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2012 Road Trip Notes on the Go, Day 6: Waters Running Deep

July 13, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

As we packed our belongings this morning in our hotel room, I paused while checking the bathroom and noticed a centipede trapped in the sink. I’m not sure how he wandered into it, but he struggled to find purchase on the slope. Just as he would make progress and elevate himself several proud millimeters, invariably he would encounter water droplets from our ministrations, adhering to the sink and obstructing his path. After watching him try a few lateral moves in vain, my wife extended our complimentary copy of USA Today to him like a lifesaving rope and left him on the sink to pursue his appetites or frighten the housekeeper, whichever came first.

Our morning route wove through the south end of Colorado Springs, circumnavigating the former wildfire zones to the northwest. We never saw any of the much-publicized damage to forests and homes, nor were we interested in ogling it. We were heartened to see several local businesses with fundraising jars and cans at their registers, doing their part for charity, relief, and kindness. My wife spotted T-shirts for sale with a slogan to the effect of, “Community Doesn’t Burn.” For want of timely precipitation, opportunities to love and provide were born in response.

Our first attraction was Seven Falls, a mountainside chain of seven vertically successive waterfalls, each one a tributary to the next one below it. Several nearby geological formations also sport shapes vaguely resembling other things if you squint at them just right and use your imagination. A lengthy staircase leads healthy visitors several stories high, permitting a meaningful gaze upon the seven-part waterway from above, and connecting to a mile-long trail leading to the grave of a local author. Across from the falls and on the other side of the larger of two gift shops, an elevator carries visitors to a deck perched high enough to observe the falls in their entirety, but from a distance.

That was pretty much our entire Seven Falls experience: the one set of falls, the ways to see them, and the surrounding peculiar rocks. We arrived a few minutes before 9 a.m. as the first customers of the day. Neither gift shops nor snack bar were open yet. We enjoyed a two-way elevator ride, some brief marveling at the star attraction, and several minutes of my family watching me ascend and descend the first several dozen steps of the staircase without incident. Without a mood for a mile-long walk that early to pay respects to an unfamiliar author, we were over and out by 9:30. Paying admission to view some water grated on us a little. It was too simplistic an application of the basic roadside attraction formula: find unusual natural thing A; surround with gift shop B and cafe C; develop heavy marketing plan D; rake in profit E.

To the southwest, several miles past the town of Cañon City, lay another example of man corraling water for entertainment and employment, the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park. The centerpiece is the Royal Gorge Bridge, reputedly the highest suspension bridge in America, crossing nearly a thousand feet above the Arkansas River and spanning over 900 feet across canyon sides. Timid visitors can cross the bridge slowly in their car, viewing the sights from within a heavy metal capsule that wouldn’t save them if the cables were to snap. Bold visitors like us can walk across the bridge themselves and experience firsthand the swaying in the wind, the occasional loose board, and the sight of the gorge bottom between the cracks.

Walking across on foot also provides better photo ops. Each of the fifty state flags is hung across the length of the bridge in alphabetical order. We had to unfurl the snarled Indiana flag ourselves, then sighed as a group when we found it frayed and in dire need of replacement.

The bridge itself isn’t the only activity available. Their railway elevator can transport over two dozen visitors to the foot of the gorge for a closeup of the Arkansas River. We had fun watching a sextet of rafters courageously concentrating on rowing their way downriver, rather than sticking to the safety of a riverside deck. A few amusement park rides offer unrelated thrills for small children, as did a boisterous stage performer who fancied herself Minnie Pearl reborn, complete with shrill yet accurate “HooowDEEE!” that could be heard from blocks away. An overzealous local club was on hand to sell fundraiser lemonade to anyone not tempted by the park’s own free-refill amenity.

If you successully cross the bridge, promises of more entertainment await you on a series of adjacent hillsides. We were afraid to approach their pretend mountain-man shanty-town. A “wildlife park” had spacious enclosures for several bighorn sheep, a herd of bison, and some elk. A “petting zoo” allowed direct physical contact with a couple of cows, two llamas, and all the goats you want, including one particularly crafty kid who worked his way onto the roof of the goats’ shelter and tried gnawing at some stray grass wedged between the slats. Burro rides were available for anyone between 22 and 48 inches tall, thus disqualifying our party. A bungee-like contraption swung paying victims through midair and over the gorge in ways that interested none of us.

Once we concluded that the far side of the bridge wasn’t quite the draw that we thought it was, we tried making our way through the rising midday heat to the aerial tram that would spirit us to the other side. I followed their cartoon map to the best of my ability, guided us slowly up a few consecutive inclines, and stopped when I thought I was several feet short of victory…only to see the correct location still two hills away. At the same time, we also watched a park trolley pull past us, loaded with passengers riding to the other side in style. We fumed, fussed, and decided to cross the bridge on foot once more, back to the starting side. We already knew the way.

Once we returned to square one, we cooled down at their largest gift shop and celebrated our successful stubbornness with cheap cafe lunch. My elk bratwurst suited the occasion just fine. Although the ancillary activities were underwhelming, we found the gorge and bridge to be an impressive display of the peculiar relationship between man and water. In this instance, water and its surroundings maintained whatever forms they pleased, and man worked around them.

Four miles of winding roads returned us to Highway 50, which stretched directly east from Cañon City to our next night’s base in Pueblo. On the way we stopped in the town of Florence for photos of their Veterans Memorial Park, containing a veterans’ memory wall and several parked, decommissioned Army vehicles apparently donated by nearby Fort Carson — a Phantom II jet, one medical chopper, one war copter, a small tank, and a howitzer. It was a brief diversion that partly made up for no one being enticed of my offers to drive us to other local attractions such as the Dinosaur Museum or the Colorado Museum of Prisons.

After checking in to our Pueblo hotel, my wife and I let our son hang out with his friend Uncle Laptop while the two of us excused ourselves for a romantic time at Pueblo’s own Historic Arkansas Riverwalk. As it turns out, the Arkansas River flows from Cañon City forty-plus miles to Pueblo, where the city has contained and reconfigured it into a peaceful riverwalk, not unlike San Antonio’s famous Riverwalk or Indianapolis’ own White River Canal Walk. Pueblo’s Riverwalk is shorter than either of those for now (construction on one side may or may not have foreshadowed future extension), but not without its own charm. By sheer happenstance, we showed up the same night as a planned Farmers’ Market, which allowed us to view and sample local wares such as multiple varieties of goat cheese. (That was my favorite stand, anyway.)

Two restaurants offer dinner seating on their Riverwalk. Angelo’s Pizza looked overcrowded, so we opted instead for an Italian meal at The Sicilian, a recently opened establishment whose modest prices and quality meals shamed all our Olive Gardens back home. If their Eggplant Rollatini hadn’t already won me over, their cannoli would have for certain. Without my Italian-hating son with us, we relished a moment alone with a fabulous meal and waterway scenery. I wouldn’t’ve minded staying and enjoying the company of this tamed portion of the Arkansas for a while after that, but gathering stormclouds threatened us with a less captive, more aggressive form of water.

Our evening at the hotel was slightly deprived when we flipped through TV channels and witnessed the casualties of the DirecTV/Viacom brouhaha that has apparently gripped the nation with fear and rioting while we’ve been away from home and ignoring entertainment news. We had the same problem with the previous night’s hotel, as a good third of the hotel channels were now blank screens thanks to DirecTV’s corporate protest of corporate greed. With fewer options at our disposal — by which I mean no Adult Swim King of the Hill reruns for our second night in a row — we were forced to settle for lesser fare, such as a rerun of an episode of The Office we’d all hated the first time around. The subsequent top-notch Parks & Rec rerun was more to our liking.

Scraping the bottom of the TV barrel, we even sat through part of an episode of Wipeout, which I’d never seen before. In this poor man’s Ninja Warrior, or perhaps an even poorer man’s Double Dare, blustery contestants face physical humiliation for prizes and fleeting fame. Every slippery obstacle or jarring punishment sends the contestant unceremoniously plummeting into the water below the course.

Beyond fulfilling the necessities of life, bodies of water have been co-opted by man for countless secondary uses: to exemplify natural beauty; to foster creativity in overcoming or traversing it; to embody tranquility for quality-of-life enrichment; even to stimulate local economic gain.

But to see so much water wasted in service of something as low as reality TV? I felt embarrassed for that poor, sullied water.

2012 Road Trip Notes on the Go, Day 5: Beauty and Breakdowns

July 12, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Today we bade farewell to our hotel outside Denver. Unfortunately, we departed just in time for rush hour and spent twice as long in the car as expected. We stopped for gas in the town of Castle Rock partly to let the traffic die down, partly for snacking purposes (some of us were burnt out on three straight days of the same hotel breakfast), and partly because I was amused to see a town sharing a name with a Stephen King motif, even if the town predated the setting.

When the coast was clearer, we headed south to the Colorado Springs vicinity, veered west for a return engagement with the great and powerful Rockies, and paid a visit to the Garden of the Gods, a coincidental collection of naturally occurring rock formations in unusual shapes great and large — a few monoliths, a couple shaped like animal heads, and some towering in pairs. Our favorite was Balanced Rock, a large, precariously perched roadside boulder that remains inexplicably secured. In addition to the uniquely shaped geological specimens, one other sight was new to me: Mennonite tourists using cameras much nicer than mine, tricked out with zoom lenses and tripods.

Five minutes down the road was our next attraction, the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. Over a century ago, a collection of Anasazi homes was uprooted and relocated in the side of a mountain near the town of Manitou Springs for preservation and education purposes. Visitors can enter any door or window and snake their way through the passages connecting each facade or dwelling, including one two-story, multi-family unit. That is, you can do so if you’re not in line behind a youth group on a field trip who’ve already filled all the ex-domiciles to full capacity. Fortunately for them, no ancient Anasazi fire marshals were anywhere in sight to cite the kids for overcrowding.

Alternatively, you can check out their multi-level museum and gift shop, which together occupy somewhere between two and eight stories. The layout was confusing, far from straightforward, separated me from my family at least once, and led me to two or three dead ends, each one filled with quality merchandise such as feather-shaped lollipops displayed like a war bonnet, the same pile of inseparable magnetites you can buy in every gift shop nationwide, and lethal weapons such as the “Deerslayer Boomerang”, a cardboard children’s tool that would cost one dollar if ordered from a comic book ad in the 1970s.

On the other side of US Highway 24 was downtown Manitou Springs, a tourist town comprised of numerous small businesses (including one comic book shop!) and one Subway. With limited time before our afternoon appointment, we fetched lunch at one of the restaurants nearest the public-parking area, a bar-‘n’-grill called the Keg. I wasn’t sure this was a family establishment that would serve my seventeen-year-old son, but no one broached the subject. It was his first opportunity to watch his lunch being cooked by a tattooed chef wearing a concert T-shirt in lieu of a garish fast-food uniform. Nevertheless, I can testify that my Mile-High Roast Beef sandwich was authentically meatier than any Arby’s product I’ve had to date. All the Slipknot logos in the world couldn’t have affected my enjoyment of that.

High above the town is the Pikes Peak Cog Railway station, which offers a handy train ride from Manitou Springs (elevation: 6,571 feet) to the top of Pikes Peak (elevation: 14,110 feet). Your alternatives to reach the top are: (1) a long hike, for which our family is ill suited; (2) a three-hour daredevil drive, which my wife refused to let me attempt; or (3) invent a flying machine, for which our family is also ill suited. The Cog Railway isn’t cheap, but it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance for about the same price as admission to a bad amusement park.

Our departure was scheduled for 1:20. We began boarding at 1:00. We steeled for takeoff at 1:20. After sitting for another half-hour or so, we learned another train somewhere on the track was experiencing technical difficulties, At first they moved our train onto an alternate track so the impaired train could return to the station. Then they moved us back onto the main track. Then we returned to the alternate track again. Throughout the merry rearranging games, our cheerful conductor did her best to keep us entertained with situational updates, good-natured bad jokes, and individual anecdotes about the nearby apple tree, the nearby bench, and any other random objects we could see through our windows.

After an hour of waiting in a train that wasn’t getting any more air-conditioned, finally they moved us even further forward into their official train repair shop, had us disembark and walk back to the station so trains could be swapped around and tourism service could resume. This awkward transition allowed the Railway time to issue customer refunds if desired, resell those seats to new customers, and sell off any seats that had been previously unsold prior to our aborted departure. I can’t fault them for wanting to maximize service on what would prove to be a totally off-schedule day, but when we boarded our substitute train, it was discouraging to find that the additional elbow room we had claimed from those formerly empty seats was now revoked, leaving us more cramped than we had been before.

A full ninety minutes after our scheduled time, our journey to the Pikes Peak summit commenced at long last, The trip is roughly seventy minutes in each direction, and includes numerous sights beyond the mere breathtaking scenery — occasional rambunctious marmots; one waterfall; the ruins of a century-old shack; obsolete spigots that were necessary when steam engines ruled the Railway; trees murdered by pine bark beetles; storm clouds threatening other cities and states; and more, more, more. We also had the pleasure of company provided by a family from Tennessee sitting next to us, to whom my wife did most of the talking because the train engine drowned out their conversation too thoroughly for my poor hearing to catch consistently.

The top of Pikes Peak was a greater place than I could have imagined. We could see clouds drifing below us. We could view other states from afar. We could venture onto one of several outcroppings and have our photos taken by relatives terrified for our lives. We could warm up inside the Pikes Peak Summit House, a gift shop whose offerings includes hot coffee and renowned fried cake donuts that were fresh, crisp, and tender, not doughy and stale like Dolly Madison shelf-cloggers.

The top of Pikes Peak was also a more painful place than I could have imagined. In our rush to finish lunch and board the train on time (all that hurrying in vain, in retrospect), we forgot our jackets in the car, The summit is a few dozen degrees colder than the base of the mountains, and made for some discomfort among us older folks, (My son thrives in winter temps and was unfazed by his surroundings.) Despite drinking plenty of water all day and during the ride, I still found myself light-headed for the first several minutes up high in the thinner reaches of the atmosphere. (Donuts and decaf seemed to help cure that, or perhaps it was mere acclimatization.)

Despite borrowing chewing gum from our Tennessee companions (a necessary defense according to some sites), I also encountered troubles with my ears popping multiple times during our ascent, then stuffing themselves shut during the descent. I was practically deaf throughout said descent, as the noises of the world were buried under the incessant drone of train-engine combustion, muffled even further by altitude maladjustment, with occasional interruptions from the conductor’s intercom instructions and from half-conversation excerpts as spoken to others by my wife sitting next to me. I didn’t enjoy the isolation.

We returned to the station richer for the experience in general, yet not quite whole. By the time we adjourned to our hotel in Colorado Springs, the stuffiness had subsided somewhat, but whenever we weren’t in the presence of machinery or background music, everything around me sounded as though I were listening to the world through a seashell ocean-sound filter. This isn’t my first experience with a temporary hearing issue (see also: a Metallica concert I attended in 1992, one super-amped They Might Be Giants gig a few years ago), so my tentative plan is to sleep on it and see what happens. Sometimes these things fade. If it’s my hearing that fades instead, we’ll escalate the issue to the next level,

Thus endeth the adventure of the American who went up a mountain but came down a wreck. This bout of pain and suffering naturally called for an obvious dinner choice tonight: Smashburger second encore!

We rightly assumed that Colorado Springs also has a few locations, After tonight’s above-average meal I’m now officially sick of them, but I acquiesced to the majority vote with the knowledge that this may be our last Smashburger visit until either they reach Indianapolis or we conveniently schedule a future road trip in one of their present states of operation. Maybe by then I won’t be tired of their awesomeness anymore,

2012 Road Trip Notes on the Go, Day 4: Dallying in Downtown Denver

July 11, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

After our big day up in the mountains, a day down in the city seemed an appropriate counterbalance.

As all Denver tourists are required to do, we checked in at the west side of their gold Capitol Dome, where one of the steps allows visitors to experience the sensation of standing exactly one mile (5,280 feet) above sea level. It’s not an impressive height compared to the mountains, the nearby skyscrapers, or even the several steps above that step. What makes it special is that moment when you know you’ve achieved math-geek precision in physical form. Unless you hate math or measuring, in which case it’s just an ordinary stair-step with a large label on it.

Our first indoor activity was a tour of the Molly Brown House, former home of a two-time boat disaster survivor. The century-old brick exterior blends in with the other houses compacted into the same block, but the interior was, for its time, a forward-thinking modern marvel of electrical wiring, indoor plumbing, and exotic-artifact-based decor. While feasting our eyes on her collection of unusual items (my favorite was a genuine bearskin rug, just like in cartoons), we also learned about her crucial involvement in the early development of the juvenile justice system, and in the creation of the Dumb Friends League (a common-knowledge name in Denver, far more amusing to us foreigners from other states).

We also saw the second floor, which has a wide space where Mrs. Brown would invite bands to come play, opening the window so their music could waft out the window for the neighborhood to share, or for large outdoor parties to enjoy. This same window offered a gorgeous view of the Rocky Mountains and the Capitol Dome before office buildings were inconsiderately built across the street in later years and ruined everything.

As her husband’s eventually considerable earnings afforded her the opportunity for private tutelage and intellectual pursuits, she also amassed quite the book collection. I managed to note the names on her large collections of Dickens, Thackeray, O. Henry, Balzac, Bret Harte, and Memoirs of the Courts of Europe before I dropped my pen and watched in horror as it rolled against the wall behind an antique plant holder. Fortunately the docent was gracious enough to help me navigate a path to it without contaminating anything priceless. She very nicely overlooked my faux pas, as did the other tour-group members — a mother and daughter from Austria, and two men from Bloomington, in our very own home state of Indiana. This isn’t our first what-a-small-world vacation moment, but they’re always one of our favorite kinds of surprise joy.

The tour ends with the obligatory backroom of Titanic commemoration. One interactive portion allows children to write down their answers to the question, “What do you think we can learn from the disaster of the Titanic?” The most sensible answer I read was, “To make more life boats.”

The gift shop is expectedly well-stocked with all imaginable Titanic books (including one fictionalized trilogy!), Titanic merchandise, Titanic documentaries, and several copies of Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. If they had copies of that one James Cameron flick on hand, I overlooked them.

From there we headed several blocks due west to the Denver Art Museum. With limited time at our disposal, each of us picked one section for the entire group to visit. My son, fan of all things Japanese because of how much more awesome they are about everything they have ever done in every field in all of existence compared to us losers from any other nation, predictably selected the Asian section. Highlights included various hand-painted screens, ridiculously intricate bamboo carvings, and line-art pieces by 19th-century artist Tsukioka Yoshitoshi that reminded me faintly of the delicate works of early Frank Miller.

I picked the Pacific Northwest Native American section, because all museums east of the Mississippi seem to feature arts and crafts by the same five or ten tribes, and I was curious to see what else is out there. I wasn’t disappointed as I beheld totem poles, argillite tools, unique masks, and other samples from tribes such as the Tlingit, the Haida, the Inupiaq, and the Kwakwaka’wakw, which I dearly, truly hope isn’t pronounced “wocka-wocka-wocka”.

My wife randomly chose the pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial art section — again, not sections we typically run across in our usual stomping grounds. Much of what I perused was all about Catholic imagery, but I had to raise an excited eyebrow at one room that positioned paintings of Christ next to Mexican paintings about chocolate. This was one of my new favorite museum rooms of all time.

We had to leave the museum early for a lunch reservation at the world-famous Buckhorn Exchange, century-old establishment, proud possessor of State of Colorado Liquor License #1, servers of exotic game dishes, and displayers of numerous stuffed animal heads. Restaurants like the Buckhorn, with or without grand taxidermy, are several levels above my pay grade under normal living conditions, but we decided to splurge just this once. Speaking only for my own meal, I can say that quail was a delicious main dish, especially in its pear/apricot glaze; the game tips in a sort of Stroganoff sauce were an appealing appetizer; and our server was courteous and very engaging. By and large, I personally was content. Outnumbered by those who agreed to disagree, but content.

The remainder of our afternoon was spent wandering Denver’s downtown 16th Street Mall. Basically, it’s a downtown just like any other large city’s, except several areas are zoned off for pedestrians only, and shuttle buses carry shoppers from one end of the mile to the other, with impressive frequency and for no charge. The shoppers themselves were a gratifyingly wide variety of all possible demographics racial, social, economic, or otherwise distinctly categorical — tattoos next to ties, business suits next to nightclub wear, and mohawks on all ages from six to sixty. We’re more accustomed to The Way Things Are in Indianapolis, where particular malls and shopping districts tend to be more about birds-of-a-feather than about all-just-getting-along. On the other hand, I’ve never witnessed an actual arrest in one of our shopping strips back home, but I’d like to think the high young man we saw being accosted by four officers next to a waiting ambulance was an aberrant exception.

The stores didn’t look radically different from back home, unless Japanese fast food or Filipino stands count. The only two buildings we entered were a Colorado gift shop, at which my wife fulfilled most of her souvenirs-for-relatives checklist; and the free tour at the Federal Reserve Branch Bank, which requires a thorough security exam before you can enter and view three minutes’ worth of exhibits. At least they were nice enough to offer visitors free bags of shredded out-of-circulation money. I was thinking they might make great pillow-filling, but my wife was thinking further ahead to their potential as Christmas stocking stuffers for our nephews.

After our legs were once again worn down to nubs, we returned briefly to the hotel, relaxed and regrouped, and then ended our tourism day with a crowd-pleaser of a dinner best summed up in two words: Smashburger encore! Having discovered their fine product on Day 1 in St. Charles, MO, by popular demand I searched online for more locations for the benefit of those who’d experienced lunchtime issues earlier. Imagine our surprise to discover Denver is the Smashburger’s hometown.

And they all ate happily ever after.

2012 Road Trip Notes on the Go, Day 3: Misty Mountain Marathon

July 9, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

We’ve never been so happy to have rain on our vacation. Our various Colorado clerks and service reps were even more joyous for any weather other than “hot with a chance of combustion.”

Our entire day was spent in, around, and hugging the Rocky Mountains, which we finally located once the storm system lightened up. Fortunately all roads dried quickly, and temperatures stayed in the low 70s all day long. As the driver, I was afforded the opportunity to navigate the winding, twisting mountain roads with half my mind paying attention to the road and the other half overwhelmed by dozens of miles of looming, gargantuan majesty.

We started at the Red Rocks Amphitheater, a concert venue built into a mountainside, reportedly with fantastic acoustics. Numerous joggers convene there early in the morning for workouts, zipping up and down the stairs, back and forth across the rows. A setup crew was working onstage for tonight’s scheduled concert (weather permitting), the Beach Boys, on their 50th anniversary tour and far from their natural setting. The reverberations were keen enough that I could overhear one-half of a conversation between two joggers standing fifty feet away, one of whom was facing the side wall.

The drive up Alameda Parkway to the amphitheater was scenic in its own right. Back at ground level, the same parkway leads in the other direction directly to Dinosaur Ridge, but Google Maps hadn’t taken into consideration that this straightforward route was permitted only for pedestrians, bicyclists, and shuttle buses. That meant we had to leave the parkway, drive back north to the interstate, drive to the very next exit, then drive back south to where we nearly began. The folks at the gift shop were among the friendliest we’ve met this week, but we made the mistake of taking a self-guided walk up the ridge rather than taking the optional shuttle bus with a helpful, informed tour guide.

Without the bus or the guide, our experience amounted to an uphill one-mile walk to view one set of dinosaur footprints, several examples of variegated stratification, some plant fossil imprints, and one or two very tiny, singular fossils embedded in the cliff walls, no full sets of skeletons. After missing out on whatever the tour guide told the paying customers, we found the subsequent one-mile downhill walk back to the car a little disappointing. The healthier, better equipped bicyclists zipping past us up and down the route each added just a few grains of salt to our wounds. That salt was then washed away when the rain returned for a few minutes. This was not our finest hour.

From there to Lookout Mountain was a jaunt of less than ten minutes, thankfully by car and not by foot. We weaved through a network of posh mountainside homes to reach the Buffalo Bill Museum and final resting place of the man, the myth, the legend, and his wife. Since the only other restaurant along the way had been shut down, our lunch wound up being at the museum’s Pataska Tepee cafe, decent diner food at gift shop prices. Mr. Cody’s gravesite, adjacent to a panoramic lookout, notes his accomplishments as a husband, an Indian fighter, and a Masonic lodge brother.

Even more fun than all of the above was the adventurous trip down the other, more dangerous side of Lookout Mountain. That led us northward through Boulder (which resembled some of our upper-class suburbs back in Indy, except Colorado has ten times as many bicyclists), up through Lyons and into Estes Park, where we later stopped to check out the famous Stanley Hotel, Stephen King’s inspiration for The Shining and filming location for the Steven Weber TV adaptation (not Kubrick’s version). Alas, its lot is gated, secured, at at first glance not welcoming to any busybodies without reservations. Also odd: whereas the fictional Shining hotel is isolated from civilization, the Stanley is a stone’s throw away from a dense, sprawling conglomeration of tourist shopping traps.

Estes Park is also the eastern gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, a natural smorgasbord of mountains, more mountains, animals, and still more mountains. Mostly I remember miles upon miles of looking and staring and pondering and then staring some more, with an occasional sidelong glance the road in front of me to confirm I wasn’t colliding with anything. In addition to the Alluvial Fan falls and the bighorn sheep meadow (empty today, alas), we also saw several squirrels, one weird black-and-white bird, and two sleeping snakes we didn’t dare disturb. By this time our legs were all damaged to varying degrees, so we enjoyed God’s grand works more from the car than I would’ve preferred, but it was a direct consequence of overextending ourselves. Enjoyed immensely, sure, but overextended nonetheless.

This is not unusual for us. Every one of our road trips has had its share of setbacks, oversights, and moments of humility. We accept the situation, note the results mentally for future reference, and make sure we took plenty of photos anyway. Today’s lessons learned the hard way:

1. Mind your altitude changes. The drive up Alameda Parkway, the walk up to the amphitheater, the excited walk down its sixty-odd steps, and the beginnings of the walk back up said steps combined with the thinner atmosphere to leave my wife dehydrated and struggling to breathe. We had all expected me, the least healthiest of us three, to succumb to illness first. No one would have bet on her to draw the short straw. I made the trip back to the car, fetched two bottles of water, and returned to where she left off, thankfully without falling ill myself. After some resting and drinking, her condition improved, but we paid more attention to our physical statuses the rest of the day. (Rest assured the subsequent Dinosaur Ridge two-mile round trip was marched at an extremely slow pace, foolhardy though it might’ve been nonetheless.)

2. Let your credit card company know your travel plans. My wife faithfully notifies her provider every year. I’ve always interpreted this as a polite courtesy on her part, not a mandatory task. When we tried to check in Sunday night at our hotel, my card was declined without comment. I wrongheadedly dismissed it as a card reader error. When we stopped for gas today in Boulder, lightning struck twice. Sure enough, after one unhappy phone call to my provider, I found my card had been flagged for “suspicious activity” because I’m out of town. We’re all straightened out now, but I was not excited about having to make other arrangements. I should be grateful that they’re watching out for my interests, but those two awkward moments in hindsight feel more as though I were subject to the whims of an overprotective parent.

3. Remember your time zone at all times. I keep forgetting we’re in Mountain Daylight Time rather than Eastern Daylight Time, and consequently failed to do the math in time to realize that Bunheads started at 7 p.m. here, not 9 p.m. I’ve another item to add to my back-home to-do list, then.

4. If someone offers you a shuttle bus that’s inexpensive or free, you say YES.

2012 Road Trip Notes on the Go, Day 2: the Plains, the Plane, the Hills, and the Bill

July 9, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Today was 270 miles of Kansas plus 160 miles of Colorado. The unifying visual theme was unseemly drought damage.

The rolling hills of eastern Kansas didn’t last long and gave way to a lengthy journey earmarked by occasional herds roaming freely around endless, sickly yellow waves of grain. Breaking up the post-hillside monotony were countless anti-abortion billboards and handcrafted signs, all dotting the charred, flattened landscape. So many heartfelt expressions targeting the same thoroughfare gave the impression that Kansas’ share of I-70 is a teeming powderkeg of wanton lust and convenient Planned Parenthood centers.

After a hotel breakfast of lukewarm buffet sandwiches, our first diversion was in Abilene at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. We don’t normally brake for every Presidential museum, but a combination of historical significance, convenience, and lack of competition made this the perfect follow-up to yesterday’s brief stop at the Truman Museum. The gift shops at both museums were even selling the same “Ike and Harry 2012” merchandise, which appears to tie in to a website that I’m too tired to read closely at the moment.

The Eisenhower complex consists of the visitor center/gift shop, a functional research library, a museum, his boyhood home (tours only, no freely roaming inside), and a chapel containing the final resting place of President and Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower, along with their son Doud, who passed away too soon at age four. A small church stage and modest pews provided visitors the opportunity for moments of reflection. It was as apt a place as any for us to be on a Sunday morning, hundreds of miles away from our home church.

The less apt follow-up was a stop at Abilene’s Russell Stover factory, whose storefront sells all the Stover candies and Whitman’s sampler that a family could want, whether or not any holidays are imminent. The intense smell of chocolate pervades their air and punches you in the nose when you enter, even if you like sweets. Their backroom is all clearance-sale items — bags filled with deformed factory rejects, and numerous pallets of holiday leftovers dating back to at least Halloween 2011. I spent fifty cents on a timeless sugar-free sampler, while my son splurged on a three-dollar eighteen-inch-wide heart-shaped Valentine’s Day gift box, the kind whose unwieldy size says, “I’m really, really sorry that you think my stalking you is creepy instead of charming.” After paying, he opened his goodies and found that half of them tasted precisely five months old, and the other half were cherry-flavored, which to him is even worse.

Another recurring motif in Kansas, besides suffering flora: military things. As we passed the exit for Fort Riley, we noticed a parking lot out back filled with ominous black helicopters. (As great a photo as it may have made, parking outside a military base to take photos may have sent a wrong message.) Kansas’ very own Manhattan wasn’t nearly as awesome as the Manhattan we visited last year, but it did have a sign proclaiming itself the future home of the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility, which sounds only slightly benign. Still further down the road, stationed in the town of WaKeeney was a small, decommissioned fighter jet for any and all looky-loos to come poke and prod. When we detoured for an impromptu photo op with it, an older couple of geocachers were peering into the holes and opening the hatches in search of their elusive quarry of the day, deposited somewhere within this one-vehicle roadside exhibit.

We also digressed through the town of Oakley, home of a large Buffalo Bill statue and Buffalo Bill Cabin, ostensibly a gift shop but closed for the day. I’m not sure if this was a one-day inconvenience or a transitional state. Behind it, another house was in mid-construction. A flyer told us the cabin itself is for sale, but not the property. Moving and foundational arrangements, per the flyer, will be left to the discretion and responsibility of the buyer. We passed on the generous offer.

Prettier and closer to the interstate was a towering easel in Goodland, upon which rests a giant-sized replica of one of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings, part of an ambitious Canadian painter’s planned seven-continent project. The painting itself is lovely at any size. The construction crane parked underneath the mega-easel was less photogenic.

After Kansas, our first 160 miles of Colorado were vaster, slightly hillier, even yellower fields. We were disappointed that their fair state’s alleged mountains weren’t simply flocked at the border to impress and intimidate us immediately upon entry. It’s our understanding the mountains will present themselves tomorrow once we venture further west into Denver proper.

We couldn’t decide whether or not to be disappointed that our approach to the hotel was surrounded by storm clouds. In light of recent conditions and events, I wouldn’t blame the residents if they threw the storms a ticker-tape parade.

2012 Road Trip Notes on the Go, Day 1: Trumans and Burgers

July 7, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

[The next nine days’ entries will be typed on the fly with minimal copy-editing or rewriting as time, energy, and hotel wi-fi access permit. Our photos, of which there are typically too many each year, will be uploaded and posted sometime after our return home.]

After driving 570+ miles from Indianapolis we’ve arrived safely in Topeka for the evening at a six-story hotel with only one working elevator, a short-handed staff, a passkey that worked exactly once before malfunctioning, and a wi-fi network with an easily guessed password, for which I’m grateful so I don’t have to add one more phone call to the staff’s burdens.

Today’s drive was planned as a nine-hour burn-through rather than a series of sightseeing escapades. Our ultimate goal is Colorado, for which Kansas is our way station. That’s not to say Kansas won’t have its share of highlights, but most of those weren’t planned for today. Despite construction sites the first leg of the journey through west Indiana and all of Illinois went smoothly until we entered Missouri and had to compete with aggressive St. Louis drivers in their natural element. In Illinois we stopped once at its former capital Vandalia to see their Madonna of the Trail — one of several such monuments nationwide — and to lament the disrepair of what once must have been their former main street, too common a sight in formerly bustling small towns.

Lunch was in St. Charles at a small national chain we don’t have in Indiana called Smashburger, which specializes in cooked-to-order burgers on four different types of buns (including wheat and pretzel). My St. Louis Burger was just fine, and the Smashfries (topped with olive oil, rosemary, and garlic) were above-average for a burger joint. In a shocking turn of events, my finicky son declared their non-greasy fare the best burger he’s ever had. We relished this moment of positivity for all it was worth.

The second leg of the trip was marred by an I-70 accident in Columbia, MO, that bottlenecked traffic for a while and somehow ended with a delivery truck lying on one side and having its other side torn off. We pray no one was seriously injured in what must have been one horrific action sequence. We exited for a while and avoided the blockage momentarily, searching in vain for a roadside attraction whose directions were apparently obsolete. When we returned to the interstate, several more minutes of patient sitting were necessary until drivers resumed inching forward. We whiled away the minutes by watching a small girl in the van in front of us tearing tiny handfuls of stuffing out of her poor scapegoated dolly and tossing them out the window, letting them drift away like so much unwanted dandelion seed.

Fortunately Missouri allowed us one successful sightseeing stop in Independence at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. The obstructions in Columbia delayed our arrival until fifteen minutes before closing time, but the staff, going above and beyond in the name of courtesy, allowed us access to the central courtyard — burial site of President and Mrs. Truman, as well as their daughter and son-in-law — free of charge. I would’ve bought something from their gift shop in gratitude, but they didn’t seem to have a single “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” mock newspaper anywhere in stock.

Dinner in Topeka was at Bobo’s Drive-In, as seen on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Despite their brief TV fame, I was surprised that a Saturday night found only three other cars in the lot. Their sandwiches were acceptable and affordably priced, though we had to forgive them for forgetting one of our burger topping requests. Half my onion rings had fused in the fryer into one unified mega-ring. My son, already taken aback at the concept of eating dinner in a car like primitive cultures of the distant 1960s, began having unhappy flashbacks when he realized their side dishes were held in the same paper food baskets as his school lunches. I was fine with my own experience in general, but it was a far cry from the sky-high bar set by our own beloved Mug-‘n’-Bun Drive-In back in Indianapolis.

Today’s most irrelevant note: the Missouri Department of Transportation is abbreviated “MoDOT”. As a Marvel fan, I couldn’t help imagining an alt-universe version of MODOK whose sinister plans involved world domination through infinite road construction and the ability to blast killer potholes in any flat surface.

Road Trip Clip Show: a Salute to Vacation Days, Part 2 of 2

July 4, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Continuing my stroll down Memory Lane to revisit the spirits of road trips past, while looking forward to the spirit of road trips yet to come.

2009: South Dakota and friends

Our longest drive to date, our first foray into the Mountain Daylight Time zone, and our introduction to South Dakota, land of a thousand casinos. There’s more to see than mere impressive Mount Rushmore.

The Badlands greet you on your way into Rapid City, major tourism hub.

Badlands of SD

Custer State Park, located in the Black Hills, is inhabited by animals accustomed to being spoiled rotten by tourists. They have no compunction about invading your personal space, and may be the secret masters in charge of the park. Notice how Intrusive Burro is very intrusive.

Custer's Bad Burro

When you’re done with Rushmore, you can visit the other massive stone monument in the area, the perpetually in-progress Crazy Horse statue. The ongoing project is taller than Rushmore and funded entirely with private donations. The nearest approach is even more distant than Rushmore’s observation area, but you can do what I did for an extreme closeup: max out the digital zoom on your camera, pop a quarter into the stationary viewers, jam your camera lens into the viewer eyepiece, and snap away.

Crazy Horse, zoom within a zoom

Since we were only a few dozen miles away anyway, we spent one day on a diversion into neighborly Wyoming, home of Devil’s Tower, the free-standing mesa As Seen On Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Bring your own mashed potatoes.

Wyoming's Devil's Tower

2008: Virginia

Our primary destination was Virginia Beach, but I spent the week under the weather and trying my best not to dampen our spirits. The three of us also discovered something unanimous about ourselves on this vacation: none of us actually enjoy beaches. Consequently, many of our stops on the way to and from Virginia Beach were more interesting to us.

Largest of those was the U.S.S. Wisconsin, decommissioned and moored in Norfolk. Tours are guided by retired veterans proud to be serving as tour guides even when the weather is in the triple digits.

The USS Wisconsin

One of the nicest looking places in the area was Natural Bridge, great for scenic photos and some of the most unusual roadside attractions nearby. One caution: if you love animals, you might want to skip their zoo.

Us at Natural Bridge

All photos are excerpted from lengthy travelogues that I wrote for each of our last several vacations for fun and posterity. If it weren’t for humility and concerns about copyright issues (will theme parks really throw a tantrum if their mascots appear in your published photos?), I’d consider compiling them into a genuine Book, also for fun and posterity.

Road Trip Clip Show: a Salute to Vacation Days, Part 1 of 2

July 3, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Once all the necessary errands are run and all defensive countermeasures are in place, we’ll be taking off this weekend for our annual road trip. Each year we drive hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to other states to view their museums, witness amazing works of God and man, check out roadside attractions of varying degrees of imagination and quality, and generally see firsthand what lies beyond Indiana.

Our 2012 road trip will take us through Kansas to Colorado, including a circuitous route through Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. With the Waldo Canyon fire now 70% contained as of today and the other extant fires being beyond the scope of our plans, we’re feeling less intrepid and more emboldened to sally forth toward the Rockies and whatever they might surround. We’re challenging ourselves to find good points about Kansas as well.

In honor of Independence Day, one of America’s busiest traveling holidays of the year, and in honor of the fact that I have less free time this week because of vacation preparations and mandatory family-holiday quality time, I present a cursory look back at our road trips from previous years, select snippets of a few of my favorite faraway things.

2011: Manhattan

Our first time in New York City became my favorite vacation to date. The sights, the sounds, the subways, the cleanliness, the overwhelming density of activity options — it was like three vacations packed into one and then marinated in adrenalin.

Naturally we photographed Times Square too many times. We attended The Lion King, found ourselves blown away and wishing the other shows had been inexpensive enough to attend four or five more.

Times Square ad frenzy

Most people view the city from atop the Empire State Building. For a few dollars less, and with no haranguing from enthusiastic street guides, you can ride to the upper floors of 30 Rockefeller Center and see most of the same rooftops. At that height, the view plus or minus a few stories isn’t appreciably different, unless we missed something really cool on 30 Rock’s roof.

the view from 30 Rock

A couple of New Yorkers we know thought it odd that we included Grant’s Tomb on our itinerary. My wife the history buff insisted after reading his autobiography. This seemed like an awful lot of building just to provide a tomb for two, but I was happy to oblige.

Grant's Tomb: Conveniently on the Way to Harlem

2010: Pennsylvania via Ohio

Our primary destination was Philadelphia — again, because of history — but our attention wandered to numerous other sights along the way.

My personal favorite: Eastern State Penitentiary, a former famous prison that’s now a “stabilized ruin” you can visit and view from within. Most notable features include a cell once occupied by Al Capone and a self-guided audio tour narrated by Steve Buscemi.

Eastern State Penitentiary, second floor

Diverging from the Pennsylvania Turnpike for several miles allowed us opportunities for small-town roadside wonders such as this giant quarter in Everett, created as part of a local contest.

Everett's giant quarter

On the way to Pennsylvania, we stopped for lunch at the Thurman Cafe in Columbus, a certified As Seen on Man v. Food pit stop. Below is the Thurman Burger, which is larger than some house pets. Not even in my overeating college days could I leave a clean plate after this meal.

Thurman Burger, Thurman Cafe

More to come tomorrow!

Colorado Wildfires Threaten Lives, Destroy City Blocks, Ruin Vacation Plans

June 30, 2012 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

My family’s thoughts and prayers are with those in and around the countless areas still being ravaged by wildfires nationwide, who will be coping with the aftermath for what I pray is a much, much shorter time frame than it feels. I can’t begin to imagine the gravity of living face-to-face with such a situation. The online reports and footage have been heartbreaking to hear and see in every area that’s reported them.

In the case of Colorado Springs, our humanitarian interest contains the slightest tinge of selfishness.

Every year we devote our family vacations to embarking on a road trip to a different location, then posting summaries photos and travelogues for our online friends. One nice advantage to living in Indianapolis is its four outbound interstates that provide convenient access to any number of states within twelve to sixteen hours of driving. Last year we dared to make our first foray into astonishing New York City; the year before that, Philadelphia and other places along the way; two years ago, our longest road trip thus far, out to Rapid City, South Dakota; and so on back to 1999, when we started small with an out-of-town comic book convention.

This year we’re planning on taking our very first steps into Kansas and Colorado. In all our vacation history, this may be the first time a natural disaster requires us to rethink our plans.

Our original itinerary began with a straight shot across I-70 from Indy to Topeka to Denver. After spending sufficient time there, the next step would be a left turn on I-25 to visit the wonders of Colorado Springs, then heading down and to the left for Cañon City, doubling back to the Pueblo vicinity, then heading home by daring to venture east through the southern half of Kansas without benefit of interstates and hopefully without a surprise stopover in Children of the Corn Town.

Now that some of my MapQuest routes are on fire, some detours may be in order. The official website for the Colorado Springs hotel where we have reservations says they’re closed for the time being. Google Crisis Response (yet another previously unheard-of extension of the sprawling empire of ConGoogleCo Dynamic) has a convenient map tracking wildfire progress. I’m not sure if its 8-bit graphics are advanced enough to incorporate real-time updating. All I know is, where Colorado Springs should be, the ostensible halfway point of our road trip now looks like a Missile Command base that someone failed to protect from enemy bombing. CNN.com reported as of 9:47 p.m. Friday night EDT that the wildfire was 25% contained, but I’m not convinced that a 75%-contained fire the size of a ZIP code qualifies as a supervised fireworks display.

We have a week until takeoff. We have limited time to decide how to go forward, how much of the area to circumnavigate in advance, how much of our vacation to improvise as we go, and whether or not it’s appropriate to approach a scene of chaos and destruction while wearing a Hawaiian shirt and wondering in obnoxious, stentorian tones where to find all the kookiest roadside attractions.

At the absolute very least, I resolve to stop whining about our local weather this week, which has only been figuratively combustible rather than literally so. I plan to be extremely grateful we didn’t schedule our vacation two weeks earlier. Some charitable effort might also not be out of the question. Whether that’s on location or from afar remains to be decided.