Our view of the Green Mountains from the parking lot at our next hotel in Waterbury.
Natural panoramas! American war history! Pandemic-era disappointment! Food! This one has ’em all, in sparing amounts!
Our 2022 Road Trip #20: Green Mountain Medley
Tag Archives: photos
The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 4 of 10: A Capital Pack of Markers
The Old State Capitol in the old state capital on good ol’ Capitol Avenue. Capital!
Back in 2016 Anne and I visited the Indiana State House on the occasion of our state bicentennial and enjoyed the up-close look at where our local government met and worked in easier times before work-from-home became a survival option and later became simply the latest fashion. Before our centrally situated hometown of Indianapolis became the official workplace of the governor and all the rest, Hoosiers reported to the State House’s prequel structure near our southern border.
Our 2022 Road Trip #19: Buy Buy Burlington
A 2010 statue of Vermont jazz legend Big Joe Burrell, who played with the likes of B.B. King, Count Basie, and Phish.
We’re not high-end shoppers who get caught anywhere near boutiques, jewelers, perfumeries, fashion trendsetters, or home decor artisans unless they happen to be next door to the retailers we’d rather visit. And by “we” I especially mean “I”. Anne’s collecting habits are modest bordering on spartan, whereas I’m the one on the lookout for brick-and-mortar purveyors who cater to my hobbies and pop culture interests. Fortunately Burlington had just the district for us.
Halloween Stats 2022: Free Candy? In THIS Economy?
Lowe’s was all about pushing the spooky Halloween accessories this year.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: each year since 2008 I’ve kept statistics on the number of trick-or-treaters brave enough to approach our doorstep during the Halloween celebration of neighborhood unity and no-strings-attached strangers with candy. I began tracking our numbers partly for future candy inventory purposes and partly out of curiosity, so now it’s a tradition for me. Like many bloggers I’m a stats fiend who thrives on taking head counts, even when we’re expecting discouraging results.
The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 3 of 10: Halloween and the Hallowed Tree
Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beeeeee best if I just stop there.
Autumn motifs are inevitable in Anne’s October birthday trips. Ironically, Anne isn’t even a huge Halloween fan (she saves her holiday love for December), but on our walk to go check out one of Corydon’s proudest monuments, we noticed the number of residents who’d decorated for the occasion well outnumbered the few pitiful celebrants on our own street back home. I admittedly took my sweet time setting up our own display this year, but at least we have one. It was nice to find the spirit of the occasion hasn’t been exorcised from all neighborhoods.
The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 2 of 10: Welcome to Corydon
A glass pumpkin for the autumn occasion at Zimmerman Art Glass in Corydon.
Okay, prologue aside, now we get to October 14th’s primary objective.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.
In October 2022 Anne turned 52. Indiana offers no shortage of tourist attractions for history aficionados like her. We’ve visited quite a few of those over the years, but this year we felt it was time to check off one of the Hoosier State’s biggest trivia answers: Corydon, our original state capital before Indianapolis…
The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 1 of 10: Unrelated Pastry Prologue
The woman I love with a pecan swirl she adored.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.
In 2022 Anne turned 52, a number that begs me to insert a gratuitous DC Comics reference here, but it was her birthday, not mine. Indiana offers no shortage of tourist attractions for history aficionados like her. We’ve visited quite a few of those over the years, but this year we felt it was time to check off one of the Hoosier State’s biggest trivia answers: Corydon, our original state capital before Indianapolis.
History tidbits will be forthcoming. But first, our opening act: sugar.
Captain Janeway’s Homecoming: Star Trek Fans Welcome Kate Mulgrew to Bloomington
Live from Indiana, it’s TV’s Kate Mulgrew!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: last May my wife Anne and I stopped in Bloomington, home of Indiana University, to check out the bronze statue of STEM icon Captain Kathryn Janeway that was unveiled in October 2020 as a tribute to Kate Mulgrew, the celebrated star of Star Trek: Voyager. As it happens, Voyager writer/producer Jeri Taylor, a Bloomington native herself, inserted her hometown into Janeway’s canonical backstory. The city’s fans took that nod to heart and commissioned the artistic tribute accordingly in her future birthplace. It was a kick for us to admire the results in person.
As if that weren’t enough Mulgrew awesomeness for us this year, we also met her in person at Star Trek: Mission Chicago back in April, attended her rather lively Q&A at same, and read her two candid, riveting memoirs. I could go on with links to our other Trek-related experiences of late, but suffice it to say we can’t seem to stop tripping over Trek lately.
But wait! There’s more!
Our 2022 Road Trip #18: Champlain Happy
Anne meets Champy, the local celebrity mythical water monster.
By the time we reached Burlington, the largest city in Vermont, we’d seen Lake Champlain from a mountaintop, from the roadside, and from a small pier jutting into the middle of it. At lunchtime on Day Four, we were okay with seeing it yet again, but tried slowing down long enough to traipse around it and bask for a while.
Our 2022 Road Trip #17: Bernie and the Bears
What has two thumbs and buys winter wear in summertime? This gal!
Bears. Memes. Bernie-Starred Mitten-ica.
Our 2022 Road Trip #16: Obligatory Vermont Maple Syrup Intermission
Hurray for sugar and sugary products!
“Did you buy any maple syrup while you were there?” asked far too many people whenever we mentioned our trip to Vermont. So…yes. Yes, we did. WE HOPE YOU’RE ALL HAPPY.
I mean, we do hope you are. Sorry if it sounded sarcastic.
Our 2022 Road Trip #15: Behind the Boathouse
Lake Champlain once again, but up close this time.,
Our next stop appealed to us on two levels: we thought it would offer easy access to something we wanted to see; and admission was free. Fans of boats and boat accessories might’ve gotten more out of it than we did, but when it’s free, we’re willing to live and learn a little.
Our 2022 Road Trip #14: A Night at the Old “Newhart” Place
Some ’80s kids saw the front of this place on TV, though the owners have had new windows installed since then.
Vermont! At last! Naturally our first stop was a pop culture reference from our childhoods.
Our 2022 Road Trip #13: The Peak of Defiance
As elevated views go, it isn’t Pike’s Peak, but it’s not nothing.
Fun travel rule of thumb: if someone asks if you’d like to go up a really tall structure or geological feature so you can look down upon all the other tourist attractions you actually came to see, you say yes.
Our 2022 Road Trip #12: The Armies Sacked at Fort Ticonderoga
Welcome to Fort Ticonderoga, which rhymes with hardly anything except “yoga” and “Conestoga”.
Some of the roadside attractions that catch our attention are all about indulging our geek sides. Some are highlights that speak to Anne the history aficionado. For such a tiny town, Ticonderoga pulled off the neat trick of catering to both facets in her. It was a little jarring transitioning from a tour of the 23rd century to a time capsule of the 18th, but we managed. We are large; we contain multitudes.
Our 2022 Road Trip #11: A Trek Tech Trove
Captain Anne has the bridge.
Sure, Vermont was our target destination, but the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour might’ve been the stop on our itinerary that we were most excited to see. The town of Ticonderoga seemed an odd location choice, as opposed to a large city or squarely in California, land of ten thousand entertainment tourist attractions. But inside those doors and on those resurrected sets, all questions about the outside become irrelevant while you’re exploring this full-scale, familiar TV world.
Of course we couldn’t contain all that space goodness to a single chapter.
Our 2022 Road Trip #10: The Enterprise Docked at Starbase Ticonderoga
Scotty, two to beam down!
MCC’s amazing colossal Star Trek year continues! So far in 2022 we’ve attended Star Trek: Mission Chicago (where we met cast members from multiple series) as well as two other conventions with Trek stars (another Chicago show, plus one here in Indy); we’ve shared and overshared our impressions of Picard; loved both Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds without writing about them; read a few Trek-related books, some of which I’ve discussed as well as others I’ll eventually cover when I get back to writing about my reading; and checked out the Captain Janeway birthplace statue in Bloomington, IN. After taking several years off from the universe Gene Roddenberry built, we’ve fallen back into it hard.
We even worked a heaping helping of Trek into this year’s vacation. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve detoured for Trek’s sake (cf. that one time in 2014 when a traveling Trek exhibition stopped at the Mall of America), but some extra mileage was necessary to reach this one. One does not merely swerve off-road on an impulse for this particular spectacle.
Our 2022 Road Trip #9: Von Steuben in the Woods
Another day, another grave.
Upstate New York is populated by the remains of so many famous dead people that it’s tough for any serious history aficionado like Anne to pass all of them without at least a cursory courtesy visit. Hardcore fans of the Revolutionary War who want to complete their gravesite set will have to detour far into the sticks west of the Adirondacks to pay respects to one particular Prussian whose assistance was instrumental to securing America’s freedom from the British monarchy, at least in a bureaucratic sense if not necessarily in a head-space sense.
Our 2022 Road Trip #8: Stylin’ Syracuse Sustenance
These treats were billed as Korean Breakfast Corn Dogs — dipped in Cinnamon Toast Crunch pancake batter, drizzled with a hot honey ‘n’ sweet cream sauce,
Not all the food we had on this trip need to be raised on their own commemorative pedestals, but Syracuse, NY, earned bonus points for providing us with not one, but two of the best meals of the week. That’s worth a single-entry shout-out.
Our 2022 Road Trip #7: Harriet Tubman vs. the Empire
Harriet Tubman. The lady. The leader. The legend.
After the National Women’s Rights Park we had another set of stops to make at the next town over that would likewise have fit in well with our 2018 visits to the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House in Rochester and her grave (as well as Frederick Douglass’), if we’d had time to stop at every single upstate New York city on that trip. This year we made up for quite a few omissions that year.
But first, we had to brake for some unexpected cameos that had far less to do with rights, except perhaps in other galaxies.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 