DAY FIVE: One last shot of those lush Green Mountains, along the road north from Quechee Gorge to Montpelier.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip each year to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. We’re geeks more accustomed to vicarious life through the windows of pop culture than through in-person adventures. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any surrounding areas that also had comics and toy shops, we chucked some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own, from the horizons of nature to the limits of imagination, from history’s greatest hits to humanity’s deepest regrets and the sometimes quotidian, sometimes quirky stopovers in between. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.
For 2022 we wanted the opposite of Yellowstone. Last year’s vacation was an unforgettable experience, but those nine days and 3500 miles were daunting and grueling. Vermont was closer, smaller, greener, cozier, and slightly cooler. Thus we set aside eight days to venture through the four states that separate us from the Green Mountain State, dawdle there for a bit, and backtrack home…
…and it’s long past time for us to get there in this, the season finale. Before we get to the last mini-gallery for the last day of our trip, we take a look back at where we started with a selection of outtakes from the first six days. Why only six out of eight? Because by the time I got around to recounting Day Seven, I was pretty much posting everything there was, far as you might care. Anyway: enjoy!
DAY ONE: Tickle Me Elmo rules above his subjects in the other picture window at Big Fun Columbus down the street from a Pokemon convention.
Another giant autographed baseball outside PNC Park in Pittsburgh, this one starring Satchel Paige.
Also in Pittsburgh: the Andy Warhol Museum. Four more works by the Pop Art legend, all from 1985-86: Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato); Be a Somebody with a Body; Repent and Sin No More!; and Hamburger.
DAY TWO: Some of our fellow Pittsburgh hotel guests were clearly having fun that weekend.
DAY THREE: An alternate shot of the faithfully recreated Enterprise hallways at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, NY.
That same fan-run wonderland had a treasure trove of facsimile props, such as this never-explained sculpture in Captain Kirk’s quarters. (Possibly Zapotec? Possibly Xōchipilli?)
DAY FOUR: The back of a Grand Union Flag, the first flag flown by our 13 rebelling colonies when they were merely asserting their rights rather than demanding independence. One of the more colorful, non-wooden, non-nautical items at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vermont.
An overlooked pile of stuffed friends greeting us at the Vermont Teddy Bear Museum.
DAY FIVE: We left a lot of the dead flavors from the Ben & Jerry’s mock graveyard on the cutting room floor. Representing for them is the long-gone Ethan Almond variety, which bolsters this miniseries’ use of Ethan Allen as a recurring motif.
DAY SIX: The Museum and Education Center at the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site. You can’t really make out the gnats on the porch that ate our faces off.
Patio chairs for sale at a gas station we stopped at on the way to Coolidge’s place.
Additional members of the extended Coolidge lineage at his family’s considerably inclusive plot.
…and that brings us back to the final hours of our vacation.
After our 3½-hour jaunt around Cuyahoga Valley National Park we stopped for lunch near Lodi at Country Pride, a chain huddled in a gas station plaza alongside a Popeye’s and a Burger King. The place was nearly deserted. The food was a solid simulation of home cooking, no complaints from us weary wanderers.
![Diner booths with inspirational quotes on placards atop each one. In front is from Milton Bradley: "There is nothing like playing for the team you grew up rooting for," Next booth back is from songwriter Samuel F. Smith: "From every mountain side [sic], let freedom ring."](https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/booth-quotes.jpg)
Each pair of booths was topped with a quote in varying levels of inspirational motivation.
Anne’s fried-fish lunch is easily pictured in your head, as is probably my hot Nashville chicken sandwich topped with pickles and cole slaw.
…and then we drove the last 4½ hours home. Along the way we listed to an hour-long special on SiriusXM’s “80s on 8” channel in which a group of strangers asked special guest Kenny Loggins about all his hits, apropos of the humongous media push for Top Gun: Maverick, then in theaters, as displayed on numerous marquees throughout this miniseries and watched four months later on my own TV at home. Now that I think about it, I don’t recall anyone asking Loggins about “Meet Me Half Way”, as heard in the notorious motion picture Over the Top. Someone will have to bring that up if Sylvester Stallone ever makes a sequel and asks Loggins to compose a new power ballad for it called “Okay, Now Meet Me the Rest of the Way”.
Random sights along our path included the Anheuser-Busch factory in Columbus. Fun trivia: the first alcohol I ever tasted was a can of Bud Light, on the very day I turned 21.
Not pictured: an Ohio lightbox sign suspended over I-70, cautioning drivers for the upcoming July 4th weekend: “Don’t Drive Star-Spangled Hammered”.
The obligatory “Welcome to Indiana” sign may be the last time this design ever greets us. Installation of new, inferior replacements around our borders are now underway.
Back home again in Indy, we grabbed dinner from our favorite Chinese takeout joint and then verified everything in our house was pretty much where we left it. We returned the rental car, we unpacked and sorted, and we settled in for that week’s new episode of Ms. Marvel, an extremely adorable show. Thus was our transition back to everyday geek life complete.
TOTAL ROAD TRIP MILEAGE AS OF FINAL GAS STOP #9: 2,257.
The End. Thanks for reading! Lord willing, we’ll see you next trip, which already happened three months ago…
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[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on Twitter if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]
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