One feature of extended travel is that you’re always fulfilling recurring bodily requirements (eating, sleeping, and so on) in unfamiliar contexts. Those of you who read this regularly and who still travel for a living will certainly know exactly what I mean.
Recently, and because of our method of travel, I’m thinking that my choices might be more interesting than yours, though.
To begin with, I’ve got more time than most of you and maybe broader options when it’s time for a meal. To begin with, do we stop and cook a hot meal or prepare cold food in a park? Or do we look for an attractive local eatery? (Chains are a last resort, and fast food is definitely out.) So where we eat is an open question. There are often not so many options to shop for groceries, although we’ve still got more options than most of our friends in the Dominican. I’m pretty sure that those of you reading this in the US have more options in the grocery than what we find in small towns.
Enjoy.
Sleeping presents another opportunity for us to choose. In the tent, or in a motel? Do we pitch the tent in a park or a forest, or in a private campground? If in a motel, do we bed down in a one-off mom and pop establishment, or in a national chain? (And where’s the Wi-fi connection?)
As it turns out, we’ve spent about half of our nights in the tent so far, and about half of our nights in one motel or another. One or two have been wonderfully comfortable and several have been downright desperate. The others have been quite adequate.
Come to think of it, most of you professional travelers probably fare better on the road in this regard, also.
We’ve camped on Bureau of Land Management land, and in state and national parks and in private campgrounds. Our outdoor domiciles have ranged from nice to awe-inspiring. There are one or two photos on the website, but they don’t really do justice to the whole road trip outdoor sleeping experience: the temperature, the breeze, the animal sounds in the night. Or the leaving of the warm sleeping bag in the middle of the night, staggering blindly to the bushes to answer nature’s call.
Despite some drawbacks, we’ve discovered that we actually prefer camping to sleeping in a motel. It’s somehow simpler and easier.
Nevertheless, we do occasionally choose the motel option.
Not surprisingly, we’ve not had much luck in small towns locating motels where the staff are represented by a labor union. As a result, our primary criterion has usually pivoted on the choice between local owners and national chains.
My initial inclination was to avoid the national chains in favor of the local little guy. Denise was predisposed to patronize national chains. I’ve come to appreciate the reasoning behind her preference.
With a national chain there is at least a chance that there are uniform standards. Sometimes local standards can be more than merely lax, about which more only when we’re together.
I hadn’t expected it but my favorite sleeping place so far has been when visiting my brother-in-law in Denver. Denise and I filled the bedroom graciously vacated by my niece for the couple of nights we stayed with them. The time we spent with our niece and nephew certainly made it a extra difficult to pack up and move along when the time came to depart.
Michael sent us off with a swell brisket dinner served under a beautiful Colorado sky. He made me promise to tell you. So there you have it.
We’ve been gone from Washington for a month and are only a third of the way along our projected itinerary. Clearly, compromises will have to be made. I’ll sacrifice visiting the antique washing machine museum for example, but I AM going to get a look at the Chapman Elementary School chimney swifts in Portland, Oregon this year, come hell or high water.
We spent Labor Day with old and new friends in Estes Park in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where we enjoyed each other’s company and ate good food, including some sort of fire roasted banana desert. We walked a bit, and talked about life and work and the Dominican and other interesting things.
I hope your holiday was stellar and that the coming year brings you much joy and success.
Tags: Denise Hanna, Retire, Retirement, Road Trip
I’ve never had much patience with those who pillory government as a matter of general principle. More specifically, I object to those who protest paying taxes while enjoying a scandalous standard of living in one of the best-served nations on the planet. Maybe that’s why I’ve always enjoyed small towns and small-town conversation in “liberal” as well as “conservative” states.
We’re now finished with driving mile after mile after mile across the Midwest on well-paved, well-marked roads that are not the interstate highways. The roads, even the unpaved county roads we’ve been driving are the sort of highways that our Dominican friends can only dream of having. This is government at its best.
While we’ve admittedly found fewer parks in the Midwest, the ones we’ve seen are as well-maintained as any that we used in the mid-Atlantic region. For instance, water comes out of the taps we turn. Generally, you can drink that water. Sewage predictably disappears in even the most remote location. In addition, fresh and nutritious food is readily available nearby and trash seems to be picked up regularly (even if recycling is something of a challenge in the mid-West.)
Wi-Fi Internet access is available in the most unlikely places.
We’re reminded of the number of excellent little Post Office buildings in even the smallest of the towns we’ve visited. The mail seems to be regularly delivered, probably on time. In the most remote prairie we see signs cautioning us to call before we dig, lest we disturb buried communications cable. This is frequently fiber-optic cable; I’ve checked.
We’ve got some swell infrastructure in this country, that’s for sure.
Now that I think of it, those tax objectors and malcontents I’ve known personally have mostly come from the larger cities in which I’ve lived–or they’ve owned very large farms in the West. This is probably a function of where I’ve lived, more than anything. I’m pretty sure they must live in these small towns as well.
Wherever they reside, it is somehow possible for them to sustain an illusion of independence from the larger social fabric and to successfully confuse their idea of independence with their feeling of estrangement from the workings and personnel of government.
It seems that maybe such an illusion would be more difficult to sustain in small towns. It’s a simple matter of scale, for one thing. Everyone personally knows old Sam who maintains the parks and city grounds; the policeman is Denny (Jim’s boy, back from the service), and Avery and Dan are paving the county road two sections over. Probably next year they’ll be grading the county roads in this section.
You get the picture: the connection between citizen and government is direct, and the reminders appear to be constant.
I don’t know how we get so isolated in the city, where for some the most significant aspect of government is the quarterly tax bill and we lose sight of all the rest. In both town and country this must, to some degree, be a simple failure to communicate the connections.
Maybe Civics isn’t taught in the middle schools any longer. Perhaps our subjective civic experience is mostly one of government prohibitions or requirements to which we are subject.
Certainly the desperate 24 hour news shouters drown out any information about government other than the sensational. It’s difficult to find a positive story about our government presented in anything like an objective way, isn’t it? As a consequence lots and lots of people don’t have a clue what the “common weal” is, or how it might underpin the very structure of our system of representative government.
This unfortunate circumstance characterizes a number of things that are good for Americans and which we nevertheless despise: single-payer health care and the labor movement, to name two.
This sort of social information void was recognized by Howard Dean and Barrack Obama struggles to fill it every day, even as the news shouters line up like some sensationalist bucket brigade to douse his light with the latest in scandalous trivia.
At best, it’s the same kind of information vacuum that exists between regular folks and the unions that would represent their interests. Of course it’s much worse than a mere vacuum—ask any American about the labor movement and chances are you’ll hear a one dimensional story about Jimmy Hoffa; they will certainly mention the mob and violence on the picket line. As a nation we’ve forgotten, or never learned, how unions have helped America and Americans.
While we may realize that Avery and Dan are working on our behalf this season by paving the road in the next jurisdiction, we as a nation just don’t have a clue how the Autoworkers vaulted millions of Americans into the middle class, how unions were compelled to successfully bargain for health insurance during the second world war, or how lives change for union members who enjoy the benefit of a pension. Trust me; I see this, especially the last point.
In many way we’ve become–all of us–a nation of whiners. We have been trained to expect constant evidence that we individually are what it’s all about. Of course this is an impossibility, and so we are never satisfied. As a country, we have developed an unattractive trait of expecting constant attention and service and plaintively complaining when it is not forthcoming. Even so, we’re not bad people–at least I’m not.
We come by this failing honestly. We’ve become a country filled with people who functionally cannot pay attention to anything more complicated that a single 42 minute television episode. The news of the day is thrust upon us in a pre-digested form and in even smaller increments. Corporate media makes no attempt to integrate the small increments we receive into a larger view of the world we live in, except in the service of the sensational news story of the week.
By design or happenstance, we’re too busy or too self-involved to examine the bits and pieces that make up our world, and often too insecure to examine with others how those bits and pieces can be arranged to best serve the common interest.
Maybe I’m delusional here, but the mutual examination and discussion of a shared set of circumstances seems to be more common in small towns than anonymous cities. Mutual examination and discussion are what’s missing, I think, from the shouting that passes for persuasion and from the vested opinion that often passes for news.
(Mounting soapbox)
I am of the opinion that striving to moderate the tenor and shift the focus of our national conversation to the common interests of citizens is what the American Labor Movement should be about. This is an opinion I first formed as a business agent in Seattle; it’s one expressed to responsible leaders of the national labor movement, both officers and staff in Washington, DC. It a belief that nags at me still.
This is a topic to which I will perhaps return in more detail in future, but now and for the time being I’ll return to chronicling our journey across the United States. There’s much to catch up on in the past couple of weeks: prairie storms and salt mines and city parks in Kansas, small town parades and firefighter’s hose contests in Nebraska, fiddle and picking contests in Kansas, and pie, oh the pie in Colorado!
Everywhere we see plenty of evidence of the common weal; as a nation we just no longer recognize it for what it is. This is a correctable situation.
Bill
Tags: Government Services, Retire, Retirement, Road Trip
Do you recall my speculation and wish earlier this summer when we were on our shakedown trip through Ontario? If you remember, I was impressed with the civility of the Canadians we encountered. I wondered if we’d have the same sort of experience with Americans across the United States, even though we Americans don’t have the common tie of a national health care system to unite us.
So far, our experience with Americans has ranged from mostly positive to extraordinarily considerate, helpful, and generous.
We’re in the heartland. We’re driving a foreign car with an Obama bumper sticker. I’ve developed fairly long hair in the last year or so, and I’m not wearing blue jeans or boots. I guess people know that we’re not from around here; but it’s still easy going and comfortable in the small towns and roadside cafes and all of the parks and campgrounds that we’ve pulled into.
People are mostly considerate on the roads and highways; they wave at you on the smaller roads and slow down if you want to pass on the larger ones. I suppose the maniacs are all on the Interstates?
I don’t know quite how to convey my thinking on this next point, but it feels like the consideration we’ve been shown here in the US is of a more personal nature than the consideration we were shown in Ontario. It’s almost as if the Canadians are considerate because that’s just how they are with everyone. The Americans are mostly oblivious to those around them, but when you get their attention they’re considerate too. Maybe because that’s who they are individually–and they’ll let you see that, if they once see you, too.
Anyway, we’re now deep in the mid-west and are looking to spend a few more days in Kansas before dropping into Southern Colorado and making a circuitous journey back and up to Denver to spend a few days with Denise’s family.
Saturday was an unexpected small-town parade with barbecue on Main Street and Sunday was Bluegrass and Sunday was the State Fiddling and Picking Championships with barbecue in the park. Whooee!
Tuesday we descend into the salt mine. Really.
We had to go to Kansas to find one that would still take us underground.
Tags: Retire, Retirement, Road Trip
Hi,
A commentary on an unattractive aspect of one’s character may be in order. For the sake of continuity, let’s illustrate with a glimpse at what I take to be a component of my own character.
I like more.
I also like “big,” “quick,” “and “full.” I do like “better,” but prefer “best.”
This desire for completeness is perhaps partially defines me as a modern American. I suppose that the wish for “more” is not be the most attractive or compelling component of my character, but it is right up there.
I think that the American character, if such a thing may be said to exist, tends strongly in the direction of “more.”
We are compelled in no small way by the modern advertising industry, but this compulsion has allowed a certain ignorant laxness on our part. Ignorance and laziness is a bad combination in one’s character (although one might argue that it’s not as bad as my least favorite combination of character traits: arrogance, ignorance, and denial.) No offense, but you do see my point about the influence of advertising, don’t you?
Mind you, I’m not saying that this is only or even mostly a bad thing.
After all, striving for achievement or reaching for perfection is commonly reckoned to be an admirable trait. It’s something that the conscientious parent strives to instill in the character of the child. “It is…” as Martha Stewart says, “…a good thing.”
And, while it may be a useful quality to weave through one’s character, I suppose that it’s best when one is quite CONSCIOUS of that characteristic and therefore better able to willfully employ and direct one’s own desire for “more” to good effect.
Of course, living consciously doesn’t necessarily meet with universal or even personal approval.
For one thing, conscious living can be a lot of work. And for another it can result in a one’s seeing a common set of circumstances differently than many others. The resulting conflict can complicate life for a social animal with herd tendencies, like humans.
Here I’m blindly hoping that we may no longer be discussing me, or my character.
Ha!
This isn’t such high-faluting philosophizing as it might seem at first. The desire for more can influence the most everyday of our activities, often with unimagined (and certainly unintended) consequences.
I’ll give you a recent example, to discretely return to my own experience.
Here we are in Illinois, a state that has never made my list for “most interesting” for anything, despite what you may have read in previous postings on www.elotrowa.com. We’re headed to the Iowa State Fair; I do imagine that the Iowa State Fair will be interesting, as will the I-80 Truck stop, the world’s largest. But for purpose of this illustration we’re in Springfield. We’re touring Abraham Lincoln’s home and the very well-done museum that bears his name. We’re also fortuitously booked into a Bed and Breakfast called The Barn. The Barn is located two hours to the northwest of Springfield, and in the general direction of the Iowa State Fair. The schedule we’ve set for the day is quite manageable.
You’ve got the picture?
But who could guess that Springfield would be so attractive and that we might wish to spend another day poking around the city itself? Or who could foresee that the Barn is such a special place as might warrant a whole additional day of rest and relaxation?
But our (my) desire for “more,” in this case more “quickness,” more “adherence” to schedule, more “consistency” with the plan is not so admirable. In fact my desire for more gets in the way of the best outcomes. The desire to get to someplace other than where we are is preventing us from enjoying Springfield and, in turn, the Barn, to a more fulsome point.
We’re anxious to make it to the Iowa State Fair before all of the vegetables wilt and as a result incompletely experience two places otherwise fully available to us.
It seems that sometimes the desire for more can hinder the full appreciation of what one already has. Were I a comedian or a philosopher, I might call this “irony.” But I’m neither, and so we’ll just catalog this as another interesting fact of life.
Anyway, I recommend Springfield, Illinois to you all, and the Barn Bed and breakfast in Dahinda, IL (www.thebarnbedandbreakfast.com) warrants at least a couple of nights when you’re in the neighborhood.
Bill
The Barn, A Bed and Breakfast.
Tags: Retire, Retirement, Road Trip
Hi,
As I recall from casual reading, when Dwight Eisenhower was a young officer in the United States Army he was involved in a convoy across a good-sized chunk of the nation. I suppose that it was an inefficient and time-consuming journey which he never forgot.
Our present trip is something like that too. But of course ours is by choice, while Ike was following orders.
After the Korean War and following his election to the Presidency, Eisenhower captured the imagination the nation and set out to build the Interstate Highway System. The primary purpose of the Interstates was to make it possible to move troops and materiel within our borders rapidly in the event of attack. Previous administrations had paved the primary highway system to facilitate the movement of farm products to market but this monumental infrastructure project was accomplished in the name of Civil Defense. “Civil Defense” was the Homeland Security of those cold war times. I guess that both sorts of road are still assets to our economy and in the calculus of our generals, too.
And of course, they’re also an asset to you and me.
The military emphasis was on rapid deployment of troops and material and so the engineers flattened hills and filled valleys, straightening and banking curves as they went through rather than over hill and dale with the result that much of the Interstate Highway System looks much like most of the rest of the Interstate Highway System. It may be a quick trip from “A” to “B” along the Interstate, but it’s likely to be a relatively uninteresting one.
The Interstate project was substantially complete by the early 1970’s, and is the system that I’ve mostly done my long-distance driving on since in my early twenties. There have been only a few notable exceptions–this trip, for one example. I imagine that your experience is more similar to mine than not.
One could look at the Interstate Highway System as the single most durable artifact of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. (For my money, the most durable LEGACY of his administration would be the culture fostered by the “Duck-and-Cover” fear-mongering that has given rise to the whole psy-ops terror and insecurity industry that caters to the power brokers in today’s world.)
Maybe those Interstates are busy today in the middle distances between suburbs and maybe they carry traffic other than freight in trucks, I can’t say as yet. I’d like to make it across the country, and back, without personally finding the answer to that one.
But I can say that there aren’t many travelers on the old primary highway system right now, other than Boomers on motorcycles. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I’m just saying.
I’ll tell you where else there aren’t a lot of people: on the trails in the federal and state and county parks we’ve visited so far.
Even those few parks that do a comparatively good job of filling up their tent sites and regularly coupling their RV hook-ups to transient or semi-permanent vehicles don’t seem to have many folks out marching through the forests and fields.
Pity, because there’s some remarkable stuff to behold, for example the Cahokia Indian Mounds in Illinois (just outside of St. Louis Missouri) are the most incredible mounds I’ve ever seen. They cover a very large area and a well-developed economy including a population larger than that of London, England at the same time.
We went on to St. Louis and made it up into the Arch this year. Whooeee! If you ever find yourself in St. Louis with time to spare, do take in the Arch–and don’t neglect the old documentary film of its construction.
St. Louis also sports the City Museum constructed in an old shoe factory, which we visited last year. It’s got a six-storey slide and the stone and terra cotta decoration from numerous old St. Louis landmarks, but isn’t just for children and architecture buffs.
Now it’s back to Illinois and the Lincoln Museum in Springfield and then on to the Iowa State Fair before the vegetable displays wilt.
I’ll put a few photos on the El Otro WA website, www.elotrowa.com
Bill
Empty Campground, Weekend
Tags: Retire, Retirement, Road Trip