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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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.

2022 Condo Trip, Part Three: Wednesday & Thursday

 This is part three 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.)

We just had to go back to the beach. I got a couple of tacos to go from La Isla, the pretty good Mexican restaurant on the highway near our condo, then we drove down to the National Seashore again. This time we filled up three garbage bags with detritus from the beach, so it felt like we had done some good in the world. Considering how much litter was left behind, not so much....

We stayed out there for a few hours; Nancy and Sherry saw a green turtle in the water near shore, but otherwise it was an uneventful morning. Very relaxing. Jeff stayed behind at the condo for some Me-Time. I spent the whole morning reading the Grey Man novel I've got checked out. (Q.v. Tom Clancy, in Part Four of this post.)

We grabbed sandwiches from Subway for lunch at the condo, then sat around relaxing until late afternoon, when we all put on our bowling shirts and went to the lanes on the grounds of the Naval Air Station. We were the only people in the place, which was kind of nice. Nancy and Sherry bowl about as well as they did when we first started the Once-a-Year Bowling League, but Jeff & I have deteriorated. I used to bowl around 135, year in and year out. The past couple of years, though, I can't even break 100. Now that the arthritis in my knee has gotten to be a problem, it's really hard to get down low enough to release the ball the way I used to. So I've had to change the motion I use for this sport. It helped, a little: in the first game I bowled a 62, but on the second game I got up to 89. Still kind of embarrassing, but not mortifying.

For dinner we went to the little Thai place right by the entrance to our subdivision. The green curry there is as good as what we get back home, but the other dish we got, mixed vegetables with chicken, was a little disappointing, just because the chicken seemed kind of dry. But otherwise, it was a pleasant meal: good service, good prices. And we had plenty of leftovers to bring back for a late-night snack.

Games night at the condo was a version of Canasta called Salsa. I generally avoid playing card games other than solitaire, and now I remember why. Of course, that aversion is easier to exercise when there are foursomes available without my participation.

Thursday, our last day in town, started with a solo trip down to La Isla for some tacos de machacado con huevo a la mexicana and not-bad coffee, then a group excursion to the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and Nature. This is, unfortunately, the time of year when local schools, desperate to keep the kids engaged before summer break, take all their field trips. With the exception implied by that, the museum was interesting enough to occupy a good bit of our day. It had small exhibits on Texas geology; an exhibit focussed on the 1542 wreck of three Spanish ships on Padre Island; local history; and dinosaurs. There may have been other exhibits -- there was quite a lot, I think, of the building that I didn't get to before it was time for lunch, which we had nearby at Brewster Street Ice House, a restaurant and dance hall just beyond the Harbor Bridge's elevated approach ramp. It was pretty well past the lunch rush, so that was good. The food was traditional American -- burgers and such -- and I indulged myself by actually ordering a chicken-fried steak. Usually I think about it, then order something more nutritionally responsible, but this time I followed through, mostly because they bill it as "award-winning." I think it must have been a county-wide competition, at best, but there's really no such thing as bad chicken-fried steak, is there? My dog says there isn't.

Olympic (detail)

Next we went to the Art Museum of South Texas, which is currently free to visit because of some corporate sponsorship or something; I didn't really hear the explanation. I'm tempted to make remarks like "you get what you pay for," but the fact is the exhibits that were open for viewing were interesting. I was particularly taken with a painting called Olympic, depicting a deepwater shipwreck (it felt familiar; I may have seen it last time I was here, hundreds of years ago), and the small collection of Western Art. There's also a visually intriguing 8-foot-tall shard-like sculpture of black-painted bronze that, for some reason, is tucked away in a back room where no one but museum staff will see it unless they're lost.

I call it "the shard"

A lot of the art on display is modern. Call it what you will -- and artsy-fartsy types have names for every type of art, even if their categories seem to include only a single work -- it's basically meaningless crap to me: beach chairs collected into a pair of big balls was okay in a whimsical way; a boat made out of reeds (it looks like) and a "gravity table" were at least mildly interesting for their form. Some of the large canvases were attractive even if devoid of readily discernible meaning. That abstract kind of painting always seems to me to only exist for decoration, not meaning: "We just need a reddish painting to set off the color of the Lazy-Boy." 

There's also a pair of rooms dedicated to Spanish Colonial art. The first room contains paintings from the actual Spanish Colonial period, mostly religious themes. The second contains what I'd call a modern take on it, or Mexican folk-art: bright colored painting of religious themes heavily leaning toward pre-Christian styles. It's not bad, it's just irrelevant to me; kind of like Plains Indian art, language and religion. It's nothing to do with my own culture except by the slightest of impact. If there are aspects of it that truly have meaning, they gradually get absorbed into my cultural heritage, like breakfast tacos or cowboy hats. If not, they remain as exotic affectations. 

Oh, and there's yet another Dale Chihuly assemblage of seaweed-shaped glass, such as can be seen in any wannabe-arty institution with enough money. I really wish he would have a third idea.

Dinner that night was random. I had the leftover curry from the night before; I don't know what anyone else had.