Periodically I reference Art Good’s JazzTrax. I like smooth jazz, I listen to his syndicated show, and he’s also my uncle. In LA I spent time with him and his team planning how we would instill his business with social network marketing.Nixon Presidential Museum
When I choose a theme I can’t help but wrestle it to the ground. The Nixon and Reagan Presidential Libraries are both in Southern California so to keep progressing down my list of the 12 managed by the National Archives I visited them both. Nixon’s was very good but interestingly the Watergate section is still not finished; Reagan’s was in an amazing location but key sections were closed due to preparation for his 100th birthday celebrations. I’ll have to return to Reagan’s because too much was unavailable and I might as well visit Nixon’s again to see if they ever finish Watergate.
When you’re weaving together loose strands of previous Arizona agendas you can cover quite some distance. Still left to cover is the Tonto National Monument which was unavailable to visit due to road closures.
Could I visit the last of NPS sites in Arizona on this trip? Perhaps not but I was going to try. If only I could keep from becoming distracted by serendipitously discovered sites worth visiting, beautiful locations worth taking pictures of, or parks worth hiking. For me, this tension always exists.
This State is HUGE! Over the course of two weeks I covered the Gulf Coast and a myriad of other inland spots. I had no particular theme. For any number of reasons these places got on my radar so I hopped in my car and drove for a visit.
While I didn’t start out intending to explore the nooks and crannies of Texas, I did end up visiting a wide variety of places and learning much about this exceptional State. Below you’ll find a variety of places I visited and enjoyed.
It’s not so long ago when Jimmy Carter ran for president. So much of Plains, GA is as it was. Pictures from 1976 had this sign over he storefront and I wouldn’t doubt that this is the very same sign.
In a movie at the NPS visitors center Jimmy Carter says that when he was young, a trip to Plains was a trip to the “big city”. My goodness! Arriving in Plains felt like arriving at a crossroads, there was very little substance. The boyhood home was another three miles down the road in the middle of absolutely nowhere. In a sense it really is amazing that someone from the hinterlands became president of the world’s most powerful nation.
In truth, I really enjoyed my visit to Plains because it was so untouched and genuine. I walked around in his boyhood home, strolled the hallways of his high school, stopped by the house where Jimmy courted Roselyn, drove by his current residence, and saw all that lay in between. There was the train depot which they used as campaign headquarters for the presidential campaign. There were the grounds of his father’s farm and the outhouse they were happy to finally leave behind when they got an indoor toilet. It was all so real.
Just down the street from where MLK Jr. grew up is the church where his father was minister and he was assistant pastor. The interior is undergoing renovations but the neon sign was there to behold.
After four hours of meetings I still had energy and enthusiasm to get out and see some of Atlanta. This city is rich with interesting things to do: tour CNN, visit Coca Cola HQ, see the Olympic Park, and much much more. I chose to continue two quests started long ago: to visit as many presidential museums and civil rights memorials as I can manage.
Down a long narrow parkway called Freedom Park are important sites of two native Georgians: President Jimmy Carter and Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.
This is just the gatehouse to the Biltmore Estate. From here you drive 3.1 miles just to get to the main house. The scale of this residence just blows my mind. Think of the maintenance costs. Gasp!
Asheville? I’d never heard of it. Sad how ignorant I can be.
After abandoning my second attempt to drive the complete Blue Ridge Parkway due to road closures I headed for Asheville, NC. It’s located in the western portion of the State. This was not my chosen destination because I had done research and knew what was there. Instead it was simply where I had planned to stay after completing the parkway drive.
I found Asheville to be substantial. The music and art scenes are really vibrant as evidenced by what can only be described as an excessively lopsided ratio of galleries to residents. The Biltmore Estate is located here and it is America’s largest private residence which, at $59 to access, is a house I will probably never tour. Chimney Rock would have been a great hike had I the time. Asheville is hilly, has a river winding through it, has tunnels all around, has an historic downtown … it’s got a lot going for it. Perhaps I’ll return one day.
On my way to Atlanta I made one stop: The BMW Museum. Their U.S. facility where BMW makes all of their X3, X5, and X6 cars is located in Spartanburg, SC. Also at this plant is a Performance Driving School. Not being a particularly rabid fan of BMWs I expected to spend only a few minutes walking around. Then I saw several of the tiny BMW Isetta cars, the same cars I fell in love with when I lived in Chile. So, ladies and gentleman, below I inflict you with pictures from the museum. Check ‘em out.
Winston Link captured in sight and sound the end of the steam railroad era. In the restored Roanoke passenger train station is a wonderful collection of his work. Check out this link to see a selection of pictures.
Riding the Blue Ridge Parkway is fun. It’s not a stunning experience or life changing in any way. It’s simply joyful. The path is not ruthlessly twist-turny but instead follows the contours of the hills. You can drive a satisfying 35 to 45 mph, about right for this roads. The periodic overlooks provide pleasant vistas and the roadside historic sites are interesting. For around these parts, this drive is a pretty nice distraction.
The impression you get is that you’re driving a road through the wilderness. However, in the winter this illusion can be shattered. Whether you’re driving the Natches Trace Parkway, Shenandoah’s Skyline Drive, or the Blue Ridge Parkway the trees having lost their leaves makes it possible to see out of the park. You realize how narrow, how tunnel-like these parkways are. You can occasionally look off to either side and see back yards. The rest of the year you can delude yourself in to believing you’re riding through a never-ending wooded landscape along nature’s contours. Winter strips away the veil.
In any season I enjoy riding these roads. If it wasn’t for my tendency to go in the winter when storms leave ice and snow which result in road closures and detours, well, I’d enjoy them even more. Some day I would like to the end of the Blue Ridge. Again this time the bottom third is closed. At mile marker 290 I exited and went by Interstate to Asheville. Sadly this means I fell 175 miles short of my goal of finishing.
Some day I need to drive this road during another season.
Nature created caves high in the cliffs. Man found access and some how built structures within caves and called them home. To my eyes these were amazing achievements in hot and hostile environs.
Something about the Alhambra made me reflect on other ancient dwellings.
Earlier in 2010 I spent a week running around New Mexico. Why? Easy, I was totally ignorant about the State: its history, its people, its geography. Spending time driving around within its borders I learned a lot. One lesson was that many different indigenous people have called home the territory we now refer to as New Mexico. These people left behind evidence that they once occupied the area: their dwellings.
The early peoples lived in many dwelling types: underground, above ground in structures, etc. However, the most interesting to me were their dwellings in cliffs. Not just a rare exception, cliff dwellings can be found throughout the region. Most were occupied several hundred years before the Alhambra was established but, like the great structures of Granada, these structures impress you and cause you to wonder.
Valencia had great art. When combined with early morning light and a bit of post-production trickery you can create some fun results. Kelsey and I took this on our dawn stroll to pick-up our rental car.
Courtney is spending the Fall semester in Spain. She’d been there three months when Thanksgiving break came along which gave us the opportunity to go as a family to visit her. Off we flew.
The big picture was to drive from Valencia to Sevilla along the Mediterranean coast. Courtney would fly to spend the weekend with us in Valencia and the following weekend we would join her in Sevilla for a tour of her “home town”. Along the way we’d see a bit of Spain and tour some highlights of the south. Wonderful trip but second only to seeing Courtney was the Alhambra.
My strongest impressions were of the extend and the precision of the ornate architecture. That it was perched atop a hill with amazing vistas in most directions was another of it’s strong characters. Having been built over such a long period of time, having survived through to the present, having avoided near disaster on several occasions, it really is something special.
There are other reasons to visit Granada but none comes close to visiting this amazing mash of structures from the Moors and Spaniards. The Alhambra is amazing to have survived and I’m lucky to have seen its wonders.
Under the shadow of the Watergate and hidden behind a boat rental store you can find “Mile 0” of the C&O Canal. Here it drops into the Potomac which opens onto the Chesapeake and into the Atlantic Ocean.
Canal barges were pulled at four miles per hour but there was a time when people were betting they were the best option for moving goods, certainly better than those new-fangled trains. Hard to believe but in their infancy trains were slow and dangerous and didn’t have much of a hauling capacity. For a small window in history, the riverboat canal system and the railroad competed for supremacy. Seems hard to believe today.
America’s manifest destiny was to grow, to expand west. In post-colonial times this meant expand into the Ohio valley where fertile land and natural resources were bountiful. Critical to this expansion were communication and transportation and this meant connecting the east coast with the Ohio River. In the late 1700s this stirred the development of the C&O Canal along the Potomac River to link the Chesapeake Bay with the Ohio River. America was moving west.
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