It's been a fun week since we last talked. Actually, more like eight days, but who's counting? I've been visiting friends and family more than touring, and as you've figured out I don't do a lot of blogging about my visiting activities - because, and I hate to say it so bluntly, my visiting activities are none of your business, really, and I'm saving all the good stuff for the novel* - but I've seen some cool places as well.
There are so many times when I am driving that I wish I had a magic camera which would automatically record what I am seeing, since it is often not possible to stop to take a picture. The morning I left North Carolina was such a time. It was foggy, and the gray softness skirting the eastern edge of the Smokies was so beautiful it took my breath away. Driving on my Least Favorite Interstate, I-40, also took my breath away but not so much from the scenery. Don't get me wrong, it's a gorgeous drive through the mountains, but the presence of massive numbers of semi's inspired fear more than awe much of the time. Still, I made it through without incident and crossed into Tennessee.
Here's the view from the Highway 25E scenic overlook on the way down from the Smokies.
The valley is Bean Station, one of Tennessee's earliest white settlements. It was founded by William Bean who built Bean Fort and, in front of that, the Bean Station Tavern, which was the largest tavern between Washington DC and New Orleans. It must have been quite a tavern and hosted several presidents.
That picture gives you an idea of how beautiful it is in Tazewell, the small town in Northeast Tennessee where some of my in-laws live. It's just south of the Kentucky line, and we drove to Cumberland Gap which is only a few minutes away.
There's an Iron Forge in Cumberland Gap which is a large stone furnace built for the use of people coming through the Gap who needed tools of various types. Now it's a great trailhead from which my sister-in-law and niece and I took a short hike.
As on the other side of the Smokies, the recent spring snow had melted quickly and turned often dry creekbeds into rushing streams. Very pretty, although for reasons I no longer remember, I don't seem to have any pictures of them. Sorry about that!
So I worked my way north, stopping in Louisville, Noblesville, Fort Wayne, and Berrien Springs, to see various friends and family, and then drove through Chicago and Wisconsin on my way to the Twin Cities to see more friends and family. (Aside: is there a more spiritually desolate place on earth than Illinois between Chicago and the Wisconsin line? At least West Texas had weird earth formations and a soul. There's something about post-suburban Chicago that makes a person - or at least me - want nothing more than to keep going.)
On the way back next week, I'm going to stop in Wisconsin for a couple of days to check out Madison and who knows what else. I did see a couple of interesting things that I want to explore, including some giant and seemingly random rock formations in Wisconsin. If anyone knows anything about these, please comment.
Some of you may know that Indiana Highway 9 near Huntington is called Highway of the Vice Presidents. This has always struck me as sort of pathetic. It just seems like you're aspiring toward, I don't know, second place. That's not a very nice thought, and it is somewhat colored by my disrespect for a particular former Vice President from Huntington, but I have a lot of thoughts that are not very nice so there you go.
Anyway, I thought about the Highway of the Vice Presidents as I saw a billboard for Menomonie, Wisconsin. The billboard proudly proclaims that Menomonie is the 15th Best Small Town in America. Does anyone else think that Sinclair Lewis would have had a field day with that slogan? I guess I would have suggested something more along the lines of "Menomonie - one of America's best small towns" but hey, that's just me and I'm nobody's publicist. Sometimes I see this sort of thing and I can't get it out of my head.
Not coincidentally, I suppose, I've been listening to a CD of Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary, which is about his time in Puerto Rico in the late 1950's. That man could write, particularly before the booze and the drugs destroyed his ability to be coherent, and I feel nearly inspired. To write, that is, not the booze and the drugs part (don't worry, Mom). Thompson writes stuff that I wish I had written, such as: "It was the tension between those two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going." His descriptions of people and places tend to focus on the dark side and perhaps that's what makes them illustrative, interesting and spot on.
But enough hero worship. The early morning precipitation in Minneapolis seems to have dissipated and I am going to check out a few places before my friend, Barb, and her husband come home from work. I hate to waste a day, usually, plus if I stay here I'll eat all of the large unlocked Tupperware container of Chex mix which she left, rather foolishly I thought, in plain sight.
*This may or may not turn out to be a complete lie.
There are so many times when I am driving that I wish I had a magic camera which would automatically record what I am seeing, since it is often not possible to stop to take a picture. The morning I left North Carolina was such a time. It was foggy, and the gray softness skirting the eastern edge of the Smokies was so beautiful it took my breath away. Driving on my Least Favorite Interstate, I-40, also took my breath away but not so much from the scenery. Don't get me wrong, it's a gorgeous drive through the mountains, but the presence of massive numbers of semi's inspired fear more than awe much of the time. Still, I made it through without incident and crossed into Tennessee.
Here's the view from the Highway 25E scenic overlook on the way down from the Smokies.
The valley is Bean Station, one of Tennessee's earliest white settlements. It was founded by William Bean who built Bean Fort and, in front of that, the Bean Station Tavern, which was the largest tavern between Washington DC and New Orleans. It must have been quite a tavern and hosted several presidents.
That picture gives you an idea of how beautiful it is in Tazewell, the small town in Northeast Tennessee where some of my in-laws live. It's just south of the Kentucky line, and we drove to Cumberland Gap which is only a few minutes away.
There's an Iron Forge in Cumberland Gap which is a large stone furnace built for the use of people coming through the Gap who needed tools of various types. Now it's a great trailhead from which my sister-in-law and niece and I took a short hike.
As on the other side of the Smokies, the recent spring snow had melted quickly and turned often dry creekbeds into rushing streams. Very pretty, although for reasons I no longer remember, I don't seem to have any pictures of them. Sorry about that!
So I worked my way north, stopping in Louisville, Noblesville, Fort Wayne, and Berrien Springs, to see various friends and family, and then drove through Chicago and Wisconsin on my way to the Twin Cities to see more friends and family. (Aside: is there a more spiritually desolate place on earth than Illinois between Chicago and the Wisconsin line? At least West Texas had weird earth formations and a soul. There's something about post-suburban Chicago that makes a person - or at least me - want nothing more than to keep going.)
On the way back next week, I'm going to stop in Wisconsin for a couple of days to check out Madison and who knows what else. I did see a couple of interesting things that I want to explore, including some giant and seemingly random rock formations in Wisconsin. If anyone knows anything about these, please comment.
Some of you may know that Indiana Highway 9 near Huntington is called Highway of the Vice Presidents. This has always struck me as sort of pathetic. It just seems like you're aspiring toward, I don't know, second place. That's not a very nice thought, and it is somewhat colored by my disrespect for a particular former Vice President from Huntington, but I have a lot of thoughts that are not very nice so there you go.
Anyway, I thought about the Highway of the Vice Presidents as I saw a billboard for Menomonie, Wisconsin. The billboard proudly proclaims that Menomonie is the 15th Best Small Town in America. Does anyone else think that Sinclair Lewis would have had a field day with that slogan? I guess I would have suggested something more along the lines of "Menomonie - one of America's best small towns" but hey, that's just me and I'm nobody's publicist. Sometimes I see this sort of thing and I can't get it out of my head.
Not coincidentally, I suppose, I've been listening to a CD of Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary, which is about his time in Puerto Rico in the late 1950's. That man could write, particularly before the booze and the drugs destroyed his ability to be coherent, and I feel nearly inspired. To write, that is, not the booze and the drugs part (don't worry, Mom). Thompson writes stuff that I wish I had written, such as: "It was the tension between those two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going." His descriptions of people and places tend to focus on the dark side and perhaps that's what makes them illustrative, interesting and spot on.
But enough hero worship. The early morning precipitation in Minneapolis seems to have dissipated and I am going to check out a few places before my friend, Barb, and her husband come home from work. I hate to waste a day, usually, plus if I stay here I'll eat all of the large unlocked Tupperware container of Chex mix which she left, rather foolishly I thought, in plain sight.
*This may or may not turn out to be a complete lie.
No comments:
Post a Comment