The Not Dayton Trip, Part Four: Beckley, West Virginia to Hershey, Pennsylvania

 This is the fourth post in a series; 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 trip

 When I went outside this morning it was cold. I went back in and put on long sleeves, though I still am wearing shorts. It's not that cold.

 I started off the morning with a brief exploration of Beckley. I lived there forty years ago, but I've so completely forgotten the place that I couldn't recall the name of the street where I lived. I drove through downtown, but absolutely nothing looked familiar. So after filling up the tank I headed out.

 The cold didn't really matter, because it was to be a day on the freeway. The sun was just up and I was headed due east, so I was blinded for the first half hour or so, until I got into the fog that I always expect in the hollows of West Virginia. I wasn't disappointed.

 The car has been going through a rotating series of electrical issues. (1) The little motor that drives the radio antenna up and down stopped working last year; I think it's the mechanical connection, because I can hear the motor turning but nothing happens. It's not worth worrying about. (2) I hit a hard pothole in New Mexico last year, and ever since then I sometimes get a warning light and the messages "cruise control not available" and "check rear lights." I've checked the rear lights and found no issue, and I generally don't need cruise control. Today, when I wanted it, it worked; yesterday it didn't. And (3) I get a red warning light and the message "Engine coolant low." I started getting that a couple of years ago and the reservoir is always full. I did some on-line research and learned that the sensor for coolant level is defectively designed. I had it replaced last year and it's been fine until this trip. This morning the warning light came on every time I went down a steep hill, and went off when I went up hill. Plus the temperature gauge didn't move, so I'm sure it's just the defective sensor. Once I got to the flatlands it stopped coming on. The repair is still in warranty so maybe I'll have it replaced again when I get home.

 I made four unsuccessful attempts to get breakfast this morning. First I pulled off the freeway at Lewisburg, West Virginia, "the coolest town in the USA" according to somebody. The traffic into town was so bad it was backed up onto the freeway exit ramp and the main highway inbound, so I said the Hell with it and got back on the freeway. It looked to be a long wait to get into the town proper. Next I took an exit where there was supposedly a Waffle House, which is good enough for me. It wasn't there. A few miles farther on I took an exit where there was supposed to be an IHOP. It, too, was nowhere in sight. You can't trust those blue highway amenity signs. I took another exit where there were supposed to be restaurants, but the only one actually there was a McDonalds, which is too far down the list of tolerable options, so I just got coffee at a convenience store and made do. (There was a sign advertising what looked like a Mom-&-Pop diner at one exit, but I missed the exit because of trucks in the right lane.) I just cruised along, listening to my audiobook, and skipped breakfast. I may have skipped lunch, too, because I can't remember stopping except at a TransAmerica after crossing into Pennsylvania, where I took a nap. 

 After a couple of scares when I think I actually fell asleep at the wheel, I now make it a point to pull over whenever I feel fatigued, stop the car and count to 300 with my eyes closed. If I get straight through it takes me about five minutes. I don't think I've ever gotten straight through. Today it took me almost 40 minutes, so I must have napped most of that time. Fortunately the weather was excellent and I could put the windows down. After that I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and good to go for the rest of the day. 

 I got to my first destination, the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, at 3pm, which gave me two hours to go through it. That wasn't long enough; I ended up skipping through the last 3 or 4 galleries. At the same time, the overall experience was pretty frustrating because of the noise. Not the noise of the visitors -- there were very few; the noise was coming from the exhibits. Every gallery featured too-loud audio tracks and videos that made it impossible to concentrate on the signboards. Often there were more than one audio track to be heard. 

 Here's an example: I was standing at the bottom of the stairs reading about the first battle in which Union cavalry proved as good as Confederate cavalry. As I read, I could hear (1) the sound of infantry firing by rank, from a television monitor right behind me; orders being shouted, then click, click, boom, click, click, boom; (2) a description of a field hospital, where amputations were being performed, from an exhibit to my right across the room; (3) the sound track of a recreation of an infantry charge, with all the sounds of battle, coming from a loudspeaker on the stairs to my right; and (4) the sound of soldiers singing at night in their camp, from an exhibit at the top of the stairs. I don't remember any of the particulars about the signboard I was trying to read. 

 This experience was repeated throughout the museum. I know there are technologies -- I've seen them at other museums -- that will localize the sounds of exhibits; at the very least, they could use motion-activated devices and turn the volume down some. The distraction was maddening.

 And while I'm bitching about the visit, they could record the audio using people who don't have distracting speech impediments. In one area (just before the singing soldiers) it sound like Virginia's version of Elmer Fudd, somberly intoning that "Wichmond could bweathe again." I'm sorry, but after about seven minutes of this guy descibing various events of the war, it just became laughable.

 And there were the usual museum complaints: duplication of exhibits, specifically having to do with the development of signal flags, first used by the Union in the Civil War; misspellings; and incorrect grammar: they refer to "less men" instead of "fewer men," and they used the word "sunk" when they should have used "sank." You kind of expect educated people to recognize these things and do them right. 

 I suppose it's to be expected that the battle of Gettysburg, which is just down the road from Harrisburg, gets its own full-gallery exhibit, while the equally important capture of Vicksburg, which occurred at the same time, got one signboard and one photo mounted on a wall. This is called chauvinism, I think.

 And finally, after reading several signboards describing various battles, one wonders that the war lasted the full four years, because each Union victory "left no doubt that the Confederacy would be defeated." Well, there must have been some doubt, because they fought on for another year or more. What we have here is a failure of imagination on the part of the signboard writers.

 Like I said, two hours wasn't long enough.

 My next stop was going to be a car museum in Hershey, that RoadTrippers said was open until 9pm. So I picked a good restaurant in Harrisburg, close to a Chase Bank ATM, and went into town for that. At the ATM (which is located next to the county jail) there were three women withdrawing money, over and over. When they finally finished I pulled up and found that the ATM was no longer available; they had drained it of cash. I assume they were getting together bail for somebody. So I went to the restaurant I'd picked out on line, & found there was nowhere remotely close to park. (Also I didn't want to walk very far in that neighbourhood.)  

 I located a nearby place to pull over to get directions to my next destination, the car museum in Hershey ... and learned that it closes at 5pm, not 9. So I just asked for directions to Hershey, which is only like 10 miles away, and figured I'd do what is becoming customary on this trip: go to dinner at a random restaurant, and make a hotel reservation while there. I found a Bob Evans restaurant in Hummelstown and made a reservation for a nice little mom-&-pop motel called the Simmons in Hershey. Very pleasant, not too expensive (they advertise "private bathrooms"!), right on the main drag of this quiet little town which, by the way, no longer smells like chocolate. The lady at the desk says they closed down the big yellow factory in the middle of town, so it only occasionally smells like chocolate. Another disappointment. 

 

The Not-Dayton Trip, Part Three: Campbellsville, Kentucky to Beckley, West Virginia

 This is the third post in a series; 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 trip

  So at some point this morning I stopped and made a list on my phone of things to mention in this blog post, because I often find that by the time I sit down to write in the evenings I can't remember all the interesting little things I've thought of while driving during the day. When I made this list it was late morning; I didn't add anything to the list after that, so I expect this post will be heavy on the early stuff and pretty light on the after-lunch stuff. Not that it matters, really: when you get right down to it, there's not a lot of interesting stuff for anyone besides me on this trip (so far). 

 I got out of my hotel pretty early this morning. The place where I stayed (Campbellsville, Kentucky, I  think it was) is just over the line in the Eastern Time Zone, so my internal clock is a little off. I went to bed last night at about 11pm EDT, even though I wasn't really tired, and got up at 6AM EDT because my alarm went off. I shut it off and tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't, so by 7AM EDT I was on the road. The sun wasn't even up at that hour. (The disadvantage of being in the western edge of a time zone.) Traffic was light, though, and by the time I got to the next town it was well up.

 That town was Lebanon, Kentucky, only about 30 miles along, but as I was passing through the downtown area I saw exactly the sort of mom-and-pop cafe I like to patronize, so I stopped for breakfast: the Main Street Diner. Parking was very easy: mine was the only car in the on-street parking area at that time of day. And I was the only patron in the restaurant at 7:40 on a Wednesday morning. I hope the place makes it; it was a pretty pleasant place, with good food and reasonable prices, and excellent coffee. They've only been open since January, and everybody knows how hard it is to make a go of a restaurant. But we need more of this kind, and fewer of the fast-food chain restaurants. (I was going to leave a glowing review on Google Maps, but for once I've found a place before they did; it's not listed yet. I added it, but will probably not remember to post a review when they add it a few days from now.)

Secretariat in the traffic circle, Lexington

 

 This morning was spent cruising through the Bluegrass Country of central Kentucky: geologically, a karst subsurface where the overlying layers of softer rock have eroded away. I stopped in the outskirts of Lexington to get a picture of the statue of Secretariat -- objectively the greatest race horse of the past 100 years, at least -- and there was this exhibit in the scenic overlook there that described the geology of the area. I've probably gotten it wrong but who gives a damn?

  All the way from Lebanon to Lexington I was seeing these dark rock walls lining the road, and I mean for miles and miles and miles, on both sides and in the neutral grounds. They're called double-rock walls because the bottom parts, about three feet tall, are limestone blocks set horizontally without mortar, while the tops are irregular limestone set at an angle. I didn't get a picture of it myself, but there are lots of them on line, including the one at the link above. (Though my experience has been that, a year from now, that link will be broken.) I suspect these walls were slave-built, but then New England is full of fancy stone walls that go on for miles, too, and they didn't use slaves (most of them). Anyway, they're very pretty, these walls, and are a big reason that the entire Bluegrass area was made a historical district.

 Another thing I noticed was that in that part of Kentucky, which is big-time Horse Country, a lot of the bluegrass paddocks, huge areas of grass, were actually mown. That surprised me, to see the lines left by tractor mowers. You'd think they'd just let the horses run out there and keep it cropped. 

 So by the end of the day of very pleasant top-down driving I'd finished touring all the remaining counties of Kentucky -- 41 states down, only 9 to go! -- and slipped into West Virginia. I expected to have to set my clocks back a hundred years but it seems the government has been busy since I moved away, resolutely dragging the state into the 20th Century. I'm spending tonight in Beckley, where I used to live, and other than the roads still being in the same place, everything I've seen so far is new since I left. I didn't expect to feel at all at home here, and I have not been disappointed.

The Not Dayton Trip, Part Two: Arkadelphia, Arkansas to Chapmansville, Kentucky

 This is the second part of this post; 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 trip.

I made only one sightseeing stop today, at a weird place not far from the courthouse in Brownsville, Tennessee where it would appear Yard Art has gotten rather out of hand. The main feature of the town, as far as the traveller is concerned, is called Billy Tripp's Mindfield. It's a city block long and probably forty yards wide. 

Here's the description of the place from RoadTrippers.com:

“The Mindfield” is the creation and life’s work of Brownsville, Tennessee artist Billy Tripp. The structure was begun in 1989 and will continue to evolve until Billy’s death, at which point it will become the site of his interment.  Included in the network of steel are individual pieces representing various events and periods of Billy’s life, especially the death of his father, Rev. Charles Tripp, in 2002.  The latest addition, a water tower salvaged from a defunct factory in Western Kentucky, was dismantled, transported to Brownsville, and reconstructed single-handedly by the artist.  It now stands as a memorial to Billy’s parents as well as a testimonial to his current life, his belief in the inherent beauty of our world, and the importance of tolerance in our communities and governmental systems.”

That pretty much sums it up. I saw the water tower, a canoe, three and a half fire towers, a couple of derrick cranes, a small airplane and two large boats, along with untold articles I couldn't identify. And I have to admit that I see no relationship between this random assemblage of scrap metal and "the inherent beauty of our world." Eye of the beholder, I suppose.

But is it art?

Other than that, there's really not a lot to report from today's travel. I did get through the remaining Tennessee counties, so have now been to all the counties in 40 states; and I got the first two of the remaining Kentucky counties, so I will finish that tomorrow. (And I got about half a dozen expressions of admiration for the car. Got a few of those yesterday, too, but didn't remember it when I was writing. Anyway, it should go without saying.)

The terrain through western Tennessee was mostly flat and mostly uninteresting, though not unattractive. The first thing I noticed was the kudzu in the unmaintained areas like creek beds. It seems to be kept in check wherever people take an interest in the look of the land.* And I noticed that some prosperous towns have not done a good job in keeping up with traffic. I first noticed that in Silver City, New Mexico, a couple of years ago. When I first visited there in the 1990s (probably) it was a nice, pleasant town catering to agriculture and tourism. Something seems to have taken off there since that day, and it's now choked with traffic on the outskirts where new developments are. This afternoon I saw another such town: Clarksville, Tennessee, which is stop-and-go from one end of the town to the other. I don't know what decisions that town's government has made that have resulted in such a choking of the roads, but it surely must be down to government. Other towns don't suffer the same fate.

 As I got into the unvisited Kentucky counties -- Marion, Taylor and Green -- the terrain gave way to exactly the sort of winding two-lane country highways I love to travel. Fortunately, so far at least, there's been little traffic on those roads, and I hope that as the roads get even better as I approach the Appalachian Mountains tomorrow, the thrill will get even more pronounced.

* I found this interesting video showing how it's done:

https://imgur.com/eKtTDCshttps://imgur.com/eKtTDCshttps://imgur.com/eKtTDCshttps://imgur.com/eKtTDCshttps://imgur.com/eKtTDCs

The Not Dayton Trip, Part One: San Antonio to Arkadelphia, Arkansas

Well this could be the last time
This could be the last time
Maybe the last time
I don't know
Oh no, oh no

--Mick Jagger & Keith Richards,

The Last Time

 

There is a museum in Dayton, Ohio, that I went to a few years ago called the British Transportation Museum. I've decided to give them my little English convertible, because I'm getting too old to enjoy it and nobody else in my family wants it -- it is, after all, more than 20 years old now, and a little expensive to maintain in the style it's accustomed to. Just like a trophy wife, come to think of it, and all the members of the next generation of the family are a little too intelligent to want to take on that burden. Plus, it's really not their style. They're more the Back-Country Vacation types than the fading-luxury touring-car crowd. So it'll go to a museum devoted to cars of similar parentage, where it will be appreciated for its lineage and lines: the fine materials used in its construction, the achingly beautiful sweep of the hood, the sexy swells of the wheel arches, the evocative grille, the little Pegasus melting on the dashboard (which the museum will probably remove). 

 This trip started off as a final wander in my beautiful car that would end at Dayton. But it turns out that the group that owns the museum doesn't have its tax affairs in order just now, having suffered the lot common to many small volunteer-run charitable organizations: its tax-deductible status has been suspended until its paperwork is brought up to date.

 

 That was enough of an excuse to prompt me to put off my donation until, oh, next year. But in the meantime, I had already planned the trip to the point of arranging to visit someone in New York -- since I was going to be in the area -- that I had not seen in some years. I was committed. So now the plan is a round trip: San Antonio to New York and back, and as long as I'm going all that way and probably will never be going back, I may as well tick some boxes on my bucket list. To that end, I will, on this trip, go through the last two counties in Tennessee, the last eight counties in Kentucky, and some of the many remaining counties in Georgia (on the way back, if I actually stick to the plan. I have a history of not doing so, but I still make the plans).

 So this morning I headed off for what could well be my last wander in my convertible. A bittersweet thought. I cut across Texas today from San Antonio to Texarkana, and have pulled up for the night in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. This morning I listened to a short (2-hour) audiobook written and performed by the late TV personality Steve Allen, a sort of quickie murder mystery involving the Japanese mafia in Las Vegas. I enjoyed it, and since I was just zipping along highways in broken weather I had the top up all day and could actually hear it all. (Didn't get any rain to speak of despite the forecast.) I met my friend Hank in College Station for an early lunch, and we spent a pleasant hour making plans that may or may not ever come to pass. You know how it is. After lunch I started another audiobook, Every Crooked Nanny, another light-weight murder mystery. And since I'll be on freeways until after Memphis tomorrow, I should be able to finish it before the top goes down and audiobooks become an iffy proposition.

 I'm hoping to get through Little Rock before the rush-hour traffic gets too bad in the morning, and I hope to get through Memphis in the mid-morning lull; though drivers are so bad in Tennessee that I fully expect to hit back-ups and slow-downs caused by accidents before the city limits are behind me. Then, when my audiobook is finished and I'm off the freeway, the top will come down and, I hope, stay down until Westchester. The forecasts are good -- clear skies and moderate temperatures -- and I have more than enough time for a relaxing, laid-back voyage, with lots of winding mountain roads and a smattering of interesting stops noted along the way. And even if I do make it down to Georgia on the way home, I will still have a week or so to decompress before we pile into the Subaru and go off to the Lake for the annual Huntsman Trip.

 Fingers crossed.