Month: July 2011

Today is mostly a driving day although we do manage to do a little sightseeing in Hannibal, MO along the way. Hannibal is famous for being Mark Twain’s boyhood home and the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

We also see a real replica of a fence that is just like the one that Tom Sawyer got his friends to paint.

After a horrible lunch at the Mark Twain Dinette, we walk down to the Mississippi River, Mark Twain’s Mississippi River.

And we look at the Mark Twain statue overlooking the Mark Twain River.

And the Mark Twain riverboat.

I guess the fine people of Hannibal, MO are very proud of their native son. The rest of Hannibal seems to have fallen on hard times. The town is full of old Victorian houses but few have been restored to their former glory. Many storefronts are empty. If it weren’t for Tom and Huck, no one would probably stop here. It’s also incredibly hot and humid.

We stop at a grocery store and pick up some fixings for tonight’s dinner. Our hotel room in Springfield has a kitchenette. However, when we go to make dinner we realize that there is no cooktop so making dinner is impossible. Are the gods working actively to sabotage my diet? So we go to Saputo’s which is a red Italian restaurant and eat all the wrong things. And we have our first totally Eastern salad, all iceberg lettuce with a couple of tomato pieces thrown in. Humidity and iceberg lettuce, I’m almost home!

Once we crossed the Rockies we knew we were in for it – humidity. It’s the natural state of things in most of the United States. But if you are not used to it, and maybe even if you are, it is debilitating. This morning we play tennis again. As the diet starts to slide a bit, it’s important to keep the activity up. The humidity is like a thick blanket around us. At one point I notice raindrops on the court but it is so humid that we don’t feel it fall. Weird.

One of the best parts of the day is when we have a Skype session with Nathan and Sam. Or rather Clark and Lewis have a Skype session with them. Nathan is so excited to talk to Clark. He tells Clark that he wants to take him to Santa Cruz to go on the rides. Clark is not so sure. Maybe it will be scary. Nathan promises that he will only take him on the children’s rides and that the ride on the big truck will be perfect – the truck doesn’t go fast. Now all this conversation is going on with me holding Clark, the stuffed frog. I am talking in my normal voice that Nathan would recognize as belonging to Beeba. And yet he is totally communicating with Clark. I think it was the best Skype we’ve ever had. Hopefully we can connect again next weekend.

Then we go off to the National World War I museum here in Kansas City. Dedicated in 1924 and restored in the late 90’s, it’s an interesting art deco building.

Inside we see a couple of movies explaining the reasons for the war and the conditions under which it was fought. It is very insightful and we learn a lot. The whole place is somber. The loss of life in this war is incredible. The trench warfare is horrendous. The final outcome just seems to set the stage for World War II.

It’s now about 3 p.m. and we haven’t eaten since breakfast. Today is our big splurge – lunch at Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue. We share some ribs, beans and pickles. Wow, is it delicious!

We have a quiet last night in Kansas City. No dinner tonight due to the massive lunch. We mosey on down to the bar, people watch and have a glass of wine later in the evening.

On to Springfield, Illinois tomorrow!

Today we started the day playing roof top tennis at the hotel here in Kansas City. Apparently there aren’t many people who play tennis at this facility because the courts are littered with trash. We have not had a very positive experience at this hotel and I plan to make sure that TripAdvisor knows about it.

Our hotel, the Westin Crown Center, tries to be upscale but is really lacking. Yesterday at 5 p.m., the breakfast room service trays had not been picked up from the hallway. When we get into bed for the night, we discover that the sheets are too small for the bed. They are untucked at the top, bottom and sides. It takes us until 12:30 a.m. to get the correct size sheets. The brochure touts their tennis courts but it’s like playing tennis on skid row with plastic bottles, butts and broken glass on the courts. The staff is lackluster at best and the hotel looks like it was designed by Stalin (my opinion) or Mussolini (John’s opinion.) And of course you have to pay for each electronic device separately to get internet, there’s no free breakfast, and there’s a charge for self-parking.

After we are done playing tennis and clean up, we go to the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum. It is a really fine small to medium sized art museum. Right now they are having an exhibition of Monet’s Water Lilies. Impressionism always draws a big crowd although I can’t see the appeal. We’ve seen the Water Lilies in Paris so we skip the exhibition.

The first group of works we see are Roxy Paine’s Scumaks and Dendroids. These are quite interesting blobs. There is a blob making machine at work in the museum.

Then we spend quite a bit of time in the Egyptian section of the museum. I’m usually all hot to get to pre-Rennaisance art so too often we skip this. The Nelson-Atkins museum has a small but comprehensive section of art from the Egyptian tombs.

They also have an outstanding outdoor sculpture area. There are many modern sculptures plus a few golden oldies.

We finish up with a tired traipse through contemporary art. I think our favorite is Max Ernst’s Capricorn.

We get back to the hotel in time for happy hour and have an interesting discussion with a retired lawyer concerning world affairs in general and American politics in specific. He holds mostly the same ideas that we have. Who would have expected it in Kansas City?

Today we say goodbye to Nebraska and make for Kansas City, Missouri. This will not be as simple as we had thought. As we learned yesterday, the flooding in the Missouri River system has closed all the major crossing points from Omaha down to the Iowa line. We have learned that just because flood waters are done cresting (and are therefore no longer nationally newsworthy), it doesn’t mean that the water is gone and the damage magically repaired.

We head east on I-80, detour south on US-81, cross in Kansas (we had actually not planned on any Kansas this trip- we were less than overwhelmed by our brief encounter with southwestern Kansas last trip), and then head east again on US-36. Turns out this road follows part of the route of both the Pony Express and the old California Trail.

We stop for coffee at the town of Marysville KS, take a few pictures of its courthouse, old stores and Victorian houses, and head toward what we are told will be an unimpeded crossing at St. Joseph MO. We decide that northeast Kansas is kind of pretty.

As we get a few miles from the river, we see a lot of fields covered in flood water. Some crops appear fine, others are just drowned to yellowed stalks. There has been significant damage to roads and buildings. We are given to understand that it will take a very long time for the water to subside.

The actual crossing is without incident. Unless of course you count the fact that we are unable to locate any place for lunch along the loop road around St. Joe. We make it almost all the way to Kansas City before finding a place we want to eat.

After lunch, Missy, our GPS, gets us efficiently to our hotel on the south end of downtown KC. We’ll be here three nights. We unpack, take a swim, locate the tennis courts for tomorrow’s early morning play (did I mention it was 101 degrees as we crossed into Kansas City?), and had a good dinner at Pierpont’s in the beautifully restored Union Station across the street.

Tomorrow: tennis, the WWI memorial, maybe the Art Museum, maybe some barbeque. All depends on the heat and humidity.

“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay” for tennis is played and our wash is done again. And a fine job folding, Clark and Lewis! After getting up at zero a.m. to beat the heat, John and I play tennis at the high school courts here in Grand Island. Then we head back to the hotel, have breakfast, and do our laundry. We finally make it out the door around 1 p.m. for lunch and sightseeing.

Our sightseeing goal of the day is the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. We enter the impressive visitor’s center and ask a bunch of questions to a helpful volunteer. When was Nebraska admitted to the Union? How did the slave state/free state play into its statehood? What native Americans lived here? And so on and so on. Museum volunteers should run when they see us coming. The most important question, why do people live here when it’s so frigging hot, humid and buggy in the summer and so frigid in the winter, goes unasked.

We head outside to visit their pioneer village. It’s kind of like a prairie version of Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. There are actual houses and shops from the late 1800’s and historical re-enactors. We walk through lovely gardens and even run into a friend or two of Lewis’s.

Moving along we go into the one room schoolhouse. John, Clark and Lewis are attentive pupils.

Then we take a couple of pictures at the bank and the printer’s because my father was a banker and one of my grandfathers was a printer.

As you can tell by the pictures, I am beginning to wilt. It is really hot out and humid besides. And I am getting attacked by mosquitoes and flies. I tell John to look at the rest of the outdoor stuff by himself and I head back to the visitor’s center. John follows about 20 minutes later. Being outside is difficult but being in the tiny shops and houses is unbearable.

We do our dinner shopping for the evening, take a swim in the pool, hobnob with the other guests during social hour, and settle down for a little TV watching. We need to be up early tomorrow because we’ve learned from one of the other guests that many of the bridges across the Missouri River are still closed due to flooding. We may need to make a lengthy detour to get to Kansas City tomorrow. We have enjoyed our time in Nebraska a lot. According to the internet, the state motto of Nebraska is ” Equality before the law.”. We think it should be “Really friendly people, really big salads, really cold restaurants.”

Do you like combines? I mean giantly big and agriculturally awesome farm machines?

Well, have I got a tour for you!

John booked a tour for us at Case/IH. (Case/International Harvester and New Holland farm equipment.) It is perhaps the best tour I have ever taken. And, perhaps, the worst.

We drive all morning to Grand Island, Nebraska and find lunch at the Chicken Coop in downtown Grand Island where I eat a hamburger (only the second one since the first of the year). We present ourselves at Case. This is a personal tour just for the two of us. We don protective glasses, reflective vests and headsets. It is so noisy in the plant that we wouldn’t be able to hear the explanations otherwise. Dick is our tour guide and he does an incredible job. We see the combine assembly line from the beginning to the end. We talk to the workers as we walk down the line. It is repetitious work that they do with grace and humor. There is nothing hidden here. If there are mistakes along the way, Dick points them out. He has been retired since 1996 and yet you can still feel the pride in his voice as he describes the equipment. And that is why it is the best tour we’ve ever taken.

Then why also the worst? This tour takes three hours. Three hours without sitting down in an enormous, incredibly noisy plant that does not have air conditioning. The temperature today is over 90 and it is humid. By the time we finish we are awash in sweat and almost numb from the noise. It’s why we look shellshocked in the photos.

Afterward we stop at the HyVee, a supermarket, and buy some vittles and beverage for supper. We are too exhausted to go out tonight.

Here are some pictures from the factory.

Today we start the next phase of our journey. We’ve been noodling around Utah and Colorado so far, but now it’s time to make tracks. We depart the Denver area and head mostly east towards Nebraska.

To get to Interstate 76, we take a road through Denver International Airport. It says it’s a toll road, but, having neither an electronic pass nor a Colorado license plate we cannot figure out how to get the toll paid. I can only hope no Colorado state troopers will not be at our door in California when we get back several weeks from now.

As we get further east from Denver, it’s clearly cattle country here along the South Platte River. The land falls gradually. Unfortunately, the temperature and the humidity rise. We’d better get used to it. We cross into Nebraska, which claims to be “The Home of Arbor Day.” We find this curious because there is not a superabundance of trees.

On our previous trips around the country four and two years ago, we had given Nebraska short shrift, just nipping a couple of corners (but seeing Carhenge in Alliance– very important). This time we’re going in whole hog.

We stop in Ogallala for lunch. We eat at the old-timey Front Street Saloon and take pictures, not forgetting our little buddies Clark and Lewis. Of particular culinary note is the buffalo burger, medium-rare, highly recommended.

After lunch we drive around town and see a cute Victorian mansion and the town cemetery at Boot Hill. Then back on the interstate (now I-80) and on to our destination for the day, North Platte.

Whereas Ogallala was and is a cattle town, North Platte was and is a railroad town, with a healthy dose of Buffalo Bill thrown in.. First, we go see the Lincoln County Historical Museum which houses a display of the World War II train depot canteen that served 50 trains a day going back and forth across the country carrying troops. Although we couldn’t find their names in the register, it’s quite possible that both of our fathers stopped here on their journeys west as soldiers during WWII. We both get choked up appreciating our fathers’ contribution and the efforts of the locals to support the troops at a time when no one had much to spare.

We next visit the Golden Spike Tower of the Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard. It’s the largest in the world. Over a hundred trains a day are disassembled and reassembled. It can hold up to 15,000 cars at a time. We are able to watch a couple of trains passing through, a couple being assembled (by a process known as “humping”) and a line of engines being sent into the maintenance shop. It’s all a mechanized ballet in slow motion.

Lastly, we visit Cody Park (told you Buffalo Bill is a big deal here) for the exhibit of (you guessed it) more trains. The centerpiece is a Challenger 4-6-6-4 locomotive from 1943, really a brutishly handsome piece of machinery. Since it’s open for boarding, we oblige Clark and Lewis and let them drive the train. (Does any one out there know what an “Ack Valve” is?)

At the end of a very hot but rewarding day, we find our hotel and have an exceptionally well-cooked and well-served dinner at the Applebee’s across the street. You say, “Applebee’s?”, but hey, sometimes one has to manage risk. Today was a success.

Tomorrow, Grand Island!

Today, since I don’t have enough just John and me pictures, everybody gets the Clark and Lewis treatment. This is an example of the letter that I send every day to our grandsons, Nathan and Sam. For clarification, I am Beeba and John is Zayde and Clark is the frog and Lewis is the duck.

The Adventures of Clark and Lewis – Chapter 13

Beeba and Zayde got Clark and Lewis up early today. They had about 4 hours worth of driving to do and wanted to get to Denver with enough time to see the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. They arrived at the museum around 1 o’clock.

“Clark, I am so hungry. First we have to drive and drive and drive. When we finally get to the museum Zayde can’t find a parking space so more driving except this time in the parking garage. And now we have to stand in line for tickets!! My tummy is eating itself!” exclaimed Lewis.

“Chill, Lewis,” remarked Clark. “There’s not a single thing we can do about it. So just be patient.”

“I’m going to start quacking really loudly any minute!” threatened Lewis.

The first thing that they did after getting their tickets was go to the T. Rex Cafe for lunch.

“Tofu! And hummus?! And vegetables!!!! We’re a frog and a duck, not vegetarians,” complained Lewis.

“I agree with you, Lewis, “said Clark, “but I looked and there are no entrees that include bugs so we’ll just have to be satisfied.”

After lunch they started exploring the museum. Clark and Lewis wanted to see the exhibitions about animals.

“Look, Clark,” said Lewis proudly, “That bird is a symbol of the United States and he’s related to me.”

“I’m just glad that they didn’t make a duck the symbol of the United States,” retorted Clark. “That would have been silly.”

“Better than a frog,” muttered Lewis.

On the way out of the exhibit, there were wooden seats in the shape of llamas.

“Zayde, sit on the llama!” Clark and Lewis shouted.

“Okay, okay,” laughed Zayde. It was funny to him because his nickname used to be “llama” a long time ago.

“Now that I’ve had my picture taken on the llama, you guys stick your heads through the picture of the elephant and the orangutan. We’ll have a picture of a froggy elephant and a ducky orangutan, ” said Zayde.

Next they went to space section and to the planetarium. They saw a show about Black Holes. It was very dark in the theater and both Clark and Lewis wanted to sit on Zayde’s lap. Beeba took a picture of the three of them but since it was dark, it didn’t come out.

Finally they saw the section on dinosaurs and early mammals.

“Look at those dinosaurs, Lewis,” said Clark. “it looks like they are roughhousing just like we do!”

“And look at these fossils,” exclaimed Lewis, “It looks like a mom dinosaur and her little boy!”

Needless to say it was a big day for everyone. By the time they got to the hotel, Clark and Lewis were really tired. But they still were excited about all the things they had seen and spent a little while talking about their adventures before they fell asleep.

Needless to say, our “boutique” hotel in Antonito does not provide breakfast. Not even coffee. Nor any place in the room where we might set up our well-supplied mobile kitchen. So it’s across the street again to the Dutch Mill, which is open breakfast.

Mary orders wheat toast with jam, no butter. Out comes buttered white toast. Sent back for another try. I order a short stack of pancakes. Inedible. Sent back, I try a cup of chile verde instead. OK. At least the side of bacon was good.

Time for our adventure on the the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad. We head out to the train depot. Our little buddies Clark and Lewis are very excited. We take their pictures at various places on the train. It has an authentic coal-burning steam locomotive and restored cars. We have opted for the parlor car in the back in the hopes that the seats will be comfortable and that we will be away from the engine’s smokestack, which we expect will emit authentic sooty stuff in large quantities.

We set off at 10am sharp.

The train proceeds mostly westward (towards Chama NM) and upwards. Antonito is at 7800 feet; the highest point on the route at Osier is at over 10,000 feet. The line was originally part of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, hauling silver, supplies and passengers through the San Juan mountains into New Mexico. The segment of the line that we are on crosses the Colorado-New Mexico border 10 times in each direction.

We see some very beautiful scenery (it is after all a scenic railroad) especially Toltec Gorge, and learn a lot about the topography (significantly volcanic in origin).

We have lunch at Osier. “Grub” seems a suitable description. We change trains and return to Antonito, arriving just before 5pm. We get some little presents for Nathan and Sam, hop in the car, and leave Antonito for Alamosa, 30 miles north and infinitely closer to the creature comforts we call civilization. Looking for some familiarity and consistency, we have dinner at Chili’s and reflect on the memorable experience we have had on today’s train journey.

Tomorrow, north to Denver!

PS (Mary, here. John has done a yeoman’s job by writing today’s and yesterday’s post for me. All I have to do is stick in the pictures. Thank you so much, John!)

[John here. Due to the extraordinary lack of space and climate control mentioned in Mary’s executive summary, and the fact that the adventures of Clark and Lewis demand Mary’s full creative energies, I am stepping in as guest blogger.]

We leave Durango after having spent a very interesting and relaxing two days. On to our next destination, Antonito, a small town in southern Colorado which is one terminus of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railway. We have places reserved on the 10am train tomorrow.

First, though, we must get there. This requires we cross the Continental Divide. this is something we’ve done many times before, but this is the first time by this route. We cross at Wolf Creek Summit on US-160 at almost 11,000 feet. We have a photo taken at the interpretive display at the top. We ponder the fact that such a crossing (at 11,000 feet) was the EASY route. Yeesh. Side note: Wolf Creek apparently did not indicate the presence of wolves, at least the 4-legged kind. It was named after early settler Bill Wolf. Humph.

We continue eastward to get to the town of Alamosa, kind of the hub of the San Luis Valley. We have lunch at the San Luis Valley Brewery downtown. It’s located in an old bank building. At best tolerable food, but good American-style wheat beer, inscrutably named “Hefe Suave.”

After lunch we go see the Great Sand Dunes National Park about 35 miles northeast of Alamosa. Although it’s been in the National Park System since 1932, and given that we are National Park junkies, we have never even heard of this place! Shame on us.

These are the tallest dunes in North America. They were encountered by the Zebulon Pike expedition in 1806-07, in another one of Thomas Jefferson’s attempts to probe the Louisiana Purchase and beyond. In the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the dunes are formed by the otherwise protected confluence of two major wind streams. They are pretty darned big, to be sure. But it’s hot, and we’re not sand walking fans any way. So we just see the interpretive displays and go out on the overlooks, take pictures, and let our companions Clark and Lewis have some fun.

(Astute followers of Today’s Worry will no doubt observe that we have done a lot of dune in the last few years. The Singing Sand Dunes of Kelso CA and the Grand Dune du Pilat in Arcachon France are just two examples.)

We finish with the dunes and head down to our destination for the night, Antonito. There is not much to this town. We drive right past our hotel. It’s a restored (sort of) property on the main drag. The proprietors are very friendly and helpful, but there’s nothing they can do about the fact that the rooms are tiny, there’s no air conditioning, and the street noise persists until well after 11pm. We choose to cancel our second night there.

Dinner presents another challenge. There are two eating establishments nearby. We choose the Dutch Mill because it is closer and the menu looks a little more varied. The food is mediocre to poor, but the wine pours are, shall we say, substantial.

Looking forward to our train adventure tomorrow!