The French Market may seem empty around 10 a.m., but the calm and the extra personal space don’t last.
Day Four was spent walking here, there, everywhere around the French Quarter — gawking at random sights, browsing festive shops, learning history from museums, weaving through crowds, and trying our best to withstand the 90-degree heat that kept hammering at us all along the way. Fortunately a few places offered respite from melting.
As we promised last time: MOUNTAINS. We saw some.
Welcome back to Rocky Mountain National Park in beautiful Estes Park, Colorado.
Right this way for mountains! And clouds! And mountains with clouds on them!
Soon as you enter the nave of St. Louis Cathedral, on one side of you Joan of Arc is risen above.
Our first indoor stop on Day Four that wasn’t a restaurant was the grand St. Louis Cathedral, centerpiece of New Orleans’ Jackson Square and one of the oldest cathedrals in America. The outside id distinct in its own right, but the interior decorations and designs were impressive in their own right, even the parts identical to what you see in other, newer, more modest churches. There’s something about such a venerable structure that elevates even the most mundane details toward a greater spiritual presence.
I sure hope y’all like mountains because we took roughly six million photos of the Rockies on this trip.
On Sunday we landed in Denver shortly after 9:30 their time. Our Colorado Springs hotel was seventy minutes south of the airport. We couldn’t check in till 3 p.m. With plenty of time on our hands, we decided to follow up our short flight with a long drive — two hours northwest of the airport for an encore in a little town we last visited in 2012 called Estes Park, snug inside the Rocky Mountains.
It’s like a prettier Disneyland without the rides or kids or paid stuffed animal cosplayers.
At the end of Day Three, we first laid eyes upon Jackson Square when the sun was on its way out of sight. Some clouds had lingered after a light drizzle that had peppered the city while we were inside Mardi Gras World. The world generally looked gray everywhere we turned. Then we got a good night’s sleep, commenced Day Four, and walked into the idealized sky-blue morning you see above, beckoning us with its possibilities and begging for a photographic do-over.
Our Indianapolis International Airport welcome committee: WWI flying ace Harvey Weir Cook, who flew for the Army Signal Corps with seven victories to his credit, then later for the newly invented transcontinental airmail service. He was a colonel when he died in 1943 while training other men to be just like him. The terminal and major airport thoroughfares are named after him.
Each year my wife and I take a road trip to a different part of the United States and see what sorts of historical landmarks, natural wonders, man-made oddities, unexplored restaurants, and cautionary tales await us. We began the tradition in 1999 during our best-friend years as an excuse to attend geek conventions and fan gatherings outside Indianapolis. After four years of narrowly focused hijinks, the tradition evolved through our happily married years into an ongoing project to visit as many other states as possible, see what they have that we don’t, and filter the results through our peculiar sensibilities.
From November 1-6, 2015, we racked up a number of personal firsts. My wife Anne was invited on her first business trip to Colorado Springs, all expenses paid from flight to food to lodging to rental car, to assist with cross-training at a distant affiliate. Her supervisor gave me permission to attend as her personal travel companion as long as I bought my own plane ticket and food. Neither of us had ever flown before, largely because we each grew up in families too poor for such extravagance. We’ve also never taken two week-long vacations in a single year. Thanks to our unforeseen circumstances, we were shocked to find such things no longer inconceivable.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, I posted one photo for each of the six days while we were on location. With this series, we delve into selections from the 500+ other photos we took along the way.
On the morning of our second full day in New Orleans, one of our first stops was St. Louis Cathedral. The majority of the structure dates back to 1850, with minute portions integrated from still older predecessors. It’s the centerpiece of Jackson Square (as you’ll notice in the preceding chapter), free for tourists to visit (donations are suggested), serves an active congregation, and remains the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans.
Jackson Square in the French Quarter in early evening. Where tourists, beggars, and horses vie for control of New Orleans.
Bordering one side of the French Quarter is our old friend the Mississippi River, which we last saw in Minneapolis on our 2014 road trip. We’ve effectively now seen both ends of it. After dinner at the Royal House, we ended our day of too much walking with even more walking, checking out the art, the businesses, and the life teeming and scheming along its banks.
This “Scrap House” sculpture is a Hurricane Katrina memorial perched across the street from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. One of several surprise finds along our long, dehydrating path.
Over the last several entries in this series we’ve shared large batches of photos and memories from our visits to the National WWII Museum and to Mardi Gras World, but those two locations weren’t the only points of interest we saw on Day Three of our trip. For this episode we backtrack to recapture some of those random bits that made their own impacts on our overall New Orleans experience.
A baked potato called the Texan, containing steak, bacon, onion rings, jalapenos, cheddar cheese, and barbecue sauce. I’m not the kind of guy to call a baked potato a full meal, but maybe I would if all other baked potatoes were made industrial-strength like this.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: for my wife’s birthday we spent a Saturday walking around Terre Haute, Indiana. In Part One of this trilogy we met an Auschwitz survivor whose sheer force of will shames us both; in Part Two we visited the Clabber Girl Museum and Bake Shop, learned still more about World War II, and had snacks.
Here in Part Three: other sights, sculptures, and shops we saw around town on this fair October day, including poetry, pink ribbons, surprise comics, and her birthday lunch of choice.
Right this way for the conclusion of another birthday road-trip miniseries!
Redfish beignets at the Royal House in New Orleans.
Day Three of our seven-day road trip was our first full day in the city of New Orleans. We already covered our musical breakfast at Cafe Beignet. As noted previously, “Going into this year’s vacation, we hoped the cuisine would be a highlight at our various stops — be it good ol’ Southern kitchen cookin’, Gulf-sourced fresh seafood, or, really, anything outside of international franchisees.” In that vein, lunch and dinner each had their own approach.
Right this way for another foodie episode, but without using the word “foodie”!
Spongebob Squarepants! Spongebob Squarepants! Spongebob Squarepants! Spongey-boooooob Squarepaaaaaaants!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I visited Mardi Gras World, a giant-sized warehouse-shaped museum in New Orleans in which floats are constructed, painted, stored, disassembled, reassembled, repainted, reconfigured, and displayed for guests who want to take a long walk through local party-time history.
As promised last time, here’s a sampling of the many heads, bodies, persons, places, and things on display that have entertained generations and enthralled the sober and the drunken alike.
Right this way for famous big heads from Marvel, Star Wars, history, and more!
When it’s Mardi Gras, even the gator and the lobster set aside their differences and party all night together in the same gumbo pot. Meanwhile in the shadows, Burger King bides his time and plots his next sinister move.
When people ’round our parts think “New Orleans”, once they get past the memories of Hurricane Katrina, the next thing that pops into their head is Mardi Gras. Other cities and countries may honor the grand finale of every annual “Carnival” multi-part holiday, but the way it’s talked about, you’d think “Mardi Gras” was French for “New Orleans party”. For all I know, maybe it is.
Anne and I don’t drink, party, observe Carnival, or socialize while our clothes are missing, but we thought it wouldn’t hurt to look into the prettier, safer element of those shindigs: the famous parades and their scintillating floats. So that’s what lured us to Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World.
Sorry, folks: these dime donuts are for historical display purposes only.
For the last several years, my wife Anne and I have spent our respective birthdays together finding some new place or attraction to visit as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on this most wondrous day, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. My 2015 birthday destination of choice was the city of Fort Wayne, two hours north of home. Her 2015 choice last Saturday was Terre Haute, an hour west of here. In Part 1 of this three-part miniseries, you saw our final stop of the day, the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center, which absolutely made her day.
Our first stop of the day was something completely different: the Clabber Girl Museum and Bake Shop. The longtime purveyors of baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch, and other products under assorted brand names have their factory and corporate HQ in downtown Terre Haute. We happen to be fans of baked goods, and this wouldn’t be our first trip to a museum about baking ingredients (cf. the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis). It didn’t hurt that the museum is free.
The B25 Mitchell is the kind of bomber used in the 1942 Doolittle Raid, as seen near the conclusion of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor and probably some other, better films.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our road trip to New Orleans continued as my wife and I spent much of Day 3 touring the National WWII Museum. Of all the buildings in the complex, the tallest was the most fascinating and contained the largest objects of all: half a dozen military airplanes suspended in midair.
(See that yellow-and-orange dot in the faraway window that kinda looks like a Ms. Pac-Man fruit? That’s my lovely wife.)
Right this way for the conclusion of a four-part photo-gallery miniseries!
A Sherman Tank! I first saw one of these in the forgotten James Garner film Tank, which played at the drive-in when I was a kid. This encounter was much better than that film.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our road trip to New Orleans continued as my wife and I spent much of Day 3 touring the National WWII Museum — four super-sized buildings and one smaller, locked gallery used for restoration work. With all that square footage and so many high ceilings, the Museum has plenty of space to display the largest wartime souvenirs: the vehicles that men drove into combat.
Hi, we’re guns! You may remember us from such films as Every Men’s Adventure Film Ever, The Complete Chuck Norris Catalog, and Bowling for Columbine!
Considering recent headlines, maybe I picked the wrong week to share photos of guns. Or the perfect week, if you’re on the other side. Blame World War II for the wide selection here.
The front page of a special Honolulu Star-Bulletin Extra published December 7, 1941, three hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
When I first suggested driving to New Orleans for this year’s road trip, my wife was hesitant because most online tourism resources summed up the general ambiance as HERE THERE BE MANIACS. No matter where you stay, how brightly the sun shines, how large your group is, or how tall and muscular you are, message boards and review sites and travel books and Fodor’s agree sooner or later a tag team of America’s Most Wanted will come gunning for you.
Then we found out New Orleans is the home of the National WWII Museum. Not a WWII museum — the National WWII Museum, as duly designated by Congress in 2003. Anne knows stuff about WWII. Longtime MCC readers might recall the story of how we first met:
[Anne had] been a WWII buff for years, and read extensively about Germany in general and Hitler in particular. I still remember the time when the teacher (one Frau Schmitz by name) basically turned the class over to Anne and let her give us a speech about Hitler. Anne proceeded to do so…with no notes, and no real preparation beforehand. As I recall, her extemporaneous speech filled two solid class periods over two days — roughly 100 minutes total — with what she knew about Hitler before Frau Schmitz finally stepped in and resumed teaching.
She’s always up for learning more about WWII, above and beyond what she’s already accumulated over the course of decades. When she learned the National WWII Museum was in New Orleans…well. Murderers, schmurderers.
We are…the Three Amigos!
Day Three, we awoke in New Orleans before 7 a.m., excited and peppy and ready to go. Sadly, most of the French Quarter was still asleep, but we found a place to hang out while we waited for them to catch up with us. No matter where you go, Mondays are Mondays.
One of the G-rated stretches of notorious Bourbon Street on a Sunday evening. Even Party Central needs its downtime.
There she was at long last — New Orleans!
We reached our primary objective at the end of Day Two, thankfully before sundown. All the post-Katrina tourism resources we consulted in our vacation research (books, travel sites, AAA brochures, message boards with supporting posts from wary New Orleans residents) seemed unanimous on one important message: anyone caught outside in New Orleans at night will be swiftly, repeatedly murdered. Perhaps that’s not the reality, but we weren’t prepared to call Fodor’s bluff during our first hours in town. No matter how long we spent in Alabama or at stops along the way, we wanted to be in New Orleans and checked in at our hotel while the sun was still on our side.
We met our objective, and all it took was a long, nearly featureless drive through an unrelated state, braving the cramped hallways that pass for roads in the French Quarter, and cutting a major stop from our itinerary.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 