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.

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