Smokin' trip to navigating the Potomac

The South and the regular South

The South Carolina countryside is attractive. We drove past miles and miles of peanut fields, dotted with tidy small country houses and punctuated with Baptist churches every couple of miles. Each church has its graveyard right next to it. Occasionally some graves are separately fenced off and I suppose this is to keep the Southern Baptists from associating with the regular Baptists, but I don’t know that for sure. People here are friendly, hospitable and gracious. Along the back roads we saw fewer confederate flags than in California and while we came across a couple of county race tracks, there really were no redneck yards of the week to be admired. Certainly, Oregon sports more “emporiums” and fixer upper cars displayed on concrete blocks than the heart of the South.

In Augusta, GA we enjoyed the Green Jackets (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t478) beat the Charleston Riverdogs (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t233 )

 5:1

Our goal was to get to the Smokey Mountain National Park (http://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm).  On crossing into North Carolina along a curvy mountain road in the forest, things did suddenly turn backwoodsy. We came past a bunch of stereotypical shacks with moonshiner type characters lounging on the sloping porch and an assortment of rusting trucks along the highway that dated back to the great depression. We had lunch at a roadhouse and were asked a question I had not heard for some time: “Smoking or Non-Smoking?” Bless the Tar Heels.  They had a bucket of peanuts on each table and the catfish is real good.

As we got close to the park entrance, heavy thunderstorm developed that would last well into the next day. We turned back and my ambition to visit this famous park will remain unfulfilled.

Eventually we paused in Fredericksburg, VA and saw the Potomac Nationals (mascot: “Uncle Slam”) (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t436 ) play the Winston-Salem Dash (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t580  ) .

I like the way a lot of minor league teams bring a lot of kids onto the field and really engage the fans.

My nephew Mark came down and joined us and Ferdinand scored a souvenir T-shirt

We cheered with uncle slam, celebrating the win  with a tenth inning walk-off.

In DC we were treated to a fine afternoon of sailing on the Potomac.

Ferdinand did an outstanding job skippering

 Now I’ll have to get a boat.

We also made a pilgrimage to Camden Yards.

 What an iconic ballpark! What great food options ! I had some pulled pork, but would also have liked the BBQ chicken with corn on the cob. What good fans ! Unfortunately, the birds

stink and have stunk for some time. Attendance is way down. We did enjoy seeing ole Vladi swat

 and we held up our end by cheering for the ex-Angel. His average is way down and the birds lost to the Cardinals, but Ferdinand bagged a promotional T-shirt.

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It’s easy to get in and out of DC and Baltimore. They have multiple mass transit

systems, albeit incompatible light rail lines that do not connect

, so we parked our truck at the station and took the tram into town and to the games. Unfortunately, the Greenbelt, MD transit police are dimwits and gave me a tickets for expired Oregon plates (yeah, they do stand out), while I had a valid California permit displayed at the same time.

 They were pretty nice over the phone, though,  and I assume its all good by now.

We also saw the surging “Natinals”

 take on the surging Pirates.

The stadium is fine, but lacks character. The team makes up for it with fine play.

We were treated to a walk-off in the ninth.

  They don’t do fireworks when this happens. I suppose the tight restrictions on anything that goes ‘bang’ in DC have something to do with national security, or maybe with nervous dogs. Good thing I didn’t bring a bunch of “Ill Eagle” rockets to Marks house and launch them over the White House. A fine time was had by all, despite the lack of some big bangs after the big bang.

A better mascot would have been a eledonkey or an asslephant

Fresh Squeezed to the last Shuttle

The Trip Turns North

The sunshine state greets you with a cup of fresh orange juice. It’s a long haul across the panhandle and I was surprised how extensive and dense the pine woods are. We made an impromptu stop at a roadside turnout that provided some shady benches and a boat ramp. There was our first gator. Our goal was Tampa, where we planned to take in the Clearwater Threshers (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t566 ), but on the way into town we saw a billboard for a churrascaria (http://www.texasdebrazil.com/ )

and, well, you can only do one thing at a time. The food was great. The price was not, but, hey, you go into debt with your credit cards only once.

South we went, around Lake Okeechobee. We entered the Seminole reservation and went to see Billies Swamp Safari (http://www.billieswamp.com/rates.html ) Another disappointment. They had non-native birds on display and want you to take the full day package at $50, when all we wanted to do is ride an airboat.  We had a mediocre lunch and left. The Seminoles sport the national colors of Germany and seem to have some sort of real good source of income. Unlike on many reservations I’ve gone through, here the houses are lavish, two big fat SUV’s in every car port and a palm thatched picnic roof next to every mansion. There is a casino, but it does not appear very busy. The staff at Billies Seminole Safari were all white guys.

To make up for the missed game, we headed to the East coast and catch the Marlins take on the Mariners, with some hope to get Shaun Figgins’ attention. Turns out, the Marlins now play their home games in Seattle ! Yes, the series was moved to Safeco field to make room for some U2 concert; seems that was a financial decision. The franchise will make more money that way and we were left holding the bag (screw the fans at home, too). Is this some strategy by the owner to reduce fan attendance below a threshold, get out of the contract with the city and move to Cleveland? (sounds like a movie plot to me)

Tropical showers, sometimes heavy, had moved in, but we resolved to drive an hour North and take in a game hosted by the Jupiter Hammerheads. It was all you can eat night. Man, were they going to make a loss on us ! (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t479 ). It was drizzling when we got to the stadium and they were bravely pretending the game would go on. We hung around a while, but eventually left, because the inevitable did happen; it was rained out. We did not have much baseball success in Florida.

I asked the motel clerk about a good Cuban place to have dinner at, She promptly suggested “Las Vegas”. I informed her that wasn’t funny and we’d just come from there. There are no Cuban restaurants in Las Vegas. No, the place is called Las Vegas and it was a cross between fast food and real dining. The food was outstanding and the service very genteel, gracious and attentive. A bunch of old men kept coming in for meals and it was clear they were feeding their homesick souls. The music matched the flavors.

Off to the Everglades. I had the brilliant idea to sneak in on a spur road that leads to a campground North of the main entrance and picnic there. After quite a bit of a drive, we got there, only to discover that the place was closed for the summer season. Those national park nit-wits didn’t have the wherewithal to post that useful bit of information on their sign out on highway 997. I finally located a couple of guys cooling their heels inside a lavish and well air-conditioned fire station and they confirmed the fact. Seems only foreigners (mostly Germans and Swiss) and country bumpkins from Oregon are foolish enough to enter the glades in June. The park is nice, but Big Bend was better. We only saw a couple of gators, but the mosquitoes are oppressive. I didn’t know mahogany trees were once prevalent in the swamps. We tried our picnic at another site

, but the intense heat and the bugs drove us away. Unless you have a boat and one of those beekeeper type bug suits, the park is not that interesting.

The East side of the glades is a region full of tropical nurseries and fruit plantations. I had no idea so much exotic fruit was grown here; papayas, bananas, lychee, mangoes, avocado (the big, Brazilian kind), coconuts, etc … I loaded up on some big mangoes + a bag full of lychees.

I had never had a fresh lychee (small red fruit)  The shells pops open with a slight squeeze and the white meat surrounding the pit is sweet and delicious. The taste lingers. I am saving the seeds. Maybe I can raise some in Morro Pintado.
 (https://picasaweb.google.com/MorroPintado/MorroPintado2010#  ) Speaking of which, we have some papayas there.

Cape Canaveral is another expensive tour, but this one we didn’t skip.

It’s still a very lavish operation, despite being fairly obsolete. Due to ‘security concerns’ you can no longer approach the interesting sites, nor enter the assembly building. HSA type security is in full bureaucratic  bloom here and must have added a nice layer of make believe work to the federal payroll. If terrorists want to damage a working space program, they’ll  go to Baikonur. In fact, they’re building a new port in Russia: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10698433

We should turn ours into a nature preserve. That’s partially already true. Cape Canaveral sports 21 eagle’s nests, lots of gators and wild pigs, all three of which of which we saw during the bus ride. The last shuttle is sitting on its pad

 and only a few of the launch sites are still operational, but there is a fleet of a hundred or so air-conditioned buses ferrying tourists around, plus all the attendant staff, displays, I-Max shows, space burgers, etc.  And they’re not very nice, either; when we were in the queue for the bus

 I asked the attendant if we could have the handicap seats because Ferdinand is an amputee, giving Ferdinand more space to accommodate his leg.  She actually asked, “Are you kidding me?”. She then had the temerity to suggest he be placed in a wheelchair like the fat lazy ass self-disabled and be hoisted up a hydraulic ramp into the bus;  more about Florida hospitality later.

NASA drones on about the Apollo program. It’s all you see and hear about.

I guess that’s their only shot at keeping funding. Not a word, nary a display, from Voyager, the Mars rover or any of the other truly interesting things they have done in the last few decades. That’s way too scientific, I guess. Four, count ‘em, four times,  the tour guide pointed out viewing stands and locations where only “VIP invitees” would see the last shuttle launch. Seems to me, the most important folks would be those who paid for it. Where is the free admission and hot dogs for the unwashed crowds of tax payers?  Yeah, turn this into a nature preserve and leave some relics of the space program standing around, with a self-guided (free) tour  and we’d have a good thing there. I was once pretty pumped up by all that moon shot stuff and Kennedy did inspire the nation to do something truly difficult. All we have is nostalgia now. We need an inspiring national aspiration. The war on drugs is not it. The wars to force democracy on medieval societies is also not going so well. The green jobs initiative will inspire legions of spongers and corporate welfare tricksters.  Great societies have great dreams. All we’re now getting is nightmares.

Lunch was at a nice Mexican/Cuban place in Titusville that had a wonderful poison green plastic coconut out front.

 It was raining pretty good and that added to the atmosphere of decay and abandonment. Titusville, like most of the towns we drove through, bore the hallmarks of decay and retreat; boarded up businesses, shuttered shops and houses for sale. All that a few miles up the road from a place where the tour guide tells the marks that cell phones were a byproduct of the space program. How do I know that this is BS? The key components of all that digital wireless stuff are the narrow bandwidth frequency filters developed by Rockwell Radio (the Cadillac of radios), a division of Rockwell. I know , because they offered me a job on the team back when I finished my BS.

Now just North of the Kennedy moon shot nostalgia center is a very good National Wildlife Refuge and we went there to take a dip in the North (ok, North to us) Atlantic. We saw more gators there than anywhere else on the trip, including this sweetheart who was blocking the dirt road we explored.

Green camo gators, too

The beach was great (and it’s cheap to enter). The shuttle is visible just down the coast. This is the place to be to see the launch.

They have hundreds of yellow stakes marking sea turtle nests. You can see them if you enlarge the picture here:

 We both had a very nice swim. Our best experience in Florida, I’d say. So far, the state had the rudest, pushiest and aggressive drivers along the route (I know, wait ‘til New York) and the service attitude in a bunch of places like motels and restaurants is terrible. Seems like the wrong coast version of California (but with better fruit and better Latin food.)

Zydeco to Big Guns

As the Astros were out of town, we merely did a drive-by.

 As luck would have it, it took us past the G.W. Bush memorial trash can.

We headed South from Lake Charles tuned to the repo man song on KBON (http://kbon.com/ ) Along one of the canals in the wildlife refuge we met up with a woman and her four daughters, busy crabbin’. They’d been at it since 5AM and still seemed pretty happy about it in the early rainy afternoon. Here is how it’s done: You lay a net on a stick into shallow water. Then you toss out a piece of bait (the nastier , the better) on a string and when you feel the bug tuggin’ at it, you slowly coax it in and over the net. Then you yank that net up and toss the mudspider into the cooler. They’d caught a good two hundred already. The lady warned us not to get too close to the reeds on the canal’s margin, ‘cause that’s were them gators like to hang out.

When we reached one of only two beaches ( Holly Beach Louisiana has on the Gulf, it was blowin’ hard from the South and there were a lot of hard rain squalls.

 There are traces of the big storms, but no evidence of the “bubbler”, as the locals put it. The shore was deep in rotting seaweed and thick with shells and other protein fare for the seabirds.

The brown churning water was not exactly inviting. We made the impromptu move to follow the county roads along the coast and passed through the low rent shore of Arcadia. Here the mobile homes are on stilts, but the pickup trucks are usually worth more than the house. Every gas station also sells bait.

As we moved East, the coast becomes industrial; a familiar industry to me. The Louisiana DOT operates a ferry across one of the canals and there we were in the heart of the oil patch.

 Cameron still builds BOP’s and BP’s office flies the corporate flag proudly. I felt right at home, seeing all those liftboats, supply tenders and service company yards. I spoke with a hotshot driver crossing on the ferry with us, and as I suspected from the sustained good oil price; it’s real busy out there in the black gold world, or “balls to the wall”, as we would have said. No one sleeps; you hardly eat, but you’re makin’ money hand over fist.

The oilfield has left a permanent imprint on me. It made me more rude than I should be, harder to please and expecting a lot from others. That’s how that world is and it gets the job of creating wealth from black goo hidden miles underground done.

In Lafayette (seems like a nice town) we splurged on some real good Cajun food. (http://www.prejeans.com/ ) The place features live Zydeco

 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zydeco ) Well, the snap beans were pretty good. You could’ve seen us on webcam eatin’ shrimp (ordinary), gator (not bad) and gumbo (excellent). From there we made the good move to head South yet again and met up with “Cajun Jack” (http://www.cajunjack.com/ ) for a swamp tour. The guy is a genuine bon vivant;  played ball for LSU on a championship team ( Ferdinand was in awe ), did his time in the oil patch ( Iliked him then ) and now brags and entertains tourists. He’s got a pretty good thing going. He has a nice house/office by the water,

accepts  cash only and that goes into his pocket ( for tax-purposes, dog )

It’s a good trip

and we saw a bunch of real fine bayou

 and swamp.

We cruised past the homes of some old time swamp residents but saw neither them nor any gators/

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We thought we could make it to the Zephyrs (http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t588 ) game after the tour, but Cajuns have a vague sense of time and the boat got back late. It was raining pretty hard on the way to New Orleans anyway  and it turns out the game was cancelled.

We stayed in Gulfport, Mississippi ( 34,650 distinguishable permutations of that state name)

and then made haste to Mobile, Alabama (only state where a song made it onto the license plate) Sweet !

At Mobile Bay we visited the USS Alabama

 and  a bunch of other associated killing machinery. Now we have an idea of how wide the Panama canal locks are.

Interesting to note that the dreadnaught was planned in the late 1930’s and her keel laid in 1940. Now, we had a whole bunch of this heavy armament in the pipeline by December 7 1941, so let’s not pretend it was all such a big surprise. There is also a WWII sub you can crawl through

 and a plaque commemorating the 2000+ sailors drowned in the submarine service during the  conflict. ( The Germans lost 20,000 men, or almost 70% of the service )

Down the street from the battleship is a lovely place called Felix’s FishCcamp

( http://www.felixsfishcamp.com/ ) I had the whitefish with some really good collard greens. The service was also interesting. They take the trouble to have an individual waiter/waitress for every person on the table when the food is served and take care to set all the plates down on cue.

Artillery Shells to Missions

In Lordsburg, New Mexico they offered up artillery shells for sale (best selection)

Sounds good, especially if I see another one of those ‘Click it or Ticket” billboards. In Washington state the good fourth of July stuff is sold from Indian roadside stands like “Ill Eagle Fireworks”. In New Mexico and Texas, this appears to be standard fare.

My brother says Texas is in dire financial straights, but the tourist point of entry at El Paso

 is nothing less than lavish and amply staffed by folks just waiting around to empty the trash.

The border patrol, too, has a lot of young faces and plenty of brand new 4-wheel drive trucks. We’ve gone through 5 ‘checkpoints’ so far where  these self-important guys, all armed, always with  a German shepherd on hand, improve our homeland security by asking us if we are US citizens. Reminds me a lot of crossing into East Germany. These cool dudes like to wear Terminator sunglasses, ride along frontage roads, dragging old tires so they can later find footprints. Yeah, real clever. Untold millions are being spent here in a successful effort to bolster the federal employee union rolls. The maids at the motels no hablan ingles.

It’s a long, hot drive down to the big bend in the Rio Grande. Some of the roadside attractions are better than others.

Texas gets the roadside rest areas right. There are lots of them. They have shade roofs, most have BBQ grills and they are called picnic areas.

No one in their right mind visits Big Bend National Park during the summer. Cottonwood campground

 had only one other customer; a couple of guys who made the mistake to think it’d be neat to kayak down the river. Cottonwood is nice, shady and green. We batted and pitched the bucket of balls a few times. There is also has a native mob of Javelina (wild pigs)

that have made it their home. Unlike the random horse or the roaming cattle, the park service will not chase them out. In fact, the picnic tables all have warnings not to confront them and to be neat with food. They did not seem to mind the long fly balls.

A windmill still pumps water at the old adobe homestead of the Nail family.

. Some pecan trees and a fig attest to the valiant efforts of these tough folks. The Simpson sheep herder house is even more remote.

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A woman named Nina is buried by the side of the road. She died in childbirth and asked to be laid to rest overlooking the shaded spring where she read to her other children so often. The grave is cared for. Someone put up a new marker and there are some recent plastic flowers. The original marker is hidden behind the new one. It is a plain rock, cemented into the ground and only her name and 1911 are scratched into the concrete. One has to wonder if one of the kids that was read to under those cottonwoods still lives nearby.

 These people are all but forgotten. They pitted their wits and strength against a harsh land. Their mark is soon erased and I have to wonder; did they win or loose? Certainly they did more in their lives than most of us. Just as certainly, they would  be lost and outcast in our world today, but we would die from thirst, hunger and exposure in theirs.

The Rio Grande is not the grande.

It is a silty rivulet marking the frontier. You wouldn’t get your back wet crossing that, but getting down the cliffs might be a trick.

The Pecos is more impressive.

 but it took three washed out bridges before the folks figured out that a high bridge was needed.

 This bridge is featured in some movie, but I forget which one.

In Del Rio we turned in for some steak and shrimp at a Chilis. When it came time to pay, the waiter informed us that an anonymous benefactor had picked up our tab. He said the person was in the habit of doing this for someone randomly as a family tradition. Wow ! Texas is friendly, but this beats all.

The Alamo

 is dwarfed by a bunch of urban mushrooming

surrounded by a network of green water canals

and supports the usual menagerie of bums, crazies, druggies and hobos generally attracted to free taxpayer subsidized urban planning projects.

It was 104 degrees and we tried to stay in the shade.

Even the sidewalks are stamped so as not to forget the Alamo

The San Antonio Missions are a farm team of the San Diego Padres. They’re doing very well at 47:20. Even though it was father’s day, the game was poorly attended.

The concessions were lousy and the game started slow and hot.

 A few beers later it got better. They played “Why I like beer…” between innings and did some very funny and clever video clips. There was also some fine heckling of some hapless Midland player.

Despite the strong wind blowing in from the outfield, we saw a grand slam and their mascots are good and goofy: Henry the slammin’ puffy taco (could be a bit risqué)

and the Balopena.

The pitching was rotated starting in the 5^th inning. I’ve heard the commentators bemoan the fact that pitchers are coming up from the minors without the stamina to last a full game. The Nolan Ryan days of 200+ pitches are gone. The Missions won 8:3. Maybe the Padres should send some of their boys back to the Mission.

It is becoming impossible to get block ice. Has anyone noticed? On the other hand, we got coupons for 6+6 chicken wings, good at any San Antonio Buffalo Wings restaurant, because the  team scored 6+ runs. We’re giving them away to locals; paying it forward (a wee bit).

Near the motel was a Salvadorean restaurant (http://sanantonio.citysearch.com/profile/10100557/san_antonio_tx/la_playa_seafood.html ). Ferdinand was not amused by the exotic fare. I thought both the ceviche and the frog legs were bland, but the fish was good.

The concept of a breadless burger leaves fast food joints perplexed around here. On the plus side, there are BBQ breakfast places and BBQ drive-through places. As the billboards for Lone Star Beer point out; there really is no reason to leave the state. Nonetheless we plan to do just that and head for Beaumont, TX and then the Big Easy.