August 4 – Idaho, Montana, and Yellowstone, Wyoming

Today we left Ogden, UT, somewhat early and drove almost all day, trying to get to Yellowstone by evening.

We spent a lot of time driving in Idaho.

And a tiny bit of time driving in Montana.

We saw a bison, just walking on the side of the road.

And we stopped for the Mountain Man Rendezvous (Public Welcome!) to ogle and shop.

Then we made it to Yellowstone! This was a crowning achievement, because we had all agreed back at Arches that although we were tired and a little out of motivation to last two more weeks, we did indeed want very much to see Yellowstone. The Grand Canyon was one thing, but it felt like the two together would be a pair of epic summer coolness.

We paused a few times on our way from the West Entrance to our campground at Grant Village.

First we stopped at Fountain Paint Pot.

(holy crap geyser!)

Then we stopped at Biscuit Basin!

And the last stop before we headed for the campground (around 4:30, predicted eruption 5:23), was Old Faithful.

We were suitably impressed.

July 30 – Canyons and Flagstaff

Wednesday morning we got up, packed the car again, and went to the lodge to stare at the canyon some more. Dad and I rode the bikes (thus making them meaningful and useful and worth bringing!) to the lodge, and the road we’d traveled in the dark two nights earlier turned out to be RIGHT on the edge of the canyon, shielded by some trees (people aren’t in danger of driving off a cliff). It was quite something. We got hot chocolate and shopped in the gift store. I got me a gigantic poster for my dorm room. Then we went and sat on the “sun porch” and looked at the canyon.

(I won’t trouble you with more pictures)

(okay, maybe one more)

Then we left, to drive back to Flagstaff to spend the night. We stopped for a brief frolic in a meadow, created by an ice age glacier.

I took pictures of flowers while Sarah chased a deer.

Maybe 50 or 60 miles back towards the main route 89 south to Flagstaff, we stopped, dad and I got the bikes out again, and rode them six or seven miles downhill. It was astounding. Just picture whizzing downhill on a bike, yellow reflective vest flapping, sun shining, rounding a corner, and seeing something like this…

It was worth the sun and wind burn.

Also we stopped at a scenic overlook and bought some pretty Navajo jewelry.

We stopped once to stare at the desert and wonder at the sky and considered the sheer enormity of the country. You don’t get this kind of sky back East.

We stopped again for lunch at Lee’s Ferry on Glen Canyon. The Colorado River flowed beneath us, and we didn’t really have perspective on the size until these boats passed. Man is the measure of all things.

We got to Flagstaff in the afternoon, found a KOA Kampground (sic) and set up for the night. Dad and I went grocery shopping, and then we tried to make turkey burgers and baked potatoes. The burgers were great, but the fire wasn’t hot enough for the potatoes, so we ate salad and were content.

July 28/29/30 – The Grand Canyon

There isn’t a whole lot to say about the Grand Canyon that really does it justice. Nor will the pictures really suffice. Every time we looked at it, it was different (probably why there are so many pictures). It became understandable why people would just show up and stare at it. We stared. We camped in a sweet, quite, well-forested little camp ground on the North Rim. A short walk down the road and bam, big hole in the ground. So we’ll take a little turn from our regularly scheduled blog post (which isn’t so regular, and hardly ever scheduled, shut up) for a gigantic slideshow.

Sunday, July 20, 2008 (Tom)

Sunday, July 20, 2008

We have had a series of pleasant, yet eventless days, here in the land of the lotus-eaters, where each day is much like the one before, and prospects for tomorrow are not much different than today.

I am exaggerating, of course, but staying in motel rooms is not half as much fun as roving the country like gypsies so the ennui is palpable around here, despite specific activities each day to keep ourselves entertained.

Friday was travel day, as we left Austin and went first, back to Rockdale to scavenge the Cacafuego for gear and clothing that we had been missing during our first hiatus in Austin. We drove from there to San Antonio, and along the way we saw a roadrunner and longhorn cattle, neither of which we managed to photograph, and we stopped for lunch at Sonic, which is an old-fashioned car-window fast food place that, apparently, everybody in the country takes for granted except us easterners. We also stopped at a farmer’s market and bought hand crafted goat cheese from a toothless old texan in a straw stetson hat.

Our hotel in San Antonio was a bit of a dive, in the shadow of the interstate, but the price was right, and we were only about ten block out from the downtown tourist district, so we could walk back and forth and get our exercise with only the occassional detour around a wino or two on the way. The Alamo is downtown, surrounded by gift shops and office buildings, much like Liberty Hall in Philadelphia, of Graceland in Memphis, and it is oddly unnerving to stand and contemplate the solemn history of the place with neon and chaser lights behind your back. There is a plaza there, with great gobs of human activity surging back and forth, including kids with plastic light sabers and sombreros, as well as belligerent street preachers and two, or maybe even three, arch-rival ghost tours who would, I think, gladly make of each other fodder for next season’s spiel.

And, it was HOT. Siesta time is a serious business when the sun burns down over a hundred degrees from two to five pm. We didn’t notice if all of San Antonio shuts down for siesta, but we certainly did. In the hotel with curtains drawn, naps being optional, and then out again after six pm. The first night we visited the Alamo, then dined on the Riverwalk, which is a long maze of meandering walks along the canals and channels of the San Antonio River as is cuts through downtown, lined with restaurants and cafe tables, and with tour boats and dinner boats plying trade up and down the waterways. It is pretty, but the food was tourist grade, much as we expected.

My class at ACA

On Saturday, I got up and made my escape to Alamo City Aikido, the local ASU dojo, in the hopes of a little exercise and a change of pace, since I haven’t been training much at all this year, and it is about time I got back into it. I had packed by aikido gear for just such an unlikely eventuality, that I would find myself in a town with a dojo, and with time on my hands, and it turned out that the family could do without me for a few hours after all. The local sensei was an alum of the Washington DC dojo, so he knew my teachers, and told me that I was welcome to visit, but he would not be there, and that he suspected I would outrank any of his local students and would I mind teaching class? I ended up doing just that, which was a little uncomfortable for me since I felt out of shape, but we all had fun, I guess, and they bought me lunch.

Stephen Spielberg works with Angelina Jolie on her characterization of the title role in THE SOPHIA LOREN STORY

Ann and the girls were out touring the Alamo interior and getting lunch, so we all rendezvoused for siesta and a swim under the freeway, then went out for the evening to first tour some of the other old missions, then dinner (away from the Riverwalk), then a ghost tour from one of the snipey, fractuous, and frankly-creepy-wouldn’t-feel-comfortable-passing-him-on-the-sidewalk tour guides. They passed out infra-red thermo-meters (laser pointers), magnetic field detectors (stud finders), and dowsing rods (bent coat hangers on a spool) and tramped us around downtown pointing them at things and listening to stories about the old spanish garrisons and vigilantes and such. It was mildly amusing and moderately irritating at the same time, but it gave us something to do.

Lunch in Boerne (Bear Moon Cafe)

This morning we shook the dust of that town from our car tires and had another travel day, this time to the Texas Hill Country, which is much like the Texas flatlands, only hillier. We spent a pleasant hour or two in the crafts and antiques town of Boerne, and had luch at the local coffeehouse, with a homey character and a sophisticated menu. I had Yucatan chicken and lime soup, as an example, and I hope to recreate the recipe someday.

Now we are in Fredericksburg, another lovely town of arts, cafes and wineries. I had small tastings at two wineries this afternoon, within two blocks of each other, and there are at least three more further down Main Street to hit tomorrow. The German heritage of the place apparently is responsible for the town policy of encouraging open containers of beer and wine on the sidewalks,which is, in my opinion a very civilized way to live, at least until someone puts an eye out, or something.

Dinner this evening was crackers and toothless texan goat cheese, with a jar of local jalapeno jelly for counterpoint, with bananas and Nutella for dessert, enjoyed in the comfort of the Super 8 Motel. We are all content with a quiet evening tonight.

July 17 – another day in Austin

In the morning, we ate cereal in the hotel room and set out to see what we could find to entertain us. Our first goal was Barton Springs in Zilker Park, but we took a detour along the way to visit the Umlauf Sculpture Garden. From the website: Charles Umlauf, a prolific and internationally known sculptor, created works ranging in style from realistic and abstract expressionism to lyrical abstraction during his career. In 1985 he and his wife, Angeline Allen Umlauf, gave their home and studio with sculptures, drawings and paintings to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum.

Then we proceeded to Barton Springs, where we discovered that the amazing, natural pool fed by spring water was in fact closed on Thursdays from 9am to 7pm for cleaning.

So I took a picture of this squirrel as we pondered our next move.

We decided to ride the ‘Dillo around town. It was a fun, air conditioned, free way to see more of the city than we would on foot, and it gave us time to get hungry for lunch.

Which we ate at Flip Happy Crepes near where we had parked. The best thing about Austin is the outdoor society. It’s warm enough year round that these little Air Stream food stands can exist happily, at least from spring to late fall. In Seattle, or Portland, or Baltimore, this would be impossible (too rainy, too humid, respectively). But in Austin, it’s perfect.

We ordered our crepes and sat at a table under a bright red awning, with a local, Josh, who told us all the best places to eat and/or listen to music.

Also he agreed to hold the sock.

After lunch, we got sno balls and we headed back east and south to Lamar Street to hit up some bead stores and a spa. I bought beads for the tunic, and mom bought beads for lots of things (see mom’s Austin post).

Sarah had a blueberry sno ball.

Then we had to kill time before Barton Springs would be open, so mom and Sarah went back to the hotel, and dad and I strolled down 6th Avenue, which had a few weird antique stores and some higher end clothing stores, but nothing as interesting as SoCo.

Around 5:45, dad and I started to make our way back to Barton Springs. We rode the ‘Dillo for part of it, and stopped for an iced coffee (me) and a beer (him), and arrived at Zilker Park just shy of seven.

Barton Springs is a natural pool formed by two springs. Now the stream is diverted around the pool so the pool stays fresh from the spring and joins the stream at the downstream end.

We swam for about an hour. It was cold, and the bottom was slippery with moss and algae, and it wasn’t at all like the ocean. It was a good time.

The dressing rooms: reminiscent of a bygone era.

Then we made our way to the Alamo Drafthouse Theater for Wall-E. The movie was good, but the theater was the real attraction, it turned out. They played old Pixar shorts before the movie, lots of them, and they served food and drinks in our seats! It was like a tiny restaurant inside a movie theater.

I was amused.

July 16 – Austin is cool.

In the morning, we heard some more news about the Cacafuego. She had radiator and coolant system damage, but they needed to see if she had any engine damage, and she would be in the shop for a couple of days at least. So we rented a car with the intention of driving to Austin for a night or two.

The Enterprise station was located in Taylor, TX, 27 miles from Rockdale, and at that distance they no longer “pick you up,” because gas is too goddamn expensive. So mom set out on her moped for an epic 27 mile ride into Taylor to go get the car. When she arrived in Taylor, however, she discovered that the car wasn’t going to be there until noon, and it being approximately eleven, she had some time to kill.

Also apparently in Texas, if it has a motor you need to be licensed to drive it. Also you’re not allowed to park on the sidewalks, regardless of pedestrian-to-sidewalk ratio. And that cop was pretty cranky anyway.

Dad, Sarah and I checked out of the motel at 10:30 (and by “checked out” I mean “handed the key card to one of the owners as she passed in her housekeeping duties”) and walked along the highway, loaded with our laundry bags of (clean!) clothes to the restaurant at the Best Western next door.

We ate a little, but mostly just sat for almost two hours, and no one really minded. I even finished sock #1.

But finally, finally, mom came back with the car, and we drove to Austin, where we found first a ridiculous spread of malls and chain stores before we hit real downtown Austin. Imagine I-83 from Timonium to the city, but entirely surrounded by strip malls and Wal-Marts and hundreds of Best Buys.

Oh and I forgot about this scorpion that jumped on Sarah while we were loading the car with things from the camper that we’d need for a few days:

Anyway, downtown and south-side Austin were really very nice. We crossed the river into the cool and interesting south-side and found a cafe—Flipnotics (link)—where we had well deserved iced coffees and wifi. Apparently the whole city of Austin (area limited, probably only the cool section) has wifi, so we were able to pick it up most everywhere.

My goal for the day was Hill County Weavers, which we found very easily in the awesome part of South Congress Street. I shopped happily for yarn (they had a LOT of yarn, rooms and rooms full to the top) and then we proceeded on to shop and stroll northwards on South Congress. There were plenty of fun stores to look in.

The south side of town is the funky, weird, hip, college-tinted side of town. It feels a bit like Portland, or San Francisco, or Philadelphia, with its college students and it’s anything-goes attitude towards fashion. It was fun. There were lots of stores to play in.

We had dinner at Guero’s, which was delicious and satisfyingly tex-mex. I convinced the waitress to take a picture with the (second) sock, which she enjoyed, I’m sure.

Then we set off towards the river, to watch the bats come out.

Austin, Texas, hosts the largest urban colony of bats in the world. The bats live underneath the Congress Street bridge, and come out every night to hunt. They are Mexican free-tailed bats. They are quite cool. And squeaky, as you might expect bats to be. We could hear them chittering for at least half an hour before they began to emerge at sunset.

Also I taught Sarah how to knit, and started her on a hat with yarn and needles obtained at Hill Country Weavers.

And so we ended our day by driving quite near forever out to our hotel, got lost, and finally made it at 10:30.

Days 3, 4, 5 – Lake Norman, Asheville, and a little Tennessee

July 10th – Lake Norman and Asheville, NC

We spent the night of the ninth into the tenth with the Martins at their lakehouse on Lake Norman. Jim Martin (jr) was a high school friend and college roomate of Tom’s, for reference, and his parents Jim Sr. and Dotty Martin are the former governor and first lady of North Carolina.

In the morning after breakfast, we were treated to swimming in the lake, being dragged around behind the boat, and rolling about in the inflatable hamster ball.

After lunch, we packed up the camper in preparation to leave, only to discover that one rear tire was half-flat. Dad and Jim reinflated the tire in a very manly fashion, and we finally made it out of the driveway around 1:30pm.

We headed west towards Asheville and drove through a thunderstorm along route 40, near the Smokey Mountains.

But the rain cleared by the time we reached Asheville, North Carolina, and we arrived at the Biltmore Estates to sun and a cool breeze. Since we had arrived after 3 o’clock, we were allowed to come back the next day, and so we spent the afternoon exploring River Bend Farm and the Winery at Biltmore. Just as a reference towards the size of the Biltmore estate, the drive from the entrance to the Winery was three miles. Biltmore’s estates were landscaped by the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, who also designed New York’s Central Park, and Baltimore’s Roland Park(!).

The sock snuck into a few pictures. To the left of the picture is the center stable, where the horses would be kept. To the right above the sock is the creamery, where they sell delicious ice cream made locally from local cows.

Here is the sock with working blacksmith, Doc Cudd, Jr.

River Bend Farm was a working farm on the Biltmore Estates. The unique(!) octagonal shape allowed for the horses to be stabled in the barn in the center, while still leaving plenty of room for storage of equipment and goods. When we were there, filling the outer rim of the octagon were displays of farm equipment and demonstrations of butter churning. There was also a blacksmith’s shop, where Doc Cudd was working, and a woodworking shop.

Edith Vanderbilt, George W. Vanderbilt’s wife, was believer in ensuring that all young men and women were proficient in a number of skills, so River Bend Farm was also used as a summer camp of sorts, where young men learned woodworking and farm skills, and young women learned to sew and embroider.

Those of us who already know how to knit, rode the tractor.

After the farm we went to the winery. The winery at Biltmore used to be the Dairy Farm, where the cows were kept and milked, and where the milk was processed into drinkable milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream. After the Biltmore estate opened as an attraction to the public, the dairy farm wasn’t bringing in enough revenue, so the converted it into a winery in 1985.

Both sections of the winery—fermentation and casking and bottling—were open for viewing, and made for a very interesting, real-time display.

Unfortunately, North Carolina is not the appropriate climate for growing grapes for wine, so the wine was (apparently) not very good.

So we returned to the farmyard, which was closed, but we harassed the chickens and goats anyway.

We learned that angora goats enjoy having their heads scratched, and that their horns are warm because they have a blood supply. We knew this in theory, but experiencing it was something different.

Finally around seven we drove to Lake Powhatan and set up camp for the night. Dinner was hardboiled eggs and Tostitos. Fortunately we were not very hungry, probably from the ice cream at River Bend Farm.

I personally was a little overcome by the cuteness of the situation. Being a former Girl Scout, I am expert at rigging up tarps. Yes indeed.

July 11th – The Biltmore Estates and Asheville, NC

The morning of July 11th we got up and packed up enough that we could change the tire on the Cacafuego. Success. Nothing else could possibly go wrong (so far, so good). At Sarah’s behest, we breakfasted at Waffle House, where the food was cheap and the blueberries were chewy and the server was irritatingly attentive.

Then we took the flat tire to Firestone to get it repaired and drove to Biltmore. This time we went to the chateau itself.

George W. Vanderbilt’s grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, made his money in shipping (earning him the nickname “Commodore”) and then railroad stock. When he died, he left a fortune of an incredible one million dollars ($1,000,000,000). His son, George’s father, doubled the fortune in ten years to two million dollars. Fortunately for them, the modern equivalent is something close to ninety-six billion dollars.

So George, at age 30, was an incredibly eligible bachelor, and he bought a lot of land, built himself a French style chateau and called it Biltmore. The house itself is about 4 acres inside.

We toured Biltmore for hours. The house has four stories of living space for the family and guests, not including the basement. It has 255 rooms; 43 bathrooms; dozens of bedrooms; a banquet hall; a breakfast room (for lunch); the Winter Garden; numerous sitting rooms; a salon with Napoleon’s chess set; a bachelor’s wing which includes a smoking room, a billiards room, and a hunting room; female servants quarters on the fourth floor, with a common/sitting room for the servants; male servants and grooms quarters over the stable and carriage house; its own telephone system; full electricity; three or four separate kitchens for separate tasks (pastry, roasting, and main kitchen); a hand-wash laundry room; a machine laundry room; a drying room; a bowling alley; an indoor swimming pool with underwater lighting; a gymnasium; and scores of changing rooms for the guests. I may be forgetting some things.

The view from a rear porch on the ground floor:

After we had toured the top four floors, we had to go sit and rest before we tackled the basement. We sat under a tree out front near the carriage house and admired some of Sarah’s drawings (pictures are prohibited inside the house). [click to enlarge; they're wonderful drawings]

After a tour of the basement, Sarah and I headed up the hill to visit Diana under her cupola, and Ann and Tom took a short jaunt in the garden.

Then we drove back through the Biltmore estate to Biltmore Village, where I got to do some yarn shopping at Yarn Paradise. Their selection was huge, and it was wonderful. But we were all tired, so after we got to check our emails sitting out on the lawn by the RV in front of a tea room, we drove on back to Lake Powhatan, had dinner, played with a fire, and went to bed. Mom and I slept out in the tent, which on top of one and a half thick sleeping bags each was perfectly comfortable, if a bit hard, on the gravel.

Today, July 12th, we drove all day, stopped for lunch at Poppy’s organic grocer slash farmers market, and kept on driving out of North Carolina into Tennessee. We arrived in Chattanooga, TN, and found ourselves an RV hookup at Raccoon Mountain. Hooray!

The RV park has wireless, and electricity, so we are treating ourselves to air conditioning, a refrigerator that cools instead of merely stores, and recharging all of our copious electronics.

Days 1 & 2 – Skyline Drive & Lake Norman

So we set off Tuesday, July 8th, after emptying the fridge of things that might perish (by eating them), and saying goodbye to the kitties. We packed all of our last accoutrement, clothing, pens, books, and amusement, and set off down Route 70 on our grand adventure.

Our first stop was the Washington monument outside Boonsboro, MD, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This Washington monument was built in 1827 by the citizens of Boonsboro, in honor of George Washington, entirely out of granite found in the area. During the Civil War, the tower was used as a lookout and signalling post. From the top of the tower we could see Antietam battlefield, and we could pretend to see Pennsylvania.

The Washington Monument State Park also contains a small portion of the Appalacian Trail. We passed one through hiker who made a crack about our camper cooling off (he was right– time number two that the radiator boiled), but got pretty excited anyway about being on the trail even a little bit.

We left the Washington monument and drove on to Loft Mountain in the Shenandoah Valley State Park (with a brief detour to visit Dinosaur Land).

I spent the rest of the day enjoying all the effects of a good case of food poisoning (disguised initially as car sickness). Fortunately for the fun of the trip, I did discover it was food poisoning (boyfriend and friend we ate lunch with also sick all night). I’m just glad it was the guacamole and not the motion of the caravan– the driving will last 35 days, the guacamole only about 2.

(campsite at Loft Mountain)

In the morning we got up and ate a bit of breakfast, went for 5 minute showers at the camp store (delightfully hot and sadly short), and drove south. We saw signs for FOAM HENGE, and saw it as we drove past (yup, looks like Stone Henge, made of foam), but failed to go back to marvel and take pictures.

Instead, we went onwards to Natural Bridge, Virginia.

Natural Bridge was known by the natives before the to-be-Americans showed up. It was carved out of limestone by Cedar Creek, which is a tributary of James River, and stands at a height of 215 feet above the riverbed. The river itself is rather quiet and unassuming, but limestone is notoriously easy to carve, and well, it’s been done over a long time.

Thomas Jefferson built himself a cabin nearby the Natural Bridge to entertain guests and show this phenomenon off. George Washington carved his initials in the rock on the far side (from the walkway) of the bridge.

The walkway continues on to a saltpeter cave and “The Lost River” and Lace Falls. Still in recovery from my adventure the day before, I sat on a bench and admired Cedar Creek.

The rest of the family continued up the path to admire Lace Falls.

After Natural Bridge we made more or less a beeline for Lake Norman, North Carolina. We stopped at a grocery store to feed me Gatorade and again at a Farmers’ Market for spices and dried fruit and so on, but arrived in Lake Norman around 4:30 pm, and spent the evening socializing.

Now we are being called to dinner, consisting of chicken, grilled corn, and various incarnations of baked beans with bacon.