Monday, June 23, 2008
Our Girl Stella
Somewhere in the middle of Alabama our GPS gave up. It thinks we’re in a corn field and if we follow it, we will be. We’re on a highway surrounded by rolling shale beds interspersed with the piney woods of Eastern Alabama. And, the GPS won’t stop insisting that we turn where there is no road.
We are not a GPS family, or we weren’t until Honda equipped us with this 2009 Honda Pilot Touring Edition for the journey. The system has been excellent but only after the break-in period where we alternately took turns fussing with it and veering off the road while trying to learn its idiosyncrasies and remain married. Who knew that NOT asking directions would result in our first three-way: Steve, me and the Navigation Woman we’ve named Stella.
Now we’re so used to her that we’ve ditched our Atlas and are thinking of bringing her into the hotel room for the night. We’ve used her to find hotels in each town, the Cadillac Ranch, Texas Motor Speedway, and some of the best ribs in Oklahoma. So far, she’s a pretty satisfying third wheel. But, you know, a three-way is tough to do without becoming emotional -- she falls to pieces every once in a while.
Sometimes, we miss a turn and she insists we turn around, when there’s a pretty good alternate route clearly on the map. And, then there was Las Vegas where she seemed spastic to keep us off the strip. Maybe she was afraid of the competition. And, she’s a little out of date when it comes to local cuisine in small towns – which may come and go too quickly to stay current and often seem to have left just moments before we pull in. Or is that part of her ruse to keep us from acquiring new tastes and keep us to herself? But, just when you think she’s turned into a Fatal Attraction and you really, truly need to find Elvis’ birthplace, the American Old Time Auto Museum in Morillton, Arkansas, or the Honda Manufacturing Plant in Lincoln, Alabama -- she’s Steve’s girl. And, so am I.
We are not a GPS family, or we weren’t until Honda equipped us with this 2009 Honda Pilot Touring Edition for the journey. The system has been excellent but only after the break-in period where we alternately took turns fussing with it and veering off the road while trying to learn its idiosyncrasies and remain married. Who knew that NOT asking directions would result in our first three-way: Steve, me and the Navigation Woman we’ve named Stella.
Now we’re so used to her that we’ve ditched our Atlas and are thinking of bringing her into the hotel room for the night. We’ve used her to find hotels in each town, the Cadillac Ranch, Texas Motor Speedway, and some of the best ribs in Oklahoma. So far, she’s a pretty satisfying third wheel. But, you know, a three-way is tough to do without becoming emotional -- she falls to pieces every once in a while.
Sometimes, we miss a turn and she insists we turn around, when there’s a pretty good alternate route clearly on the map. And, then there was Las Vegas where she seemed spastic to keep us off the strip. Maybe she was afraid of the competition. And, she’s a little out of date when it comes to local cuisine in small towns – which may come and go too quickly to stay current and often seem to have left just moments before we pull in. Or is that part of her ruse to keep us from acquiring new tastes and keep us to herself? But, just when you think she’s turned into a Fatal Attraction and you really, truly need to find Elvis’ birthplace, the American Old Time Auto Museum in Morillton, Arkansas, or the Honda Manufacturing Plant in Lincoln, Alabama -- she’s Steve’s girl. And, so am I.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Small Town Commerce
From the highway, a road trip is a blur of sameness. The same rest stops, the same chain restaurants, the same mile after mile of pavement. While this is the fastest way to get from “A” to “B”, it’s certainly not the most satisfying.
John Steinbeck noted this frequently in his landmark road trip book Travels with Charlie. Published in 1961, one year before Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature; it was his most commercially successful work. It chronicled a long road trip taken with his dog, Charlie, a standard poodle. They traveled in a converted pickup reminiscent of a small camper today. This book was very important in the planning of our trip because many of Steinbeck’s observations ring true today.
Steinbeck hated the highway, always choosing the slower, more local routes on his trip when possible. He ruminated on the loss of region dialect noted as he passed from town to town. He suggested that the highways and their accommodation of ready migration from place to place were homogenizing the American regional speech into a national language. I’m not sure that this has come to fruition, but I do think our commerce is a sea of sameness.
Every waypoint along the interstate is the same: McDonald’s, Exxon, Starbucks, etc. In developed areas, these exits often nestle up against suburbs, which again exude a sameness of commerce: Bed, Bath & Beyond next to Target next to Petco. It’s not a bad thing to have this convenient, consistent supply of goods that are in demand. But, it sure is boring. This becomes much more clear when we leave the highway and take the smaller routes through the smaller towns.
In Oklahoma, we leave the highway to track down an automotive-themed roadside oddity called the Spider Bug. In a field next to a local auto business, the Spider Bug is a 30-foot tall – the body of which is a VW Beetle. We snap a few pictures. Then head back to the highway through one of the most picturesque small towns in America, Purcell, OK.
The town is one wide avenue with angle parking on both sides and down the middle. The traffic splits one way on either side of the central parking median. Turn of the century buildings in beautiful condition flank the road on both sides for what seems like half a mile. It’s beautiful and it’s filled with local, small businesses. A small café is hear a barber just up from the post office. We stop to send postcards and are greeted by friendly locals who enthusiastically help us locate a restaurant for lunch. Not a Blockbuster in sight. No homogenized commerce.
We go through a few more towns like this, many not as lovely as Purcell. But, we do notice the lack of chain stores and a certain density of car-related commerce. Many small used car lots, tire stores, auto parts, windshield repair, etc. seem to thrive in small towns and outnumber other types of businesses. Ford seems to be the only brand of any stature in these towns and the lots are filled with trucks. Is this because auto repair is the one thing you can’t drive very far to get? You could certainly drive the 30 miles or so to Wal-Mart if you needed a particular type of laundry soap, but if your car doesn’t run, you can drive it to get it repaired, right? That’s my theory. Let me know what you think.
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VISIT WWW.INYOURCARROADTRIP.COM TO SEE OUR TRIP MAP AND LINK TO FLICKR WHERE YOU CAN POST PICTURES OF THE CONTENTS OF YOUR CAR!
The Bug Ranch
Okay, we couldn't resist visiting the Bug Ranch, a satire just up the road from the Cadillac Ranch. We took pictures from the window of the car since we were still soaked and in our underwear. Seemed fitting.
Cadillac Ranch
My finger is on the nozzle of the spray can. The paint is red. The sky is a dark and peppered with lightning. I have a moment of indecision.
“Kelley or Mommy?” I wrestle with who I am. “Kelley or Mommy?” Who do I want to be? A rain drop splattered on the back of my hand.
K-e-l-l-e-y I paint in foot-tall letters on the 1960s Cadillac face-planted into the red Texas dirt.
The Cadillac Ranch was once an iconic display of audacious automotive glory – tail fins and chrome glistening in the Texas sun.
Now, it’s different, but equally wonderful. It’s a piece of people’s art. Open 24/7, just off the highway in Amarillo, the ground is littered with spray cans and the cars are festooned with graffiti to within an inch of their lives. In fact, layer upon layer of spray paint may be the only thing holding them together at this point.
As we push open the creaky gate (also painted) and amble down the dirt path, some bad, bad weather is closing in. The few families in the field leaving their mark are making a run for it, dropping their cans where they stand. Drops of rain the size of cherries send tufts of red dust up from the foot path as they hit, one after another. The kids run ahead and begin to paint, unleashed in this moment of permissible rebellion.
As we paint, it’s like someone unzipped the sky everything you’ve heard about Texas storms has come true -- rain in buckets, wind whipping your hair in all directions, pea-sized hail here and there, and lightning floor to ceiling.
We watch our fresh paint struggle to cling to the fenders as the rain tries to slide it to the mud below. Realizing that we’re in a field with huge metal structures sticking out of the ground in a lightning storm, he ma, we run for it. Then, we learn about Texas Gumbo.
The red dirt path is now a slick ice rink of mud that slows our progress by half, then half again as the mud sticks to our shoes in globs and doubles their weight. We run and slip and laugh all the way back to the car, soaked through to our underwear.
We strip to skivvies roadside and no one blinks an eye. This is Texas and they’ve seen worse. We head toward civilization, hot showers, and fried chicken, the universal comfort food of travelers nationwide, with nothing but muddy shoes and paint crusted fingers to show for our adventure.
“Kelley or Mommy?” I wrestle with who I am. “Kelley or Mommy?” Who do I want to be? A rain drop splattered on the back of my hand.
K-e-l-l-e-y I paint in foot-tall letters on the 1960s Cadillac face-planted into the red Texas dirt.
The Cadillac Ranch was once an iconic display of audacious automotive glory – tail fins and chrome glistening in the Texas sun.
Now, it’s different, but equally wonderful. It’s a piece of people’s art. Open 24/7, just off the highway in Amarillo, the ground is littered with spray cans and the cars are festooned with graffiti to within an inch of their lives. In fact, layer upon layer of spray paint may be the only thing holding them together at this point.
As we push open the creaky gate (also painted) and amble down the dirt path, some bad, bad weather is closing in. The few families in the field leaving their mark are making a run for it, dropping their cans where they stand. Drops of rain the size of cherries send tufts of red dust up from the foot path as they hit, one after another. The kids run ahead and begin to paint, unleashed in this moment of permissible rebellion.
As we paint, it’s like someone unzipped the sky everything you’ve heard about Texas storms has come true -- rain in buckets, wind whipping your hair in all directions, pea-sized hail here and there, and lightning floor to ceiling.
We watch our fresh paint struggle to cling to the fenders as the rain tries to slide it to the mud below. Realizing that we’re in a field with huge metal structures sticking out of the ground in a lightning storm, he ma, we run for it. Then, we learn about Texas Gumbo.
The red dirt path is now a slick ice rink of mud that slows our progress by half, then half again as the mud sticks to our shoes in globs and doubles their weight. We run and slip and laugh all the way back to the car, soaked through to our underwear.
We strip to skivvies roadside and no one blinks an eye. This is Texas and they’ve seen worse. We head toward civilization, hot showers, and fried chicken, the universal comfort food of travelers nationwide, with nothing but muddy shoes and paint crusted fingers to show for our adventure.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon is no less spectacular now than it was when I first saw it years ago. The difference this time was seeing it through the eyes of my children, wide with wonder. We lingered at the view point and as the sun melted into the western rim. In the lingering twilight, the kids pulled out their guitars and played. The hundred or so people crammed onto the overlook were hushed for a minute or two as the sound of Spanish Romanza wafted through the air, spilling into the canyon below. Then, they resumed conversations and picture taking. One couple, who had scrambled over the barricades never did break their face-sucking stride, making out through the entire sunset. Their dual immolation was almost as spectacular as the canyon itself and an act almost as old too.
Leaving the canyon we find ourselves behind a line of 5 Porsche 356s ranging from a 1955 to a 1963. One red, one blue, one green, two white – a couple of hard tops, the rest convertibles. We catch up with them at a Route 66 diner and chat for a few minutes. One driver, Bill Collins from Windham, NH, has a friendly smile and is eager to talk, even though he’s been driving a while and I’m keeping him from his lunch. He says “the boys” left New England a week ago and covered 800 to 900 miles a day to pick up the “women” in Phoenix. “Your own women? Or just some women?” I asked to clarify.
He smiled even wider, “Our wives,” he said. “We’re on our way to Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe for a car show. People will show up from all over the country who have trailered their cars in and handle them with white gloves. We show up with bugs on our windshields and mud and stickers from where we’ve been.” They’ll cover 9,000 miles total to the show and home. I ask if he’s concerned about putting those miles on a vintage automobile. “No.” he said. “These cars a made to be driven. I’m carrying 28 lbs of parts in the nose, so I’m ready if there are problems.” Apparently, each car carries between 25 and 30 lbs of parts and they’ve already made one stop for repairs.
We let the boys and their women go to lunch and pop into a “soda fountain” just a few doors down in hopes of finding an authentic fountain root beer. What we find is a fake. Festooned in Coke signs and upholstered bar stools, a modern soda machine cranks out the same soda you’d pour for yourself at 7-Eleven. A real soda fountain would ladle a scoop of root beer syrup into a tall fluted glass in a metal rack with a handle, and then fill it to the brim with carbonated water and stir. We love these, and the family tradition is to order it without stirring. That way, you can nick a little of the syrup straight from the bottom and stir when you’re ready. Needless to say, it was a big disappointment to be handed a paper cup with soda you could get anywhere. This is Route 66 after all – The Mother Road – you would think you could get a mother of a root beer. But alas, it was not to be. Not today anyway.
Leaving the canyon we find ourselves behind a line of 5 Porsche 356s ranging from a 1955 to a 1963. One red, one blue, one green, two white – a couple of hard tops, the rest convertibles. We catch up with them at a Route 66 diner and chat for a few minutes. One driver, Bill Collins from Windham, NH, has a friendly smile and is eager to talk, even though he’s been driving a while and I’m keeping him from his lunch. He says “the boys” left New England a week ago and covered 800 to 900 miles a day to pick up the “women” in Phoenix. “Your own women? Or just some women?” I asked to clarify.
He smiled even wider, “Our wives,” he said. “We’re on our way to Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe for a car show. People will show up from all over the country who have trailered their cars in and handle them with white gloves. We show up with bugs on our windshields and mud and stickers from where we’ve been.” They’ll cover 9,000 miles total to the show and home. I ask if he’s concerned about putting those miles on a vintage automobile. “No.” he said. “These cars a made to be driven. I’m carrying 28 lbs of parts in the nose, so I’m ready if there are problems.” Apparently, each car carries between 25 and 30 lbs of parts and they’ve already made one stop for repairs.
We let the boys and their women go to lunch and pop into a “soda fountain” just a few doors down in hopes of finding an authentic fountain root beer. What we find is a fake. Festooned in Coke signs and upholstered bar stools, a modern soda machine cranks out the same soda you’d pour for yourself at 7-Eleven. A real soda fountain would ladle a scoop of root beer syrup into a tall fluted glass in a metal rack with a handle, and then fill it to the brim with carbonated water and stir. We love these, and the family tradition is to order it without stirring. That way, you can nick a little of the syrup straight from the bottom and stir when you’re ready. Needless to say, it was a big disappointment to be handed a paper cup with soda you could get anywhere. This is Route 66 after all – The Mother Road – you would think you could get a mother of a root beer. But alas, it was not to be. Not today anyway.
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