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.