2022 KC/MI Wander: Kansas City

Days 4, 5 and 6

 This is the fourth installment of the blog post documenting my epic wandering around the middle part of the country. You really should read them in order. To that end, here's a link to Part One. At the bottom of each post, click the link for "Newer Post" at the bottom. And here is a link to ALL the pictures I took on this trip. Viewing them will require that you scroll through God knows how many pictures of parts of old cars, so you might want to just skip that altogether.

Day Four of my trip, Friday, began with a walk up the street to a breakfast place we'd passed the previous evening on the way to dinner on Main Street. I was seated next to a very young couple who were engaged in a group phone conversation with some guy in what sounded like a techno-chic night club. Or maybe he just liked to blast dance music in the background. Whichever: the young couple could only overcome the noise from his location by shouting into the phone about their gym routines. I had to move to another table, where I was made privy to the thoughts of a 73-year-old woman who likes dirty martinis and has some unpleasant thoughts about sexual practices in West Africa. Fortunately, live voices are easier to tune out.

The food was good, the coffee not so much. Service excellent, values not so much. Overall I'd give the place an average rating, two and a half jalapeños out of five. 

National Toy & Miniatures Museum

After going back to the house and writing up my blog post from Day 3, I walked over to the National Toy and Miniature Museum, about three blocks away. The museum was started when two wealthy old KC women decided to pool their collections. One collected miniatures, the other collected toys. The museum has toys on the second floor, miniatures on the first, though naturally there's some overlap, especially when it comes to doll houses.

The attraction of the upper floor was, of course, the nostalgia of seeing things I used to play with locked up in plexiglass cabinets where they couldn't be played with: the Lockheed Constellation model airplane, the Marx Garage, &c. I pretty much skipped over the doll exhibits, and I was disappointed to find an entire cabinet of Hot Wheels cars, but not a single Matchbox. (We die-cast model snobs disparage Hot Wheels as morally and physically inferior to the Matchbox models.) But there was an old video of the Matchbox manufacturing process produced by Lesney, the company that made the toys (starting in 1952, I learned, with a model of Queen Elizabeth's coronation coach). 

But it was the miniatures on the first floor that are really the heart of this museum. They were astounding. 

nesting tables 1" x 1.5"

The miniatures museuem I visited in Victoria, British Columbia a few years ago had dioramas of great scenes created with phenomenal detail: battles, a dogfight, a car show, circus parades. I was expecting, even hoping for something similar. But instead I found thousands upon thousands of items rendered in perfect tiny proportion. And while they were often arranged in complete sets -- Art Deco Jewelry Store; Country Cottage; Anteroom in the Doge's Palace -- the main thrust of the museum was educational, showing how these incredible items are created. The exhibits highlight the special tools used, the techniques applied, the various stages of production. In one room, I got to try putting the hands on a miniature grandfather clock with a pair of tweezers. The first hand went on easily; the second took me a dozen tries, and I wasted a lot of time looking for it after it squirted out of the tweezers' grasp.

table & chair, full-sized & miniature

captain's chair on a pin

Probably the most fascinating item was a copy, in miniature, of a writing desk from the palace at Versailles. The model is only about six inches across, but it perfectly duplicates the full-sized furniture, right down to the gold leaf decoration, the inlaid roll-top (including the entire brass mechanism), the dovetail drawers, the complex lock, and the mechanism that enables the writing desk to double as a reading stand. There was a documentary film, engaging despite its leisurely pacing, showing how the piece was made.

There were miniature copies -- apparently perfect copies -- of oil paintings; there were porcelain figurines and dishes and vases; there were candles and chandeliers and kitchen tools, even tiny flowers and food and animals, all of them perfect in every detail. The result of these collections is absolutely breathtaking.

When I left the museum it was mid-afternoon and much hotter than I cared for. I briefly considered going to the Nelson-Atkins Museum, or driving around the city checking out other locations I'd marked to visit on RoadTrippers; but after walking back to the house, I decided instead to settle on the back porch with a glass of ice water, my computer (to start putting down these thoughts) and my cellphone.

I found that relaxing.

Saturday (Day 5 of the trip) was set aside for a visit with my friend Marty, who lives out in Olathe, a suburb of the city in Kansas. His house isn't far from the Kansas City Automotive Museum, and he expressed an interest in going there with me. Perfect. 

Since he works nights and doesn't usually get up until around ten in the morning, we planned for me to come by his house and fetch him a little after that; then we'd have brunch and go to the museum together. Easier said than done: every decent breakfast place in the area had long wait times. At the third restaurant we checked, with a 25-minute wait, I said let's just wait. If we'd waited at the first one we'd gone to, we'd have already eaten by then. But by the third restaurant we were both a lot more desperate and a lot less proud. I had gone out to an ATM that morning and stopped for really good coffee at a convenience store I'd passed on the way, and had thought about getting something to tide me over (this was around 7:30AM) but decided not to. Since I expected to eat around 10:30, I figured there was no need. In the event, it was about 11:15 before we finally sat down at a restaurant table. We had a good breakfast -- I had eggs benedict and coffee, lots of coffee -- and sat talking well into the afternoon. 

So we didn't get to the museum until around 2pm. It's not a large museum, but it's an interesting one. It has special shows, a different one every month, and most unfortunately, their Jaguar Month is September. If only I"d known. When we pulled up and went inside, they immediately started trying to convince me to leave my car in their museum for the month. "We haven't got any newer Jag models lined up yet for the show." Too bad, I said, because this car will be in Michigan by the first of September.

1954 Lincoln

Among the unusual cars they had on display were a 1925 Jordan, similar (I've been told) to the one my grandfather drove; a 1954 Lincoln, a rarity in car museums; a 1935 Bentley 3.5-litre saloon; an Essex Super Six; and a 1957 Chrysler Imperial Crown convertible. All the cars were fully restored and beautifully presented, although the lighting in the museum is fairly harsh and my photos are, as a result, mostly overexposed and filled with glare spots. There was also a 1957 Messerschmidt two-seat tandem car, which prompted a long conversation about postwar industrial recovery in Europe and Japan, and the persistence of rationing in Britain. 

1939 Racine Ford

But the most interesting car was something that, normally, I wouldn't have bothered with: it was, according to the sign, a 1939 Racine Ford -- not something I'd ever heard of, and I suspect that it's actually a fairly recent artifact. It was built using parts from a number of cars, ranging from a 1934 Ford, a Jaguar, an MG, and several others. All these odd parts were cobbled together by various local mechanics (a complete list of the parts and the builders was given on the accompanying sign) into one of the most attractive 1930s-Style vehicles I've seen outside of the top car museums.

Marty and I spent about an hour at the museum, and another hour or so sitting outside talking. Just before we left I went back in to toss some trash, and an older man who hadn't been privy to our conversation on arrival immediately set to work trying to get my Jag into their Jaguar Month show. I spent about 20 minutes talking with him and the other three museum employees about which cars are the most beautiful (and which aren't): Jaguars in general, yes; Jaguar XK-150s, no; Delahayes in general, yes; Bugatti Atlantics ... we agreed to disagree. 

In any case, I'm now up to seven "nice car" comments, including Marty, who gushed. He'd expected me to be driving my Subaru (because I was bringing the stained glass panels up). But while bringing up the glass is the Official Reason for this trip, the convertible is the Real Reason.

Speaking of stained glass: while I was out in Olathe, the panels got hung up at David's house. (The installation had been delayed because the hooks originally bought for the hanging were only rated at 4 pounds each, and the center panel weighs almost 10 pounds, so bigger hooks were needed.) Since this installation is the Official Reason for the trip, I guess I should mention that it's been accomplished, and show the result. So:

Ginko Triptych, Installed

We had dinner down at an Italian restaurant in The Plaza, a shopping district built in the 1920s and famous for two things: (1) being the first shopping center designed for cars (there are parking garages hidden all over the 6-block area) and (2) a plethora of public art. I have photos from a previous trip of a magnificent fountain at the eastern end of the Plaza with several monumental bronze statues in it; this time we were at the western end, where the statues are more modest, and whimsical. After dinner, we strolled around the area for a while, as David pointed out where everything used to be. Seems the tenancy of the Plaza has been extremely fluid in the past few years; not really a surprise, but it always promotes a certain feeling of regret-tinged nostalgia when important parts of your home town go through big changes. I feel the same way whenever a longtime River Walk business folds or moves away, and when some national chain takes over a space that, morally, should have a tenant with a local connection.

Sunday (Day 6) started off with pouring rain. I started my laundry and then sat on the back porch, pondering coffee sources until there was a lull in the downpour. I rushed out to a convenience store a mile and a half north, filled their biggest cup, and brought it back to the house. By the time I moved my laundry from the washer to the dryer, it was plain that the lull in the rain would be lasting for some time. So I found a place for breakfast called the Neighborhood Cafe, three miles south, and went there. Four and a half jalapeños. Had a good-enough breakfast burrito, and more coffee; but the best things about the place were (a) the prices; (b) the lagniappe (hot-from-the-oven cinnamon rolls); (3) the service; and (d) they had the Forest:Spurs match on the TV over the counter. I was tempted to remain until full time, but I had laundry in the dryer.

I spent the entire afternoon at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. The best part of that museum is that it's free, so I don't feel like I have to see everything in order to get my money's worth. That's really a good thing: I don't know how many times I've gone, and I have never seen even half of it. I had gotten there around noon, figuring I'd spend, oh, a couple of hours and then go for a late lunch. Instead I was there until closing, in which time I saw about 2/3 of one floor. (I don't even know how many floors they have; at least two, probably more.) I spent a pretty good chunk of that time considering a single painting, John the Baptist in the Wilderness, painted in the 1500s by Caravaggio. I'd seen it for the first time years ago at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, but the Nelson-Atkins is its home. It is, to me, one of the most enigmatic and important paintings in the entire history of art. 

I managed to get all the way to the medieval cloister at the western end of that floor -- the Plaza Level -- and around the corner to the Assyrian and Egyptian art section before closing time. I find so much of interest there that I had never before gotten that far along that floor. On this occasion I spent a good bit of time with French porcelain and Italian Baroque -- did not see a single English painting on this visit -- and who'd'a ever have thunk it? They have a section on stained glass! Wonders never cease. 

It didn't even occur to me to have lunch. Now, that's engagement.

Well, now: my wandering resumes tomorrow morning, destination Nebraska. I might even get as far as the Iowa border. The chance of rain predicted for tomorrow is the same as it was this morning, but I"m hoping it moves off to the east. Fingers, once again, crossed.

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2022 KC/MI Trip: Day 3

 This is the third post in a series. You really should read them in order, so here's a link to Part One. And here's a link to all the pictures from this trip, should your anal-retentiveness or OCD require it.

One thing I can never hear too often on these long cross-country wanders is the phrase "Nice car." I've heard it four times so far, a little more than once a day. Just enough to satisfy. First time was on day one, while I waited for the engine to cool enough for me to pour some water into the coolant reservoir. A woman filling her gas tank thirty feet away shouted it. I shouted "thanks" back to her, and only later noted that she, too, drove a Jaguar. But hers was a later-model XK -- the version that supplanted mine in the Jaguar line. I thought briefly about complimenting her car, if belatedly, but couldn't bring myself to do it: the XK is a bulbous, overinflated version of the svelte XK-8, and I just don't much like its aggressive looks. 

Yesterday -- Thursday, day 3 of this trip -- I had set my alarm for 6AM on my phone, then woke up at about 5:58AM, wondering what time it was. I'd had a hard time getting to sleep and had ended up on the computer, practicing my timewasting techniques, until probably 1:30 in the morning. So I was sure I'd slept through the alarm, or else that it was only 3AM. But as I went across the room to check the time, the alarm started beeping, making me feel like a real-life version of Jack Reacher, the Lee Child character who can set his internal alarm clock with just that sort of precision. 

I was in the car -- top down under pristine sky -- by 6:30, and then in the parking lot of a local breakfast place called Jimmy's Egg five minutes later. I had what they call the Garbage Breakfast: eggs with a little of this and a little of that, all kind of dry but satisfying enough. The coffee was good and the service was better than good, so I was happy. 

I drove up the road to start my planned route with the Flint Hills Scenic Drive, along State Highway 177 from Cassoday to Council Grove, a distance of just over 50 miles. Along the way I'd planned to stop at a belvedere south of Cottonwood Falls; at a small waterfall near a reservoir; and at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve north of Strong City. It didn't work out that way.

For starters, Highway 177 is under construction, being re-paved with a new asphalt surface. The work has just begun, and only a stretch of about a tenth of a mile has any actual work being done on it; but the vehicles involved in ferrying materials back and forth are being marshalled at the belvedere 15 miles up the road, and so that entire stretch of highway is marked down to a single lane, requiring a pilot truck to escort travellers through the construction zone. I pulled up to the flagman at the south end of the zone not long after the pilot had left on a northward run, so I had time to get out and spend half an hour or so chatting with the flagger, a Texas boy from Jacksonville who'd come to Kansas for his father's wedding, and met the love of his life. Long story short, he's still here.

The driver of the pilot truck came back ("Nice car! What is it? That's a Jaguar? Looks really nice.") and was replaced by my flagger friend, who led me at breakneck speed past the belvedere where I'd planned to stop -- it was full of dump trucks and graders so I couldn't have stopped anyway, but I could tell from the view beyond it that it wouldn't really have been worthwhile anyway -- to the end of the construction zone in Cottonwood Falls, where I turned off to go to Chase Lake to see the waterfall. Chase Lake is a small reservoir, and just below the earthen dam the creek drops, oh, maybe six feet. I couldn't get to it. The dam is fenced off and the creek exits the reservoir at the farther end, so I just watched the play of sun on water for a few minutes before heading (slowly) back down the gravel road to the highway. 

Masai Mara, 2008: feel that feeling

The Flint Hills are unimpressive bulges in the landscape, mostly covered in grass and livestock, pretty enough to be comforting as background scenery but not so photogenic as to warrant stopping for pictures. I can read the comments of people who have made the stops I'd included in my itinerary, comments about how small the landscape makes one feel, and remember feeling that feeling at various places in the Great Plains (and elsewhere) over the years. I didn't feel inclined to experience it yet again. So I put the next destination into my GPS and headed off. 

 

The Buster Keaton Museum

That next destination was the Buster Keaton Museum in Piqua (pronounced "Pick-way"), Kansas. It turns out to be a tiny room in the office of Rural Water District #1, just off the highway. I drove around the tiny town two or three times before I saw the little "Buster Keaton, Silent Film Star 1895-1966" sign mounted on the side of the building. The Water District employee inside told me that in 1895, a big storm forced a passing train to stop in town unexpectedly; Mrs Keaton, a passenger on that train, chose that time to go into labour, and so Buster acquired Piqua as a point of origin. He stayed two days in the town before heading off to great fame and fortune in Hollywood, though he did come back later in life to acknowledge the little community's celebrations of him as its own claim to reflected fame. The museum contains a couple of cases of memorabilia and hundreds of 8x10 photos, movie posters, letters and newspaper clippings. I mainly found it interesting for what it says about Us, the general public, and our desire to cultivate imagined relationships with people who accomplish anything noteworthy in life. 

On the way to my next stop I finished listening to the Ron & Clint Howard book and started up a series of Great Subjects lectures on the American Revolution, bite-sized talks that covers the Big Event from the French and Indian War to, presumably, the Treaty of Paris. (I've heard 4 or 5 of the lectures so far, and am just up to the encirclement of General Gage in Boston following the Shot Heard 'Round the World.)

The next stop was in Osawatomie, Kansas, in a park at the confluence of the Osage and Pottawatomie rivers -- creeks, really, that immediately flow into the Marais des Cygnes River less than a mile away. That park was the scene of the largest single battle in the Bleeding Kansas phase of American history, when pro- and anti-slavery people flooded into the Kansas Territory ahead of a vote on whether the South's Peculiar Institution would be a part of the future state's legacy. (It was not.) John Brown, later to gain fame for an unsuccessful raid on the US Armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia before moulderin' in his grave in North Elba, New York, came as part of that influx of voters, and after the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces, he got up a bunch of anti-slavery settlers and retaliated with the Pottawatomie Massacre. Things got ugly, and confused, and so I'll leave you, reader, to your own researches on the subject. The park in Osawatomie contains the cabin of the Adair family, relatives of Brown's. He "hid out" in plain sight there for a couple of years before going on to greater acclaim or notoriety at Harpers Ferry.

John Brown

 In this (hopefully) post-Trump era of Proud Boys and anti-Constitutional insurrection, it's hard to know whether Brown should be condemned or praised for his role in provoking the Civil War. He was convicted of treason following the Harpers Ferry raid, and executed. But a part of his legacy is that slavery is gone, and the Union lives on. Those are good things. But slavery in this country was not talked to death; it only drowned in the blood of hundreds of thousands of people. And its end is not a solution to our problems as a society, only a big step along the road to the general Welfare of a more perfect Union.

Okay, end of sermon. After a short nap in the shade of a tree near the Adair Cabin (which is enclosed for preservation in a slightly larger rock building) I drove on to Kansas City, where the temperature surpassed my limit of 94 degrees and forced me to put the top up for the last fifteen or twenty minutes. I probably won't put up nightly posts while I'm in KC, but will try to do a single all-encompassing description of my time here before I leave on Monday.

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2022 KC/MI Trip, Day 2

This is Part Two of the blog post for the trip to Kansas City and Michigan. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to Part One. And here, for what it's worth, is a link to all the pictures from this trip.

 I know you're seething with curiosity, so I'll tell you that, Yes, I did find some good eats in Bowie: at a Tex-Mex restaurant that turned out (despite Google Map's prediction of how long it'd take to get there) to be right across the street from my hotel. Brisket enchiladas with rice and charro beans, and a salsa crema to which I added a mild salsa picante. And a really big frozen margarita that made me really glad that I only had to drive, oh, a hundred yards to get back to my room.

I'll also mention one thing I forgot from yesterday: another bust. In the town of Aurora, Texas, there was supposed to be the grave of a space alien. I found it on Roadside America. I went there. When I got there, I found a fairly large cemetery, so I looked up the listing to see if it showed where in the cemetery this space alien's grave was supposed to be. Really wish I'd read through all the comments before driving out there, because several comments mention the fact that the grave marker had been removed. Nothing to see. Well, that kind of puts the cherry on yesterday's wandering, doesn't it.

So: today. First thing, I put the top down. There were lots of clouds, but they were the light, puffy kind that held no threat of rain. I had breakfast in a restaurant next door to my hotel -- Longhorn Cafe, I want to say: excellent service, good food, good prices, very popular with the locals, who gather in large groups to discuss local concerns. Not a "Trump 2024" sign in sight. (In fact, I've yet to see that sort of sign anywhere along this trip so far. Considering how often I see it to the west of San Antonio -- like in Arizona -- that's surprising.) These people seem to have returned to norbal.

I get to my first stop, the Horton Car Museum in Nocona, just as they open at 9AM. I didn't expect to spend more than an hour there, because I knew from online information that it was "mostly Corvettes," and while Corvettes are pretty -- at least up to about 1990 -- they're not that uncommon. Okay, the earliest Vettes, from the '50s, are a rare sight, but I've seen so many, in so many museums, that I don't figure they will hold much charm for me yet again.

Turns out they're more interesting when massed like this. There are about 45 'Vettes in a single room, arranged pretty much chronologically from 1953 on. I notice that the '53 Vette is pretty sloppily put together: lines don't align, gaps are uneven, and there's one small chrome part that seems to have a piece of painted metal ripped away from some other surface adhering to it. I'm informed by the curator that it's because the 1953 models were all hand built; the 1954 models, which are identical, were built on an assembly line and the fit and finish is much better. There's a 1954 model right next to the '53, and that's obviously true.

The smallest room in the museum is given over to about 10 vehicles, almost all Chevrolets. The '58 and the '61 interest me but, again, these are cars that I see all over the country, in and out of museums. And besides, the lighting in that room and the arrangement of the cars are such that I can't get a good picture of any of them. The rest of those cars are generally uninteresting to me.

Then there's the back room: large, with dozens of cars of all sorts arranged in groups of 2 or 4, so that it's possible to see all sides of each car. And the lighting is better, too. I spent much longer in that room than in the others. Many of the cars are in that same category of almost commonplace: Mustangs and GTOs and Road Runners and Barracudas -- muscle cars -- are neat to look at, and fond memories abound (especially when I get to the 1970 Chevelle SS'es along the far wall) but they're not worth photographing yet again. I've already got those pictures.

But there are also a number of cars in that back room that I haven't seen frequently in other museums; some I've never seen before. The 1940 Lincoln Zephyr, a really funny-looking car that looks like it got stuck in an extruder. The 1951 Lincoln Cosmopolitan, a peculiarly ugly and chubby-looking luxury car. A 1931 Packard dual-cowl phaeton -- a type of car that has always fascinated me, ever since my days of playing with Matchbox cars. 

Coming out of the Horton museum after two hours, the clouds to the north and east had turned ominous, so I left the top up for a couple of hours. Looking at my itinerary, I decided to skip my next planned stop, at Turner Falls in Davis, Oklahoma, because a couple of recent reviews of the place pointed out that the $15 entry fee was pretty steep for what you got. So I plugged in the next planned stop and headed off.

After lunch -- of Arbuckle Fried Pies (one Tex-Mex, one spinach & mushroom) and a chat with an elderly couple from Kent, England, who were touring the country in a rental car -- and a couple of hours' driving (during which I gor exactly three drops of rain on my windshield, so the top came down again), I stopped for a break and, while I stretched my legs, I decided to look ahead to the other planned stops. Doing some quick mental calculations, I realized that (1) my next stop at a museum in Sapulpa, Oklahoma would be at its closing time, and (2) the the remaining stops in Oklahoma would require me to sit around waiting until 11AM tomorrow at the earliest for access. So I said to myself, Self (I said), let's just go on to Kansas. I said, You can look at your paper maps and decide where-all you want to go; get a big-picture view. That's when I realized that I'd left all my paper maps, with their carefully highlighted routes marked out from Texas to Michigan and back, sitting on top of my Windows computer back in San Antonio. AND I'd left behind my old beat-up Rand McNally Road Atlas of the USA because I didn't need it; I had those paper maps.

So I have no big-picture resource at the moment. That caused me a little difficulty this evening when I tried booking a cheap motel in El Dorado, Kansas, and found that, because I was using that tiny little cellphone screen, I'd plugged in a motel in Wichita instead. Not that far distant, but still out of my way. So I stopped at a Wendy's in whatever town I was in at the time, and called for a reservation by phone instead. 

I see a visit to the AAA office in Kansas City in my not-too-distant future, for a new set of paper maps. They won't have the routes highlighted, but at least I'll be able to change plans with greater comfort. 

I blame my wife, of course, for my having left the maps behind. I'm not saying it's her fault, just that I blame her. 

So how to explain the way I feel about today's drive? I feel something akin to joy. Yes, my plan was a near-total bust. I'll not see the car museum in Sapulpa, or the Deco architecture of Tulsa, or the Healing Stone, and I'll have to get my Superman ice cream in Michigan or somewhere like that; and I didn't see the Indians On The Hill or Bluestem Falls or Greenville Avenue. But today's drive was a joy, top-down on mostly small country roads listening to Ron and Clint Howard talk about their childhood. (Clint's voice is a little deeper than Ron's, and on my radio it's kind of hard to hear him speak. At one point I thought he said, talking of someone he worked with on a TV show, "he was accurately known as Fat Dick." I wondered how anyone would know that. Then I heard him say it again, and realized it was "Fat Jack," so presumably he was talking about the man's weight problem, not his endowment.) (I really should take some time to review the equalizer settings on my radio; maybe I'll do that in KC, now that I expect to have an extra day there.)

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2022 KC/MI Wander: Not the Best Start

 My first wander of the year! Finally! I've so been looking forward to this. The itch to hit the road and move around the country, see places and things I've never seen before, has been growing every day. I've spent enjoyable hours on line, looking for increasingly trivial things along the way, and now it's finally here! I'm all a-twitter.

I knew yesterday that the weather today would alternate between heavy clouds and rain, and so it did. The top stayed up all day, but I didn't especially mind. The rain, when there was rain, was mostly brief, and light. The only time it was at all substantial, I was indoors. So one thing went at least well enough.

I left the house about 7:30 this morning. Could have gotten away earlier, at my intended 7AM, but as the time approached, it didn't seem to matter much. I have, after all, four days allotted to get to Kansas City, so no big deal. I headed up San Pedro, opting for city streets instead of freeway until the Avenue merged with Highway 281 outside the loop. Within about twenty minutes I was past the Death Loop (1604), noticing the progress made in extending the freeway northward. They've opened about 3 or 4 more miles of it since I was last out that way. Then a few miles of construction, then back to the old one-sometimes-two-lane highway. After stopping for a convenience-store taco and a final cup of coffee, I put an audiobook on, and turned on the Navigation function of Roadtrippers, my preferred travel-planning app. The cultured British voice said, "In half a mile, take the slip road on the left." (A slip road, apparently, is an English term for a freeway entrance ramp, though why it's started calling them that in the past few months, instead of "entrance ramp," which it used to call them, I don't know. But it does make me feel just a tiny bit more sophisticated to hear it called a slip road, and know what that means.) 

That was, alas, the last I heard from her until, ten hours later, as I approached my hotel, she blurted out, "In half a mile, continue straight"; and then "In 100 yards, your destination is on the left." Really could have used that kind of direction earlier in the day (though I didn't miss any turns this time; but there was one that was kind of last-second. Luckily, the guy behind me was making the same turn and was giving me room to slow down suddenly). 

My first planned stop was just shy of Marble Falls, at a place called Dead Man's Hole.This was, apparently, a popular place to throw the dead bodies of political opponents in the 19th Century. According to the marker, the hole is more than 150 feet deep and 50 feet long, and the remains of 17 people, mostly Union sympathizers, were found in it when it was finally explored in 1951.  It is now filled in because of "dangerous gases." So not really anything to see here.

At this point I decided another taco was called for. I stopped at another convenience store (really a bathroom break, but tacos -- even convenience-store tacos -- always take top billing). As I pulled out of the parking lot to resume my trip, the red warning light came on to tell me the engine coolant was low. This had happened once before, back in March when I'd gotten my roof mechanism fixed. This car takes some special kind of coolant (naturally) that's not readily available, and has to be mixed 50/50 with distilled water. I'd looked on line and found that small amounts of regular water can be used safely. I had, of course, no coolant available, and no distilled water, so I pulled back into the convenience store and bought a bottle of purified drinking water. Then I had to wait for the reservoir cap to cool off enough to open it without it spewing all over and scalding me. Thiat took maybe ten minutes.

When I opened it, it was full. Just like last time: the fluid level was all the way up to the top. So just like last time I poured a tiny bit of water in until it slopped over the reservoir, and replaced the cap. Magically, again, the sensor is satisfied. I am not. When I get home, that's going to get looked at.

My second planned stop was even more of a bust: the World's Largest Spur, in Lampasas. I saw it from the road and decided it didn't warrant so much as a left turn and a one-minute stop for a photo. If you have some unaccountable hankering to see what the world's largest spur looks like, visit RoadsideAmerica.com. 

Continuing on down the road, I got to my next planned stop, a car museum in De Leon. According to Automotive Museum Guide, it's open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10AM to 4PM; I checked with the museum a couple of weeks ago to verify that, and learned that in fact they close for lunch from noon to 1pm. I'd gotten to town just before noon, so I took the opportunity to indulge in a little solid food myself, with a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich and sweet potato fries at the Blue Moon Cafe on Main Street. The sandwich wasn't bad; the fries were excellent. I felt like I'd made my first good choice of the day. After a relaxing meal, I moved five blocks north on Main Street to the museum ... which has changed its hours again, and now doesn't re-open from siesta until 2pm.

I only really rue the change because it was the fact that this museum isn't open on Mondays that made me start my trip today, Tuesday. Now I feel like the Terrill Automotive Museum kind of owes me.

Well. So. I decided not to wait another hour. This tiny car museum is the closest one to San Antonio, so if I ever really really really want to see it, I can come back someday.

Soon after that pointless stop, I realize that it's time for another bathroom break. I pulled into the first likely opportunity, a convenience store in whatever wide spot in the road came next. Once business was taken care of, I stood by the car thinking about how I felt. My mood had been getting darker and darker all day: the threat of rain, the idiot light, the lousy convenience-store tacos .... I had been thinking of abandoning the trip already, then decided that I had to at least go to KC to unload the stained glass in my trunk and stock up on cigarettes (Missouri's tobacco tax is only 19⍧ a pack; every other state charges at least a dollar-a-pack tax, so I prefer to buy in Missouri or on Indian reservations out west). Maybe at that point I'll bin the rest of the trip. We'll see.

And then I realize: it's the audiobook. I'd chosen Robert Reich's book from a couple of years ago, The Common Good, to listen to. He was Clinton's Secretary of Labor, and I've occasionally read some of his editorials on line. The man thinks deeply and writes well; and I've seen him on TV interview shows, and know he speaks well, too. I had hoped he could also read well. (Some authors should not, under any circumstances, be allowed to read their own works out loud.) He can, except where he tries to do imitations and accents (of Ayn Rand, and the Donald, and Alexis de Tocqueville). I had expected this book to be a long essay on the common good and why it's important to consider it; and to some extent, it is. But it is also a long litany of every major scandal, political, economic, or legal, that's taken place since Watergate. It just was too much to listen to. So I cut it off, returned it to the library, and listened to music for the next hour or so. My mood improved dramatically. Then, after my next stop, I started listening to Ron & Clint Howard's memoir of growing up as child actors. (Ron Howard, of course, was Opie on The Andy Griffith Show and Richie Cunningham on Happy Days; his little brother Clint was the lead actor on Gentle Ben, a show I never watched.) This is a much more upbeat accompaniment.

1936 Dodge

I made it to Weatherford in time to go through the Vintage Car Museum, a free (donations requested) car museum just off the courthouse square. It has only about twenty cars on display, about a third of which are Ford Model T's, which interest me not at all. Notable vehicles on display (they do have others, but space is limited) are a custom-built Cadillac "bus," one of a fleet built for the Broadmoor Hotel; LBJ's 1964 white Lincoln Continental convertible; and a 1939 Alvis, the lone non-American vehicle in the place. Unfortunately, all three rooms have glass walls on one side, which means almost all the cars are so harshly backlit that it's very difficult to get decent pictures. The attendant on duty was personable, and tried to be helpful, but couldn't answer any of my questions. (What was that little crank on the back of the front seat in the Dodge? What is a "pop-out ignition"? What was that gizmo on the spare-tire holder that looks like an over-engineered clamp? What's that little flipper-like knob inside the back doors, but not the front doors, of the Studebaker?) I threw a few bucks in the collection box and stepped out into the tail end of a solid rain, played with my phone for a few minutes until it stopped, then headed on.

The Bowie Knife

My last planned stop was at the World's Largest Bowie Knife in -- wait for it -- Bowie, Texas, a town which didn't exist in Jim Bowie's lifetime or for fifty years afterwards. The knife -- duly certified as the largest by the Guinness Book -- is twenty feet long and stands at the entrance to the town, by the soccer fields. It's surrounded by signboards giving bits of history about the area, mostly to do with the Chisholm Trail, but includes a description of the original Bowie knife, which, if the description is accurate, did not look like the giant example for which the town's generous citizens paid some $180,000 five or six years ago. Well, let's not quibble. It's a big knife, and it's in Bowie, so it's a Bowie Knife.

My first stop in the morning is another car museum, in Nocona, just south of the Red River. It doesn't open until 9AM tomorrow, so I checked into a cheap motel for the night and spent about an hour and a half checking over my pictures from today and writing this post. Now it's tme to go find something decent for dinner. Wish me luck.

Click on "Newer Posts" to continue

KCMI Trip: The Excitement Builds

 Planning a trip is almost always more fun than actually taking it. Planning costs nothing, fills time admirably, and is an infinitely flexible undertaking with no calories. There is no chance of car trouble, or flight cancellations, or weather delays, or lost reservations, or pickpockets, or unexpected charges or medical contamination. There are no impulse buys to tempt me in the planning stage.

 I always think about the trip to Portugal for the 2002 Euros: spent months thinking about it, planning it, researching air fares and hotels and figuring out what to see and do (besides the matches, of course). It was going to be a great trip. Then the dollar's exchange rate tanked and my $12,000 trip for two became more like $18,000; so we decided to stay home, drink some Madeira (which we didn't), listen to some fado music, and watch the games on TV. It was still great. 

 So: at the moment I'm planning my next Big Trip. I have three stained glass panels to deliver and install in a house in Kansas City, so I know I'll actually make this trip, at least that far. These panels took me about a year to build, so I'm not about to change my mind. And as long as I'm going as far as Kansas City, I figure I might as well wander around the country some: visit some of those counties I've never been to, and see some more of this part of the world that I think of as Home. 

 There's not really that much of it that I haven't already been to; 135 counties (in 14 states; plus Alaska, which has no counties) out of about 3,000. Consulting my maps of what remains, I decided that Michigan, with twenty counties to target, was the place to go. It suited the time available to me (limited as always by my level of tolerance for being away from home, and, in this case, the need to get ready for the next trip, an annual excursion to the Mojave desert), and it was vaguely in the same direction as Kansas City. And along the way, with only a slight bit of backtracking, I could also pass through some other, less beckoning counties, in Nebraska and Iowa. And on the way back -- if I stick to the plan -- I could visit the few remaining counties in Kentucky and Tennessee. 

 I don't usually stick to the plan. Every intersection is an opportunity to change course, so despite the detailed plans I make I seldom feel at all reluctant to discard them because some sign on the side of the road alerts me to something that I hadn't planned on, be it a giant ball of string or paint, or an oddly-designed pedestrian bridge. This is OK.

 But because there are now so few counties left to colour in on my map of Where I've Been, I find I need another meaningless concept to draw me out from Paradise South. And I've found it, in the form of automotive museums. Who knew there were so many of them around, and so nicely scattered as to justify a trip in any direction? Well, I can tell you right now that, much as I enjoy car museums, I've overloaded this trip with them: 17, at last count. So I'm pretty sure that at least some of them will be left out: put off for a later visit, or skipped altogether. (There are five of them in one commercial subdivision in western Michigan alone; I plan to visit all of them, but don't be surprised if I decide not to.)

 In addition to the dozen or so things I've identified as worth seeing or doing in Kansas City itself while I'm there -- mostly things I won't have time for; I'm only going to be there two days and three nights -- I have an itinerary of 180 waypoints spread over more than 5,200 miles. Just the leg from San Antonio to Kansas City, normally a day-and-a-half drive, I expect will take four days. A few waypoints are just points on a highway that I had to include to make the route go through a particular county; but there are also a couple of dozen additional points of interest that are "on the side" -- places I might decide to go to but am not planning on. Places that are plan-adjacent, put on my map for awareness purposes. Maybe, when I get to Tulsa, for example, I'll actually feel like spending a couple of hours in the interesting-sounding art museum, even though I'm pretty sure I'm going to spend at least that long in the art museum in Kansas City. That's just how I roll. (I'm more likely to skip the ice-cream parlour in Tulsa, because I now know that I'll be able to get Superman ice cream in Michigan.)

 In the Olde Days, I'd just pick a place on a map, call it a destination, and see what there was to see between Here and There and Back. Now, of course, there's the Internet, which makes it all so much more complicated. I have Roadtrippers to build the itinerary on, and Roadside America to alert me to the view-worthy weirdness that lies along the backroads. And Atlas Obscura. And OnlyInYourState.com. And a nearly useless site called Make My Drive Fun. (I say nearly useless because, no matter what I plug in as starting and ending points, it tends to show me routes that begin in Lisbon, Portugal, and end thousands of miles away in Russia or southeast Asia. And even when I get the route I'm looking for, the preview of the interesting points identified along the way tend to be described as a convent in Barcelona or a medieval building in Romania.) And there's AutomotiveMuseumGuide.com, and any state I go through has web sites of its own to "aid" my research. And books! I recently was given a book called USA State By State; but that turns out to be an actually useful first resource.

the best part of Condo Week

 I usually take several of these wandering trips a year. During the pandemic, I still managed a trip to Ohio, and another around East Texas, and another to Park City, Utah, and another to Los Angeles. And I may be forgetting some. That's why I take pictures. But this year I've been homebound. Early in the year I couldn't go anywhere because the top mechanism on the convertible wasn't working; once I got that fixed, I had to stay home because my wife had a trip already planned, and somebody has to stay home and look after the dog. Then I needed to get the stained glass panels finished, a task that was interrupted by our annual Condo Week, this time close by in Corpus Christi (and, of course, by my Olympian procrastination skills). Once the panels were ready to go, I had to stay home and look after the dog again because my wife had a tournament out of town. Then the weather was too hot to go anywhere. It'll still be too hot when I leave -- as I write this for later publication, I'm a little more than a week out from T-Day. But because of the timing of the annual Mojave Desert Classic, which can't be shifted, I have to be back from this trip by a certain day in September. So: August it is, and pray that the Midwest doesn't get another heat wave like the one they had earlier this summer.

 Since I'm travelling alone this time, I expect to have plenty of free time in the evenings to sort through my pictures and write blog posts. This is your warning to expect them.

2022 Condo Trip, Part Four: Winding Down

 

 This is part four of the trip narrative; you should read them in order. Click on this link to go to the beginning, then click on "Newer Post" to move through to the end.  (And here's a link to all the pictures from the trip.)

So there had been some discussion of Beeville's relationship to NAS-CCAD, and I decided that we would take the old highway back to San Antonio. That would take us through Beeville, and I hadn't been that way in many years, probably since I-37 opened decades ago. We left Corpus early enough to get home and collect Carly from the kennel before 2pm, which was my goal. Our drive took us north on Padre Island, across Aransas Pass on the ferry (one of only two, it appears, still operating in Texas; the other being at Point Bolivar, near Galveston), and through towns that echo almost emptily in my memory: Sinton, Karnes City, Poth, Floresville. It was like seeing an old TV show that you know you've seen before, but remember nothing about. With one exception: a hall in Karnes City that I recognise as having been to, but I couldn't say why. I suspect it has something to do with my ex-wife's family. They were from down that way, though the ones I knew best all lived in San Antonio, if not even farther north.

Nancy & Jeff stayed with us four nights. During that time we spent the hot parts of the days holed up in the house, mostly, though Nancy did get interested in the history & architecture of the grand palaces littering the curbsides in Monte Vista. Jeff was in the midst of reading an early Tom Clancy novel, and as any fan of that genre knows, such books cannot easily be put down. It was achingly difficult for him, I'm sure, to lay his phone aside long enough to join us for dinner. (I sometimes suffer from the same "social" affliction.)

I had had the rare foresight to call earlier in the week to reserve a Friday-night table on the patio at La Fonda, our favourite local restaurant, and we got lucky, weather-wise: dry, not too hot. It was one of the great meals of recent history (even though the waiter got my order wrong; but a good frozen margarita will cover a host of sins), and one of the most relaxing.

Not Good Enough

We did make a few excursions around town before they had to go back to Colorado: on Saturday to Mission Espada, for example, because it's a San Antonio thing to do and Nancy wanted to take a picture of a nearby street sign. (I showed her my picture of it, but that wasn't good enough: she wanted her own picture to send to people. You understand how that is: you don't want to send it out and have to say you didn't actually go there yourself....) So we got the picture and spent a pleasant half hour or so at Espada, then drove up to the 18th-Century acequia, which was closed but visible from the street; and on to Mission ... I forget which; whichever one is the next to the north. Either Concepción or San Juan. I don't remember which is which, and I'm too lazy to look it up. You wanna know? Try Google Maps.

Our next destination was Blue Star. When we got there all the shops were already closed, but our main reason for going was dinner at the craft brewery located there. As Texas craft breweries go, this one is ancient; it's been there for more than 25 years. They did not accomplish that remarkable longevity by savvy management of the restaurant side of the business. The phrase pinche servicio sounded in my head in the voice of a friend from The Old Days. It got better after we trapped a young man named Alfonso, whom I took to be a bartender, and got him to wait on us. There were a couple of other servers making rare appearances in the dining room, but no one reliable. Sherry got Pig Pie, while I just ordered the loaded nachos. Both were good, though the nachos could easily have been better (i.e., they needed more cheese). Everyone enjoyed their drinks, too, as one would expect. (I had water; I was driving.)

Ooh! So close!

On Sunday we headed over to the Winchester for the final day of competition in the English Premier League. Liverpool would have won the league if Aston Villa's defense had come back on the pitch after halftime at City; Tottenham made sure they finished ahead of archrivals Arsenal; and (yay!) Burnley got relegated while Leeds stayed up. Afterwards we lazed around the house, mostly, until around four in the afternoon, when we suddenly got ambitious and drove downtown for a little sightseeing. We caught a bit of the Alamo grounds before its 5:30 closing -- it's showing signs of significant improvement in the story it tells since the Daughters of the Republic of Texas got relieved of custody (ironically, an event neatly glossed over in the story's telling). We then strolled over to the Riverwalk and down to La Villita, seeing the chapel where Sherry & I got married ("the scene of the crime," said Nancy, but we love her anyway), then decided to go for dinner at Schilo's, which has the best German food in town, and both Sherry and Jeff are particularly partial to that cuisine. Unfortunately, Schilo's has changed its hours and now closes after lunch. Sad. I was all set for their split pea soup and some kind of sausage or sandwich. 

None of the other downtown restaurants appealed to us, so we decided to try Paesano's in Alamo Heights. (I know, they have a location on the River, but A Certain Person didn't want to walk the block and a half to get there.) We called on the way over but couldn't get an answer; so we ended up going to Pesto's instead, which is always good. (And it turns out that they now have a location downtown as well, but it would have been two whole blocks to walk there.) And they have a Mediterranean salad very similar to the one I would have ordered at Paesano's, the only difference being that they batter their chicken in Romano cheese, while Paesano's uses Parmesan. Just different enough to be distinct. Mwah. About the only major difference is the bread: Paesano's offers a selection of four different breads: one very good, two excellent, and one outstanding; while Pesto has recently changed its bread offering; sadly, not for the better. What they serve now is merely very good, whereas before it was good enough to be The Best Reason to go there. Now the rest of the food has to fill that role.

We did do other things besides eat while they were here: we played board games, watched some TV (neither of them had ever watched some of our favourite shows, so now they have an idea of what Mom and Schitt's Creek are all about), talked about literature and art and philosophy, and played with the dog. All in all, the best things to do with our time.

2022 Condo Trip, Part Three: Wednesday & Thursday

 This is part three of the trip narrative; you should read them in order. Click on this link to go to the beginning, then click on "Newer Post" to move through to the end.  (And here's a link to all the pictures from the trip.)

We just had to go back to the beach. I got a couple of tacos to go from La Isla, the pretty good Mexican restaurant on the highway near our condo, then we drove down to the National Seashore again. This time we filled up three garbage bags with detritus from the beach, so it felt like we had done some good in the world. Considering how much litter was left behind, not so much....

We stayed out there for a few hours; Nancy and Sherry saw a green turtle in the water near shore, but otherwise it was an uneventful morning. Very relaxing. Jeff stayed behind at the condo for some Me-Time. I spent the whole morning reading the Grey Man novel I've got checked out. (Q.v. Tom Clancy, in Part Four of this post.)

We grabbed sandwiches from Subway for lunch at the condo, then sat around relaxing until late afternoon, when we all put on our bowling shirts and went to the lanes on the grounds of the Naval Air Station. We were the only people in the place, which was kind of nice. Nancy and Sherry bowl about as well as they did when we first started the Once-a-Year Bowling League, but Jeff & I have deteriorated. I used to bowl around 135, year in and year out. The past couple of years, though, I can't even break 100. Now that the arthritis in my knee has gotten to be a problem, it's really hard to get down low enough to release the ball the way I used to. So I've had to change the motion I use for this sport. It helped, a little: in the first game I bowled a 62, but on the second game I got up to 89. Still kind of embarrassing, but not mortifying.

For dinner we went to the little Thai place right by the entrance to our subdivision. The green curry there is as good as what we get back home, but the other dish we got, mixed vegetables with chicken, was a little disappointing, just because the chicken seemed kind of dry. But otherwise, it was a pleasant meal: good service, good prices. And we had plenty of leftovers to bring back for a late-night snack.

Games night at the condo was a version of Canasta called Salsa. I generally avoid playing card games other than solitaire, and now I remember why. Of course, that aversion is easier to exercise when there are foursomes available without my participation.

Thursday, our last day in town, started with a solo trip down to La Isla for some tacos de machacado con huevo a la mexicana and not-bad coffee, then a group excursion to the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and Nature. This is, unfortunately, the time of year when local schools, desperate to keep the kids engaged before summer break, take all their field trips. With the exception implied by that, the museum was interesting enough to occupy a good bit of our day. It had small exhibits on Texas geology; an exhibit focussed on the 1542 wreck of three Spanish ships on Padre Island; local history; and dinosaurs. There may have been other exhibits -- there was quite a lot, I think, of the building that I didn't get to before it was time for lunch, which we had nearby at Brewster Street Ice House, a restaurant and dance hall just beyond the Harbor Bridge's elevated approach ramp. It was pretty well past the lunch rush, so that was good. The food was traditional American -- burgers and such -- and I indulged myself by actually ordering a chicken-fried steak. Usually I think about it, then order something more nutritionally responsible, but this time I followed through, mostly because they bill it as "award-winning." I think it must have been a county-wide competition, at best, but there's really no such thing as bad chicken-fried steak, is there? My dog says there isn't.

Olympic (detail)

Next we went to the Art Museum of South Texas, which is currently free to visit because of some corporate sponsorship or something; I didn't really hear the explanation. I'm tempted to make remarks like "you get what you pay for," but the fact is the exhibits that were open for viewing were interesting. I was particularly taken with a painting called Olympic, depicting a deepwater shipwreck (it felt familiar; I may have seen it last time I was here, hundreds of years ago), and the small collection of Western Art. There's also a visually intriguing 8-foot-tall shard-like sculpture of black-painted bronze that, for some reason, is tucked away in a back room where no one but museum staff will see it unless they're lost.

I call it "the shard"

A lot of the art on display is modern. Call it what you will -- and artsy-fartsy types have names for every type of art, even if their categories seem to include only a single work -- it's basically meaningless crap to me: beach chairs collected into a pair of big balls was okay in a whimsical way; a boat made out of reeds (it looks like) and a "gravity table" were at least mildly interesting for their form. Some of the large canvases were attractive even if devoid of readily discernible meaning. That abstract kind of painting always seems to me to only exist for decoration, not meaning: "We just need a reddish painting to set off the color of the Lazy-Boy." 

There's also a pair of rooms dedicated to Spanish Colonial art. The first room contains paintings from the actual Spanish Colonial period, mostly religious themes. The second contains what I'd call a modern take on it, or Mexican folk-art: bright colored painting of religious themes heavily leaning toward pre-Christian styles. It's not bad, it's just irrelevant to me; kind of like Plains Indian art, language and religion. It's nothing to do with my own culture except by the slightest of impact. If there are aspects of it that truly have meaning, they gradually get absorbed into my cultural heritage, like breakfast tacos or cowboy hats. If not, they remain as exotic affectations. 

Oh, and there's yet another Dale Chihuly assemblage of seaweed-shaped glass, such as can be seen in any wannabe-arty institution with enough money. I really wish he would have a third idea.

Dinner that night was random. I had the leftover curry from the night before; I don't know what anyone else had. 

2022 Condo Trip, Part Two: Monday & Tuesday

This is part two of the trip narrative; you should read them in order. If you haven't read Part One, click on this link.  (And here's a link to all the pictures from the trip.)

 The Laredo Taco Company is the name of a chain of convenience-store taco stands around South Texas. Being something of an aficionado of the taco, I felt no compunction about pooh-poohing the untried quality of their wares. But then a neighbour of mine, seeing one of their locations in passing, reminisced fondly about the old days when she and her colleagues would get lunch there, to go. Having spotted no real taquerías in the immediate vicinity of our condo, I decided this was the time to give it a try.

To my surprise, it was not simply a heat lamp over a supply of ready-made tacos bound in foil, but a Subway-style collection of ingredients with a grill at the ready. I ordered a bacon-and-egg taco on corn, and a potato-and-egg taco, also on corn, with cheese on both. My first hint that this breakfast would confirm my prejudices came when the woman behind the counter looked at me in amazement and said, disbelievingly, "On corn?" I assured her that was what I had said. It provoked an urgent whispered conference with her associate while I went to the register and paid.

I collected my tacos in a brown-paper bag and went back to the condo for breakfast. On unwrapping the tacos, I found that their corn tortillas were the poor-quality dry five-inch circles of masa one gets in plastic pouches at HEB. They are too small for the use to which Laredo Taco Company puts them, so each taco had two tortillas enclosing it. (Double the deficiency.) As concerns the quantity of filling, that is a point in their favour. As for the quality, it was reasonably good. The eggs were cooked very nicely, and they and the additives were plentiful. But wouldn't you think that you could tell the difference, by taste if not appearance, between potatoes and bacon? I could not. And the bag, I found, did not include any kind of salsa, which made for a serious lack. (There probably were salsa options available at the shop, but I didn't notice any.) All in all, a dissatisfying breakfast, but I may try them again in a day or two, with flour tortillas and a search for condiments. At least the service was reasonably good and the price was not outrageous. Besides, if there aren't any other taco options, I'll be desperate.

Having thus fortified myself, I was able to cart this menagerie of people down the road to the beach in the National Seashore, where we spent the rest of the morning. The park service gives out garbage bags at the visitors' center, to encourage users to clean up little patches of beach around them. We took one, and had it full inside of an hour. Next time we'll take more, as there's plenty of trash washed up from Points South along the Padre Island strand. (The park ranger says that's where most of it comes from.) We set up our new beach umbrella (not the one we bought in San Antonio and left sitting in our garage, but the one we bought to replace it) and put out a kind of plastic rug under it, weighted down by sand in the pockets provided for that purpose, and made good use of the water and the beach for the rest of the morning. Nancy even saw a sea turtle -- a smallish one -- in the water. 

We grabbed food to go from Subway and relaxed at our condo for the rest of the day, until dinner at Doc's, a two-storey restaurant that has, at some point in the past fifty years, joined Snoopy's out on the island facing our back deck. Personally, I prefer Doc's to Snoopy's: it offers table service and the margaritas are better. And it offers live music upstairs, which I enjoyed. (I'm often surprised by the fact that so much live music is geared toward people who came of age before Friends debuted.) 

We dragged our sated bellies back to the condo just in time to see the sun sink behind Snoopy's, then turned our attention to the games table. Monday night we cracked open Scattergories, which Nancy & Jeff had never played (and Sherry and I hadn't played in decades), and went through five rounds. Sherry won one round convincingly; she and I drew the rest, or won by no more than a single point.

one of the sea turtles

Our plan for Tuesday was to go first to the State Aquarium, and then the local museum of science and history. We got out to North Beach just before 11 in the morning, and ended up staying at the aquarium until almost five PM. It consists of two main exhibits: the Gulf and the (new) Caribbean halls, plus some exterior exhibits on particular animals: dophins, otters, rays, turtles, etc. 

We saw the dolphin show first. I found myself wondering if those animals, who had all been in the aquarium at least 15 years (one, twice that long) felt any sense of imprisonment, or if they were like dogs, happy to be kept as a pet. (I also wonder why it is that all the trainers -- presumably a position of some glamour in the hierarchy of the aquarium, are female, but let's not go there.) Next, we went to the Turtle Talk, and heard (through an irritatingly static-y headset) about the various rescue turtles in the aquarium. They only keep the ones that are too seriously injured to release into the wild, and have five on hand now. One has air bubbles trapped under her shell and can't descend in the water; another has only one flipper remaining after getting tangled in fishing line. I forget what injuries the others have sustained, but I'm thankful that there's a place where they can at least live out their lives unthreatened.

Nancy and Sherry went to see a film about octopi that afternoon. I was in the Gulf section, watching people in front of the oil-platform exhibit, when I got a text that said "We are going to see the octopus movie. Go through the gift shop." So when they closed the theater doors and the movie started I was in the gift shop, trying to figure out why Nancy considered it a Must-See part of the aquarium. (It definitely isn't.) It sounded afterwards like the octopus movie was a highlight of our visit, though; or at least, was for them & would have been for me.

Dinner Tuesday night was at a little Mexican place just outside the subdivision we're in, a place called Isla. Good service, good prices, way too much food. I thought the seasonings were a little heavy-handed, but nothing really to bitch about, damn it. None of us was able to finish our plates. (We did, though, finish our margaritas....)

We came back to play a few rounds of Hoopla before switching to Scattergories. It almost came to blows when Jeff insisted on credit for his answer to "things that are sticky": A pointed stick. ("Ask Ali, what's stickier than a pointed stick?" I didn't get the reference, but can imagine what it's about. But I still insisted that a pointed stick is NOT "sticky.") In return, he argued against my later answer to "countries that start with O" --  Oesterreich -- but that was just petty revenge: if you don't use the umlaut, it starts with O. (And if you do, it starts with Ö, and isn't that an 'O'?) Anyway, we all got over it and played probably three rounds of the game. Sherry won one round, and we tied once. She was all like "I finally won one," as though it had never happened, like I win all the time. I don't, but she like to feel oppressed. I'm not saying it's her fault, I'm just saying I blame her.

THE ADVENTURE RESUMES: Condo Trip 2022

This is Part One. Please read them in order. All the pictures from the entire trip are available here. 

Sunset over Laguna Madre from our condo's deck

 A stroke of good luck: Nancy's flight was 3 minutes late; Jeff's was 11 minutes late. So they each arrived in San Antonio at exactly the same time, from opposite sides of the country. It being just after lunchtime, we made our first stop at Beto's Alt-Mex, not far from the airport, for some excellent fish tacos (and something else, also excellent, for the member of our party who doesn't care for fish), then headed off down the highway for the coast.

Corpus Christi skyline

I looked on every website I could think of for interesting things staged between San Antonio and Corpus Christi. There are none. The South Texas Plain sweeps relentlessly to the Gulf without a pause for interest, or history, or culture, or even whimsy. The only thing remotely worth investigating is the Lipantitlan Battlefield, about 30 miles west of Corpus, where the Spanish in the 1780s -- and later, the Mexicans -- erected a sorry excuse for a fortress (one historian compared it unfavourably to a "second-rate hog pen") to exercise control over the area, when sovereignty was threatened by outsiders or, later, revolution. In 1835 a detachment from the Texian revolutionary forces at Goliad, flush with a small victory there, came to Lipantitlan to push out the small Mexican garrison, who happened to be away at the time. The next day, the returning Mexican forces attacked the Texians, who had superior weaponry, and suffered a small defeat before retreating into Mexico and leaving only the garrison at Béxar within the borders of what is now Texas. (Later, of course, that garrison would surrender and retreat, after which a major army would march north under Santa Anna in a doomed effort to exact vengeance and re-establish control.)

There is absolutely nothing left of the fortifications at Lipantitlan, but that didn't stop us from standing there in the tiny state park and speculating knowledgeably about Texas history and military strategies. It was a nice diversion on the otherwise-dull three-hour drive to the Island.

We got to our condo a couple of hours later than planned, because of those two stops, and found that the registration paperwork left for us was incorrect. Office closed until Monday, so won't worry about it until then. Friday evening we drove over to Snoopy's for dinner. That's a seafood place that stands on an island bordering the Intracoastal Canal. The name, in gigantic letters on the roof facing our condo across Laguna Madre, makes it kind of a landmark for owners at Puente Vista. It's traditional to eat there at least once every time we come to town. Sometimes it's especially good. Last time I was here, 3 years ago with Mike, we were there for sunset, which, from a table on the back deck, was spectacular; this time, a little earlier in the day, and from a table in the darkest corner of the dining room, right under a loudspeaker announcing whose orders were ready, it was less wonderful. But the margaritas were adequate for requirements, and I controlled myself by ordering a Greek salad with a mediocre crab cake added. No one was seriously dissatisfied, so I suppose that counts as a win. 

The rest of the evening was spent on our back porch, staring out across the Lagoon and solving all the world's problems; something we do as well as anyone.

Saturday started with breakfast at a Mexican restaurant a little way down the island. The food was pretty good (I'll give it three and a half jalapeños, out of 5), as was the value (also three and a half); the ambience was a little on the loud side (two and a half jalapeños) and the service was very good until we were ready for the check, at which point it ground to a halt (two jalapeños). Still, I'd go back. That was followed by  three hours glued to the television while Liverpool scraped past Chelsea in the FA Cup Final (6-5 on penalties). We'd planned to watch it at a bar, but couldn't find one that was open before noon. Apparently a city of 300,000 is too small for that level of opportunity to drink. Our plans were saved when it was discovered that Nancy's Disney-Plus subscription includes ESPN+. And she had brought her Fire Stick.

I don't know what that is, but it worked.

Three hundred thousand is not too small, however, to offer a good distillery, which I'd read about in Texas Highways, and was interested in because they produce a version of chartreuse liqueur. I sampled that, and found it refreshing, while the others shared two flights of various boozes produced by the house (gin, vermouth, whatever...). It was relaxing if not cheap. That stop was followed by the obligatory visit to HEB to stock up on essentials for the condo. 

After a scintillating round of miniature golf (which I did not lose) a leisurely dinner followed, at an Italian place with enjoyable live music and fair-quality food and service. Afterwards, we went back to the condo and played Hoopla until bedtime.

The rest of the weekend was taken up by a trip up to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, a couple of hours up the coast from here. It was kind of a disappointing trip, in that we saw very little in the way of wildlife -- one alligator eating a bird, a few others unmoving in the water; a few herons, a handful of other birds, scattered deer. But nothing to really get excited about. No snakes, no bobcats, no spiders, not even a distant peccary. It was like all the wildlife was away at a seminar.

The photo album for this trip can be seen by clicking this link.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

 

Just Wondering...

 Like most people, I've been sort of following Russia's war of conquest in Ukraine this past week. I have no military experience, and I don't really know what things are like over there. But I've been fascinated by the week-long saga of the "40-mile-long convoy" approaching Kyiv from the north. Satellite photographs of the slow-moving gaggle of Russian trucks, tanks and other military vehicles have been all over the internet and the news since it started. I heard one American military expert say that the vehicles have to stick to the roads because the ground is not "frozen hard" as it normally is this time of year, and it won't support the great weight of these Russian vehicles.

 So I'm wondering, how come the Ukrainians haven't tossed some anti-tank weapons in the back of a Land Rover or some other off-road vehicle, and driven out there, and destroyed some of these vehicles? I mean, it just seems like (a) everybody knows where they are, and (b) they're moving really slowly. Seems like a few excursions to put two or three of the leading vehicles out of action would block the road for a time and bring the already leisurely advance of the column to a complete halt. It seems like it ought to be a turkey shoot.

 I'm sure there are reasons why this hasn't happened. Or maybe it has, and nobody has reported it. But I sure would like to hear an explanation of why it hasn't. Hell, if that sort of invading column were creeping down US 36, advancing on Denver, you know the fields either side of the road would be full of good ol' boys in Jeeps and on ATVs taking turns blowing up a tank here, an armoured personnel carrier there. I know from previous reporting that Ukraine has the sort of weapons needed -- some of them, anyway. Why haven't we seen video of Russian soldiers trying to push destroyed tanks off the roadway?

 I'd just really like an explanation.