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.

Donner Pass

360°

They say that hindsight is twenty-twenty.  Even in a well thought-out action like the American Founding Fathers scribing the Declaration of Independence, creating a nation may have been monumental, but it also began the reduction of the long-standing British Empire.  The statement of freedom became a single step towards the formation of a superpower despised by upstart countries throughout the world.  And even worse the pronouncement based on liberty looked the other way as the basic liberties failed to extend to American Indians, women, African Americans, and an expansive list of religious, sexual, and, ethnic citizens.  Nonetheless, two hundred and thirty-seven years of educating ourselves and analyzing the actions of those men allow us to consider better courses of action for the future.  We’ll always be reevaluating our choices, from everyday decisions to life-altering choices.

That’s what interpreting history does: allows a three-hundred-sixty view of circumstances that may have barely had a fractional view of all the facts at the time they occurred.  I’m sure General Custer thought he had everything under control at Little Bighorn (see “Cornered on a Hilltop,” July 2013).  Attacking Russia worked so well for Napoleon.  Jailing Nelson Mandela quieted the world on the issue of Apartheid.  It’s always easier being the armchair quarterback than being the guy in the huddle, even if it ends well for the guy in the huddle, it may just as likely end poorly.  Just ask Joe Theismann – I’m sure he didn’t plan that.

Stuck in the Snow

Visiting the Sierra Nevadas in eastern California treats any visitor to a spectacular range of environments from cold winters to brutal heat.  At a height of more than 14,000 feet, the range’s highest point, Mt. Whitney, straddles Death Valley (see “Desert Dust,” October 2011) and Sequoia National Park.  The snowy range includes an abundant source of water to support the megalopolis of San Francisco and Los Angeles. And tucked high above Truckee, California far uphill from the resorts of Lake Tahoe lies the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort built in the early twentieth century to entice the citizens of San Francisco area to enjoy the snowy, winter wonderland between Mount Judah and Mount Lincoln.

In November of 1846, without the benefit of hindsight or of a full-circle view, a group of eighty-one west-coast bound settlers discovered the downside of the Sierra Nevada winter wonderland and only forty-five descended the mountain pass to the pleasures of the California coast, with some horrifically poor dietary decisions along the way.  When I drove the path myself, I enjoyed the benefit of knowing what could occur when unprepared, and yet I still had to leave my vehicle to help push a fellow driver out of the snow bank in which he had found himself trapped.  And the view from the summit reminded me that even when we learn from history, it may still be hard to see where we are going.  Thank goodness the fog finally lifted.

Forty Years On An Airplane

My First Flight

The first time I flew on an airplane in Summer 1973, my mother dressed us appropriately for a semi-cross continental excursion: long, pastel dresses for us girls, my Dad in a necktie and sports coat.  We climbed the exterior staircases, carrying a small token of a toy for entertainment during the 2.5 hour flight.  If we remained on our best behavior for the duration, the stewardesses would provide us with a small pin to remind us of our voyage.  We would have earned our wings.  Best behavior meant not asking for a complementary deck of cards, it meant not dropping food in our laps as we ate our meals, and it meant sitting in our seats and not getting up for any reason, even to use the on-board lavatories.

Flying in the early 1970s also meant departing from the old, brick terminal at Sky Harbor Airport.  We had only lived in the Grand Canyon State for about eighteen months, yet we had visited the terminal several times to pick up Dad from his business travels.  Sometimes we would arrive early and go out to the gate to meet him; sometimes we would change into our pajamas and just pull up curbside when he had late evening arrivals.  I remember driving down Interstate 17 and curving onto the Black Canyon Freeway, and I never remember there being any traffic.  Travel felt different then, even if I simply came along for the ride.  And when I finally boarded a plane, I felt like royalty.  And I dressed and acted accordingly.

Flash Forward

I am inflight now, and I see a completely different view.  Kicked under my seat are my flip flops.  On my tray table, a simple bag of peanuts, and I fork over the additional cost for a Corona.  The flight attendants – the majority of whom are men – wear shorts and polo shirts.   My son sits next to me, jeans and t-shirt, much like every other passenger.  Last time the two of us flew together, we sat astride on two aisle seats, but he got the better deal.  On the window beside me, a woman tucked her dog in a nylon tote under her seat, and between us her boyfriend used his soft drink can as a make-shift spittoon.  It’s a different caliber of passenger, with a different level of service, and a different in-flight experience.

But think about what else has changed.  This flight includes LED mood lighting to ease the transition from taxiway, to airborne, to landing.  I am Wi-Fi enabled and can play solitaire, not with the complimentary deck of cards, but on the in-flight gaming system.  The movie audio isn’t piped in through headset air tubes, but is electronically connected, along with a full selection of television channels and movies.  I communicate with the ground via email, or I can post a video of myself and the view out the window.  With GPS I can track my flight, see over what landmarks I am flying, and receive real-time speed and distance measurements.  This is a new era of air travel, less formal, but far more functional; planes are more snug, but letting go of the traditions of the past helps us move towards a better life and a more effective journey from Point A to Point B.  I recall a flight abroad in the early nineties where the back third of the plane contained the smoking section, as if the smoke confined itself to those rows.  I like the changes in the past forty years.  Now, if only we can get rid of the smokeless tobacco, too.

Cornered On A Hilltop

Twisting My Arm

General George Custer got what was coming to him.  That’s what I always thought.  So when my Dad decided the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in southeastern Montana should be a highlight of our travel, I acquiesced and blocked time in the itinerary to indulge his preference.  After all, Dad had tolerated my desire to see Devil’s Tower National Monument and the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, plus I made him and Mom pose like the Lewis and Clark Historic Trail signs, so this would be a little something I would tolerate in exchange.

And had we simply visited the battlefield with a quick pop in at the visitor’s center, I would have not minded the excursion, but Dad found himself sucked in to a ranger program that was one part history, two parts storytelling and one part personal political commentary.  I opted out and climbed the fateful hill to see the actual sites rather than listen to one person’s opinion thereof.  I’m a visual learner.  Surprisingly, I relish in the rolling hills and autumn brush far more than I expect of the eastern Montana scenery.  And on the tallest of the small hills, overlooking the not-so-distant, tree-lined river valley, the core of one of America’s most historic battles overlooks the disputed territory where Manifest Destiny clashed with the livelihoods of hundreds of generations of Native Americans at the spot where Custer paid the piper.

A Sacrifice for History

The toe head from West Point, the lowest graduate of the class of 1861, definitely bit off more than he could chew and thought far more of himself than he should, but as I stood on the hillside, seeing random grave sites of warriors and soldiers alike, the frightful truth of a handful of defenders killing their own steeds for the sake of cover appears stark and frightening.  From all sides the military men faced attack, and they all perished, their resting places marked.  For the combatants on both sides, men lie where slain, the grasslands covered with the fallen fighters all committed to their ideals and their way of life.  I understand the dire consequences in which those who died here, without a peaceful moment but instead dying in desperation; men who gave their last breath to their respective causes.

 

Nearly a century and a half later, history contemplates the failed rationale of an expanding nation that clearly did not reflect the best of a fledgling democracy.  Nonetheless, the horrific ending met by those who died at Little Bighorn lie bare on this sunny hillside, kissed only in a subtle breeze, offering me a second thought about the nonchalant way in which I contemplated the valiance of the battle.  I bend down to take a photo of a marker showing where a soldier died and I imagined the vantage point he had with no defense, not even a boulder or tree to block his approaching death.  I finish my private exploration after giving each man who fell here the reflection they all deserve, regardless of right or wrong.  I finally depart the hillside finding Dad still engrossed in the lecture with Mom standing patiently at his side making a sacrifice of her own at Little Bighorn.