Williamsburg Again, and More: the 2023 Condo Week in Virginia

 All the pictures I took on this trip -- not very many, really -- can be seen online here.

Mardi Gras

 As much as I love the thought of travelling by car around the country, I've not been particularly satisfied with the trips I've made so far this year, in some ways. My first, to New Orleans with my friend Marty, was as much fun as I'd hoped it would be; nice hotel, mostly good-enough weather while there, and we caught a Krewe of Chewbacchus parade. The only disappointment being that because of the threat of bad weather, I took the Subaru instead of the convertible. It was January, after all, so I couldn't be surprised that it was too cold to go top-down. Plus, the car mostly sat by the hotel anyway, while we took the streetcar or walked everywhere. Really the only driving was across Louisiana on the freeway, and how much fun would that have been? (I had, at one point, considered taking the coastal roads back -- from New Orleans to Houma and New Iberia, then across on State Highway 14. That would only have taken a couple of hours longer, but (a) I had the Subaru and (2) Marty had a plane to catch. Plus it rained pretty hard in Louisiana on the trip home.)

on the beach, South Padre Island

 The second trip was to South Padre island, just a few hours away. That was really good, first because the weather was glorious, second because we got to take Carly with us, and third because we got to visit with a good friend we hadn't seen in a while. (Joyce, who is one of about three people I've known for half a century. It seems impossible, given that we're both so young.) But, good as the trip was, it wasn't a wander.

 The third trip, to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, was also about what I'd expected. The trip up didn't go as planned, but it was okay. Freeway all the way, though I finally got to go to the lynching memorial in Montgomery, but was rushed in the nearby museum, and there was so much to see that I want to go back. We didn't get to the Georgia state park I'd planned to stop at, but we did go to an unexpected park in Alabama and had a good long hike to a waterfall. 

 It was on that trip that the Wyndham Rewards mobile web site stopped working right. (And I thought Google Maps was irksome!) I've tried the app, but it never worked right. Now the web site fails consistently as well. No matter what location I plug into it, it's unable to locate any hotels. A couple of times I've tried just calling the toll-free number and making a reservation that way, but that involves (usually) about 20 minutes on hold and a lot of questions that Wyndham should already have the answers to. I've also tried using their regular web site, and have had intermittent success with that. Lately, though, I've just gone with other hotel groups. I pay a little more for lodging (I'm sure) but have a lot less frustration. (The Wyndham Rewards website works fine on my computer at home, but most of the time I don't know in advance where I want to be at night.)

Big Dam Bridge

 This latest trip was, all in all, a good trip as well. The outbound leg could have gone better, but I didn't plan it well enough. First, there was a failure of communication, in that I'd expected to come home from my first-thing-in-the-morning doctor's appointment to find that Sherry had taken Carly to the kennel and was ready to go at 9:30 in the morning. She had not, and was not, so we got away kind of late. (I'm not saying it was her fault, I'm just saying I blame her.) We got across Texas with the top mostly down, and pulled in late at Hope, Arkansas the first night (because Wyndham couldn't locate any of its three hotels in Texarkana). The next day we drove to Little Rock, then spent the morning at the Big Dam Bridge, a scenic spot west of the city. I found a route to Memphis that avoided freeways for the most part, and even though the secondary highway route was less than scenic, it was still a grand improvement on Interstate 30. At Memphis, we walked across the Mississippi River on the Harahan bridge, an old railway span where the accompanying roadway has been converted to pedestrian use. It gives a nice view of downtown Memphis, which unfortunately isn't really much to see. From there, we went to the Crystal Shrine Grotto, in a local cemetery, which was a cool (literally) break from the heat (which was made worse by the fact that the car's A/C had stopped cooling; we got that fixed in Williamsburg). 

 I had planned to go up to Houston and Montgomery Counties, the last two Tennessee counties I haven't visited already; but I didn't accurately foresee the times and distances involved, constrained by the need to be in Richmond at a certain time on Friday. I also didn't foresee the fact that there are only three people in Tennessee who know how to drive on the freeway, so we faced long delays west of Jackson, in Nashville, and east of Knoxville, to go with the prior trip's hour-long stoppage in Chattanooga. So that planned diversion was tossed out, and we crossed the state on the freeway.

  I did, though, stop at the Parthenon in Nashville as planned, because I really wanted Sherry to see it. It's as much a Wonder of the World as the original in Athens, and is truly Not To Be Missed. So we didn't. (The picture here, by the way, is from a previous trip; I didn't take any pictures of it this time. The only difference is that the landscaping is now finished, and some of the irrelevant exhibits in the basement art gallery are different.)

Once we got past Knoxville the travel got easier. Even the freeways in the southern Appalachian Mountains are pleasant to drive. If Wyndham Rewards could have located any of their seven hotels around Wytheville, Virginia, it would have been nice. (Bitch, bitch, bitch.)

  I should mention the Muffin Incident. Years ago, during a condo week in Branson, the office sent over a box of doughnuts to welcome us to their complex. Sadly, Sherry answered the door, thanked the woman, and sent the doughnuts away because we were "all on a diet." This is now known in our circle as the Branson Doughnut Incident. None of us has forgiven her that bit of scruple, but at least I thought baked goods would be safe around her. At one of our hotels, I picked up a chocolate chip Otis Spunkmeyer muffin, and just in case she wanted something -- even thought I knew she wouldn't -- a packaged cinnamon roll. If it turned out she did, in fact, want one, I'd be perfectly happy with the other ... though I would have preferred the muffin. Both packages were lodged in our back-seat cooler.

  After a couple of days of patting myself on the back for my will-power, I said I wanted the muffin. "The muffin is gone," she said. "Then I'll have the cinnamon roll." "That's gone, too." I was astounded. Had they both gone bad, sitting in the cooler for two days? No, they'd been eaten. Shocked. Dismayed. Betrayed. In fact, this Muffin Incident stands to be the signature event of the entire 2023 Condo Week trip. I may never get over it.

 Next day, we got to Richmond, picked up Jeff's rented oxygen machine and went to the airport. Richmond has a nice, small airport, and offers an hour free parking in their garage, which made it convenient to meet up there before driving to Williamsburg, where we checked into our condo at Vacation Village. The people in their office tried hard (then, and again later) to get me to commit to a time-share song and dance, but after Pigeon Forge I wasn't about to sit through that again. 

It needs a name.

 One of the things I like about these condominium complexes we go to on these trips are the activities they provide. Most of the time we ignore them, but on occasion they prove fun or interesting. This year, we took advantage of two offerings. We went to the Activity Center on Sunday and painted ceramic piggy banks -- I particularly wanted to do that because the plastic plug on my cute little penguin piggy bank has failed; I really only wanted a new plug but came away with a new dinosaur bank. (Its plug doesn't quite fit the penguin. ¡Que lastima!)

 The other activity we took advantage of was a talk by a man who portrays an XVIII-Century Virginian, whose name I forget, as a means of bringing the Revolutionary Era to life. Think Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain. It was entertaining and informative, even if it wasn't especially accurate, and made for a relaxing evening.

Zoom in

 The first thing we did, though, was to go to a local car show. It was advertised as "British," but about a third of the cars were Ferraris, Porsches or Mercedes. (They were interesting, too.) But I must be getting jaded, as I only took one photo, and that as much for the window sticker as the car. There were a few Jags in the show, but not nearly enough, and none as pretty as mine.

 We got a three-day ticket to Colonial Williamsburg, which I thought was more time than I would want, but it turned out to be just right. I won't go into all that we saw there; we had been to the place 15 years before and I remembered it pretty clearly. (Luckily for you, that was before I started blogging, otherwise I'd give you a link to a long-winded recounting of the visit, which you would be morally obligated to actually read. Here, though, is a link to the pictures I took on that trip, which include many of Williamsburg.) Not everything in Williamsburg is open every day, and some of the shops that were open during this visit were new to us: the wheelwright, for example. And this time, instead of getting to watch a stage performance of the type that would have been seen in Colonial times, we got a short lecture about theater of the era (because all the other actors had the day off). 

 But I'm not going to dwell on Colonial Williamsburg. It's a lot of fun, despite being educational, and very prettily restored. The artisans at work there, both in costume and behind the scenes, are a great historical resource, on a par with the National Parks Service (and better funded), and having Colonial Williamsburg available to visit is a treasure everyone should take advantage of. If you haven't been, go. If you have, go back.

 We stopped at Fort Eustis to see the US Army's Transportation Museum, which was closed for some unexplained reason, so we only got to look at the outdoor exhibits through the fences. What a collection of oddities it is! Then we headed over to Newport News to revisit the Mariner's Museum. We'd been there on our prior condo trip to Williamsburg, just a few years after the Monitor had been located off the North Carolina coast; now there's an extensive new exhibit about the famous Ironclad and its encounter with the CSS Virginia (better known as the Merrimack), that we wanted to see. Again, not enough time. Afterwards we drove around looking at some of the public art that Newport News makes a small fuss about.

on the VMFA lawn

 More interesting, though, was the art on display at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. While not as big as my favourite art museum, the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City, this fine collection runs a close second. Probably because it has a lot of glass in it, ancient and modern, from art glass to leaded glass, and because it displays works by one of my favourite underappreciated artists, Charles Rennie MacIntosh (though, sadly, none of his glasswork). It also has a collection of Fabergé eggs, which are pretty but utterly decadent, and a good collection of Great Masters paintings.

 We paid a visit to the Virginia State Capitol building, which was not as architecturally interesting as its staff seems to think. (It was designed by one T. Jefferson, whose name is everywhere in Virginia, and who is mostly famous for having once written a deathless sentence -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal...", yada yada yada -- and for having known when to abandon principle for practicality; specifically, May 2, 1803.) The building's main attraction for me is the life-sized statue of George Washington, which was done at a particularly poignant moment in his great and eventful life, midway between his astonishing success as commander of the Continental forces that had wrested thirteen North American colonies from the powerful British Empire (with a little help from nos amix) and his return to public life to initiate the Federal government we have today. If King George III got one thing right in his life, it was this: 

When the King asked what General Washington planned to do now that he had won the war. [Benjamin] West replied: "They say he will return to his farm." King George exclaimed: "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

Yup.

So we did some other touristy things around Richmond: a boat tour of the canals built before the railroads came, and a visit to a Tudor-style manor house of sorts, built from pieces of the genuine article transshipped from the English Midlands in the 1920s; a visit to the Old Ironworks, part of the Richmond Battlefield National Historical Park. We also spent an afternoon with some of Jeff's family, who held an impromptu get-together in honour of his return to Virginia. I had only previously met one of them, his sister Kathy (or Cathy; I don't know which spelling she uses), and that was decades ago. But sitting in the dining room of the vintage house (a very pretty, and nicely updated Arts-and-Crafts place) listening to the mostly 20- and 30-somethings talk, it struck me that of all these people, all of them born and raised in Virginia, not a one had the least hint of a Southern accent. In fact, their speech, both in accent and style, was indistinguishable from the unstressed postmodern open tones of the Great Plains. They all sounded as if they had been brought up in the same rooms as my niece and nephews. Any of them could host late-night talk shows and everyone from coast to coast would be able to understand them easily. I wasn't prepared for that, and I can't account for it, unless everyone of that generation got their diction from network television. (I blame the bloated Federal bureaucracy, the epicenter of which is only a few dozen miles to the north.)

 Richmond seems a much more pleasant place than I'd expected. Not that I saw all of it, or even much of it. We stayed in a hotel near the airport, in a suburb that I would call middle-class; on the way into town from there we passed through working-class neighbourhoods and one area that I would feel uncomfortable in, day or night. The area south of the James River, along Hull Avenue, seemed to me a vibrant working-class area full of potential, while downtown (on a weekend) was nothing if not sleepy under the soporific weight of government offices. Richmond, like San Antonio, is suffused with a largely ignored history. But everywhere in the city we encountered lively areas of small-scale commerce (the best kind) resisting the blight of franchise shops and chain stores; I doubt that there are a dozen Starbucks in the whole town. The streets of the older sections, where we spent most of our time, felt to me like Southtown, or New Orleans, or South Philadelphia: all places I enjoy being if it's not too hot. I liked it.

 The drive home was pleasant enough. We were concerned about rain along the way (there wasn't any, it turned out) and we both missed our dog Carly, who had endured a number of thunderstorms while in the kennel back home; like many dogs, they terrify her. I thought about going through Tennessee again, just to go through those two remaining counties that I'd hoped to get to on the way up, but decided instead to stick with my original plan of getting the last remaining county in North Carolina. I did that (making it the 38th state I've been to every county in), though we decided against going to Hanging Rock State Park or driving the Cherohala Skyway. Those would have added another day to the return trip, and would have forced us to take the same routes we had taken on the trip to Pigeon Forge a couple of weeks before. Instead we dropped down to central Georgia, where we were able to put the top down and spend a whole day wandering across the state from east to west, picking up 17 of the nearly 60 remaining unvisited counties there: the kind of travel I most enjoy. That done, we got on the freeway and headed home. The only departure from the tedium of freeway driving across Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and east Texas came when we stopped for dinner in Flatonia, about an hour and a half east of home, and stumbled upon the Red Vault, a very nice restaurant owned by a French chef retired from California who shares my appreciation for old cars. (Wednesday is sushi night, by the way, and it was as good as any I've had anywhere.)

Pigeon Forge & the Smoky Mountains

This is the last post about the 2023 Pigeon Forge trip. You should read the previous post first.

 After Noccalula Falls Park, we stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel, then headed for Pigeon Forge. There was an accident along the way, in Chattanooga. Google Maps announced a one-hour delay while we were still in Georgia, but then didn't revise the route, so we figured it'd been cleared up. Not! While we were stuck in traffic on the freeway I glanced at the map and saw there were at least three other highways heading our direction, so why it waited to change the route until the traffic finally started to move again is beyond me. Anyway, in the end it took us on a very scenic drive through northwestern Georgia and eastern Tennessee, not just on alternate highways but on neighbourhood streets and rural lanes that made me positively ache to be in a little convertible with the top down (not a drop of rain today, BTW).... 

  We got to Pigeon Forge at about 6:30 Eastern Time. First impression: Ghastly. Horrible. Utterly detestable. Like Vegas, but without the charm. The traffic on the road in front of our hotel has been bumper-to-bumper all evening (it's 11pm as I write this, and it's still a traffic jam out front). The electronic billboards are relentless. Everything is crowded with Middle America: restaurants, shops, streets.... Everything. I feel sorry for the people who come here with kids.

Pigeon Forge culture

  And kitsch beyond belief. Within a couple of blocks of our hotel is a building made to look like a wavy medieval castle; near that is a statue of King Kong carrying a biplane up what looks to be intended as Rockefeller Center, next to which is a stumpy Empire State Building. One of these monstrosities houses the uber-trashy Ripley's Believe It Or Not. Close to that is a building that looks like a Hollywood version of Mount Rushmore, with giant heads of dead celebrities stuck to its parapets. That's a wax museum, I think. A little further down is a "crime museum" meant to look like Alcatraz (it doesn't), and next to that is a giant yellow barn that appears to be a theater.

  Amid all this glitzy schlock, though, are a couple of almost-nice touches. I like the canopy of lights covering the access to The Island (see below), and in the courtyard of that development is a miniature version of the Bellagio's dancing fountains, lined with Adirondack chairs. Apparently, watching the fountain is a Thing here.

  We went to the Sunliner Diner for dinner, a popular 50s-themed place two blocks away (of course, that required us to go in the opposite direction and make a U-turn, because while everybody's glad to let you in, and let you move over, you just can't catch much of a break on traffic coming from the other direction).

  The Sunliner Diner is big and brightly lit and has décor that is a 21st-Century version of the 1950s. The food is just okay; the service is good; the ambience is so-so (too loud, mostly); and the value is poor, as everything is terribly overpriced. Don't tell me "resort," the Sunliner is no resort, despite its gift shop selling $30 T-shirts and $24 coffee cups.

 Then we went for moonshine. The distillery's tasting room and shop is located in The Island, a true resort development that features an amusement park, a shopping center, several hotels, and parking like Disneyland, complete with shuttle trams. It was fairly late by the time we got there, so it only took about half an hour to drive the five blocks from the diner to the turnoff for the Island -- think about that for a second -- and we got lucky in the parking lot, finding a place in the second section. We did our tasting and picked out our bottles and left. We will most assuredly not be going back there. (On the plus side, the 'shine is about $12 cheaper per bottle than it was at the liquor store next to our hotel, where I first discovered it. That makes it the only good deal yet to appear in this tawdry town.)

  On Friday morning, we had breakfast in the hotel, then headed off to hear Wyndham Resorts' timeshare-lite presentation. That wasn't really too bad. For one thing, it poured rain while we were warm & dry in there, and for another, the deal (if it's as it's presented -- watch the John Oliver segment on timeshares) is something I might've actually been interested in 10 or 15 years ago. But now? No way. Anyway, they went through their spiel, and when we didn't bite they called the manager over to make us a different offer, which again we weren't taking, so they gave up, gave us our little prize (a $200 gift card) and we left. 

  The rain had eased up some, but we still didn't want to spend much time wandering around on trails, so we went down to Gatlinburg to have a look at their Arts & Crafts Community. There's an eight-mile-long loop along three roads that features over a hundred artists' galleries and artisans' shops. I was particularly interested in finding some nice pottery, while Sherry was just interested in various things, generally. Most of the potteries were closed, though; possibly because of the Easter weekend. There was one larger place open, which had a few things that mildly interested me -- I want pottery that doubles as art -- but nothing really worth the asking price. Sherry did find a deal on yarn, and bought two skeins super cheap. ("The lady who taught me died," said the shopkeeper, "and her kids asked if I wanted what she had left over. I named a price, and they took it, and I got twenty-six big boxes of yarn.") Stroke of luck for Sherry.

  Then we went through Gatlinburg -- which is as crowded as Pigeon Forge but retains enough of its own character to be genuinely interesting; given a choice, it's the better place to stay if you ever come to the Smokies. There are silly touristy attractions there, too, but it's a walking town. Parking is outrageous, so leave the car at the hotel and take the free shuttles that cover pretty much the whole city. 

  We couldn't find the other place we wanted to have a look at, another arts-and-crafts market. There was nowhere we could leave the car and walk around to search for it. We got to within six numbers of its address (it was at 968 on whatever the street was called; we found 962 and there our search came to an end), then gave up, went back to our hotel and rested until dinner, for which we went to an interesting local restaurant next door, called Local Goat, which was started by a retired military man who began raising goats as a sort of therapy. When he had too much milk, he learned to make body lotions and such from it, and, well, one thing led to another and now he has a very well-thought-of restaurant (where you can buy goat's-milk lotions in the gift shop). My thumbnail review: good food, very good service, good ambience, reasonable prices by local standards (meaning, it was only a little overpriced). I went with the steak nachos, while Sherry had the Black & Blue Burger. 

  I slept like a log; Sherry's burger didn't sit well with her, she says.

  Saturday morning it was still raining, but not hard. We finally got out of the hotel around 9:30, and went for breakfast at a tiny little cafe on a road other than the Parkway (home of the constant traffic jam). They had an hour and a half wait, so we left to take our chances, which meant we pulled in at a Shoney's that hides in plain sight at the older end of the Parkway, where the traffic starts to thin. At least the coffee was good, as was the service. The ambience is as you'd expect at a crowded chain restaurant that features a breakfast buffet (we ordered off the menu), and the prices ... well ... have I mentioned that it's a resort town? Three-fifty for coffee and twelve bucks for eggs, toast and bacon might be de rigueur in Monaco or Abu Dhabi, but in Middle America, even resort-town Middle America, it's highway robbery. 

The Old Ogle Place

  We headed to the park. Our GPS took us an odd way, through new-ish subdivisions of houses that are literally one room per floor, stacked up three and four floors high, with balconies cantilevered off the back, and driveways that I would never attempt in the dark. These places seem to have proliferated wildly as land prices have skyrocketed.

  Like I say, it was still raining, but not badly. We went to the visitors' center for a parking pass and a passport stamp, then took the Motor Nature Trail, a roughly 40-mile one-way drive through luxuriant scenery. This park is the most visited in the country (mostly because it's the biggest park in the eastern half of the country, and so draws many visitors from all over the southeast, midwest and northeast, people who don't have time to drive out to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon) and the sheer number of visitors strains the resources. There was nowhere to park at many of the sites along the Nature Trail, so we didn't get to do any hikes along the way. The only beauty spots we could access were an old pioneer cabin and a roadside waterfall called, I kid you not, The Place of A Thousand Drips. But we enjoyed the drive.

Upper Laurel Falls

   By then, the rain had eased further, and we chanced a hike up to Laurel Falls, one of the most popular locations along the northwestern edge of the park, which is replete with waterfalls. It's a little over a mile each way, and the reward is one of the larger and higher waterfalls in the area. (The photo at left is only of the top portion of the falls; it continues below the level of the path, all the way down to the bottom of the valley.) While we encountered a lot of people on the (sort of paved) path, we had the falls to ourselves for as long as we felt like staying out there. Nice.

  Then we drove off in search of a couple of other waterfalls, ones that were said to be right beside the road. We apparently missed them, so we turned around and went back, and discovered Meigs Falls mostly by accident, maybe two hundred yards off to the right, with no sign; and then a place called The Sinks, indicated only by a sign warning of a "Congested Area" ahead. (It wasn't congested.) Both were very nice, and by this point the rain had pretty much stopped entirely, but it had gotten colder and the wind had picked up, so if anything it was more unpleasant being outside the car. It being fairly late in the afternoon anyway, we headed back to Pigeon Forge, having dinner on the way home to avoid having to go out in the local traffic again. (Oh, and we also stopped at another moonshine distillery we stumbled across. We are now fairly well stocked with the stuff.)

  I had planned a four-day relaxed excursion home, but as is usual with these trips, I now just want to be home. So we will likely make it in two and a half days. I went through my planned route on RoadTrippers, and cut out almost everything I'd included just because it was Along The Way. We're left with a scenic point near Birmingham and a botanical garden in Mississippi (and that, only to break the trip; we may skip it, too).

Here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.

 

P.S.: In the end, we went a different way, stopping only to see Birmingham's statue of Vulcan (which, judging from online comments, is best known for his bubble-butt). We got home on Monday, in time to collect Carly from the kennel.

Driving to the Smokies

 First Day (Tuesday, April 4)

  So we dropped Carly off at her new kennel. She was so thrilled to get a paper collar, like one of those hospital bracelets every patient gets. That was the high point of the day. Which, when all we're doing is driving across Texas and Louisiana on the freeway, isn't a bad thing. We had breakfast at Panchito's on McCullough and lunch at an IHOP along the freeway east of Houston. I checked Google Maps and figured that we could make Pascagoula at a reasonable hour, so I tried to book a hotel there; the Wyndham website kept telling me there were no hotels available. I figured I'd try again later.

  By the time we stopped at the rest area in the Atchafalaya Basin, it had become clear that Pascagoula was a tad optimistic. At that point, the traffic through Baton Rouge, which normally makes Austin seem rural in comparison, was at a dead stop, both before the bridge and approaching the 10/12 Split, so I modified my expectations and tried for Hammond. Still couldn't get the web site to work, so had to call and make a reservation on the phone, which took way too long (20 minutes) but got it done. The customer service rep I spoke to put me on hold so he could confirm the reservation, but he couldn't get a response either, so he just sent me the confirmation email and that was that. Now we're at the hotel, which is less than a quarter full, so not a problem.

  One other high point for today: there's now a Don's Seafood Restaurant located in Hammond, not far from out hotel. When I lived in Lafayette, 40 years ago, that was the place to go for top-quality seafood. It has not changed. I had an outstanding plate of catfish topped with crawfish étoufée, while Sherry had stuffed catfish. Both were excellent, though if I'm being honest -- rigourously honest, you know -- hers was the better of the two. 

  And one other happy note: Trump was arraigned today. I caught a glimpse of it on a TV screen somewhere along the way. It's way past time for that.

Second Day (Wednesday, April 5)

  Well, this was a pretty good day: drove across the tail of Mississippi and up the interstate to Montgomery, Alabama, where we finally got to go to the Lynching Museum. I forget what it's really called, but it consists of two facilities, the memorial that I've been to twice before, both on days when it's closed, and a museum a few blocks away, in downtown. 

  The memorial is an awesome place. It reminds me of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin for its simplicity of design. Steel blocks inscribed with the names of lynching victims and dates hang from the ceiling of a very large rectangular building. Duplicates of the blocks are laid out in the courtyard, arranged alphabetically by state and county, so visitors can see who is known to have been lynched in a particular place. (I found that one lynching victim from Bexar County, Texas, has been identified: one Alexander Washington, killed on October 11, 1886.)*

  It was near closing time when we got to the museum (after a long, trying search for somewhere open for lunch at 3:00 in the afternoon), so we kind of had to hurry through that. It's just as well: the exhibits it contains are pretty damn overwhelming in their portrayal of slavery, Jim Crow, and modern American use of the criminal justice system as a tool of oppression. (I would have disagreed with that to some extent, had not certain people in power in the Federal government in my lifetime made belated but still-horrifying admissions from time to time; think Nixon, think Trump.)

  We drove on into the evening, and are now lodged in another Days Inn, this one in Gadsden, Alabama. There's a state park with a 90-foot waterfall, ten minutes up the road, so we plan to visit there in the morning before heading up toward Cloudland Canyon State Park in Georgia, which we may or may not visit, depending on the weather. 

  Oh, and! Next to our hotel is a convenience store/liquor store which sells moonshine from a distillery in Gatlinburg, where we will be passing. I looked it up on line to add to our trip plans, and found there's also one, with a tasting room, a short distance from our hotel in Pigeon Forge. One more thing to do while were there, and that one doesn't depend on the weather. Mmmm... I can almost taste it now.

Third Day (Thursday, April 6)

  A day of ups and downs. First thing this morning, we drove up to a place called Noccalula Falls Park, just above Gadsden, where there's a 90-foot-high waterfall, and a trail that goes along the creek, behind the falls, and back down the other side of the creek to a suspension bridge, then back up to the access trail. I was never so unprepared for a hike in my life. 

Noccalula Falls

  First, the trail appeared to be a level, broad well-tended path, so I wore my boat shoes. Uh-uh. Once you get down to the creekside, it's a rocky up-and-down slog, not terribly difficult, but difficult in boat shoes. By the time I realized that, I was fully committed.

  Second, it appears I'm not entirely acclimated to my new eyeglass lenses, and I found that, at a few important moments, the ground was not quite where it seemed to me to be. I have a couple of new scrapes and light bruises as a result.

  Third, I was excited to be able to use my new hiking poles, which I got for Christmas. Sherry grabbed them out of the back of the car and carried them off for me. When we got to the climb down to the creek, I set the length on one, then started to set the length on the other, only to discover that I had neglected to cut the zip-tie that held the two poles together in the store. You know, those things are impossible to destroy without a sharp blade. I happened to have a pair of good scissors in the car, but by the time I realized the need, it was too far to go back to the car. So I just used one, but had to hold both handles in my hand, which was more than a little inconvenient. (Soon as I got back to the car, the scissors came out.)

  And fourth, we didn't expect a half-mile trail to require a four-mile hike of about two and a half hours, and we had no water with us. In the end, we decided that we would not walk through under the falls, as it looked too slippery and sloping; instead we went back the way we'd come; and rather than going all the way back to the suspension bridge and up, we took a short cut through the Day-Use Park ("Stop! Do Not Enter Without Park Wristband!" F**k that.) We found that, in order to reach our car from there, we'd have to walk all the way to the far end of the Day-Use Park, about half a mile, and then about another half-mile along the highway to the parking lot we were in. Or we could just go under the chain-link fence separating the two parks, which was only fastened at the top. Sherry caught her hoodie on the fence -- she's a lousy criminal -- while I rolled under with no trouble (except having to use my hiking poles to stand up).

  I don't normally do things like that, but it felt really good to be so brazen. Like escaping from prison, but in broad daylight.

  Noccalula, by the way, is the name of an "Indian Princess" who supposedly jumped to her death rather than marry outside her tribe. Romeo and Juliet with a miscegenative twist. This is Alabama, after all.

*It turns out that this lynching actually took place in Atascosa County; the town where it happened, Somerset, was later moved to Bexar County.

Here's a link to all the pictures from this trip. 

Click on "Newer Post," below, to continue reading about this voyage.

Low Expectations

This was written on April 3, but won't be published until later for security reasons.

 Some time back, my wife and I were talking about places we'd been that we would particularly like to go back to some day. There are a lot, for her and for me, but one in particular we agreed on, enthusiastically: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in Tennessee and North Carolina. So it was with that in mind that, having been forced by a poorly-designed mobile website to call Wyndham Rewards on the phone from a Wendy's parking lot in Kansas, and having been subjected to a pointless (though they don't know it) pitch for their Wyndham Resorts program (a sort of time-sharing venture), I accepted an offer for a 3-night stay in their facility in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, near that national park. They threw in a $200 gift card as a sweetener when I resisted the first offer. That won't begin to cover the expense of getting to eastern Tennessee, but it helps. Sure, we'll have to sit through another hour-and-a-half presentation on the joys of timeshare ownership, but we can do that.

So a few weeks later I selected a time for the trip, after consultation with my wife about her schedule. At that point, neither of us had any definite travel plans, so the choice came down to the timing of her local team's soccer matches, and Easter was the best time for her to be away. 

Well. The trip is nearly upon us: we leave in the morning. My diligent-albeit-meaningless travel plans have already been pushed back a day because of an unforeseen family situation. so the trip over will be three days instead of four (though we might take an extra day coming back). And of course my excitement at the thought of driving around the southern Appalachian Mountains in my little convertible has been quashed by the realities of weather (highs in the 50s and strong chance of thunderstorms are really not "convertible weather"), so we'll be puttering across country in my aging, but still reliable Subaru Forester. (I say reliable: the stereo's Bluetooth has died for a second time, so we'll be limited to music and radio, no audio books. That's a real blow, but I'm damned if I'm going to get that fixed again.)

Really, the biggest things about this coming trip are (1) the dog and (2) other plans.

When both of us go somewhere, we like to take our dog with us. That means we go to places where she'll be welcome: primarily our family outposts in Colorado and Arizona, but also occasionally to other places. But more often, it means only one of us goes, and the other stays home with the dog. My wife goes to see her sister, and I stay home with the dog. I go on a wander, and she stays home with the dog. She goes to a tournament, and I stay home with the dog. It works for us. (At least, it works for me; I assume it works for her. Seems to, anyway.) But our sweet little dog is not welcome at Wyndham Resorts (another reason we won't be buying into it, as if we needed another reason), and so she's going to the boarding kennel for a while. I hate that.

And then there are the other plans. Like I said, when we picked these dates we had no other travel plans except a vague notion that at a certain point in mid-to-late April my wife would be out in Arizona for a couple of weeks with her sister. They do it every year. Nothing else was planned for the entirety of 2023, at least until a vague point in October when another regular trip comes 'round. It seemed like a safe bet to put this trip on the calendar for Easter.

beautiful scenery, tarted up

I'll make this the short verion: we do not have time for this trip. We do not want to go. We wish we had not committed to do so. There is no time in 2023 when we would want to be in Tennessee for a long weekend. And that will be true for every year into the foreseeable future. We will still enjoy the National Park, if it doesn't rain too much, but the truth is these resorts are not in places, as a rule, that interest us or suit the sort of travel we like to do. We have no interest in the commercial tourist attractions of Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg; they don't include anything of interest to either of us. It's like another Branson, Missouri: beautiful scenery, tarted up. 

(I did stay in a Wyndham Resort in New Orleans a couple of months ago, and it was very nice, but it's just a regular hotel with a good price and a good location; there was nothing "resort-ish" about it, that I could see.)

Also, I watched part of John Oliver's recent commentary on time-shares, which I recommend to anyone considering ever buying into one.

The Havasu Film Festival

 One of the ways I've entertained myself, having been left to my own devices in this family-oriented desert getaway spot, is by taking advantage of my newly-acquired borrowing privileges from the Mohave County Library to take out DVDs to watch. As there were no other people's tastes and preferences to consider, I could get whatever I wanted. As it's a public library, there was no porn available. Fortunately I have internet of a sort, through a hot-spot device that is nearly as slow as my cellphone, and no particular need or desire for porn. So, there being only one vote in the electorate, controlled by me, I was limited only by the fact that I have no idea what most of the movies available are about, and I didn't want to take the time that would have been needed to look each title up on Rotten Tomatoes. I played my hunches, confident that if I ended up with crap, I didn't have to watch it all the way through, and could go back to the library every day except Sunday for another try.

 At this point, I've played nine of the ten DVDs. The last I was saving to watch tonight with my wife when she got back from St George; but she's decided to stay over an extra day to do some hiking with her teammates. So I guess I'll be watching it alone. But first, I will indulge my own desire to pontificate on matters of taste and art, and slake your undoubted need, dear Reader, to know my humble opinions, given as they always are as if from On High.

 The absolute worst of the nine films is Reindeer Games, starring Ben Affleck. This is the story of a felon released from prison who impersonates his suddenly-dead cellmate so that he can sleep with that guy's pen-pal girlfriend. He doesn't realize that she and her gang of ill-bred friends have hatched a plot to use the dead cellmate's insider knowledge of a casino to rob the place. He gets beat up but good and goes along with the plan to keep from joining his erstwhile cellmate in the Great Beyond. This film was so dull that I only watched about thirty minutes of it before deciding that life was too short to sit through so bad a movie. On a scale of 1 to 5 jalapeños, this film gets none.

 Next lowest on the entertainment scale is a meritless farce called Super Troopers. This waste of a grown-up's time was put together by a deservedly not-well-known comedy troupe called Broke Lizard: five guys, none of whom, it seems, has matured much past puberty, though they have enough schooling to be able to churn out a script of sorts. (It appears, though, that there are enough pubescent boys* buying DVDs to justify the creation of a Super Troopers 2 video, which I will not be looking for on my library shelves any time soon.) Suffice it to say the movie consists of fart jokes and childish pranks draped around a loosely-conceived plot made mostly of holes, so that the semi-tractors at the center of the low-jinks can be driven through them. I laughed once, more from surprise than amusement. There's a pretty girl, the one character with a measurable quantity of brains, to give the film enough of a hint of sexuality to draw in the masturbation-centered crowd that is this film's intended audience; and a shot of a fat guy in full-frontal nudity to turn them all off. If I had half a jalapeño to award this film I'd be reluctant to do so.

*And not just pubescent boys, it turns out.

 Continuing from bottom to top of the entertainment scale, I come to Scarface, a film that illustrates director Brian De Palma's well-known obsession with screen violence. This is one of the few films in this festival that I had actually heard of, though I'd always thought it was about Al Capone. It's not. It's a remake of a 1932 film based on a 1929 novel that was loosely based on Capone, but this blood-soaked three-hour jaunt is about Tony Montana, a Cuban immigrant who comes over on the Mariel Boat Lift during the Carter administration, and makes his way to the top of Miami's burgeoning drug-dealing trade. Al Pacino is not at his best as the murderous coke-addled Montana, and Michelle Pfeiffer must have had nothing much going on in her life when she accepted the role of Elvira, the bored housewife of the drug dealer who gives Montana his first criminal job after he comes to the US. There isn't much to the Elvira character, and Pfeiffer delivers what there is and nothing more. On the other hand, Elvira does at least survive the end of the film, which literally no one else can say. I'll give it two jalapeños, mostly for the cars. At least De Palma had the decency not to shoot up the 60s-vintage white Bentley (which was so embarrassed about being in the film that it insisted on being disguised as a Rolls-Royce), which is the only other star to survive to the closing credits.

 Next are two mediocre films, one a disappointment, the other a pleasant surprise. The disappointment was Running With Scissors, a memoir about a teenaged boy coming of age in a truly warped household. His mother, a delusional poet played by Annette Bening, gives him away to her psychologist, who believes that thirteen-year-olds are mature enough to be considered adults. (This, it seems, was a real person. The character's name is changed but the real person actually believed that, and practiced in New England until being stripped of his licensure.) The boy's father, played by Alec Baldwin, has finally had enough of her irrational behaviour and left; he gives not a shit about the kid. Since the boy is already well along the mother's path by the time of the divorce, I can't really blame him. Naturally, the kid goes through hell and comes out looking like a 21st-Century New York version of normal; it helps that the script is taken from that character's In-Real-Life memory. For some reason -- could I have put faith in the blurbs on the DVD case? -- I expected more of this film. I didn't get it, so will grudgingly give it only three jalapeños; and some of that is just because it's so much shorter than Scarface.

 The other mediocre film was the pleasant surprise, Puerto Ricans in Paris. It stars Luís Guzman and Edgar García as a couple of New York police detectives with some success at sniffing out fashion fraud. The movie begins with an entertaining sequence that ends in the arrest of some guys selling knock-off Louis Vuitton bags. They get hired for a private job on the side, in Paris. They use their vacation time to go to the City of Light and stumble their way through the beau monde of fashion, failing to find their criminal until the last minute, when Garcia's character makes a mental leap (foreshadowed by the film's opening scenes) and saves the day. I expected mindless fluff; I got that, plus some well-designed cinematography, a few funny lines and even a smattering of character development; and Rosie Perez, playing the wife of García's character, is less irritating than usual. This film meets expectations where it was not expected to, if that makes any sense. Three jalapeños, and maybe a little bit more.

 Getting up there on the overall-quality scale is Rumor Has It, a 2005 rom-com starring Jennifer Aniston and ... I don't know; was there anybody else in that movie? There must have been.... (Aniston has that effect on me: if I had one of those lists that got Ross in so much trouble when he met Isabella Rossellini at Central Perk, it would just list Jennifer Aniston four times, plus Sandra Bullock, because she's kind of local. She lives in Austin, so I could actually meet her, theoretically.) Oh, yeah: Mark Ruffalo, back when he was playing romantic leads with all the nuance of a supermarket birthday cake, and Shirley Maclaine, who, having forgotten more than most actors ever know, still knows more than most of them about how to deliver a performance. Kevin Costner is in it, too. The movie takes the premise that The Graduate was based on real people in Pasadena, and those real people are the family of Aniston's character, who for some reason sets out to find out about it. The premise isn't entirely ludicrous; for all I know it may even be true (or, as they say in Hollywood, based on real events.) The characters aren't all made of cardboard, and the love-story aspect of the script isn't entirely slapped up. Plus there's just the one shot of Jennifer Aniston's side boob (or her double's; don't tell me if it is, I need to believe it's actually Jennifer Aniston) that reminds me of what it's like to be young. All in all it's a fun little movie, and I'll give it three and a half jalapeños, even without the side boob.

Next up is The Sum of All Fears. Yes, it's a stock Tom Clancy-type story of spies and military derring-do and heroism and Apple Pie and all, but it's a good story and a well-made movie, with a reasonably tight script that kept me guessing, good performances from the principals (Morgan Freeman and Ben Affleck) as well as the rest of the cast, and just a whole lot of action. The movie holds interest from beginning to end, and I was intrigued enough by it to even watch those gushing "bonus" interviews on the DVD about how the special effects were done. (You know: how the boss had such vision and the peons who did the actual work had such talent and the entire crew was just so imaginative. These interviews always sound like Donald Trump introducing his next victim to the country, only more sincere-sounding.) I give it four jalapeños.

I checked out A Simple Favor, mostly because I like Anna Kendrick and the title seemed vaguely familiar. In this black comedy, Kendrick's character, an oh-so-happy homemaker and mother who finds purpose in giving helpful hints in a chirpy vlog, gets wrapped up in the lives of her neighbours, a crazy woman and her husband. It's a fun story, with enough twists in the plot to keep you entertained, even if you can see them coming. She's dead, or is she? Will the good guys win? Who, exactly, are the good guys? It also stars Blake Lively, who I thought was a man but who very clearly isn't. This movie also gets four jalapeños from me.

 

 Finally, the best of the lot. No surprise: it's A River Runs Through It, with Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer, and Tom Skerritt. I checked out this film because we had been talking about it a few days before, and all I could remember about it was that it involved fishing and Robert Redford. (He directed it.) It's a gorgeous movie, visually. The story is tragic but not unexpected, and the acting is believable, even if the script gets a little too on the nose at times. Even the child actors deliver quality performances (and one of them went on to be kind of famous, as did that Pitt guy). Nobody dies on screen in this period piece, which is more a human drama than any of the exciting action pictures I usually see in theaters (because movie choices there always involve at least two voters). Think The Waltons, but out West. The film isn't as overwhelmingly beautiful as I remembered it being from when it was new in theaters, but it's still a sumptuously told tale of real life in America at any point in our history. I give it four and a half jalapeños.

No Bad Days

Life in Havasu

 I bought a t-shirt today to give to a friend, a souvenir of this year's Huntsman Trip. (Normally, at this time of year, we come out to Lake Havasu, on the Arizona-California border, and spend some time just hanging out; then my wife goes up to Utah and plays soccer in the Huntsman Senior Games while I go hiking in various places on the Colorado Plateau with my dog Carly and my former law partner, who now lives in Las Vegas. We call it the Huntsman Trip.) Things are a little different this year, which is why I'm still in Lake Havasu City and able to go shopping for t-shirts. 

 The t-shirt I bought says "Lake Havasu City: No Bad Days." That seems to be the current motto for the local tourism industry. And it got me thinking about the time I've spent here this year. Let me tell you about it.

 The house we have here is reasonably spacious. I could wish that it was furnished more with tall people in mind: there is one chair that isn't too close to the ground, and some bar stools that are high enough to be comfortable; so I make do. This year my brother in law and sister in law were here, too. Well, she's usually here when we are, but it was unusual for him to come along. Until this semester he's always been otherwise engaged and unable to come, but now he's retired, so he could come. He's even taller than me, so I insisted that he should have the one good chair. (He's older, too, so that's the official reason: respect for my elders etc., etc.) Besides, I spend a good part of my time out back under the gazebo, and this year I spent another good chunk of time in the home office, writing a treatment for a television series that will surely go nowhere. (I had planned for that project to encompass the entire three weeks of this trip, but it went faster than I'd expected.)

 My wife and her sister are able to have fun on the lake. Usually that means taking the boat out, or the jet-ski, but this year they've taken up SUP-ing (stand-up paddleboarding) and, after a week and a half of fairly steady progress, seem to have attained a level of competence at it. Or at least comfort. It's a work in progress, I guess. My brother in law went out with them once or twice, too, but it's difficult for him just now because, at the moment, he's kind of attached to some kind of medical device that makes it a little inconvenient. I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for that he'd have been out on the lake a lot more than he was. But as for me, I don't care for boating. I'll drive the boat if somebody wants to water ski, but I'd just as soon not be out on the lake. I just find it ... well, kind of boring. Likewise jet-skiing: I don't get a thrill from taking turns going in circles on a jet-ski; we only have the one, and even if we had two, where would we go? The same places we'd go in the boat. Watersports on Havasu means going to this or that cove and floating in the water. I suppose we could go across the lake to the casino, but we're not casino-type people. (And I don't imagine it's much of a casino anyway.) Plus, they always wait until the hottest part of the day to go, because it's too cold before that to get wet. So when they go out on the lake, I stay at the house.

This is a rail.

 The other thing we have equipment for is railing. A "rail" (or a "sand rail") is like a dune buggy, but without a body. It's a VW engine and transmission mounted on a slab of sheet metal and surrounded by a cage of steel bars. It, too, is not built for tall people, but it can take a lot of punishment, and driving it out in the desert, up and down barely-there tracks and creek beds, over steep hills and down sharp slopes (and hoping there is a sharp slope on the far side of each steep hill) can be fun. But every year, there's something wrong with the rail. One year it was just a flat tire, I think; one year it was the steering; one year it was ... I don't know; I don't remember. I was out here three times before the rail was operative at all. Most years, it goes in the shop when we get here and we hope we get it back before it's time to leave.

 This year, the rail was, as far as we knew, fully operative. But nobody suggested taking it out. Each day's plans involved the boat and the paddleboards instead. Then, after my wife had left for Utah, my brother in law mentioned that he would like to go out in the rail. At that point, with only one afternoon left before he returned home to Colorado, it was almost pointless to mention, but as my sister in law and I got ready to drive the rail over to the North End to pick up the Tahoe, which was being repaired in anticipation of our drive up to the airport in Las Vegas the next morning for their flight out, she told me what he'd said, and I said, Well, I guess you'll be going out in the rail this evening.

 Nope. The transmission went out on the way to get the Tahoe, so we had to have the rail towed home from the repair shop. Next April, it will be in the capable hands of its dedicated mechanic Ronnie, and maybe will be in operating condition in time for next year's Huntsman Trip.

 My former law partner, the one who lives in Las Vegas, has been kind of out of touch this year. He has serious medical issues in his family that he's having to deal with, so I was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to go hiking. (I planned, instead, to spend that time working on my television treatment, the one I finished in about a week.) Last year all we managed was to meet up for lunch in Laughlin, about halfway between Vegas and Havasu. But I haven't been able to get a hold of him, by email, or text, or telephone to arrange even that. So I intended to go up to Las Vegas and knock on his door. That was why I undertook to deliver my sister and brother in law to their flight: killing two birds, so to speak. I wasn't comfortable driving the Tahoe up to Las Vegas and back, a 300-mile-plus trip, with the "check engine" light on, so my sister in law made sure to get it into the shop before that trip. (The light went out on the way over to the shop; the mechanic said that was because it automatically resets every hundred or so times you start the car, but pointed out that "that doesn't mean the problem goes away." I learned the hard way not to ignore that light when I had my old black Firebird.) We picked it up on Tuesday afternoon, had the rail towed -- an adventure in itself, as the insurance company that covers the rail didn't have its act together, which meant we sat out in a mild version of desert heat for an hour and a half trying to get that straightened out -- and then headed up to Vegas early Wednesday morning. I dropped them at the airport, then went to visit my friend. 

 The Google Maps app on my phone wasn't working ("You seem to be offline.") I stopped at a fast-food restaurant and had breakfast while trying to figure out what the F was wrong with it. Finally did, though why that problem should occur is beyond me. Anyway, finally got the directions to his house, drove out there and knocked on the door. I was greeted by the new occupant of the apartment, who moved in last Saturday. No idea where he'd moved to, of course, and the apartment manager refused to give me any information, of course. So. Back to Havasu. (I'd figured on stopping in Laughlin if I had no luck at his house, but wasn't in the mood. I was more concerned about leaving Carly cooped up in the house for too long, though I shouldn't have worried; so I skipped a repeat visit to the Laughlin Automobile Museum.) 

The view of The Island from the island.

 A trip to Las Vegas and back from Havasu uses a full tank of gas in that gassucking Tahoe. I wasn't comfortable with the gauge so close to E, so I stopped along the way and bought a little gas, knowing that I could get it for a lot less in Havasu, if only I could get there without running out. (I did.) Then I noticed two tiny chips in the windshield. So this morning, after taking Carly for a walk around Water Safety Island (that's just what I call it; I don't know that it has an actual name) I spent an hour or so arranging to get the chips filled. That was the exciting thing I did this morning. And then, as long as I was out, I stopped for lunch at a Thai restaurant very close to a t-shirt shop. The great Circle of Life.

 That's what it's been like, here in Havasu. It's a little too hot for comfort during the afternoon, and the furniture in the house isn't made for people like me, and technology continues to disappoint and frustrate, and all kinds of little things go wrong and get fixed. And I've already seen London Bridge like a dozen times so I'm a good two and a half hours from anything to do. But you know, there are, in fact, no bad days in Havasu.

 Though of course I'd still rather be in Los Angeles....

County Counting Update

 My recent trip, to Kansas City and then Michigan, went reasonably well despite technological issues, and I got to two new counties in southeastern Nebraska, and all the remaining counties in Iowa (10) and Michigan (20). The trip home went nothing like I'd planned it -- not really a surprise there -- so I didn't get to any new counties in Kentucky or Tennessee. 

Who cares. Since I very much enjoy driving my little convertible on such winding mountain roads as abound in both those states, I'm sure I'll be going to those places soon enough. 

Meanwhile, here's the updated situation. I've now been to all the counties in 37 states, shown in green on the map below. The states in yellow are those where there are only "a few" counties left to visit, which I arbitrarily define as ten or less. The number of remaining counties to go to is shown in red.

The grey states, Georgia and Oregon, are those with more than ten counties left to visit. And then there's Alaska, which doesn't have counties. I've decided that any step taken in that state is good enough: One and Done.

 This last trip was the first I've ever made with county-counting as the express objective, and the last. The only remaining areas where there are enough to tempt me to go for that purpose are (1) the state of Georgia, with its surfeit of tiny little counties, and (2) the Northwest. But doing the Northwest all at once would be an exceedingly long and no doubt dull wander, while doing Georgia in a single trip would be just plain tedious; so I won't attempt it. Best to collect those counties as I pass through on the way to places more interesting.

 The dearth of counties left to visit for the first time has prompted me to change my goal to visiting all the car museums in the country. There are hundreds of them, and they're nicely scattered across the country, often in small towns. They are the new excuse to wander, not really the objective. You know the old saying, "It's not the destination, it's the journey"? That applies here. 

At the same time, I will not get all worked up about it. On my last trip, at one point in the planning I counted 17 car museums among my planned stops. (That number included, I think, five in Hickory Corner, Michigan, because I didn't understand the set-up there; there are actually 19 separate buildings, but some of them are operated by various car clubs and, I suppose, count as separate museums. Since I went to all the ones I'd planned to see, and several others, over two days, I'm counting it as five museums.) I actually went to 13 of the ones I'd planned. The rest I skipped because their hours of operation didn't fit my schedule. (A lot of them are only open a few days a week.) I did get pissed off when I showed up at one museum -- the first, as it happens -- and they had changed their hours within the last few weeks. Well, it happens. I got more pissed off when I drove half a day out of my best route to see a museum that doesn't deserve that name. Even so, I enjoy car museums, even most of the mediocre ones. And since they come and go like cellphone plans, I'll never run out of new places to go. Will I.

Twenty-One Years

 An entire generation has now grown up since this happened. It does not include any of the unborn progeny of the firefighters of NYFD Ladder Truck 118, seen crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in the foreground. They all died that day.

(the picture was uncredited on the site where I found it; thanks to whoever took it)

2022 KC/MI Wander: One Last Thing

 

This is Part 14 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.

 I did, in the end, manage to contact the people who run the British Transportation Museum in Dayton, Ohio, and arrange for a tour outside their normal Monday and Saturday hours, and I'm really glad I did. I got there just after 9:30 this morning.

I was a little late because, for reasons known only to itself, Google Maps had me get off the freeway north of town and drive south for about 5 miles on Dixie Highway, a four-lane city street that parallels the freeway, but with a red light every few hundred yards and, if it's possible, even more over-the-road trucks than the freeway. Then it had me get back on the freeway and continue south to downtown. Somewhere along the way (just south of Lima, about 90 miles back) the written instructions that normally appear at the top of the screen froze with the legend "200 yards Bellepointe Drive right turn, then turn left." But the audio worked and the actual map kept moving so I could follow the correct (or at least the specified) route. Until I got to downtown Dayton. The instruction there was, "In a quarter mile, take the interchange on the right." After that quarter mile, there were two exits, literally one right after the other. I chose the first one. Not, it turns out, a good choice. That took me out of the way, to the east. Google Maps rerouted me through a somewhat convoluted neighbourhood and got me back where I should be, but at that point the map itself stopped moving, so all I had was the audio. Fortunately, by listening carefully to the instructions and moving with unusual deliberation -- in case I missed a turn, I wanted it to have time to re-route and actually give me an oral instruction before I passed by the new turn -- I managed to get where I was going. And since I remembered from having looked at the map several times over the last few weeks that my destination was south of downtown and west of the freeway, I was somewhat confident that I was headed the right way.

I fantasize throwing my phone to the ground and grinding it under my heel, but I need it for other things than Google Maps.

So anyway: I got to the British Transportation Museum and met its director, Pete Stroble. He and I talked for probably 45 minutes before we started looking at the cars that were all around the floor. He told me the history of the museum, which has been going on a little over 25 years now. Its membership consists of people, mostly local, who are afficionados of this or that make of British car -- his personal love is the Morris Mini. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, just northeast of town, brings a lot of people to Dayton who have also been posted to England and there developed an interest in British cars. 

an MG restoration under way

This is not a pristine collection of finely restored gems of motoring. While there are some cars in top condition, most are in more ordinary shape. Unlike many museums, this one actually owns most of the vehicles on display. They get donated to the museum, and restored as time and money allow. Much of the work is done by various car clubs in the area; for example, I saw an MG coupe (it may have been a hard-top convertible) undergoing complete restoration by the local MG club. Its body panels have been removed and laid out on the floor prior to painting. 

MGB

Elsewhere there are cars that leak fluids, cars that need brakes, cars that run and cars that don't. The museum -- "car-rich and cash-poor," Pete calls it -- does what it can when it can. There is a core of about a dozen guys with varying degrees of technical expertise (Pete himself is a retired engineer) who put out fires left and right and then devote themselves to particular projects until they're completed. As we went around the display floor, I heard about what they've done to this car, what they need to do to that car, and what they couldn't do with a car that is no longer there. One of the ways the museum raises revenue for the expensive work of car restoration is to fix up a car they don't need in their collection -- a donated vehicle of a type they already have on hand --restore it and then sell it. Naturally, the most common British vehicles are the ones that get fixed up and sold: MGAs, MGBs, Triumph Spitfires. Rarer cars, they keep.

1960 Ford Consul

And they've ended up with a fascinating collection of cars that are unfamiliar to me, along with some interesting examples of familiar cars. A bright yellow Spitfire (a kind of car I nearly bought in the late 1970s) and a couple of bright red Triumph TR-3s (one on loan, one owned by the museum); an MG TD and a couple of rare MG saloons; a 1926 Rolls needing a lot of work; a 1936 Daimler that took part in the coronation parade for King George VI; and of course the cars I always want to see, the Jaguars: only one E-Type, a 3.8, a couple of XJ-6s. There were two Humber saloons from around 1960, big American-style family cars that seem somehow out of place in England. A 1960 Ford Consul convertible also looks like it belonged on an American street in the Kennedy years. A 1960 Peerless GT that looks English to the core. A Morris Oxford estate car ("all-steel," a big selling point in post-war Britain) and a pair of Triumph Herald sedans, which I'd never seen before.

As we went around the floor, Pete shared all kinds of stories about the cars, pointing out things that I probably would never have noticed. How the door on an MG saloon is misaligned because the frame of the car is made of wood that has warped (still, it's a beautiful car); how the US Ambassador's 1936 Packard (with right-hand drive) ended up in their museum; how they came to have an old Vauxhall DHC, and what still needs to be done on it; and so on. 

If I had just gone around looking at the cars on my own and taking pictures, I probably would have spent about an hour and a half in this fascinating museum. With Pete telling stories as we went, I ended up staying a full five hours without noticing the time. (On the downside, I often forgot to take pictures of the cars, or to note the details for my photo captions.) He may regret spending his day that way, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Anything that makes me forget to eat lunch is a great experience.

When I left, it was with the thought that the weather in Cincinnati was going to determine whether I followed my planned route through the unexplored counties of Kentucky; but the persistent problems I'm having with Google Maps foreclosed that option. I can't trust the app to route me the way I want to go. So I just told it to take me home, and it showed me that I was 19 hours away. I got a paper map of Kentucky at a rest area on I-65 south of Louisville, and saw that, with a relatively short detour to the east I could still get the 3 counties in the middle of the state; it would probably add no more than an hour to the return trip. But what's the point? Those three counties are on the way to the other 5 I would need to finish the state, so I might as well wait until they're on my course. Likewise the two in Tennessee, although that would finish that state.... With my paper map of Kentucky I can plan out a route that gets me to those to somewhat remote counties. But then what? I can't count on Google Maps to get me to Memphis afterwards, and I have only the vaguest idea of how I'd get there on my own. So I'll likely skip that little diversion, too, and just stay on the goddamn freeway all the way home. I won't get there tomorrow, but might get to Dallas, and then home on Friday. Either way, there won't be anything to tell about the rest of the trip, so this is going to be the final post from the 2022 KC/MI Wander.

2022 KC/MI Wander, Day 15: The Road Home?

 

This is Part 13 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.

 In my memory, life was much simpler before the tech revolution. For a traveller, the halcyon days were those that came after the invention of accurate paper maps, and before the invention of GPS. Paper maps work every time you look at them. They do not issue ludicrous instructions, they do not freeze up for no reason, they do not require a signal of any kind to operate, they do not suddenly go blank, they do not change from moment to moment. True, there's a lot they can't do: they can't tell you if the road is closed or if there's been an accident up ahead. They can't warn you of a speed trap along your way. And they can't tell you what restaurants or motels are along your route, or how much they cost.

I'll take that trade.

Anyway. So saying, in yesterday's post, that I would finish with Michigan around noon and start for home proved to be a little optimistic. After Google Maps threatened several times to send me down gravel roads I just pulled up a map of the state, figured out where I wanted to go, and then looked for paved roads that would take me there. That worked, at a glance. I also enjoyed, for a change, having at least some picture in my head of where things are in relation to each other, in the thumb of Michigan's mitten. And at 2:20 pm I sailed into Sanilac County, the last of the 83 that make up the state. Thirty-seven states down, thirteen to go.

And now I'm torn. I've already skipped Wills St Clair Auto Museum -- that was easy; it was closed -- and Stahl's Automotive Foundation -- that was harder; it's only open on Tuesdays, and today's Tuesday -- and Marvin's Marvelous Museum, and the Roush Automobile Collection, the National Construction Equipment Museum (it would have been closed by the time I got there), Stroh's Center (home of the world's largest bronze falcon sculpture), Snook's Dream Cars, the Fostoria Rail Park and the Fostoria Glass Heritage Center; and the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation. Some of those things I'm more disappointed at not seeing than others. And tomorrow I know I'm going to skip almost all the stops I'd planned on. (I did try to buy some moonshine here in Ohio, but the supermarket I went to didn't have any. I will find some tomorrow, I hope.)

I don't mind so much skipping all the places I'd planned to stop, back when I was just planning the trip. They're all things I can go to some other time, and to be honest most of them aren't worth the forty cents worth of gas it might take to get a photograph. They were just there, near where I was going to be anyway. The thing I'm torn about is: do I just get on the freeway and go home, or do I get off the freeway when I cross into Kentucky, and wander through the five counties I need just southeast of Cincinnati, and then the three in the middle of the state, and then the two in western Tennessee before I get back on the freeway? Or do I just stay on the freeway. That is the only thing on my mind. (That, and the British Transportation Museum in Dayton, which isn't actually open tomorrow but they say tours can be arranged outside their regular hours. If I could just get hold of them....)

So. Today I stopped at a sculpture museum and garden in Saginaw -- well, first I stopped for breakfast at a Bob Evans restaurant where something was going wrong in the kitchen; they were way behind and people were complaining and cancelling their orders and leaving. I, having lots of emails to read, didn't really notice until a certain point when I realized that I'd already had my allotted three cups of coffee and still hadn't gotten any food. It came shortly after so I wasn't too upset. Not like the guy behind me at the cash register a few minutes later. Then I went to an auto parts store seven miles down the street -- there was a much closer one, but Google Maps chose not to so inform me -- to find out why my Check Engine light had come on. (As I'd expected, a slight vacuum leak. It's been that every time but once since the invention of the vague Check Engine light, and except for that one time it's meant the gas cap didn't get tightened all the way, and the warning light goes out after a while. So far it hasn't gone out, but at least I'm not too worried about it.) And then I went to the sculpture garden.

Black Elk, the Lakota philosopher

 It's located at Saginaw Valley State University, and features the work of a local guy named Marshall Fredericks, who made good in the Art World. He was popular with auto-industry executives. Big, monumental sculptures in well-known places like Cleveland and Europe. The indoor gallery is mostly filled with plaster casts and scale models of works, while the garden outside has a number of full-sized pieces. 

There are also four fake swans in the pond out there. I only knew they were fake because one of them tipped over. 

Pointe Aux Barques Light

From there I made my way up the thumb of the mitten to Pointe Aux Barques, the second-most-dangerous area of the Great Lakes for shipping, to see the old lighthouse.

And from there I made my way through Detroit (which, to my surprise, has a lot of new high-rise construction downtown) and Toledo to Lima, Ohio for the night, where I will ponder my course for tomorrow.