retainer wall built for the use of random graffiti artists. There was nothing the least bit impressive on it, so after scanning it from the comfort of the car, we went on to brunch at a place called The Egg, on Gravois Avenue. It's a trendy place, apparently, but has a very nice ambience about it. We both had something called "beermosa" -- Hefeweizen and orange juice. It wasn't too bad, but I'd never order it again. I got pulled pork cornbread Benedict. It had two slices of sweet corn bread under three slices of nicely barbecued pork belly, topped with two poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce. On the side was a generous portion of perfectly fried potatoes. 

 From there we went to the St Louis Museum of Fine Arts, in Forest Park. Roland parked himself on a sofa in the first room he came to and stared at a crappy Max Beckmann painting for about four hours while I explored what I could in that time. I saw a few Assyrian animal sculptures and Greek and Roman pieces before tracking down some paintings. If there is a coherent order to the many galleries in this museum, it isn't obvious to me, but each room has a theme, even if it's not connected to that of the next room. 

Martin, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion

 In the hours I was there, I saw maybe a third of the main floor and most of the floor below, which houses the decorative arts that interest me the most: furniture design, ceramics and glass. By the time I'd looked those parts of the musuem over, I didn't think I could stand up any longer, so I collected my passenger and left. We went to Ted Drewes' Frozen Custard shop on Chippewa, a local institution according to something I had read. My source seems to have been accurate: neither of us had ever seen such long lines at a custard shop. It took us at least ten minutes to get to one of the six customer windows to order. I had a Big Apple Concrete, which is apple spice and baked apple chunks mixed up with the frozen custard. "Concrete" is what they call it when it's been mixed on a machine, like a root beer freeze or a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Anyway, picture Sheriff Andy Taylor saying "It was gooo-ood!" It was.

 At that point we had nothing really to do, so we drove back over to our hotel in Illinois and relaxed until it was time to go to dinner. Some source I had checked had recommended a place called Rigazzi's in The Hill, the Italian neighbourhood in St Louis, and since we had no other information, we went there. It was in an early-twentieth-century house, expanded and converted, in a mixed residential and industrial neighbourhood. I'm not aware of a comparable area in San Antonio.

 Even though we'd come early (6:30) there was a wait for a table that ran to about 45 minutes. Then we faced slow, indifferent service: a long wait for drinks, a long wait to order, a long wait for our salads, a long wait for our food, a long wait for our check (even after we'd asked for it). I'd give the service one chili pepper out of five. The food was meh at best. The salads were out of a bag, the bread was off the shelf, the pasta was heavy and overly salty. Two chili peppers out of five. 

Capone at Rigazzi's

 (While Roland was waiting for me to bring the car over from a block away, he encountered some other folks from San Antonio. They, too, thought little of the food or service at Rigazzi's. Definitely not a place to go back to. It is apparently most famous for its claim to be the place where Al Capone was taken prisoner.)

 Once back at our hotel, we threw our leftovers in the fridge and I headed out to watch the US:Jamaica match in the Gold Cup competition at the tavern we'd been to the night before. (I still can't remember the name of it!) I got there a few minutes before the match started, concerned about getting a good seat. I needn't have been. I was one of about 20 people in there.  I had a table with a clear view of the match on a large screen. My shot of bourbon cost me five bucks (I just had the one) and the Diet Coke I portion it in to was free. With refills, it lasted me the whole match, which by the was was a fairly exciting (as in frustrating) draw, 1:1. The US has sent its B team to the Gold Cup, not the first time US Soccer has entered a tournament it didn't take particularly seriously; but at least in this case there's the excuse that all the top players featured in the Nations League final just a week or so before, and they're back with their clubs across Europe. This tournament will be a test of BJ Callaghan's abilities as a coach. Can he get this second-tier group of MLS and Liga MX players to gel? Can he get them to the semifinal? The final? Or will they somehow contrive to not win their group of minnows? The world awaits.

Sunday, June 25:

 Our original plan was to spend Sunday in St Louis too, but since we'd pretty much done all the stuff I really wanted to do (and there was nothing in particular that Roland wanted to do) we've decided to move on. I told the desk clerk this yesterday morning, but he apparently didn't make note of the fact. So there was a discussion with the clerk this morning, but it worked out as it should have. As I finish writing up this blog post, Roland has found a tennis match on TV to ignore while he surfs Tik Tok. I expect he hardly slept at all last night, but he'll sleep in the car as soon as we get going.

 And, as I told Roland: Italian food is usually better as leftovers than as fresh food, even the best of it. The leftovers I had from last night were an exception.

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