Of cacti and bluebirds

Friday, March 4, 2011

SANTA FE, NM — We’re in a new state and a new time zone – Mountain Time – which gained us an extra hour today. We made an early start since we had a bit further to go this time to reach this fabled city of New Mexico, “the enchanting state”.

It was a breathtaking drive today. The Texan landscape continued with its prairie grasses, grain silos and grazing cattle. At one point, on our left we saw hundreds and hundreds of black-and-white cattle, coralled into scores of pens. When we passed the building at the end of this stretch of highway, emblazoned with the words “beef cattle”, we realized where these creatures were headed; restaurants and supermarkets everywhere!

Several times we passed signs warning of severe winds, and Val really felt it pushing from the south against the side of our trailer. Most of the trees by the highway were twisted sideways, indicating that this type of wind blows from that direction pretty well all the time.

Shortly before lunch we crossed into New Mexico, under a yellow archway with stylized Adobe-type suns that decorate the NM flag. The welcome centre there provided a wealth of literature which we eagerly scooped up.

Almost immediately the landscape began to change. There were still huge expanses of grassy land, but they were peppered with low evergreens and twisted, spiky plants with pale yellow flowers at the tips of each fleshy branch. We even caught sight of some real cactus; the kind that looks like round paddles tufted with sharp spines, though there weren’t too many of these. Some of the fences had snagged tumbleweed in them as well.

The land was fairly flat, but it often dropped away into gulches or was pushed upward into flat-topped hills. I think these are what they call mesas. The shape was fascinating, but what captivated me even more were the colours, especially of the soil, which ranged from rust colour to almost purple in places. Then, far off in the distance, we saw blue mountains, some of them high enough to be capped with snow! The truck climbed steadily as the elevation increased. The city of Santa Fe is known as the highest city in the US, at 7,000 feet above sea level — and we read in the brochure that newcomers may even sense the thinner air, requiring a couple of days to become accustomed to it.

Our KOA campground is outside the city of Santa Fe, so we haven’t yet seen what the town looks like, but the houses we passed to get here were quite different; almost all of them had flat rooves, and they were low and nestled on the hillsides, many the colour of sand or brick.

Our arrival here was fairly early, due both to our early start and the extra hour we gained crossing the time zone. It gave us time to set up and relax, and I was able to do a couple of loads of laundry. Next to the laundry room, in a little garden area surrounded by an adobe wall, I saw some little birds fluttering around a feeder, hung from a small tree. On closer examination, I realized they were a lovely blue! The woman in the office said they are Mountain Bluebirds. I was enchanted.

Back at the trailer, awaiting the completion of the wash cycle, I heard a pattering sound on the roof and looked out. The air was filled with billows of snow pellets that bounced on the red soil and piled up in the grass! I could hardly believe my eyes! It certainly was chilly when we got here, but I didn’t sign up for snow! At least it melted fairly quickly.

Note to faithful readers: We’ve finally been able to upload a few photos, so you can scroll back to some earlier entries and see them now!

Cowboy country

Thursday, March 3, 2011

AMARILLO, TX — The Texas Panhandle is what they call this squared-off northernmost portion of the Lone Star State, which we have crossed to its mid point today. Although Oklahoma had already displayed a wide, flat prairie geography before we left that state, Texas seems to really feel like the wild west.

The colours of the prairie are so varied, with rust-coloured grasses, sage brush, soil that is almost pink in the sunken gulches, and brush that is as yellow as ripe wheat. Every now and then, an irrigated section of farmland gives a burst of bright green against this palette, and dotting the plains on either side of the road are black cows, grazing contentedly, and characteristic round windmills with a rectangular rudder spinning in the stiff breeze.

Three-armed windmills of a newer vintage, by the scores, rotated their huge arms in western Oklahoma. The structures are gigantic! Val figured each arm must be about fifty feet long. I tried to count them as we drove past, but the rolling hills obscured some of them and I lost track. There must have been over a hundred clustered in one area. To paraphrase the song from the musical, ‘the wind was so busy it didn’t miss a windmill’. It swept against the trailer too, and shredded the clouds into horsetails in the huge blue sky ahead.

Our travels took us along the old Route 66, which gained fame through a popular TV show in the sixties. There’s even a Route 66 museum in western Oklahoma. There are plenty of other museums too; one about aeronautics and space travel in Weatherford, the home town of astronaut Tom Stafford, which boasts a moon rock in its collection, and one dedicated to native son Roger Miller, who sings “King of the Road” and “Dang Me” and other country songs. Even singer Carrie Underwood comes from these parts and merits her own billboard by the roadside!

We stopped for fuel near Clinton, OK and bought a Dairy Queen ice cream cone – it actually felt summery today at 70 degrees! The lady who served us agreed that the weather today was “real nahs” and much better than last Sunday when grass fires had raged across the region. The Amarillo Globe-News paper said there was nearly $13 million in damage from two major fires, one of which covered more than 24,000 acres. The lady told us she had been visiting her daughter in Fritch, and when it was time to go home there was only one road out; all the rest were blocked by fires. Glad we missed that one.

Our campground tonight is sandy and flat, with stunted gnarly trees here and there, and cutout figures of cowboys lounging against fenceposts. Most of the places we have camped at so far are sparsely populated, since it’s not really the season yet. Today our neighbours happen to come from Sarnia, ON – they’re on their way back home after visiting their daughter who’s working at a mission in Mexico.

Just before our turnoff to the campground, we passed a huge billboard that said “Jesus Christ is not a swear word”, and behind it was a great big truck stop with fuel pumps and a convenience store. The name of the truck stop, emblazoned across the shelter over the pumps, was Jesus Christ Is Lord Travel Plaza. Good Food. Clean Restrooms. Isn’t this a neat country?

Hogs, hills and howdy!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — New day, new state! We had another good day, with sunshine and blue sky – and plenty of that in Oklahoma’s wide plains. It got up to 70 degrees today by the time we got to our KOA campsite, so we celebrated by cooking burgers on the barbeque for supper.

Before heading out from Russellville, Val found the lyrics of the musical “Oklahoma!” on the internet so I could do a proper rendition of the title song as we crossed the state line. I got to perform a couple of bars for the ladies at the Oklahoma Welcome Center when we stopped for maps and literature. I think Val was pleased that there weren’t too many people in the office at the time.

Our trip today took us past rolling hills and wooded sections near the Arkansas state line, as well as several rivers, including the Arkansas River and another called the North Canadian River, and lakes. But the main impression of Oklahoma so far has been one of wide prairies with yellow grass, farm buildings, grazing cows and a big, big sky.

There were several large concrete teepees decorating the Oklahoma Welcome Center’s front lawn, and inside was a huge painting of Indians and covered wagons trekking across the plains. Indians, as the Americans call their native peoples, appeared to have an important place in Oklahoma’s history and culture, and after our visit to the center, we found out why.

In the years around 1830, as the Europeans began to settle the eastern states of the US, they expelled Indian nations and forced them to relocate westward to an area designated as Indian Territory. The territory was parceled out to each nation, including Pawnee, Choctaw, Cherokee, and dozens of others, who had to walk from their homelands in the east with whatever possessions they could carry to this new land and build a new life. One Indian chief called this trek a “trail of tears”.

Indian Territory became Oklahoma. Today there are more than 39 tribal nations here, and some 250,000 descendants of the original 67 nations still call Oklahoma home. The Indian heritage of Oklahoma is now celebrated and honoured in museums and visitor centres in several parts of the state. All this history was quite new to both of us; we had never heard these accounts before today.

Several times along the way we passed road crews working on the highway. The road bed is made of thick slabs of concrete, reinforced with rebar, so it provides a really solid base, but over time, small gaps develop between the slabs. As a result, in many places along the way, our truck and trailer endured a rough ride, going ga-dunk, ga-dunk, ga-dunk over the gaps. I could just picture our plates and glasses in the trailer cupboards jumping up and down with each ga-dunk. But, fortunately, we found no damage when we reached our destination.

Large billboards were peppered along the roadsides, enticing travelers to turn off for juicy steaks, to seek salvation, to hit the jackpot at casinos, or to fill up with low-priced fuel. A theme that we had encountered both in Arkansas and Oklahoma was the pig. The razorback hog appears to be a symbol for Arkansas, and barbequed pork is a popular dish. At the filling station where we stopped to fuel up after lunch, there were three large pigs out front made from oil cans, in front of the Pig Out Palace. When we are in a location that allows us to post the photos I took, you'll be able to have a look!

Toad Suck State Park

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

RUSSELLVILLE, AR – The names of some places we pass on the highway are too quirky to ignore. Hence the title of today’s entry, which is an honest-to-goodness attraction in the state of Arkansas! It reminded me of one in Pennsylvania that was called Hungry Mother State Park. Where do they get these names?

Shortly after we left the RV park this morning, we turned in to the Arkansas welcome centre for maps and information. I asked the attendant why the last syllable of her state is pronounced “ah” when it reads “as”, and she said that in the 1890s the state passed a bill establishing the correct pronunciation, and that’s what it has been ever since.

We had a perfectly beautiful day for traveling today, with clear skies and bright sunshine. We hit a high of about 58, so it was really quite pleasant. Signs of spring are everywhere – more and more emerald green fields spread out on either side of the highway, and we caught glimpses of flowering fruit trees and even wild daffodils as we drove.

Today we saw more evidence of wildlife than any other so far. Unfortunately, a lot of it was squished on the side of the highway, including a deer, a racoon, and a coyote. I saw a couple of slender white cranes wading through some roadside ponds, and we saw a couple of hawks close up as well. At our campground this evening we could hear cardinals trilling away nearby. For us, March has definitely come in like a lamb.

We passed through Little Rock this morning, and I read in one of the pamphlets we picked up about the Little Rock Nine – the nine African-American teenagers who, in 1957, tested the notion of equal rights for all by trying to attend an all-white high school in that city. They were turned away at first by the Arkansas National Guard, but some days later, on orders of President Eisenhower, were escorted by the US Army to class. It sparked news stories everywhere. Val says he remembers that event very well, but I can’t say I do; I was under 10 years of age when it happened. Now there is a civil rights museum across the street from Little Rock Central High School, which has also been declared a National Historic Site, and 2,400 students still attend the fully-integrated school.

We stopped for lunch and fuel at a truck stop just off the highway. It was a bustling place, and in the parking area there were dozens of tractor-trailers parked, still running, while their drivers paused for food, a shower, or just a break from their trek on the Interstate. There were literally hundreds of the huge trucks on the road, heading in both directions. I tried to look through the cab windows of oncoming tractor-trailers to see if any of them had companions in the passenger seats, but I didn’t see any. It must be a lonely life, but some drivers must prefer it that way.

Once we were settled at our RV park, we headed to the local Walmart for food and supplies. It was rather fitting for us to choose that particular store, as the chain had its beginnings in this state when Sam and Helen Walton opened their variety store in 1945 in Bentonville, AR. The first Walmart was launched in Rogers, AR, in July of 1962. If we were headed for the northwest corner of this state, we could visit the Walmart Visitors’ Center that provides a full account of this American retailing success story.

Frozen in time

Monday, February 28, 2011

MARION, AK — It rained heavily through the night last night, so when we went to catch our bus for the tour of Memphis and Graceland, we wore our rain jackets, but it stayed dry all day. What it did not stay was warm. As the day went on, it got cool and then downright cold – it hit 37 degrees, after a summery 76 yesterday!

Our tour took us to see the sights of Memphis in the morning and Elvis Presley’s home, Graceland, and related museums, in the afternoon. First we visited Beale Street, the vibrant bar-and-music part of town. A. Schwab’s was an old general store with worn wooden floors and counters where you could still buy embroidered handkerchiefs, plaster piggy banks and belts up to 80 inches long.

Our next stop was the Sun Studio building where Elvis cut his very first record. The owner gave a lot of fledgling artists a helping hand, including Charlie Pride, Jerry Lee Lewis and other rock-n-roll greats. We also saw the Pyramid, which is a former sports arena, the Cotton Exchange, and the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The famous balcony bears a white wreath at the spot where he died. A Civil Rights Museum has been built on to the motel, but we were not able to go in and see it.

We passed the St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, a huge facility that cares for kids no matter what their financial means may be, and conducts research into children’s diseases. It was founded by entertainer Danny Thomas, whose body is entombed with his wife’s in a garden on the grounds.

We had a leisurely lunch at the Pork With An Attitude restaurant back on Beale Street with Barb and Janice, the two other full-day tour participants, who hailed from Australia but were probably the most-traveled people we’ve ever met! We asked where they hadn’t been, and they replied “Antarctica”!

Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, is a gracious, pillared building set back from the road with a curved driveway and wide lawns. While some might call it a mansion, it was really just a large home with some opulent decorations, like a 15-foot white sofa in the living room set against a stained-glass doorway of brightly coloured peacocks that led to a smaller music room with a baby grand piano. The rooms reflected an eclectic decorating style of the sixties, including a family room with tiki-style carved wood furniture covered with striped fake fur, green shag carpet on the floor and ceiling, and a fake stone wall with trickling waterfall at the end of the room! We wore headsets that provided ongoing descriptions of each room, including the raquet-ball room where each of the high walls was completely covered with platinum records of dozens and dozens of hit songs Elvis had recorded and sold in the millions.

Outside in the Memorial Garden were the graves of Elvis, his parents and grandmother and a small memorial plaque for his twin brother who died at birth. All around them were wreaths and flowers from around the world.

The museums, displaying his cars, clothes, movie memorabilia and tributes were all on the opposite side of Elvis Presley Boulevard, so Graceland itself was separated from the kitsch. What struck us was the evidence of not only his prolific talent and output from a show-business viewpoint, but also his tremendous generosity. One wall had 40 cheques on display, signed by Elvis to charities and individuals, each in the amount of $1,000 — which at the time represented a considerable sum. He was known to give away Cadillacs to complete strangers who happened to be in the car showroom at the same time he was there (late at night to avoid crowds). He was presented with a huge plaque displaying some 50 charities and causes he had supported. We left with a new respect for an individual who had a humble start, achieved greatness, but remembered and cared for others.

Tale of three rivers

Sunday, February 27, 2011

MARION, AK— A rumble of thunder and the patter of rain on our trailer roof woke us this morning, but with a travel day planned, a wet day wasn’t a big deal. At least the rain held off while we stowed stuff, pulled in the slides and prepared to move on.

Shortly before lunch we crossed the Tennessee River, which marks the dividing line between central and western Tennessee. It was wide, brown, and swift-flowing, and must have presented a major challenge to settlers journeying west when there were no bridges.

I didn’t mention the Nashville flood in my blog yesterday. Last year, on May 2, heavy rains caused the Cumberland River, which flows through the city, to rise several feet, causing extensive damage to many important buildings, including the Grand Ole Opry, which had six feet of water inside. There’s a major shopping centre near it which remains closed to this day because the insurance money hasn’t covered the cost of restoring it. We heard a number of flood stories during our stay there.

Our destination today was a KOA camp in Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River, which delineates the state line at the western extreme of the state of Tennessee. The city of Memphis sits on the eastern shore of this mighty river, and West Memphis is on the Arkansas side after you cross the bridge. The camp is a 15-minute drive from the city, so our plan is to take a tour from here to see Memphis tomorrow.

Val remarked that the Interstate 40 along which we were driving must have been covered many times by Elvis Presley in his early days, going back and forth between Nashville and Memphis to perform and develop his unique sound. This stretch is called the Music Highway, since it connects two major music centres.

We drove through Memphis to get to our camp; it’s quite a big and bustling city, and we actually got caught in a traffic slow-down for a while due to a closed lane. The 40 became a ring road around most of the city before guiding us across the Mississippi River, another impressive, brown, wide waterway that has inspired quite a few stories and songs.

The Arkansas landscape so far is extremely flat, with large expanses of farmland and sky. I spotted, in the brown stubble of a plowed field, a few white tufts still clinging to some stalks, which made me realize these were cotton fields. We passed a lot of them in the latter part of the day.

There also seemed to be a marked change from the relatively prosperous state we just left to one, in its first few miles anyway, where the roads and buildings were in really poor shape. We also passed a few small, dilapidated houses that looked more like abandoned shacks but were clearly still being lived in. I don’t think I’ve seen such poor housing anywhere in Canada or the US as what I saw today.

We encountered several rainstorms as we drove along, but nothing like a couple of days ago, thank goodness. Weather is a constant concern in these parts, as strong storms can blow in, sometimes accompanied by tornadoes. We’ve been given instructions both at this camp and the last of what to do if we hear the tornado siren go off: run to the nearest washroom building, because they are built of cinder blocks that should provide a safe shelter.

It’s actually pretty windy right now, and the trailer is moving a bit with each gust. The big weather news for us today was the thermometer in the truck, which measured an amazing 76 degrees! The warmest temperature we’ve had so far! I stowed away my new Binghamton boots and my winter jacket, hat and scarf in the deepest closet of the trailer. Won’t need those now!

Music, music, music!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

NASHVILLE, TN – It has been a grand day and a full one. A beautiful sunrise greeted us bright and early; we wanted to catch the morning bus tour of Nashville so we couldn’t waste any time. Fortunately, there was room for us on the bus, so off we went to see the sights.

There are some impressive buildings and parks in the city of music, as it’s called. The main park of Nashville has a huge map of Tennessee laid out on the ground at the entrance, and along one side are monoliths marking the centuries, standing next to a wall that records the major events of each in turn. Carillon bells at the north end of the park play well-known Tennessee tunes on the hour and half hour, and along the east side of the park are time capsules for each county that will remain buried until 2096.

Our driver, Bill Davis, told us about the various districts of Nashville; the commercial sector, the night life sector, the restaurant sector and the music business sector, and people staying for the afternoon portion of the tour would also see the homes of the country music stars, but this didn’t interest us because, except for a few really big ones, we don’t really know who they are!

We visited the Ryman Auditorium, home of the first Grand Ole Opry. The round shape, with curved pews in sloped tiers, made for near-perfect acoustics. We saw lots of spangled costumes worn by Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and others, and old videos of their performances. Val and I posed for a picture, complete with guitars and old-fashioned microphone, against the backdrop of the famous stage!

The Country Music Hall of Fame was the highlight of this tour. Everything about the building was a tribute to music, from its architecture (shaped like a bass clef, with high windows made to resemble piano keys) to its amazing design, to its huge variety of stars, their lives, their clothes and their toys. It must have been a real challenge to figure out how to provide visitors with recordings of the various stars while keeping the sounds at each display from mingling into an indistinct cacophony. They did it by focusing the music through umbrella-shaped cones, and by building padded, curved cubicles that you walked into to hear the old classics. Amazing.

Equally amazing were the beautiful dresses and suits of the stars, embellished with rhinestones and embroidery in a rainbow of colours. The Tammy Wynette display even included her shoes and wigs, plus a collection of pig figurines! We also saw Elvis Presley’s Cadillac, finished with layers of paint that contained crushed diamonds, and equipped with gold-plated door handles!

Our last stop was at the Legends Corner, a bar where guitars signed by Dolly Parton and others decorated the walls and a fledgling band in cowboy hats blasted our ears while we sipped complimentary soft drinks.

When the tour was over, we went for lunch at Caney Fork, a restaurant founded by a local outdoorsman who decorated the inside with stuffed critters of every description: bears, mountain goats, possums, turkeys and even raccoons complete with garbage cans, plus a pond in one section where real live two-foot-long catfish sashayed through the water. Our lunch included corn fritters and stew made with beef and venison!

After lunch we went out to a big grocery store in the suburbs so we could stock our empty larder. It was challenging trying to find plain stuff like fat-free ham or pita bread, which we like, but interesting to see cans of grits, displays of prawns, and miniature pineapples for sale.

Almost as soon as we got the food put away, we had to eat and head over to the main office for our bus to take us to the show at the Grand Ole Opry. Crowds of music enthusiasts streamed into the new building, built in a similar style to the Ryman Auditorium but on a larger scale. It seats 4,000 and there was nearly a full house. The show is a live radio broadcast, so it included commercial breaks, but there were more than a dozen talented performers who wowed the audience for two and half hours of foot-stompin’, hand-clappin’ down home music. Vince Gill and the Doobie Brothers were the big name stars, along with many others of all ages.

It was quite a day. We will long remember Nashville, the City of Music.