I have decided that if heaven exists, it should be a lot like The Homestead.
The Homestead is a resort that sits nestled among the Appalachians in Hot Springs, Virginia. It is in fact a very old resort. The first building for visitors was constructed near the hot springs in 1766, when we were not even a nation. In 1766, it was more like a fancy hunting lodge. In the intervening two hundred plus years, the resort has grown. It now caters to skiers, conventioneers looking for an unusual place to congregate and people with lots of money and leisure. For the rest of us, if we have some money burning a hole in our pockets, we can escape for a few days and live the life of the British aristocracy.
One thing is for sure, The Homestead is not an inexpensive place to visit, even during off-season. My wife and I just returned from spending two nights at The Homestead. The first few days of March are as empty as The Homestead probably ever gets. I would be surprised if ten percent of its eight hundred plus rooms were full. It turned out the dearth of people was something of a blessing, as the place is often packed during prime season and on the weekends. If you need a massage or even two, chances are you can be worked in without much problem during the first week of March. Nevertheless, do bring plenty of money because maintaining the high quality of the resort does not come cheap.
Over two centuries the resort has metastasized, in a good way. It’s sort of like being on a cruise ship, except the meals and most activities are not free. At least you do not have to worry about becoming seasick. There seems like a million things you can do at The Homestead, and most of them cost extra and include spending the day in the spa, having the kinks worked out of your muscles, skiing, falconry or playing golf. Perhaps the best thing to do is simply relax. A good place to relax is in The George Washington Room where, if so inclined, you can browse through an eclectic selection of books housed in cherry wood cabinets or play chess or checkers. Based on my experience, it is an excellent place to stretch out in a chaise lounge and snooze for an hour or two. Moreover, you won’t have to worry about CNN or Fox News playing on a nearby television to disturb your slumbers.
The Great Hall, the main entrance to the hotel, is truly grand. It comes with sixteen-foot ceilings, roman columns and plenty of comfortable chairs that invite intimate conversation. On cold days you can sit next to one of the many fireplaces, feel their heat and hear the wood crackle. Some of the more nerdy bring their laptops. At least in March, as a gentle wet snow fell outside, the Great Hall invited only peaceful contemplation. The Great Hall becomes a bit grander between three and four in the afternoon. This is tea time. A pianist sits down at the grand piano while waiters and waitresses (in black uniforms, of course) ask you very politely if you would like tea. A few minutes later, they return with a large silver tray laden with tea and tea biscuits, which you can sip like a proper British aristocrat, adding cream and a dash of lemon if you prefer.
With only two nights and with winter weather making most outdoor activities inadvisable, we spent most of our time indoors. Getting anywhere was an adventure because you have to traverse numerous long hallways and staircases. This resort is not for the vertically challenged, although there are elevators you can take if needed. In early March, the hallways were mostly eerily silent. However, we did eventually find the spa (where my wife enjoyed a Swedish massage), the exercise room (where I spent two hours working out), the bowling alley (where we played pool and I lost twice), the movie theater (showing mostly G-rated family films) as well as many other rooms and alcoves that range from ornate to intimate. In them you could relax, look at old paintings on the wall, or lapse into a comfy chair. Dark paneling is de rigueur at The Homestead.
Overall, the standards are quite high at The Homestead. Most rooms are standard size but some suites are available. Our room came with an exceptionally comfortable king sized bed and a very large flat panel television on which standard definition cable channels looked somewhat stretched and silly. Perhaps the high definition channels will show up in time. Regardless, we rarely have slept so well in a hotel bed, but our sleep was also enhanced by the relatively few hotel occupants. For the most part, the hotel is an example of how well you can preserve and modernize a massive but aged resort if you spend enough money and can give it enough attention. Clearly, there is no lack of money at this resort. The only mystery is how they keep the place so immaculate. I imagine the cleaning crew mostly works only at night because they were certainly absent during the day.
Unsurprisingly, you will find excellent dining at The Homestead. You had best bring some fancy duds with you, because they won’t let just anyone into The Dining Room for dinner. Gentlemen are expected to wear shoes, a collared shirt and a sport coat or suit. Don’t expect a salad bar, but you can order salad as a second course if you prefer. Do expect to find the staff impeccably groomed, a three-piece band playing button down music (show tunes were popular last night) and modestly sized entrees of very high quality. For those with looser feet than mine, there is also a modest-sized dance floor to enjoy.
Breakfast in the same room is much less formal and more pedestrian, with a large breakfast bar full of the foods you crave. Even with all the usual temptations like eggs and hash browns, I found the fresh fruit alone to have been worth the $25 cost of the meal. The taste of this morning’s fresh strawberries, pineapple and blueberries still linger on my tongue.
We could have easily spent a week at The Homestead, but we are not yet independently wealthy. Between the wonderful but expensive meals, extras like massages, various resort packages you can choose from, the dubious “activity fee” and the room rate, a couple can spend $500 a day without any problem, and it is easy to spend considerably more. However, if you have the money, you should feel no qualms about spending it because The Homestead offers no compromises in providing a first class resort experience. While the money holds out, you can buy yourself the sort of lifestyle you have always wanted but could not quite afford.
The Homestead has hosted over twenty presidents as well as celebrities that seem countless (many of whom can be found in pictures on the limitless walls), but also has its dark side. Most recently, on March 21, 2009, Beacher F. Hackney, a resort employee, allegedly shot and killed two of his supervisors. He is currently #1 on America’s Most Wanted fugitives and is still at large.
We would have liked to have more time to spend at The Homestead, but this short mini-vacation amounted to a quick getaway to reconnect and de-stress. We look forward to a return trip as soon as our bank account recovers.
March 3rd, 2010 at 05:28pm
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Mark |
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Tags: Hot Springs Virginia, The Homestead
One of the downsides of traveling on your employer’s dime is you rarely get to choose a decent airline. Since most of my business travel takes me to Denver, I am usually on one of our contract flights between Denver and Washington Dulles, which means I am on United Airlines.
United is one of these airlines which, if I were to grade it, would rank somewhere between a C and a D. Sadly, most of the domestic airlines here in the United States would rank between a C and a D. The good part about flying United is you pretty much know what you are going to get. Since my employer will not pay for business class, I will be back in economy. Since I am six foot two inches, I know my knees will be rubbing up against the seat in front of me. Trying to check in, whether online or at the airport, and I will be nagged to purchase “Economy Plus” seating. Because they can, United will also charge for bags: $15 for the first bag, $25 for each additional bag. These baggage fees have become quite popular and essentially are a way to raise your ticket prices without broadcasting it.
Fly United and you expect that the airplane is likely to be dirty, except in business and first class. If you want a meal, expect to pay $9 or so, assuming they are offering one, and do not expect it to be large or particularly memorable. Otherwise, all you get is a beverage service. Movies are scattershot, and generally available only on the longer flights, but at least they are free. Their wide-body aircraft generally have personal TV screens where you can select from some canned entertainment; otherwise, you are left to your own amusement. While their skies are not exactly friendly, they are not overtly hostile either.
Which is why my short flights on jetBlue to and from Boston last week was such a noticeable change for the better. Since I could not find a contract flight, I had to book an out of network flight instead, and jetBlue had the most convenient time and the best price. Given its low-ticket price I was expecting something like United Airlines or worse.
I could not have been more surprised. jetBlue is a civilized airline. First, there is no artificial distinction between coach, business and first class. As with a few other airlines like Southwest, there is only one class available. It was weird to walk into an airplane with no artificial bulkhead between premier seats and those of us in the cattle car section. The seats were all three across, upholstered in leather and actually left a few inches between my knees and the seat in front of me. Nor was the seat artificially narrow. Not that it was wide, but it was comfortable. Some airlines (and Northwest comes to mind as a particularly egregious example) will torture you by trying to jam you into 22 or 23-inch wide seats.
At least for my flights, the cabin was absent the usual detritus of napkins on the floor and reminders of previous passengers in the seatback pocket. The welcome boarding the plane seemed at least half-heartfelt. I never felt that on United. Settling into my seat, I found that I had my own personal TV with several dozen satellite channels available. If I did not want to watch satellite TV, I had XM satellite radio to choose from instead. This suited me just fine and I settled into the XM National Public Radio channel.
On-time departures are problematical with any airline, but my flights left a minute or two ahead of schedule and arrived on time or a little early. On the brief flight, we had a choice of either chocolate chip cookies or jetBlue’s proprietary blue-tinted potato chips. The beverages are announced at the start of the flight, and are usually somewhat limited, but include bottled water.
On the longer flights, if you want to see a movie you have to pay for the privilege, although there is plenty of entertainment on the satellite channels, just rife with commercials. You also have to pay $2 for earphones if you do not own any and want to listen to the entertainment. Overall, my experience on jetBlue was what passed for a high quality airline experience these days. It was weird. It was like they actually cared a bit about my flying satisfaction.
Southwest was the only other airline where I have felt something similar. Granted this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Southwest used to be infamous as the cattle car express, and they still have a bizarre policy where there is no assigned seating, meaning that you tend to arrive extra early to have the first chance to board. Even so, Southwest is at best a B- of an airline. jetBlue ranked a solid B.
If there are A-rated airlines out there, they are likely foreign carriers. Since I do little foreign travel, I have little to compare but I was impressed with IcelandAir a few years ago. Most domestic airlines seem to be flyer-hostile, or at least exhibit a passive aggressive side through tactics like usury baggage fees and premier seating that simply means your knees have an inch or two to spare. On jetBlue, the first bag is free, providing it does not exceed fifty pounds. (The second bag is $30. The third is $75.)
The only part of the jetBlue experience I found annoying was the commercials. JetBlue will commandeer your TV at certain points during the ascent and descent and subject you to annoying ads. You cannot turn the TV off, but you can at least unplug your headset and look elsewhere for a while.
Those of us older travelers cannot help but feel wistful for a time when the standards were much higher. In the early 1980s, I would annually fly Delta Airlines to Florida. Back in coach we were served real breakfasts. The food was provided hot in ceramic containers. You got real silverware and linens too, as well as a choice of meals and condiments. Moreover, all this came with the price of a ticket. There were no baggage fees at all for the first couple of bags. (This year I flew Delta to Salt Lake City and I can assure you they are busy emulating United Airlines.)
Those days are likely gone for good. Meanwhile, if you have to travel domestically and do most of your traveling back in the coach section see if you can fly jetBlue. You may at least get a hint of what real airline service used to feel like. When I have a choice, I will be booking jetBlue in the future.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:58am
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Mark |
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Tags: Airlines, Delta Airlines, jetBlue, Southwest Airlines, United Airines
During the summer of 2008, my family took a roadtrip to Beantown, stopping along the way at artsy places like Mount Gretna, Pennsylvania and lowlife way stations like the Ghosthunters show storefront in beautiful (well, actually kind of ugly) downtown Warwick, Rhode Island.
This week I finally had a reason to fly into Beantown, a.k.a. Boston, Massachusetts. Beantown turned out to be a way station to my real destination, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, which sits on the southern side of Cape Cod. There I spent three days in a lovely conference room and spent my evenings wandering around Woods Hole and nearby Falmouth. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute sits in what is probably the most bucolic campus in the country, with dozens of lovely building surrounded by maple and oak trees, joined by lovely walkways and with the Atlantic Ocean just a fifteen minute walk away.
As I told my daughter, I enjoy my short distance business trips the best. The shortest ones generally occur in my own time zone, and I can get there with a direct flight, generally lasting an hour or so. Getting there does not swallow most of my day. As it turned out, it took longer to drive between Boston’s Logan airport and Falmouth (where we stayed) than it did to fly between Washington Dulles and Boston. There were no weather or aircraft delays, just routine traffic delays trying to drive out of Boston during rush hour.
Cape Cod is further away from Boston than I thought. I imagined you could glimpse it from Boston Harbor but I doubt that is true, at least not at surface level. It is further east and further south than I imagined. Falmouth, where we stayed, turned out to be a lovely and typical New England town with plenty of stores, galleries and restaurants designed mostly for tourist season. In October, while the tourist traffic was somewhat off, the locals were friendly, looked well moneyed and were overwhelmingly white.
The citizens of this part of Massachusetts are an unfailingly polite group, or so it appeared to this visitor. A walk down the Shining Sea Bike Path into Woods Hole led to many pleasant greetings from fellow residents. Woods Hole is small and exclusive enough to make it nigh impossible to park without a permit. It is also a harbor town. Aside from serving oceanographic interests, it acts as a conduit for tourists to and residents of Martha’s Vineyard. For $7.50 you can board a ferry that will deposit you on the island. Make sure you also purchase a return trip and not miss the 9:30 PM ferry, or you may be in for a long and cold night. Particularly during the summer season, without a reservation you cannot count on a room at Martha’s Vineyard.
I looked hard to find things to dislike about this part of Cape Cod. Most towns in New England come complete with a picturesque town square or commons, which offer a lovely dose of tamed nature in what would otherwise be a busy part of town. In Falmouth, my group found plenty of old churches, meeting halls and restaurants. Dinner at The Quarterdeck in Falmouth revealed a tavern populated not by tourists but by locals, all of whom seemed to be on intimate terms with each other. There was not a hint of crime or litter in Falmouth. Nor could I complain that the town felt fake. Steeped in hundreds of years of history, it cannot help but be authentic. Nor, after walking its long main street, I could I find a chain restaurant, a real plus. If you do not enjoy seafood, you would probably be happier elsewhere, but if you do enjoy seafood you are blessed with abundant and fresh seafood at local restaurants, which you can watch being hauled in at harbors like Woods Hole.
If forced to find items to complain about, one could make the case that the local roundabouts found on the Cape as well as much of New England, while quaint, are annoying and create backups at certain parts of the day. I also checked the local real estate prices. The riff raff are apparently easy to keep away because they cannot afford to live in this area. It helps to inherit a relative’s property or to have a six figure income. Otherwise you probably cannot afford to live in this area, despite its conspicuous absence of supersized houses.
This second trip to New England in less than two years made me realize again that New England is loudly calling for me to settle there. Fortunately, it is also calling my wife, which means we will be looking at retiring, if not in some charming Cape Cod town like Falmouth, then somewhere in New England, providing we can afford it. While there are definitely some not so nice areas of New England (such as Revere, where Logan Airport sits) much of it is charming and inviting to those who like a northern climate.
I imagine New England gets much less charming in the winter, particularly during its abundant snow season. I suspect much of its charm would wear off after shoveling snow several times a week. Most people retire from places like Boston, not to these places. I may find that the milder climate of Northern Virginia where we now live is much better overall.
Still, now that I have an exposure to New England, I want to live here. It will be hard to convince myself to spend my retired years somewhere else.
October 9th, 2009 at 04:45pm
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Mark |
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Tags: Boston, Cape Cod, Falmouth MA, New England, Woods Hole MA
Perhaps when you were young you had dreams similar to mine. The nightmare rarely varied and they were always ended the same way: I would end up falling off something very high and feeling very panicked, knowing I was about to die. In the dream, I never quite actually met the bottom of the cliff and my maker. Perhaps they were a result of watching too many Road Runner cartoons, or perhaps they were vestigial memories of being in utero.
Perhaps this explains my vertigo. I am fine peering down over something from way up high, providing there is a guardrail or something similar to inhibit my fall. Otherwise I am incapable of getting near the edge of anything with a precipitous drop.
This phobia makes little sense as I can and do fly frequently. In fact, if the weather is nice, I prefer a window seat. Only a couple times have a felt panicky in an airplane, and only during moderate or severe turbulence.
I only rarely experience vertigo, mainly because I deal with it through rigorous avoidance. Occasionally though I have no choice. For those of us who suffer from vertigo, you should avoid Trail Ridge Road in The Rocky Mountain National Park. Up there above the tree line at altitudes from 10,000 to 12,000 feet there are miles of road where you drive literally along the side of the mountain with not so much as a guardrail between you, your car and careening thousands of feet down the side of the Rocky Mountains to certain death. Moreover you may be shadowed by tailgaters because you are going the speed limit of 35 mph and they want you to go faster. In short, if you suffer from vertigo like me the drive will be nerve wracking and heart pounding, and that is assuming that the weather is fine, which it often isn’t. The wind has been clocked at up to 150 mph at the Alpine Ridge Visitors Center, and you can get snow, hail or sleet on the road at any time of the year.
View from Alpine Ridge Vistors Center
Granted, if you want to kill yourself, you should have a spectacular view on the vertical descent. You may piss off a few elk, big horn sheep and moose on the tundra on your way down. Yet, even if you suffer from vertigo, you might want to take Trail Ridge Road anyhow, for few roads command such a breathtaking view. You are only guardrail-less for a few miles and once you get below the tree line the feelings of vertigo should recede. Trail Ridge Road is as close as many of us ordinary mortals will get to being on top of the world.
The Alpine Ridge Visitors Center is only publicly accessible during the short summer months. During the winter the road is closed. The snowdrifts can extend up to thirty five feet above the road. It takes the National Park Service months to make the road drivable during its short driving season. As I discovered, even in August the weather can be bracing at the Alpine Ridge Visitors Center so bring a jacket and gloves. If you are not too faint from the thin air, you can take a trail a thousand feet or so to the summit and, like me (see picture) perch next to a sign that tells you that you are at 12,005 feet above sea level. This is likely as high up as I will get in my life.
Me at the top of Alpine Ridge
When you vacation around The Rocky Mountains, you have to expect to be altitude challenged. I have flown to Denver enough times to no longer notice the thinner air, but move a couple thousand feet higher and I found myself short of breath and my heart racing, even while sitting still. East of The Rocky Mountain National Park is the city of Estes Park, which sits 7500 feet above sea level. My wife and I spent two nights in this mountain-lined city but even at that modest altitude my wife and I noticed the change in elevation.
Estes Park, a beautiful touristy city with expansive views, is something of a low altitude city compared to the last destination of our journey, Leadville, Colorado. Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the continental United States at 10,200 feet in elevation. It sits below the tree line, but not much below it. My wife and I spent a night in The Ice Palace Inn, one of dozens of bed and breakfasts in Leadville, a historic mining town that was once the largest city in the state and its presumed state capital. Even in August the weather in Leadville was bracing with cool blustery westerly winds and evening temperatures in the forties. Much of its lower temperature was likely due to its high altitude. Leadville can make an east coast guy like me feel humbled, for you can be at rest and still find yourself breathing heavily and your heart racing. Monday we took the Leadville, Colorado and Southern Railroad ride 900 feet higher into the mountains. While the view was breathtaking, you will probably find yourself hyperventilating out of necessity. I found myself constantly taking deep breaths. We were grateful later in the day to be back with my brother and his wife in Boulder at a mere 5400 feet.
Today we fly back to low altitude Northern Virginia where we can breathe effortlessly again. Our trip out west exceeded both our expectations. In addition to the places I documented, we also spent two nights in Laramie, Wyoming at a B&B called The Mad Carpenter Inn, absolutely the best B&B where we have ever stayed. There we toured the well restored Ivinson Victorian Mansion, a local art museum and the Wyoming Territorial Prison (a far more interesting a place than it sounds) which housed many a ruffian including Butch Cassidy. Overall Wyoming is a beautiful state, if vastly underpopulated and very dry by east coast standards. The whole state has just 533,000 people in it. By contrast, the county I live in, Fairfax County in Northern Virginia, has over a million inhabitants. To go from one city to another in Montana usually requires a journey by car of several hours. There are no large cities in the state, with Cheyenne being its largest at about 53,000 residents.
We were amazed by the friendliness of people we met. We found it disarmingly easy to slip into intimate conversations with relative strangers. Perhaps the lack of people in states like Wyoming makes people naturally friendlier and inquisitive. In Estes Park, Colorado we had continental breakfasts at a Comfort Inn with the same two couples two mornings in a row. One couple left us their name and address so we could visit them in Western Nebraska.
The West has much to teach us somewhat insular East Coasters, including the somewhat lost art of friendliness. We will be back again. Perhaps we will retire out here.
August 18th, 2009 at 01:37pm
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Mark |
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Tags: Colorado, Estes Park, Laramie, Leadville, Wyoming
Small town America used to be ubiquitous. Even if you are fortunate enough to live in a small town, it has probably changed for the worse over the years. The Wal-Mart just outside the town might have made Main Street a sad and mostly boarded up place. Or you could live in a small city like this one where the principle industry went elsewhere leaving behind a poor tax base and lots of boarded up houses. So when you find an authentic and healthy small town in America today that feels kind of like Mayberry, it should be noted.
My wife and I rediscovered small town America by spending a night in Buffalo, Wyoming, population three thousand or so as well as the Johnson County seat. I picked Buffalo as a place to spend the night on our vacation because we had planned our day around visiting Devil’s Tower National Monument in northeastern Wyoming. Devil’s Tower was so worth the trip, but finding a good place to stay near Devil’s Tower was next to impossible unless you had an RV. So instead we chose to drive two hours to its west, to the town of Buffalo, and sleep there instead.
Main Street in Buffalo, Wyoming
Buffalo is an eastern gateway into Yellowstone National Park. The Bighorn Mountains frame its western horizon. The aptly named Clear Creek runs through the center of town. Its clean and abundant mountain waters doubtless made it a logical center for commerce in the area. Our destination was The Occidental Hotel on Main Street. To call it just a hotel is to give it short shrift. It is a hotel, a saloon, a fine dining establishment and perhaps most importantly something of a private museum. The hotel was actually constructed in the 19th century. Among its early guests were the western notables Calamity Jane, Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid and Buffalo Bill Cody. No less than two U.S. presidents have also slept in the Occidental Hotel. You can find and sleep in Teddy Roosevelt’s suite on the upper level, or if you prefer sleep in the somewhat humbler Herbert Hoover Suite on its lower level.
We chose the Herbert Hoover Suite. Hoover is infamous as the president at the start of The Great Depression, so perhaps sleeping in his room was not that great a privilege. He was campaigning for reelection in Wyoming when he arrived at The Occidental Hotel in 1932. In the room you can see pictures of him somewhat overweight and in a full suit and tie.
It was a strange experience to spend a night in a room inhabited, however briefly, by a president of the United States. The original claw footed bathtub is still there, so I stripped and showered in the same place as a U.S. president. I am sure the bed has been replaced since the 1930s but presumably we were sleeping in the same spot as President Hoover as well. The room, like all the rooms in the hotel, feels very early 20th century. Our room came complete with a number of old books, including a book about “The World War”, which when it was published meant World War One. Inside it was a letter postmarked in 1918 from the original owner of the hotel. This, the old fashioned radio, the antique furniture, and the ancient wooden flooring that creaked under you as you walked on it made it feel absolutely authentic which, in fact, it was. The room’s only defect was its walls, which were authentically wooden with no soundproofing. Fortunately by ten p.m. the hotel had quieted down. This and my silicon earplugs ensured that my sleep would be undisturbed.
The hotel sells its history and ambiance as well as a night’s rest. The clerks behind the counter are exceptionally friendly. In the hotel lobby, rife with antique furniture, you can play a game of chess or gaze at the many stuffed animal heads on its walls. Pre-ragtime music sounding like it came off a Victrola can be heard overhead. The hallways abound with vintage pictures and historical documents, most of them marking events of notables staying at the hotel.
A trip into the adjoining saloon reveals the hotel’s likely naughty past. A large painting of a naked woman hangs on the wall. Perhaps she was a naughty lady of the house that could be found in many western hotels and saloons in the 19th century. Today the saloon attracts a higher class of clientele, who principally are guests of the hotel. Its counters and floors gleam. In a room in the back is a pool table that might have been heavily used a century ago. Next to the saloon is The Virginian, a restaurant affiliated with the hotel, which is doubtless the best dining available in Buffalo, and probably within a hundred miles. My wife and I enjoyed steak dinners in our own private dining alcove. Appropriately, my wife chose a buffalo steak.
On the hotel’s patio are two sets of rocking chairs where you can enjoy watching life on Main Street pass by. You can hear Clear Creek babbling to your right. During the evening, horse drawn carriage rides are available for a modest fee, which you can conveniently board at the hotel. Or you can amble up and down its considerable Main Street, stopping if you wish at a local ice cream parlor. The closest thing you will find to a chain store on Main Street in Buffalo is a Rexall Drug. In the evening you may notice, as we did, an owl perched on the top of the court house.
The character of Buffalo is borne out simply by crossing the street. Motorists will happily stop to let you cross, even if you are jaywalking. Eat breakfast as we did at the Main Street Diner and you may find a kindly local willing to move a seat down on the counter to make room for you. The Main Street Diner, like the Occidental Hotel, is an experience that should not to be missed. Behind the counter are four very hard working people serving twenty to thirty patrons. Our young blonde waitress was efficient, pleasant and personable. I found her interesting to observe, her hands constantly in motion as she orchestrated the complex process of serving all the patrons, managing the counters, calculating all the tabs (on paper) and processing all the payments. If you like getting great value for your money, you will find it at The Main Street Diner. The portions are beyond enormous. I ordered a western omelet, to find fully stretched across an enormous plate, along with toast and hash browns hanging on the side. It was good but I only ate half of it, certain I was already consuming far more fat and calories than I should. Perhaps the portions were sized assuming you were going to spend the rest of the day roping steers rather than driving a rental car.
In short, our brief stay in Buffalo, Wyoming made us wish we had booked a second night at The Occidental Hotel. To me, if felt very much like I was in a time warp. From the nearby City Hall to the county courthouse built in 1886 next door, to the elegant grand hotel itself, to the babbling brook, to the nostalgic diner on Main Street, it struck a resonant chord of comfort in my heart. I did not find Sheriff Taylor or Floyd’s Barber Shop, but perhaps I did not look hard enough. However, I did find boys biking along Main Street, blissfully unaware of how special their authentic small town experience actually was.
If you were to drop Mayberry somewhere in the West, you would most likely find it in Buffalo. I feel like I left some part of my heart in the town, and I sure hope I live long enough to return for a proper and extended visit.
August 13th, 2009 at 09:51am
Posted by
Mark |
Travel |
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Tags: Buffalo Wyoming, Occidental Hotel Buffalo Wyoming, Wyoming
For most of us air travelers, America’s north central states are just flyover country. I have flown over the Dakotas more times than I can count. Yet until Sunday I had never set foot in the Dakotas. Perhaps this is because they are so hard to get to. The airlines give the Dakotas short shrift, making flying into these unpopulated states difficult and expensive. So we fly over them instead and mostly what we see out the airplane window seems featureless.
Yet, the western side of South Dakota is anything but flat. It is framed by The Black Hills, which push up against Wyoming’s eastern edge. While not quite The Rocky Mountains, The Black Hills are an appealing destination nonetheless. There is a surprising amount to do in The Black Hills. A family could easily spend a week or more there without feeling like they had seen it all.
Getting to The Black Hills from our starting point of Boulder, Colorado (where my wife and I spent a couple days with my brother Tom and his wife) made for a memorable driving journey through the eastern half of Wyoming. It takes about six hours of driving to get to Rapid City, South Dakota from Boulder. You pass through hundreds of miles of empty land. It is not empty desert as you might find in Nevada, just miles of buttes with virtually no people and little in the way of trees to obscure your view. This is big sky country. For a while The Rocky Mountains shadow you to your west, and then they recede altogether. I-25 reveals a land dappled with vegetation which is not quite desert. Occasionally you pass picturesque places like the Platt River, but mostly the area consists of enormous ranches where widely scattered groups of cattle graze. For an east coast guy like me, Wyoming is appealing for its remoteness and its feeling of being unspoiled. It is not quite unspoiled. If it were unspoiled, it would be rife with bison and Native Americans on horseback. The bison were hunted to near extinction long ago and the Native Americans are now largely sequestered on Indian reservations on far less interesting land. Eastern Wyoming is a pacified west, with only an occasional oil derrick to spoil its majestic view.
Pass from Wyoming into South Dakota and not only do you find yourself in the gently rolling Black Hills, but you also feel you are in a different climate. Wyoming feels dry but South Dakota, at least its western side, receives more rain, so there is more vegetation, more green things on the fields and plenty of pine trees and gently winding roads. Yet like Wyoming, it still feels remote. This is something of an illusion. While South Dakota remains one of our least populated states, if you travel through The Black Hills you will find plenty of tacky tourist traps, roadside family restaurants, inexpensive campgrounds as well as some first class tourist attractions.
My wife and I took in three such attractions on Monday, working from our home base, a Country Inn & Suites in Rapid City. Rapid City, like The Black Hills near which is sits, is a pleasant city in its own right. While the East Coast sweltered under a heat wave, we enjoyed blue skies, dry weather and highs around eighty degrees. There are lots of dead presidents in Rapid City. Since it is something of a way station for people on their way to Mount Rushmore, it plays up its association with U.S. presidents by placing metal sculptures of presidents on its street corners. It is also a thoroughly white area of the country. If you are Anglo Saxon, you will find plenty of your own ethnicity in this state. Rapid City also ensures that you have to wade through plenty of traffic lights on your way to Mount Rushmore. Naturally there are plenty of businesses catering to tourists along Mount Rushmore Road. We noted some pretty inane tourist attractions, including a Cosmos Mystery Area and an Old MacDonald’s Farm that would make even Mr. Rogers retch.
Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore remains a worthy destination, but what makes it distinctive is not just the chiseled images of four great presidents on the face of The Black Hills, but its frame of the beautiful Black Hills themselves. One can of course marvel at the engineering involved in making Mount Rushmore back in the 1930s, but the geography only allows you to see it from a few angles. There is a large promenade and theater which sits before the mountain that will tell you more than you probably want to know about the memorial, and a trail you can take with many steps that will take you half way up the mountain, but no further. You can look at models of the memorial in a sculptor’s studio.
Crazy Horse Memorial
To my mind, far more impressive is the Crazy Horse Memorial some twenty miles away, which sits atop its own mountain not too far from the town of Custer. It is a work in progress. Some sixty years since construction began, the memorial consists mainly of Chief Crazy Horse’s head and an exposed tunnel of granite. When completed, this memorial will dwarf Mount Rushmore. In fact it will be in the largest chiseled work of art in the world, surpassing even the Great Pyramids. Construction might have proceeded at a faster pace had Korczak Ziolkowski, the obsessed visionary who also helped chisel Mount Rushmore not spurned government money. The Ziolkowski family still directs work on the mountain, and supports its construction primarily with fees contributed by visitors. At $10 a person or $27 for a carload, it looks like the project will remain well funded through private sources. For an extra $4 you can take a bus ride to the base of the memorial, or you can observe it from a distance, and enjoy the many buildings on its campus. It is hard to find fault with the project, which seeks to honor a distinguished and fiercely independent Native American chief for all posterity. There are many Native American artists selling amazing works of art on premises. The scope of the project is audacious and is unlikely to be completed in my lifetime, or even my daughter’s. To get a sense of the scale of the project, Crazy Horse’s face, which has been completed, is much larger than the engravings on Mount Rushmore itself. Still one cannot feel more than a bit humbled by the size and scope of this amazing engineering endeavor and labor of love. I do hope that one day it is fully realized. If so it will be a new wonder of the world.
Jewel Cave National Monument
After seeing so much enormous statuary, we were glad to end our day underground touring Jewel Cave, also located in The Black Hills. The Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore are monuments to man’s audacity and ambitiousness. Jewel Cave is a monument to Mother Nature, who has the luxury of time to dazzle us with underground delights. Over the years I have gone on a number of cave tours, but our tour of Jewel Cave was by far the most extensive and interesting of the bunch. Jewel Cave is enormous, measuring 146 miles. It is likely a lot larger, since based on air pressure calculations only about three percent of the cave has been mapped. The site was designated as a national monument by President Teddy Roosevelt, so it is perhaps fitting that his face is chiseled in granite on nearby Mount Rushmore. Two elevators take tourists down nearly three hundred feet below the visitor’s center. We had an excellent park ranger who guided us on a ninety minute tour of the cavern. We marveled at the diversity of rock formations and crystals in the cave, which is second in size only to Mammouth Cave in Kentucky. Having the cave managed by the National Park Service made quite a difference compared to places I am more familiar with that were privately run. The park ranger provided a great deal of cave history and explanations for the natural works we witnessed. The extensive sets of staircases made traversing the cave as painless as possible. The forty nine degree temperature made it invigorating after being outside all day.
If you have been flying over South Dakota like me, you are doing yourself a disservice by not stopping by for a proper visit. It is time to consider South Dakota as a vacation destination. For those enamored with natural wonders, there is much in South Dakota to enchant and delight.
August 11th, 2009 at 09:31am
Posted by
Mark |
Travel |
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Tags: Black Hills, Crazy Horse Memorial, Jewel Cave, Mount Rushmore, Rapid City, South Dakota, Wyoming
Salt Lake City is one of the great cities to arrive at by air. You descend over the tops of the Rocky Mountains. You feel like your plane may scrape one of the summits, and then gently descend into the Salt Valley. Even in late June you can still see some snow on the mountains. The city unfolds around you as you approach from the south. Out the window I watched the Great Salt Lake glimmering in a setting sun. Unlike the busy hub of Atlanta where I had left, Salt Lake’s airport is rather serene in the evening. It is also unusually close to the center of the city. A few volunteers with the Unitarian Universalist Association greeted me as I descend toward baggage claim. They noticed my Serenity T-shirt and giggled. They should have known I was a UU just from the T-shirt. A shuttle to my hotel awaited. Fifteen minutes later I was at my hotel, the Little America Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City on a warm and dry Tuesday night.
Salt Lake has grown up since 1996. The Salt Palace Convention Center is still there but the mall across the street has been torn down. Condominium skyscrapers are going up in their place. Some of these buildings are so high that they tower over nearby Temple Square, a sort of Vatican City for Mormons. All this construction suggests that mammon may be Utah’s real religion. Yet within a block or two of the convention center there are plentiful vacant storefronts. Utah, like much of the west, is hurting in this economy. Still, the city seems to be shrugging off hard times and building for a boom they have faith will arrive eventually. Its leaders are thinking strategically. There was no light rail system back in 1996, but it has arrived in 2009. I can pick it up at a stop a block from my hotel, but it is better to walk the five blocks or so to the convention center for exercise.
Unitarian Universalists from across the world have arrived in Salt Lake to occupy the city, or at least its downtown. The plentiful Mormons are happy to have our business, and seem a happy bunch in general. I know I am not in Northern Virginia when I cross the street at a crosswalk in the middle of the block and the cars actually stop. In Northern Virginia or DC such a brazen act would likely get you run over. Their economy may be close to being in shambles, but the people of Salt Lake City never forget their manners. Even the tough looking types will offer a pleasantry when you pass them on the street.
The UUs tried to string a five story high banner from the convention center, but it didn’t quite work. “Standing on the side of love” is the theme of this General Assembly. One of the ways we are standing on the side of love is by standing up for marriage equality for same sex partners. In this reddest state in the Union, this could be dangerous. Salt Lake City though is a tiny dot of blue in an otherwise deeply red state. It has two versions of a city paper and a progressive Democratic mayor. Perhaps this is because the city, white as Wonder Bread back in 1996, is now becoming a tad Pumpernickel. African Americans can be seen unloading baggage at Salt Lake City airport, and Hispanics can be found as hotel maids and working at the local Wendys. Perhaps the whites of Salt Lake City no longer wanted these jobs.
A few of us representing the Reston, Virginia contingent of Unitarian Universalists manage to meet up Wednesday night in the exposition hall at the Salt Palace Center. As this is my first General Assembly it is both exciting and comforting. I am very much at home, with or without members of my church, for we speak a common language and share similar values. It has gotten to the point that I can spend five minutes or so with anyone and tell with an eighty percent probability whether they are a UU or not. The normal signs would be a hybrid automobile and a Darwin fish on the rear fender, but in person you can often tell from the way they look – it’s a certain crease around the eyes. There are other clues, like the chalice that many are wearing as jewelry. The flaming chalice is the symbol of Unitarian Universalism.
Still, there is a big difference between attending a service at your local church and being in the presence of four thousand other UUs at an opening plenary session and service. Frankly, I found it a bit overwhelming. The plenary session started out with a banner procession. Each congregation has a banner and they paraded around the enormous room with their banners to the great applause of fellow UUs. While the vast majority of UUs are centered in the United States, we had UUs from Africa, Europe and the Philippines in attendance also. Outgoing UUA president William Sinkford delivered a report to the membership that I found surprisingly stirring. You might think a relatively small faith like ours might not have made much of an impact these last eight years, but you would be wrong. From opposing the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to being at the vanguard of marriage equality, to our outreach to the Muslim community, UUs have made great strides under Rev. Sinkford’s leadership. We also have had two unwitting martyrs. A new association president is to be voted in later this week. The campaigning is hot and heavy on the convention floor. Should we choose a Hispanic man or our first woman as president? Either one, like the African American Bill Sinkford, would demonstrate that our largely white congregation is becoming more inclusive.
It is not often that you attend a worship service with four thousand people. Only the pope gets bigger venues. The service, which followed the plenary session, was both stirring and moving. Hearing our signature hymn, “Spirit of Life” sung in four different language (including Hungarian) was touching, as was the “Passing of Peace” where we offered peace to the people sitting around us, in some cases going more than a few rows back. The service had the theme of atonement. Unitarians were one of the religions selected to help “civilize” Native Americans after they were sent to reservations in the 19th century. In retrospect, this was a great injustice. We made a public apology and had our apology accepted by one of the native tribes. There were few dry eyes in the house.
The exhibition hall showed me the amazing diversity of UUs. There were booths for pretty much every conceivable variation of UU you could imagine, from the humanists, to the Buddhists, to the UUs who think Jesus was divine, to the polyamorists.
Ironically, UUs are still largely silent about the polyamory community. If they are going to stand up for love, why not for those who want to love more than one human being at the same time? Right now we are being largely silent. I imagine this will change in time too. I spoke to the polyamorous UUs and told them I couldn’t figure out how they could juggle more than one loving relationship at a time. They are certainly charting a brave new frontier in love.
Today I attended three seminars, but by far the most interesting was the Theology for a Secular Age course, part of the UU University series. It is being taught by the minister of the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in New York City, the Rev. Galen Guengerich. He may be the best speaker I have ever had the pleasure of listening to, a man of great learning and insight. The seminar resumes tomorrow at eight a.m. so I must be to bed early. I don’t want to miss a word!
Tomorrow will be another day of fellowship and learning.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:28pm
Posted by
Mark |
Life 2009, Sociology, Travel |
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Tags: Mormons, Salt Lake City, Unitarian Universalism, Utah
Well, this is cool! I am blogging from 35,000 feet. Granted, the first 10,000 feet are still not Wifi accessible, but perhaps that will change too. For $12.95 I can buy myself about three hours of high speed Internet access, at least on selected Delta flights. Other carriers are probably offering similar services, or will be soon. Moreover, the quality of the service is as good, if not better, than what I get at home via our Cox cable service. The times, they are a changing, and not always for the worse.
I am on my way to Salt Lake City to attend the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Having been a Unitarian Universalist since 1997 or so (and in spirit much longer, I just didn’t go to services) I figured it was about time to attend a General Assembly. This is an annual meeting where UUs from across the country come together and discuss denominational business. It is supposed to be a lot of fun and very interesting. Look for posts on the GA during the week. I will not exactly be alone since other members of our congregation will be in attendance too. When you are surrounded by thousands of UUs, you are never really alone. Of course most will be strangers to each other, but we are all the same in spirit. I am hoping it will feel a bit like coming home to the home you never quite had. I figure that if Muslims are expected to make one pilgrimage to Mecca, perhaps UUs should make at least one trip to a General Assembly too. I hope to learn a lot, but also to clarify for myself just how down the UU rabbit hole that I want to go. Thus far my association has been more tangential than dedicated and has consisted of participating in a covenant group and teaching religious education.
This trip is also unique in that it is something I am doing by myself. I travel quite a bit by myself, but so far it has all been business related. My wife, a Buddhist, had no particular interest in attending. Here I am age 52 and this is the first vacation that I have ever done on my own. It is sort of like being single again, at least for a week. There is no family to visit on the other end. There is also no spouse and/or child to drag along. If I get overwhelmed by the intensity of it all, my hotel is a few blocks away. I can distress by computing from my hotel room or hanging out at the pool. I strongly suspect that I will have no problem finding ways to fill my time. The typical problem at these General Assemblies, I have been told, is trying to do too much. There is simply too much going on.
I mentioned to a colleague where I was going and she said “what is Unitarianism?” I am amazed that in 21st century America so many people have not heard about Unitarians or Universalists. There is often at least one UU church in any community of a significant size. There have even been Unitarian presidents of the United States, although at the time they were not known as UUs, but stuck usually said they were deists. Thomas Jefferson was a Unitarian, at least in spirit. If you are curious to learn more about Unitarian Universalism, feel free to check out the association’s web site, or my tag archive on the subject, or just keep reading. To the extent I have time to blog this week, I will be posting my thoughts on the General Assembly.
Unitarian Universalists are basically religious liberals, without a professed creed, with their roots in Christianity but who are for all practical purposes not Christian. Some UUs consider themselves Christian and a UU service definitely has a church-like feeling to it. Most UUs would consider Jesus to be a great teacher, but only a few think he was divine. It is a sort of “none of the above” religion, where no creed is required for membership, where you simply come as you are, hang out in fellowship, try to do good things, and work toward tolerance and social justice. Perhaps a majority of UUs are like me: officially atheist or agnostic. We also have pagans, wiccans, Buddhists, gays, bisexuals, transgendered, the polyamorous and pretty much any type of odd non-denominational faith you can think of. In general UUs are a tolerant bunch.
We are also overwhelmingly Caucasian. If there is one deficiency in my religion, this may be it. I expect the General Assembly to resemble a Republican convention. My wife rightly points out that her Buddhist temple is very multicultural. In some ways I am jealous. I am also hopeful that over time UUs will become more culturally diverse too. Our current president is African American, but that will probably change this week as we elect a new association president. Unfortunately, I am not one of the delegates, since each congregation only gets four votes. I am sure whoever we pick will be someone of a similar vein to Rev. Sinkford.
However, I don’t give myself too much grief about being part of a “white” denomination. The congregation is so white, not because it tries to exclude people of different colors, but because its roots are European, and Europe is predominantly white. It was imported into the United States where it flourished and where mostly white people lived. Just as certain southern Baptist associations are overwhelmingly African American and it is okay, it is okay that UUs are overwhelmingly white. We do have two African Americans in our congregation, so we are not exactly pure white, and a few Hispanics and Asians too. Those of color whom we attract tend to be comfortable among whites. UUs also tend to be intelligent and overeducated. This can be daunting to some.
So I look forward to a week of fellowship, learning and song. While I do not particularly enjoy being away from family, it is not a bad thing to have a week to myself to do things that interest me far away from home. It helps me figure out who I am and where I want to go as a person in this next phase of my life.
The last time I spent any time in Salt Lake City was in 1996. Back then I remarked how Wonder Bread the city was. Perhaps in the thirteen years since it has become more culturally diverse. In any event, given that Utah is overwhelmingly white I suspect that most UUs will feel at home there. Given our religious and political liberalism, we may give the local Mormon population something of a shock. I hope I am there to witness any fireworks.
June 23rd, 2009 at 07:25pm
Posted by
Mark |
Life 2009, Philosophy, Travel |
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Tags: Blogging, Unitarian Universalism
Most people love the beach, but not usually during the off-season. A few oddballs like my wife and me have a hard time appreciating the beach except in the offseason. Lying on beaches can lead to skin cancer, and since my father is predisposed to it, I figure I could be too, so I tend to limit my exposure. Moreover, if you live inland, then getting to the beach can be a hassle. It is particularly a hassle if like me you live in Northern Virginia. To reach the closest beaches you will have to take many frequently traffic-clogged roads. The trip includes a journey over the majestic but often congested Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Once on Maryland’s Eastern shore, you then have to brave U.S. 50, which during the summer can turn into a hundred or more miles of stop and go traffic. In short, given its cost-benefit ratio, the community pool is much more convenient.
While lounging on a beach holds little appeal to me, seeing a beach ecosystem in a largely unspoiled state has a lot of appeal. My wife and I heard for years about Assateague Island on the Virginia coast, but until last weekend never actually took the time to visit it. The Assateague Island National Seashore, which actually spans parts of the Virginia and Maryland coastline, is a large stretch of shoreline left pretty much the way nature intended it.
The Eastern Shore of Maryland, more correctly called the Delmarva Peninsula, is serious chicken country. If you are familiar with the Perdue brand, you might say it is Frank Perdue country. Would Salisbury, Maryland be the big city it is today without his oversized influence? It is hard to say. The peninsula has only two major cities of note, Salisbury being one and Dover being the other. We did not pass through Salisbury, but instead passed around it, passing through smaller cities and towns like Princess Anne and Pokomoke City as we headed south on U.S. 13. Aside from the occasional chicken barns, you will find a lot of mostly empty flatland and scrub pines. Civilization does not quite disappear but it does recede. If your idea of a fun way to spend Friday night is dinner and a movie, you might have to travel all the way to Salisbury to see the movie.
While Assateague Island was our final destination, the inland island next to it, Chincoteague Island, was our base of operations. To get there you pass the Wallops Island Flight Center then drive down a long causeway and finally over a rickety bridge onto the island. (A new bridge is being built, and not a moment too soon.) Chincoteague is well populated with houses, B&Bs, motels and places to eat, yet it is small enough to feel somewhat remote. Wal-Mart has not made it to Chincoteague and likely never will. Most of the B&Bs were closed for the season, so we stayed at the Hampton Inn instead. Hampton Inns are good bets in general, but this particular hotel was the nicest and fanciest Hampton Inn we had ever stayed at. All rooms faced the sound and it was crazily quiet, clean, modern and almost ornate. The Jacuzzi looked very inviting, particularly since a cold rain was falling outside and we were chilled to the bone. It was not an option for us, as we had not packed our swimsuits. Our view from our third floor window revealed a number of moored trawlers nearby and noisy ducks squawking on the dock.
There was not much is happening on a cold and wet March evening in Chincoteague. Yet, some restaurants were open including Bill’s Seafood Restaurant, which was conveniently right down the street. It was crowded like it was the middle of tourist season, which is a sign of a good restaurant. It helps to be a seafood lover if you come to Chincoteague, otherwise you may find your dining options limited. The rain combined with a driving wind made us wonder if we made a mistake with the timing of our visit. So instead, we spent the evening huddled inside our hotel room, watched Son of Rambow on our portable computer, and hoped for better weather in the morning. Our large king sized bed proved exceptionally comfortable.
Morning offered us overcast skies but a temporary abatement of precipitation. After filling ourselves with the standard Hampton breakfast fare, we headed over to Assateague Island, reached by yet another bridge. As soon as you pass over the bridge, you realize you have left civilization behind. The weather may have been cold, but it had the virtue of being too cool for insects. Maybe visiting Assateague in mid March was a brilliant rather than a stupid idea.
There are a few but not many manmade structures on the island. They include two visitors’ centers, only one of which has flush toilets and a historic lighthouse. The warmth of the visitor’s center was welcome. Inside on a television we could watch the nest of two bald eagles and their two eaglets. From the visitor’s center, it was a short drive to the beach. While it was not raining, the temperatures in the high thirties, the wind and the moisture made it feel quite cold. The weather did not stop a small boy from chasing a seagull feather down the beach. There were not many cars on the beach, which was part of its allure. As long as you were bundled up, you could sit on the sand, enjoy the pounding of the surf and ponder the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean.
Assateague Island is probably best known for its wild horses and ponies, which are probably not native to the island. You cannot pet them and for the most part, they wisely prefer to stay away from humans. We were able only to catch glimpses of them with our binoculars. There is other life in great abundance on the island, but you have to know where to look for them. We found them in the Assateague Park Pond. As ponds go, this one is huge, and it is more marsh than pond. It is a 3.2-mile hike around the pond along a road that is wisely blocked from cars until 3 PM.
Pond on Assateague Island
The walk was the highlight of our weekend. The pond, which reaches a mile in diameter, was full with thousands of waterfowl, from ordinary ducks to swans and egrets. We passed a magnificent grey heron that warily watched us from less than a hundred feet away. Nearby we also observed the majestic flight of the bald eagle we had watched on TV in the Visitor’s Center. Except for an occasional exceptionally loquacious waterfowl there was little to be heard but our footsteps, the distant sound of waves crashing on the beach and the gentle squawking of thousands of birds inhabiting the pond. Many had their butts pointed toward the sky as they worked to find food in the marsh. A pristine and wholly unspoiled natural environment enveloped our senses. I count the ninety minutes we spent walking around the pond as one of the great natural experiences of my life. It is achingly sad that such experiences are so hard to find in the 21st century United States. The Assateague National Seashore remains one of the last unspoiled natural ecosystems on the East Coast. If you are a naturalist, it is not to be missed.
Fortunately, the rain held off until we had left the island. There was time to travel to the Wallops Island Visitors Center. Before Cape Canaveral was used for launches, the Air Force was shooting off rockets at Wallops Island. Wallops still packs rockets with a “wallop”, but virtually all its rockets are of the sounding variety. Sounding rockets make quick trips into the stratosphere or into outer space for research purposes then sail back to earth. You cannot miss a number of impressive satellite antennas and radio telescopes at the facility, including one GOES receiver that receives the bulk of the real-time field data for the system that I manage. I would have enjoyed a tour of the facility, but since it was a Saturday, the timing was not right. The Visitor’s Center though was quite impressive for a small museum, hosting an auditorium with a film narrated by Robert Redford, and large globe that acted as a projector for shows about the earth and the sun. The center also has a comprehensive set of exhibits explaining the research that went on at the facility and continues into the present day.
While we saw almost no sun and endured plenty of cold and miserable rain, our two-night journey into this wilderness was well worth the hassle of traversing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the Capital Beltway. It felt good to commune with nature and since it is in such abundance on Assateague Island, we will doubtless return again, leaving refreshed in mind and body.
March 16th, 2009 at 08:33pm
Posted by
Mark |
Travel |
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Tags: Assateague, Chincoteague
In the mood for some nostalgia but do not actually have the money to see your old haunts? This used to be a problem but in many cases, it is not true anymore. While not exactly new news, until recently I was not that aware of Google Earth Street Views. More specifically, I was not aware how much fun they could be.
Way back in the dark ages of 2005 I discovered Google Earth. Back then it was the latest and most impressive tool from the wizards at Google, allowing you to see amazing imagery of our planet. The user interface was so slick and it seemed to know the location of pretty much everything. Now nearly four years old, Google Earth, along with its companion web-based product Google Maps feel very institutionalized. I wonder how we ever got anywhere without it.
Since then, Google kept adding features to Google Earth. You can see the stars in Google Earth, as well as Mars, the Moon and, most recently, underwater features of our planet. In addition, many new layers allow you to see relevant sets of features on our planet. Street views are a new layer that you can toggle on and off within Google Earth. You may have to upgrade Google Earth to find it and enable it. If you do, you may find your appetite for nostalgia has increased dramatically.
Street views, as the name implies, shows you the view from the street, not the view from a satellite or highflying aircraft. Street views require a lot of photography. While you can submit your own photos and they might appear in Google Earth, street views are more systematic. Apparently, Google has deep enough pockets to send out cars to traverse the nations’ highways and byways. On top of the car is a camera which every ten feet or so takes a 360 degree picture of whatever it sees. While Google is a long way from having street views of every street in the United States, it is making steady progress.
My neighborhood in Northern Virginia has yet to be photographed, but neighborhoods inside the Capital Beltway, as well as much of suburban Maryland are already available. To see street views first you have to enable the layer, and then you have to zoom in close enough to see the icons that appear on the screen. If street views are available, you will see more icons as you zoom in. If you zoom in on a street, you can see icons representing pictures every ten feet or so, indicating the exact location where the picture was taken. They appear as a little globe on the street. Double-click on the icon of interest and the scene smoothly changes to a street view. Then simply use your mouse to change direction, zoom in or zoom out.
In many cases, the street views leave a lot to be desired. The cameras appear to be programmed to take more detailed pictures near major intersections. You will find rather low-resolution snapshots in many street views. The photos may be low resolution but they are available any time of the day or night for free on your PC.
Google has yet to provide street views of Endwell, New York, the town where I spent my formative years. While I wait for them to get around to this backwater part of New York State, there are plenty of other street views that I can enjoy. In 1972, my family moved from Endwell to Ormond Beach, Florida. One of my first major finds was a street view of our old house on Capri Drive. More than thirty-five years have passed since I lived on the street, and it is showing its age. Our old house does not look as well maintained today as it did when we lived there. Our garage is gone and is replaced by what looks like it may be a home office. There is also a rather ugly picket fence around the house. The chain link fence I remember was more inviting. Still, it is amazing that I can see it at all. From the air, you look at the roofs of houses. This limitation goes away with street views.
The old Winn Dixie where I wiled away many hours is gone too, but the building still stands. The imagery is not good enough to show what replaced it, but whatever class of retail inhabits the place today it looks like a step down. The imagery of Belair Plaza in Daytona Beach, site of the first Winn Dixie where I worked, is much better but if the store is still there, it is hidden behind the trees. Just up the street, the Red Lobster where my brother Mike spent late evenings up to his elbows doing dishes still seems to be doing business.
Google has also been down the street in Scotia, New York where I spent my earliest years. I had to go to the pictures I took in 2005 to find our old house with any accuracy, since my memory was so hazy. The years have not been kind to North Holmes Street. When we lived in our house, we had a painter next door. The house next door could use one now, along with carpenters to replace it siding. It looks like it should be condemned. Nonetheless, the current occupants of our house must be patriotic because an American flag flies on their porch.
Nostalgia is an obvious use for street views, but it is also a great traveling tool. If you need to stay at a hotel in a city, you cannot only find it, but you can look around and see what the block looks like. In many cases, you can make out neighboring businesses. You can also create virtual vacations. Want to visit Paris? There are thousands of street views that you can enjoy, most with excellent definition. (People’s faces seem to be fuzzed out; I assume this is some sort of privacy requirement by the government of France.) I found a street view of our hotel in Paris with little effort and could even traverse its side street and read the window of the Pizza Hut where we ate.
Street views thus serve a number of purposes. To me they help cement in my mind just how amazingly big and complex our planet actually is. In the years ahead, I look forward to spending many hours traversing streets both known and unknown.
February 28th, 2009 at 09:14pm
Posted by
Mark |
Technology, Travel |
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Tags: Google, Google Earth
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