Happy New Year!

Hello, all ye faithful blogazzette followers! We wish you all a very Happy New Year, and to add a wistful note, we’re still not fully accustomed to the static existence of living in one place and not moving along the road from day to day! But life does go on, and alas, that wonderful trip described in our blog is now a memory, or a series of memories, which the blog attempted to encapsulate. Just to make it easier for people to read, especially newcomers who didn’t come along for the ride in the first place, I’ve put together a PDF “Blogbook,” which upends the “last in, first out” format of the blog to give you first things first, in the logical chronological order. You could print this thing out, but be warned that it’s ~180 pages long if you do so. If you’re using your computer to view it, you should be able to just click on gallery links to see associated photos with each blog post. Here’s the link to Blogbook1.PDF, which is a large file, over 30MB in size. (Password is “john-jane”) Please e-mail me at <jareed@me.com> if you have any troubles? Thanks for viewing, and for following along, friends of the road!

California Bloggin…

Well, we’re back at home now, trip over. But still… It isn’t easy to interrupt that old adrenalin flow that courses through one’s veins with every new day of discovery on the road? But coming home into California hasn’t passed without incident, as you’ll see. We arose early on Thursday morning, jumped into the Prius, and enjoyed a seemingly short ride (the time change gave us an extra hour!) from just west of Phoenix over to Palm Desert, CA, our Thanksgiving date with Jane’s sister and brother-in-law. We figured by now that we had just about had it with museums, having seen myriads of them along the way. Even junkies can get saturated, right? So imagine our surprise, when we stopped in for gas at Chiriaco Summit on the way into the Coachella Valley (where Palm Desert, Palm Springs, etc. all lie), to see yet another museum, this one dedicated to General George S. Patton! Luckily for our schedule, it wasn’t open, but since they’d have a hard time hiding big tank-sized exhibits inside, I managed to snap a Patton Tank on exhibit:

A Patton Tank on exhibit at George S. Patton Museum, Chiriaco Summit, CA

After fill-up, we finally dismounted our faithful Prius in Palm Desert, and sat down to an end-of-trip toast right there at the dinner table:

Toasting the end of our trip at Thanksgiving in Palm Desert

Ahhh… And a nice dinner was had by all, for sure! And by the way, HAPPY THANKSGIVING to you blog followers, while we’re at it. Thanks for the fun support you’ve given us along the way for this trip, it’s made the experience even richer and more fulfilling than it would’ve otherwise turned out.

Jane’s brother lives over the San Jacinto Mountains in the town of Fallbrook, not far north of San Diego. In good weather, one can figure about 2-2.5 hours to journey over there. So we planned that trip for Saturday, and headed out in the morning, over Highway 74, the most direct route over the mountains. But… As we drove along, the overcast turned to rain, and the roadside signs started saying “Chains Required.” We didn’t have chains, but figured we could keep going anyway, right?

Heading up Hwy 74 at about 5,000 ft in the snow...

We trudged along a little further, but were soon repelled by the logic that it just plain wasn’t safe to go much further, what with narrower roads and higher altitudes ahead. So, we turned around, and on the way back down, I found some solace in the beautiful scenery unfolding down in the Coachella Valley:

A panorama of Coachella Valley, from Palm Springs to La Quinta, from Hwy 74

As you can maybe get a sense in the gallery, some of those desert scenes were absolutely breath-taking, comparable to many of the beautiful scenes we’ve encountered heretofore on our trip. But what the heck, I’ve gaped at a lot of beauty along the way, this left me agape as well. But be sure to take a full-screen view of that pano when you’re in the gallery, it’s kinda purty, I think.

Sunday morning, as more pious people were perhaps in Church, I instead went down to Living Desert off Portola Avenue, at the south end of town. I suppose you could say I was a Cheetah?Of course, if you had a face that only a mother could love (like that Turkey Vulture over there), you might find solace in my punful humor. I always think of these guys when I hear those luggage announcements on airplanes regarding “carrion” items?

Well, all good things must come to an end, as inevitably must this marvelous trip of ours. We had originally planned to spend Monday night with some old college friends from La Canada Flintridge (the longest city name in the U.S.), but as Jane and I were both feeling a bit puny from the cold I started, we opted instead to just visit them for lunch, and make our final goal, HOME, in Los Altos. So we did that, had a nice lunch, and headed off later than we should have to the west and north. La Canada Flintridge is just west of Pasadena; it seemed that the whole area had cleaned itself up for our visit. The air was as clean as I’ve ever seen it, and the local mountains seemed close enough to touch!

Mountains west of Pasadena: Santa Suzannas? Close enough to touch

We did indeed reach home around 9:30PM, for about the longest day’s drive of our entire trip. Now we’re regrouping, and coming to grips with local realities, incumbent upon our return. So I guess this is the last post of this blog, and again, I want to THANK YOU all for your interest, and hope that you’ve gotten some benefits from this thing called a blog. I know I’ve personally found it rewarding, and I’m sure we’ll both refer to the blog time after time just to recall our many experiences. See you around!

An Arizona Sampler…

When we entered Arizona on I-10, we continued on to Willcox, made arrangements for a night’s lodging, then headed south from there to the Chiriachua National Monument, high atop the Chiriachua Mountain range, at an altitude of ~9,000 ft. The Chiriachuas are a part of the old Chiriachua Apache Indian reservation, from days of yore. At different times of the year, they host many different species of rare birds and animals not easily found elsewhere in North America, for one example, the Elegant Trogon. But nary a bird did we see in our short visit. We did get to see some beautiful rock formations though, left behind by a volcanic eruption of 27 million years ago, I’m told.

Rock Formations as seen from Masai Point, Chiricahua National Monument

There are several more photos of different rock formations in our daily gallery; check them out? High mountain ranges such as the Chiriachuas are sometimes called “Sky Islands,” rising as they do from the desert floor, with the grassy desert floor acting as the “sea” from which they rise. This photo conveys a sense of the “island” feeling:

The Desert floor from high atop the Chiriachuas

And, driving along the road along the desert “sea” at dusk, I was struck with the subtle lighting of the area:

“Whistle me up a melody, whistle me back where I long to be, whistle me a tune that’ll carry me, to Tombstone Territory” (theme song  from old TV show “Tombstone”). As you might guess, next day we drove down to Tombstone Territory, and dined at the Nellie Cashman Restaurant, the oldest building in Tombstone, built in 1879, they said. Nellie was a very interesting character. If you read the literature on her, you get someone of the magnitude of Annie Oakley or the like, this woman did so many things in her life. For example, it’s said that she once led a party of six men with 1,500 pounds of provisions into the Frozen North to relieve a group of miners afflicted with scurvy in the Alaskan gold fields. She was Puritanical by nature; even though she owned a saloon, she hired a man to run it, and never went near it herself. As a matter of fact, we had a good and enjoyable lunch at the current Nellie Cashman’s Restaurant, complete with dessert of home-made pie.

As the sign above suggests, Tombstonians were well aware of the devious ways of Politicians; the Law was often interpreted and administered on a very local basis, and guns spoke louder than words. Of course, the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened in Tombstone, but not at the O.K. Corral. It occurred in a fifteen- to twenty-foot space between Fly’s Lodging House and photographic studio, and the MacDonald assay house west of it. By some good luck (and also by laying out the $$ for admission tickets), we were treated to an interesting re-enactment of this armed melee. Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp, and Doc Holliday fought Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, Billy Claiborne, Ike Clanton, and Billy Clanton. Within a few seconds, the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton were dead. (Billy was only 19) The Moral of the Story? Don’t mess with Wyatt Earp! (For the bloodthirsty, there are more snaps in the gallery)

We’d planned to do some more touring, but darn it, the driver (me) came down with a bronchial cold; so instead, we headed straight up to Tucson, had a nice meal, and roosted there for the night. Next day, we took Highway 79 up to Phoenix, so we could go visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West. Oddly, we came to a sign: “Tom Mix Historic Marker.” There was this monument out in the middle of nowhere, with a bullet-riddled galvanized horse atop, and a paper photo of the old-time Western star taped on the front. What was this about? So we got the photo, and I thought maybe I could read the plate from that, but it was illegible. Enter the Internet: This was the spot where Tom Mix died! A short Tom Mix bio: (January 6, 1880 – October 12, 1940) He was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features. He was Hollywood’s first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed.

The story I’d heard about Mix’s death (from my Dad) was that he was driving a fancy Cord automobile when the front axle froze up, causing him to crash. Uh-uh, it seems. My research says that Mix was driving along Hwy 79 at an excessive rate of speed. (It wasn’t clear whether or not he was sober) As he rounded a curve on two wheels, he saw a construction project in progress right in the road, and slammed on the brakes. Well, the Cord stopped so fast that a big metal suitcase in the back seat flew forward, hitting Tom on the head, and breaking his neck. When the car stopped, he stepped out of it, then quickly collapsed and died.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona

But we did get up to Phoenix and on to Scottsdale, where Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West is situated. This place is so integrated into the landscape that it isn’t easy to just snap a photo and say, “Look, there’s Taliesin West.” But Wright was in love with the landscape of this region, and took every measure to integrate the structures with the surrounding desert. He didn’t even use glass at first, more canvas and other natural materials struck his fancy. Taliesin West is still actively functioning as an accredited architectural school, an interesting place to visit. Several more photos from there abound in our gallery of the day; take another look!

Well, this ol’ blog has about had it. It’s almost three months old now, and about to start getting stagnant. Once we’re back home in a few days, I’ll frankly miss all the many adventures we’ve experienced over our drive around the U.S. One more post ought to about do it, don’t you think?

New Mexico, Over and Out…

The UFO Museum and Research Center, Roswell, NM

We spent Saturday night in Roswell; I was hoping to see for myself the UFO museum there – It was our first stop. As I saw it, the raison d’etre for the place is to basically document the reality of the existence of aliens as they have come to Earth, or made various mysterious appearances over the years. Roswell became the center of this when in 1947, an alien spacecraft (it’s said) crashed into the desert just north of the town. There were several witnesses to the event, but the Government quickly moved in to suppress any knowledge of it. All records kept by the G were highly classified, but I guess became de-classified over the intervening years. You’ll see in the gallery an excerpt from a classified scientific report originated by government scientists, describing two different strains of aliens, and speculating that they may have come from two different planets. Then there was that politician over there on the left; he wasn’t happy at all with what he saw!

OK, OK, I know the last blog entry left something dangling, so let’s deal with that right here and now! Remember I said how a traveling Doc had suggested something about a “Hurd” gallery that we might visit? So there we were, cruising along Hwy 70 westward through some really pretty country. At 70 MPH, it was easy to pass up the “Hurd Gallery” sign; but having seen it, I said, “Hey Jane, isn’t that the gallery that guy was talking about back in Ft. Stockton?” So we decided to drop in, took the next exit and looped down into the valley of San Patricio. We pulled up to the Gallery, and there wasn’t a soul around it. I looked closer at the sign; “Closed Sundays.” Shoot! So I took a couple of snaps of the place, and was about to get back in the car to go, when a pickup truck came down the driveway. The guy driving stopped, jumped out, and said “Hi, I’m Michael.” He asked me what we were doing. I explained we were just touring, had come the long way around the U.S. from California, had heard about this gallery, and would like to have seen it, if we hadn’t blown the schedule. “Well,” he said, “I can show you around, don’t want you coming all that distance without seeing it!”

To backtrack a little, I have to say that probably my favorite American artist is Andrew Wyeth; who was this guy driving the pickup? His name is Michael Hurd, and Andrew Wyeth was his uncle! Not only that, N.C. Wyeth was his granddad. Moreover, his father, Peter Hurd (who’d established the Hurd Gallery), and his mother, Henriette Wyeth Hurd, were both accomplished painters in their own right. Michael the son is carrying on the tradition.

Jane with Michael Hurd, grandson of N.C. Wyeth

Imagine visiting a gallery full of prints and paintings from your favorite painter and family? Really nice experience, to say the least. Not that I could afford to buy any of them (many 5-figure price tags on the walls!), nonetheless it was a great happenstance. A little later Michael’s lady Tiffany showed up with her little dog; you’ll see them in the gallery. She runs the biz, lets him do the art.

Pursuant to my earlier blog “mystery,” what should I call this series of events? Was it serendipity, blind luck, a Higher Being’s watchful eye, what do you think? We’re just happy that it happened!

After we left the Hurd, we drove on to see the Hubbard Museum of the American West, in Ruidoso Downs. Good collection of western artifacts.

Ride 'em Cowboys!

After leaving the Hubbard, we drove up to Cloudcroft, in the neighborhood of 9,000 feet up there. Beautiful little town; we climbed up to the tower of the Lodge at Cloudcroft, which you can see in the gallery, of all places? By this time I was getting a bit anxious about our remaining daylight hours, as our next destination was the White Sands National Monument. We did get there, but there was just barely enough Sun to light the dunes. Here’s a sunset pano I took:

Sunset over White Sands

I kinda liked this profile of a girl and her dog atop a dune, silhouetted against the fading sky:

Girl and dog on dune at White Sands

We spent the night in Las Cruces, along the I-10, and heading west, finally stopped for lunch and gas(oline) at Lordsburg, not far east of the Arizona border.  Judging from this sign, we were leaving New Mexico none too soon!Now we’re in Arizona just out of Tucson; the big trip is starting to wind down, it seems. We’ll spend tonight in the Phoenix area, then chug on over to Palm Desert, CA tomorrow just in time for Thanksgiving Dinner with Jane’s sister and brother-in-law. We’ll be in touch…

A funny thing happened on the way out of Texas?

Paisano Pete, Ft. Stockton's Roadrunner

As I said previously, Friday night was our last night in Texas, which we spent in a Quality Inn there in Ft. Stockton. Aside from the cheerful promise of Paisano Pete the Roadrunner shown above, on first running through Ft. Stockton early (me), then driving around town later (we), for a Saturday, the town seemed quite dead, almost bereft of any activity that we could discern. We did find the Annie Riggs Museum, with a lot of musty exhibits

Old bottles on display at Annie Riggs Museum from Comanche Springs

of artifacts from the Old West; some of these are shown in our gallery; take a look! Check also in the gallery for events of the semi-rainy Friday leading up to our stay in Ft. Stockton, from Austin on west.

But here’s the funny thing: As we were having breakfast at the Quality Inn, I struck up a chat with a fellow breakfaster, a retired anesthesiologist who was traveling to Florida for Thanksgiving. He was from New Mexico, which was where we were heading, specifically that day for Carlsbad Caverns. But he got to talking about other cool things we could do up there. I mentioned we would probably spend the night in Roswell, and he said, “Hey, if you’re heading west out of Roswell, you should stop at San Patricio and visit the Hurd Gallery there, if you like Wyeth and Hurd paintings?” This piqued our interest, but who knew if we’d ever get remotely near that place? Nice suggestion, but we get myriads of those. Now for you the reader, I’ll suspend discussion of this topic until the next blog, but remember, you’ll be tested!

Everything in Texas is big, including its rivers. The Pecos River is about 900 miles long. Though its origin is in eastern New Mexico, most of its length is contained within Texas. And by the way, did you know that Texas has its own Colorado River? Not the Grand Canyon one, this one is 800 miles long and entirely contained within the Lone Star State, even runs through Austin. (Just thought you’d like to know.) But anyway, on our way up to Carlsbad, we happened to spot the “Museum of the West Pecos” in Pecos. It’s a great museum, very well done and interesting in many ways. Four floors of goodies, all well-presented, and interesting. We spent altogether too much time there, but hey, what can a pair of museum junkies do? I got a kick out of the way old-time barbers must’ve also had to work as dentists?

There really were some quite interesting things there though, if you looked close enough. In our gallery, you’ll see a poem entitled “The Death of Long Hair,” which seems to be an original poetic rendition by one of the Indians or their descendants who participated in the Battle of Little Big Horn, AKA “Custer’s Last Stand.” George Custer, you see, was known to Indians as “Long Hair.” Look closely at that image in the gallery, it’s touching. To me, it speaks of a lot of respect that the writer held for the bravery of Custer and his men, all of whom died in that battle in 1876.I took a photo of this other contraption, that at first I thought was a primitive Electric Chair, you know, the Hot Seat? Jane put my mind straight in a hurry. This is what women used to have to endure to have permanent waves applied to their hair! Jane herself remembered undergoing this particular kind of torture machine as a young girl. Whew, glad to be a boy!

Pecos claims to be the site of the world’s first Rodeo. And, they have excellent “documentation” there at the Museum on the legend of Pecos Bill. You remember him? Among other accomplishments, Pecos once got so thirsty that he got a stick and dug the Rio Grande!

But the high point of the day? We found that 750 feet down from the surface at Carlsbad Caverns. I’d heard of this place all my life, seen photos of it before, but to experience it yourself, is just an awesome, other-worldly experience. Incredible scenes unfold before your eyes:

A scene from the "Big Room" at Carlsbad Caverns

The temperature “down there” is a constant 56 degrees F, all year round. When you reach the “Big Room” via the 750-foot elevator, you immediately start seeing scene after scene:

Another "Big Room" scene

And more:

And one more?

There are a few more images in today’s gallery. I don’t purport to be an expert on photographing scenes at these Caverns, but I would point out a few helpful things you might try if you’re thinking of visiting this magnificent place?

1.  Take a full-size tripod along. Lighting is artificial down there, and dim, by and large. Shutterspeeds can range from 1/2 second up to a few seconds, too long for hand-holding. My tripod was a small unit that could only be propped on the low retaining walls alongside the path, not as good as being able to set it up where you’re standing.

2.  Don’t rely on camera flash. The Caverns, unlit, would be pitch-black. Lighting artists over the years have established a lighting and back-lighting series of effects to bring out the depth and the beauty of the various stalactites and stalagmites. Flash kills that illusion, resulting in flat, uninteresting photos, IMO.

3.  A technical point: I think it would be best to shoot your photos, if possible, in RAW format, to get the best dynamic range from your images. I shot in JPG only, and later wished I’d shot in RAW.

4.  The Caverns are roughly 45 minutes from Carlsbad. Plan to arrive there early enough so that you can leave the place by about 3:30 PM. We actually stayed down for 1.5 hours, until 4:30, but the Ranger down there told us at 3:30 that they would be starting then to shut down the lighting systems. We begged, and she relented.

Carlsbad Caverns were discovered in 1902 by a ranch hand named Jim White. When he related what he’d found down there, his fellow ranch hands thought he was crazy! Jim persisted, hung on tenaciously to try to get someone to believe his story. Unbelievably, it was 20 years before he gained acceptance of his magical findings! If you get a chance, be sure to visit this astounding place. And stay with this blog to solve the mystery…

The Lone Star State’s “Hill Country”

Not having spent much time in Texas other than at business meetings in places like Dallas, Houston, and Austin, my impression was that Texas was just a pretty flat state. I remember standing and looking out the window from about the 40th story of a building in Dallas, and I couldn’t see a single hill anywhere! Well, Jane did the research on this disputable “fact,” so we decided to visit the Texas “Hill Country,” which begins somewhere in West Texas and stretches east to Austin. Many a city slicker has slapped leather at Hill Country dude ranches, (Bandera, the County Seat pictured in our gallery, claims to be the “Cowboy Capitol of the World.”) and Jane was especially taken with the strong German heritage of many of the region’s charming small towns. Fredericksburg, a good example of these qualities, sits in about the middle of this region, and we decided to stay there in a B&B for a couple of nights to give the Texas hills a good looking at. And what a look!

Cypress trees at the Rio Frios River, Garner State Park

We happened on Garner State Park, not far north of Uvalde, and there we found a magical combination of colors like the photo shown above. The river was shallow there, and the sunlight gave it an emerald-like sheen, which along with the majestic old Cypress trees along the banks, created some wonderful sensory moments for the eye and the camera. Just beautiful! There’s a panorama from there in our daily gallery, but I really liked the shot above the best.

You can see a hill in the shot above; actually, the hills of this region aren’t exactly like another Rocky Mountain range, or even Appalachians. But they are definitely hills, rolling, often covered with a Texas form of “color,” and can be pretty scenic when they want to be.

A Guadalupe River crossing

Driving through the Guadalupe River valley, we crossed it several times, as pictured above. We also found some pretty decent fall colors in the Lost Maples Preserve, shown there on the left. We took a little hike up the Sabinal River at Lost Maples, even had to cross some rocks, which have always been my nemesis, but managed to keep dry this time! You can see more of these experiences and colors in the gallery, of course. Also in today’s gallery is a snapshot of our Fredericksburg B&B, the Corner Cottage Bed & Breakfast on Orange St. It’s a really excellent and also economical place to stay. The two mornings of great food and great family-style breakfast conversations with the other patrons and our hostess Marsha really created a great memory of our stay in the Hill Country. We decided to go out to the LBJ Memorial out on the Pedernales River. (If you’re like me, you might not have been pronouncing this word correctly? I thought it should sound like “peddernallus,” being ignorant of Texas lingo. The correct pronunciation is “Purdinallus,” just as Lyndon Baines Johnson himself would have said it). After stopping at the Visitor’s Center there, we checked out the Sauer-Beckman ranch site nearby, a ranch representing the way things were done back in the days when Lyndon himself was growing up on the Johnson ranch across the river. Then, we crossed the river and entered the Johnson ranch itself. I got myself nose to nose with a very friendly horse:

A really friendly horse looking for a handout on the Johnson ranch

We took a Ranger-guided tour of the Johnson White House. LBJ did a lot of work from that place, where he felt really at home, able to perform at his best. No photos were allowed inside, but you can see the building itself and some of its associated artifacts in the gallery. We also got a good look at the home where LBJ’s was born (he grew up in Johnson City), but didn’t enter it. Here’s a snapshot:

LBJ's boyhood home on the Johnson Ranch

As we were leaving the Johnson Ranch, we got our first glimpse of actual Texas Longhorns:

A Texas Longhorn steer from the Johnson Ranch

One of the projects of the Johnson Ranch is to preserve and protect a herd of Longhorns, as it seems they are a diminishing breed. I wasn’t sure about the racial purity of these animals; if you look in the gallery you’ll see we found Longhorns of several different colors.

The old "Elephant Bar" of Fredericksburg, now an art gallery

Before heading for Austin next day, we strolled down Main Street of Fredericksburg itself, quite a colorful and interesting place. Over there on the left is a very interesting building, at least by its appearance. Built in 1888, it started out life as the “Elephant Bar,” and it served drinks and vittles to a host of patrons in that capacity. But time wears on, and the Elephant Bar has undergone several role changes, including once being a Ford dealership. It has just recently become an art gallery, only been open in that capacity for a couple of weeks.

But our hostess had told us that we “must” visit Rustlin’ Rob’s, and Dooley’s 5-10-25 cents store. Rustlin’ Rob’s is really an amazing place, where they sell every conceivable type of sauce, condiment, you name it, and not only do they sell them, you can sample any of the different offerings from dishes in front of each file of jars. We wound up buying more than we could cram into the Prius, but it was fun! I did get a kick out of some of the titles:

Selected sauce offerings from Rustlin' Rob's, Fredericksburg

Finally, we headed out for Austin, got there in time to fill an out-of-state prescription I needed at a Walmart there, and also, to have dinner with my nephew Phillip and his wife. A little history is maybe in order? I first met Phillip when he was born. I was there in Blytheville, Arkansas in 1956, when he emerged as my middle sister’s first and only baby. I next saw him in Dayton, Ohio, in 1967, when he and his Dad (who by then had divorced my sister) came there to visit me while I was there on business. Fast forward to 2009, when Phil and I “friended” each other on our FaceBook accounts. Here we are in Austin, 2009:

John and Phil, Austin, 2009

Phil works in Austin, as does his wife Liz. She is a writer, and I’ve actually read two of her books prior to meeting her for the first time last evening! A great experience for your old blogger, to have this reunion after so many years.

Well, we had great intentions to take an Austin tour and do the town up right, but Mother Nature intervened, and today came in with a very heavy rainstorm. So we decided to migrate west, and have now managed to drive away from the rain, spending our last night in Texas in Fort Stockton, from which tomorrow morning we’ll ride on up to Carlsbad, New Mexico, to check out them caverns, Y’all! (Guess you cain’t visit Texas without having a little rub off?)

In Texas, We Remember the Alamo…

 

The scene greeting Texas entrants at I10 entry station

We rolled into Texas from Louisiana on Sunday; weather was overcast, kind of blustery, not a real great scenery day. There at the entry center, you can see the big Texas Lone Star symbol, more about which later vis-a-vis the Alamo. We were figuring on staying somewhere near Houston, but along the way, we drove through the east Texas city of Beaumont, which seemed to have died and gone to heaven, if lack of any visible signs of life is any measure of that?

25-foot Hydrant in front of Texas Fire Museum, Beaumont

Now of course, everything in Texas is BIG, but can you imagine the size of a dog using a 25-foot hydrant? Fortunately, this one is non-functional, just a hydrant statue to mark the site of the Texas Fire Museum there in Beaumont. We did find one open museum, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas. You can see what it looks like in our daily gallery, but, uh, I wouldn’t make a special trip to east Texas just to see this museum’s collection, know what I mean?

While we were heading east out of Beaumont towards Houston, we saw this kind of amusing sight:

Mexican van vamoosing from America!

I don’t want to make any rash assumptions, but the plate on that van full of someone’s belongings, replete with a bunch of wheelie thingies on the back, reads “Nuevo Leon,” which any student of Mexican geography knows is a state in Northeastern Mexico, just beneath West Texas. This hombre was headin’ home! Then, through fairly heavy rain, we drove through Houston itself:

Houston skyline in the rain, through the windshield

Next day, the rain was gone, but the wind remained. We stayed a little west in Katy, and headed into what must’ve been about a 15 mph headwind, all the way to San Antonio. I can’t say for sure, but the Prius, tooling along the freeway at 70, typically will get ~45 mpg. Well, against that headwind, mileage fell to ~37 mpg. About the same as if we’d been driving at 85 in still air. (Aren’t you glad your blogger’s an engineer?) But we stopped, baited by some “Pecan” signs, in Schulenberg at a great spot, Potter Country Store. Worth the stop: Great pecans of all descriptions with samples of each kind. Other paraphernalia for the real Pecan nut. We bought some.

Potter Country Store, Schulenberg, Texas

The wind died down a bit by the time we reached San Antone. We decided to get right into the Alamo thing, parked nearby the Alamo, and bought tickets to see the iMAX re-enactment of the famous battle of the Alamo:

Screen shot from iMAX film of William Travis with Davy Crockett

This screen shot typifies the scenario portrayed by the movie of how the big battle transpired. Travis led the resistance, which ultimately succumbed to the siege and overwhelming attack by Santa Anna’s soldiers. But then we visited the Alamo itself:

Jane at the Alamo, San Antonio, Texas

I have to confess to ignorance about the history of this event, but between the film and hearing what a docent had to say about things, learned enough to want to learn more. The Texas territory or republic, was contested, maybe rightly or wrongly, between the Mexicans, the Spanish, and the British originally. The soldiers under Travis at the Alamo were fighting in 1836 for Texas independence, and though they lost that battle, their loss was soon avenged by Sam Houston and his troops, who turned around and defeated Santa Anna and his army. Texas then became an independent republic under the Lone Star emblem, from 1836 to 1845, when they were finally assimilated into the United States of America. Interesting history; I’m now reading a book said to be definitive about what REALLY happened in this era; I’ll report my findings in some future blog.

One other aspect of San Antonio familiar to experienced travelers is its famous “River Walk,” a river-level (below street level) network of walks bordering the San Antonio River as it meanders through San Antonio. We enjoyed a drink down there:

The Riverwalk, San Antonio, Texas

We were anxious to head for the Texas “Hill Country,” so we left San Antone before sundown and settled for the night in Boerne, as I said earlier. It’s a great place, we’re now about to leave Fredericksburg after a very nice glimpse of this beautifully interesting region of the Lone Star State. But hey, I’m all blogged out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Natchez Trace, and Antebellum Natchez…

A portion of the Natchez Trace trail

Natchez Trace was originally a trail carved out by Indian tribes, then frontier scouts, as a wilderness “highway” which extended from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN, a distance of ~445 miles. We sampled the first 20 miles of it this last Saturday; it’s rich with history of that bygone era of the antebellum period before the Civil War. (At the risk of sounding redundant, for you astute readers!) As you’ll see in today’s gallery, today there’s a nicely-paved two-lane road traversing the Trace’s entire length, but obviously the early users of the Trace had to hoof it, in more ways than one. The early significance of Natchez in particular becomes more apparent when you realize that, prior to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Natchez was at the southwestern corner of the budding United States!

One of our first discoveries along the Trace was the ruins of the “Elizabeth Female Academy,” which opened in November of 1818 and finally closed in 1845, after Mississippi’s cultural center moved north to Jackson. But the Elizabeth Female Academy was the first institution of higher learning in the entire United States to confer degrees upon women! Here’s what’s left of this pioneering institution:

Ruins of the Elizabeth Female Academy, Natchez Trace

After arriving in Natchez Friday evening, we Yelped ourselves (iPhone terminology: Yelp, an iPhone application, lets you run the yellow pages for restaurants or any other businesses in your immediate vicinity, with customer reviews) to a good local restaurant. The one we chose, the King’s Tavern, happens to be in Natchez’s oldest building, built before 1789.

The King's Tavern, Natchez, home of Madeline's Ghost

Legend has it that a promiscuous young woman named Madeline was once murdered there in the Tavern by a jealous landlord’s wife, in fact workmen in 1932 found a diminutive skeleton with a jewel-handled dagger embedded between the ribs. Well, Madeline’s ghost seems to be real to the locals, and there’s even a news reporter’s accounting of a direct encounter with the wispy damsel. Our waitress told us how one night when she’d had to close up the restaurant, she closed up all the rooms, turned off all the lights, and when she got down to the street, saw someone watching her from a window. She went back inside, no one was there, or was there? We went into the dark upper quarters of the building ourselves after dining, but alas, Madeline chose not to show herself. (Good thing!)

After driving a bit on the Trace the next day, we came down to Natchez to tour a few of the many antebellum homes scattered throughout the town. First we visited Stanton Hall, on High Street:

Stanton Hall in Natchez, finished 1857

This was a HUGE house, but its builder/owner, Frederick Stanton, was a very rich man who owned seven plantations on the other side of the Mississippi. For him this house was built mainly to – PARTY! It was seven years or so a-building, and scarcely had it been built, when nine months later, Mr. Stanton passed away, leaving it to his wife, who lived there for 32 more years until her own death. In the gallery, you’ll see the huge central hallway of this behemoth. (No photographs were allowed inside, but…) Next, we visited the House on Ellicott Hill:

The House on Ellicott Hill, Natchez

James Moore, a prominent Natchez merchant, built The House on Ellicott Hill about 1798.  This is the last remaining 18th Century merchant’s house on Canal Street, and the oldest building exhibiting high-style architectural details such as fanlights in Natchez. We experienced a sharp contrast between the droll, humorless docent who’d shown us around the Stanton House, to the enthusiastic, animated docent of Ellicott Hill (recurring theme?). The builder of this house, Mr. Moore, never actually lived there, but it served as offices for dentists in its history, among other professionals and merchants. We drove by yet another antebellum home, the Dunleith House, and shot a few photos of it, but didn’t take its tour, so you’ll have to go to the gallery to see it in any detail. Lovely place! But we saved the best for last:

The unfinished Longwood House, Natchez

Said to be the “largest octagonal house in America,” this house was originally designed by architect James Wright, for Haller and Julia Nutt. Haller, a wealthy plantation owner, turned out to be a Nutt for details, and he carefully supervised every detail of the house’s construction, including 5-sided bricks (all bricks were made on the premises) to make the octagonal joints at the corners of the geometric structure. The house was well on its way towards completion when the Civil War erupted. At that point, most of the workers having been hired from the North, returned to their homes to join the Union Army, and work on Longwood was abandoned. To compound Nutt’s misfortune, he had generously provided the grounds of his 7 plantations across the River for encampment of Union Army soldiers, like U.S. Grant, for example. Before leaving, they “gratefully” torched all his properties, leaving him penniless, unable to complete his project in Natchez. Thus, to this day, Longwood stands unfinished, and that’s perhaps what sets it apart for the visitor, seeing the workmen’s tools and materials strewn around the upper floors. Only the first floor was ever lived in, and Haller Nutt himself eventually died, it’s said, of a broken heart. After touring Longwood, we drove south into a beautiful twilight sky…Well, much asphalt and concrete have flowed under the wheels since Longwood. We spent the night in a small burg west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and sallied forth into Texas next day. San Antonio (remember the Alamo?) is already behind us, as I write this entry from Boerne, Texas (pronounced “Bernie” by natives). We’re poised to head off tomorrow to the Texas Hill Country, prior to landing in Austin in a couple of days. TTFN!

From Tallahassee to Natchez…

Thatched chapel and cross, San Luis Mission, Tallahassee

After leaving Ocala, we set as a goal to spend the night somewhere not too far east of Pensacola. We had a couple of business items to take care of there, so wanted to allocate the majority of Thursday there. Ida-stimulated rain was still spattering the windshield, so when we got into Tallahassee, let’s just say that conditions were somewhat less than photographically favorable? But dauntless, we trod on… We visited Mission San Luis in Tallahassee, a re-created simulation of an ancient site (circa 1600s?) where Spanish missionaries and conquistadors attempted to imbue the local Appalachee Indians with their foreign beliefs (not to mention exploiting agricultural resources for beneficial trading for foreign goods?). I had an interesting discussion about all these tradeoffs with Juana, a simulated mother of 10 (the ones that lived) over there on the left. Today’s gallery shows other shots of the chapel innards, and the meeting/worship facilities used by the Indians themselves.

We roosted that night in Panama City Beach, west of Tallahassee, and about 90 miles from Pensacola, AND, in the Central Standard Time zone. It was nice to pick up an extra hour. Coming into town, it seemed like the place was FULL of un-occupied condos, but maybe it’s just a November thing in that region. But the next morning dawned beautifully, and as our hotel sat directly on the extensive Gulf Beach, I was able to take a nice sandy run on the beach to start the day, which stayed purty all day through. Our biz in Pensacola consisted of finding a AAA for more travel maps, meeting with an expert recruiter whom I’ve been tele-conversing with for years, and getting the Prius in for its 2nd 5,000 mile service of the trip (it’s now up to ~12,000 as we speak?).

National Museum of Naval Aviation, Pensacola, FL

Though we were bound determined to get out of Florida before nightfall, yet another museum sign tempted me as we headed out of Pensacola: “National Museum of Naval Aviation.” Well, it couldn’t be far, right, just off the I10 a little south? It turned out to be about 20 miles south of the interstate, and we got there 1/2 hour before closing, but we loved the visit! There are too many photos to show here in the blog, but again, you’ll find more in our gallery, so check it out!

Desperate to be out of Florida for the night, we headed directly west out of the Pensacola NAS (site of the museum) and wound up in Foley, AL.

Lambert's Cafe, Foley, AL, home of "Throwed Rolls"

As serendipity would have it, we happened to choose one of only three restaurants in the United States where they throw rolls to patrons! All three are part of the “Lambert’s” chain; check out the website on the sign to find out more about this mecca of southern fried food (I ate catfish, Jane had shrimp). They pass around other side dishes like potatoes, slaw, etc., so believe me, you won’t leave there hungry!

Out of Foley the next morning, we motored up through Mobile, AL, then struck out in a northwesterly direction across the state of Mississippi, with Natchez as our evening’s goal. I’ll put in another plug here for eschewing the interstates; those “roads less traveled,” in this case mainly U.S. 98, offer great road surfaces, divided highway (though not freeway), and very little traffic to interfere with ingesting the beautiful scenery, even for the driver! We were expecting to see cotton and tobacco fields in MS, but in fact, we traversed mainly forested lands, as it turns out, lumber is a big commercial enterprise there, and much of the land is devoted to raising and logging of trees, mostly pines. You’ll see some of that scenery in the gallery, but it was a very pleasant drive, all day long. And the epitome of the day was to reach Natchez, and the Mississippi River, just before sundown!

Sunset over the Mississippi at Natchez, MS

For one of the loveliest sunsets I’ve ever witnessed, I shot three successive shots for this particular image and stitched them together on my Mac later on. Showing here is just a teensy snippit. You’ll enjoy it more if you look at it in the gallery at full screen width; there’s enough there, image-wise, to print a panorama of 18″ X 56″, if anyone’s interested?

But there’s much more to Natchez than has met your eye as yet. Stay tuned for scenes of regal antebellum homes, the famous Natchez Trace, and even a haunted restaurant! See ya later.

More from Key West, then to the North…

Something about Key West left us puzzled, Jane and I. What other place is anything like it? It seems to have a character all its own. Atmosphere, thought I, reminds me a bit of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Architecture? Lots of clapboard, gingerbread, certainly tin roofs everywhere. We took the Tram tour of Key West and on the tour snapped off lots of shots of different residences, stores, inns, restaurants, etc., and you can see a bunch of these shots in the first 24 images in our latest gallery; they’re un-captioned in that group, as the tram driver was rattling off so many factoids there was no time to retain them all. But see for yourself if you can taste the flavor of this magical place?

While we were at it, I just want to put in a word for a great treat I enjoyed while sitting on my Tram seat. Is there anyone who doesn’t like Key Lime Pie? How about chocolate? What would a combination of these two magical ingredients be like? Well, that there photo shows me about to consume a piece of Key Lime Pie dipped in chocolate, on a stick! Almost a critical mass of scrumptuous flavors, if you ask me. It didn’t last anywhere near long enough!

One very interesting story vis-a-vis the Florida Keys is the one about the Florida East Coast Railway, brainchild and nearly-successful project of Henry Morrison Flagler. The railroad spanned the Florida Keys over their entire length, from the mainland to Key West, 100+ miles or so. Though pundits and other detractors scoffed at Flagler’s idea, though the project was performed from 1905-1912, paralleling the development of the Panama Canal, 1906-1914, and beset by many of the same drawbacks faced by that ambitious project, in fact it was successfully completed in 1912. Flagler’s money and personal drive and ambition made this railroad fly, so to speak. An amazing story. Actually, the FECRC operated up and down the Keys until 1935, when a hurricane destroyed some of the bridges. (Oil mogul Flagler was long-g0ne by then, having died in 1913). But here’s my problem: The FECRC was one link of a commerce route from NYC to Havana; boats would take passengers and cargo from Key West to Havana and return. The photo on the left is the schedule for the FECRC. I can’t figure it out, but the “stationmaster” gave me a clue that it took 30 hours to get from NYC to Havana. Can you interpret this cryptic slate?

Key West also has a monument termed Truman’s “Little White House.” We took a tour of that, quite an impressive place. Though attributed to Truman, it started life in 1890; Thomas Edison invented 41 new weapons there during WWI; President William Howard Taft visited here in 1912. After Truman used it, Eisenhower recovered from a heart attack here, Kennedy met here with Macmillan in ‘61. The Carters used it, Colin Powell opened peace talks between Armenia and Azerbijan. Even former prez Bill and Hillary Clinton have used this place as a weekend retreat. But one very interesting factoid from the visit? If you look closely at the inset photo, you’ll see that an eminent large panel of historians have rated Harry Truman as our fifth greatest president! You can see more of the Truman White House and other Key West stuff in our gallery, of course, and maybe even blow up that inset large enough to read it?

We finally tore ourselves away from Key West and headed for the Mainland on Monday afternoon (that’s Monday the 9th, the Veteran’s Day holiday, remember?). En route, we had one of those cool incidents that sometimes occur: We stopped at a restaurant in Key Largo, where we’d eaten before on our way down. The door opened, and out walked Bill and Diane Chow from Los Altos! (You may know them as the ones who’ve walked two giant English Shepherd dogs around town for years?) Small world it is.

Raccoon looking for morsels at Highlands Hammock State Park, Sebring

A Female Anhinga at Highlands Hammock

With our penchant for staying off the beaten path, we drove up the middle of Florida on Rte 27, which goes right through the citrus belt of Florida. In fact, we visited the factory of Florida’s Natural, where I get all my grapefruit juice. And, we visited the site of Florida’s first State Park, called Highlands Hammock, just out of Sebring. As you’ll see in the gallery, we saw some cool swamp scenes from the boardwalk there. They also have a very interesting museum on the history of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), and how it operated throughout Florida during the 30s.

Well friends, Florida is a helluva large state. Later in the evening after Highlands Hammock, we drove through a very heavy rainstorm to Ocala, barely halfway up the state. Weather picked up a bit the next day, when we managed to get through Tallahassee, and finally wound up at Panama City Beach for the night. But all that stuff will emerge later on, blog-wise, know what I mean? Goodnight from Foley, Alabama!