Virtual vacation, Days 2 & 3

Our virtual vacation continues. Day 1 is here.

I already summarized Day 2 on the evening it occurred. Our newest National Park outdid itself to interest the casual tourists; we’re excited about visiting many more times to those parts of the park we couldn’t get to. Most of the park (and indeed the state of West Virginia) appeal to the outdoorsy person but I’m an indoorsy person. I’ve been such all my life. As a teenager I might reluctantly put down the book I’d been reading most of the day when the neighborhood guys came around recruiting for a pickup game of football. As a college student I spent many hours biking (freshman) and canoeing (senior), but generally, if you just put a book in my hands, a glass of something handy, and I’d be fine. Indeed, one of the best parts about teaching junior high occurred when I’d arrive home around 4 p.m., pour a beer, light up a cigar, and settle into a chair outdoors, book in hand. West Virginia and New River Gorge N. P. offer a lot to the outdoorsy person. For me, it’s attractions are historical sites, nature, minor hiking, and the general scenery of a mountainous area.

As we left the park and stopped to check our directions, I learned a little about about baseball. I’m a moderately obsessed fan, but baseball grew up with our country unlike other sports here and has deep roots in much of Americana. Who knew that in the middle of semi-nowhere the Cincinnati Reds played an exhibition game?

Historical marker in Glen Jean, WV. July 2023.

Day 2 ended in Cincinnati, adding some serendipity to seeing the marker above. (And 50-cents for admission?! “They must think we’re rich!”) Arriving in Cincy, the calendar thwarted our dinner plan: the Jamaican restaurant Island Frydays didn’t open on Mondays. Instead we walked a couple blocks to a combo Indian and Ethiopian restaurant, two cuisines I never would imagine under the same roof. I felt some trepidation at the Ethiopian offerings (as did my wife); we stayed with the curries and attempted to educate the waitress about beers.

Day 3 offered the discovered joys only a road trip can bring. I noticed that US highway 127 paralleled I-75 but 20-some miles to the west of it. Traveling interstates seems to be not much different than surface highways, except for the continual slowing down and stopping demanded by the latter. In actuality they exist worlds apart. By their nature, interstates isolate you from what you travel past. The insulating nature of “limited access” soon numbs the driver from venturing off the concrete until his gas tank or stomach or kidneys demand it. Foliage, buildings, signs, people are all pushed back from the margins of the traveled road. Sights become the background bit players to the star: the interstate itself.

By contrast, traveling on any other highway surprisingly delights. Though it seems to travel the same route through the same countryside, it does so with panache, familiarity that borders on intimacy with its surroundings, and a deference to the towns which lie along its path. Unlike the interstate, the humble highway goes out of its way to connect town after town rather than pass them by and forcing them to grow strip malls and ‘satellite business districts’ along its path to fill the coffers of the local businesses. We had a lovely day to travel. Temperatures were in the mid-80s, the blue skies sported a few scattered clouds, and we were in no hurry to get to our destination (Lansing). It’s rare to find one highway which connects your departure with your destination; we made the most of it, stopping at will but mostly just admiring the fields, the architecture of the houses, the peculiarities each town develops over time, the crops which differed from North Carolina (or Pennsylvania or Washington), and those little things appealing only to us such as how the soundtrack from my digital audio player seemed to curate the sights taken in by our eyes.

We left greater Cincy through the Mt Healthy incorporated limits, provoking a few chuckles. North of Dayton (which we avoided on US-127) we skirted the shore of Grand Lake and encountered Celina, the seat of Mercer County, population about 11,000. Traveling a minor detour in town, I suddenly espied sacred architecture. Instinctively, I turned left. One block off our route stood this church:

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Celina, OH. July 2023.

After minor research I’m still uncertain why this is a cathedral as it seems not to be a diocesan center of worship. No matter–its beauty stands on its own. How or why such a marvelous church came to exist in such a small community will have to wait for another day.

Interior, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Celina, OH. July 2023.

We were not alone in our admiration. Another visiting couple (retired also, I surmised) came out of the cathedral and urged us to go inside. I’m not sure we would have done so otherwise. Tuesday? When no one seemed to be around? We were overwhelmed. I said a brief prayer, and thanked the local clergy for leaving the building open so that I could use its bathroom.

Our day continued in the same manner, but became more mundane as we entered Michigan. The weather had turned to overcast, and we worriedly looked northward to blue-black clouds as we skirted Jackson. All the ills of interstates visited us when US-127 became limited access also. (A sad feature which returned to plague us on Day 4.) Driving into Lansing brought mostly aggravation with it. Our hotel there boasted its newness, and we soon discovered we were only a block from Jackson Field, the home of the Lansing Lugnuts, a High-A team (that’s single A ball). Not only that, but on the backside of the amazingly well-developed ballpark for a Single-A club sits Lansing Brewing Company! We had some of the best chicken tenders I’ve had (though I pretty much avoid them because…they’re chicken tenders), and their beer astounded with its high quality. (We bought a case and a half to go!)

This is NOT a typical Single-A ballpark. Lansing’s Lugnuts play to state politicians (state capitol) and the varied professors and students of Michigan State. Not shown: a new apartment complex looking in from the outfield! July 2023.

Virtual Vacation, Day 1

Having returned from a trip to Ohio and Michigan a week ago, I’ve decided to re-take it vicariously here. I jumped the gun a couple times while on vacation, though. We’ll see how this goes.

I always plan a shorter drive the first day. This accommodates my inevitable inability to leave on time, thus protecting marital bliss. We had Mr. Lincoln loaded by 10 and left shortly thereafter. Skirting most of Durham, NC, we left I-40 not many miles further to the west for reasons which are still known only to Google’s Navigator. A nice, direct route would have been to strike north On US-29 from I-840 as it rounded Greensboro. Instead we zig-zagged through the Burlington area visiting small places for the first time: Gibsonville, and some too small to appear on the map right now. A couple lashing thunderstorms later we found US-29, left it at Reidsville, and leaving Eden (oh, the symbolism!) crossed into Virginia. Once there we used US-58 to cross the Appalachian/Blue Ridge mountains. If you’ve never driven this route, it’s recommended. Take it soon: we saw major roadwork on either side of us as we twisted our way over the summit, and it seems certain They are straightening the road to make it safer and less interesting. The road travels through hilly land used for horses and small agriculture. As it travels westward things start to get more interesting. The road twists and turns like a mountain stream seeking to escape to the lowlands. Eventually one reaches Lovers Leap a bit east of Meadows of Dan. The view is mixed:

Unfortunately the road intersects I-77 not too much longer after that. We needed to turn north to Beckley, WV, and our interests turned to rating drivers on a scale of stupidity. Oh, and wondering why West Virginia still accepts cash at its toll plazas in all lanes but one. How quickly one forgets the traffic jams that develop when every driver needs to dig out money to proceed along the road!

Trains, hunger, and ghosts

Today trains run down
Thurmond's rails laid with
promises we thought
included us, made 
us integral to 
those trains, controlling them. 
Those trains controlled us.

Today, trains still run
through Thurmond, still
sound horns at crossings
where tourists gape their
tourist-gapes, where grass
reclaims what we wrested 
from this steep slope.

Us? We melted into 
America: most to 
nearby towns, some to 
Cincy or places 
far-flung like bits of coal 
escaping from tenders
serving locomotives.

Stocks dove mortally, 
banks failed. Ours held on:
two years, five years...
then closed or left. Our
hotels burned, fell down.
Yet tightly we clung
to traditions learned.

Progress ushered steam 
engines into history. 
Their coal waited uselessly
beside steel tracks. It
heated our homes, true,
but offered nothing more:
we couldn't eat coal.

We sought regular 
meals elsewhere, hungry.
Federals bought up what 
we never owned anyway.
Thurmond's landed stayed,
profited, found new cows
from which to milk money.

(All photographs were taken in Thurmond, WV, July 2023. Though Thurmond dried up after steam engines ceased to ply the lines–the last one in the early 1950’s–a few persons hung on. In 2020, the population was five.)

Our newest National Park

This morning we visited New River Gorge National Park & Preserve. We had only a few hours, though, and this park lends itself to a segmented number of visits: there are four distinct areas, none connecting to the other. We chose the Thurmond area where an abandoned town thrived through the early 1900’s then slowly withered away as steam-powered trains no longer needed West Virginia coal.

Here’s what once was a thriving bank:

The bank looks out to a pair of still-in-use railroad tracks–we had to wait for a freight before crossing to this main street of the town–and then to the New River, barely glimpsed through the trees.

On the way back we stopped at a vehicle turnout beside Dunloup Falls to lunch on the leftover steak from dinner last night, stuffed into some soft rolls (also from dinner):

We then pointed our vehicle along the canopied road, joined the USA’s interstate system and motored to Cincinnati.

Measuring the inevitable

I’ve been pondering (to quote one of my new favorite bloggers) that I stand on the threshold of 70 and I’ve only 10-15 years of travel left in me. This starkly scares me. I usually figure two or three significant times of travel per year. Twenty to forty-five seems like a goodly amount, but it’s that lower end that makes me wonder: if I’ve only 20 trips left, and I want to go to Europe more than once, to Hawaii, to places in the USA, to just experience certain periods of unfettered wandering…how much is left in me?

It’s funny. You think for much of your life, “hey, there’s plenty of time for that,” because you’re 35 or 45 and decades stretch out before you. Then you get up toward retirement, and frankly you’re just thinking about that retirement. There are a lot of channels to negotiate to retire: income when you’re not working, riding herd on the expenses, and the projects you always thought you’d do but you just didn’t have the time or the money to do them. You negotiate that when suddenly a little global pandemic kinda s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s that whole process out. When the world comes to, everyone removes their masks (assuming they were wearing them in the first place), and you realize, “crap, I’m almost 70. How much time is there?”

This clarifies things but in a brutal way. When someone comes at you with a knife, your options suddenly are VERY focused. When life comes at you with a knife…… Didn’t the Fates snip a man’s life thread and end it?

Engine 2

Some museum near Tupper Lake, NY. September 2004.

Washington (for B.)

One of the few blogs I follow recently commented in passing about Washington State in the USA and said, “I hear it’s breathtaking.” (You know who you are.) Although Oregon and California give it a run for the money, those states are not as geographically diverse. I moved from the state where I grew up in 1992, prior to digital photography, returned when crude digitals were just being introduced, left again in 2001, and visited selectively from that point forward. Most of these photos, therefore, are from an Introduction to Washington trip we did with our NC friends in 2017 when forest fire smoke hazed the atmosphere. Forthwith:

Smack dab in the middle of Spokane (my hometown). August 2017.

The wheat fields of the Palouse. Southeastern Washington. August 2017.

The Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, Washington. March 1998. [low-res digital camera]

Beach at Kalaloch, Olympic National Park, Washington. August 2017.

Columbia River Gorge and I-90. Near Vantage, WA. August 2017.

Diablo Lake from the North Cascades Highway. North Cascades National Park. August 2017.

I could continue: the North Cascade Mountains (or the Olympics! or the volcanoes of Mounts St. Helens/Rainier/Adams/Baker); the ‘true’ Columbia Gorge from Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA east for 60-100 miles; the scablands shown here by inference in the Vantage photo; the Puget Sound inland waterway which with the Salish Sea offer a worthy challenger to Chesapeake Bay on the east coast; and…but let’s stop there. I think I need to plan another trip to Washington!

Golden times

In October 2011 my wife and I rented a house just outside Newport, OR, where we vacationed with my brother, his daughter, and our parents. Our last night there an amazing set of conditions created one different sunset after another. (I’ve posted other photos of it here and here.) For more than twenty minutes I stood on the bluff outside the house snapping photos as the rest of my family waited to go to dinner. We might have had reservations, I don’t remember. I ignored their growing impatience to capture these photos. Thus, the photos have an undercurrent of discontent, though I don’t regret taking them. It represented the self-centeredness they would say I’ve had all my life. I’ll have to explore this later.

electric lizard

A follow-on about clothes

Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. Still there in November 2007.

A little bit ago I wrote about the longevity of clothes in my closet and how they mark the march of time in reverse. I’ve realized lately that they have staked out the future too. Today I wore a fleece top purchased when we took a Thanksgiving getaway to Ocean Isle Beach, NC, in 2007. It’s none the worse for wear (the fleece top, not Ocean Isle Beach which might very well be the worse for wear). It dawned on me today that a heavy flannel shirt/jacket, the aforementioned fleece top, the sweatshirt I wore last week which was given to me by my employer in 2003 or 2004, etcetera, etcetera, will possibly be in my closet when I die.

Recently I’ve tried to lengthen my time between Now and Death. “It’s likely twenty-plus years, you fool,” I tell myself. Retirement planning forces one to focus on ‘how long do I have’ and then hope the money lasts that long. It fosters looking toward the end instead of the path toward the end–instead of focusing on where you are right now. And lately, I’ve been successful in realizing where I am relative to my likely End. I accomplished this by looking backward the same amount of time I can expect to live. Today it means focusing on where I was twenty years ago. “Goodness, I thought things were grand back in 2003!” he thinks. It feels many years ago when looking backward. Then why not many years ahead when looking forward?

These darn clothes tell a different tale, or at least they have their own tale to tell. “We’ll still be there in your closet. This is your wardrobe for the rest of your life.” It’s weirdly depressing and freeing at the same time.