"Our guess is Adam Richman from Man vs. Food on the travel channel.. a little google even makes it look like we might be right!
http://www.bookschlepper.com/marketblog/2009/07/man-vs.html "
Friday, July 17, 2009
TV Personality at Reading Market Mystery Solved
Thanks to my cousin Brian and his wife Crystal for figuring out who the TV personality at Reading Market in Philly was:
"Our guess is Adam Richman from Man vs. Food on the travel channel.. a little google even makes it look like we might be right!
http://www.bookschlepper.com/marketblog/2009/07/man-vs.html "
"Our guess is Adam Richman from Man vs. Food on the travel channel.. a little google even makes it look like we might be right!
http://www.bookschlepper.com/marketblog/2009/07/man-vs.html "
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Relevant Trip Statistics
We took the trouble to document this stuff so we need to post it on this blog for posterity.
State license plates seen (39 US states, DC and one from Canada):
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachussetts
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
Washington, D.C.
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Ontario (CA)
State license plates seen (39 US states, DC and one from Canada):
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachussetts
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
Washington, D.C.
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Ontario (CA)
Date Start Temp Odometer Price of Gas
7/1 81° 191 $2.45
7/2 72° 784 $2.31
7/5 64° 1148 $2.59
7/6 64° 1455 $2.59
7/9 55° 1863 $2.49
7/10 68° 2100 $2.39
7/12 73° 2200 $2.75
7/13 73° 2612 $2.29
7/14 70° 3176 $2.39
3821
4012
Final Post (#4)
Alright, we’re in Dallas so it’s time to get this last trip report cranked out. Do you realize how long it takes to write these things? The really crazy ones take at least an hour and a half. Good thing my in-laws’ sofa is quite comfortable because I’m going to be here a while.
OK, so flashback to Saturday morning. We woke up in the Best Western Center City having thankfully not been woken up by the quite loud members of the Robinson Family Reunion. At least, I wasn’t bothered but I learned a long time ago (thanks Robert!) to wear earplugs to bed in any place that might be loud in any way. People yelling in the hall and running up and down definitely qualifies as ear-plug requiring.
Anyway, the point of staying at this Best Western was to be within walking distance of the major Philly attractions. We had a late breakfast, laced up our walking shoes and hit the pavement. First stop was City Hall. If you think your City Hall is neat, believe us it has nothing on Philly’s City Hall. Philly’s City Hall is more impressive-looking than many state capitol buildings. It is enormous. Too bad we could only walk around the outside and inner courtyard as, for some strange reason, there are no tours or elevator rides to the top on Saturdays, the day that tourists would most likely show up to see it. Oh well.
Second stop was the Reading Central Market, a mostly-food market a couple of blocks over. We love these central markets. They have the greatest stuff such as fresh fruit and veggies, random spices, food stalls with local specialties and other random stuff. We can see, however, that they might have more appeal for tourists due to the central location and the potential difficulty of getting down there. At the same time, it can be kind of an excursion for locals due to the presence of all the prepared food vendors and dessert stalls. We made a mental note to come back for lunch.
Third stop was the Masonic Lodge for Pennsylvania, a cathedral-looking building just across the street from City Hall. I know next-to-nothing about Masons and I guess that’s how they prefer it because they are a ‘secret society.’ Seems kind of strange that a ‘secret society’ would take $16 and allow Jennifer and I to visit their facility. The inside was pretty opulent to be sure with about seven meeting rooms that resemble British Parliament though each one had a different ‘theme’ such as ancient Egypt, ancient Greek and Moorish. It was a little like walking through a fake museum. There was some humor in the tour as the tour guide, a Mason in his mid-fifties, was peppered with questions about Masonic rituals and other sensitive subjects by a group of talkative Red Hats. Red Hats are a gang of ladies over 50 who wear, of course, red hats and apparently purple clothing to match. I would call them a menace to society but my mom is a member, eh! The other thing to note about the Masonic Lodge is that it chose its location so that it would be the tallest building around and dominate the skyline. Three years after construction started in 1868, the city of Philadelphia announced that it would build its monster city hall just across the street, thus dashing the Masons’ hopes. We think the city did it that way on purpose.
So after the Masonic Lodge visit we strolled back to the Reading Market to snag some lunch. Jennifer found the salad bar from heaven and I got in a long line for a philly cheesesteak sandwich. Supposedly the way you’re supposed to have a philly cheesesteak is ‘wit whiz’, meaning cheese whiz. This stand didn’t give me that option so I had American instead. It was quite simply one of the top 10 sandwiches I’d ever eaten in my life (even though I couldn’t tell you most of the other nine, eh). And it was enormous! You’ll see the photo when I get ‘em uploaded. As a bonus, some television personality was interviewing people at the next stall over. Neither Jennifer nor I knew who he was though. Maybe one of you can identify him.
After lunch we wandered over to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The Liberty Bell had a line but was easy to get into and see. Not so Independence Hall. That requires a ticket and apparently there are a limited number because by the time we got there they were out of tickets for the day. Oh well...now what?
The next step was to wander over to the waterfront on the Delaware River estuary to see the USS Becuna and the USS Olympia. The former is a submarine from the World War II era and the latter was the ship that Commodore Dewey commanded during the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War in 1898. We had never been inside of an actual submarine before and, let me tell you, it was fascinating, especially when compared to the Olympia parked next door. If you’ve seen submarine movies, you know that those subs were tiny. They felt tiny even with only a few tourists inside them but we just couldn’t imagine being inside with 79 other people. 79! And they were limited to one minute of showering a week. It’s just so hard to imagine what submariners went through.
The Olympia was a lot different as it felt like an old-time cruise ship, just with big guns everywhere. It was worlds-roomier than the sub but was also quite interesting. It reminded me a lot of the Steve McQueen movie The Sand Pebbles about US gunboat diplomacy in other countries, in this case China, during the early 20th century. Anyway, despite the increased amount of room, I bumped my head three times on the ship while managing to remain unscathed on the sub.
The next step was to head over to the maritime museum to use the restroom but also to take a quick peek at the tattoo exhibit. Apparently tattoos were done by various cultures around the world but sailors really took a fancy to them and spread the art around the world. Many American sailors during the early 1800s would tattoo their hometowns on their bodies so as to prevent British ships from conscripting them (since they were Americans).
After that we walked over to Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest residential street in America. That means there are people living on it still though I can’t imagine how they could cope with all the tourists like us. It was a cute street though and the Harry Potter-sounding name didn’t hurt either. By that time it was too late to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which closes at 5, so we headed back to the Reading Market for dinner. Many of the stalls were closed but there was still a stall making philly cheesesteaks so I had one ‘wit whiz’. The ‘whiz’ was, quite frankly, a detriment to the sandwich. When you’re in Philly, stick with either provolone or American and leave the cheese whiz for making queso. The rest of the evening was spent in the hotel room watching the Phillies score five runs in the ninth to beat the Pirates.
The next morning we began the denouement of the trip: the return to Texas. The original thought was that we’d take five days; four to drive and one to fart around in the Smokies. We had made no hotel reservations and figured we’d be better off playing it by ear. However, 14 days is our limit for vacations and it was already day 12 so we weren’t necessarily going to have an off-day in the Smokies. Anyway, we set out on Sunday morning and drove down I-95 through Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It was tons of freeway and a fair amount of traffic, especially at the first tollbooth (though the toll was a merciful $2), but we got through it without going insane. For lunch we stopped and visited Jennifer’s best friend from Kindergarten, Ashley, as she and her husband have an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the river from Washington, D.C. Ashley took us to eat at Gadsby’s Tavern, a place so old that George Washington ate there. After a nice lunch, we hit the road again to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is a two-lane road that skirts the mountaintops of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western Virginia and North Carolina. We hit the Parkway at Shenandoah National Park and paid a $15 fee for the pleasure. The views were very nice and there was an overlook with a small parking lot at least every mile if not more often so you really didn’t miss any good views. The problem was that the road just got tough to drive after a while, what with the all the hairpin turns, steep grades and cars stopping in the middle of the road because they thought they saw a deer or something (leading to a line of 10-15 cars slowly driving forward as everybody looks for whatever it was the first person thought they saw). It was reminiscent of Yellowstone really except at Yellowstone there was usually a shoulder to pull off onto. We drove on the Parkway for about an hour and a half before deciding that by that point we had had a representative sample of its benefits. We cut west a little bit and hit Interstate 81 which heads southwest to our intended destination, Roanoke, Virginia. We found a Best Western and crashed for the night.
The plan for the next day was to, rather than take the Interstate all the way home, drive backroads in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee before reuniting with the Interstate somewhere between Memphis and Nashville. That seemed like a good idea except for a) more mountain driving (though in valleys mostly) was making Jennifer feel a little nauseous and b) it was going to take us another three days to get home going that way than the expected two (we were set on making Dallas by Tuesday night, i.e. the next evening). We followed some nice roads through Appalachia but it also felt extremely, for lack of a better term, backwoodsy, mainly the type of place you didn’t want the car to break down in for fear you were never going to be able to get someone to adequately repair it. We couldn’t even find a good local restaurant to eat at, having instead to get burgers at a Hardee’s and supplement it with Cheestick & Marinara-flavored Pringles, ginger snaps and cheesebread bought at a local Kroger. Still, we saw some neat stuff but after realizing it was almost 1 and we were still in West Virginia, we made an alternate plan to follow some better developed highways.
It was interesting to see the difference between backroads and the main US highways and parkways. On the backroads, the road was built wherever it could with a minimum of blasting mountainsides and such. You’d cross a river multiple times, skirt hillsides and be subject to steep grades and downgrades. On the main highways, however, no expense was spared to make the road as straight and level as possible. Rather than going over steep hillsides, the road construction crews had blasted through them. The highways were still not straight and flat but they were definitely much easier to drive on.
Our goal was to get to Bowling Green, Kentucky, which is located on Interstate 65 going southwest to Nashville, Tennessee. Thanks to gaining an hour while crossing from Eastern Time to Central, we reached Bowling Green at 6:30 after almost 11 hours of driving. Figuring that was too early to stop, we pushed on through Nashville and stopped at the first Best Western afterward, thus ensuring we’d miss Nashville rush hour the next morning. We like Best Western because it’s moderately cheap but still has two essentials: wireless internet and continental breakfast.
We hit the road on our last day at 7:15am, knowing we were going to have a long haul to Dallas. It was all interstate driving, changing from I-40 to I-30 in Little Rock, Arkansas. We also stopped in Little Rock to see my old college buddy Elena and her cute-as-all-getout eleven-month-old daughter Dabney, whom we hadn’t met yet. The visit worked rather well as it gave me a chance to rest after so much driving plus the food at the Flying Burrito Company was really good. ‘Suitably rested and refreshed’, we pushed on for another five hours through southwestern Arkansas and northeastern Texas (stopping for some mandatory bbq not long after crossing the state line) we reached my in-laws’ house in Big D around 7:15pm. Not bad at all.
This was a strange trip for us due to the large amount of driving. When you look at it, we spent only five of the fourteen days not driving (two in Cincy, two in Ohiopyle and one in Philly). That’s how it goes of course on a long driving trip, especially one unlike the trips of my childhood where we got started at probably 5 in the morning. We could’ve taken other roads to get us to certain places more quickly but for us part of the enjoyment of the trip came from seeing America on its backroads. After about 4100 miles of driving, we’ll be home this afternoon and ready to recharge ourselves until our next vacation. Thanks to everyone for reading these journals of ours and especially for being a part of our rather fortunate lives. We’ll be seeing you all sometime in the future.
Matt and Jennifer
OK, so flashback to Saturday morning. We woke up in the Best Western Center City having thankfully not been woken up by the quite loud members of the Robinson Family Reunion. At least, I wasn’t bothered but I learned a long time ago (thanks Robert!) to wear earplugs to bed in any place that might be loud in any way. People yelling in the hall and running up and down definitely qualifies as ear-plug requiring.
Anyway, the point of staying at this Best Western was to be within walking distance of the major Philly attractions. We had a late breakfast, laced up our walking shoes and hit the pavement. First stop was City Hall. If you think your City Hall is neat, believe us it has nothing on Philly’s City Hall. Philly’s City Hall is more impressive-looking than many state capitol buildings. It is enormous. Too bad we could only walk around the outside and inner courtyard as, for some strange reason, there are no tours or elevator rides to the top on Saturdays, the day that tourists would most likely show up to see it. Oh well.
Second stop was the Reading Central Market, a mostly-food market a couple of blocks over. We love these central markets. They have the greatest stuff such as fresh fruit and veggies, random spices, food stalls with local specialties and other random stuff. We can see, however, that they might have more appeal for tourists due to the central location and the potential difficulty of getting down there. At the same time, it can be kind of an excursion for locals due to the presence of all the prepared food vendors and dessert stalls. We made a mental note to come back for lunch.
Third stop was the Masonic Lodge for Pennsylvania, a cathedral-looking building just across the street from City Hall. I know next-to-nothing about Masons and I guess that’s how they prefer it because they are a ‘secret society.’ Seems kind of strange that a ‘secret society’ would take $16 and allow Jennifer and I to visit their facility. The inside was pretty opulent to be sure with about seven meeting rooms that resemble British Parliament though each one had a different ‘theme’ such as ancient Egypt, ancient Greek and Moorish. It was a little like walking through a fake museum. There was some humor in the tour as the tour guide, a Mason in his mid-fifties, was peppered with questions about Masonic rituals and other sensitive subjects by a group of talkative Red Hats. Red Hats are a gang of ladies over 50 who wear, of course, red hats and apparently purple clothing to match. I would call them a menace to society but my mom is a member, eh! The other thing to note about the Masonic Lodge is that it chose its location so that it would be the tallest building around and dominate the skyline. Three years after construction started in 1868, the city of Philadelphia announced that it would build its monster city hall just across the street, thus dashing the Masons’ hopes. We think the city did it that way on purpose.
So after the Masonic Lodge visit we strolled back to the Reading Market to snag some lunch. Jennifer found the salad bar from heaven and I got in a long line for a philly cheesesteak sandwich. Supposedly the way you’re supposed to have a philly cheesesteak is ‘wit whiz’, meaning cheese whiz. This stand didn’t give me that option so I had American instead. It was quite simply one of the top 10 sandwiches I’d ever eaten in my life (even though I couldn’t tell you most of the other nine, eh). And it was enormous! You’ll see the photo when I get ‘em uploaded. As a bonus, some television personality was interviewing people at the next stall over. Neither Jennifer nor I knew who he was though. Maybe one of you can identify him.
After lunch we wandered over to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The Liberty Bell had a line but was easy to get into and see. Not so Independence Hall. That requires a ticket and apparently there are a limited number because by the time we got there they were out of tickets for the day. Oh well...now what?
The next step was to wander over to the waterfront on the Delaware River estuary to see the USS Becuna and the USS Olympia. The former is a submarine from the World War II era and the latter was the ship that Commodore Dewey commanded during the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War in 1898. We had never been inside of an actual submarine before and, let me tell you, it was fascinating, especially when compared to the Olympia parked next door. If you’ve seen submarine movies, you know that those subs were tiny. They felt tiny even with only a few tourists inside them but we just couldn’t imagine being inside with 79 other people. 79! And they were limited to one minute of showering a week. It’s just so hard to imagine what submariners went through.
The Olympia was a lot different as it felt like an old-time cruise ship, just with big guns everywhere. It was worlds-roomier than the sub but was also quite interesting. It reminded me a lot of the Steve McQueen movie The Sand Pebbles about US gunboat diplomacy in other countries, in this case China, during the early 20th century. Anyway, despite the increased amount of room, I bumped my head three times on the ship while managing to remain unscathed on the sub.
The next step was to head over to the maritime museum to use the restroom but also to take a quick peek at the tattoo exhibit. Apparently tattoos were done by various cultures around the world but sailors really took a fancy to them and spread the art around the world. Many American sailors during the early 1800s would tattoo their hometowns on their bodies so as to prevent British ships from conscripting them (since they were Americans).
After that we walked over to Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest residential street in America. That means there are people living on it still though I can’t imagine how they could cope with all the tourists like us. It was a cute street though and the Harry Potter-sounding name didn’t hurt either. By that time it was too late to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which closes at 5, so we headed back to the Reading Market for dinner. Many of the stalls were closed but there was still a stall making philly cheesesteaks so I had one ‘wit whiz’. The ‘whiz’ was, quite frankly, a detriment to the sandwich. When you’re in Philly, stick with either provolone or American and leave the cheese whiz for making queso. The rest of the evening was spent in the hotel room watching the Phillies score five runs in the ninth to beat the Pirates.
The next morning we began the denouement of the trip: the return to Texas. The original thought was that we’d take five days; four to drive and one to fart around in the Smokies. We had made no hotel reservations and figured we’d be better off playing it by ear. However, 14 days is our limit for vacations and it was already day 12 so we weren’t necessarily going to have an off-day in the Smokies. Anyway, we set out on Sunday morning and drove down I-95 through Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It was tons of freeway and a fair amount of traffic, especially at the first tollbooth (though the toll was a merciful $2), but we got through it without going insane. For lunch we stopped and visited Jennifer’s best friend from Kindergarten, Ashley, as she and her husband have an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the river from Washington, D.C. Ashley took us to eat at Gadsby’s Tavern, a place so old that George Washington ate there. After a nice lunch, we hit the road again to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is a two-lane road that skirts the mountaintops of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western Virginia and North Carolina. We hit the Parkway at Shenandoah National Park and paid a $15 fee for the pleasure. The views were very nice and there was an overlook with a small parking lot at least every mile if not more often so you really didn’t miss any good views. The problem was that the road just got tough to drive after a while, what with the all the hairpin turns, steep grades and cars stopping in the middle of the road because they thought they saw a deer or something (leading to a line of 10-15 cars slowly driving forward as everybody looks for whatever it was the first person thought they saw). It was reminiscent of Yellowstone really except at Yellowstone there was usually a shoulder to pull off onto. We drove on the Parkway for about an hour and a half before deciding that by that point we had had a representative sample of its benefits. We cut west a little bit and hit Interstate 81 which heads southwest to our intended destination, Roanoke, Virginia. We found a Best Western and crashed for the night.
The plan for the next day was to, rather than take the Interstate all the way home, drive backroads in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee before reuniting with the Interstate somewhere between Memphis and Nashville. That seemed like a good idea except for a) more mountain driving (though in valleys mostly) was making Jennifer feel a little nauseous and b) it was going to take us another three days to get home going that way than the expected two (we were set on making Dallas by Tuesday night, i.e. the next evening). We followed some nice roads through Appalachia but it also felt extremely, for lack of a better term, backwoodsy, mainly the type of place you didn’t want the car to break down in for fear you were never going to be able to get someone to adequately repair it. We couldn’t even find a good local restaurant to eat at, having instead to get burgers at a Hardee’s and supplement it with Cheestick & Marinara-flavored Pringles, ginger snaps and cheesebread bought at a local Kroger. Still, we saw some neat stuff but after realizing it was almost 1 and we were still in West Virginia, we made an alternate plan to follow some better developed highways.
It was interesting to see the difference between backroads and the main US highways and parkways. On the backroads, the road was built wherever it could with a minimum of blasting mountainsides and such. You’d cross a river multiple times, skirt hillsides and be subject to steep grades and downgrades. On the main highways, however, no expense was spared to make the road as straight and level as possible. Rather than going over steep hillsides, the road construction crews had blasted through them. The highways were still not straight and flat but they were definitely much easier to drive on.
Our goal was to get to Bowling Green, Kentucky, which is located on Interstate 65 going southwest to Nashville, Tennessee. Thanks to gaining an hour while crossing from Eastern Time to Central, we reached Bowling Green at 6:30 after almost 11 hours of driving. Figuring that was too early to stop, we pushed on through Nashville and stopped at the first Best Western afterward, thus ensuring we’d miss Nashville rush hour the next morning. We like Best Western because it’s moderately cheap but still has two essentials: wireless internet and continental breakfast.
We hit the road on our last day at 7:15am, knowing we were going to have a long haul to Dallas. It was all interstate driving, changing from I-40 to I-30 in Little Rock, Arkansas. We also stopped in Little Rock to see my old college buddy Elena and her cute-as-all-getout eleven-month-old daughter Dabney, whom we hadn’t met yet. The visit worked rather well as it gave me a chance to rest after so much driving plus the food at the Flying Burrito Company was really good. ‘Suitably rested and refreshed’, we pushed on for another five hours through southwestern Arkansas and northeastern Texas (stopping for some mandatory bbq not long after crossing the state line) we reached my in-laws’ house in Big D around 7:15pm. Not bad at all.
This was a strange trip for us due to the large amount of driving. When you look at it, we spent only five of the fourteen days not driving (two in Cincy, two in Ohiopyle and one in Philly). That’s how it goes of course on a long driving trip, especially one unlike the trips of my childhood where we got started at probably 5 in the morning. We could’ve taken other roads to get us to certain places more quickly but for us part of the enjoyment of the trip came from seeing America on its backroads. After about 4100 miles of driving, we’ll be home this afternoon and ready to recharge ourselves until our next vacation. Thanks to everyone for reading these journals of ours and especially for being a part of our rather fortunate lives. We’ll be seeing you all sometime in the future.
Matt and Jennifer
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Post #3: Amish Country and the Phillies Game
Hanging out at the La Quinta Inn in Roanoke, Virginia. We hoofed it down from Philly and may make it back to Dallas on Tuesday night, two days ahead of schedule. It feels like the trip is over but instead of one day of plane travel we have 3-4 of driving. It's kind of weird but we're still very much on vacation, taking backroads through Appalachians tomorrow rather than cheating and taking I-81/I-40/I-30 all the way.
Before we get to the trip, here are some notes we left out. First, a great way to pronounce Skyline, as in Skyline Chili in Cincinnati, is ‘ska-lee-nee’. Second, our guide on the Youghigheny told us about some ways crazy people ride rapids in rafts. My favorite is the ‘tombstone’ where five people get in the back of a raft, making the front end rise up almost vertically, and literally hop from rapid to rapid. Another is the ‘postage stamp’ where, in order to get through a certain crazy rapid, the raft must become completely vertical against a rock in order to get through. Needless to say, we didn’t try either one. Thirdly, we’ve seen several signs on the road warning us that ‘Speed Enforced by Aircraft’. Anybody have any insight to that? Do we get strafed by a police plane? Unmanned aerial vehicles? Superman? We figure that the money Pennsylvania saved by having crummy historical signs is being spent on the aircraft.
Alright, back to the trip. So on Thursday we drove out of the Allegheny Mountains and into real Pennsylvania. Very few roads go east-west across southern Pennsylvania due to the craziness of the mountains so we were forced to drive on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (a toll road). It was relatively cheap though: $4.10 to go maybe thirty miles. On ALT-183 north of Austin, I think that will get you 100 yards, eh! We veered off the toll road at a town called Breezewood and hit US Highway 30, a road going southeast to Gettysburg. Gettysburg, site of the historic Civil War battle, is apparently a huge biker hang-out which made it not a big favorite of ours. Plus US 30 was very busy with tons of trucks. It was a big change from our two days of relaxing in the Alleghenies, that’s for sure.
We continued on to York, a town large enough to have a Best Buy, where we bought a new, smaller and fancier digital camera for $100 less than the one I ruined on the Youghigheny. That was good. We also ate burgers at Five Guys, a local burger chain out here. That was good. I also sang about 10 made-up versions of the ‘Grand Old Duke of York’ song for Jennifer’s benefit. That was bad. We were glad to leave York behind us, eh!
Not far beyond York was Lancaster County, home to about 29,000 Amish folks. Let’s get this out of the way right now: we were somewhat disappointed with our visit to Amish Country. Being so close to Philly and Lancaster being such a large municipality, it was definitely not an out-of-the-way peaceful spot in the middle of nowhere. There was lots of traffic and tons of tourists everywhere (like us, eh). Plus the Amish are not the folks living in the 1700s like we all think. They use tons of modern conveniences such as running water, refridgerators and lamps. For the most part they draw the line at using electricity but they use telephones (albeit sparingly), the postal service and even travel (there’s an Amish resort in Sarasota, Florida), usually by bus. We also saw lots of Amish working in non-Amish places like in a modern kitchen, playing with what looked like an iPhone and working a cash register. It was fun to see their horse buggies walking on the shoulders of the highways though.
Our first stop on Thursday in Lancaster County was the site of what our Fodor’s guide said was a historical museum but what actually seemed to be the Amish outlet mall, consisting of a huge parking lot and tons of stores selling things that weren’t necessarily Amish such as Vera Bradley purses. Way to go Fodor’s. That’s where we saw the full-service kitchen where the Amish women were canning pickles. I was going to buy some Amish-made salsa until Jennifer reminded me that salsa is really a Texas thing that the Amish have no business making in the first place. Crisis averted.
More Amish trivia. You can tell if a man is married by his face and clothes. Unmarried men are clean-shaven while married men have the crazy beard around the chin thing going on. Unmarried men wear a hat that has a crease at the top while married men make do with a hat that is flat. You can’t tell by the shoes though; all Amish men might be seen wearing tennis shoes.
Our second ‘stop’ in Lancaster County, near the town of Intercourse (intercourse is the old timey name for a road intersection), was for another museum to learn about the Amish but, thanks to Fodor’s again, it didn’t exist either. So we drove around a little bit before deciding to call it a day rather early (3:30) and head to our B&B. That night’s lodgings were in the heart of Columbia, PA, on the banks of the monstrous Susquehanna River. The B&B was in a very ritzy but old-fashioned three-story house. We were offered an upgrade on our room to a slightly bigger one but we liked the location of our room as it was away from the main drag and all of its biker noise (and, unbeknownst to us, closer to the innkeeper’s husband and his Los Lonely Boys CDs playing that night). After making ourselves at home, we did our laundry at a laundromat around the corner (the place where we wrote the last e-mail) and then found dinner, after spending ten minutes driving through Columbia, in Marietta, the next town over. Jennifer has been on an eternal quest to find a salad with green, rather than pale white iceberg, lettuce and was thwarted yet again by a little Italian joint we found (though Matt’s salami and cheese sandwich was delicious).
The next day we hit the city of Lancaster and were reunited with traffic congestion. Gosh we didn’t realize how good we had it when we were cruising the Ohio River and hiding out in the Alleghenies! Lancaster was busy with a capital b. We somehow found parking and visited another large central market that also featured some Amish folks selling things. All we found were a magnet and some postcards but really, we’re not big souvenir buyers anyway so that wasn’t a problem. We wandered around just long enough to have to pay the 2 hour rate on our parking instead of 1 hour and then headed out of town and to the little town of Strasburg. Strasburg had, 0.7 of a mile off the main freeway, an Amish ‘village’ where you could have a tour guide teach you about the ways of the Amish. Our guide was a local teenager who had grew up around them so she had some interesting information to relate including about how the Amish don’t continue school past the eighth grade and had a Supreme Court case to reinforce this (and also not pay into Social Security). We toured a house and a school and got to see a bunch of other stuff. It was a good way to finally learn more about them without the awkwardness of asking an actual Amish person. Apparently their numbers have, since they have 7-10 kids per family, doubled in the past ten years in Lancaster County so they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
That was it for Amish Country so we headed on in to Philly around 2pm. Good thing we went early because Philadelphia traffic, even on an early Friday afternoon going INTO town, was absolutely insane. Nobody was going anywhere. What should have taken us an hour and a half instead took around three and a half due to the traffic and also our inability to find our hotel in the maze of one-way streets in downtown Philly. Our hotel was a Best Western located near the city center at a very good rate actually but, as we should have known concerning cheap hotels in good locations, the facilities leave something to be desired. For example, you couldn’t get hot water from the sink, only being able to get it from the tub. The door wouldn’t always open, even when the key worked, and the doorframe was bent so bad it looked like somebody had had to get in one time with a crowbar. There were almost no outlets in the room, there was no ventilator for the bathroom so the whole bathroom steamed up everytime someone took a shower and the air conditioner was so loud we cranked it up before we went to bed and then turned it off for the night. Oh, and the Robinsons were having their family reunion and it seemed like they’d taken up half the hotel due to their noise.
Luckily we left at 5:30 or so to get to the Phillies-Pirates game. Thankfully Philly has a subway system that would take us right to the park. We hoofed it eight blocks down Spring Garden St and caught a direct subway line to the ‘sports complex’ where Citizens Bank Park (Phillies), Lincoln Financial Field (Eagles), the hockey rink and the basketball arena all are in close proximity. We’re assuming they share their parking spaces, eh. The Philadelphia subway, unlike some other subways we could mention, was very easy to figure out how to use (tokens) and get where you were going so we made it to the stadium without any problems.
Our seats were chosen due to a) their location between the foul poles and b) their view of the Jumbotron. The former is my requirement while the latter is Jennifer’s. Since the Jumbotron is over left field, we had seats by the right field foul pole. The stadium is a really nice open air stadium and the seats were great except we couldn’t see deep right field or the bullpen. We had a couple of hard-core Phillies fans sitting in front of us who gave us some insight into the team and feigned awe that we had come all the way from Texas. The Phillies won the World Series last year so it was like everybody was still enjoying that honeymoon what with all the video montages on the Jumbotron and World Champs merchandise available. You’d think the team had cured cancer. The game went really well for the Phillies too. Down 1-0 on an early homer by Garrett Jones, the Phils scored 3 runs in one of the middle innings to take a 3-1 lead. That led to Brad ‘Lights Out’ Lidge, the former Astros closer, coming in in the top of the ninth with one out and the bases empty. Brad proceeded to strike out the next batter and then, after getting a 3-2 count and all of us in the stadium standing up and applauding since the game was almost over, allowed a solo homer to bring it to 3-2. The next guy got a base hit before Lidge somehow struck out the next guy to end the game.
I must say one of the highlights of the game was the Philly Phanatic, the silly alien mascot. He was hilarious. His first act was to drive an ATV around the field twice, leaving his tire tracks across the impeccably-groomed outfield grass. He taunted the Pirates bench. He rubbed a bald guy’s head in the choir who were going to sing the national anthem. He danced with a 6-year old girls’ dance troupe. He got up on the Phillies dugout and tried to teach a scared 8-year old boy how to do the pelvic thrust that makes his huge gut/butt surge forward. In short, he was what every mascot should be. Unfortunately, he was also a sad reminder of how Orbit, the Houston Astros’ mascot, used to be big and round too before inexplicably slimming down after a couple of seasons in the mid-90s. Actually, I don’t know if Orbit is still around.
Our game had a bonus: a massive post-game fireworks show. The only catch was that the fireworks were going to be going off so close to the stadium that the outfield bleachers had to be completely clear. Our usher was actually advising us to relocate during the seventh-inning stretch to the upper deck on the first base side, despite the fact that the game appeared to be sold out. What did we do? We waited until the game was over, then moved to some empty seats just outside the foul pole. Our necks hurt from watching the fireworks but the display was fantastic. Afterward, we caught the subway back to near the hotel and made it back without incident.
Yesterday we wandered around Philly but it’s already 10:30 and we have a long day of cruising the Appalachians in four states tomorrow so I’d better wrap this up. Will try to write more mañana.
Before we get to the trip, here are some notes we left out. First, a great way to pronounce Skyline, as in Skyline Chili in Cincinnati, is ‘ska-lee-nee’. Second, our guide on the Youghigheny told us about some ways crazy people ride rapids in rafts. My favorite is the ‘tombstone’ where five people get in the back of a raft, making the front end rise up almost vertically, and literally hop from rapid to rapid. Another is the ‘postage stamp’ where, in order to get through a certain crazy rapid, the raft must become completely vertical against a rock in order to get through. Needless to say, we didn’t try either one. Thirdly, we’ve seen several signs on the road warning us that ‘Speed Enforced by Aircraft’. Anybody have any insight to that? Do we get strafed by a police plane? Unmanned aerial vehicles? Superman? We figure that the money Pennsylvania saved by having crummy historical signs is being spent on the aircraft.
Alright, back to the trip. So on Thursday we drove out of the Allegheny Mountains and into real Pennsylvania. Very few roads go east-west across southern Pennsylvania due to the craziness of the mountains so we were forced to drive on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (a toll road). It was relatively cheap though: $4.10 to go maybe thirty miles. On ALT-183 north of Austin, I think that will get you 100 yards, eh! We veered off the toll road at a town called Breezewood and hit US Highway 30, a road going southeast to Gettysburg. Gettysburg, site of the historic Civil War battle, is apparently a huge biker hang-out which made it not a big favorite of ours. Plus US 30 was very busy with tons of trucks. It was a big change from our two days of relaxing in the Alleghenies, that’s for sure.
We continued on to York, a town large enough to have a Best Buy, where we bought a new, smaller and fancier digital camera for $100 less than the one I ruined on the Youghigheny. That was good. We also ate burgers at Five Guys, a local burger chain out here. That was good. I also sang about 10 made-up versions of the ‘Grand Old Duke of York’ song for Jennifer’s benefit. That was bad. We were glad to leave York behind us, eh!
Not far beyond York was Lancaster County, home to about 29,000 Amish folks. Let’s get this out of the way right now: we were somewhat disappointed with our visit to Amish Country. Being so close to Philly and Lancaster being such a large municipality, it was definitely not an out-of-the-way peaceful spot in the middle of nowhere. There was lots of traffic and tons of tourists everywhere (like us, eh). Plus the Amish are not the folks living in the 1700s like we all think. They use tons of modern conveniences such as running water, refridgerators and lamps. For the most part they draw the line at using electricity but they use telephones (albeit sparingly), the postal service and even travel (there’s an Amish resort in Sarasota, Florida), usually by bus. We also saw lots of Amish working in non-Amish places like in a modern kitchen, playing with what looked like an iPhone and working a cash register. It was fun to see their horse buggies walking on the shoulders of the highways though.
Our first stop on Thursday in Lancaster County was the site of what our Fodor’s guide said was a historical museum but what actually seemed to be the Amish outlet mall, consisting of a huge parking lot and tons of stores selling things that weren’t necessarily Amish such as Vera Bradley purses. Way to go Fodor’s. That’s where we saw the full-service kitchen where the Amish women were canning pickles. I was going to buy some Amish-made salsa until Jennifer reminded me that salsa is really a Texas thing that the Amish have no business making in the first place. Crisis averted.
More Amish trivia. You can tell if a man is married by his face and clothes. Unmarried men are clean-shaven while married men have the crazy beard around the chin thing going on. Unmarried men wear a hat that has a crease at the top while married men make do with a hat that is flat. You can’t tell by the shoes though; all Amish men might be seen wearing tennis shoes.
Our second ‘stop’ in Lancaster County, near the town of Intercourse (intercourse is the old timey name for a road intersection), was for another museum to learn about the Amish but, thanks to Fodor’s again, it didn’t exist either. So we drove around a little bit before deciding to call it a day rather early (3:30) and head to our B&B. That night’s lodgings were in the heart of Columbia, PA, on the banks of the monstrous Susquehanna River. The B&B was in a very ritzy but old-fashioned three-story house. We were offered an upgrade on our room to a slightly bigger one but we liked the location of our room as it was away from the main drag and all of its biker noise (and, unbeknownst to us, closer to the innkeeper’s husband and his Los Lonely Boys CDs playing that night). After making ourselves at home, we did our laundry at a laundromat around the corner (the place where we wrote the last e-mail) and then found dinner, after spending ten minutes driving through Columbia, in Marietta, the next town over. Jennifer has been on an eternal quest to find a salad with green, rather than pale white iceberg, lettuce and was thwarted yet again by a little Italian joint we found (though Matt’s salami and cheese sandwich was delicious).
The next day we hit the city of Lancaster and were reunited with traffic congestion. Gosh we didn’t realize how good we had it when we were cruising the Ohio River and hiding out in the Alleghenies! Lancaster was busy with a capital b. We somehow found parking and visited another large central market that also featured some Amish folks selling things. All we found were a magnet and some postcards but really, we’re not big souvenir buyers anyway so that wasn’t a problem. We wandered around just long enough to have to pay the 2 hour rate on our parking instead of 1 hour and then headed out of town and to the little town of Strasburg. Strasburg had, 0.7 of a mile off the main freeway, an Amish ‘village’ where you could have a tour guide teach you about the ways of the Amish. Our guide was a local teenager who had grew up around them so she had some interesting information to relate including about how the Amish don’t continue school past the eighth grade and had a Supreme Court case to reinforce this (and also not pay into Social Security). We toured a house and a school and got to see a bunch of other stuff. It was a good way to finally learn more about them without the awkwardness of asking an actual Amish person. Apparently their numbers have, since they have 7-10 kids per family, doubled in the past ten years in Lancaster County so they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
That was it for Amish Country so we headed on in to Philly around 2pm. Good thing we went early because Philadelphia traffic, even on an early Friday afternoon going INTO town, was absolutely insane. Nobody was going anywhere. What should have taken us an hour and a half instead took around three and a half due to the traffic and also our inability to find our hotel in the maze of one-way streets in downtown Philly. Our hotel was a Best Western located near the city center at a very good rate actually but, as we should have known concerning cheap hotels in good locations, the facilities leave something to be desired. For example, you couldn’t get hot water from the sink, only being able to get it from the tub. The door wouldn’t always open, even when the key worked, and the doorframe was bent so bad it looked like somebody had had to get in one time with a crowbar. There were almost no outlets in the room, there was no ventilator for the bathroom so the whole bathroom steamed up everytime someone took a shower and the air conditioner was so loud we cranked it up before we went to bed and then turned it off for the night. Oh, and the Robinsons were having their family reunion and it seemed like they’d taken up half the hotel due to their noise.
Luckily we left at 5:30 or so to get to the Phillies-Pirates game. Thankfully Philly has a subway system that would take us right to the park. We hoofed it eight blocks down Spring Garden St and caught a direct subway line to the ‘sports complex’ where Citizens Bank Park (Phillies), Lincoln Financial Field (Eagles), the hockey rink and the basketball arena all are in close proximity. We’re assuming they share their parking spaces, eh. The Philadelphia subway, unlike some other subways we could mention, was very easy to figure out how to use (tokens) and get where you were going so we made it to the stadium without any problems.
Our seats were chosen due to a) their location between the foul poles and b) their view of the Jumbotron. The former is my requirement while the latter is Jennifer’s. Since the Jumbotron is over left field, we had seats by the right field foul pole. The stadium is a really nice open air stadium and the seats were great except we couldn’t see deep right field or the bullpen. We had a couple of hard-core Phillies fans sitting in front of us who gave us some insight into the team and feigned awe that we had come all the way from Texas. The Phillies won the World Series last year so it was like everybody was still enjoying that honeymoon what with all the video montages on the Jumbotron and World Champs merchandise available. You’d think the team had cured cancer. The game went really well for the Phillies too. Down 1-0 on an early homer by Garrett Jones, the Phils scored 3 runs in one of the middle innings to take a 3-1 lead. That led to Brad ‘Lights Out’ Lidge, the former Astros closer, coming in in the top of the ninth with one out and the bases empty. Brad proceeded to strike out the next batter and then, after getting a 3-2 count and all of us in the stadium standing up and applauding since the game was almost over, allowed a solo homer to bring it to 3-2. The next guy got a base hit before Lidge somehow struck out the next guy to end the game.
I must say one of the highlights of the game was the Philly Phanatic, the silly alien mascot. He was hilarious. His first act was to drive an ATV around the field twice, leaving his tire tracks across the impeccably-groomed outfield grass. He taunted the Pirates bench. He rubbed a bald guy’s head in the choir who were going to sing the national anthem. He danced with a 6-year old girls’ dance troupe. He got up on the Phillies dugout and tried to teach a scared 8-year old boy how to do the pelvic thrust that makes his huge gut/butt surge forward. In short, he was what every mascot should be. Unfortunately, he was also a sad reminder of how Orbit, the Houston Astros’ mascot, used to be big and round too before inexplicably slimming down after a couple of seasons in the mid-90s. Actually, I don’t know if Orbit is still around.
Our game had a bonus: a massive post-game fireworks show. The only catch was that the fireworks were going to be going off so close to the stadium that the outfield bleachers had to be completely clear. Our usher was actually advising us to relocate during the seventh-inning stretch to the upper deck on the first base side, despite the fact that the game appeared to be sold out. What did we do? We waited until the game was over, then moved to some empty seats just outside the foul pole. Our necks hurt from watching the fireworks but the display was fantastic. Afterward, we caught the subway back to near the hotel and made it back without incident.
Yesterday we wandered around Philly but it’s already 10:30 and we have a long day of cruising the Appalachians in four states tomorrow so I’d better wrap this up. Will try to write more mañana.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Still Trekking East
(we actually wrote this yesterday, Thursday, but we couldn't get internet to work in our b&b...got back late from the Phillies game and will write more about it hopefully on Sunday).
Hi from Smith’s Laundromat in historic Columbia, Pennsylvania. Yes, one of us had to lose the ‘who’s going to run out of clean clothes first’ game and this vacation, it was me. This will be the only time this trip we need to wash though so that’s good. We realize it’s been a few days since we’ve written but we’ve been, in true Matt-and-Jennifer fashion, vacationing so hard we’ll need a vacation when we get back home just to recover.
So where were we last? Oh yes, chilling out with Jennifer’s Uncle Bill and Aunt Charlotte in Cincinnati. Apparently a bad weather day in Cincinnati is 75 degrees with a slight drizzle because it put a damper on our ability to lounge by the pool and hang with the mallard duck mama who had built her nest under some flowers just above it (she would sit in the pool before flying up onto the nest). It also meant we had to eat our Cincinnati sausage-themed lunch, consisting of metts, brats and more metts, inside. For the afternoon, we just chilled out in the house where, in the basement, I wrote the last e-mail. That turned out to be some much-needed rest because we had to be prepared to scarf down all-you-can-eat ribs at the Montgomery Inn, a famous rib joint in town. Unfortunately for Jennifer and I, they were in the middle of their All-You-Can-Eat-Ribs for $19.95 which was a steal. I took it as a personal challenge to eat enough ribs so that Bill, who was paying for the meal, got his money’s worth and then some. It was a lot of ribs but they were goooooood. A lot of famous people apparently eat there but nobody came over to take Jennifer and my photo, eh.
But that wasn’t all. Our stomachs quite full, we headed down to the Ohio River waterfront to catch the Cincinnati Pops’ special July 4th performance. We had some time beforehand to wander around the waterfront which mainly consisted of Coney Island Theme Park but we also got to appreciate the immense power of floods. The Ohio is a monster river and apparently the biggest flood ever to come through, in 1937, was 80 feet above flood stage. Flooding is such a a presence on the Ohio that the covered outdoor ampitheater where the Pops performs was designed specifically to be floodable and easy to clean mud out of after the floodwaters recede. The concert, thankfully under cover since it was still drizzling out, was super-duper fantastic, full of patriotic anthems and spiced up with Broadway tunes sung by a couple of Cincinnatians who had made it big on Broadway (Pamela Myers and, as the conductor always introduced him, Mr. Lee Roy REAMS). The concert was so much fun that we thought intermission came too soon and that it ended too early.
But that wasn’t all. It was July 4th, after all, so there needed to be fireworks baby! And boy, were there fireworks. As we were walking out from under the protection of the ampitheater, the rain stopped and the fireworks started. They were fired from down by the river but we were so close that it felt like we were underneath them when they went off. Not only did it hurt our necks to watch them (Jennifer made me prop up her head with my forearm) but we were occasionally dusted with scattered bits of fireworks. The finale was so loud that Jennifer had to cover her ears and I decided to lose some of my hearing instead. It was great.
The next morning we said goodbye to Bill and Charlotte and headed out down Ohio Highway 52 to follow the Ohio River to Wheeling, West Virginia. This was definitely not the most direct route but how often do you get to drive along a major historic river. I mean, the road went right by the river almost the whole time. We spent a lazy day without incident tracing it, stopping at Ulysses S. Grant’s birthplace (did you know his real name was Hiriam Ulysses Grant but that his name was mangled on the application to West Point so he stuck with it?), an old lock-and-dam community (where people lived who worked the locks before this particular one was removed for a bigger one) and a currently-being-used lock-and-dam. We almost made it along the whole river road except for a batch of construction which shut down parts of it as we got close to Marietta, where we would be staying the night. We would shuttle over to the nearest parallel highway, go north for a bit, cut back to the river only to find it closed for construction there too. In fact, there ended up being so much construction on the Ohio side that we had to cross into West Virginia for about ten miles just to get to Marietta. On the plus side, West Virginia’s tourist slogan, prominently displayed on the ‘Welcome to West Virginia’ sign that greeted us as we crossed the Ohio, is ‘Wild and Wonderful’ (we’re still looking for a worse one than Washington’s ‘Say Wa?’ campaign).
Also, and this is important, if you are ever in Gallipolis County, Ohio, there is a company that will deliver pizza AND beer, anywhere in the county, or so they claim. Must not be a big county. Anyway, we must’ve seen three of their billboards during our drive but sadly don’t have any photos. We did get one of ‘Southern Moon BBQ’ though; use your imagination.
Marietta was a neat little town with our Best Western (no point staying in a B&B when you’re just passing through) being located on the backside of town on the Muskingum River. It sounds more scenic than it was because the Muskingum was wide, flat and frequented by guys on jet skis. Since it was a Sunday and Marietta’s not that big, our choice of restaurants for dinner was quite limited. One of the options, however, was the restaurant El Tampico (at least, we think that’s what it was called). Anyway, for any of you familiar with the song by Bowling For Soup – Ohio (Come Back To Texas) (at least, we think that’s what it’s called, eh), we wanted to test the accuracy of the lyric in the song stating that ‘the Mexican food [stinks] north of here (Texas) anyway’. Well, we’re not prepared to stereotype the quality of all Mexican food north of the Red River but, as our friends who were science majors would say, the hypothesis was not disproven.
The next day found us following the Little Muskingum River northeast for an hour and then cutting over to our good buddy the Ohio River for another hour or so. We then caught an interstate to cross the Ohio again to Wheeling, WV before immediately jumping onto US Highway 40 into Southwestern Pennsylvania. See, US Hwy 40 is built upon the National Road that the US Government started building in the late 1700s to help people settle west of the Appalachian mountains in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and elsewhere. It’s a very historic highway and we wanted to check it out and see if we could learn more about the history and experience some of what the settlers went through. Well, the state of Pennsylvania made that task rather difficult by doing the following to their roadside historical markers: 1. they put them right next to the road so that, in order to read them, you would have to block traffic and risk getting rear-ended by that eighteen wheeler who was riding your tail and 2. when you can read them, the information is very, very slim. Here’s one we saw today while wandering Columbia:
Originally Wright’s Ferry, founded by John Wright in 1726. An early center for turnpike, canal and railroad activity, at an important Susquehanna River crossing. First bridge built in 1812.
That’s it. Can we get some more information please? Didn’t anything interesting happen in this town?!!! In Texas, we would’ve known what country Wright’s family came from, which famous person was born there and the high school’s mascot. Oh well. The road itself was also well-used although it was only two lanes for most of the way. It seems there are few highways that run east-west across the Alleghenies/Appalachians so the ones that do are pretty popular. It was still a scenic road and was especially interesting when you could look in the distance and see the green Alleghenies rising up to the sky. The Alleghenies aren’t super-tall like the Rockies; the highest point in Pennsylvania is only something like 3900 feet but that’s more than high enough for us. We stopped briefly in the town of Washington to eat pizza at an Italian restaurant (we haven’t eaten as much pizza on this trip as we usually do) and for me to have to run back down the very steep hill in downtown to put quarters in the parking meter because I’d fogotten to do so. This was also the first time all trip that we truly felt hot (it was in the low 80s, whoa). We’ll see if we can bring some cool weather to those of you in Texas when we get back.
The one spot we stopped at along the National Road was Fort Necessity, a small fort built by some British and colonial soldiers led by George Washington in 1754. Actually, it’s more like a circular privacy fence surrounding a small log cabin with some trenches outside. Washington and his 293 men hastily built it while they were expecting a counterattack from the French and their Indian allies coming from Fort Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh). The French prevailed and Washington surrendered the fort but was allowed, along with his surviving men, to go back to Virginia.
Oh, looks like the laundry’s done!
Ah, back in the Columbia Inn B&B. I’m actually sitting on a windowseat listening to the proprietor play Los Lonely Boys outside and inconsiderate people riding loud motorcycles down the street. We haven’t decided which we think are more annoying: young guys playing loud rap music in their cars or older guys riding loud Harleys. Anyway, we got a little tour of the fort by two rangers dressed as militiamen and walked up a hill to see the Mount Washington Tavern (which was closed). It was a little odd to see one of the ‘militiamen’ driving a minivan up to the Tavern though.
After Fort Necessity we turned north through backroads in the mountains and found our new home, the Log Haven B&B out in the middle of nowhere. These two retirees had a big log cabin built with half being reserved for them and the other half being a B&B. It was very cozy and perfect for us; they even had homemade cookies and fudge set out for you every day, eh! Of course, their idea of breakfast was something to get you jumpstarted with a big sugar high. The first breakfast was a giant apple pancake, the second was pecan swirl rolls and today’s was a big honkin’ sticky bun loaf. Maybe they were making up for the fact that we weren’t drinking coffee. The cookies were pretty good but luckily enough not too good; I only ate five each night.
So two days ago, on Tuesday, we went hiking in Ohiopyle State Park in the Alleghenies. It’s a big park located on the Youghigheny River. Quick, how do you pronounce Youghigheny?
WRONG!
In an another attempt to distinguish the locals from the tourists, it’s pronounced ‘yaw-keh-gay-nee’. Anyway, Ohiopyle has a ton of hiking trails, many of which go along the northeastern version of a creek, called a ‘run’. So instead of Bear Creek, Jonathan Creek and Sugar Loaf Creek, you have Bear Run, Jonathan Run and Sugar Loaf Run. We kept waiting to see a Beer Run but never saw one. We spent about three hours hiking four miles or so with about six hundred feet of elevation change as we walked down close to the river and then back up. The undisputed highlight was scaring the bejeezus out of a black bear. Actually, it was probably thirty feet off the trail but we could definitely tell that it was a bear hightailing it through the underbrush. Our hosts said they’d only seen two bears in eleven years in their log cabin so we feel really lucky. It certainly made the rest of the hike much more exciting as I kept looking around for other bears. Actually, this trip has been decent for wildlife because we saw an osprey in Kentucky (building a nest on a high school football stadium lightpole), a fox bounding across the road in Ohio and tons of chipmunks. After the hike, we spent some time wandering around the small town of Ohiopyle (in the middle of the state park), checking out the rather large waterfall on the Youghigheny and wandering some of the nearby trails. One really cool thing Pennsylvania has done is taken an unused rail line spanning the state and converted it to a monster hike-and-bike trail. It’s ingenius and gives you lots of cool pedestrian bridges that used to be monster railroad trellises.
We weren’t done with the day though. We’d found out that there was a nearby ski resort, Seven Springs, that had an alpine slide. An alpine slide is a plastic half pipe that switchbacks down the mountainside; you traverse it on a little skiff with wheels and a brake handle. The idea is to go as fast as possible without flying off the track (it feels like such a thing is possible as the barriers to flying off are few). Jennifer and I used a 2-for-1 coupon we’d found in a coupon book at the B&B and got on for $7. I’m a lot more daring than Jennifer on these type of things and thus went much faster on the way down though was unable to catch any air on any of the drops. Supposedly it dropped 1,980 feet in altitude but that sounds more exciting than it really was. Definitely worth $7 though and it’s always interesting to see what ski resorts do in the summertime to get people to show up. This one had a bowling alley, arcade games, mountain biking trails, a disc golf course, ‘mountain jogging’ trails, a rockwall, European-style bungie (where you’re on a trampoline with a rope on either side) and shopping.
The next day was the crown jewel of the trip so far: a rafting trip down the Yough (yawk). Holy moly. Neither Jennifer nor I slept too well the night before due to three reasons. 1. The Lower Yough has Class III-IV rapids. We splurged and got a raft that would have a guide in it steering and telling us what to do as opposed to having a go at it ourselves and having a guide in a kayak giving us directions. 2. Rather than ride back to our car on a bus, we were going to ride back by bicycle. After several hours of grueling paddling, a seven-mile bike ride would be just the ticket. What were we thinking? 3. I was also going to slide down a natural chute on Meadow Run. It would be great except the water was going to be freezing and the temperature, not being above 75, would undoubtedly do me in. So neither of us slept too well.
The day started out on the wrong foot as we got to Meadow Run at 10am. The water was wayyyy too cold to get in and besides, no one else was down there so if my body became frozen stiff I was only going to have Jennifer around to pull me out. We hung out in the car listening to some more of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (can you believe it’s 17 CDs? we only finished it today) and then walking around a bit. We checked in at the appropriate place (after being directed to the wrong one at first) right on time at 11:30 and prepared for our rafting excursion.
This excursion was set up rather interestingly. We had maybe 70 people going on one outing with about six staff people. The rafts would hold anywhere from 3-7 people and most of them would have only customers and not staff. Having sprung to have a guide, Ferg, with us, Jennifer and I got a raft pretty much to ourselves and would get to have him tell us when to paddle forward and when to backpaddle. Most everybody else would have to follow the instructions of a guide standing on a rock in the middle of the rapid to know what to do. That seemed really strange to us. Essentially, before every big rapid everybody would stop by the shore and we’d all get a pep talk from the main guide, telling us exactly how to run the next rapid. Then he and two or three others would go on ahead and stand on certain large rocks so as either to give instructions (using hand motions or, better yet, yelling), to throw a rope or to paddle in on a kayak to help pull somebody out. We all had on lifejackets (pulled SUPERTIGHT by our buddy Ferg) and helmets and if you fall in, we were told, keep your nose and your toes pointed to the sky. Anyway, we were stress-free since we had Ferg with us though some of the rapids looked pretty hairy. Of course, they were hairier for all the people who got bounced out of their rafts or had their raft flipped. You’ll see the photos. I think the highlight was the one rapid where we went first, then pulled off to the side so Ferg could stand ready to throw a rope to anyone who came drifting out. Before too long an empty raft came floating through. Jennifer tossed Ferg a paddle and poor Ferg had to swim out into the river in order to retrieve it, pull it onshore upstream 50 yards and then paddle it over to the other side while Jennifer and I, paying customers, sat and watched. Anyway, Ferg did a good job and kept both Jennifer and I from falling out although there was one rapid he misjudged that sent him flying forward on top of me. It took a lot longer than it should have to float the seven mile stretch because we had to keep stopping so the rapids could be explained but it was a ton of fun. It helped that the only civilization around the Yough was the railroad track. No houses, condos, campers or anything else. Very cool. We had a lot of fun and it was definitely a highlight of the trip. The only bad thing was that I had taken a waterproof bag with us that had sunscreen and my digital camera (I had bought a waterproof camera for the trip but I wanted to have the digital for, well, I wasn’t sure). I’d bought the bag the previous day from our outfitter but somehow it contrived to develop a hole which, unfortunately, ruined the camera. I was not enthused but was determined not to let it ruin the day.
Oh yeah, but then we weren’t done. Still had the bike ride (and the chute) to go. The biking was done on the bike trail on the old rail line so it was fairly smooth although Jennifer made sure we took the ride at a leisurely pace. It didn’t help that neither of our tires were properly inflated either. Poor Ferg drew the short straw and had to ride back with us as apparently a guide was required to. It was a nice ride though as we also got to cross the Yough twice on railroad trestles.
Once back at the car, we drove over to the outfitter shop to return the bag and let it be known their merchandise was faulty. They offered us a new bag in exchange which we scoffed at; why get the same crummy bag? They wouldn’t offer a refund but told us to call in to speak to the manager the next day. Thanks for the great customer service guys. (Note: the manager wasn’t in the next day either)
Oh but we weren’t done. I still had to hit the chute. I’d voluntairly jumped in the Yough a couple of times during the rafting and it was c-c-cold. So I was determined to do the chute regardless of the temperature because, well, because it was there and who knows if I’d ever have another chance? Jennifer, smart woman she is, decided to skip the opportunity but would take my photo. I was heartened to see several little kids going through it so I had one of them instruct me on proper technique and then followed them in. It was super cold of course and really not that much fun, probably because the water flow wasn’t strong enough to push me all the way. I dragged my rear end several times which of course always makes you wonder whether this will be the time you get a big rip in your suit. Plus you’re never sure if you’re going to conk your head. I went through once and then, after realizing I was shivering like a maniac, decided to defer another opportunity. Once was enough. Jennifer and I split a pizza at Fox’s Pizza Den in Ohiopyle and then returned to the B&B for the evening.
On our trips we have some usual standbys in the food department. First and foremost are Pringles because a) they taste good and b) you can’t inadvertently crush them because they’re in a can. We’ve only had one can so far because we’ve found a new travel food: ginger snaps. We love ginger snaps and look forward to scarfing another couple of pounds before we return home.
This morning we woke bright and early, said goodbye to Ron and Betty the innkeepers and hit the road for Eastern Pennsylvania and the Amish Country. I would write more but it’s late, this missive has already surpassed 3600 words and Jennifer wants to proof it. Will write more later as we tour Amish Country and Philadelphia (we’ll be at the Phillies/Pirates game on Friday night). Hope everyone is doing great, wherever you happen to be.
Hi from Smith’s Laundromat in historic Columbia, Pennsylvania. Yes, one of us had to lose the ‘who’s going to run out of clean clothes first’ game and this vacation, it was me. This will be the only time this trip we need to wash though so that’s good. We realize it’s been a few days since we’ve written but we’ve been, in true Matt-and-Jennifer fashion, vacationing so hard we’ll need a vacation when we get back home just to recover.
So where were we last? Oh yes, chilling out with Jennifer’s Uncle Bill and Aunt Charlotte in Cincinnati. Apparently a bad weather day in Cincinnati is 75 degrees with a slight drizzle because it put a damper on our ability to lounge by the pool and hang with the mallard duck mama who had built her nest under some flowers just above it (she would sit in the pool before flying up onto the nest). It also meant we had to eat our Cincinnati sausage-themed lunch, consisting of metts, brats and more metts, inside. For the afternoon, we just chilled out in the house where, in the basement, I wrote the last e-mail. That turned out to be some much-needed rest because we had to be prepared to scarf down all-you-can-eat ribs at the Montgomery Inn, a famous rib joint in town. Unfortunately for Jennifer and I, they were in the middle of their All-You-Can-Eat-Ribs for $19.95 which was a steal. I took it as a personal challenge to eat enough ribs so that Bill, who was paying for the meal, got his money’s worth and then some. It was a lot of ribs but they were goooooood. A lot of famous people apparently eat there but nobody came over to take Jennifer and my photo, eh.
But that wasn’t all. Our stomachs quite full, we headed down to the Ohio River waterfront to catch the Cincinnati Pops’ special July 4th performance. We had some time beforehand to wander around the waterfront which mainly consisted of Coney Island Theme Park but we also got to appreciate the immense power of floods. The Ohio is a monster river and apparently the biggest flood ever to come through, in 1937, was 80 feet above flood stage. Flooding is such a a presence on the Ohio that the covered outdoor ampitheater where the Pops performs was designed specifically to be floodable and easy to clean mud out of after the floodwaters recede. The concert, thankfully under cover since it was still drizzling out, was super-duper fantastic, full of patriotic anthems and spiced up with Broadway tunes sung by a couple of Cincinnatians who had made it big on Broadway (Pamela Myers and, as the conductor always introduced him, Mr. Lee Roy REAMS). The concert was so much fun that we thought intermission came too soon and that it ended too early.
But that wasn’t all. It was July 4th, after all, so there needed to be fireworks baby! And boy, were there fireworks. As we were walking out from under the protection of the ampitheater, the rain stopped and the fireworks started. They were fired from down by the river but we were so close that it felt like we were underneath them when they went off. Not only did it hurt our necks to watch them (Jennifer made me prop up her head with my forearm) but we were occasionally dusted with scattered bits of fireworks. The finale was so loud that Jennifer had to cover her ears and I decided to lose some of my hearing instead. It was great.
The next morning we said goodbye to Bill and Charlotte and headed out down Ohio Highway 52 to follow the Ohio River to Wheeling, West Virginia. This was definitely not the most direct route but how often do you get to drive along a major historic river. I mean, the road went right by the river almost the whole time. We spent a lazy day without incident tracing it, stopping at Ulysses S. Grant’s birthplace (did you know his real name was Hiriam Ulysses Grant but that his name was mangled on the application to West Point so he stuck with it?), an old lock-and-dam community (where people lived who worked the locks before this particular one was removed for a bigger one) and a currently-being-used lock-and-dam. We almost made it along the whole river road except for a batch of construction which shut down parts of it as we got close to Marietta, where we would be staying the night. We would shuttle over to the nearest parallel highway, go north for a bit, cut back to the river only to find it closed for construction there too. In fact, there ended up being so much construction on the Ohio side that we had to cross into West Virginia for about ten miles just to get to Marietta. On the plus side, West Virginia’s tourist slogan, prominently displayed on the ‘Welcome to West Virginia’ sign that greeted us as we crossed the Ohio, is ‘Wild and Wonderful’ (we’re still looking for a worse one than Washington’s ‘Say Wa?’ campaign).
Also, and this is important, if you are ever in Gallipolis County, Ohio, there is a company that will deliver pizza AND beer, anywhere in the county, or so they claim. Must not be a big county. Anyway, we must’ve seen three of their billboards during our drive but sadly don’t have any photos. We did get one of ‘Southern Moon BBQ’ though; use your imagination.
Marietta was a neat little town with our Best Western (no point staying in a B&B when you’re just passing through) being located on the backside of town on the Muskingum River. It sounds more scenic than it was because the Muskingum was wide, flat and frequented by guys on jet skis. Since it was a Sunday and Marietta’s not that big, our choice of restaurants for dinner was quite limited. One of the options, however, was the restaurant El Tampico (at least, we think that’s what it was called). Anyway, for any of you familiar with the song by Bowling For Soup – Ohio (Come Back To Texas) (at least, we think that’s what it’s called, eh), we wanted to test the accuracy of the lyric in the song stating that ‘the Mexican food [stinks] north of here (Texas) anyway’. Well, we’re not prepared to stereotype the quality of all Mexican food north of the Red River but, as our friends who were science majors would say, the hypothesis was not disproven.
The next day found us following the Little Muskingum River northeast for an hour and then cutting over to our good buddy the Ohio River for another hour or so. We then caught an interstate to cross the Ohio again to Wheeling, WV before immediately jumping onto US Highway 40 into Southwestern Pennsylvania. See, US Hwy 40 is built upon the National Road that the US Government started building in the late 1700s to help people settle west of the Appalachian mountains in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and elsewhere. It’s a very historic highway and we wanted to check it out and see if we could learn more about the history and experience some of what the settlers went through. Well, the state of Pennsylvania made that task rather difficult by doing the following to their roadside historical markers: 1. they put them right next to the road so that, in order to read them, you would have to block traffic and risk getting rear-ended by that eighteen wheeler who was riding your tail and 2. when you can read them, the information is very, very slim. Here’s one we saw today while wandering Columbia:
Originally Wright’s Ferry, founded by John Wright in 1726. An early center for turnpike, canal and railroad activity, at an important Susquehanna River crossing. First bridge built in 1812.
That’s it. Can we get some more information please? Didn’t anything interesting happen in this town?!!! In Texas, we would’ve known what country Wright’s family came from, which famous person was born there and the high school’s mascot. Oh well. The road itself was also well-used although it was only two lanes for most of the way. It seems there are few highways that run east-west across the Alleghenies/Appalachians so the ones that do are pretty popular. It was still a scenic road and was especially interesting when you could look in the distance and see the green Alleghenies rising up to the sky. The Alleghenies aren’t super-tall like the Rockies; the highest point in Pennsylvania is only something like 3900 feet but that’s more than high enough for us. We stopped briefly in the town of Washington to eat pizza at an Italian restaurant (we haven’t eaten as much pizza on this trip as we usually do) and for me to have to run back down the very steep hill in downtown to put quarters in the parking meter because I’d fogotten to do so. This was also the first time all trip that we truly felt hot (it was in the low 80s, whoa). We’ll see if we can bring some cool weather to those of you in Texas when we get back.
The one spot we stopped at along the National Road was Fort Necessity, a small fort built by some British and colonial soldiers led by George Washington in 1754. Actually, it’s more like a circular privacy fence surrounding a small log cabin with some trenches outside. Washington and his 293 men hastily built it while they were expecting a counterattack from the French and their Indian allies coming from Fort Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh). The French prevailed and Washington surrendered the fort but was allowed, along with his surviving men, to go back to Virginia.
Oh, looks like the laundry’s done!
Ah, back in the Columbia Inn B&B. I’m actually sitting on a windowseat listening to the proprietor play Los Lonely Boys outside and inconsiderate people riding loud motorcycles down the street. We haven’t decided which we think are more annoying: young guys playing loud rap music in their cars or older guys riding loud Harleys. Anyway, we got a little tour of the fort by two rangers dressed as militiamen and walked up a hill to see the Mount Washington Tavern (which was closed). It was a little odd to see one of the ‘militiamen’ driving a minivan up to the Tavern though.
After Fort Necessity we turned north through backroads in the mountains and found our new home, the Log Haven B&B out in the middle of nowhere. These two retirees had a big log cabin built with half being reserved for them and the other half being a B&B. It was very cozy and perfect for us; they even had homemade cookies and fudge set out for you every day, eh! Of course, their idea of breakfast was something to get you jumpstarted with a big sugar high. The first breakfast was a giant apple pancake, the second was pecan swirl rolls and today’s was a big honkin’ sticky bun loaf. Maybe they were making up for the fact that we weren’t drinking coffee. The cookies were pretty good but luckily enough not too good; I only ate five each night.
So two days ago, on Tuesday, we went hiking in Ohiopyle State Park in the Alleghenies. It’s a big park located on the Youghigheny River. Quick, how do you pronounce Youghigheny?
WRONG!
In an another attempt to distinguish the locals from the tourists, it’s pronounced ‘yaw-keh-gay-nee’. Anyway, Ohiopyle has a ton of hiking trails, many of which go along the northeastern version of a creek, called a ‘run’. So instead of Bear Creek, Jonathan Creek and Sugar Loaf Creek, you have Bear Run, Jonathan Run and Sugar Loaf Run. We kept waiting to see a Beer Run but never saw one. We spent about three hours hiking four miles or so with about six hundred feet of elevation change as we walked down close to the river and then back up. The undisputed highlight was scaring the bejeezus out of a black bear. Actually, it was probably thirty feet off the trail but we could definitely tell that it was a bear hightailing it through the underbrush. Our hosts said they’d only seen two bears in eleven years in their log cabin so we feel really lucky. It certainly made the rest of the hike much more exciting as I kept looking around for other bears. Actually, this trip has been decent for wildlife because we saw an osprey in Kentucky (building a nest on a high school football stadium lightpole), a fox bounding across the road in Ohio and tons of chipmunks. After the hike, we spent some time wandering around the small town of Ohiopyle (in the middle of the state park), checking out the rather large waterfall on the Youghigheny and wandering some of the nearby trails. One really cool thing Pennsylvania has done is taken an unused rail line spanning the state and converted it to a monster hike-and-bike trail. It’s ingenius and gives you lots of cool pedestrian bridges that used to be monster railroad trellises.
We weren’t done with the day though. We’d found out that there was a nearby ski resort, Seven Springs, that had an alpine slide. An alpine slide is a plastic half pipe that switchbacks down the mountainside; you traverse it on a little skiff with wheels and a brake handle. The idea is to go as fast as possible without flying off the track (it feels like such a thing is possible as the barriers to flying off are few). Jennifer and I used a 2-for-1 coupon we’d found in a coupon book at the B&B and got on for $7. I’m a lot more daring than Jennifer on these type of things and thus went much faster on the way down though was unable to catch any air on any of the drops. Supposedly it dropped 1,980 feet in altitude but that sounds more exciting than it really was. Definitely worth $7 though and it’s always interesting to see what ski resorts do in the summertime to get people to show up. This one had a bowling alley, arcade games, mountain biking trails, a disc golf course, ‘mountain jogging’ trails, a rockwall, European-style bungie (where you’re on a trampoline with a rope on either side) and shopping.
The next day was the crown jewel of the trip so far: a rafting trip down the Yough (yawk). Holy moly. Neither Jennifer nor I slept too well the night before due to three reasons. 1. The Lower Yough has Class III-IV rapids. We splurged and got a raft that would have a guide in it steering and telling us what to do as opposed to having a go at it ourselves and having a guide in a kayak giving us directions. 2. Rather than ride back to our car on a bus, we were going to ride back by bicycle. After several hours of grueling paddling, a seven-mile bike ride would be just the ticket. What were we thinking? 3. I was also going to slide down a natural chute on Meadow Run. It would be great except the water was going to be freezing and the temperature, not being above 75, would undoubtedly do me in. So neither of us slept too well.
The day started out on the wrong foot as we got to Meadow Run at 10am. The water was wayyyy too cold to get in and besides, no one else was down there so if my body became frozen stiff I was only going to have Jennifer around to pull me out. We hung out in the car listening to some more of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (can you believe it’s 17 CDs? we only finished it today) and then walking around a bit. We checked in at the appropriate place (after being directed to the wrong one at first) right on time at 11:30 and prepared for our rafting excursion.
This excursion was set up rather interestingly. We had maybe 70 people going on one outing with about six staff people. The rafts would hold anywhere from 3-7 people and most of them would have only customers and not staff. Having sprung to have a guide, Ferg, with us, Jennifer and I got a raft pretty much to ourselves and would get to have him tell us when to paddle forward and when to backpaddle. Most everybody else would have to follow the instructions of a guide standing on a rock in the middle of the rapid to know what to do. That seemed really strange to us. Essentially, before every big rapid everybody would stop by the shore and we’d all get a pep talk from the main guide, telling us exactly how to run the next rapid. Then he and two or three others would go on ahead and stand on certain large rocks so as either to give instructions (using hand motions or, better yet, yelling), to throw a rope or to paddle in on a kayak to help pull somebody out. We all had on lifejackets (pulled SUPERTIGHT by our buddy Ferg) and helmets and if you fall in, we were told, keep your nose and your toes pointed to the sky. Anyway, we were stress-free since we had Ferg with us though some of the rapids looked pretty hairy. Of course, they were hairier for all the people who got bounced out of their rafts or had their raft flipped. You’ll see the photos. I think the highlight was the one rapid where we went first, then pulled off to the side so Ferg could stand ready to throw a rope to anyone who came drifting out. Before too long an empty raft came floating through. Jennifer tossed Ferg a paddle and poor Ferg had to swim out into the river in order to retrieve it, pull it onshore upstream 50 yards and then paddle it over to the other side while Jennifer and I, paying customers, sat and watched. Anyway, Ferg did a good job and kept both Jennifer and I from falling out although there was one rapid he misjudged that sent him flying forward on top of me. It took a lot longer than it should have to float the seven mile stretch because we had to keep stopping so the rapids could be explained but it was a ton of fun. It helped that the only civilization around the Yough was the railroad track. No houses, condos, campers or anything else. Very cool. We had a lot of fun and it was definitely a highlight of the trip. The only bad thing was that I had taken a waterproof bag with us that had sunscreen and my digital camera (I had bought a waterproof camera for the trip but I wanted to have the digital for, well, I wasn’t sure). I’d bought the bag the previous day from our outfitter but somehow it contrived to develop a hole which, unfortunately, ruined the camera. I was not enthused but was determined not to let it ruin the day.
Oh yeah, but then we weren’t done. Still had the bike ride (and the chute) to go. The biking was done on the bike trail on the old rail line so it was fairly smooth although Jennifer made sure we took the ride at a leisurely pace. It didn’t help that neither of our tires were properly inflated either. Poor Ferg drew the short straw and had to ride back with us as apparently a guide was required to. It was a nice ride though as we also got to cross the Yough twice on railroad trestles.
Once back at the car, we drove over to the outfitter shop to return the bag and let it be known their merchandise was faulty. They offered us a new bag in exchange which we scoffed at; why get the same crummy bag? They wouldn’t offer a refund but told us to call in to speak to the manager the next day. Thanks for the great customer service guys. (Note: the manager wasn’t in the next day either)
Oh but we weren’t done. I still had to hit the chute. I’d voluntairly jumped in the Yough a couple of times during the rafting and it was c-c-cold. So I was determined to do the chute regardless of the temperature because, well, because it was there and who knows if I’d ever have another chance? Jennifer, smart woman she is, decided to skip the opportunity but would take my photo. I was heartened to see several little kids going through it so I had one of them instruct me on proper technique and then followed them in. It was super cold of course and really not that much fun, probably because the water flow wasn’t strong enough to push me all the way. I dragged my rear end several times which of course always makes you wonder whether this will be the time you get a big rip in your suit. Plus you’re never sure if you’re going to conk your head. I went through once and then, after realizing I was shivering like a maniac, decided to defer another opportunity. Once was enough. Jennifer and I split a pizza at Fox’s Pizza Den in Ohiopyle and then returned to the B&B for the evening.
On our trips we have some usual standbys in the food department. First and foremost are Pringles because a) they taste good and b) you can’t inadvertently crush them because they’re in a can. We’ve only had one can so far because we’ve found a new travel food: ginger snaps. We love ginger snaps and look forward to scarfing another couple of pounds before we return home.
This morning we woke bright and early, said goodbye to Ron and Betty the innkeepers and hit the road for Eastern Pennsylvania and the Amish Country. I would write more but it’s late, this missive has already surpassed 3600 words and Jennifer wants to proof it. Will write more later as we tour Amish Country and Philadelphia (we’ll be at the Phillies/Pirates game on Friday night). Hope everyone is doing great, wherever you happen to be.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Northeast to Ohio
Do you know what’s really wrong with Texas? No, not the 100 degree temperatures, the disturbing lack of rain or the fact that the Legislature only meets for 140 days every two years? Nope, it’s the lack of basements. Basements are the greatest rooms known to mankind. They’re always cozy, unique and a little bit secretive (the door to a basement always looks like it leads to a closet). You feel like you’re in your own comfortable cave.
Why do I bring this up? Because I’m typing this e-mail in a basement of course! I’m sitting at Bill Moore’s desk the basement of he and his wife Charlotte’s house in Indian Hills, Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati. Jennifer is their niece and thus we were able to blackmail them into making us stay at their fantastic house and show us around Cincinnati. Seriously, they love having guests but at the same time I’m trying to figure out if I should allow them to approve the content of this e-mail regarding Cincinnati or whether I should maintain editorial independence.
For those who hadn’t been alerted, Jennifer and I are using up some of my accumulated vacation from work to go visit the Amish Country and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania and see some neat stuff along the way. It’s not our normal big honking international trip that you all know and love but we weren’t planning on going anywhere this year and when I found out I was going to be required to take four weeks of vacation (in order to get down to 40 hours of accumulated vacation on the books) I promptly informed Jennifer I wasn’t going to spend four weeks at home. Hence, a driving trip. Plus it will provide a small amount of economic stimulus here in the US.
The trip had to be up north so we could escape the heat. Have I mentioned that it’s in the mid-70s during the day up here? Yeah, we’d forgotten what weather under 90 degrees felt like. We’d probably move here except we’d go crazy during the long cold miserable winters. Bill and Charlotte actually wanted it to be hotter during our visit, ha, though in fairness it was so we could use their swimming pool.
Anyway, Jennifer and I started our trip at about 5:15pm on June 30, End of Quarter Day at National Instruments (NI). Our trips must always wait until a) Jennifer is finished with shutting down the Grandview Hills Elementary School library for the summer and b) End of Quarter has passed, meaning the time when NI attempts to ship as much product as possible in order to boost our billings numbers (and thus profit level) to show off to Wall Street and keep our stock price from nosediving, among other reasons. Since my group’s schedule is often heavily impacted by End of Quarter, that is not a good time for me to be on vacation.
So anyway, we left Austin at 5:15pm on Tuesday, June 30 and hit I-35 headed for Big D so we could drop off our little 14 lb kooshball with teeth (our dog BB) with Jennifer’s parents in Dallas. After a brief overnight stay, we hit the road at 8am the next morning, sans BB. The poor dog has been through this routine four times now but the good part is that she loves staying with Bill and Laura most likely because they spoil her like crazy. The goal of the first day was to make it 590 miles to Paris, Tennessee, a decent halfway stop between Dallas and Cincinnati. 590 miles sounds like a lot but when you’re cruising at 70mph on the interstate most of the way it’s not that bad. It took three hours to get to Texarkana, about five to get across Arkansas and then three more to get to Paris. It was all interstate from Dallas to Memphis, punctuated by a half-decent barbecue lunch at Big Jake’s in Hope, Arkansas and a gas fill-up in Lonoke, Arkansas after I, like an idiot got our Toyota Camry Hybrid down to almost empty (the mileage gauge said we had 20 miles to go before we’d be running on fumes).
There were tons of people on I-30 and I-40. Tons. We saw license plates from 23 states and there were almost as many eighteen-wheelers as four-wheelers (passenger cars for those of you who wouldn’t know what to do with a ‘bear on your six’ – answer: pull over). Wayyyy too many vehicles for Jennifer to drive unstressed so I drove the whole way. To help pass the time, we busted out the audio version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (thanks Austin Public Library!). This is my favorite of the Harry Potter books but the problem is that the guy reading the story can really put you to sleep if you’re not careful. To keep me from totally drifting off, we would turn on talk radio every hour or so for a bit. Nothing perks you up quite like listening to talk radio, whether it’s Rush Limbaugh, Jim Rome or a talk show host in Memphis who referred to an unnamed local politician as ‘Buffalo Butt’.
Once we crossed the Mississippi River (or, as Jennifer and her brother Andrew would call it, the Mizzizzippi River), we were in Tennessee. I hadn’t been there since getting a tour of Rhodes College back sometime during my senior year of high school (1996-97) and Jennifer hadn’t been since she was a little girl. It was at that point we left the Interstate and hit an old friend of ours, U.S. Highway 79. For those of you familiar with Round Rock, TX and all towns due northeast of it all the way up to Longview, this was the same U.S. Highway 79 that you know and love. I was kind of excited actually to be on a ‘familiar’ highway but then again, I’m a dork for that sort of stuff. The plan was to follow 79 all the way up into Kentucky almost to the Ohio border. Leaving the four-lane bustle of the Interstate and replacing it with a two-lane highway with people’s driveways opening onto it was kind of nice. West Tennessee is very green with lots of tall trees, farmland and rolling hills (more pronounced than the ones we experience driving on 290 from Houston to Austin, that’s for sure).
We arrived in Paris after 11 hours in the car, found a place to eat (an Italian eatery called the Olive Pit) and settled into our room at the Super 8 hotel. We had tried driving around downtown Paris but couldn’t find a single open restaurant but we were determined not eat anywhere that we could eat in Texas (i.e. no McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, etc.). The Olive Pit was just fine though it looked like it was built out of an old Taco Bell. Anyway, the day had worked out well as we hadn’t gotten a super-early start (like when I was a kid and we’d leave the house at like 5 in the morning), had been on the road all day and arrived late enough that we didn’t have time to really sit around and watch TV or anything. Very nice. The one highlight of the day was the spotting of three businesses run, apparently, by fat people. Fat Jake’s barbecue, Fat Larry’s restaurant, Fat Belly’s something-or-other..
The next day had us continuing on Highway 79 through small Tennessee towns and across the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, which American Revolutionary war hero George Rogers Clark swum across while disguised as an Indian in order to sneak back to a fort for reinforcements in the book Long Knife which I read on our trip to Chile last year. Can something I’m reading this trip be a portent for where we’ll be next year? It’s a novel set in 1920s Germany...hmmm. Anyway, we soon started seeing what we thought were fields of tobacco and very soon after crossed into Kentucky, another beautiful state. In fact, I’m going to say right now that Kentucky is much prettier than East Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee. You’ll have to see the photos but that won’t do it justice. No huge mountains or anything but just hills, picturesque fields and old houses and barns everywhere you look. Even a ‘holler’ or two, eh. It’s beautiful.
Our friend Beth Cage had told me to have some barbecue in Kentucky which would mean mutton. Unfortunately, we didn’t stop to have barbecue while gracing the state with our presence but we did have lunch at Perna’s Country Cafe in Brandenburg, Kentucky, where one of the featured items on the dry erase board (Southwestern University Friday Night Dinner people may remember that a dry erase board was a requirement for a good FND restaurant) was fried cheese balls. I doubt they’re unique to Kentucky but they were good!!!!! Why the Texas State Fair insists on frying crazy things like oreo cookies and Coca-Cola when they could just fry cheese balls is beyond me.
Oh yeah, and remember how I was thrilled about following US Highway 79 so far? Well, about twenty miles into Kentucky, U.S. Highway 79 ends and a little later becomes Kentucky Highway 79. I felt cheated. I even had to do a u-turn so I could take a photo of the saying pronouncing ‘End – U.S. Hwy 79’. We referred to Kentucky Highway 79 as ‘Fake 79’ for the remainder of the day.
Jennifer had never been to Indiana so we crossed the Ohio River going due north, then cruised through the Indiana foothills for a bit (also very pretty) before heading east to cross the Ohio River at Louisville. We could’ve stayed on the two-lane backroads up to Cincy but we wanted to get to Bill and Charlotte’s in time for dinner so we, ugh, hit the interstate. First Interstate 64 east into Louisville and then Interstates 75 and 71 up to Cincinnati. Tons of traffic again. Tons. Heck, 71 was four lanes way before we got to Cincinnati. On the bright side listening to Harry Potter determine who were going to be the Quidditch players for Gryffindor House had a calming effect on my driving and we made it into Cincinnati (across the Ohio River again) and to Bill and Charlotte’s house in Indian Hills on the eastern edge of the city without incident.
Bill and Charlotte didn’t make me write this but Cincinnati is a fabulous city. What do you know about Cincinnati? All Jennifer and I knew was that a) it was named after some Roman General named Cincinnatus, b) it was on the Ohio River, c) it’s the home of the Reds and Bengals and d) for some strange reason they eat their chili on top of spaghetti. Bill and Charlotte have spent a considerable amount of time (1.5 days as of now) educating us on what a cool city it is. Tons of big hills, lots of greenery, cool old funky neighborhoods and great views, especially of the Ohio River, made this feel a bit like Seattle actually. It has a vibrant downtown, tons of artsy stuff like a great art museum (more on that in a minute) and a symphony and great restaurants and culinary traditions. The only downside is the winter. In Texas it may be around 100 degrees right now but at least we can go outside in January.
Yesterday Bill and Charlotte took us to explore the city. We visited a couple of parks with great views of the Ohio River and Kentucky, took a spin through the Cincinnati Art Museum, ate some of the afore-mentioned chili spaghetti (which includes about a pound of cheddar cheese to top it off) and visited the Kentucky Riverfront. I had my chili spaghetti ‘five-way’, meaning it had chili, spaghetti, cheddar cheese, onions and beans and had a coney dog (buried under cheddar cheese) to finish it off. Good stuff. We also saw tons of old buildings including a water tower that was designed back in the 1800s to resemble Elsinore Castle in Denmark (wasn’t that in Hamlet?). Cincinnati’s Art Museum, where Charlotte lives as a docent, has a fantastic collection of paintings from the 1800s due to Cincinnati being an artistic center even back then. You’ll see photos of some of the paintings; they’re as fantastic as any paintings we saw in the Met in New York except for the fact that none of them had ever made it into any of our history textbooks in high school, eh. The other sections of the museum that we saw weren’t half bad either.
We also stopped by the Findlay Street Market in downtown Cincy. Food markets like it are apparently common in big Upper Midwest cities like Cleveland and Pittsburgh and we could see why. Not only could you buy all sorts of fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and spices but you had the following two options: 1. You could buy fig newtons and other usually boxed snacks by the pound ($3.99 per lb for the fig newtons) and 2. You stop by Kroeger’s sausage stand and feel like you died and went to sausage heaven. There were seriously about forty types of sausage including Cincinnati metts (their version of hot dogs), bratwurst, Hungarian sausage and, and this is something I’ll try one of these days, Moroccan camel sausage ($7.99 per lb). Very cool. Oh yeah, and we had Graeter’s Ice Cream for dessert, an item that could give Blue Bell a run for it’s money except that we all need to support the Texas economy since Blue Bell’s based in Brenham.
In the evening we went out to eat at this very nice Italian restaurant to celebrate Charlotte’s birthday. Located just off the main square in Cincinnati, anchored by a fountain with a lady having water pour out of her outstretched hands, the food was good and it was a great place to people-watch. Afterward we wandered around downtown before heading back to Indian Hills for the evening and just in time to listen to the Reds blow a game to the St. Louis Cardinals.
This morning we headed over to the Indian Hills town center to catch the neighborhood Fourth of July parade which was really neat. Community events like that are so cool. Jennifer and I are determined that, if our neighborhood doesn’t yet have a Fourth of July parade, we’re going to make one. Assuming we’re not always traveling on July 4th, eh. After a nice lunch of metts and bratwurst, I’m busy typing this e-mail. We were going to chill outside by the pool but it’s drizzly outside.
We hope you all are doing well.
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