Moonlight in Minnesota

Ghost Tours Should Come With Adult Refreshments

Convinced I should stroll the streets of St. Augustine with a band of tipsy Floridians and wide-eyed tourists, I found myself with a friend on a ghost tour of America’s oldest European settlement.  The stone walkways below us and the period costumes ahead of us made the nighttime walk seem only moderately more interesting than any other evening constitutional.  Nevertheless, like dozens of mid-size, moderately historic towns in the United States, “ghost tours” entice sightseers, both doubters and believers, to giggle or gasp at the stories tied to a community’s parks, plazas, and promenades.  Ghost tours in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, are most likely tales of military death and woe.  Ghost tours in New Orleans tell the tale of the haunted history of the Big Easy and the mademoiselle who still roams the French Quarter.  In each locale, unsuspecting, unresolved souls stumble into an ambling storyteller bewitching their followers with cryptic tales of foolish passers-by unknowingly relieved of their wits and wages.  Sounds like someone I know intimately.

I begin the evening adventure as dusk transitions into darkness and as my evening buzz fades along with the final remnants of sunlight.  I giggle, I roll my eyes, and I wonder how much longer until we reach a saloon where I might find a brew to keep me happily unconcerned that I am, in fact, bored out of my skull.  Nothing about the occult charms me.  While I do believe some people have a connection to the nether world, I believe mediums have powers I cannot understand and allow them to communicate with the dearly departed.  Yet I believe neither me, nor the costumed tour guide earning $10.82 an hour for her evening gig, facilitate a connection to the other side on this warm night in north Florida.  I believe this tour needs adult refreshment to make it remotely interesting.

Gravestones Should Come With Baseballs

Most people who visit Rochester, Minnesota, seek the medical recommendations of the renowned Mayo Clinic, but not me.  Sure, I may have planned to pop in on family members, but the cover story in the human-interest section of the local paper caught my pop culture eye and took me to a small, two-acre plot.  W.P. Kinsella’s novel, Shoeless Joe, led to Kevin Costner plowing under his corn fields on the big screen, and the tiniest bit of trivia from the American pastime impacted the novel, the movie, and the history of the Rochester area.  And it made my trip unique and remarkable.

 

Now buried in a plot next to his wife, Alecia, Archibald Graham spent nearly nine decades serving his family and town rather than continuing to play baseball beyond the single inning of professional stardom that he savored and discarded.  Kinsella found Graham's simple stat when writing his novel, and on a summer afternoon, I find his simple headstone after strolling through the graveyard referenced in the daily news.  In the light of day, without a tour guide, or a hint of intoxication, or an over-inflated story, I reach out to the other side to thank “Moonlight” Graham for his contribution to American film lore and my expedition to the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.  And laying next to his granite slab, a perfectly-placed leather sphere with its signature red stitching marks the appreciation of another fan like myself who had taken the same self-guided tour.

360° Around Lake Tahoe (Part 2)

360° Around Lake Tahoe (Part 1)

Circumnavigation

Telling Time

Everyone vacations differently.  For the past several years, a friend of mine has planned his big summer outing with his entire family (yes, some in-laws, a handful of cousins, etc.) by the edge of a lovely lake in North Carolina.  For his family, this outing marks the pinnacle of family time and he returns feeling refreshed and relaxed.  I marvel at the concept, as the one time I spent two nights with extended family at the Lake of the Ozarks, I noted the experience would be my last family reunion in a shared cabin.  More than a decade later, I stand by those guideline.  Besides, I’d like to see more of the lake than a single, shore-side view.

In the heart of Florida, Lake Okeechobee marks the crossing point between the drifting headwaters and the full-blown Everglades.  On a variety of mini voyages, I have seen vantage points from the southwest around to the south; specifically, I have driven around the entire lake from eight o’clock to six o’clock if one were to view the lake as a clock face.  Likewise, I have enjoyed a two-hundred, seventy degree view of Lake Huron, from six progressing around to three, also in multiple road trips.  And despite having even explored the inside of its clock face on Antelope Island, the  Great Salt Lake from eleven to five o’clock offered me only half of the full waterside experience.

Counter Clockwise

Even before beginning to plan my excursion to Lake Tahoe, I knew I wanted to drive the full distance around its shores.  Starting at the traffic-clogged southern tip, I break from the construction traffic to grab a bite of lunch (see “Where’s Jack?” from March 2013) at the six o’clock point before beginning my full-face assault.  I skirt the water’s edge counter-clockwise (on my vacations, I am allowed to break the rules of time travel) into Nevada and am bombarded by casinos – no need for a “Welcome to Nevada” sign here – the abundantly clear transition lets me know.  I continue to climb up to the rocky tunnel towards the three o’clock marker, and then just beyond to the crystal-clear pool of boulders.  As much as the full circle beckons, the below rocks, sitting blissfully in the   

cool mountain pool deserve their own moment of reflection.  The clock momentarily stops here.

At twelve o’clock high, I drive into California for the second time today.  The summer crowds have departed and the skiers are still waiting for the more substantial snows – not the dusting from a few days ago – so the roads are as clear as the skies.  I continue around to eight while the sun still lingers, and pause for a rest in my own little cabin just out of the sight of the water.  And shortly after the sun peeks from its slumber, I resume the final two hours on the lake’s clock face.  Somewhere around seven o’clock geographically I pull over for a final view of the American Alpine lagoon.  For years I wanted to be at this spot, at all of these spots, to make this three-hundred and sixty degree loop, and to see one small piece of America from every angle.  Back at six o’clock, I turn right and mark the time I circumnavigate Lake Tahoe.

An Ocean View Spoiled

Adding to the Adventure

More than once I have traveled for a medical procedure.  Not as extreme or distant as discounted heart surgery abroad, but often finding the right physiological provider did require a flight to a doctor’s destination (and once included a bump up to first class – how simply awful for me).  And as is common with most of my travel, I insert sightseeing into my itineraries.  Whether it is for business, joining a family reunion, completing my degree work (see “An Education at Gettysburg,” March 2013), or for a medical procedure, I stop at a historical marker, I voyage via a unique mode of transportation, or I take in a baseball game to add a little spice to my travel.  It’s what makes a routine trip a memorable outing.

Once I cruised Hollywood Boulevard after a two-day workshop in Southern California and happened upon a press-lined red carpet for a movie premiere at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater.  I dined on the waterfront after a meeting in Annapolis when I took with a side trip to Chesapeake Bay (see “The Ice Machine in the River,” July 2012).  I squeezed in a landmark outing in the City of Brotherly Love (see “The Vet,” November 2011), and I added a full day’s drive to the northern tier when I had just planned an overnight outing to Omaha (see “North Dakota on a Napkin,” November 2011).  My travel always has multiple purposes and selfish sightseeing.

Missed Sunsets

I land on Monday night and reach the hotel after sunset, sadly, since my hotel stands near the beach in practically perfect Santa Monica.  I barely close the door to my room and receive a call from the front desk updating me on the score from the Tampa Bay Rays game (why, yes, they did sweep the Red Sox).  Clearly this hotel will exceed my expectations if they can keep me apprised of the early-season series.  Hued in tans, browns, and white, with highlights of trendy green, this hotel may not ooze medical motif, but it certainly brightens my visit’s purpose.  I may not get to enjoy the fancy first-floor nightclub, but just being in Santa Monica will be a treat.

Morning begins with my trying to complete my homework in advance of finals week.  But certainly I will get a chance to get out to the beach or down to the pier.  By midday I am on my way to appointment one of two, followed by a social call from friends checking on me.  When adding in a little recuperation time, another sunset comes and goes without me.  Day two takes a similar course, substituting work on my final term paper for the conversational pop-in.  And by the time I lie down, I have caught only a snippet of the sun’s departure and none of the ambiance of the ocean.  The coastal taxi ride back to LAX affords me my only scenic pleasure during an excursion-less escape.  The sun metaphorically set on Santa Monica.

Georgia Agritourism

I Saw The Signs

Plenty of highway signs dot the road sides to get us where we are going.  Obviously the highway department in any given state provides multiple notifications before an exit because sometimes drivers miss one or two as they cruise along the road.  The green ones tell us where we are headed and what is coming up next.  The blue ones provide us with services and the brown ones share with us the cultural and historic sites along the way.  The yellow ones caution us, the white ones remind us the rules of the road.  Highway markers for interstates, US highways, state roads, county roads, and cross roads direct us as we move from place to place.  But is it really possible to see them all?

When traveling solo, I often read as many of these signs as possible, seeing them as friendly faces along the way greeting me, speaking to me and teaching me as I drive.  And I certainly learned a new term as I drove through Georgia: Agritourism.  When I first saw the word on a small blue sign, I spent several miles tossing the idea around in my brain; the mix of southern agriculture and tourism seemed comical – wouldn’t that just be a summer trip to an extended family’s farm?  Do plants really produce a vacation industry?  I like pineapples and pistachios, but they fall pretty low on the list of reasons to travel to Hawaii.  Nevertheless, the word continued to generate steam in my gray matter the farther I drove.

Georgia On My Mind

The Peach State always reminds me of the old South, of cotton plantations and giant oak trees, and a few of these sprawling estates still stand to provide a glimpse of the state’s history.  The peaches and the cotton, and the way of life that has long since ended transitioning into a modern agriculture boom that ingrains itself in the state.  Giant groves of pecan trees (pronounced pē’-can, of course) add to the charm of the new south and the sweetest of pies.  Its native son, first its governor and then US President Jimmy Carter, brought Georgia peanuts into the limelight.  And who doesn’t cry at the site of Vandalia onions when slicing and chopping them?

 

Perhaps the sign, small in comparison to others, represents the twenty-first century

South – a South that’s growing and alive, that has variety and vitality and flavor and fluidity, that’s tasty and tempting and touristy.  While I still don’t think I am motivated to travel to Georgia to savor its bounty, I certainly like having it at my disposal.  And in tribute to the full range of Agritourism Georgia provides, I stop on my way out of the state at a southern winery where I sample and purchase my own bottle of vintage Agritourism at its finest.

The Twins

Quirky Coincidences of History

Do you remember who won the World Series in 1991?  Wait, let’s take a step back.  Do you know who won the World Series last year?  Do you follow baseball at all?  Maybe it’s not about the sport or the teams or the scores or the victors or the spoils.  Maybe you’re not good with dates.  Many of my friends defy my geeky logic and profess to not being history buffs primarily because they cannot remember all those names and dates and places.  But I argue that historic moments cannot be rhetorically remembered by names and dates and locations, but rather by the circumstances of the events that help to remind us of the salient details.

President James K Polk (do we all remember that name?), the Commander-in-Chief during the Mexican/American War (do we remember the year that ended?), happened to mention in his State of the Union address that a spot in the American West (do you recall the place?) happened to produce a golden nugget – a nugget that would transform the United States’ destiny.  And that valuable mineral propelled people with promises of prosperity westward spurring the largest stampede that defined the growth of the 19^th century American West.  And how do I remember the key names and dates and places?  Easy: San Francisco, a city located west of the South Fork of the American River, hosts the National Football League’s 49ers named for the year those money-hungry settlers arrived en masse and that's the year of the California Gold Rush.  The year before that, 1848, the United States acquired the land that became the Golden State at the end of the Mexican/American War.  The year after, 1850, California had boomed in a transition from territory to state faster than any other in America’s history because of the rush of folks to the tantalizing gold fields.  And as for President Polk, his middle name, Knox, in one of the fun, quirky coincidences of American history, happens to be the same name as the site of America’s gold depository at Fort Knox.

My Mnemonic Device

Leaning history stems from more than clever coincidences, the memorization of facts, or even the names of NFL teams.  Our memories makes history truly magical and remarkable.  We recall the date of Pearl Harbor because our president (do you know which one?) told us the date would live in infamy.  Our children will remember the events of 9/11 because it may be their earliest memory of American history.  But not all history is tragic, or monumental, or even memorable to everyone.  Take the World Series of 1991.  If you are not from Minnesota, even a baseball fan may not recall the final outcome of that year’s playoffs, and while I am an aficionado of the sport, I would be unable to recall who won the October Classic in 1990.  I remember that particular year, though, (and similarly why I remember the winners in 1992) the way many people recall history – by having been there.

During the summer of 1991, I drove with my son (see “Rapid City, Rapid Change,” November 2011) from Denver, Colorado to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (see “The UP,” July 2012).  The route took me through the Twin Cities during August as the aptly named home team gave its finest effort to make the season truly memorable for the players, the fans, and the Land of 10,000 Lakes.  Baseball history, world history, American history, and my family’s history converged in the summer of 1991 and for that reason, I recall who won the 1991 World Series.  I also know what year members of the old Soviet regime kidnapped Mikael Gorbachev, and what year our family moved to Michigan.  And I didn’t have to memorize any names or dates or places; instead I experienced all of the above.  That’s what I adore about history: the way it comes alive in our lives, the way it becomes a part of who we are in large and small ways, the way it sticks with us and follows us, the way its quirkiness, its coincidences, and its own kind of storytelling excite me.  Don’t even get me started on what happened when Sacajawea bumped into her brother.