Driving Back from Texas - Day 10 (Harrodsburg, KY, the last day)

On our last day of the trip, we stayed at Aspen Hall, one of the many, many large historical houses in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, the oldest city in the state. The ceilings in the bedrooms were as large as a castle's, and it was the first time the boys had ever stayed in a Bed & Breakfast.

The main questions from children when one first stays in a Bed & Breakfast are as follows:
Do people live here?
Where do they live?
Can we use the whole house?
Are other people here?
Don't the people eat with us?
Where do they eat?
Why don't they like to eat with other people?

We landed in Harrodsburg on a Sunday, which in the `bible belt`, like Stornoway, means that nothing is open except the local restaurant. Harrodsburg has stately, historical homes, so just walking around the front steps of the local churches and sharing a pop was a real pleasure. It also has the country music star Montgomery-Gentry and his new restaurant off of highway 127. Just built last year, this wonderful oak log building is towers in the middle of the Kentucky hills like a giant log cabin, although the local pub food could easily be reproduced at home on the fryer better and cheaper.

We stuck to our Bed & Breakfast – soon to be sold to a happy buyer as the owners say goodbye to Kentucky for the California wine country.

Driving Back from Texas - Day 9 (Tennessee)

Memphis is not a city for children. For blues fans, music fans, bar-hoppers, and Elvis junkees, yes, but children, no. The city centre is designed for adults. There are very few parks (1) for running or climbing or walking, and there are virtually no stores. There is a vibrant music and pub culture, and the business centre seems active, but for two boys the biggest attraction was the breakfast bar at the hotel, and even there they got a nasty stare from the staff when they tried to grab a second box of cereal.
So after we checked out of the hotel, we headed out of town and stopped at the `King`s` house - Graceland.
Elvis was before my time, and way before the boys` generation, so we were surprised to see that there are actually still lineups to visit his house. We waited in line for an hour before getting in, and wow, shag carpeting on walls! We stripped an acre of the stuff out of the last house we moved into, but I had forgotten what a fad that had been! Every inch of the walls was covered with something - shag carpeting, fabric, or wood panelling. Nothing was left untouched.

We loved looking over the costumes that Elvis wore during his music tours, and all of the gold records really impressed the boys. "Are they really gold?" they asked in wonder.

I had also forgot that Elvis had been buried at Graceland beside his mother and father. This is the spot that drew most of the crowds for the longest, and we all said, "can you do that?!" I imagine once Michael Jackson's home, Neverland, goes on tour, the crowds and comments will be very similar. It is fascinating to see how a person who is so public actually lived privately.



   We had an interesting cultural encounter at a McDonald's drive through on our way to Nashville. "What accent is that?" the server asked. "Canadian," I said.
"We don't have an accent!" said the boys.
 "Why, is it hard to understand?" I asked the server.
"Yes, it is a bit ma'am," replied the server.
I smiled, and the boys were stunned. "I can't believe he thinks WE have an accent."

We arrived in Nashville an hour and a half too late to see Athena. Inside of Centennial Park's Parthenon, is a giant statue of Athena, a replica of the one in Greece. But what is most impressive is the sheer size of this reproduction. Like everything in Nashville, they did it up big.

The 'Parthenon' means nothing to the boys. What is important and impressive to them is the fact that this is where a significant scene in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief was filmed. They could walk around the parts where 'Percy' searched for the stone and imagine where the monsters entered. They loved it.
Centennial Park itself was also beautiful at this time of March. All of the trees were flowering, the birds were nesting, and the water fountains had just been turned back on for the beginning of the wedding season. Aesthetically, is was peaceful and calming. A serene break from highway 40 North.

After an 'all-you-can-eat Sushi meal' at a Chinese restaurant for St. Patrick's Day (all of the local cafes were full with revellers in green), where we learned that you are considered an adult at 9 if you are eating in at a Chinese buffet, we continued North to Harrodsburg, Kentucky - the oldest city in KY.

Driving to Texas - Day 7 (Wild Oak Ranch, San Antonio

Have you ever had one of those days when everyone you are with is tired and sick? Day 7 of the trip was that day for us. Niall had had a cold earlier in the month, and Seumas and I hit the peak of the virus today. It is hard to stay indoors and sleep when you know you only have one day left to see things you may never be back to see. Other children were swimming, biking, playing in the arcade, or riding down the lazy river in San Antonio's new 'Wild Oak Ranch' resort, but we were holed up in the air conditioning pushing the apple juice and building lego.

The 'Wild Oak Ranch' is right across from Sea World in San Antonio, and it probably the singular worst location for a Summer family destination - dry and unbearably hot, with no foilage, tents, or water to relieve the heat, even in March, I cannot imagine how exhausting it would be coming here in July or August!

  The rooms are designed for long stays with a full kitchen and living room. Most guests bring their own groceries, and we were no exception to this, stopping by a Texas 'HEB grocery store' on our way in. I thought the 'HEB' stood for 'Hebridean', after the famous Summer festival in the Western Hebrides, but it is simply short for the owner's initials: H.E.B.
 Tomorrow, Day 8, will be a day of road travel, passing through the 'great state of Texas' on our way to Tennessee, but most of the passengers will be sleeping through the scenery, recovering from the Texas virus.
One more swim in the warm, 90 degree pool, and we will be on our way home!

Driving to Texas - Day 6 (San Antonio)

San Antonio is built around the centre of the city - the Alamo and the river. It was once home to a series of battles for the formation of the state of Texas, and now is a very commercialized centre with Mexican cafes, boat tours and Alamo T-shirt shops along the riverside.

The highlight of my day was finding a two hour parking spot right beside the front gates of the Alamo. Because the city has grown up around this historic site and river, there are no parking lots, so drivers have to drive in circles for awhile before they find a curb-side opening for their car. We were so pleased with the location we found, that we dreaded leaving it.
The Alamo historic site was originally an old town parish, or fort, made out of stone walls from the surrounding valley. For John, the most interesting character in the battle was a man named Bowie who was a dead shot with a gun (apparently, injured, he fought the entire battle from his bed in a tent) and who developed a sinister-looking knife known today as the 'Bowie knife'. This knife was one of the first to have a backward serrated edge, like a shark's set of teeth, so that when a man was stabbed in battle, the knife did a great deal of damage coming back out. One of the originals is kept in the Alamo museum.
Like many historic forts and villages, the Alamo employs a group of young re-enactors, as well as various students who demonstrate life in the Alamo. We spent a lot of time taking in the beautiful gardens, koi fish, and the children's games at the fort.

There is a 'shrine to the Alamo' inside a small chapel in the centre of the site, but the lineups were over two hours long just to walk through, so we left the buildings and gardens for a lunch along the riverside, where Seumas attracted a very nice duck who was determined to be his girlfriend. We had to tell her, sadly, that she wouldn't be able to go home with us and she would have to leave. We all giggled at this.
    Tomorrow is a day at the 'Wild Oaks Ranch Resort' just outside of the city close to SeaWorld, and from there, we will begin our journey back home through Memphis and Nashville.

Driving to Texas - Day 5 (Austin)

What child doesn’t want to see what elementary schools are like in a different state or country? Well, we had that opportunity this morning when we visited the Forest Trail Elementary School in the Eanes District of Austin, Texas. Forest Trail, a K-5 school, has its own communal garden, laying hens (Rhode Island Reds which we recognized from home), and an outdoor theatre along a woodland path. It’s linked to the outdoors and the land through all its classrooms, and it was wonderful to see how integrated the children are with the land surrounding the school. In grade 6, the children move across the street to the middle school, until grade 9 when they attend the local Austin high school, which has its own transition wing called, ‘The Grade 9 Centre’.

The botanical gardens in Austin are a wonderful fusion of Japanese and South-western landscaping. The boys picked up several little one inch long Cottonwood snakes that must have just hatched , all while standing under a circular Asian arch with a giant horseshoe framing it. The natural centre next door also hosted local rescued wildlife, including a bobcat. "I always pictured bobcats as just being a big, fat cat," Seumas said puzzled, "because my grandfather is named Bob and he's got a big stomach."

We were going to try one of the ‘flavourtown’ restaurants for lunch , the Green Mesquite, but right beside it was John’s favourite hamburger joint, and a local celebrity, P. Terry’s. It should be on the ‘dives’ show since we loved eating the only thing on the menu – hamburgers and hand-cut fries done in peanut oil. The lines up to the take-out window (it’s all take-out) were so long that we had to wait with the pigeons and crows to get our food, but it was well worth any flavortown rating.

Not far from P. Terry’s is a natural springs swimming hole where visitors have been coming for centuries. Barton Springs is run by the City of Austin, complete with its own lifeguards and a diving board - a wonderful example of a naturally preserved swimming area. Ducks, loons, and the odd mocking bird share the water, but under the 27˚C March sun, it was a refreshing dip. The springs keep the water at a constant room temperature of 70˚F year round, so it is a favourite during the hot Texan Summers. Behind the main swimming pool area there is a shallow lazy river or small rapids. The children spent most of their time here following the flow of the creek like a couple of salmon until the youngest began to turn blue and we dried off in the afternoon sun and headed home to Silverado Circle for a chicken supper and a night of packing in anticipation of Wild Oaks and San Antonio in the morning.



Driving to Texas - Day Four (Austin)

Welcome to Texas! The 16˚C temperature in Little Rock began to rise one degree for every hour we drove South-west, and by the time we arrived in Austin, it was a balmy 26˚C! We changed out of our sweaters in a restroom along the red muddy highway, and enjoyed the Texas drive in our first ‘Summer’ shirts of the year.

Purple wild flowers were blooming on either side of the road, and the trees were sitting in a shallow warm bath of water everywhere. After Dallas-Fortworth, the limestone cliffs and hills alert you to the Austin city limits along the Colorado river, and we welcomed the change in topography. We marveled at the sheer number of white pines crowding the streams between contemporary architectural subdivisions. There is a real artistic feel to Austin that you don’t get coming through the big money of Dallas. It has a geography which, like Arizona’s, stands out to be heard and be different.

The Meltons greeted us to pizza as soon as we found their house amidst the hidden valley of ‘Bee Caves’. Here was the place where the Texas people who visited us each Summer in Ontario actually came from. Now the other half of the puzzle was complete!

Driving to Texas - Day Three

In direct contrast to the clear blue sky of St. Louis, the rain poured along the historic route 66 all the way into Little Rock, Arkansas. If you are ever driving across country, take the old routes. The scenery, even in the dark, driving rain, is so much richer than the monotony of asphalt. Creek beds and woods, and small town stores invited us all the way through Missouri and made it infinitely more enjoyable than the ‘tallymen’ on the Ohio Turnpike.

Through Little Rock runs the beautiful Arkansas River, which surprised us, since so many publicized films of the South display poverty and drought. Little Rock is certainly not that. It is lush and vibrant and full of small shops and fish restaurants. But the boys Little Rock highlight?

“Here is your warm chocolate chip cookie sir,” says the desk clerk at the Double Tree Inn. Ah, men. So easy to please!

Driving to Texas - Day Two

It is refreshing to see a city where there is still one place left unravished by stifling insurance controls! We happened along St. Louis’s City Museum after an hour and a half into the tour of a pristine 1854 house belonging to the Campbell fur family. With the boys yawning from their Victorian St. Louis history lesson, we bumped into a wild spiral of iron grids and tunneled steel netting of dragons swarming with children, like ants on a Summer sidewalk popsickle.

City Museum in St. Louis is a tangle of girders and steel sculpted and welded with railroad spikes and tin and copper to form tunnels and trees and a labyrinth of climbing possibilities.  The entire world reminded me of a steel Dr. Seuss or Edward Tinkl. And with all of the endless exploring: empty stomachs and annoying idiosyncrasies go unnoticed when minds and bodies are creatively occupied.

City Museum, St. Louis

Four hours later, with sunny faces and sore muscles, we walked into the Scottrade Centre to see the number one hockey team in the Western conference: the St. Louis Blues. The Centre is sold out. Street corners are crammed with fans holding signs, “We need tickets!” Men with beer and undersized blue and yellow jerseys with an eighth note on the front yell, “BLUUUUUUUUUUES”. It sounds like, “Booooooo”, but the effect is a cacophony of voices raised in the dual purpose of seeing goals and hoping for fights. Huddling around the players’ entrance, each of the boys gets a high-five from the Blues’ captain before their hero, #1 goalie Brian Elliott, goes on to win the game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, 4-1.

Driving to Texas - Day One

On the whole, driving 11 hours across five states isn’t so bad when you are engaged in the Hunger Games series, read over the radio. Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri…we stopped in them all for a quick leg stretch, a slurpee, and a $1 lotto ticket from each state to mark the boundary. Every part of the interstate was remarkably the same. Little or no variation in pavement every step of the way. This is the very reason we will be travelling the ‘historic 66’ down to Little Rock the day after tomorrow.

Indiana had the best state sign, well the only one we saw, “Welcome to Indiana” in great big multi-autumn colours across highway #70 from an enormous Sao Paulo aluminum cross.

Road tolls on the Ohio turnpike were new to us. At the end of the toll road, a woman with greasy, stringy hair reached out to take our money with long, sharp nails curving at the end. “Pay the tallyman”, our contemporary version of the troll at the bridge said.

We didn’t let Vandalia get by without a quick walk by the stream and around the century-old white pillars towering of two four-foot boys.

We unraveled when we reached the Drury hotel in St. Louis. The kids’ quiet, peaceful, sleepy behavior on the long car drive quickly broke down to insults and kicks as their hunger and fatigue transformed them into small gremlins. But one plate of fries at Maggie O’Ryan’s busy pub, packed with Ron White and Radiohead fans proved to be the antidote we needed.

“Seumas?!” the waitress said as we discussed the menu, “that is the second time I have heard that name today! That is sooooo weird!” Seumas rolls his eyes,  and we were all ready for a swim before bed.

Vandalia

The St. Louis Arch

Where the Mississippi Begins