LA Trip reprise, sort of

 Day 1: Friday, June 7

 So the trip started not so well. I pulled up the email I'd sent myself of the route to take from San Antonio to Carlsbad and loaded the trip on Google Maps ... and it wouldn't run. I sat in my driveway for like 15 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong, then finally decided to continue my quest over breakfast, as it was already close to 9am. Drove up to my favourite taquería on Hildebrand, and it started just as it should have in my driveway. So problem solved.

 Google Maps had offered me three routes heading out of town. I selected the eco-friendliest route (because it involved the least time of freeways), but by the time I got on I-10 (a distance of maybe 8 blocks) it had reverted to the route that took me up the freeway all the way to Boerne. I took the route I'd planned anyway, through Helotes. Started my first audiobook, a Jeffrey Archer novel from 2019 called Nothing Ventured, and after maybe three minutes I was pretty sure I'd listened to this book before. 

 One of the nice things about me and audiobooks (or regular books, for that matter) is that while I will recognize a book on hearing it, I won't remember what happens in it until it happens. When it comes to fiction, I have the memory of a goldfish. And the nice thing about Jeffrey Archer is that his books are basically long concatenations of small dramatic occurrences, each one as insignificant as the one before, that add up to an entertaining though not very gripping story. This one concerns a top lawyer's son who decides to become a policeman, and how he gets to realize his dreams. By my recollection, there's a happy ending involving some paintings caught up in a divorce and a man wrongly convicted of murder, but who cares? It's just a trivial story to pass the hours and the miles. 

 I had forgotten how beautiful the road is from Vanderpool to Camp Wood. The two-lane highway is carved into the sides of fairly steep hills, with lots of winding 20mph curves and signs warning you about how many motorcyclists have been killed there lately. Fortunately at that point I still had the top down, but by the time I got to about Rocksprings it was hot enough to put it back up. 

 I was on Texas Hwy 55, heading for Rocksprings when I pulled off to raise the top and meanwhile delete the next stop on the Google Maps route (because I'd already gotten that far) but the app was unresponsive. After trying a number of times to continue the navigation, I realized it wasn't responding because I didn't have a signal. So I just closed it. A little while later, in Sonora, I tried to turn it on again, but once again it wouldn't start. Damn it! So I pulled into a DQ for lunch (a single hamburger, water, no fries -- going to try to come home a little lighter than I left) and the app was working perfectly again.

 So my understanding is that Google Maps will only start working when you're at a restaurant. 

 After Sonora it was freeway all the way to Fort Stockton, then arrow-straight highway into Carlsbad, where I am now, in a slightly déclassé Super 8 motel. I went down the road (this town really only has three, like a Mercedes star) for dinner to a place that I couldn't find despite Google Maps insistence that it was right there, on the right, so I went to a different place, one that I could actually see. It wasn't bad. I'm not wild about the seasonings used in Mexican food in New Mexico, so I ordered enchiladas verdes. The chicken in the enchiladas was a little dry and the refritos were infested with the unpleasant seasonings of the local area, but the rice was good and I left reasonably satisfied. The odious practice of adding a charge for credit cards has hit this area, I saw. The charge was about 4% of the bill, which is more than my cashback reward, so I paid cash, confident that I can find an ATM in Arizona and California much easier than I could in North Carolina. I already know where they are.

 There's not a lot to see along the way through New Mexico tomorrow. My first stop is a waterfall, about an hour out of my way, but I have plenty of time. I'm tempted to stop at the Living Desert Zoo here in Carlsbad; Sherry and I went there some years ago, and all I remember about it is that it was small and I petted a raven. But it opens at eight and if I spend an hour there, it'll be ten before I get to the waterfall, and I'd kind of like to see it when it's still cool enough to enjoy. (It was 108 when I checked into my hotel here this afternoon.)

 The route I have laid out for tomorrow is a little over 9 hours of driving, to a place called Springerville, Arizona, and the thing that concerns me about it is that, in the long stretch of highway leading to that town, there's not another motel for like 100 miles. So even though I don't really want to drive that long, there's really no alternative. So I booked a hotel there for tomorrow night.

 I yearn for the old days, when I could just pull into a town and find a decent hotel without a reservation. But there are too many other people out on the roads these days, so I've learned I either have to stop early, like by 6pm, or make a reservation. Why can't these people stay home!

 Two other things worth mentioning. First, after living for half a century and more in Texas, this morning I saw my first diamondback rattlesnake in the wild. It was on the edge of the road, and while I didn't get a great look at it, I could see it was clearly a rattler. So I can check that off my bucket list. (I saw a huge tarantula crossing the road, too, but I'd seen those before.) Second, I got a chip in my windshield this afternoon, right in front of the driver's seat, at eye level. I called to see about getting it fixed right away, because I don't want a crack to form in that part of the windshield. (The other side, who cares? I have a crack there already, caused when the windshield got chipped at the very bottom edge and I couldn't find it, so I thought it wasn't chipped, until the crack started across the bottom of the windshield. Drove my friend Marty crazy.) So the insurance guy tells me that, if it's right in the driver's line of sight I might want to get the windshield replaced instead of repaired, because the repair would still be visible and it will drive me nuts having to see it all the time. So long story short, when I get back to San Antonio I have an appointment to get a new windshield. 

 No pictures today. As pretty as that road is out of Vanderpool, it's not photogenic ... though I came close to stopping for pictures anyway. But no. 

 Day 2: Saturday, June 8

 The first order of business this morning was coffee. Ordinarily I'd have a cup at the hotel before moving on to more promising sources, but last night's overpriced hotel didn't even offer that amenity. Luckily there was an Allsop's convenience store along the early part of my route, and one with surprisingly good coffee. Should've gotten the larger size, but one can never tell, can one?

 And of course Google Maps presented me with issues; several times during the day, in fact. Once again, the restaurant curse held, as did the lack of a signal in a number of places, including one intersection where I literally had no clue which way to go. I should have gotten out the road atlas my nephew gave me for Christmas year before last, but instead I flipped a mental coin and headed off. (The atlas did come out later, when another gap in cell coverage left me in the Google Maps lurch.) 

 Surprisingly, even before Google Maps caused me problems, RoadTrippers failed me. Once again, it does not recognize my premium subscription, and this trip no longer appears on my profile. I emailed the sons of bitches about it, but it's Saturday and I don't expect to get help before Monday. This is a serious enough failing that I am considering abandoning the app altogether. (News break: this evening the trip was back on my profile and everything seems to be working fine.)

 The road to Sitting Bull Falls was paved all the way, except for a single stretch of about fifteen yards in the middle where it looked like the pavement had been taken up and then the resurfacing project forgotten about. I would say that was no big deal, except that one feature of the lacuna was a fairly sharp drop-off at the beginning, which caused some kind of connection in the car to come loose. My dashboard began flashing the message "Check rear lights. Cruise not available." I did check the rear lights -- taillights and turn signals; I have no way to check the brake lights by myself -- and found no problem. The cruise control, I found, didn't work. 

 I rebooted the system by turning it off and turning it back on, and everything was fine, though later the problem recurred. Since I didn't need cruise control I wasn't too concerned, and indeed later another reboot resolved the issue again. Still later I used the cruise control without problem, though the message did return briefly near the end of the day. I don't know if this is really a problem I need to worry about or not. Maybe while I'm in LA I can remember to have Hank take a look at the brake lights for me; that's really all I'm worried about.

Sitting Bull Falls

 Sitting Bull Falls is a very pretty place. It's not a gushing torrent by any means, certainly not at this time of year. It's just a pleasant trickle of water down a long steep cliff, with lush vegetation at the top where water seeps through myriad channels before dropping into a pond, and flowing from there down through a canyon, eventually to join the often-pathetic Pecos River near the Texas state line. It took me nearly an hour to get there, and I spent perhaps fifteen minutes at the falls, which are concealed behind a mesa just a two-minute stroll from the parking area. It's the only thing there is to see in New Mexico other than things I've already seen. But the only place in the state I really want to go back to is White Sands. I saw it in the distance this morning after cresting the Sacramento Mountains at Cloudcroft, and gave some halfway-serious thought to changing my plans and going there. But it was really too late in the day by then. White Sands really cries out to be visited when the sun is low in the sky.

 (Later in the day I drove through the Very Large Array, a bunch of radio-telescope dishes spread across the middle of the state for several miles. I'd been there with my friend Rick, on the Voyage of Discovery Trip many years ago. It was one of the lesser sights we saw on that occasion and is no more impressive now, though it now boasts a Visitor's Center just off the highway. That seems a genuine waste of government resources, as there's nothing about the VLA that couldn't be served by a nice big sign.)

 Because I hadn't been hungry when I left the hotel this morning, I didn't have breakfast before going to the falls. And it was an even longer drive, an hour and a half, from the falls to the first decent restaurant ... which turned out to be a place called Alma's, in Artesia, New Mexico. I ordered a green chili burrito, but it was nowhere near as good as the ones Sherry and I always get at Sierra Blanca, near Raton, on almost every trip to Colorado. 

 By the time breakfast was over it was about 11AM, and the heat was building. But I left the top down because, even though it was in excess of 94 degrees (which is my theoretical breaking point), it was a dry heat, and still reasonably comfortable. Before it got beyond 97, I was climbing up into the Sacramentos, and the temperature started dropping. I hit a rainshower along the way, by which time the temperature had dropped to 61, and I should have been cold (top still down, despite the rain), but I wasn't. By the time I stopped for a bathroom break in Cloudcroft, I was dry again. 

 The top stayed down most of the day, but eventually I gave in. Still later, having climbed into the high plateaus of western New Mexico, it came back down, and it was glorious. I'm going to miss this car.

 I've had two people compliment me on the car so far on this trip. The first, yesterday, was a near-toothless middle-aged woman in a beat-up pickup truck, whose clothing suggested she had never actually seen a Wal-Mart, so I wasn't too impressed by her appreciation of its beauty and grace. The second occurred today, while gassing up at another Allsup's. This time the compliment came from a man of my generation. He asked about the marque's reputation and I told him what I thought of it (without using the standard line, "Prettiest car you'll ever see broken down at the side of the road"). That prompted the information that he was an engineer himself, and so he had to tell me the story of his meeting with the guy who developed Beta video tech for Sony back in whatever decade that happened. I wanted to tell him the story about the airship de-icing mechanism, but it was too hot at that point to stand out in the heat swapping tales. 

 So. Tonight I'm going to actually load my planned journey for tomorrow onto Google Maps de novo, in the hope that it will work correctly without having to go to a restaurant. (I'm in Springerville, Arizona, in an off-brand motel called Travel Inn. Much nicer than last night's Super 8, and much cheaper. And dinner, at a local restaurant called Safire, was a house salad and one cheese enchilada covered with green chili sauce almost as good as at Sierra Blanca. I may go back for breakfast, except they don't open until 7 and I hope to be long gone by then.)

 Oh, and a P.S.: I finished the Jeffrey Archer book, and am reminded of why I don't listen to his stuff anymore. He uses a lot of courtroom scenes, and they are so dismally superficial that I find it more trying that watching an episode of Matlock. The two trials that feature in this particular book were both so ridiculously superficial in presentation (for dramatic effect, but to excess) that it was unbearable for me in the end.

 On the other hand, I've started listening to a book called Unruly, about the kings and queens of England. It's written and performed by an English comedian with an interest in history, so it's very funny (to me, anyway; I love the British wit). Sherry would love it, too. I should tell her. But maybe she'll read it here.

Second Attempt: the trip to Los Angeles; Prologue

 The last time I was in Los Angeles was in August 2021. Was the pandemic still going on then? I don't remember. Anyway, I had gone to see a museum exhibit on stained glass, and to get there I had plotted out a route that would get me all the way to Los Angeles from San Antonio with only two hours of freeway driving, the unavoidable passage through the West Texas wasteland from Sonora to Fort Stockton. 

 Well. If you've read the blog posts from that trip, you may remember that, while it was a good trip overall, certain things prevented me from taking my intended route; three things, in particular. (You probably didn't read them, and if you did you probably don't remember. That's OK; I really only write for myself.) First, I had no cell service in the area west of San Antonio, so I couldn't access the route-plan on my phone; and I had also neglected to bring along paper maps. I couldn't remember the route I'd laid out several weeks before, so ended up getting to the freeway in Junction, Texas -- normally a two-hour trip from San Antonio -- in just about four hours. And that was just the first hurdle.

 Second, the roof-raising mechanism on my convertible broke in the middle of nowhere, at that time located in west-central New Mexico, near the Arizona state line. That eventuality meant I had to abandon the middle portion of my planned route, and instead go into Phoenix for repairs...which proved to be unavailable. But the shop there at least got the back windows up and deactivated them. So the top stayed up from that point on, until I got the repairs done after returning home. (It's just now, as I'm writing this, that it occurs to me: would the top have gone down without the back windows going down first? I don't know; I never tried.) Anyway, having the top up for the entire trip kind of negated the whole point of having a de luxe touring convertible.

 Third, Google Maps stopped talking to me. I had not realized this until I found myself on a freeway entrance somewhere in Los Angeles County. That was when I realized I wasn't on the route I'd so carefully planned out. Now, I have had many issues with Google Maps, despite it still being (far as I can see) the best navigational aid available. It used to tell me the names of streets to turn on, and the names and numbers of freeway exits. Then it lapsed unbidden into Brit-speak, and would say things like "take the slip-road on the left." Then it stopped speaking altogether, as during my last trip to LA. 

 We're on speaking terms again, Google Maps and I, but it's of a strained and limited variety: now it'll just say, "In two miles, take the interchange on the right." Usually that's adequate, but when, as occasionally happens, there are two possible turning points in very close proximity, I never know which to take. It has never worked out well.  At the worst point, it not only stopped speaking altogether, it stopped moving the map to show my position. Ask me about Dayton. Thank goodness that didn't last long! (I noticed that, when we were using my sister in law's version of Google Maps in North Carolina last month, street names abounded.)

 In the case of the Stained Glass Trip, I ended up trying to wing it; I got off the accidental freeway, selected a destination that I knew was along the intended route, and asked for directions. It gave me what I wanted, but it wouldn't say anything. I would have to look at the phone to see if I was going the right way. If I missed a turn, I got a little electronic noise, but as someone who wears trifocals, I can't actually see my phone in the car unless I hold it in front of my face. You will agree that this is not the best way to drive, especiallly in an unfamiliar area.

 Since that trip, I've figured out that if the phone is connected to the car radio by bluetooth, Google Maps won't say anything unless the radio is on. As long as I remember to turn it on, I should get some instructions from the program, even if I still don't get the names of streets. I've also made sure to have a paper map in the car this time, and I've highlighted the route through the Hill Country. I've also laid out the route on Google Maps on my computer and sent it to my phone. Twice. I hope at least one of these things works. Because I'm leaving again for Los Angeles soon, and I'm going to try basically the same route, with a few changes: adding a waterfall in New Mexico, dropping a couple of places in New Mexico and Arizona that, I've since learned, are just fire watchtowers in the national forests. (From their descriptions on RoadTrippers, they sounded like scenic viewpoints.) And since I left off the places along the old route that I actually went to on that trip, I could change the route enough to (a) stop over in Havasu, where we have a house I can stay in, and (2) add a whole bunch of potential places I probably won't go to and a few I probably will (like the out-of-tune singing road in Lancaster, California).

 So fingers crossed! Will the car function within acceptable parameters? Will the weather cooperate? Will any of the sites I've picked out on my route prove at all worth seeing? Will I be attacked by a bear, or a mountain lion, or a MAGA Republican? 

 I'm meeting my friend the Hankmeister in LA; he flies in on the Thursday after I leave for LA, so I have six days to get from here to there. Since San Antonio-to-Los Angeles is normally a long two-day trip or an easy three-day trip, I have the luxury of no real constraints on my wandering. (I suspect this is proving a little irritating to my sister-in-law, who has to deal with the caretaker of the house in Havasu; but she's being flexible.) That is the best way to wander, the way I always try to plan, but seldom actually get to do. May this time be different!

 When the Hankmeister flies home on Sunday, I'll go back to Havasu that night. At least, that's the plan. It's a 5-hour drive and he doesn't have to be at the airport until about 4:30 in the afternoon, so I may be driving late into the night. I don't like that thought, but one does what one must.

Just Wondering...

media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads

I've seen a number of reports yesterday and today that nine of the witnesses who testified for ex-President Trump in his criminal trial in New York got major financial rewards from him, his campaign, or his company. I don't know that this is true, though it's being reported as factual; the information apparantly was contained in some report prepared by someone and released after the trial concluded. 

 I just have to wonder, if it is true, why did the prosecution not bring these facts out when these people testified? Seems like Law School 101 to me.

 Just a thought. I could be wrong.

Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 5

 

 This is the fifth part of the posts about this year's condo trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to Part One. And here's a link to all the pictures from this year's trip.

All of my pictures, I believe, are captioned, so you don't have to just guess at what you're looking at. In some applications, the captions show at the bottom of the photo; otherwise, when you view the pictures in Google Photos, you'll see a little "Information" icon at the top right -- an "i" in a circle. Click on that to read the captions.

Part Five: Condo Week (cont'd)

Thursday, May 23

  Our Thursday began with a bang as Sherry returned from her morning run and announced that she had encountered a bear and was not going to run here any more.

 She had been heading downhill toward the golf course when she saw a black bear loping uphill towards her in the grass beside the street. She stopped and slowly side-stepped her way to the far curb and kept a close eye on the critter until it was well past her and out of sight. She says she thought about heading back to the condo right then, but since the bear had gone in that direction, she decided to continue her run and hope that, by the time she came back, the bear would be gone. (And if it wasn't, she'd call for a ride.) Luckily, she didn't see the bear again and got home intact. 

 She was sure that what she saw actually was a bear, and not just a large beaver.

The Blue Ridge (photo by Sherry)

I decided I don't care if the dog's a slob.

 Once the excitement had died down -- it took a while; we had to have the whole thing explained to us several times before we could truly grasp it -- we got ourselves together to do some more exploring, this time along the Blue Ridge Parkway, a Depression-era government boondoggle that has left this nation with one of the great roads of the modern world; the kind of boondoggle that maybe we could use more of. We headed a short distance west on Interstate 40 -- a much more expensive and practical expenditure of government funds -- and picked up the Parkway, very close to the Southern Highland Craft Guild Folk Art Center that we'd visited the other day. I stopped in to buy the small blue oval bowl by Amanda Taylor that I'd noticed on that first visit, and ended up buying both it and a companion piece, a slightly taller, equally beautiful round bowl with the same pattern. 

the peak by the road

 From there, we drove a few miles -- maybe fifteen? -- north on the Parkway to a place called Craggy Gardens Visitor's Center. We weren't sure what this place was supposed to be; I'd assumed it was another craft display centered on botanical pursuits. It wasn't. It's just a visitor's center with the usual tourist paraphernalia: magnets, t-shirts, toys, games, souvenirs, and an attendant who cheerfully offered to answer any question we might have, but was immediately stumped by a question from Nancy about the geography of the region, and just as cheerfully admitted that she only supervised the Parkway shops in the area and was new to North Carolina. 

 The local attractions are two hiking paths, one that goes about a mile and a half to a picnic area we'd just passed, the other that goes about a mile and a quarter to the top of a peak next to the parkway. They have elevation gains of 400 and 500 feet, respectively, so we were not in a frame of mind or physical will to hike either. Well, Sherry might've been; she lives for that kind of exertion. But it would have meant being on her own in bear country. She was not of a mind to do that. We contented ourselves with a few photos of the area, and a bear-themed postcard for Sherry, who still maintains it was not a large beaver she had seen.

 Nancy suggested lunch at Mount Mitchell State Park, which she'd found referenced at the Craggy Gardens Visitor's Center; it was just a few miles farther on, and was supposed to have a nice view of the mountains. It sho-'nuff did. This was North Carolina's first state park, formed around 1915 to preserve the spruce forest that was, at the time, being clear-cut across the state. The restaurant there looks out across the ridges to the west, and the view was especially pretty as the fog rose and fell. The food at the restaurant wasn't at all bad either. I got a reuben and Sherry got an "adult grilled cheese" sandwich and we swapped halves. I couldn't really say which was the better meal. They were served with home-made potato chips, which were interesting but not really all that good. The service was excellent and the prices were pretty good, too, and how could you improve on the ambience of a large native-wood room with floor-to-ceiling windows showing you the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains? Can't be done. The only peculiar thing was the way you place your order with the hostess at the entrance, then find a table, and they bring you your food. Odd; but it seems to work for them.

'40 Buick Century

 From there, we headed back towards Asheville on the Parkway, then turned off just at the northern edge of the town to go to a place called Grovewood Village, a collection of artsy-craftsy things derived from Biltmore Industries, which was a textile company back in the day. Now the old buildings have been turned to other purposes. The one I was interested in is now a car museum, in which I spent the entire time of our visit, looking over their small collection, about 15 cars (mostly GM; the building was a Cadillac dealership in one incarnation) while the others explored, oh, the sculpture garden, the museum of textile crafts, and a mountain-crafts shop. I'd've gone to look at those things but it started raining as I came out of the car museum, so I have to rely on Sherry's pictures. I would have liked to have seen the sculptures, at least.

The Flowering Bridge

 Our last planned stop was the North Carolina Arboretum, on the far side of Asheville. By the time we got there through rush-hour traffic, it was raining pretty steadily, and we decided that we did not in fact wish to wander around in the forest in the rain. So we drove back to our condo, listening to a very interesting podcast called Empire, which so far has been about the history of India since the Moghul Empire's collapse against the East India Company. Once home, we decided to go out for dinner, and after reviewing all the restaurants in the area, we settled on the River Watch, a bar & grill that has live music on certain evenings. (On the way, we stopped at the Flowering Bridge and I took two mediocre pictures, just for this blog.) At the River Watch we got to hear a guy named Dave Irvine, who played a lot of stuff we like: Bob Seeger, Tom Petty, the theme song from Gilligan's Island... All the classics. Unfortunately, we got to the River Watch a little late (mostly because Jeff had gambled that we wouldn't be going back out, and had ... um ... gotten comfortable); the place closes at 8pm every night, because, according to the bartender, by 8:30pm everyone in the area is at home and only the bears are out, rummaging for trash cans. Sherry had a very small house salad, while I had a bacon cheeseburger, which I enjoyed very much. We all appreciated the staff very much, as we were there well past closing time.

 We closed out the evening with a game of hearts at the condo, as our Duraflame log burned in the fireplace. We had all forgotten that Jeff's oxygen machine can't be used around open flame, so he had to take it off and move it away until the game was over. He then went to bed while the rest of us sat watching the fire burn and listening to music on Sherry's phone. I gave up after about half an hour and went to bed myself.

Friday, May 24

 Our only plan for the day was to attend the opening night of the White Squirrel Weekend in Brevard in the evening. We had the whole day until then to just do whatever. We managed to fill the day exploring Rutherford County, and it ended up being a very diverting exploration.

 As you might expect, there is nothing of great interest in a remote backwater area like Rutherford County, North Carolina. There is some pretty scenery, which we have been enjoying all week, and there was some tangential involvement in both the Revolutionary War (revolutionaries hanging their Tory neighbours, and vice-versa) and the Civil War (right at the end, after Lee had surrendered), but nothing of any wider importance occurred. Still, we had nothing else to do, and we had a brochure showing where all these trivial historical markers were. And Sherry found something on line called the Cherry Bounce Tour, which led travellers to the place where locals bought booze during prohibition. The tour seemed to wander at random around the central part of the county, and ended in the middle of nowhere, and it didn't give any particulars about anything we might see along the way, but we weren't really choosy. We threw that into the mix.

 First we went looking for a place to recycle glass and plastic. It was supposedly located at the Bill's Creek Convenience Center, on Bill's Creek Road. That turned out to be an old, dilapidated gas station slowly crumbling away by the side of the road. There was no recycling there. I found a sign directing us to the Bill's Creek Community Center, so we went there thinking maybe we could find someone to direct us to the recycling center. What we found was two suspicious old locals at a dog park. One tried to direct us to some place miles and miles away to the north; the other said there was a place, but it was "only for Bill's Creek residents," and that she would have to call Cindy, whoever that is. We thanked them and left. (In the end, we made a random stop much later in the day at a port-a-potty at the trail head for a hike to the house Carl Sandberg lived in when he was in the area, and there was a recycling bin there. So, Yay!)

The Get-Up Bell Tower

 So we drove first to the county seat, Rutherfordton (pronounced, believe it or not, "RULF-tin") where we stopped for lunch at Maples on Main, a nice little cafe and bakery. From there I walked down to a drug store to use the ATM (after first walking several blocks in the wrong direction), while Sherry found a printed map of the Cherry Bounce Tour at the local newspaper office across the street. It was pretty hard to use. We spent a pleasant afternoon trying to locate roads and historical markers without GPS. Some instructions gave road names, others gave highway numbers, but precious little corresponded to information available on the ground. It became a sort of trial-and-error tour, but we managed to find most of the historical markers: places like the Biggerstaff Hanging Tree (no longer there); Brittain Presbyterian Church; Fort Hampton (no longer there), from the Revolution, where it appears nothing happened at all; Fort McFadden (no longer there), which gave refuge to settlers during attacks by the Cherokee whose land all this area was; and various markers relating to  General Stoneman's Civil War raid. Although we never found the spot where they sold the booze, nor did we ever find out why it's called Cherry Bounce. (I don't know if this is relevant, but there is a locally-produced cherry-flavoured soft drink called Cheerwine....)

 But really the only marker of innate interest was the one for the Get Up Bell, in Cliffside; because it was the only one (other than the perfectly unremarkable Brittain Presbyterian Church) that had some physical evidence of the thing being commemorated. We enjoyed driving more or less aimlessly around the county, but the Get-Up Bell was a genuinely interesting idiosyncracy. It was a large bell, resting alone in a grassy field next to an apparently unrelated memorial tower, that would ring every morning at 5:30 to let the good people of Cliffside, a mill town, know that it was time to get up. An hour later, it'd ring again to tell people to get to the mill; twenty minutes after that was a ten-minute warning, because you didn't want to be late to work. It'd ring again at noon to announce lunch, and again at 12:50 to warn that lunch was nearly over; and then at 6pm when the working day was done. Whatever thoughts you might have about such a régime, we have already thought on your behalf.

the White Squirrel Weekend stage

 By the time we'd made our way to the Get-Up Bell, it was getting kind of late, so we got back on the highway and headed west for the White Squirrel Weekend in Brevard, south of Asheville. The origin of this festival has to do with some albino squirrels that got loose from a circus some time ago. They are, the town claims, all over the place now, though we didn't see any. Doesn't matter; it's really just an excuse for a street fair. They close off a few blocks of Main Street, the vendors come out and musicians perform and everybody comes out to visit with friends and neighbours and eat and drink. It's a very pleasant time. It had poured rain a little before the festival started, but by the time we got there the weather was perfect for being outside. We had a little something unremarkable to eat, and walked up and down the street, and sat and visited with a local woman with a really friendly dog named Astra -- such soft fur! -- and listened to a couple of bands play, and then we drove back to our condo. It was great. 

Coda: The Drive Home

 The drive home was about as uneventful as expected, with three exceptions.

 First, we finished listening to The Ink Black Heart. It ended up lasting us almost to the Texas state line. We both decided who done it before we were out of Alabama, and every new bit of information after that only added to our conviction. As we passed Pumpkin Center, where the old family farms were, one of the minor characters named our suspect as the murderer. That's never a good sign in a murder mystery, but still, it was obvious to both of us that the character was right. The book's detectives had dismissed our suspect -- hell, they never even considered him enough to actually dismiss him -- and no reason for this omission was given, that either of us recalls. In the end, when it turned out not to be our guy, no loose ends were tidied up. He was never explained; none of the many things that made us suspect him was explained. There were no moments of "Oh, I'd forgotten about that" to make us feel sheepish for having suspected him. The upshot is, we still think he done it, and the author got it wrong. 

 Second, I fell asleep at the wheel. This happened once before, crossing the Mojave Desert on Interstate 10 in California. That time the little ruts in the edge of the freeway woke me up after maybe a second or less, and I vowed at that point that I would never drive when I felt that kind of fatigue. Unfortunately, on that occasion, I had been looking for a place to pull off the freeway for many miles, and even after the event it was many miles before there was any safe place to get off. On this occasion I was only a little bit fatigued; it was nowhere near the level that heretofore had concerned me. I was driving in the inside lane, about to pass a semi-trailer. I blinked my eyes or something and in the next moment I had one tire in the truck's lane of travel and the corner of the trailer was less than a yard from the front of my car. Sherry jumped and gasped, and maybe that woke me up, but I really think I was already awake again before she did that. My first thought was not to oversteer in response, because I've seen too many times (on Top Gear and in movies, not in real life) what happens when you do that: you spin out, and end up at the bottom of a cliff on the Pacific Coast Highway (if it's a movie) or turning circles on the tarmac (if it's Top Gear), and in my case I knew immediately that if I moved the wheel too suddenly I'd lose control of the car. So I quickly but smoothly moved back into my lane; the car responded beautifully. And you can bet that at the very first opportunity I got off the freeway and took a nap. 

 This occurrence, quite unreasonably, confirms me in a decision I've made (in consultation with Sherry, whether she knows it or not) that I'm going to give my pretty little Jaguar to a car museum. I had a particular one in mind, but have now changed to another, more appropriate one, and I'm making plans to take it to that museum later this year, after my upcoming trip to Los Angeles. If my calculations are correct, I'll be able to deliver it to its new, hopefully permanent home, before I go to Colorado at the end of July. (That trip will be in the Subaru anyway, for logistical reasons.)

 I say "unreasonably" because, obviously, what I'm driving -- whether it's the Jaguar convertible or the Subaru Forester or any old thing on wheels -- has nothing to do with the event. It only confirms my decision because I think this car, this little XK-8, is just too beautiful to waste. 

 The third thing is, I saw my first real-live Tesla Cybertruck. On the TV commercials it looked silly. In real life it is hideous. It is grotesque. It is minimalist technocrap. It is the opposite of my little convertible. There are no words to describe just how ugly this piece of machinery is. Ugh.