Now Entering Leaving

You get the idea. No, we did not visit Kyburz this time.

We’ve been at home for almost a week now and have had a chance to rediscover our “regular” life, the one we left over a month ago. Re-entry was pretty easy and it was great to be welcomed back by our “new” Portland friends. In some ways, it feels like we never left. There are certainly no lasting scars, but the trip changed me. Although it was familiar, being on the road, the experience unfolded for me in a new way. Older? Not employed? Feeling renewed?  It is the journey, not the destination, that feels important and, of course, with whom you travel and visit with along the way.

When JD and I moved out to California, some 42 years ago, he quoted an old line while driving through a small town:  “Now entering leaving.” I had never heard it before and thought it was very funny.  It became one of our go-to sayings that could apply to much more than a small one-street establishment.  Life in general seems more like “now entering leaving” and  “in the moment” to me these days. Aging has made it so that I think less about the future, and how things might be. I just live for the day. Driving through so much of this country made me realize that there could be many opportunities for a life lived in different ways. There’s a perspective that gets showered down as the miles pass beneath the wheels. I hope to get to travel through a lot more of the two-lane view of life --- surprising twists and unexpected beauty -- bumpy pavement be damned, and double damn to all the politicians and greedy people trying to make life a struggle for the rest of us.

Andrea

Random Thoughts on a Road Trip Across the United States of America

I have figured out what is keeping the American economy in gear, quite literally. While most consumers seem to be cutting corners and trimming luxuries, there is a category of Americans who seem to be spending in a profligate manner, and arguably, they are keeping the rest of us afloat by way of their largesse. I am talking about the Harley-Driving Old Men of America, hereafter known as the HDOMA. These grizzled, oft-bearded folk seem to fall into a common demographic: 50 to 70 years old, and maybe a bit out of shape but with enough stamina to pilot a (may I venture) flaccid, massive motorbike across thousands of miles of blacktop. They all seem to shop from the same catalog, the ever-popular Hells Angels Boutique (okay I made that up,) and all of them seem to aspire to win either the Bruce Springsteen look-alike contest or the ZZ Top impersonator award. Apparently a red bandana wrapped around the skull works just as well as a helmet.

Maid of the Mist, Niagra Falls, Sunset

The culmination of this pursuit of the open road and the pseudo-outlaw experience terminates yearly in Sturgis, South Dakota, just up the road from a couple of our stops (west of Rapid City, east of Spearfish.) These dudes (often accompanied by their dude-ettes) have dropped tens of thousands of dollars on their cycles, usually Harleys with the random elegant Honda thrown into the mix, and every night go outside with the rags generously provided by the motels to clean their steeds and bring them back to their state of high polish. This is so they won’t be embarrassed by congregating with their brethren, all of whom dress the same, are outlaws in their own minds, and adhere to the identical value system. It’s a new, grand brotherhood; let’s call it the Heck’s Angels, because it is outlaw in form only, lacking any real substance or threatening Wild Ones physical menace. Andrea overheard a group of them talking about their grandchildren and wildlife sightings; I picked up on investment ideas and real estate gambits (none of which I will be following) from another group. The men do most, but certainly not all, of the talking, and conversation often drifts off in the direction of machinery, at which time the women folk usually fall silent but do not opt out.

It sounds an awfully lot like the boring nerd living next door who is checking off the boxes on his bucket list, and driving a big fat Harley to the Sturgis Rally is the be-all event that brings it all into focus.

That being said, these are polite, considerate people who (taken as a whole) are self-deprecating and amusing, and we’re happy to be sharing our accommodations and breakfast spots with these Nuevo-American self-styled gypsies. And man, are they ever pumping bucks into the tourist industry. I think most of these roadside motels would be two-thirds empty without them.

South Dakota Sky. Storm a-comin'

Another random thought: signage. It was moderately hilarious to traverse South Dakota on the Interstate and be assaulted by innumerable billboards. Many of them were on the ever-so-slightly crude side, and their main selling tactic seemed to be based on endless repetition (as previously discussed in another posting.) I realized what was going on: South Dakota is still rooted in the 1950’s. At that time, a huge and glaring billboard served the function that is now filled by signs illuminated by thousands of watts of electricity. Wall Drugs, or an out-of-the-way gambling town like Deadwood, make up for the lack of wattage with enormous signs that employ every graphic technique possible to punch up the message. There’s something to be said for it. It’s ecologically positive. Yet it is hard to imagine Las Vegas having the same impact with a series of fake-3D, day-glo billboards in place of the Strip.

The American Diet as exemplified by the ‘Continental’ Breakfast. First of all, what continent does this breakfast come from exactly? Antarctica, perhaps? Actually, that’s an insult to penguins. If you have any question about why there is an obesity epidemic in our fair country, I invite you to spy on us as we visit the breakfast provided gratis by most motels along our byways. First, I defy you to find the item free of sugar. OK, maybe the white bread. Most likely, not. All the cereals have sugar added. The ‘yogurt’, using the term loosely, seems to lack the defining element, namely acidophilus, yet gobs of sugar have been added to make sure to overcome any bitterness just in case some beneficial bacteria make it into the final product. Something as simple as oatmeal, which really does not need much help to be nutritious and delicious, is enhanced with no end of flavorings and, you betcha, more sugar. There’s always the fresh waffles, upon which one can heap fake-o maple syrup plus new and improved butter-like substance replete with mono- and di-glycerides; if you are lucky they might provide doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, biscuits and fat glop (oops, I mean gravy,) things shaped like bagels in flavors I never thought possible, and muffins that are just a thin excuse for combining copious amounts of fat and sugar in ever more unique configurations. It is a miracle to find anything without dozens or hundreds of carb calories, and the protein sources, when available, are polluted with nitrates or (in the case of the peanut butter) those ubiquitous and ever-delicious mono- and di-glycerides. Yum Yum Yum. This is just breakfast. Now throw in the standard fast-food lunch and by the time you hit dinner you’ve consumed enough calories for three normal people. That is why we have triple-wide Americans; they eat for three.

The colonization of America. There are two companies that have taken the bull by the horns and have built out their infrastructure to reach deeply into the heart of nearly every city that merits a dot on the map of the United States. We all know about WalMart; the bigger surprise is to find a Walgreen’s right in the center of most towns that have a crossroads that appears on your regional map. Competitors like Target, CVS, Rite-Aid, Sears, Big K-Mart and others are centuries behind.

The Phone Network. 3G is a resource that is very unevenly distributed. Maybe they focus their energies on the place where the most users are; maybe it is a random pattern determined by how easily they can put up new cell phone towers. Most of Wyoming, one of the most sparsely populated places in the nation, has decent-to-great 3G service on the ATT network. Much of rural Arkansas and Tennessee, with far more constituents, has zero to meager coverage. Go figure. Maybe them southern folk don’t use their iPhone anywhere near enough. They should teach this in schools. Or at home, where much of the learnin’ takes place now, for better or more likely for worse.

Buffalo Bill Cody. Actually William Cody, but you know how the media is. You think of him perhaps as a Wild West showman, which he was, but his influence was far greater. We drove next to the Shoshone River on the way from Cody to Yellowstone. This powerful, surging stream ran smack into the Buffalo Bill Dam. Turns out that Bill Cody owned boodles of land in the area, including that which eventually made up the reservoir behind the dam. When it was completed in 1910 it was the tallest in the world at 325 feet. In recent times they’ve added another 25 feet to it; even if it no longer breaks any records, the surging river turns into an immense lake that provides beverages and irrigation to a vast area. Buffalo Bill was a promoter and developer, and Wyoming owes much of its current viability to him.

The Mississippi in Wisconsin

Rivers are the defining element of the West, and perhaps of the entire United States. Even though we now have interstate highways and heavy-duty railroad systems to shoulder the burden of transport and distribution, the original network of commerce ran along the rivers, and it has shaped both the development of cities and the trajectories of the many routes interconnecting our myriad metropoli. Most of the two-lanes closely trace the path of a river. Travel from Missoula to Lewiston, Idaho along the Clearwater River, and watch it grow from a glorified creek to a broad, vast flow that disgorges from the heart of the mountains. We traced the footsteps of Lewis and Clark for much of our return to the West, except since we were in a car we left no footprints. They travelled from river to river, and got real lucky with the Clearwater. Turns out it runs more or less unobstructed to the Snake, and then further, without much drama, into the Columbia, which led them to their ultimate goal of reaching the Pacific. Jetskis, with their shallow draft, would have worked great for them; too bad we have a time displacement of over 100 years before their deployment. Where would they refuel?

It irks me mightily that a state like Wyoming, with about 12 people living in it, is given equal representation in the United States Senate as, say, California, with about 12,000 billion people in it. What’s up with that? I say, move to Wyoming, where your vote counts about the same as 10,000 folks in California or New York! Except you’ll have to eat elk burgers every night for the rest of your life. Alternated with bison burger. And steak.

(the following was written before the drive home:)

OK, folks. That about wraps it up. I am sure that since we still have a mere 800 or so miles to cover in the next two days I will find another topic or two to pontificate about. Or perhaps I will be so consumed by the mere task of driving that I will be driven into mute silence (aren’t they the same thing?) Either way, it has been a gas to be blogging, and I take it that we’ve provided at least a modicum of entertainment, spiked with the occasional insight, along the way. If that is not so, please conceal the truth from me, because my fragile ego may not be ready for the shock. At least until I’ve been back in Portland for a week. After which - - we head out on the road for California! Go figure. Some people never learn.

Yellowstone - 31 years later

Upper Falls, Yellowstone

Today found us traveling through much of Yellowstone Park, a place we had visited only one other time, quite long ago, when I was pregnant with Rosie. On that visit, which we did in our little red Fiat 128 Spyder, I almost fainted at the site of Old Faithful after eating too quickly, sampling a beer, and being at high altitude. This time I didn't faint, but it was unrelentingly sunny and the altitude still was high. Yellowstone is just a stunning and unbelievable place. The scale on which it is fabricated is so huge that it is hard to comprehend. You drive for miles and miles around a caldera that blew up not all that long ago, only 600,000 thousand years, and it still seems like the ground below is angry and ready to spew again. The smell of sulfur is strong in many places; fumaroles are steaming, mud ponds are bubbling, and boiling water is oozing out of rocks. It is wild. The alpine meadows go on for as far as you can see and evidence of a huge forest fire, that happened in 1988, is apparent in almost every corner of the park. In many ways it does not detract from the beauty. Stark, blackened tree trunks look quite elegant against the vast backdrops of rock walls and pine forests, and in many areas the burned out forest has re-seeded itself with thousands of young and hopeful pines. Wildflowers carpet the hillsides. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River has to be one of the most dramatic and impressive sights a person could ever see, and this followed a run-up from Sheridan, Wyoming which we did on US Route 14. Our track took us via the Bighorn Mountains to to the east entrance to Yellowstone. Our mouths were agape as we carefully maneuvered the trusty Versa up the curving road that literally marched us through every geological period via this incredible engineering job on multiple road cuts.

Mammoth Hot Springs, Upper Terrace Drive, Yellowstone

Now that our road trip is drawing to a close, after almost a full month, and close to 9,000 miles, I have to think about how it has felt.  There were many days when the driving seemed way too much and I wondered what we were thinking, but we have gotten to see so many things, many of them unexpected and therefore even more special than what we thought we knew or expected. This last stretch along the banks of the Mississippi; the Devils Tower; Spearfish Canyon and through the heart of Wyoming today; all are places we could never have seen or experienced without putting in those sometimes hard and boring miles to get there.

It has been fun to briefly and randomly encounter other people along the way. Sometimes in restaurants, or at overlooks. These are mini-visits into another person's life and then you get to jump back into your car, and drive away and never see them again. It is another form of sight seeing.
      
Andrea

  

Murdo He Wrote

Badlands Viewpoint

Murdo Motel Lobby Decorations

This morning we find ourselves in Spearfish, South Dakota, poised to end our long sojourn through this state that began not long after leaving Minneapolis. South Dakota is a state of many wonders, most of which are compressed into its western half. The eastern side is very plain, which is probably why they call it the Plains, but once you cross the Missouri River in Oacoma (right now swollen to high flood stage,) the land turns rolling, and after a bit some rock outcroppings peak their heads up. We stopped in Murdo, which is barely even a town; the highlight of the night was an intense, blustery thunderstorm that dumped torrents of rain accompanied by hail and powerful lightning. The motel's metal roof sounded like an entire Steel Band gone berserk, and the light show was second to none. We hit the interstate in the morning. After a short sprint we turned off the highway and headed south towards the aptly named Interior. This brings you into the Badlands National Park, where Andrea's nifty (senior) lifetime pass saved us a quick $15 in admission fees. The Badlands are a wall of erosion; the high plain which we had been crossing falls away to a lower plain and grassland; all along the edge of this geological event are 'sharps' and 'brules,' fantastic pointed and rounded structures with complex shapes carved along their edges and bases that suggest the decorations of a fancy cathedral. We partook in many of the overlooks while cruising the Badlands Loop Road, culminating in the Panoramic viewpoint, where the formations stretched for many miles and faded into the hazy distance. The Sage Creek Rim Road offered a couple of additional delights; after banging down five miles of gravel and dirt surface (nicely maintained and not particularly challenging) we ended up at the Prairie Dog Park, where the little critters periodically poked their heads out of their burrows, stood up on their back legs, surveyed the scene, and then plopped back down below the surface. There were quite a few of them and they chattered back and forth. A bit further down the road, free range bison were hanging out, and a couple of them crossed right in front of us, offering some decent photo opportunities.

Prairie Dog Crossing

We reversed course and headed out to Wall, SD and the eponymous 'drug store' of the same name. If you've ever driven I-90 in either direction, you are assaulted by a continuous series of billboards touting the wonders of Wall Drug. These include free ice water (big wow) and five-cent coffee, but what you have here is basically a huge gift shop and café, filled with an overwhelming variety of fundamentally useless things: geodes and polished rocks, ugly jewelry, books (mostly about the Plains and the West,) an immense selection of Minnetonka Mocassins (now made in the Dominican Republic,) cowboy boots and western wear, and of course a huge selection of gift shop items, including your very own Sturgis shot glass for just $6.95. I don't think a single object in the entire store was made in the United States. The look is Old West; the prices are high; the bathrooms are inadequate; the signs are garish. This proves that just because a company puts 2,000 billboards next to the highway, this is no guarantee of quality. Five minutes was enough. I do respect their promotional abilities, however; it is hard to go by without feeling you've missed something important. You haven't.

George in Profile

The far western sector of South Dakota holds some treasures. Least among them, but nonetheless of interest, is Mount Rushmore, followed closely by the Crazy Horse Memorial. The highway up to Mount Rushmore offers some excellent viewing simply by pulling over at the unmarked but obvious viewpoint; what is not so obvious is that although there is no admission fee for the memorial, there is a "concession fee" (read: parking shakedown)  of $11, a fact they keep from you until you are at the toll booth. However if you simply tell them you're not interested, you can exit for free. Thanks! To my way of thinking this epitomizes all that is wrong with American Capitalism and the free market; here you have a striking piece of national heritage that is arguably worth a close-up look, but thanks to privatization, someone's fat palm is out, demanding to be greased. This is a function that could easily be run by the Government, but that would deny someone the ability to insert a tier of profit into the scheme. Reminds me of health care; all that privatization has done nothing to improve anybody's health, but has made many CEOs wealthy specifically by denying services. Oh well. We did continue down the road and got the profile view of the father of our country, big George. Impressive. The next attraction was one we knew nothing about until Andrea read a postcard at one of our gas stops. It was the Iron Mountain Road and Pigtail Bridges. Apparently a Senator from South Dakota named Peter Norbeck designed a series of tunnels, blasted out of solid granite, that perfectly frame Mount Rushmore in all its patriotic glory. Then and only then did he commission a road designer to connect them up. This involved a remarkable feat of engineering called the Pigtail Bridges, where the road quite literally folds back upon itself several times while climbing up and down the side of Iron Mountain. It is slow going, but loads of fun. When we got to the top there was a rally of Shelby Cobra owners. For those not in the know, this is a famous, limited-production American sports car built around 1965 (only 17 of the original 427's were ever made, and they are all either in museums or in private collections, being worth about $300k.) These are 'kit' cars, where you buy a fiberglass body and assemble the various running gear from stock Ford parts. Even so, you can drop between 50K and 100K putting one together. Seeing more than a dozen of them in one spot was impressive. The road is called the Iron Mountain Road, part of the Peter Norbeck scenic byway. Norbeck was quite a character, born in the basement of a sod house on the prairie. He became a Senator despite his complete lack of oratorial skill, and was instrumental in preserving the best parts of South Dakota as parks and preserves. If it's a slow day, look him up on Wikipedia.

Wall Drug

As for Crazy Horse, the carving is again quite visible from a distance as you drive up. Again, an effort is made to conceal the actual charge of admission: $10 per person, or $27 for a car. No thanks. Maybe we will come back when it is finished, if it is in our lifetime. The final sculpture will have Crazy Horse on his steed, pointing to the horizon, with hair flowing behind him. Right now it is another face much like on Rushmore. I suppose the entry fee is more justifiable because this is a work in progress and is privately funded, including from admissions. I just was not feeling the love.

Spearfish Canyon. Does not do it justice

The Gash

Just a few more notes: we drove the length of Spearfish Canyon (another scenic byway) into Deadwood and Lead. This canyon is one of the most impressive sights of our whole trip, yet receives not that much advance hype in all the literature. Slighty rotten, tan-toned cliffs and pinnacles tower over the Spearfish River, which rushes and bubbles along but looks far too diminutive to have done all the carving that surrounds you. The Canyon is unique because, although there are quite a few exposed rock formations, the entire canyon is covered with pine forest, even at the higher points, where the trees are more like an accent than a carpet. This road was anything but crowded. Deadwood is a former mining town which has reinvented itself as a center for casino gambling. Even with this noble new purpose, the town is low key, and the largest casino would barely be noticed in a small city in Nevada. It's a historic Old West city and is loaded with buildings more than 100 years old. But for us it was a drive-through. We proceeded on to its sister city, Lead. The road climbs a hill into the center of town; on the right side is a sheer cliff with a fence. At one place there's a "free observation deck;" this turned out to put you right at the edge of an immense open pit mine, the Homestake, which yielded gold for decades but finally shut down in the '60s. The name came about because it was said that a man could earn enough to buy a home. Get rich quick! This is a cavernous gash in the ground, and the spoils of mining have been deposited in the hills that surround it. The scale is hard to comprehend. After this mind-boggling view the road to Spearfish was strictly ordinary, as is the town. It's a good place for a motel and solid if uninspiring food. It is also the jumping off point for our next leg, through Devil's Tower (think 'Close Encounters') and Cody, Wyoming. At about 350 to 400 miles a day, we're making our way slowly home. Today the mighty Versa will cross 8,000 miles of driving, so we're compressing nearly a year of normal driving into less than a month, and over a week of that time was spent sitting still with various friends. It will feel good to step out of the car for the last time and turn it back to Mr. Hertz, but still, it has been a pleasure.

farms and flowers, two lane driving

Today we drove from Madison, WI to St.Paul, Minnosota --- which I always like to pronounce as:  Mee-ne-so-ta, with the emphasis on the MEE.  JD and I realized that, while we lived in Madison for a number of years, we never traveled that far afield in Wisconsin. He did a bit of touring with his band, The Tayles, but I barely ventured outside of a square mile or two from the campus.  You know how it is when you are an impoverished college student or musician . . . not much mobility. So today we got to travel through Wisconsin as much as, or in fact much more then we ever did all those years ago.

Before I move on from Madison, though . . . it was pretty mind-blowing to return to that place where so much happened for us. After 42 years.  And it looked so different, yet at once so much the same. A veritable mountain of memories were clicking off in my brain . . . starting with the names of the streets and culminating in the stirring up of old feelings. It might have been too much to bear, but it was tempered, as much of this trip has been, by the searing heat.  We both feel slightly drugged all the time. Between the road numbness and the discomfort of the sweltering atmosphere, our reactions are a bit dumbed down. In this case --- revisiting that time in my life ---- dumbing down had an upside. It softened the recall of youthful angst that characterized much of the college years.

The Wisconsin farmland was lovely. The profusion of wild flowers was downright amazing. It is hard to capture the blanket-like floral expanses that we saw by the roadside. The farms were so different from the beleaguered establishments we passed by in upstate New York.  People had nice-looking spreads that were well maintained. We tried to drop in on the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff that is set in this countryside around Taliesin near Spring Green, Wisconsin, but we didn't have time for a minimum of two hours of touring, so that was a bit unsatisfying. We continued on, following Wisconsin's Great River Road, first along  the course of the Wisconsin River and then north. following the Mississippi, up to the Twin Cities. We did all two-lane driving today. The roads were wonderful, winding through hilly countryside with spectacular views of the river, once from a bluff high over the water, in Alma (thanks to JD's sister Susan!) We had a couple of bald eagle sightings and found out later that there is a preserve for them near where we were driving. I did miss our R32 a few times, since the passing power of the Versa is not too impressive and its road stability is somewhat lacking, but considering its other virtues ---  economy and a quiet ride ---- it held its own. It requires a bit more thinking ahead (read: time to accelerate) and a bit more muscle on the wheel to hold it steady at high speeds, but one could say that is all part of the challenge of driving.

Andrea

Sedimental Journey

Today we got a shockingly early start on our way out of Detroit, thanks to United Airlines. They managed to mangle our daughter Sophie’s flights so badly last night that it would likely have resulted in an overnight stay in the Denver airport (no hotel as compensation, because it was ‘weather related’ and not ‘mechanical problem.’) So she chose instead to come back to Sarah Rose’s for one more night that ended abruptly with multiple alarms sounding off at 4:20AM. This greased the way for a rapid reload of the thus far trustworthy Versa (not wise to leave stuff in the car in Detroit as a general practice) and we headed out to Detroit Wayne Airport by 4:45. After dropping Sophie off, there was little point in retracing the 22 miles from the airport back to Rosie’s house, so we continued on in light fog towards Chicago and a brief rendezvous with Andrea’s second cousin Marsha.

We shared a snack at XOCO, a torta, coffee and pastry bar started by Rick Bayless, who now has three establishments including the famous Frontera Grill on the corner of Illinois and Clark streets in the North River area of downtown Chicago. Other than a predilection for high concentrations of salt, the food was quite delicious. After a quick four-sided perusal of Millenium Park and the infamous Bean (all by car thanks to the 'dome of heat' they talk about here on the weather) we headed out to Lake Shore Drive and turned north. The combination of waves of substantial apartment buildings on one side of the drive, and the seemingly endless expanse of lake and sandy beaches on the other stretched on almost endlessly. Breaking away from the shore, we turned north, slid past elegant Evanston mansions, and got in our hour in Milwaukee (including a drive-by of their art museum, with striking nautical architecture that suggests either a sailing ship, a whale, or a bit of both,) and a quick pass through their lake front, which was equalled Chicago's in loveliness. Lunch was at a merely OK deli on the north side of Milwaukee. Since as usual we needed to cover several hundreds of miles, our visits to these two culture-rich cities (especially Chicago) were the height of superficiality. But such are the trade-offs in an enormous and ambitious nation-spanning round trip. Our next destination was Madison, Wisconsin, and we pulled in on a sultry afternoon with the temperature hovering around 95 degrees and the humidity rising. I need not dwell upon the joy Andrea experienced from the weather.

Der Rathskeller

A Piece of Old Madison

Madison holds particular significance for the two of us, since it is where we met, and also where we got married nearly 42 years ago. This was our first visit back in all those decades, and it was eye opening; actually, more like shocking. We retraced the route to our haunts, including apartments and houses we had lived in, and tried to figure out where all the old stores and restaurants had gone. Remarkably, the apartment we first lived in, and the house where Andrea was living when we met are both still standing, but that is the exception in this dynamic city. A large part of Madison has been swallowed up and covered with an enormous array of substantial university buildings, in nearly every direction. Areas that used to be filled with old houses now sport multi-story rental apartments, and it seems that every specialty now deserves its own edifice. It was almost humorous to see some of the original modest buildings, which now seem to be kept around to lend an air of authenticity and to suggest a link to the long history of the school. Walking around the city made me feel like an old dog going to mark his usual spots, except all the hydrants had been removed.

Lake Mendota
 from the Rathskeller Patio

It was humbling to think of all the changes that have taken place. When you leave a place and don’t return for quite some time, your memories are freeze-dried and suspended in time. It was almost like stepping out of a time machine, into a world that is vaguely familiar yet changed in almost every respect. Looking at all the young faces made me think that we had been completely and very effectively replaced. And there was nothing to say that a current student’s experience of the University, in all its glorious hugeness, and of the city with all its manifold updates, is any less valid than our good old memories. A comforting piece of continuity could be found in Der Rathskeller, part of the student union, that’s a pseudo beer hall in the German tradition. It remains dark and has the same heavy varnished wooden chairs that were there decades ago. The outdoor patio is a delightful place to sit and eat lunch, and although it has been enhanced a bit with an outdoor grill and a set of beer taps, the scene was a replay of our time there. In fact the entire student union was largely the same as we had left it, which may or may not be a good thing, but we liked it. Dinner was at Gino’s Pizza, which was established in 1964, just a few years before we came upon the scene. We went there not because of critical acclaim, but rather because it is the last restaurant remaining from our times in Madison. The pizza was . . .well, it was the same old pizza that we ate back then; the flavors were bright, the tomato sauce snappy, the green peppers crisp, and the sausage redolent with herbs and spices. But I think what I was really savoring was the connection to the same experience, in the same milieu, across the span of time.

Trying on Shoes, Ann Arbor

House Made Bread
Zingerman's Deli, Ann Arbor

In a Tavern, Ann Arbor

One final thought about universities. We have just visited both Madison and Ann Arbor, the home of University of Michigan. In both cases we were blown away by the immensity of these teaching establishments, in the size and scope of the buildings they occupy, in the vast array of specialty subects they cover, and the sheer expanse of the territory they fill. Our higher education institutions are impressive indeed, and they’ve obviously become a huge business. But I have to wonder about the contrast with the sometimes shoddy, oft-neglected schools that are supposed to prepare students for this upper tier of instruction. It would seem that without improvement in ‘lower education,’ the fate of higher education will be to teach the literate classes of other nations (in addition to the elite sector of our society.) While this is a noble enterprise, it does little to advance the idea of education for all, nor the concept that the key to improvement of a society is to educate and elevate its people. I found myself wondering if what I was seeing was simply the result of the Student Loan Program - - making easy money available for higher education, and fostering the rampant growth. Too bad some of that money could not find its way to the lower grades.

Hot town, summer in the city

The brunch spread

We are here in Detroit --- a strangely bucolic experience, considering we all think of Detroit as an inner-city urban blight. In the neighborhood where Rosie and JR live, it is quite quiet and peaceful and there is a lot of greenery and open space. A certain number of houses have been taken down, leaving many open lots that are grown over in the summer months with much greenery and in some cases, gardens. R & JR have put in a really impressive veggie garden in their back yard. Unlike her parents, Rosie seems to have the proverbial green thumb. They have a bounty of stuff growing out there. We are enjoying a rare gathering of part of our tiny tribe. My brother and his family are here and Sophie flew in, too. Today is the "wedding" bbq in the backyard.

Part of the Garden

So our trip has bogged down for a few days while we do the family thing, but then the road will be calling us back. On Tuesday we head west,  first to Madison (returning for the first time, since we met and married there 42 years ago), on to Minneapolis (called "Minnie" by Sophie, who visits there frequently for business), and then to the Badlands -- one of the raison d'etre of this trip. I just have to vent a bit about the f------- weather back here. Explains a lot about why once we moved to California, we never returned to the midwest or the east. It is HOT. Not to mention it is HUMID. We are big babies and complain about it all the time. Choosing summer to do this trip was perhaps not the wisest decision for us. Bring on the springs, bring on the falls, and even bring on the winters.... but keep those damn summers with the sunshine and the sweat. I would be happy to never have to endure another one here.

     Andrea

Our Trail of Two Cities

One way you can tell that you’ve been on the road for a while: the names of cities start repeating themselves. Our day started in Portland, Maine and we started this trip in Portland, Oregon. We sailed across Lake Champlain from Burlington, Vermont, but also have visited Burlington, North Carolina. And so it goes. Maybe there’s just a shortage of good city names, but we’ve already been through two Berlins, and the list expands daily. So a repetition of city names is as predictable as the recurring carpet of big-box and national-chain stores ringing every metropolis.

Portland was a refreshing stop along the way, but we ditched our plan to spend two days there. For one thing, we discovered the worst motel we’ve stayed in for years, the Howard Johnson. Trouble should have suggested itself right at check-in, where we learned that although we were in a non-smoking wing, smoking was indeed allowed in the lobby and in many of the rooms. That would not have surprised us had we noted the numerous semi tractors (the front part of trucks) that built up over the evening in the parking lot. Oh great. A truckers’ hotel! How bad was it? The mediocrity of this place can best be exemplified by the quality of the paper cups. Once you put something into one, you had about one minute to drink it; after this time your beverage began to slowly seep out through the seams! It was my fondest desire to fill a couple of these up and leave them on the check-in counter, but this potential prank remained merely a vengeful fantasy. Suffice it to say that HoJo hotels have a prominent place, right at the top, of the “No Stay” list.

We did have a lovely dining experience that evening in the old port. The city is a very industrial, working port with a lot of energy expended on the export of seafood. There also appear to be a smattering of hi-tech startup companies, and with the presence of a new and quite immense Whole Foods and a thoroughly modern Trader Joe’s, the condo boom surely is not far off. Vintage brick buildings and warehouses have been repurposed into attractive shops, breweries, restaurants and offices, and some of the wharfs have been reimagined as the bases for condos that jut into the harbor. J’s Oysters, located on a pier, delivered a great meal at a very reasonable price, starting with six oysters for $6.75. These, we learned, came from Chesapeake Bay, the reason being that Maine oysters are quite small, and are not what most people expect to see on their plate. They were incredibly fresh (apparently they go through over 1,000 of these a day.) I indulged in a steamed lobster dinner, which was described as “soft shell.” That meant something to me, having wrestled to separate the meat of Andrea’s lobster the previous night in Gloucester from the rock-hard shell. This must have something to do with the molting cycle; at any rate, rest assured that soft shell is the way to go. This also came with a passel of steamed clams that were outstanding and stole the show from the lobster. We dined outside under a canopy, and had an unbroken view of the harbor lights and a nearby floating restaurant. Portland ME seems like a city in development (Hampton Inns is putting up a substantial hotel right near the port, and I am sure more will follow.)

Andrea had dropped the Rochester, NY stay out of our trip and decided to substitute Lake Placid instead. This turned out to be a stroke of genius; after a rather jostling start on I-95 and a series of toll booths, we ended up on I-89 and streaked through the glorious emptiness and vastness of the New Hampshire and Vermont countryside, populated mostly by trees. The Green Mountains loomed up along the way, and the views migrated from merely lovely to spectacular as we sprinted towards Burlington. This town is dominated by the University of Vermont, as evidenced by a half dozen pizza places on the main drag, but we headed right to the Lake Champlain Ferry. After a wait of about 45 minutes (we sipped on a beer and a strange Bloody Mary with dehydrated garlic specks in it,) the  modest-sized, open-deck ferry pulled in and unloaded. We drove on and the boat departed, about half full. When we boarded the weather was muggy, sunny and hot, but storm clouds loomed over the lake; by the midpoint it started to rain lightly, and then gained intensity. We saw lightning strikes in the distance over the New York mountains, and had to retreat to our car for the latter half of the cruise. About an hour later our car was disgorged into the foothills of the Adirondacks.

What followed was a shockingly scenic drive that we had not anticipated. The route followed the Ausable River (originally known as the Au Sable.) It twists and flows across rocky terrain, resulting in spectacular formations (Ausable Gorge,) numerous falls and scenic vistas at every turn. It is apparently quite an angler’s paradise as well. I found myself pulling over every few miles for another photo, some of which are shown here. Keeseville is the home of the Adirondack Architectural Heritage group, and they are housed in a historic building surrounded by many others. The river runs right through the town and produces some spectacular rapids. The Hollywood Theater exemplifies the “frozen in time” look of the place. It’s right off the NY Thruway, so drop in if you are ever flying through. The pleasure of this drive only increased as we passed through Wilmington and beneath Whiteface Mountain, a substantial mountain with multiple ski runs. This town is full of resorts and quasi-rustic motels that seemed quite well maintained; if I return to this area I would likely avail myself of their attractions. The only strange thing about the route is the near-complete lack of any place to stop and look over the river and its environs. This speaks to a complete lack of imagination on the part of New York Lake Placid itself seems more like an Alpine village than a piece of Americana. We walked along the edge of Mirror Lake and then up and down most of the main drag, lined with restaurants and shops. We even bought a tchotchke (photo to follow.) Dinner was at Lake Placid Pub and Brewery, a funky establishment on a side street. The food and brew were both excellent, which can not always be said about pubs, especially when it comes to the dining fare.

What was not so nice were the screaming kids. This lead me to think about their behavior; I reached the conclusion that the youngsters were merely imitating their elders. Bring a kid into a restaurant with chaotic noise and music pounding away, and their inclination will be to do what most of us do, which is to raise our voices to be heard. I decided that it is a bit sadistic to bring a child into this setting and then expect them to ‘behave.’ Given that the service was languid, the experience was drawn out, and until the food arrived and little mouths were stuffed, the shrieks and screams were periodically emitted. Fortunately the feeding calmed them down; you’d think we’d hate the place, but the opposite is true. And this is the best beer I’ve had since leaving “the real” Portland!

Sun of a Beach

on the porch at the cottage

It's time to end our radio silence after several days of kicking back at "the Beach." We're now parked in Gloucester, Massachusetts at the summer cottage of Andrea's childhood-and-ever-since friend Ronni. She inherited it from her parents Joe and Ruth. Joe Solman was a painter and graphic artist of note (if you've been in our place in Portland you've seen a tiny portion of his work, including a portrait of Andrea's mother Marie.) This cottage, along with other locales in Gloucester and Rockport produced inspiration and subject matter for many of his later creations.  It is ever-so-cooler here, but hardly shiver-inducing, with highs in the eighties and lows in the 60's. This is a few degrees below what we experienced in Bethany Beach, Delaware. I can hear all you sun lovers saying, "Get over it, it is called SUMMER." And so it is, so I will stop complaining about the high humidity that blankets you with a microfilm of ooze at all times, and the sun, Mean Mister Sun, who top-broils your arms and neck in a flash. I think that living in Portland, OR has permanently lowered my heat tolerance, so nearly every place else feels too hot to be optimum. I hold out hope for Portland Maine.

cocktail sauce. So elusive!

One thing we did do in Bethany Beach and environs was to eat (I am sure this comes as a great surprise.) Two meals in a single day combined to provide us with one of the most unusual back-to-back eating experiences possible. Lunch was at a new place called Just Hooked, and both the menu and the setting were quite promising, with fresh seafood and salads, very moderate pricing and comfortable, well-spaced seating. Our server introduced herself as Amy, and promptly spilled a tray of rather large, icy water glasses all over the table. Other than a momentary threat to an iPhone, all was well, and we were reseated at a nicer, round table by the windows. Amy returned and this time successfully furnished the ensemble with ice cold waters. We by now had enough time to peruse the selections; several of us ordered the crab cake sandwich, which comes on a brioche roll baked in house as well as slaw and garlic chips (also all house made,) and "is served with tartar sauce, cocktail sauce and ketchup." I quote. Very attractive, fresh plates came out in a timely way, and all was well except for . . . the lack of cocktail sauce. We pointed this out to one of the several people who came up to ask if everything was OK, and she said she'd bring it right out. Nothing. No result. This went on and on; someone would walk up, and we'd say, where's the cocktail sauce? The story slowly evolved. They are making a new batch, would normally have been done in the morning but we were slammed last night. Ok, could you just bring us a little bit? Oh no, we have to make it for the whole house. This finally evolved into cold crab cakes sitting in front of four of us, and after yet another delay we received a promised visit from the manager. He was a nice enough man, but his management style consisted of a string of apologies, another story about why the cocktail sauce was not there, and an assurance that it would indeed soon appear. About 35 minutes after the food hit the table, the oft-requested and continually-promised cocktail sauce arrived. And oddly enough, it was, we all agreed, some of the best cocktail sauce ever. Maybe it was the long wait, or perhaps the culinary skill of the kitchen, which despite the sauce issue, had produced some delicious food. We gulped down our room-temp food, and when prompted for coffee or dessert, asked for the check instead. At this point the manager instructed the server to bring out a full tray of desserts, all six on the menu, all made in house except for some excellent ice cream from a local producer. A unique Key Lime Pie; a Lemon tart; chocolate fudge; two kinds of ice cream; warm blueberry cobbler. It was a delightful surprise and put a nice cap on an otherwise weird dining experience.

J.D.'s Sisters at the Grove. Note rain.

This is how it looked after power failure . . .

This turned out to be just the prologue for dinner. Our party of eight motored out to the near countryside to the Grove Market restaurant. I probably should not even mention this place because it is nearly impossible to ever get a reservation. It is tiny; it is well liked by locals; it has a somewhat arbitrary policy of accepting reservations a couple of weeks in advance if it fits in with their very limited seating. It also does not have a printed menu, nor will you find everything on a chalkboard. And even when the menu is recited to you in exquisite detail, course by course, one thing you will not hear mentioned is a price. Normally this is a cue to run as rapidly as you can to the nearest exit before your nest egg is permanently drained. But we had a general idea that the meal should end up at around $50 a person, and as each course was laid out the price seemed a non-issue. Every dish at this place was prepared in a tiny kitchen that divided the two seating areas, each with just a few tables; the variety of both appetizers and main courses was astounding (Grouper on skewers; smoked fish platter made in-house; salad with local beets; lobster bisque with actual lobster in it were the appetizers.) But this experience went beyond the food; just after the main courses hit the table, the intensity of the showers that had begun with our drive out to the restaurant stepped up to a new, violent level; lightning spewed, thunder rumbled, and after a few perfunctory flickers, the lights failed. "Happens all the time," said the staff, who rapidly lit the tables with tea lamps and proceeded as if this were the most normal thing in the world. The meal was completed with assistance from the Flashlight program on the iPhone and some shining of non-virtual flashlights by the staff at critical moments. We passed on dessert, which made the server happy, because she said she had no idea where anything was in the walk-in. Two bottles of wine, six exquisite main courses, and four appetizers later, we were out the door for $55 each. Thus ended the day of strange meals.

Click and check out his eyes!

Ocean City Boardwalk

Other activities included a longish walk on a soupy, sunny day on the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD, and several visits to the beach, my favorite of which was, of course, after sunset. The boardwalk gives one hope for the American economy; somehow the hordes continue to pump money into businesses that sell not one necessity, and there are surprisingly few vacancies along the way. The serene, nearly empty beach near South Bethany shows that Nature is still out there, patiently waiting for us to pause in our destructiveness so she can rebuild herself anew.

We still have a couple more days here in Gloucester before we head for Portland, ME and then begin the trek westward. More to come

Getting familiar

Hello Everyone

The compulsion to blog has dissipated a bit now that we have landed for a few days on the DelMarVa peninsula.  We don't feel quite as alone as we did when we were wandering the byways of this huge country.   Both of JD's sisters have places here at the beach.  Susan has a condo in Ocean City that has a fantastic view of the ocean where dolphins can often be seen frolicking in the waves.  Debra has a sweet little cottage on the bay side, in So. Bethany Beach,  where you can watch the waters lapping at the shore. It feels wonderful to not have pedal to the metal for a few days and get to relax in real housing instead of the endless motels. We get to do this for a stretch of days now.  We are here until Sunday and then we are going up the east coast to stay with my old friend Ronni and her husband John,  at their summer home in Gloucester, Mass, also for a few days.  

I love how where we are now is called the DelMarVa Peninsula. This stretch of the coast is comprised of the three states:  Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.  As you go up and down through the various towns, you go through the state lines. As a matter of fact, although only living a few miles apart, the sisters are in two different states.

We are partaking of the local fare, here. Crab cakes. corn, spiced shrimp. All good things. We will be visiting the tacky and colorful boardwalks of Ocean City and perhaps Rehobeth Beach. My brother and his wife have joined us so we are having a mini-reunion of all the siblings. We have never done this before and it is great fun.  We are now the older generation, we have to stick together. 

     Andrea

Coastal

Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge

Washington Baum Bridge

Finally we reached the coast. And not just any coast. A tiny fragment of land lying out, rather audaciously, in the Atlantic ocean. You gain access to the Outer Banks across a series of cement ribbons that stretch across river inlets and bays and connect you to this sand spit. The same audacious place where the Wright Brothers took their leap of faith. It feels so much better to be here. I can't really explain it… but being on the edges of the continent has this calming effet on me. Being all bunched up in the South was just not feeling right.

North Carolina Beach Dining . . .

. . .versus typical inland stuff

Motels: Sort of a crap shoot. There we were… months ago… booking places to stay. Using various methods, none of which are really reliable, to select a spot. Now here we are, in Kill Devil Hill, and we got a gem. A slightly run down, but not seedy, place on the ocean's rim. Kind of old fashioned fifties with a view of the water. The smell here is an amalgam. As soon as we started getting oceanward, I noticed this odd, burnt smell in the air. In my usual paranoid reaction, I thought it was our baby Versa burning up, but the odor was much more malodorous and organic then what a car might emit. When we checked in at our wonderful abode by the sea, I asked the desk person what was going on, and she said there has been an ongoing peat bog fire. It started, months ago, on the surface, and was a wild fire at first, but that was extinguished; yet the underlying peat continues to smolder. The smell is rather pervasive, but not totally unpleasant. Perhaps they will need a hurricane to put it out, it but a hurricane here would be not so good. The land does not rise much over the water.

So --- we are happily checked into our little bed for the night. We found a local seafood establishment with the unappealing name of "Awful Arthur's" down the road where we managed to snag some seats at the bar and got to eat very yummy seafood, including grilled locally caught tuna, spiced shrimp, oysters, steamed clams and a crab cake. And, oh yes, some hush puppies and a couple of fat martinis. We enjoyed the casual beach culture that consists of families with way too many children, callow youth, and romancing couples. The bar tender, Milo, was a real pro. Sitting at the bar can be quite fun as long as you can remain perched upon your stool.

Okay -- tomorrow we head to the bosom of our family. We will be staying with JD's sisters who each have a place on the DelMarVa Peninsula and my brother and his wife will come down form Brooklyn to stay as well. It will be s sibling reunion. We are all Jews with not that many relatives, so for the next few days we will rally our meager tribe in one place and eat vast quantities of traif. If we don't write again for a few days, don't worry, but now we are pretty much addicted to pouring our thoughts out and will probably continue to regale you with our ongoing antics.

Andrea

Closed

I suppose the first question to answer is why we failed to blog from Nashville. The answer is two-fold: first, not all that much of interest transpired between Hot Springs Arkansas and Nashville Tennessee (I am just seeing if I get all the double letters right, putting that elementary school education to use - - I am sure you all would be perfectly happy with two-letter state abbreviations.) The second reason is that we were simply trashed, bone-tired and exhausted from long-distance travel. And Nashville made it pretty easy for us to settle into a minimal activity pattern - - after hours of searching for an intelligent place to eat, we reached the conclusion that Nashville, while undoubtedly a fantastic place to discover up and coming talent in a club, is not a particularly evolved food city. So taking the easy way out and walking less than two blocks to the nearby brew pub made sense, especially after checking out the seedy brew pub just one block away, which allows smoking in most of its premises. For our Portland friends, let me just state immediately that our beer industry has nothing to fear from the burgeoning brewpub industry in the Southeast, other than the lack of taste by their clientele. I am not saying that the beer is bad; rather it simply lacks the intensity and subtlety of flavor developed by our brewmasters, perhaps because in the Northwest they have access to a panoply of unique hops and malts to work with. Or maybe we just like our beers with a bit more kick (this is the land, after all, where ‘beer selection’ often amounts to the following list: Bud, Bud Lite, Coors, Coors Lite.)

One of the Hot Springs Bath Houses

Our exhaustion in Nashville started with the trip between Oklahoma City and Hot Springs. Usually moving over to the two lane roads is an enhancement; almost anything is better than the numbness brought on by continuous hours of interstate driving. However, having come from the previously reported enrapturing scenery of Utah, New Mexico and, in part, Arizona, we have borne witness to a rapid decline in natural beauty and stop-worthy sites since leaving Santa Fe. We chose to follow Arkansas Scenic Byway Route  7, touted as one of the most scenic drives in America. Meh. Lots of rolling green hills, which, granted, were more interesting than the not so rolling terrain of Oklahoma. Maybe drive it in the Fall. Maybe it is the best Arkansas can do, but it was lacking by our now highly-refined standards for scenery.

Really Worthwhile BBQ in Memphis

Travel from Hot Springs to Memphis TN, on the way to Nashville, held promise. Little Rock has a very groovy sector called the River Market, which has situated interesting shops, a farmers’ market, restaurants and businesses in old buildings lining the riverfront. It sounded great and fully worthy of a stop. Alas, it was Sunday, and this was the first but not the last place we underestimated the hegemony of businesses in the South when it comes to being closed on the Lord’s Day. The entire market was empty and the lights were out. This did allow us an opportunity to drive by the front of the Clinton Presidential Library, an impressive modern building with a similar lack of activity. The final insult was that our GPS program on the iPhone (more on that in another blog) refused to understand the highway system of Little Rock, so badly that in the end we relied on our eyes and dead reckoning to get us back on the road to Memphis. There things became even more frustrating. First we decided to at least get a glimpse of Graceland. Big, big mistake, not so much because of the zoo scene just to get into it, but rather because it is way the hell out of Memphis on the southwest side, and was a huge time sink.  Our preselected Barbeque Joint turned out to be located equally far away, now in the southeast quadrant of outer Memphis, smack in the middle of an industrial and trucking neighborhood. It was Sunday. Need I say more? CLOSED, and another time sink! This then required triage using the smartphone, although it might have been smarter to just use the telephone and figure out if places were open to begin with; but Andrea cleverly came up with an alternative within minutes and accurately guided us through the deserted neighborhoods and avenues of Memphis (we did pass Sun Records which looked suitably vintage and neon-signed from outside, but did not feel the need for the tour.) The Barbeque Shop did not disappoint, with $4.95 sandwiches redolent with chopped pork or brisket, topped with superior cole slaw and served on Texas Toast or a bun (“Try the Texas Toast, honey, it’s really good” advised the waitress in her finest Tennessee drawl. And so we did. And all was right in the world.) Next we discovered that Beale Street might be interesting for entertainment late at night, but it was the middle of the day, so it mostly appeared to be a place where you could not park on the street, and men were gesticulating energetically trying to get you to park in their $10 lot for the privilege of strolling down a famed avenue where it was Sunday and . . . everything was closed. This rated a U-turn and a request to our GPS to find us the most direct route out of downtown Memphis and back onto the interstate. Alas, Mr. GPS was not up to the task, but by cleverly ignoring it at strategic points and using common sense, we were back on the way to Nashville.

So you could see why, hundreds of miles and many hours later, we were beat, and had little more than a randomly discovered sandwich to show for our day’s travail. Notice the close similarity between “travail” and “travel;” it proves that it can be hard work to vacation.

Sea of Shining White Faces: Cracker Barrel Site

This day began hopefully, with a visit to our second Cracker Barrel restaurant (and Old Country Store,) a huge chain that has a pervasive presence throughout the South and much of the Southwest, mostly at interstate highway interchanges. Since Andrea is officially dieting and I am working on providing positive support, we’ve found that we can spend exactly $6.99 plus tip and tax and feed both of us more than adequately. For this princely sum Cracker Barrel will supply you with two eggs, two pieces of sausage or bacon, a big serving of vanilla lo-fat yogurt loaded with fresh fruit, a tasty and sizeable blueberry muffin, and a little side of house-made granola to add to the yogurt. Andrea and I just divide it up - - eggs and meat for me, plus ½ the muffin; the rest for her. If “Cracker Barrel” sounds like a name that might not appeal to people of color, that might be true. I would have to say that the two we have visited had the most homogeneous white-skinned clientele I’ve ever encountered. This screen shot from their web site pretty well tells the story. But - - they do get credit for making their food in house at each location; using good ingredients; and doing it all with good service and low prices. Not bad for road food. Thanks, Elinor and Rex for that little tip.

Somewhat of a View

Army Corps of Engineers, Hard at Work

Torrential Rain on Blue Ridge

We decided to spice up the trip between Nashville and Asheville with some two-lane driving. The idea was to drop down off the interstate on some scenic roads and then end up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, easily one of the finest roads in the U.S. when it comes to car touring. Our path took us down Tennessee 129 and North Carolina 28, on advice from another friend (Donald.) Turns out these are two of the premier motorcycle roads in the country, and they live up to the hype. Lots of elevation gain; loads of switchbacks, and spectacular runs along, across and above rivers and lakes created by the Tennessee Valley Authority and their towering dams, visible at several points along the way. Traffic was not an issue, yet we were eating up quite a bit of time and it was turning into yet another too-long driving day (made worse by crossing into the Eastern time zone and losing another hour,) but I was determined to take in at least 50 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and after quite a schlep we intersected it for the final run to Asheville. Andrea happened to be driving, and as we turned to go up the ramp to the Parkway, the skies, which had gone from partly cloudy to drizzle and periodic moments of rain, let loose with a torrential waterfall, that went on to the point that visibility was near zero with the wipers beating as frantically as possible. Andrea pulled over and we changed places, and sat for a couple of minutes. Conditions improved, so I took off on the Parkway. The road is quite well marked and, although full of curves, can generally be negotiated at around 45 MPH. In good conditions. We were not so lucky; the torrents returned periodically, followed by moments when it seemed the skies would clear. We’d go to an overlook, only to be thwarted by fog rising from the valleys, veiling the distant mountains and valleys. Finally, near Asheville, we were treated to somewhat clearer vistas, but over all the feeling was one of disappointment, and much energy spent to little avail. 

Contrasting Architectural Styles in Asheville's Downtown

I’ve rambled far too long and at too great a length about these days, but let me quickly finish with a visit to downtown Asheville. This is a town with many brewpubs and ambitious and creative restaurants, plus brunch spots and loads of cute shops. We found a great sounding place called Posana Café. The meal was excellent (especially Andrea’s seared scallops with grits and unique saucing and spicing.) Afterwards we took a stroll and noticed a crowd gathering at a viewing point for fireworks. Andrea had researched this subject, and learned that the city had moved their event to Sunday the 3^rd because the venue was not available today, on the 4^th. But nobody had shared that with the crowd. We were told that the fireworks should start at 9:30PM, so we hung out with the audience for about 20 minutes. By 9:45 we realized that she was right; there was no event, so we walked away. I am not sure at what point the crowd dispersed, or whether by some miracle fireworks happened, because we were beating our way back to our refuge for the night (as we glanced over our shoulder on the way out of town . . .  nada.) Yet another example of things being closed, or the two of us being hopelessly out of sync with the rhythm of life in these parts. Tomorrow, on to the beach.