The Family Truckster

Fast Forward

2009-07-15T00:05:00.002-04:00

STATES VISITED: California / New York

Up at 5am. In the car by 5:30. At the airport by 6. On the Jet Blue aircraft by 7:30. And then a very uneventful (thank goodness) flight home, landing at 4:15 in the afternoon, after 4 hours or so in the air. Where did the day go?

So all the country we crossed in 18 days spooled back beneath us in just 4 hours. The marvels of modern technology. But it was a beautiful day in New York, and it was good to get home. Our dog Riley just about wagged his tail off his butt when we picked him up from the dog sitters'. The cat, Dudley, greeted us by pissing in the dog's bed to show his displeasure.

Sitting bleary-eyed this morning in the airport waiting room, we conducted a survey of our favorite things about the trip. A few highlights:

BEST HOTEL ROOM: The Marriott HomeSuites in Wheeling WV
BEST HOTEL BUFFET: The Grand Hyatt in Denver
BEST HOTEL SERVICE: The Grand Hyatt in Denver
BEST HOTEL RESTAURANT DINNER: Hampton Inn in Kayenta AZ
BEST STADIUM: Chase Field in Phoenix
BEST BALLPARK FOOD: Chase Field in Phoenix (but I voted for Cincinnati)
BEST BALLPARK CROWD: Coors Field in Denver
BEST BASEBALL GAME: Kansas City Royals Vs Chicago White Sox
BEST RESTAURANT: The one in Morgantown WV whose name we can't even remember
BEST RESTAURANT ATMOSPHERE: Arthur Bryant's, Kansas City
BEST MALL: Country Club Plaza, Kansas City
BEST RESIDENTIAL AREAS: Indianapolis
BEST STORE: CD shop in Boulder
BEST SIDE TRIP: Hannibal MO
BEST HISTORIC HOME: Kolb Studio in the Grand Canyon
BEST DRIVE: Silverton to Durango CO
BEST NATIONAL PARK: Monument Valley
BEST NATURE EXPERIENCE: Bighorn sighting in the Grand Canyon

All in all, we did pretty well, I think. Still digesting it all, of course. But, like Dorothy, I think we all agree -- there's no place like home.

...To Shining Sea

2009-07-14T01:15:00.004-04:00

STATES VISITED: Arizona / California

I don't have many pictures to post today, because -- well, because most of the landscape was pretty much the same. In some spots the sagebrush and scrub was a little more withered and brown than in others, that's all. We drove down from Phoenix to I-8, making the connection at Gila Bend. I got pictures of the rattlesnake and brontosaurus sculptures in front of the Shell station, but I was driving at the time and my backseat photographer (you know Hugh you are) failed to get the shot of the World Famous Cactus Burgers restaurant. That and the Space Age Motel appear to be the only landmarks in Gila Bend.

On and on and on and ON through the desert of southern Arizona to Yuma. We finally hit California and hoped the landscape would turn a little more verdant, but -- surprise! -- it just turned into sloping powdery sand dunes (the Imperial Dunes National Recreation Area -- though what specific recreation they offered was not clear at all).

Entering California was a little weird, though, because there were so many checkpoints stopping traffic on the interstate. I would have taken pictures but Bob told me I couldn't, because they might think we were terrorists and subject us all to strip searches. (??) The first was an agricultural checkpoint ("Are you bringing in any fruits with you?" Does Tom count?) and the next two were out-and-out border crossing checks, even though we weren't crossing the border. I-8 runs right along the Mexico border and out of our lefthand windows we could see what looked like a long continuous fence, just past a high bank of packed earth. Paranoia strikes deep. It got so we felt terrified of getting off an an exit and accidentally wandering into Mexico -- what if we couldn't get back over?

Then we hit some mountains -- the tail end of the Santa Rosas, I guess -- which looked like nothing but immense piles of brown rocks. We went from below sea level to 4000 feet elevation in about 15 minutes. There were signs on the interstate advising drivers to turn off their car air-conditioning so the cars wouldn't overheat while powering up those inclines in the brutal heat. Barrels of water were set along the highway for drivers to refill their radiators if necessary, and we saw two or three cars pulled over with the hoods propped open. Believe me, we turned off the AC willingly. It was pretty unpleasant for a few miles, but better that than the alternative.

Beyond the mountains, things gradually got greener, and we began to descend into the San Diego area. San Diego has always been one of my favorite cities -- it's a shame we can't stay and enjoy it. But as we reached our hotel, we saw San Diego Bay glittering a few blocks away, and knew that we'd finished our cross-continental odyssey.

We had time to walk over to Horton Plaza to do a little shopping -- how nice to be somewhere where you can walk outside without swooning! -- and then drove up to University City to have dinner with my Aunt Kate and her friends. Kate is pushing 90 and still works 5 days a week as a travel agent. These are good genes to share. She chose the restaurant and -- YAY! -- it was P. F. Chang's, so those Chinese food yearnings I'd been stifling since Kansas City finally were satisfied. (See there, Grace?)

Our plane is at 8am tomorrow, which means waking at 5 (ouch!!) to get to the airport, so I'd better wind this up now. I'll add the pictures tomorrow, when I'm reunited with my computer -- and my dog and my cat and my own bed. Hard to believe!

Just Deserts

2009-07-13T00:28:00.018-04:00

STATE VISITED: Arizona

Phoenix depresses me. Oh, I'm sure it's a great place to live and all that, but the prospect of so many people living in the middle of a desert, dependent on sucking water and hydroelectric power from a river hundreds of miles away, seems awfully greedy to me.

Because it is a desert, make no mistake about that. And that's why we spent the morning at the Desert Botanical Garden, so that the kids could get a handle on this alien ecosystem (well, alien to them at least). You look out the window of a speeding car and you think it's all sagebrush and cactus and sand, but it isn't, not by a long shot. At the garden, we learned the names of about 50 different types of cactus and desert trees, as well as seeing lizards and birds and chipmunks scampering around.

What surprised us the most was the number of wildflowers that grow in a desert. Spring is supposed to be the best time to see these, but there were plenty of beautiful flowers around even in July.

Trouble is, the botanical garden is out in Papago Park, right next to the Phoenix Zoo. The zoo. I thought maybe our kids were old enough, or jaded enough by all the world-class zoos they've seen, to skip the one in Phoenix. I was wrong. So once we'd rushed through the garden, we had to hit the zoo. We didn't have much time, so we skipped all the elephants and giraffes and things we've seen in the New York zoos and headed straight for the Arizona section, where we saw:

For the more zoologically challenged among you, these are (clockwise from the upper lefthand corner) a mountain lion, a coyote, an elf owl, and some prairie dogs.

It was blazing hot, but the Phoenix animals seemed like very good sports -- they emerged from their cool little caves and paced around their enclosures glaring at us through the fences, just like we hoped they would. In fact, this bobcat entertained us by rolling around on the ground just like our cat, Dudley, does.

Unfortunately, we had to race through the zoo and leave way too soon, because it was time for the baseball game. And on this trip, nothing is more important than the baseball. Thanks to an inexplicable closure of the highway we needed (poor Ms. Garmin was very distressed), we reached Chase Field just as the first inning was getting started.

This was the first time I've ever seen a baseball game played in a domed stadium. Considering how hot it was outside, we were extremely grateful for the closed dome and the air-conditioning. AC aside, it's a very nice ball field, with good sight lines and a nice floor plan. However, I have to say that the park lacked a little energy -- it was only about half-full, and there were many fewer entertaining distractions -- you know, the prancing mascots, the bubbly team girls in short shorts firing T-shirts into the crowd, that sort of thing.

This was the only time we saw the mascot at all. His name is Baxter (or "Backs-ter," I presume) and we guessed that he's a bobcat. Way more cuddly looking than the bobcat we saw that morning at the zoo.

I have to say, the giveaway merch at this game was the best of this trip -- really decent logo baseball caps (see Tom and Grace wearing theirs. Hugh didn't want to mess up his awesome curly hair). Plus I had to buy one of those big red-and-black plastic rattles that the D-Back fans like to shake at critical moments in the game. They make a great hissing noise, very unnerving. I've been craving one ever since I saw a D-Backs fan in Cincinnati using hers to great effect.

Almost immediately, the Diamondbacks' opponents, the Florida Marlins, scored three runs -- not a good omen for the home team. And as the game progressed, the Diamondbacks hardly looked like the same team we'd seen vanquish the Cincinnati Reds almost two weeks ago. The D-Backs pitcher, Doug Davis, had to be pulled after the fourth inning, while the Marlins' pitcher, Joshua Johnson (all those nice alliterative names), stayed in through the seventh, heading for a shut-out. The D-Backs got a fair number of hits, but somehow they kept leaving men stranded on base instead of chalking up any runs. In the end they managed to get one run on the scoreboard, but they lost 8-1. It was so boring I even fell asleep for a little while in the seventh.

The game ended around 4pm, so we had to leave the nice air-conditioned stadium and walk back through the heat to our hotel. Then we got in the car and drove around Phoenix and Scottsdale, trying to figure out this city in the short time we had left. We found the hockey stadium (Hugh wanted a Coyotes stick) but it was closed. We found Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West but it was closed. We had dinner at a sports bar in Scottsdale (decent food, actually) then got back to the hotel to watch TV and decompress before sleep.

This traveling stuff is exhausting.

Into the Abyss

2009-07-11T22:57:00.003-04:00

STATE VISITED: Arizona

We had to meet our guide at 8:30 am -- awwk!! -- which involved gobbling Honey Nut Cheerios in the room while we packed up everything and checked out. But at 8:35 -- pretty punctual for us -- we were in the lobby of the historic El Tovar Hotel (at right -- wouldn't it have been cool if we could have gotten reservations there?) meeting Elaine from the Grand Canyon Field Institute, who was going to reveal the secrets of the Grand Canyon to us.

Elaine's one of those people who makes round-trip hikes to the canyon floor all the time, but she promised us an easy morning hike -- a mile-and-a-half down the Bright Angel Trail and then back up. The trail was fairly crowded -- it's like the superhighway of the Grand Canyon -- so it was hardly a backwoods experience, but it was enough to get us partway down into the canyon to see what it was like. Going down wasn't bad, but like they say, hiking into the canyon is voluntary, hiking back up is mandatory. And of course, no one in the family but me would admit that they needed to stop and catch their breath. But there were plenty of reasons to pause. Elaine had dozens of stories to tell us about the history of the canyon's development, and could point out all sorts of natural wonders -- we got so much more out of our hike than we would have on our own.

For instance, she identified for us this elk poop on the El Tovar lawn. Can you imagine walking up in the middle of night to go have a pee and looking out your hotel room window to see an elk browsing right there?

On the trail, Elaine explained to us the four forces that formed the Grand Canyon, which you can remember with the acronym DUDE -- D for deposits (the different rock strata piled on top of each other), U for uplift (the heaving up of tectonic plates), D for downflow (the Colorado River carving its way through the rock), and E for erosion (the winds carving the rockface). She identified the various plants we passed; she pointed out these ancient Indian petroglyphs and some petrified rat poop running down the canyon wall.

We were in luck; we had some amazing wildlife encounters. Of course there were the little rock squirrels all over the place -- these guys are about as afraid of humans as the squirrels in Central Park are. We watched one raucous squirrel sitting out on a rock ledge, chirping so loudly we thought it was a bird.

But even better, we ran into this pair of bighorn sheep, standing right beside the trail, so close we could have touched them. They didn't seem in any hurry to get away from us, either. It was incredible close up to see how nimble their tiny flexible hooves are on the rocky surface.

And then, way up above the canyon rim, we saw a California condor riding lazily on the thermals rising from the canyon. (Look really closely; it's that tiny black dot in the sky. And that was using my zoom.) These highly endangered birds were extinct from the canyon for several years and were recently reintroduced, with great success -- there are half a dozen living in the canyon now, feeding on all the carrion they can find. Oh, I'll bet the turkey vultures are pissed off about that.

Once we got back to the top (our hike took about 2 1/2 hours), we had lunch in this historic house, built a century ago for Ellsworth and Emery Kolb, these two early residents of the canyon rim, who ran a business photographing visitors. Their living quarters, furnished with cool Arts & Crafts-style decor, aren't usually open to the public, so that was an excellent perk of the tour.

After lunch, we walked west along the Rim Trail, getting farther away from the main village with all the hotels etc. We hiked some 3 miles along the rim (mostly level, thank god) and it was amazing how the views changed. We could finally see the Colorado River down at the bottom of the canyon, which had been blocked by various mesas before. It was fantastic -- and best of all, there was a shuttle bus waiting at the end to take us back to the hotel area.

We finally said goodbye to Elaine and left the park around 3 pm, heading south for Phoenix. (Originally we were going to stay at the Canyon two nights, but then we realized that the Diamondbacks game tomorrow is a day game, so we needed to get to Phoenix sooner.) Along the way, we took a side trip through the Coconino National Forest and Oak Creek Canyon to see the red rocks of Sedona. They were beautiful all right, especially since we got there late in the afternoon with the setting sun turning them aglow. But I guess after Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon they seemed a little less spectacular.

South of Sedona, there was another hour-plus drive down to Phoenix. The forest disappeared and in its place was scrubby desert, where the prickly pear cactus was sooned joined by saguaro cactus, the classic shape of cactus that little kids love to draw.

We expected to see Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner go whizzing by at any moment.

Bit by bit, the desert turned into the vast Phoenix sprawl. I didn't take a picture because, frankly, you've seen it all somewhere else. It seems like a bizarre sort of conurbation, nothing but chain-store malls and endless suburbs, with a surprisingly small downtown, considering that Phoenix is supposed to be the fifth-largest metro area in the country. Nothing that we could see looked at all historic. By the time we checked into the Holiday Inn Express downtown we were too exhausted to go out (besides, it's like 110 degrees outside -- no exaggeration -- and no one felt like walking in that). So we ordered Pizza Hut dinner to the hotel and crashed, watching TV. Apparently that hike took more out of us than we thought...

Searching for the Searchers

2009-07-11T01:19:00.012-04:00

STATES VISITED: Arizona / Utah

If you've ever seen a John Ford movie, you don't need my amateur shots to show you what we saw this morning -- Monument Valley, Arizona, probably the most bizarre landscape I've ever traveled through. Yes, Iceland is like being on the moon, but Monument Valley is like being on Mars -- red sandstone buttes thrusting up out of a flat scrubby desert, huge panoramas of unearthly colors and stark shapes.

We were lucky enough to have booked a tour with a Navajo guide, Carl Phillips of Keyah Hozhoni Tours, who drove us around in his open-sided truck to areas that the regular tourists can't go. These included formations like the Eye of the Sun (left) and the Big Hogan (right), which if you lie down on your back looks like a giant eagle is hovering over you, homest. Even better, Carl taught us a lot of things about Navajo culture, which has remained much more intact than other tribal cultures. He led us us into a hogan and a sweat lodge and explained how they were built; he showed us his ID card that allows him to carry around peyote, because it's a vital part of tribal spiritual ceremonies. Carl recently moved back to the Valley after living in Las Vegas for a few years, working in construction, so he has a pretty intelligent perspective on what makes his culture special. We were covered in the red dust when we finished our tour, but it was really worth it.

After that -- well, after a detour to a town called Mexican Hat where Carl said we could see the Colorado (he was wrong, it was only the San Juan River ), it was back to Kayenta, where we had lunch at Burger King, not just for the yummy fast food but also because that is where the tribe has mounted an excellent exhibit on the Navajo Wind Talkers of World War II. It takes up a whole wall in the Burger King and isfull of war memorabilia. Who'd have expected that?

A long drive then, across the Navajo tribal lands, which got even more barren (picture to come) and then more colorful again, and finally turned -- surprise! -- into forest again. By now we were in the Kaibab National Forest, on our way to the Grand Canyon. I tried to ban the male members of my family from saying, "Wow! What a big hole!" but so far I have been unsuccessful. It is a pretty big hole, though.

We checked into the Maswik Lodge, had a quick dinner at the cafeteria (not as good as Deer Valley's, but then what is?) and took a walk along the rim at sunset. Absolutely incredible. I'll post more pictures tomorrow (it's late -- we changed time zones again, without even realizing it!), and this rustic lodge doesn't even have wi-fi -- can you believe it? -- so I'm posting this on Bob's computer after he finished using it and now everybody's yelling at me to go to sleep. Anyway, tomorrow we have this big hike schedulo, and maybe we'll even find the place where Joe Dirt got abandoned in the classic film Joe Dirt. We already found the place where the Griswolds visited the Grand Canyon, so all our movie references are lining up very nicely, thank you...

Butte Heads

2009-07-09T23:50:00.025-04:00

STATES VISITED: Colorado / New Mexico / Arizona / Utah

The Wyman House served one of the best breakfasts ever -- a cheese and green chile frittata, biscuit, and hash browns -- and then Grace and took a walk around Silverton in the cool morning mountain air. This really is a lovely little town, with Wild West flair -- Wyatt Earp once owned a saloon here, where he and his buddy Bat Masterson hung out. Even the "bad" side of town -- the once notorious Blair Street, which in its heyday had a score of brothels and 30-some saloons -- is charming nowadays.

We drove south on the San Juan Scenic Skyway (a wimpy road, compared to that Million Dollar Hellway of yesterday) to Durango. Yet another of these Wild West mining boom towns that's been all slicked up to draw tourists -- but Durango is more of a real town, and we liked it a lot. While Tom and Grace and I went bagel shopping, Bob and Hugh visited the museum of the Silverton and Durango Narrow Gauge Railroad. I kinda wish now we'd been able to work a ride on that train into our schedule.

At Durango we headed west again, bound for Mesa Verde National Park -- another sight that I've written about in a couple of books but never got a chance to visit until now. It seems that you have to drive forever from the gate just to get to the visitor center, winding round and round these scrubby mesas through hidden valleys, climbing ever upward.

Random bit of dialogue on the road up: Grace -- "Why do we have to go see these Indian ruins when you just said that they are the same as the Indian ruins we saw two years ago in New Mexico?" Hugh: "Hold that sass, sister." Bob: "Sass? Is that why you boys call your sister Sasquatch?" Hugh: "Ooh, Grace, you've been lawyered!" Hugh and Tom in chorus: "Oh, dang! Oh, dang! Oh, daaanng!!"

The views from the top, though, are jaw-dropping. While we were gazing out over that valley, Grace and I saw this herd of free-range horses cross the park road, stopping traffic.

We didn't have time to do one of the in-depth ranger tours, but we did drive the Mesa Top Road, where we got to see some ancient pit dwellings, a number of excavated kivas (the Anasazis' central ceremonial rooms), and, viewed from across the canyon, a spectacular line-up of cliff dwellings. The engineering and architectural genius of these peoples is staggering, especially when you consider the tools they had available.

It was such a beautiful blue-sky day, the perfect conditions for seeing these vast canyons and their ancient buildings. And looking around, there was no doubt that we were out of the mountains and into the desert. Gone were the aspens and lodge-pole pines; now we were amidst pinyon and juniper trees (those lovely blue berries, precious source of gin). We saw a lizard skittering around near the path -- a new entry on our wildlife log.

Leaving Mesa Verde mid-afternoon, the race was on to get to Four
Corners. Now the desert was really getting dramatic, with strange buttes and other outcroppings. Down in the southwest corner of Colorado, we crossed the state line and entered Navajo tribal lands, where a monument has been set up at the exact point where Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona meet. Geographers recently recalculated the states' meeting point and have declared that it's somewhere else, about a mile away, but there are no roads to get to that spot -- so we tourists continue to flock to the spot set up in 1912 as the Four Corners Monument.

I'm afraid there are only two possible snapshots to take at this spot -- one where a single individual is posed with one limb in each state (like something out of a game of Twister) or one where each member of a family is standing in a different state. We opted for the latter. Grace is in Arizona, Tom in New Mexico, and Hugh -- colossus that he is -- stands astride Utah and Colorado. So yes, we visited all the states I listed above, but two of them were kinda cheating...

The Navajos are working the Four Corners site for all it's worth -- selling frybread, T-shirts, pottery, jewelry, the works. We did our best to subsidize tribal activities with several purchases.

Then on through more Navajo desert, through tiny town after tiny town, each consisting mostly of a gas station and a trading post. Bob expressed some skepticism about what we'd find at Kayenta, where our reservations were for tonight, but when we got here we were pleasantly surprised. It's a proper town, with an airport and several businesses; they have a Burger King, a McDonald's, a Sonic drive-in -- all the comforts of home.

The Hampton Inn, where we are staying, is actually excellent -- built to look like an adobe, but smartly furnished inside. We ate at the hotel's restaurant and I had a green chile stew that was one of the best things I've eaten this trip. During dinner, a ponytailed man strolled around playing a traditional wooden flute, a soothing sound that was way better than any muzak or jukebox.

After dinner we walked around the Navajo Cultural Center next door, which has models of traditional hogans, a sweat lodge, and a shade lodge. Our walk, however, was cut short when we noticed a jackal roaming around the Burger King parking lot next door. Another new entry on our wildlife log, and a creepy one. Yes, folks, we are in the desert indeed.

Held Up in the Mountains

2009-07-08T23:14:00.003-04:00

STATE VISITED: Colorado

AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! I left my computer in the lovely Grand Hyatt in Denver. The charming people in security have promised to UPS it to me, but the way we're moving around, there's no easy place to have it shipped to. So they're sending it back to New York. Meanwhile I have to use Tom's computer, which is much cooler than mine. Niiiiiiice.

Well, when I should have been packing my computer, we were having one last walk around Denver, while Bob took care of some phone calls back to the office in New York. That's when we found the Brown Palace Hotel, which has one of the coolest lobbies I've ever seen -- a nine-story atrium with a stained-glass skylight at the top, and wrought-iron railings around all the balconies overlooking the atrium. Awesome, especially considering that it was built in 1892,, way before the Hyatt Corporation started slapping garden atriums on all their hotels.

Near the elevators I was fascinated by a facing pair of murals, one depicting travelers arriving by stagecoach, the other showing them descending the steps of an airplane (albeit a 1940s-era plane). The more things change...

We hit the road at (ahem) 10:30 (those pesky phone calls) and headed due west on I-70. I kept snapping pictures to show how the mountains grew taller around us, mile by mile -- the scrubby brown hills were overtaken by pine-shrouded peaks, and eventually granite summits with patches of snow.

We never got quite high enough to have snow around us -- I don't think they build highways that high -- but we did get over 10,000 feet in places. As we first hit the Continental Divide at the Vail summit, our ears popped -- and so did a bag of Tostitos we had in the back seat.

Back east we have roadside signs warning to watch out for deer crossing. Out here, the signs alert you to look for elk and bighorn sheep. No actual wildlife sightings, however, except for some jackrabbit roadkill, a pair of deer waiting to cross the highway, and one scared little bunny trembling by the road's verge.

We went a little out of our way so we could see Vail, the chi-chi ski resort, all tricked up to look like a mini-Gstaad. There were cyclists all over the place (they've laid out a nifty bike path), and some people lounging by pools and eating on the outdoor patios of restaurants, but nothing like what I imagine the crowds must be in ski season. It's a little precious, I must say.

We turned off the interstate just past Vail -- ignoring the commands of Ms. Garmin, that interstate-obssessed minx, who wanted us to go all the way to Grand Junction -- and started our day's odyssey down two-lane mountain highways, where the towns are few and far between. The next sizeable place we came to was the poetically-named Leadville, where fortunes were made in lead mining in the 1880s and 1890s. The main downtown street is still lined with substantial stone buildings, and wide enough for quite an impressive gun shoot-out, like in the movies. All the place needs is hitching posts in front of the saloons instead of parked cars.

We had lunch in the Golden Burro Cafe (with the adjoined Brass Ass Bar). Here is a picture of Hugh enjoying his Coke with an improvised extra-long straw. Note that the rest of us at the table do not get to have straws with our drinks; Hugh commandeered them all. Ah, well, let's indulge him, he'll be going away to college soon.

Several miles south of Leadville, we turned west again on US 50, which runs through the Gunnison River Valley -- a truly spectacular stretch of mountain landscape. For a while, the river frisks along next to the highway, twisting and turning through the mountain meadows. Eventually, though, it widens into the beautiful Blue Mesa Lake, which runs for a few miles. At the bottom is a dam, and below that the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a national park that we wished we'd had time to hike around. That's the trouble with this cross-country agenda -- all we can do is skim the surface. On the other hand, when you think that just two days ago we were rolling through Kansas wheatfields, the compare-and-contrast aspect of this odyssey is amazing.

We stopped for McFlurries at a McDonald's in Gunnison, which seemed more of a viable town than Leadville -- a bit of historic downtown left, but lots of motels and restaurants and even a college in town, Western Colorado State.

In Montrose, we turned south on Highway 550. I hadn't realized that this road -- a route we picked for convenience's sake -- was the fabled Million Dollar Highway, which I wrote about in 500 Places to Take The Kids Before They Grow Up. It's named that because it cost a million dollars to build, back in the 1880s or whenever, to serve a string of mining towns during the gold and silver rushes. The section from Ouray to Silverton is incredibly scenic -- and one of the scariest drives I've ever had to drive in my life. Hairpin turns and switchbacks, at intense altitudes, with no guard rails -- now I regret that I recommended it to readers. (I'm glad I dropped it from the second edition.) And I had the bad luck to be the driver on duty for that stretch of road, with some serious backseat driving from my co-driver. Do you know how hard it is to accelerate uphill when you've just had to slow down to 10 MPH to get around a sharp curve? I'm just glad we weren't trying to cross that pass an hour later, when it was beginning to get dark.

Around 7:30 we pulled into Silverton, another of those historic mining towns, though one with a bit more pizzazz than Leadville. We're staying at the Wyman House Hotel, built in 1903, a lovely late Victorian hotel that's now a frilly bed-and-breakfast. Not our usual hotel fare, but that's the only type of hotel they have in this town. Well, I guess we can sleep in brass bed with flowery wallpaper for one night.

Rocky Mountain High

2009-07-07T19:35:00.024-04:00

STATE VISITED: Colorado

You've gotta love a city that's as pedestrian-friendly as Denver. The city fathers here have really figured out the transit alternatives -- light rail, buses, a free shuttle that crosses downtown continually along pedestrianized 16th Street. There are bikes everywhere, too. I gather that Denver's downtown used to be sketchy, but now you walk around and there's shops and cafes lined up, blocks between the skyscrapers turned into neat public parks, and warehouses on the edges of downtown converted to condos and lofts. Somebody is clearly doing something right.

We walked first from our hotel to the state capitol, with its tall gold-skinned dome. We were told that if you stand on the thirteenth step leading up to the capital, you'll be exactly one mile above sea level. Unfortunately, there was some sort of bill-signing ceremony taking place right on the thirteenth step, so we couldn't check it out for ourselves.

Those pioneer trails we learned about back in Independence? One route, called the Smoky Ridge Trail, ended right here in Denver, an end point for both of the big stagecoach companies of the time, Butterfield and Wells Fargo. This fountain near the capitol marks where that stagecoach terminus once stood. I love the statue of the gun-toting stagecoach guard on top.

The guy who founded Denver, a General Larimer, did the shrewd political thing and named the city after the then territorial governor, who was called Denver. But the general couldn't resist naming the main commercial street after himself. During Denver's mining heyday in the 1870s and 1880s, Larimer Street was where all the action in Denver was. When the silver market went bust in 1893, however, this silver-mining boom city became a bust city, and Larimer Street turned into a notorious skid row.

Then, a few years ago, urban renaissance targeted Larimer Street, and the decrepit old buildings were all spiffed up. Now they've got Starbucks, cutesy shops, and cafes in them. I guess those cables strung over the street (the historic bit is only a block long) are strings of lights at night, which may be an enchanting effect. In the daylight, though, it looks more like some kind of aviary at a zoo.

I do like Denver's 19th-century architecture though -- the round arches, the big blocks of stone, the little neoclassical cornices and borders. Maybe it's because Denver's boom ended so abruptly that these turn-of-the-century gems didn't get knocked down. This is a cool one we saw -- the name (if you can read the carved stone plaque over the doorway) is the Ghost Building.

In other cities you have stone lions guarding the steps of the main courthouse; in Denver, it's bighorn sheep perched there. I wouldn't mess with them.

Denver feels to me a lot like Seattle -- the same kind of progressive, no-nonsense vibe. Okay, so it's got mountains instead of Puget Sound, and it doesn't have the Space Needle or Pike Place Market. (Significant losses, there.) Still, it has a great city personality.

While we were walking around downtown, we discovered this great walkway / bike path running along a rushing creek, sunken below street level. They keep the speeding bikes and skaters on one side and walkers and joggers on the other, so you don't get run down. On a hot day like today, it was great to be strolling next to the water, hidden away from the traffic.

In the afternoon we drove out to Boulder, which is only about a half hour northeast of the city, snuggled even closer to the mountains. Boulder is the sort of big college town where I'd bet people never leave, even after they graduate. Why would anyone leave? It's full of bookstores and cafes and record shops and trendy clothing boutiques; the west end of town has block after block of handsome Queen Anne-style houses with broad front porches and enormous shade trees.

Two completely idiosyncratic landmarks we had to find in Denver: Jax Fish House (left), where some guy named Hosea who was Hugh's favorite Top Chef contestant cooks; and this anonymous looking tech-park office on the outskirts where some cycle wizard is supposedly building a super-customized bike for Bob. If it ever gets finished.

Then back to town for the Rockies game! Coors Field really impressed us; it's got that retro thing going (I love these downtown stadiums where people can walk to the game), but inside it's roomy and nicely open to the mountain breezes.

The obligatory fountains in the outfield . . . .

... and the Rockies mascot. I think it's a stegosaurus. How that is connected to the Rockies, I have no idea, but the little kids loved him. Probably because he reminds them of Barney. (Is Barney still on TV?)

This was probably the best game we've seen so far. It was tied 4-4 from the fourth inning on, but there were lots of hits, so victory always seemed to be in the balance. Plenty of pitching changes, pinch hitters -- all sorts of unpredictable elements. The crowd was noisy and friendly; there weren't a lot of fans from the opposing team, the Washington Nationals -- too far away -- so everyone could afford to be genial.

The Rockies finally squeaked out a run in the bottom of the eighth, and their closer managed to wrap things up in the top of the ninth. The bizarre thing was that the win was credited to a relief pitcher, Alan Embree, who came in briefly in the 8th. Just after he took the mound, the Nationals runner on first tried to steal, and Embree whirled around and caught him out, ending the inning. In the next inning, the Rockies scored the winning run, when Embree was still technically the pitcher, so he got credited with the win. But when the Rockies next took the field, Embree was replaced -- he never actually threw a single pitch. How often does that happen, that the winning pitcher didn't throw a pitch? You gotta love the wackiness of baseball.

We're Not In Kansas Anymore

2009-07-07T00:41:00.018-04:00

STATES VISITED: Missouri /Kansas / Colorado

Today was our biggest mileage push, barreling across the whole of Kansas and a goodly portion of Colorado – over 600 miles in one day. We figured there were fewer attractions to see in Kansas, so we might as well just drive like a batmobile out of hell.

Naturally, once we got going, we discovered that I-70 through Kansas offers non-stop tourist action. The Legendary Dorothy House, in Liberal KS! The Steinberg Natural History Museum in Hays KS! The hometown of Wild West sharpshooter Annie Oakley in (you guessed it) Oakley KS! The world’s largest prairie dog town in Grainfield KS! The Prairie Museum in Colby KS! And, only a hundred miles or so off the road, Castle Rock, the Pioneer Museum (in Nebraska, actually, but so long as you’re in the area), and the world-famous Rock City in Minneapolis, KS, which used to be advertised in huge yellow letters on the roofs of barns all over the Midwest (those that weren’t already advertising Mammoth Cave or Mail Pouch Tobacco). Alas, we had no time for any of it.

On the other hand, the landscape was worth the whole trip. First, between Manhattan and Salina, we rolled through the Flint Hills, a luminous rolling panorama of rounded hilltops and wooded hollows and outcrops of gray stone, in spots almost reminiscent of Ireland. The soil here is too thin and rocky for much agriculture, so a fair bit remains of the original tallgrass prairie that used to blanket this part of the world. The grass grows taller here because eastern Kansas isn’t as dry as western Kansas, and it’s a rich mix of blue stem and other grasses sprinkled with wildflowers. It was still too early in the season for the really tall growth – five or six feet high – but beautiful nonetheless.

We stopped for lunch at a Dairy Queen in Abilene, home of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Not surprisingly, after yesterday’s Truman marathon, the kids refused to visit the Eisenhower site. Oh, well, another opportunity squandered.

By the way, notice that yellow emblem on the road signs. It’s supposed to be a sunflower – Kansas is known as the Sunflower State. After the beehive on Utah road signs, this is now my next favorite state highway emblem.

The terrain became much flatter west of Salina. The only trees we could see were planted in a dense cluster around the farmhouses – otherwise it’s just a horizon-wide sweep of high plains. Crops stretched out on either hand – first soybeans on the right and wheat on the left, then changing to wheat on the left and soybeans on the right, the soybeans sparkling in intense green, the wheat a plush carpet of dry gold.

There wasn’t as much corn as I had expected, though -- so much for “I’m as corny as Kansas in August.” Maybe it’s just too dry for corn. Wherever we saw corn, I also noticed these spidery steel irrigation contraptions.

Houses are few and far between out here. Every once in a while, you'll see something mirage-like shimmering on the horizon that looks like a cluster of condo towers, but it turns out to be a huge complex of silos and grain elevators. It made me think of the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends see the Emerald City towering in the distance -- I wonder if L. Frank Baum had this in mind?

Another thing I noticed, agriculture-wise -- instead of those spotted herds of dairy cows like we have back east, the cows here were mostly these brawny black cattle. Black Angus? Some kind of beef cattle, for sure. I suppose this is the part of their lives where they get to frolic free before they get shipped off to some hellhole of a feedlot. (See, I've been reading my Michael Pollan.)

Given the wide open spaces, I guess it’s not surprising that we’d roll through a few miles of land that have been converted to a new high-tech wind farm.

If you look close, down to the right you’ll see an old-fashioned prairie windmill, like something out of Shane or High Plains Drifter, dwarfed by those gleaming steel blades of the new giants. (Props to Hugh for getting this all in one shot.)

Past the wind farm, we also saw a few farms with a number of little oil wells pumping away amidst the soybeans. The heads of these pumps remind me of the cartoon crows Heckle and Jekyll, dipping their beaks rhythmically up and down.

At long last we crossed the line into a new time zone – the evocatively named Mountain Time – and soon after crossed the border into Colorado. We thought we'd see mountains right away -- HA! No, just more high plains, though it did get a little more hilly, with tufts of silvery sagebrush cropping up in the grassy margins along the road.

And hey -- guess what the speed limit is here? TAKE THAT YOU CONNECTICUT WIMPS!! Needless to say, everybody still drives at 10 miles over the speed limit.

Then the real drama of the drive began -- we drove right into a violent thunderstorm. We could spot it several miles ahead across the plains -- really dramatic. It lasted for about 20 intense minutes, then we could see the blue skies ahead, and we got our first glimpse of the Rockies in the distance. (You can't see it in these pictures, though.) Here's the sequence:

Traffic in Denver was abysmal -- there had been a six-car pile-up on I-70 east of downtown, and we got caught in the standstill traffic. By the time we pulled into the Grand Hyatt, we were thoroughly exhausted from our long day's journey into night. Which meant just one thing -- room service dinner!! YAY!!!!!

Independence Day

2009-07-05T17:56:00.018-04:00

STATES VISITED: Missouri / Kansas

Not making much progress, eh? Well, the way the baseball schedules worked out, we had to stay in one place over the holiday weekend, and we had piles of laundry to do, too. All of which made a perfect excuse to take an extra day in Missouri and drag the family up to Independence to visit the home of one of my favorite Presidents, Harry S Truman.

As I think I mentioned earlier, I've been reading a book called Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure, by Martin Algeo, which chronicles a cross-country car trip Harry and Bess made in 1953 from Independence back east to Washington, D.C., and then back home again. It's a very entertaining account of early auto tourism, and as it happens, Harry and Bess stopped in many of the towns we've visited on this trip -- Hannibal, Indianapolis, Columbus, Wheeling. It just seemed too perfect a coincidence.

The more I read about Harry Truman, the more I like him. This high-gabled white Victorian house was where he and Bess lived from the day they got married (when they lived with her mother and brothers) to the day he died, with a few stints in Washington thrown in here and there. While he was President, it was referred to as the "summer White House," but there's hardly anything Presidential about it. Inside, it's furnished in a random mix of antique love seats and needlepointed slipper chairs along with mid-century chintz-covered armchairs and end tables. The kitchen is circa 1950, with a red-Formica-topped kitchen table where Harry and Bess ate breakfast and lunch. Harry's book-lined study is more of a Father Knows Best-ish den than a baronial reading room. Those books weren't just for display, though -- Truman, who had no more than a high-school degree, was a largely self-educated man and voracious reader. The house is a great testament to Truman's desire not to get swell-headed just because he'd accidentally landed in the job of President.

Though it's only a few minutes from Kansas City, Independence still feels like a sleepy small town where everybody knows everybody else. Except for a series of brass plaques identifying certain landmarks -- the church where Harry and Bess got married, the barber shop where he had his hair cut, the store above which his regular poker club met, the courthouse (right) where he served as judge for a dozen years or so -- the town isn't cashing in on the Truman association, certainly not the way that Hannibal cashes in on Mark Twain.

I guess that's because Truman himself refused to cash in. Though his finances were often tight (no presidential pension back then), he turned down lots of lucrative offers because he felt they would demean the presidency. Instead he spent his post-White House years writing his memoirs and raising funds to build archives for all his papers: the first presidential library, and some say still the best. I haven't been to the others so I can't compare, but the Truman Library was fascinating. The exhibits on Truman's presidency walk you through a complicated era -- rebuilding Europe, the development of the H-bomb, the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War, McCarthyism, the birth of the civil rights movement -- concisely and yet intelligently, so that even the kids could make sense of it. Poor Truman -- what a world he inherited. And yet he managed to wade through it, making tough decisions and steering a clear course.

Besides the exhibits on the Truman presidency, the Library has preserved Truman's own on-site office, where he met with high-profile visitors from Richard Nixon to Pat Boone, as well as a detailed reproduction of the Oval Office in the White House at the time Truman occupied it. Naturally they have the original desk plaque for which Truman was most famous:

Harry and Bess are buried side by side in the courtyard of the Library, under modest white marble gravestones. (She outlived him by ten years, continuing to live in the family house in Independence.) There are several of his letters to her on display, and it's absorbing to read them -- you sense how much he adored her, and how she kept him grounded.

At one time, Independence was apparently a big deal -- the launching point for wagon trains setting out on the Santa Fe Trail and the homesteading wagons of pioneers hitting the Oregon Trail. In its heyday, Independence had no less than 7 blacksmiths helping folks get geared up for the long road west. We stopped in the National Frontier Trails Museum to get that story, but there wasn't really too much we didn't already know (I did, after all, write a book once on the Pony Express) and we were getting hungry.

Grace went to her first drive-in movie last night, and so today she went to her first drive-in restaurant -- not a drive-through but a drive-in, with carhops and everything. It was just an ordinary Sonic, but a new experience for the kids. Apparently it turned them temporarily goofy.

Back to the hotel, time for a dip in the pool and then a visit to the coin-op laundry in the basement. (Man, how fast the dirty clothes pile up.) Then we went back to the Plaza for dinner, taking a roundabout route that crossed over the state line into Kansas, just so we could say we'd done another state. We drove through Mission Hills -- plenty of choice real estate there, I must say.

I wanted to eat at P.F. Chang's, but Grace held out for the Cheesecake Factory across the street. In my opinion the Cheesecake Factory is the lowest-common-denominator kind of chain restaurant, but there is no arguing with Grace. Happy now, Grace?

Everything's Up to Date

2009-07-04T23:54:00.000-04:00

STATE VISITED: Missouri

Today's game -- the Kansas City Royals facing the Chicago White Sox -- was the only day game we'll be seeing on this trip. We walked over from the Holiday Inn just in time for the game, but not in time to get the good giveaway T-shirts at the gate. This was my fault because I wasn't ready to leave in time and so I apologize to my family. (Happy, Hugh?)

Kauffman Stadium -- a.k.a. "The K" -- looks like a spaceport from outside but inside it's a very nice stadium, not too big, with an open side to let in breezes. Considering today's stifling heat and humidity, we were very grateful for that.

As I recall, the Royals name derives from the crown logo on Hallmark Cards, which has its headquarters in K.C. The crown over the jumbotron may look a little hokey, but it's actually fun. Whenever there's a Royals home run, they send up rockets from the prongs of the crown, and the fountains to the right go spouting into the air. The Royals mascot, the king of beasts, wasn't much in evidence today, but in that heat, I can't blame him.

Our seats today were excellent -- on the first base line, only about a dozen rows back from the field -- although I don't think that's the only reason why this game felt more exciting than the last two. Though the White Sox scored the first few runs, the Royals managed to pull ahead, hit by hit by stolen base by hit. The guy to the left, second baseman Alberto Callaspo, got action nearly every time he was up to bat, and also made some great plays in the field. There was only one Royals home run -- hit by Brayan Pena (right) -- which was the first home team homer we've seen on this trip.

With the Royals ahead only by two runs, there was considerable exultation -- flaming videos, the whole bit -- when the Royals closer, Joakin Soria, came trotting out in the ninth to protect their lead. He lived up to his reputation and despatched the remaining White Sox, one two three.

I do love a dominating closer.

After the game, we picked up the car and explored Kansas City. First stop: The Country Club Plaza, America's first shopping mall, a Spanish-themed retail district dating back to 1922. I've always loved the Plaza, even though now most of the shops are chain stores -- Pottery Barn, Urban Outfitters, J. Crew, alongside Tiffany's and Rolex. I kinda like the fact that it's not all Rodeo-Drived beyond the reach of the ordinary suburban shopper.

A gallery of Plaza shots:

Next stop -- dinner at Arthur Bryant's, the legendary Kansas City barbecue joint. It's down in the historic 18th & Vine District, which has been developed to celebrate K.C.'s jazz heritage. I'm not sure how successful the restoration of this district has been -- although 18th Street itself looked nicely spiffed up -- but Arthur Bryant's hasn't been changed, thank god. Why would anybody change such a classic?

In true barbecue format, there's no table service -- you shuffle along in a slow-moving line, waiting to get to the promised land of the counter, where you shout your order through the window to the guys next to the pit. The line took a while -- Arthur Bryant's is hardly a secret -- but that just meant you could study what everybody else was already eating and decide what you wanted to order. Servings were huge and messy, and all the diners looked pretty damn happy.

While we were waiting we chatted with a couple who were also doing a cross-country drive, but the other direction, from San Francisco to New England. They got a kick out of the fact that we were meeting halfway, in Kansas City, and that we'd both been drawn to Bryant's for some classic barbecue.

We all had various sandwiches; I opted for the burnt ends sandwich, which is chunks of the most succulent pork hacked from the ends of the roast. It may be a little chewier, but it was still meltingly tender, and incredibly flavorful. I'm no barbecue expert, but I know this was heavenly meat. The K.C. barbecue style -- largely due to Mr. Bryant's example -- is a sweet tomato-based sauce, which is basically what I grew up with, so it made me very happy indeed.

Good crisp, crunchy cole slaw too, not too sweet and not overly mayonnaised. I'm very picky about my cole slaw -- I consider it the testing point of a good restaurant. Bryant's' slaw passed the test with flying colors.

The night was still young when we got back to the hotel from dinner, so Bob and Grace and I decided to go to the movies. (I'd been hankering to see this new Johnny Depp movie, Public Enemies, where he plays John Dillinger.) When we got to the closest theater where it was playing, we discovered that it was a drive-in. Man, that was really hitting pay dirt -- I haven't been to a drive-in in years! There are only about a couple hundred left in the country, I think. This one was not only a drive-in but a multiscreen drive-in -- four different screens set in a ring, and you park your car in front of whichever screen is showing the movie you want. The site was pretty run-down -- a potholed asphalt surface with weeds sprouting from the cracks, paint peeling off the white wooden fences -- and with most of the window speakers missing, the sound is now transmitted via your car radio. But, hey, they were showing first-run movies, so it wasn't just worth it for the novelty value. Full-service snack bar and everything.

We enjoyed the movie, although being a Michael Mann picture it had dark jumpy camera work that was a little hard to appreciate on the drive-in screen. (Besides, I had volunteered to watch from the back seat, which meant considerable acrobatics to view the screen between the front seats, under the rear-view mirror, and above the dashboard.) And since it was the Fourth, fireworks kept exploding in the sky behind Johnny Depp's head. But it was a kooky experience, and so reminiscent of my youth at the Shadeland Drive-In. If we'd tried we couldn't have thought up a better way to spend the Fourth of July!

Huck and the Hucksters

2009-07-03T22:24:00.000-04:00

STATE VISITED: Missouri

The last time I went up the St. Louis Arch was the year after it opened, when I went with my junior-high church youth group. Needless to say, I hardly remember anything about it, except that I took a picture of the old Busch Stadium with my new Polaroid Swinger camera and it looked like a tiny slide-projector carousel. I think it was just the Arch back then -- just a ride to the top and a look around -- although I could always be wrong.

Now there's a whole complex of things to do at the base -- riverboat tours, two different films, a mock-up of a period general store, and a whole "museum" telling the story of America's westward expansion. I put "museum" in quotes because there aren't many real artifacts, just glossy reproductions and loads of wordy plaques. I suppose if you read all the displays it could occupy you for hours -- but we're on vacation! Who wants to read all the displays? It's enough just to listen to the sonorous speeches delivered by the animatronic characters:

Okay, okay, so the bison didn't talk. That would have been too awesome, wouldn't it?

My favorite bit was the reconstructed sod house. That's like the ultimate frontier dwelling -- "Oh, you think it's cool living in a house made of logs? Well, I live in a house made of dirt." (Hint: Look in the window and you can see Hugh...)

The reality is that this "museum" is just there to occupy you while you're waiting to take the tram to the top. It's crowd control, pure and simple. Once you've been checked in with your time-stamped tram ticket, there's a string of other displays to distract you so you don't get restless while you're waiting in line some more. They're very educational and all that -- but the real reason you're there is to go 600-plus feet in the air, higher than the Statue of Liberty or the Washington Monument.

The "tram" (a chain of enclosed 5-person pods that are a real challenge for claustrophobics) takes four minutes to reach the top. I think we spent about six minutes looking out the windows and then we decided to go back down. (The ride down takes three minutes -- gravity helps.) There just isn't that much to see once you're up there, at least if you're not from the area and none of the landmarks mean much to you. But just for the record, here's what we saw: (left to right) the old courthouse, Busch Stadium, and the Eads Bridge.

The Eads Bridge is cool because it was St. Louis' first railroad bridge across the Mississippi, and had an innovative cantilevered arch design. The arches of the Eads Bridge are what inspired Eero Saarinen to design the Arch. (See, those time-wasting videos while you're waiting for the tram really do teach you something.) When all is said and done, you have to admit that the Gateway Arch is still a breathtaking monument, that minimalist immense sweep of silver glinting in the sunlight. Nearly half a century old and it still looks post-modern and cool.

I have to admit I was a bit distracted by the presence of dozens of teen-age beauty pageant winners who were swarming around the Arch, all dressed in matching blue T-shirts, white short-shorts, and rhinestone tiaras. I don't think I could ever wear a tiara without giggling, but these girls were completely unself-conscious about it. These girls were born to wear tiaras, apparently.

My kids said not to take pictures of the girls, but I couldn't help it. I figured these are the sort of kids who don't mind having their pictures taken.

We pulled out of St. Louis around noon and headed north, up the river, to Hannibal, Missouri. It was good for a change to get off the interstates and do some blue highways. As we drove through a string of tiny sleepy river towns, Bob remarked that they had "seen better days." Tom begged to differ -- what "better days" had these towns ever seen? I suspect he's right.

Hannibal was worth the drive, though. As a charter member of the Huck Finn Society, I'm a huge Mark Twain fan, and I'd already been twice to the quirky mansion in West Hartford where Clemens -- by then already celebrated as a national literary treasure -- lived at the time he wrote Tom Sawyer. I just had to see the town where Tom Sawyer grew up.

The historic downtown of Hannibal does what it can to capitalize on the Twain connection -- the Becky Thatcher Ice Cream Parlor! The Mark Twain Diner! the Tom Sawyer Dioramas! -- there's even a mustachioed gent in a white suit and a wild gray mane standing on street corners for photo ops. (Signs proclaim that he is not affiliated with the official Mark Twain Boyhood Home organization -- some local dust-up no doubt.) Maybe I should have taken his picture, but it just seemed too obvious.

The old Clemens home is pretty much what you'd expect the local justice of the peace to own: a square white frame house two blocks inland from the ferry landing, just off Main Street. Justice Clemens' law offices (also part of the official site) are right across the street. Note the white board fence to the right of the house -- that's the fence that Tom Sawyer swindles his friends into whitewashing for him in that early chapter of the book.

There didn't seem to be many authentic Clemens possessions inside, so the curators tried to distract visitors with white plaster figures of Twain, posed in the sparsely furnished rooms, as if he were visiting the place in his memory. It's a cool idea but not 100% effective.

Behind the Clemens house, they've built a house that's supposed to be where Huck Finn lived, a copy of the home where young Sam's pal Tom Blankenship, son of the town drunk, grew up. Photos of the old Blankenship shack look appropriately ramshackle, but this place was just built and hardly looks decrepit. They haven't put any furnishings inside yet, either. Huck being one of my favorite characters in all of literature, I did feel a little let down that they haven't yet done him justice here.

I still thought Hannibal was a great side trip to make. It's a fine window into the past, when the Mississippi river was the great artery of the middle of the country. All those neat brick shipfronts lining the main street, the frame houses on side streets climbing the hill -- no village green, no great shade trees, just a fair and open little town clinging to the river. As Bob remarked, it felt distinctly Southern -- Missouri was after all a slave state -- much more so than the hustling port of St. Louis two hours' drive south.

Leaving Hannibal, we cut southwest through a wide swathe of farmland and small county seat towns. One thing we noticed -- this being July 4th weekend -- was that every town had at least one, and often two or three, open-air tents set up selling fireworks, for the local Boy Scouts or Elks Lodge or cancer society or whatever. Tables stacked high with rockets and sparklers and Roman candles of all kinds, and from what we could see, they were doing a brisk business. It seemed impossible to imagine that so many fireworks could be sold in one weekend, but hey, it's the Fourth.

And once we got back on I-70, from Columbia MO on west, we noticed billboards advertising another thriving local line of business. "ADULT XXX Videos DVDs Toys Magazines Lingerie Shoes!!!!" (Shoes -- hunh?) Maybe it's for lonely truckers, maybe this is just a part of the country where there's very little else in the realm of entertainment, but there were sure enough of these billboards for us to wonder. In the interests of journalism, I probably should have gotten off the road to investigate . . . . but, well, the Family Truckster has a moral tone to uphold.

Over the River

2009-07-02T23:05:00.023-04:00

STATES VISITED: Indiana / Illinois / Missouri

Time for us to make some serious mileage. We picked up breakfast from the bakery at the Marsh grocery in Nora, right across the street from North Central -- what a hoot -- and hit the road around noon. We stopped for lunch at a Wendy's in Terre Haute, then crossed the Wabash River (sycamore trees and all) and then the state line, entering Illinois and a new time zone. (It was kinda cool to watch the numbers on our cell phones change). A bathroom-and-soda stop in Vidalia -- the ex-capital of Illinois! former home of Abe Lincoln, celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth!! -- just so we could actually touch Illinois soil for a moment.

At last, around 4pm Central Time, the Gateway Arch began to peek over the horizon, and soon after we were rolling across the Mississippi into St. Louis. Up here, when it hasn't yet merged with the Ohio, the Mississipp isn't quite as impressive as it gets to be later on -- wide and muddy but not yet mighty. Still, crossing the Mississippi says we're really out of the East at last -- major milestone.

St. Louis downtown looks great, though it was a pain to arrive at the start of a holiday weekend, when everybody was trying to leave work early. (Major metropolis + spread-out suburbs + no mass transit = rush hour nightmare.)

We checked into our hotel, one of a couple dozen Drury Inns in St. Louis -- the one closest to Busch Stadium, naturally. They've done a great job of renovating a historic building, the former International Fur Exchange. It's decorated with Old West frontier details (dark wood, tasseled drapes, tufted upholstery) and down in the lobby there's a scene of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea trailblazing the west.

Hugh and I took a walk around downtown right away, checking out the architecture etc. Stretching westward from the Arch, a series of blocks have been laid out in a really inviting public mall full of sculpture, water features, and plantings. Here's a few random shots of it:

I guess if you lived in St. Louis this City Mall would get old hat, but for a visitor, it's a cool place to hang out. The design of this whole downtown area really works -- I love how they use the Arch to frame the old historic courthouse.

Unfortunately, we got here too late in the day to go do the Arch -- have to save that for tomorrow. We did, however, discover a great view of the Arch from a corridor window in our hotel:

In just a couple of weeks, St. Louis is going to be hosting the MLB All-Star Game, so they've added some mini-arches covered with logos of all the major league teams. I tell you, this whole city seems to be delirious about this impending event. Funny, when the All-Star Game came to New York last summer it barely made a ripple . . . .

Well, baseball is what we came for, so baseball is what we did. We headed over to the new Busch stadium (opened in 2006) to watch the Cardinals play the San Francisco Giants, whom we saw play back in 2005 when we did our last baseball tour, that one of the West Coast. Busch Stadium from the outside looks like one of your retro classic stadiums, but inside it's surprisingly big. Clearly, though, they've got a huge local fan base, because the place was packed with folks in red Cards T-shirts. Our seats were rather far up, which we didn't expect considering how much we'd paid for them.

However, our seats were attached to a "party box", which meant we could walk inside for free food and drink (delicious brisket, chicken, hot dogs, nachos) or to escape the St. Louis swelter by sitting in air-conditioned comfort. There were closed-circuit TVs everywhere, too, to make up for the distance from the field. It's the old arena-concert conundrum: As soon as they give you a screen to stare at, you find yourself staring at the screen instead of watching the live action.

One cool design detail of this stadium: at the end of every row of seats there's a cast-iron Cardinal logo. Naturally there's also a big plush Cardinal mascot running around.

This game felt a lot more exciting than the Reds game the other night, even though we were far from the action on the field. Barry Zito was pitching for the Giants, and he didn't hit his groove until the second inning, by which time the Cards had already hammered him for 3 runs. Albert Pujols got intentional walks most every time he came up to the plate -- the crowd booed like crazy. The Cards pitcher, Todd Wellemeyer, had a shutout until the 7th inning, which kept the tension high. In the end the Cardinals won 5-3. Not a lot of home runs, but plenty of guys getting on base, so there was always something going on. Good game -- and very pleasant to be able to walk two blocks back to our rooms afterwards, while all the other spectators were still sitting in traffic!

My Indiana Home(s)

2009-07-01T23:37:00.025-04:00

STATES VISITED: Ohio / Indiana

I was determined to get a picture of the welcome sign to Indiana. I knew that there was one -- we saw an image of it last night at the Reds game, in the between-innings video game where the three cars race around Cincinnati (in New York, it's subway trains). But I got nervous that I'd miss it behind all those semis, lumbering up the hills of southern Ohio, so Hugh shot this sign of the highway marker to Indianapolis. Then, a couple miles farther on, here came the Indiana sign:

Heh, heh, sorry it's so blurry. What do you expect out of the window of a speeding car? But doofus-y as it sounds, this sight actually made me want to sing "Back Home Again in Indiana," a song so quintessentially cornball you should have a straw boater and cane to sing it. (Don't worry, I refrained from treating my carload of family to such a cheesy performance.)

For me, this 24-hour blitz through Indianapolis was the most important part of this trip. I hadn't been back to my hometown for 18 years; this was long overdue. It was essential to let my children see this part of my life, to connect some images to the stories I'd been telling them. Even more, it was essential for me to remind myself where I've come from.

We're staying at a perfectly pleasant Homewood Suites out by Keystone in the Crossing, which was just a cornfield when I was growing up. I have absolutely no connection to the glossy chain-store agglomeration that has sprouted around this intersection. It could be anywhere in America. A Crate and Barrel? A Borders Books? A Bed Bath and Beyond? All very well and good, but utterly beside the point for me.

No, I was on a mission to show my kids every house that I ever lived in. Mind you, this is no quick task. My dad was a real-estate lawyer; we went to open houses every Sunday afternoon just for the fun of it; we were always getting enamored of some new home, some fresh yard, some better school district, some altered visions of ourselves. My family lived in 7 different houses during the 21 years I lived at home. Today we saw them all.

First came this little bungalow at 56th and Carrollton, where my parents were a young couple starting out, with just my toddler brother Holt and baby me. I have no memories of living here, although I walked by it many times in later years. All those fussy trees around the front are new (and by new I mean over the past 40 years). Even the big tree was barely more than a sapling when I first lived here.

When I was around three we moved to this place on Central Avenue, an exceedingly bland name for a beautiful street, lined with the sort of solid baronial homesteads that Indianapolis excels at. I do remember living here, when it was a modest little yellow dwelling with a screened porch across the front. (Holt's imaginary friend Heaps Cronin lived under the porch.) That dense screen of trees to the left wasn't there then -- I know because I was allowed to run by myself over to the neighbors' yard to have tea with Tina Gerlib and her mom. Mrs. Gerlib was Canadian, I think, which in Indiana qualifies you as an exotic.

Just before I entered kindergarten we moved to this house on Washington Boulevard. I remember this house in vivid and distinct detail. Of all the places we lived, this one has changed the least. Why would anyone change it? It's a splendid little house, with that copper-roofed bay window and the leaded-glass windows embellished with tiny crests and diamond-shaped panes. This is the house I "ran away" from one evening when I was four, scaring the bejeebers out of my poor mother (my dad was out of town). But I told her before I left that I was just going around the corner to Hammakers' Drugstore, where we went every day to buy candy. I put my shoes on myself (on the wrong feet, granted) and I had been memorizing the route for days. I was always good with directions.

When we lived in that house, I went to P.S. 70. I remember walking there every day, with older boys -- "traffic boys" with special white belts -- to help guide us little kids across the street. P.S. 70 always had a great carnival, and I had the best second grade teacher ever, Miss Pollack.

The next house was probably the best, a rambling 1920s-era manor on Meridian Street, the prime Indianapolis residential street, running straight as an arrow down the center of town. We moved here when I was just about to start second grade, which meant I had to be the new kid in school. Misery. But it was a fabulous house -- at last I had my own bedroom and didn't have to share with my annoying baby sister Buffie any more. (Hi Buff!) We had a back stairway and a dumb waiter and there was a balcony off my bedroom. A huge sunken garden in back, too. We renovated this house substantially inside -- at one point we had our old bathtub sitting on the front lawn for weeks. (I'll bet that was real popular with our Meridian Street neighbors.) The new owners haven't changed it much outside but they added these big bushes in front, so we had to drive up the driveway to get this shot. Sorry, folks!

Here's P.S. 84, where I went to grade school when we lived on Meridian. (We lived there for 7 years, so I finished grade school at #84 and then went on to Broad Ripple High School). The local Catholic school, Immaculate Heart of Mary, faced #84 on the other side of the street. John Hiatt went to Immaculate Heart; when I got from an autograph from him after a show one night, I mentioned that I'd gone to #84 and he laughed. "You were going to hell," he told me. "The nuns always told us those kids across the street were going to hell." Funny -- when we looked out our windows at Immaculate Heart, all we could see was a door flying open and some kid running for his life with a nun running behind, wimple flying, brandishing a ruler.

I tried to get a picture of Broad Ripple, but it's really hard to capture this tan brick hulk with an ordinary camera from the street. This was part of the fortress-like addition they built when I was there, adding lots of windowless interior classrooms where kids went stir-crazy. In movies, they always portray high school as a hormone-addled hell house of clueless teachers and vicious social competition, but for me it was paradise. The two things that mattered here were student publications and choral music -- talk about playing to my strengths! I apologize now to all the kids who oozed through 4 years at Ripple despising me for being a top student, multiple award-winner, and yearbook queen, with my magic Riparian hall pass that could get me out of any class. I don't remember asking for it -- after being ostracized in grade school for being in "special" (the gifted and talented class), it was astonishing in high school that being smart actually counted for something.

In a world of haves and have-not, in Ripple I was the ultimate have. Couldn't get a date, of course, but that seemed a fair trade-off to me; I had great friends to hang out with, anyway, and here is where we hung out. I knew I had to take the kids to Steak and Shake; best burgers ever. Of course, in high school, we never actually ate there, we just drove around the parking lot to see who else was there. One night Dave Crichlow and Tim Harmon and Beth Wood and I set out to do 500 laps around the parking lot -- the Steak and Shake 500. We probably only did about 20 laps before we realized nobody but us thought it was funny. But we thought it was hysterical.

House #4 (I told you there were a lot) was our brief experiment in building our own house. My mother designed this as a New England saltbox, in the middle of a new development that had been a cornfield not long before -- which meant it was way out in the new suburbs, and hence in another school district. (I got special permission to keep going to Broad Ripple.) The house was sage green when we lived there, but I like the new color scheme. I remember that this house's walls were so thin, they shook when the wind blew, as it often did across that flat bare tract. There were no trees at all on the lot when it was built. I'm relieved to see that they've finally grown in.

I was already in college when the fam moved to this place just off north College, in a development called Windcombe. It's been altered so much, I had to drive past three or four times before I was sure this was it. (It didn't help that my mother gave me the wrong address. Hi Mom!) They filled in the breezeway, converted the old garage, and built a new garage behind it. I guess my parents were beginning to downsize at this point, with two kids already off at college; I think they were also tired of living with their own construction mistakes in the new-built house. This place was solid, solid, solid. I don't think they were here long; I can't even remember what my bedroom looked like. I do remember that we were living here when we got our cats Nuki and Abby, and I remember Buffie's friend Sally Harvey lived across the street.

The last Indianapolis house I ever lived in: The house on East 70th, in Arden. My mother had been lusting to find a place in Arden for years. As it turns out, this was the house that Wally Dortch lived in when we were in high school together. I was ready to graduate from college when we moved here, but I do remember the interior very clearly -- a classic 1950s layout, mostly on one level, with a long wing of bedrooms. Tiny yard, but then, with grown kids, who needs a big yard? The house never felt small to us, but obviously later owners thought so because they added an entire new wing (the whole bit over the garage). The immense old tree that used to stand there toppled during a windstorm when we lived there, falling right between my parents' cars. We lived here when my brother got married -- I remember taking photos in the yard.

So there's my Indianapolis life in houses. Bob asked me what there was to see in Indianapolis, and that's what I answered: Houses. But I'm not being facetious -- to me that's this city's great secret, its livability. People sink their money into roomy, handsome homes set on large lots -- for a city this size it has an incredible stock of them, on the North Side at least. (And to me, the North Side IS Indianapolis.) Yes, it has a beautiful downtown, which we drove around -- not much of a skyline, but impressive public plazas and mighty civic buildings made of gleaming Indiana limestone, all centered around the slender obelisk of the Monument. There are all sorts of new visitor attractions downtown, around the revitalized canal, which were developed long after I left town. But when I come to Indianapolis, what I need to do is to slake my lifelong hunger for looking at beautiful houses and wondering what's inside.

What's High in the Middle and Round on Both Ends

2009-06-30T23:25:00.019-04:00

STATES VISITED: West Virginia / Ohio / Kentucky

There's always the stuff you've forgotten on your trip -- you're just lucky if it turns out not to be critical. We were halfway across the George Washington Bridge on Day One when I realized that I'd forgotten the bottles of sunscreen and bugspray I'd bought specifically to take with us. No biggie, right? But over the next couple days it became clear that other things had been forgotten -- underwear, swim suits, a soccer ball for pre-season training -- so first thing this morning we headed to a Wal-Mart in Triadelphia,WV, to remedy the matter. Those gigantimundo stores always send me into a spaced-out fugue state; I can wander around for hours, filling my jumbo shopping cart with things I don't need just because they are so incredibly cheap. And this Wal-Mart was a special super-sized one, so getting out was even more of a challenge. The rest of the suburban hilltop was loaded with other brand-new chain stores with empty parking lots -- kinda spooky. If we weren't on a schedule, we would have checked out the immense Cabela's that dominated the hilltop: The World's Largest Outdoor Outfitters. It looked like the kind of place even Daniel Boone would get lost in. I'm sure it would have been a perfect way to cap our West Virginia experience. But, well, miles to go and all that....

As soon as we crossed the state line into Ohio, we noticed that the hills were becoming gentler and the sky wider. Beautiful Ohio farmland -- what a welcome sight to me. The highway ribboned out straight before us, lapping up the rolling landscape as we powered across I-70 to Columbus, which always impressed me as a kid on our family car drives east. It still has one of the best skylines in the Midwest, I think. No Rust Belt decay here, at least from what we could tell from an hour's quick stop-off for lunch.

Hugh was interested in seeing Columbus mainly because he wanted to check out the Nationwide Arena, where the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey team plays. So we did. Of course since it isn't hockey season now we couldn't go inside, but the pilgrimage was duly made. (Oh, please don't tell me that after we've made all this effort to help Hugh cross off all the major-league baseball stadiums on his life list, now he's going to start on the hockey arenas too.)

From there we headed southwest to Cincinnati. (Isn't it cool how Ohio has a city in every corner -- Cleveland in the northeast, Toledo in the northwest, Cincinnati in the southwest, and . . . well, the southeast corner kinda gets cut off, doesn't it? But then there are Columbus and Dayton in the middle, too, all those solid mid-sized cities, each holding their own. I love Ohio.)

The drive south from Columbus ran through more fertile farmland -- broad fields of corn, soybeans, alfafa, each a slightly different texture, a slightly different shade of green, a vast tapestry of croplands. Bob keeps remarking on how flat it is, but I don't know, I like it flat. Sorry, but this is what I think countryside should look like.

Here's a beautiful white barn we saw on the road to Cincinnati.

We had a little incident with the GPS -- or Ms. Garmin, as we now call her -- who started sending us north on I-75 as we were just starting to get into Cincinnati proper. Then she pretended she hadn't screwed up and kept saying "Recalculating. Recalculating" as if it was OUR fault. The little minx.

We finally got into Cincinnati and checked into the downtown Westin by 4:30, which meant I had to scramble to get down the street to the Underground Railroad Museum, which closes at 5. Hard to believe it, but I couldn't talk any of the kids into coming with me. The nice folks at the desk let me in free because the place was just about to close. I breezed through the exhibits, wishing I'd had time to stop and read every plaque and watch every haunting video. I saw some intriguing artifacts -- old rusty manacles, a reconstructed log cabin, raggedy dresses -- and dramatic dioramas. Not surprisingly, this museum considers John Brown a visionary hero, and displays the photographs of him that look like Abraham Lincoln instead of the really wild-eyed shots. It's a cool museum, though -- I'm glad I had at least 20 minutes there. I'd have kicked myself if I'd missed it entirely.

The Westin is just a couple blocks from the riverfront, which means we could walk to the ballpark for the Reds game tonight. First, though, we had to walk across the Ohio River to Covington, Kentucky, just so we could say we'd visited Kentucky. We took the old Cincinnati-Covington suspension bridge, which we learned was built by John Roebling, the same guy who did the much longer Brooklyn Bridge a couple years later. You can definitely see the resemblance.

Having officially touched Kentucky soil, we headed back across the river and joined the crowds flowing into the ballpark, which has a great riverfront location. It's a pretty new ballpark, I think, and it's well-designed from what I can tell, if perhaps a bit generic. It's called the Great American Ballpark, which seems like pretty bold talk until you figure out that it's underwritten by the Great American Insurance company across the street.

Here are the kids and Bob at our seats, which were on the first base line. I have to say that the stadium seemed awfully big; it was only about half full, although on a weeknight this early in the season, with the Reds not leading their division, I guess it's not surprising it wasn't packed. But what do I know? I've gotten too used to Yankee Stadium, I guess.

My dad was always a huge Reds fan, so I had to think of him, and how much he would have enjoyed knowing we were at a Reds game.

One cool feature of the park was the pavilion across the outfield from home plate, which is rigged up to look like an old-timey riverboat. You can't really see that in the picture, but here's a close-up of these smokestacks. When the crowd sings the Star Spangled Banner, on the line "the bombs bursting in air," red fireworks shoot out of the smokestacks. Nice touch.

The Reds have been around since 1869, which is pretty impressive. They were originally known as the Redlegs, so their big-head mascot is Mr. Redlegs. We loved his handlebar mustache. The kids are convinced that this is like Conan O'Brian's fantasy image of old-timey baseball players.

The Reds ended up losing the game -- their pitcher, Bronson Arroyo, just didn't seem to have any stuff tonight, and the pitcher for the Diamondbacks, Dan Haren, was much better. The D-backs are the bottom of their division and the Reds in the middle of theirs, but that's the thing I love about baseball: On any one night, any team can beat any other teams, if the stars are aligned right. That's why the World Series needs seven games, I guess. Anyhow, there were a few exciting moments in the later innings, once the starting pitchers were gone and things got a little edgier, but in the end the Diamondbacks won, 6-2.

The highlight of the evening for me? I got to try a Skyline Chili cheese coney. Skyline Chili is the biggest chain selling Cincinnati's most beloved local food, chili. It's the Official Chili of the Cincinnati Reds, naturally. They even display bowls of chili for that between-innings video game on the jumbotron where you're supposed to pick which of three identical images is hiding the baseball.

I don't know if everybody in Cincinnati is really a chili fan or if that's just visitors bureau guff. All I can say is that I finally got a chance to try some Skyline Chili on my hot dog, and it was absolutely lip-smacking delicious.

John Brown's Body

2009-06-29T22:45:00.017-04:00

STATES VISITED: West Virginia / Virginia / Maryland / Pennsylvania

We hauled the teenagers out of bed today at 8:30am, probably the earliest they've had to get up all summer. But sorry, kids, this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. We had hikes to hike and historic landmarks to mark, and time was a-wasting. (Must be something about being in West Virginia that gets me talking like Pearl Bodine.)

First off -- well, after the Froot Loops and muffins from the motel's breakfast bar -- there were battlefields to tramp around, in this case the Murphy Farm, a.k.a. the Chambers Farm, as it was known in 1862 when the Confederates set up their cannon in the hayfields to rout the Union forces. Stonewall Jackson's finest hour, apparently. The view of the Shenandoah valley from the farm is truly spectacular:

That's looking upriver towards Maryland. West Virginia was still Virginia in 1862, which just confuses all this history even more. It's pretty amazing to think that these soldiers hauled those heavy guns up these steep ravines from the Shenandoah River; I could barely drag my handbag uphill (though god knows how much I've got in that purse). The Union forces never expected they'd be coming from the south -- never underestimate the power of surprise.

The Union troops were a little farther north, in the town of Bolivar (it used to be called Mud Fort before the townsfolk changed the name to capitalize on the romantic image of Simon Bolivar, the "George Washington of South America"). Here's the Union troops' defensive position, looking south towards the Blue Ridge:

Walking around old battlefields may not be everybody's cup of tea, but we get a kick out of it. It's a good excuse for an hour's hike, anyway.

This is really is a gorgeous part of the country, I have to say. I'm sure my pictures don't do it justice.

And then of course there's the obligatory staring-down-the-cannon-barrel shot. For some reason this absolutely never gets old.

It really was ironic to see those Union cannons trained on that little gap in the trees, blindly pointing the other direction from the farm we'd just visited, where A.P. Hill and his men (not to mention his own big guns) were massing all the while, behind the Union flank. At the end of this battle, over 12,000 U.S. troops surrendered to Stonewall Jackson, a record that was not surpassed until World War II. Then apparently the Confederate troops withdrew from Harper's Ferry a few months later and the Union took it over again anyway. Go figure.

I can't claim to be much of an expert on this history, mind you; I'm only telling you what we learned this morning from Park Ranger David Fox, who delivered a genuinely impressive 45-minute overview of Harper's Ferry's colorful past, beginning back with George Washington, who surveyed the land as a young Virginia surveyor, and Thomas Jefferson, who sat on a rock here exulting over the view of the Potomac gap.

Here is a picture of my son Tom sitting on that selfsame rock, ignoring the view while he is texting friends on his cell phone:

Washington was the one who decreed that one of the two U.S. armories should be built here, where there were local iron and lumber for raw materials, and water power to run the gun factory works. If Washington hadn't located the armory here, then abolitionist firebrand John Brown wouldn't have come here to try to swipe guns to arm all the escaped slaves he was planning to help to freedom.

This John Brown stuff is the aspect of Harper's Ferry history that got me the most intrigued. It sure is a bizarre story. And where there's a bizarre story, what better way to tell it than a cheesy wax museum? Don't get me wrong, the John Brown Wax Museum is perfectly respectable as wax museums go, but all wax museums are by definition inherently cheesy, aren't they? So of course we had to visit it. Here's a fuzzy photo of my favorite tableau in the place, the denouement of Brown's crazy raid on the federal armory. Note: Brown is the kneeling figure in the tan coat, cradling in his lap his dying son who he dragged into this escapade.
I get the idea that Brown was, to put it delicately, a bleeding nut case. His goals may have been perfectly admirable, but his methods were highly suspect. In the end, he got half of his 21 men killed (did he really think he could pull off this raid with just 21 men?) and got himself hung for treason. He was tried, all right, but it doesn't look to me like this could possibly have been a fair trial -- it took place just a few weeks after the raid, when Brown himself was still suffering from wounds received in the skirmish. I'll bet it was a zoo, the 19th-century version of the OJ trial. On the other hand, Brown's lunatic raid helped to ignite the Civil War, which eventually did end slavery, so maybe he knew what he was doing after all.

Harper's Ferry has been basically a national park since the 1940s; only about 300 hundred people live here now, most of who seem to be running gift shops or selling ice cream. Nice gift shops, mind you, and delicious ice cream. It's a cool little town and we enjoyed poking around. A lot of the shops are gussied up to look like they did in the 1850s, but right now they've just got fake displays in the windows. I'd like it even better if more of them were fitted up with repro merchandise and costumed shopkeepers. You know the drill -- the fake print shop, the fake blacksmith's forge, the fake general store. I love historic restorations. I love costumed interpreters too, but they were in short supply today. We saw exactly 3 women in long skirts and bonnets and one Civil War soldier walking around for the benefit of the educational programs. Maybe there would have been more if we'd come on a weekend. I'll bet they've got loads of them organized for John Brown's 150th anniversary later this year.

Oh, and one other cool thing about Harper's Ferry -- it's the mid-point of the Appalachian Trail. We ran into at least a handful of hikers with their walking sticks and backpacks, though they didn't look grubby enough to have come all the way up from Georgia or down from Maine. After reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, I'm ready for every Appalachian Trail hiker to be mud-coated and wild-haired and stinky.

Mid-afternoon, we bid Harper's Ferry adieu and headed on toward Wheeling, West Virginia. The road we drove on, I-68, running from Cumberland MD to Wheeling, was called the National Freeway -- apparently, in 1806 Thomas Jefferson ordered the first federal road to be built along this route, linking the Potomac and Ohio rivers. (This fact I picked up from the great book I'm reading right now, Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure by Matthew Algeo -- more on that tomorrow.) It was a beautiful highway with hardly any cars on it -- mostly just a handful of 18-wheelers laboring up these long inclines and huffing around the curves. I was driving so I didn't get to soak up the long blue-misted mountain views, and the other folks in the car were snoozing so they didn't see them either. So much for seeing America...

Crossing the Mason-Dixon Line

2009-06-28T17:58:00.017-04:00

STATES VISITED: Pennsylvania / Maryland / Virginia / West Virginia

Before we left Bethlehem this morning, we did the obligatory spin through the old steel mills neighborhood. (I've written about this derelict site, once the proud home of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, in my book 500 Places to See Before They Disappear.) Bob's father and all his uncles worked here for years; Bob himself had a summer job here as a janitor. Good incentive to go to college, you gotta say that for it. After the steel went bust, the smokestacks went cold and the mills stood empty for several years, big rusting ghosts in the center of town. I guess you could say they have their own weird poetry:
Finally, the Sands Casino rehabbed one of the old mills and recently opened it for business, offering nonstop slot action. Bob's sisters have been talking about this for ages, and I have to admit I was skeptical about it ever really happening. Well, it did, and this was our first chance to finally see it. I'm not sure this is exactly what this economically depressed area needs, but I have to give them props for the clever adaption of the industrial site. They've hung their blazing red logo on an old railroad crane across the entrance:
After that we drove out to the site of Bob's other summer job -- the Saucon Valley Country Club, where he used to caddy for the rich steel executives as they busily charmed clients into buying American steel. If this course hadn't been such a plum place to play golf, the U.S. steel mills might have gone belly-up years earlier. It's such a great course, it seems that they're having the U.S. Women's Open there right now -- at any rate we saw this giant merchandise tent set up at the edge of the course:
The real reason for going past the country club, though, is to drive on Saucon Valley Road, which has a fantastic series of whoopdedoo bumps -- if you drive fast enough (and we always do), it's like riding on a roller coaster. Ticklebelly Road, the kids call it. Well, I guess if you grow up in Bethlehem, you need to have something to do in the car on a Saturday night . . . .

* * * * *

We headed west on I-78 towards Reading, then followed I-81 south. By the time we needed to stop for lunch, we were at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Its main claim to fame as far as we're concerned is Dickinson College. Hugh applied to Dickinson and got accepted, but he'd never actually visited the campus. Everyone told us it was beautiful, and they were right -- what a little gem, an ensemble of neat fieldstone buildings set around a shady quadrangle with these red Adirondack chairs plopped down on the grass. Here are the kids, buddying up to the statue of physician Benjamin Rush, Dickinson's founder. He looks like he's about to drop his book on Grace's head, doesn't he?
They have this cool new science building too --
After a very respectable lunch at the Gingerbread Man (we enjoyed watching Wimbledon on TV, then we saw the US pull ahead of Brazil in the FIFA Confederations Cup -- a game I'm told the US eventually lost) we had a little walk around town. Favorite pic of the day, taken behind one of the local churches:
* * * *

Heading south on I-81 toward Maryland, we decided to try out the GPS system that came with the rental car. I swear, our GPS voice had a speech impediment. "At the next light, turn bleft," the robot lady said. "In five hundred yards, turn bright." (As if we weren't already bright enough...). We had to turn off the voice part, it was driving us so crazy. The GPS gods, however, sent us on a different route than the one the Google map gods had decreed, which caused a momentary short circuit in our navigational peace of mind. We went with the GPS edict, mostly because the GPS gadget was actually in the car with us and could have turned vicious at any minute. It ended up being serendipitous, though, because that route led us through the quaint town of Boonsboro, Maryland, which was founded by some cousins of Daniel Boone, distant ancestors of mine. It's the kind of town that has log cabins on the main street with gift shops inside -- it sounds hokey but honestly looked cool. Then we cut across country and crossed the Potomac river into (briefly) the very tippy-top corner of Virginia, which we wouldn't have gone into if we'd gone the Google route. Boosting this trip's total of states, always a plus.

Our destination: Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, set at the strategic confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, where abolitionist rabble-rouser John Brown convinced a gang of like-minded freedom fighters to attack the federal armory in October 1859. As the front desk clerk at the Comfort Suites informed us, this year is the 150th anniversary of John Brown's raid -- "Or maybe the 150th anniversary of him getting hung. Great. Let's celebrate this guy getting killed, that sounds like fun." I'm glad to know that cynicism is alive and well in West Virginia.

After dumping our gear at the Comfort Suites -- a marvel of chain-motel predictability, not that there's anything wrong with that -- we went into the historic district for dinner. All the costumed reenactors have gone home for the night and the cutesy gift shops are closed, but we had a decent dinner at the Secret Six Tavern, which commemorates six New England abolitionists who secretly funded Brown's activities. Walking along the tavern wall looking at the steel engravings of those guys' faces, I discovered that one of them was Samuel Gridley Howe, who, um, I'm pretty sure is another ancestor of mine. This DAR stuff can be embarrassing sometimes . . . .

O Little Town...

2009-06-27T23:25:00.000-04:00

STATES VISITED: New York / New Jersey / Pennsylvania

I expected, realistically, we'd finally get going by 2pm. My husband, Bob, imagined we'd be off by 10am. My son Hugh rolled his eyes and predicted it'd be 4 in the afternoon before we left.

Guess who won.

But there are so many things to do before you take off for a trip, even more if it's going to be a long one. There's the rental car to pick up, the prescriptions you'll need while you're gone to get from the pharmacy, the last trip to the grocery to lay in cleaning supplies for the house cleaner, the last last trip to the grocery to stock up on road snacks. (At least I could send my sons to do that one -- they are excellent road snack buyers.) Then there's the instructions to leave for the catsitter, the money to leave for the house cleaner, the final bag of kitchen garbage to set out, the last load of dishes to run in the dishwasher (and wait to make sure it completes the cycle without blowing up). The beds to be made, because I hate coming home to a messed-up bedroom. The children to be nagged into making their own beds, because they do not mind coming home to a messed-up bedroom. The pile of bills to be mailed. The keys to be left with the doorman. The windows to be shut, the lights to be turned off. It's a wonder we got off by 4pm, really.

Here's the kids and the car:
In their infinite wisdom, National Car Rental decided to give us not a Dodge Caravan, but a Toyota Sienna. Now, having just researched minivans (the lease on our Volvo runs out in a week), I happen to know that the Sienna has much worse safety ratings than comparable minivans. I am so glad that I know this now, as we are hurtling across I-80. I will say, however, that it's a pleasure, after that cramped back seat of the Volvo, to luxuriate in the space of this minivan. Sitting in the third row (what luxury to have a third row!), Tom noticed that the console between the seats of the middle row looks like a sad smiley-face:

Later Grace took a picture of the sad smiley-face with Hershey Kisses in the cupholders to look like eyeballs. Every time we hit a curve, the sad smiley-face rolls its eyes. Hilarious, hunh? (I guess you had to be there.)

I reckon one of the reasons we weren't in such a burning hurry to leave is that our first stop is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where Bob grew up and where his sisters still live; we couldn't really pass by without stopping overnight to see them. No check-in deadline, no stress about whether we'll get there in time to get connecting rooms, no worries about where we'll find to eat. We make this trip so often, it doesn't really feel like a vacation yet.

But it's always fun to hang with Bob's sisters. After dinner (a very tasty Italian restaurant way off the highway that we'd never have found if we didn't know people in town), we played Scrabble and watched Notorious on TV and then taught Hugh how to play Hearts. Card games seem such an archaic skill; in the Xbox era, nobody plays cards anymore. He's a fast learner; by the second round he beat everybody's butt. A fine skill to pick up for college.

To bed at 2am. We definitely have to get on a proper schedule once the trip really starts.

One Day and Counting...

2009-06-26T11:54:00.000-04:00

Packing. Yeesh!! Packing for myself is one thing, but how's come I'm packing for all of them too -- the 14-year-old, the 16-year-old, jeezus, even the 18-year-old, who three months from now will be living the independent life at college? And here we're packing for summer time, which means the clothes are lighter -- take up less space -- but you also need extra in case it's hot as a furnace and you end up soaked with sweat, which is entirely possible when we get to the Arizona part of our coast-to-coast journey. Arizona? I'm betting Kansas City will be plenty hot too, and don't even get me started on St. Louis.

So how did I get myself into this? Eighteen days of driving across this great big country of ours, starting in New York City and ending up in San Diego. Maybe it was the only way I could get my family to visit my hometown, Indianapolis, by padding it out with treats like five baseball games (Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals, Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks) and a stop at the Grand Canyon. Which is of course means jiggering the whole schedule to match up with home games, and finding hotels near the stadium in every one of these cities, and adding side trips to small towns we'd never otherwise see (because when are we likely to be in Nebraska again?).

Remember that old commercial "See the USA in a Chevrolet"? That's what we're doing, except we'll be seeing the USA in a Dodge Caravan, which is probably the next best thing to a covered wagon. Three teenagers fighting over the shotgun seat, and arguing about whose iPod we plug into the sound system. I may regret not opting for the DVD players -- but wasn't the whole point of this trip for us to actually talk to each other?

Shoot me now.