I am traveling and will arrive at my destination this afternoon. I am getting there by plane. I am going to the most boring psychology conference in the world, and I suppose they had to have it in a pretty entertaining place to make up for all the meetings about jurisprudence, professional regulation, and licensure. I expect to hear yet again about the legal problems for regulatory boards brought upon us by the North Carolina Board of Dentistry and their attempts to put teeth whitening shops out of business!
There is a beach that proudly houses a sculpture of a 70 foot tall giant emerging from the sand. There also is a large Ferris wheel, a marina, a 3000 seat state of the art theatre, and one of the largest gaming floors outside of Las Vegas. I will not visit any of these attractions, as I don’t gamble and I don’t like large Ferris wheels. I might take a ride on a 36 foot, Americana-themed Carousel, however.
I fly into one jurisdiction, go by taxi to another jurisdiction, and will be very close to yet another jurisdiction. There will be lots of neoclassical architecture nearby, as well as an enormous library should I have some free time on my hands. I am here for six days.
Where do you think I am going, and where would you visit if you were there?
My first afternoon in Nashville, my friend and I went to Ann Patchett’s bookstore – Parnassus Books. It’s everything a bookstore should be. Tall ceilings, lots of wood, big windows, amazing children’s section, attentive staff and some wonderfully curated displays. There are two local authors tables, one of fiction on the fiction side of the store and one of non-fiction on the non-fiction side. Both displays had a wide variety of authors (not just a huge pile of one or two) and many of the books were signed.
I couldn’t resist. Although I didn’t recognize any of the titles, I managed to narrow it down to three; I asked the two staff at the desk for recommendations. Between them, they had only read one of the titles but they were familiar with the plots for all three. Based on their input I chose a historical fiction/fantasy (should that be called historical fantasy?) It’s set in Florence in 1473 and it intrigues me since I have actually been to Florence. I don’t know much at all about the history of Florence, so I’m looking forward to it.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Do you have any favorite local authors? (Yes, you should absolutely count our Chris!)
A friend of mine recently re-located here and just moved into her new townhouse; she invited me to come down for a few days to visit. Although I have been to this state, I’ve never been to this city before, despite having sent a few groups here over the years. I’m looking forward to a few relaxing days of sightseeing and entertainment.
The city is named after a Continental Army general during the American Revolutionary War.
The person who first called the U.S. flag “Old Glory” lived here.
The largest songwriter’s festival in the world is held here.
There is a full-scale replica of the Greek Parthenon in this city.
President Theodore Roosevelt coined the phrase “good to the last drop” here.
This was the first city in the nation to be granted an FM-broadcasting license.
The first seeing-eye dog training school in the U.S. was founded here.
Where am I? And if you know, what should I see while I’m here?
One of my colleagues was excited last week for the arrival of her mother for a visit from Washington State. She was flying from Spokane to Bismarck via Minneapolis, arriving in Bismarck on the midnight Delta flight.
There are very few commercial airports in ND, and very few commercial carriers that come into the State. I knew exactly what the midnight flight into Bismarck is like. The airport terminal is almost dark, nothing is open, and all the airline counters are closed. There are a couple of lighted offices, and one or two rental car desks whose occupants look exhausted. The long term parking kiosk is closed, so you better have exact change for your parking bill, or else a debit/credit card.
It is sort of comforting, sort of odd to live in such a remote place and know the details of these things so well. I wonder what it will be like to move back to Luverne when I retire, and what new things I will learn, and what old things are still there.
What communities are you the most familiar with? How have they changed for better or worse over the years? What are some of the more interesting airports you have been in?
Husband and I spent four days last week in Fargo with our son and his family, joined for two days by our daughter. She was on a week long visit from Tacoma to friends in various parts of Minnesota. We picked her up in Alexandria on Friday. She hitched a ride back to the Minneapolis Airport on Sunday morning with her best friend who lives in Hopkins but who was in Moorhead visiting her sister. Her trip took a lot of planning!
Son booked an Airbnb with five bedrooms in the historic section of Fargo on 8th St. It is only the second time we stayed in such accommodations, our children far more accustomed to booking these lodgings. It really worked out well, especially since our 4 year old grandson was pretty happy not having to eat in restaurants and could run around and play and make more noise than he could in a hotel. We ordered out from our favorite Thai and East Indian restaurants, and son grilled lovely lamb kebobs on Saturday night. My only complaint was that our mattress was far too soft and gave me a backache.
Fargo was surprising, even after all these years of living in this State. We went to the downtown farmers market on Saturday. It was wonderful, and we scored some fresh, local sweetcorn. There are very few places in North Dakota where you would see many gay couples walking around in public holding hands, but there they were, happy as they could be among the produce stalls. It was also far more ethnically diverse than I remember it being in years past. It was so nice to see.
I imagine there are Airbnb nightmares, but ours worked out swell. We will more than likely do it again, but will have our children help us figure out how to choose them.
What are your Airbnb experiences? What cities have pleasantly surprised you? Where are your favorite places to visit?
Last week when we were coming back from St. Louis, we got shuffled into a TSA line where they are apparently testing new equipment. No taking off our shoes, no pulling out our little baggies of liquid, no requests to dump water bottles.
At first I thought this would be great but was very shortly disabused of that idea. After your bags went through the scanner, anything that looked funny got shoved off to the side for additional scrutiny. In the regular line this happens as well but since our line had been specifically told NOT to pull out anything including liquids or toss water bottles, it meant that more than half of the bags going through got held up. Water bottles were opened and examined with some kind of test strips, bags were opened and rifled through; it was not a quick check.
Neither YA nor I had anything unusual but we were behind a few people who did. So we stood back and waited while watching everyone else’s problems pan out. The family who went through right before we did were a hot mess. Three kids, all under the age of five and already hot and tired after waiting in line. Four adults – it was hard to tell who belong to whom but they were clearly all together. Because they were told not to take things out of baggage, there was a plethora of sippy cups and water bottles. Every bag was opened and pawed through (sorry, my bias is showing here). Every sippy cup and bottle was opened and tested.
As the kids started to melt down, one of the adults started to melt down as well. She was angry – about everything. When her anger did nothing to make the situation better, she got angrier. Her voice got quite loud, she got in one TSA agent’s face. The folks with her tried to calm her down, but she was having none of it.
I’ve never seen anything like this in person but it was amazing how fast other TSA agents were in coming to their co-worker’s defense. And how MANY TSA agents came over. I was extremely glad right then that TSA agents do not carry firearms or any other weapons but there were enough of them that could have taken this woman down with ease. They did end up asking her and one of the other adults into a side hallway (six TSA agents for the two adults). When they came back a few minutes later, the distraught woman seemed a little calmer and she didn’t say one more word. I can only imagine what they said to her.
I asked one of the agents who was standing behind us how long this new process/equipment had been in place. He sighed and said “one week”. I wished him luck. Then our bags came through. All they did was confirm our little baggies of liquid/cream which was easy because we both had them in side pockets of our bags; off we went, plenty of time to get to our gate despite the delay.
The Botanical Garden, which opened to visitors here in 1859, is the oldest public garden in the US and among the top three public gardens in the world.
The first US kindergarten was started here in 1873 by Susan Blow. (You can still see her original class room!)
The Eads Bridge, completed here in 1874, was the first arched steel truss bridge in the world. The bridge continues to carry automobiles, pedestrians, cyclists and light rail trains!
Several new foods were popularized here in 1904: the hot dog, the ice cream cone and iced tea.
Famous folks from here: Maya Angelou, Yogi Berra, Daniel Boone, William Burroughs, Vincent Price, Stan Musial, Marlin Perkins.
It was this week three years ago that we lost our Little Jail Bird, Edith. In her memory, I’m running her most iconic posting on the Trail.
Until last fall, I had never been to Banning State Park. I had driven by it dozens of time, because when I head up to my sister’s house, I always turn off 35W and take Highway 23 into town. I didn’t know much about Banning, but when I was looking for a day trip, it seemed to fit my needs perfectly.
First, I wanted a park where I could drive there and back in one day without getting too tired. Second, I wanted a park that didn’t involve driving several back roads, because I knew that I would be driving in the dark due to the shorter fall days and my night vision and sense of direction is bad enough that I would get lost unless I kind of knew where I was going. And third, I wanted a state park because I had a state park sticker and wanted to use it as much as possible to get my money’s worth out of it. Banning fit all of those qualifications. Plus it has a waterfall, which is a big plus in my book.
So, off I went, one sunny morning in October. When I arrived, I stopped at the visitor center to get maps and ask where the best spots were. I was so excited. It seems that often when I go north, I am early for the fall colors and often find myself driving home just a few days before “peak” and this time I was not too early! I said something about that to the woman at the desk (while trying to not jump and down in excitement) and she shook her head woefully and told me in a discouraging tone, “You’re going to see LOTS of brown out there.” Gee thanks, way to burst my bubble.
Of course, since I drove all the way up there, I figured I better go on the hike anyway even if I would see mostly brown. I drove to the parking area and when I stepped out of the car and looked up, I knew it was going to be a good day (see header photo).
I hiked all the way to the falls and back and shot lots of photos. It was an incredibly beautiful day: that clear, deep blue sky that you only seem to see on autumn days and – surprise! – lots of colorful leaves on the trees. It can be a challenge shooting in bright sunlight, but I was so overcome by the beauty of it all that I just took that in my stride. There was that wonderful northwoods smell in the air – pine trees and dead leaves. Nothing like it! and nothing else invigorates me like that does.
It was getting pretty cool and the sun was going down quickly by the time I was heading back on the trail but the golden evening light only made things more beautiful and the colors more intense. I went home pleasantly tired and very happy and glad that the woman’s prediction of “lots of brown” wasn’t true.
I drove home yesterday from Howard Lake, MN in seven hours. Google tells me it is 496 miles. The speed limit varied between 55-60 MPH on Highway 12 between Howard Lake and I-94 at Sauk Center, to 75 MPH once I got out of Fargo.
I tend to drive 5 MPH higher than the speed limit if I can. It isn’t so high that a Highway Patrol would care about me, but fast enough that I can make good time. I admit my MPH got up to 90 as I passed some slow coaches here and there, I haven’t had a speeding ticket in 30 years.
I was probably too tired to drive safely once I made it to Bismarck, but my, was I ready to get home. The temperature dropped to 62° as I entered western ND in early afternoon. I understand it is a little warmer in MN!
How many speeding tickets have you had? What is the fastest you have driven? How do you keep cool in heat waves?
Monty Don, of craggy face and deep rich voice and calm confident demeanor, is the BBC’s in-house gardening expert, worth knowing if you are a gardener. And worth knowing if you are into travel. In addition to his weekly garden show, he has done several series where he helps non-gardeners develop their small yards and, my favorite, when he gives tours of great gardens of different countries, such as France and Italy. Of those I love the French tour most, in part because he travels around in post-WWII era Citroen, one of the more visually memorable cars. The French gardens are the highly structured masterpieces of topiary and shaped hedges and large fountains and looping pathways. The Italian ones are about as structured but do not appear to be so, cultivated randomness.
But it is the old English gardens which impress and irritate me. Garden on the English tour means large expanses of hundreds of acres where every tree, pathway, line of sight and folly has been developed to look ancient and natural, when it is not. The long lines of sight built into the landscape are masterpieces of faux natural. The beauty impresses me, but the bending of will to man irritates me, done by genius such as Capability Brown (1716-1783), original name Lancelot Brown. (Marketing was an art even in the 18th Century.) Brown’s face is shaped much like Monty Don’s, by the way.
Then there are the woods 20 feet off my patio, owned, except for the first 5-6 feet, by the city. Capability would rub his hands in glee on how he could change that abhorrent disarray. Not that I do not have a similar impulse, having been raised on a farm where the woods were managed as graze and woodlot. Our roads through the 85 acres still appear in my dreams.
My woods here is as wild and uncontrolled as woods in a city could be, mostly because of the ravine. Various parts of both Mankato and North Mankato are designated as Upper and Lower, meaning on top of the bluffs or below them where the ancient river Warren carved out a deep and wide valley in a matter of a few days.
The header photo shows the tangle at its worst or most glorious. They are the end of the woods where they point out into a small field of corn or soybeans, a la Ben. Those trees are not shaped that way by the wind, in fact they are bent right into the prevailing wind. I assume their need for sunlight made them arch out and away from the tall trees. It is a favorite place for deer to bed down. But even they struggle to navigate through my woods. There are several tall trees reaching their full maturity, about which there is a mystery I will not delve into. But when the leaves are gone (I took these pictures in April.) you can see the tangle of fallen and rotting trees down the sides of the raven, which gets deep very quickly, or up among the standing trees. Or you can see my corkscrew trees, as I call them, species unknown to me. They reach up like a middle finger in the face of Capability.
Trees are in all stages of life and decay.
Many visitors live or walk through the woods or the apartment building’s strip of grass.
Just three days ago I realized that at the base of one of the mystery trees a pair of squirrels have raised almost to maturity a litter of, I think, five kits. I caught them venturing out to explore, but only on their tree so far, and took this photo through the window above my computer.
I have sketched several parts of my woods. These two trees now are mush on the ground.
This spring a thick branch on one of the mystery trees broke in the high winds and got caught as a squirrel beltway. The next day the squirrels tested carefully before venturing out on this wonderful shortcut across an open space in the upper trees. Now it is their jousting ground and a trysting place, observation deck, escape route and attack route.
I could show and tell more, but I have overstayed my welcome.
Thoreau said he had traveled much in Concord. In what small area have you traveled much?
Trail Baboon 