Category Archives: Named Trip

Indianapolis ’14

Posted on by

On Good Friday, we loaded ourselves into my car and drove to Indianapolis by way of Lafayette, Indiana, and spent the night and much of the next day in Indy. We walked, we ate, we saw things. (There’s got to be a concise Latin translation for that: vidi would be last instead of first, though it won’t be as snappy.)

Years earlier I’d heard about the Eiteljorg Museum, which is downtown Indianapolis, and since then it had been filed in my large, rambling mental file called New Places to Go. That’s actually a large set of files, but the Eiteljorg had the advantage of being nearby. But far enough for an overnight trip.

Naturally, we hit the road later than planned, and so stopped to eat a late lunch in Lafayette, where we spent time wandering around the main street in town, which is helpfully named Main St. Later, just off I-65 in northwest Indianapolis, we rambled around Eagle Creek Park, which is one of the larger municipal parks in the nation – 3,900 acres of forest, plus some lakes.

Considering our arrival in Indy late in the afternoon, Eiteljorg had to wait until the next morning. After a few hours in the museum on Easter Saturday, we set out on foot in downtown Indianapolis, first along ordinary sidewalks, later along the canal. It was a bright spring day, a pleasantly warm, and so a lot of people were out, probably more than many Midwestern downtowns see on Saturdays. Looks like the redevelopment of the canal has been a success. After a late lunch, we headed back to metro Chicago, arriving back before dark.

A simple but interesting trip. And I got to see a statue of a vice president.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Vice President Thomas Hendricks, that is, who was also a governor of Indiana. He was 21st Vice President of the United States from early 1885 to late 1885, during Cleveland’s first term. The 19th century, of course, was hard on U.S. vice presidents. Hendricks went to bed one night in November 1885 and never woke up.

Indiana CapitolHis statue is on the grounds of the Indiana State Capitol. Oddly, while I was taking these pictures, a Japanese tourist asked me to take his picture with Hendricks in the background, using his camera, so I did. Maybe he’s a U.S. vice presidential enthusiast.

NC Early ’81

Posted on by

The demographics of this visual gag is a bell curve based on age. The bulge of peak understanding would be roughly between age 45 and 55. For my part, I laughed right away. It also reminded me of the early ’80s.

My spring break trips during the period weren’t particularly decadent. Downright wholesome, sometimes. I’m glad I wrote this down. I barely remember most of it.

March 4, 1981

Carolina Beach State Park. After dark, we cooked and ate dinner. The campstove was working, compared with the disappointment of the previous night, because we read the directions this time. We were alone in the park, which was a little spooky there under the big pines, but it wasn’t that cold, so on the whole we figured it would be good to sleep outside in our sleeping bags. Unless it rained.

Shortly after crawling into our bags for the night, which were warm and comfortable, we felt a few drops. Then a few more. Then some bigger ones. Then boom! and a flash of lightning. So much for warm and comfortable, or at least dry. We retreated to the car and didn’t come out until morning. Neal had the driver’s side of the front, I had the passenger’s side, with my head up against one of the sleeping bags next to the window, and Stuart had the back seat, which wasn’t much bigger, considering the everything stowed back there.

Naturally, it was hard to sleep. Instead we talked about this and that, including stories about other trips we’d taken, or other times when things hadn’t gone according to plan. I told them about how three years ago exactly, Ellen had shattered Nancy’s glass-top table [or rather, Nancy’s mother’s table] by trying to bound across it during a party we were all attending. Eventually we did sleep, though I can’t call it restful.

The next morning [March 5] the campground was completely soaked. We left in short order. We a found a series of covered tables at Hugh MacRae County Park in Sea Breeze (New Hanover County) and stopped for an hour there to make breakfast. I also put together the kite we’d bought on Bodie Is. The sun was out and temperatures were rising, so we went to Wrightsville Beach for a while.

Neal and Stuart threw a Frisbee around while I flew the kite. It took a while to get it airborne, but the wind was up (and temps in the 60s, so pleasant), and I got it flying very high over the ocean. To keep it stable, though, I kept having to give it more and more line. When I tried to bring the kite in, the thing got unstable and looped until I gave it more line again. Eventually the kite broke in mid-air and I crashed it onto the beach. Should have crashed it into the water, which would have been more dramatic. While it flew I enjoyed its motions against the partly cloudy sky, wind blowing and waves making their back-and-forth sound.

Toward noon, dark clouds returned, and we headed back to Durham mostly on US 421 by way of historic Wilmington and later Spivey’s Corner, which I’d only ever heard of because of Johnny Carson. For lunch we paused at a roadside table in Clinton to eat hot dogs and so forth, and an old farm dog befriended us for our food. We gave him an extra weenie.

GTT Fall 2013

Posted on by

Last Wednesday I spent the afternoon in downtown Dallas, walking around on a typically hot September day. I was visiting the second floor of a building – more about that later – when sirens blared in the street below. The windows sported heavy drapes, but it wasn’t hard to pull them back for a peek. On the street below was the aftermath of a traffic accident without apparent injuries, but also a little hard to understand.

So how did that little car wedge itself under that large truck? Other witnesses marveled at it as well. It would be one thing if the car was at a diagonal to the truck, which would mean that it rammed itself underneath. But the car’s aligned so evenly with the truck. Did the truck somehow park itself on top of the car? How could that have happened?

Just another little mystery. I went to Texas on the 12th and came back on the 19th. It was a trip but not a vacation. I spent time with family and friends, but I also continued working – all I need for that is a laptop, phone, and Internet connection. I drove a fair amount, too, because I flew to Dallas, drove to San Antonio by way of Austin, and later returned to Dallas for the flight home.

For a few hours on a couple of days, I managed to see a few things. New things, in fact: a large, immaculate Austin cemetery that I’ve known about for years but never visited; a music venue I’d never heard of in a familiar part of San Antonio; some small to mid-sized museums in Dallas, a pleasant bar in the same city, and a large church there, too.

Branson ’12

Posted on by

Since the previous BTST broke down, I’ve been a few places, worked a lot, voted in an election that a lot people believed important (and maybe I did, too), even watched “The Great Vegetable Rebellion” on a whim because I saw it was available on Hulu, and because it’s Irwin Allen at his best.

To kick off November, I took a trip to Branson. Not sure how the AP feels about Branson as a dateline, but I think it should stand alone: Branson, rather than Branson, Missouri, so famed has the place become. I’ve heard that I visited Branson when I was small, and when Branson was small, in the mid-60s, but remember nothing of that. En route elsewhere in 2001, we drove into town, ate lunch, and took away vague impressions. Mostly, I remember liking Yakov Smirnoff’s billboards lining the road between Springfield and Branson.

So this time might as well have been a first visit, even though it was my third. It was a busy press trip. Being Branson, that meant seeing more musical-variety-comedy shows than I might see in many ordinary years. In fact, I realized in the middle of my stay that when the variety show died out from television, it was reborn in Branson. The shows I saw included singing, dancing, visual gags, bad jokes, good jokes, sometimes lavish sets and costumes, adaptations of classic theater and movies and the Bible, and even an aerialist – who played violin during her aerial act, which I’ve never seen anyone else do, not even in a circus. We also met a handful of entertainers in person, namely a couple of Lennon Sisters, as well as a fellow whose act is a Neil Diamond tribute.

I noticed some relics, too. Saints’ relics aren’t what they used to be, since we tend to prefer celebrity relics in our time. At the Andy Williams’ Moon River Grill, the late entertainers’ gold records are on walls. That includes, of course, the LP Moon River (pictured), but also the Love Theme from The Godfather, among many others. That’s a movie I hadn’t realized had a love theme, much less one sung by Andy Williams. Its actual title, I’ve discovered, is “Speak Softly Love (or You’ll Sleep With the Fishes).” (Parenthesis added by me.)

Branson wasn’t all live entertainment. During my three full days there, I also managed to ride a train made of vintage railroad cars a short way into Arkansas, wander around the Silver Dollar City theme park, take the tour of Marvel Cave, and visit the surprisingly interesting College of the Ozarks – but not, unfortunately, see the Beverly Hillbillies’ truck, which is there. Branson also sports some museums, and I went to three of them – one about a maritime disaster, another about war, and a third, smaller one about Branson and environs.

On foot one day, I checked out the newly developed downtown riverfront and its attendant open-air retail space, and not far away examined a store that called itself a Five and Dime and had an usually large assortment of merchandise, over and above Branson-oriented gimcracks and gewgaws. Those can be found everywhere in great profusion.