Go RVing Blog

GETTING ANCHORED

Brad Herzog — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 23:49:00 -0400

The Emmy Awards were handed out last week, so let’s talk TV:

When you’re traveling in a house on wheels, you can immerse yourself in a place by exploring at your own pace. So it is perhaps both ironic and appropriate that one of the best ways of exploring is by simply watching television.

Specifically, I’m talking about the local nightly news, which amounts to a half-hour synopsis of a day in the life of a locale. What matters to the folks who live there? Maybe it’s soybean prices in Sioux City… or a surf advisory in Santa Cruz… or soldiers returning home to Shreveport. Perhaps, as we discovered in Springfield, Massachusetts, over the summer, it’s big news when the local Brownie troop donates a couple of Wii consoles to the local children’s hospital. For me, that sort of information is a window into a city’s soul.

Consider, for instance, what plays in Peoria, Illinois. The last time that I was interviewed on WMBD-TV, I discovered that the station employed a full-time family farmer giving agricultural reports and also conducted regular interviews with the coach of local Arena Football team (at least until the league folded). Just by knowing that, don’t you feel like you’ve learned something about the sensibilities and scope of the city?

Everything about the evening news – even the people relating the news – tells me something about a place. It was Bob Dylan who sang, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” But a weatherman can provide insight into the magnitude of a media market. Consider the difference between Los Angeles and Lexington: In L.A., I recall a well-tanned meteorologist showily announcing a two-degree temperature drop from Pasadena to Pomona. His name was Dallas Raines (yes, really), and he was from Georgia, by way of Florida. In Lexington, it was a Kentucky native, T.G. Shuck, taking viewers across a regional map as if he’s been there his whole life, which he nearly has.

So you learn a lot in a half hour, even if it’s only a realization that there’s nothing more top of mind to sports fans in Cedar Rapids than the outcome of the minor league game between the Cedar Rapids Kernels and the Fort Wayne Wizards.

Still, there was one time when I turned on the TV only to be thrust into geographic confusion. In fact, it seemed like a surreal nightmare. I settled down for the evening in the dusty desert hamlet of Wellton, Arizona, and watched a newscast that sounded to me like Martians reporting their secret Earth observations:

“Dozens of humans were on hand to watch a flag football game between the police and fire departments.”… “Sixty humans attended a fiddling contest today.”… “Humans are in for nice weather this week.”

Humans? I felt like one of those unfortunate saps in “The Twilight Zone” who rolls into a sleepy small town and soon finds out that he has actually entered a different dimension. I half-expected Rod Serling to appear and announce, “You’re watching the Red Planet’s #1 nightly news!”

Then it dawned on me: Folks in Yuma call themselves Yumans. You learn something every day.

Here's a photo of Luke being interviewed for the Detroit nightly news:

A TOWN NAMED TRIUMPH

Brad Herzog — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:58:00 -0400

On this day, the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I’d like to tell you about a town named Triumph.

This Louisiana hamlet is one of the last inhabitable communities along the Mississippi River, more than 2,500 miles from the waterway’s origins. It is located in Plaquemines Parish, a thin peninsula straddling the river for its final hundred-mile stretch. Over the years, the mud carried by the river has gradually extended the delta. Thus, the land surrounding the Mississippi here was in fact created by it. It is the amalgam of a great force binding a nation together.

But Triumph was born as the nation seemed to be falling apart. In 1862, it was the site of one of the most important confrontations of the Civil War, when the Union fleet fought its way past two supposedly impenetrable forts and gained control of the mouth of the Mississippi. So here, in the deepest of the Deep South, northern soldiers gave the community its name.

Over the next century, Triumph’s culture was all but inseparable from the river itself. But the Mississippi, creator of the fertile delta, has also been its destroyer. You see, this precarious strip of land is a hurricane magnet.

The storm of all storms arrived on September 9, 1965. It was given the name Hurricane Betsy, and it broke all Louisiana records, packing wind gusts up to 160 miles per hour. Betsy entered the delta against the current, and the river’s waters combined with the storm surge to form a massive tide of calamity.

Century-old oak trees were shredded. Homes were tossed into crumpled heaps. Boats were thrown inland; buildings were washed out to sea. Hundreds of dead cattle were entangled among snapped electrical poles and coffins that had floated out of cemeteries. Only nine of the 81 deaths blamed on the hurricane were Plaquemines Parish residents, but nearly 95 percent of the parish was flooded. It was no longer easy to distinguish between the gulf, the river and the land.

An estimated 4,600 homes, 700 trailers, 500 boats, 270 business establishments and 140 farm buildings were either damaged or destroyed. Total damage reached $1.2 billion, making Betsy the first-ever billion-dollar storm. And yet, soon after, a local newspaper editorial concluded, “Plaquemines will rise again.” And it did. Within three weeks, most of the water was pumped out. A few weeks later, schools reopened. By mid-November, 75 percent of the parish’s residents had returned.

And then it happened again. Just 47 months later, on August 17, 1969, Hurricane Camille came barreling up the river. Remember the sickening shock you felt when the second World Trade tower crumbled? For parish residents, the emotion was much the same. Oh, lord. Not twice.

Hurricanes are ranked on a scale from 1 (minimal) to 5 (catastrophic). Betsy had been a Category 3 hurricane. Camille was a Category 5, its top recorded wind velocity exceeding 200 miles per hour. The tidal surge left a 138-foot barge blocking the main highway. A trailer was found wrapped around a tree, crushed to a height of one yard. A church steeple was discovered half a mile away. A pay telephone was found, but not the building to which it had once been attached.

Though only seven parish residents died, hundreds of people across the South lost their lives to Camille and the floods that followed. The damage to Plaquemines alone was estimated at $500 million. Most of what had been rebuilt after the first hurricane was annihilated by the second. But once again, the people prevailed. Within four months, 85 percent of the parish’s residents returned, more than 1,100 building permits were issued, and 7,500 students were back in school.

I visited the hamlet of Triumph about 14 years ago, and I found a town changed by disaster – the homes that weren’t mobile were built on stilts, and the residents were experts at evacuation. But the town was still there – defiant and resolved – along with a local church marquee declaring, “Sometimes God breaks us so he can remake us.”

Then five years ago, Katrina arrived. You can guess what happened to Triumph. But I’m confident that we’ll be seeing the town on the map as long as we keep making maps. Jack Kerouac once compared the Mississippi River to a torrent of broken souls. But I don’t think so. Not this part of the river. Bent, perhaps, but not broken.

EVERY TOWN COUNTS

Brad Herzog — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:50:00 -0400

Here’s a number for you: 42. That’s how old I am as of today. But I’m not alone. Happy birthday to Sean Connery and Gene Simmons and Elvis Costello and my old pal Regis Philbin. Quite a motley crew.

Remarkably, today also happens to be my fraternal twin brother’s birthday. His name is Brian. He was born a whole 12 minutes before me. My brother became a certified public accountant and is now the co-owner and chief financial guru of a corrugated box manufacturing company in Chicago.

So he became a number-cruncher.

Me? Well, math and I don’t get along too well. We used to have a comfortable relationship, back when I was about seven years old. In fact, when I was in second grade I was accomplished enough that I was using a math textbook designed for fifth graders. Alas, by the time I was in fourth grade I was in… a fourth-grade math book. And that well describes the evolution of my mathematical abilities.

So I became a writer.

And, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while – or if you’ve read any of my books – you know that I have a soft spot for writing about geographical quirks. In fact, I’ve chronicled towns named after writers – like Poe (West Virginia), Thoreau (New Mexico) and Dickens (Iowa). And towns named after Shakespeare characters – like Othello (Washington) and Desdemona (Texas).

But now I’d like to get back to math. In fact, I’m going to take a deep breath and write about numerically lyrical towns. For instance…

If you’re driving through the Southwest, you can plan a stop at the California town of Twentynine Palms (near Joshua Tree National Park) or the Arizona hamlet of Two Guns, an abandoned ghost town about 30 miles east of Flagstaff. Interestingly, the latter town was named after a guy named “Two Gun Miller”… whose real name was Henry Miller… which is also the name of a famous writer, of course… who once wrote a travel narrative about a cross-country journey.

But Henry Miller – the writer – was a cynic of the highest order. He called his book The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. And Henry Miller – the Two Gun guy – was apparently an eccentric hermit who lived in a cave and was hostile to visitors. So let’s get back to happier geography:

A bit further east of Arizona, you can point yourself toward Texas and the town of Seven Sisters. Located south of San Antonio, it was likely named for the seven daughters of an important local landowner. Then again, there’s also a town named Three Brothers – in Arkansas, deep in the Ozarks.

There is also Two Egg, Florida. And Three Notch, Alabama. And Four Forks, Louisiana. And Five Points, North Carolina. And Six, West Virginia. And Seven Trees, California. And Section Eight, Ohio. And Nine Points, Pennsylvania.

And then there are the more numerically ambitious hamlets – places with names like Sixteen (Montana), Forty-one (Oklahoma), Seventy Six (Kentucky), Eighty Four (Pennsylvania), Ninety Six (South Carolina)… and, of course, Thousand Oaks (California).

I can’t say I’ve been to any of these places – yet. But I have visited one little hiccup on the map that sort of belongs on this list. I was heading to an Arizona town named Bagdad, and I took a brief detour into absurdity when I realized that Bagdad is 22 miles from Nothing.

Literally. It’s called Nothing, Arizona.

It was nothing more than a turnoff (from Highway 97) featuring a ramshackle service station surrounded by several rotting vehicles. When I visited (eight years ago), the population was 4. I heard recently, from a woman at a book signing who randomly brought up the story of that very same town, that Nothing no longer exists. But I saw it while it did.

“Nothing Towing” said the sign. Nearby, there was a scrawled proclamation of sorts, something along the lines of a nihilistic pledge of allegiance: “Town of Nothing, AZ… Founded 1977… The staunch citizens of Nothing are full of hope, faith and believe in the work ethic. Thru the years these dedicated people had faith in Nothing, hoped for Nothing, worked at Nothing, for Nothing…”

Here’s a photo from there, starring the self-proclaimed sheriff of Nothing (and he showed me the badge to prove it) – a survivalist who called himself “Jim Outback.”

“Why do you call yourself that?” I asked him.

He pointed deep into the sagebrush. “Because I live out back.”

GOOD EATS

Brad Herzog — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:09:00 -0400

I think this may be my final post dissecting and debriefing about my family’s recently-completed cross-country trek (I’ll be moving on to myriad other insights about the open road). So I’m in the mood for a last meal.

Yes, it’s time for me to reflect on the best culinary experiences of our summer RV journey – lunches and dinners that stayed with us for days (in a good way) and proved to be unexpected treats.

Let’s get one thing straight: We don’t hit every eclectic eatery on our journeys. Some we pass by wistfully. I recall a restaurant along Highway 1 in Maine – Nana’s Kitchen. “Where memories are made,” said the marquee, “and everyone is spoiled.” I would have liked to have eaten there.

And not every meal in a random restaurant is a gastronomical wonder. That’s why we love to travel by RV – you don’t have to hemorrhage money at three restaurants each day. Because sometimes – too often, in fact – you walk away muttering to yourself that a homemade (house-on-wheels-made) sandwich would have been a better idea.

I’m thinking, for instance, of the time we first arrived in Maine in late June, visions of seafood delicacies dancing in our heads. We pulled into a campground outside of Bangor, and the friendly woman who checked us in pointed to a restaurant 50 yards away and handed us a 10 percent off coupon. “All homemade,” she gushed. “Scallops and clams…”

We were sold. We strolled from our campsite to the restaurant and promptly had one of the worst meals of our lives. Luke was handed a plate that included a completely uncooked scallop, pink as a newborn baby. The young waitress merely shrugged and said, “Yeah, that’s weird.” Amy’s haddock soup tasted like milk and fish. We asked about vegetable side options, and the young waitress said the choices were coleslaw, squash or peas & carrots. The rest of the conversation went like this:

“What kind of squash is it?”
“Oh, did I say squash? I meant pickled beets.”
“Oh, that’s great. I love pickled beets.”
“Wait, actually it’s waxed beans.”
“Oh.”

So not every meal is perfect. But we had five on this last RV trip that were darn close.

EAT ‘N MEET GRILL (SARANAC LAKE, NY)

It’s essentially a hole-in-the-wall takeout joint in a charming town deep in the Adirondacks. Not necessarily the place where you expect to find exotic culinary offerings. But consider the following from the eclectic menu:

*Humble pie with chicken livers, duck gizzards, apples and raisins
*Pork rillets and duck foie gras torchon with rhubarb butter
*Jamaican jerk pork with plantain dumplings
*Portuguese sardines dusted in masa flour
*Southern fried frog legs
*Potato and onion perogies

And how about a black raspberry jam crepe for dessert.

LEUNIG’S BISTRO & CAFÉ (BURLINGTON, VT)

“The Panache of Paris,” says the tagline on the restaurant’s website, “and the value of Vermont.” Located along Burlington’s adorable Church Street Marketplace, a pedestrian walkway in the heart of the city, it really is sort of a New England version of a Parisian café. The place offers live jazz every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night. We merely came across it while seeking out lunch. But it was a medley of tasty offerings.

I splurged and opted for the oyster trio (I’m a BIG fan of oysters). This one offered six fried oysters with sweet chili aioli, 4 oysters Rockefeller with fennel, shallots, tomatoes, baby spinach and cream sauce topped with bread crumbs, and four raw oysters with champagne mignonette. So good… Amy enjoyed a salad nicoise. Luke loved his duck tacos. Even Jesse, who usually opts for a hamburger from a kids’ menu, thoroughly enjoyed his grilled flatbread with sautéed mushrooms, white truffle, artichoke hearts, baby spinach, roasted tomatoes and ricotta.

UPTOWN KITCHEN (GRANGER, IN)

Okay, I’m not entirely objective about this one. The restaurant is owned by a guy I know from summer camp three decades ago. But this was a great lunch – in Granger (on the outskirts of South Bend) or anywhere else, for that matter. “Eat well. Be happy.” That’s what the menu says. And we did and, and we were.

Amy ordered the 303 salad, which includes seared steak, roasted red potatoes, snap peas and edamame. Luke had the crab omelet with spinach and cream cheese. I wolfed down a sundried tomato, pesto and goat cheese quiche. The menu offered everything from chicken sausage hash to roasted garlic tofu to lemon ricotta pancakes. Not to mention a smoothie called The Elvis (banana, peanut butter, milk and honey). There’s also a mouth-watering dinner menu at Uptown Kitchen – liver pate, whitefish picatta, molasses seared venison… Eat well. Be happy.

MANGIAMO’S (GRAND RAPIDS, MI)

Once again, I’m a bit biased because I had the pleasure of sharing this meal with my cousin, my uncle and his new wife. But the atmosphere went beyond the company. The magnificent building in which it resides is an 18,000-square-foot mansion dating back to the earliest days of Grand Rapids, built by a silver-miner-turned-lumber-baron in 1873. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mangiamo is Italian for “Let’s eat!” And we ate well. A whole artichoke baked in tallegio cheese and rosemary. Baked Sicilian swordfish with fingerling potatoes. Seafood linguine. Cheese ravioli. Even the kids’ menu went beyond the usual – you know what I mean: How many times have you been forced to choose between chicken fingers, a burger and mac & cheese? This one offered options like wood grilled salmon and peanut butter and jelly sushi.

We skipped the mouth-watering dessert options – everything from chocolate amaretto cheesecake to pistachio, chocolate and fruit canolis. Instead, we hopped on over to East Grand Rapids and a longtime ice cream icon – Jersey Junction. It was about a buck seventy-five for a big ol’ scoop. The line went out the door on a pleasant Sunday evening. Who doesn’t want cheap mint chocolate chip and priceless tradition?

FIREFLY CAFÉ (TRAVERSE CITY, MI)

It was nice that we had an outdoor table next to a languid river on a pleasant evening. It was kind of neat that the Traverse City Film Festival was launching, and there was music throughout the city, and we could hear a bagpipe wailing in the distance. But the best thing was this: It was Tuesday night. And Tuesday nights are half-off sushi nights at Firefly café.

This was no ordinary sushi. We tried the Fusion (pineapple, cucumber, pickled ginger and pickled carrot), the Empire (blue crab, tempura, asparagus and sweet soy reduction), and the Spider (tempura soft shell crab, cucumber and garlic aioli). But hands down, the most delectable roll was called El Gordo: six-ounce pan-seared tuna stuffed with bleu cheese, jalapeno cream cheese and red bell peppers. My mouth is watering as I write this…

I’ll end this lengthy account (longer than some of our meals) by offering a list of the most interesting restaurant names that we encountered. We didn’t eat at any of these, but we smiled as we passed by:

Awful Awful Shoppe (Greenville, RI)
Joe’s Package Store and Deli (Brimfield, MA)
Dog Eat Dog World (Waldoboro, ME)
Town Fryer (Constantine, MI)
Mary’s Pop-In Pizzeria (Wiscasset, ME)
Uncle Kranky’s Café (Jewett City, CT)
Fat Daddy’s Place (Ligonier, PA)
Wiffletree Restaurant (Butler, OH)
Okey Dokey’s Family Restaurant (Floyd, NY)
D’s Doghouse Tavern (Hancock, VT)
Tail o’ the Pup (Saranac Lake, NY)
Shepard’s Pie (Quechee, VT)
Dishin’ It Out (Canaan, NH)
Rooster’s Roadhouse (Bethel, ME)
Smokin’ Good BBQ (Bethel, ME)
Happy Hog Café (Traverse City, MI)
Wasp’s Snack Bar & Diner (Woodstock, VT)

Best name for a bagel shop:

Hole in the Wall Bagels (Rockland, ME)
Finagle a Bagel (Wayland, MA)

Most literary restaurant name:

Shakespeare’s Table (Carroll, NH)
Hemingway’s Restaurant (Killington, VT)

Of course, our best taste experience may have come here:

ROAD SCHOLAR

Brad Herzog — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 17:58:00 -0400

As we passed through Connecticut last June, Interstate 91 through Hartford offered a relatively uneventful drive past the city. But I was certainly intrigued by the names of the road. The first sign that we glimpsed, as we headed south from the city center, told us we were cruising along the “Governor’s Foot Guard Memorial Highway.” I have no idea what that means. Can anyone out there clue me in?

Then, just a few miles south, we were suddenly informed that it was now the Christopher Columbus Highway. I would describe that as a road-tripper’s non-sequitur.

A much more appropriate transition occurs in Kentucky. As you drive north on I-65 into Louisville, you find yourself on the Abraham Lincoln Expressway. As you reach the city limits, the interstate gets a different name – the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Expressway. I love that.

In fact, I came across a bunch of interesting highway names during my RV expedition this summer. Here follows my Top 12:

1. Jackie Mayer Miss America Highway (Hwy 2 into Sandusky, OH)

2. Governor’s Foot Guard Memorial Highway (I-91 in Hartford, CT)

3. Underground Railroad Memorial Highway (Hwy 131 in Michigan)

4. Senator Ralph Quattrociocchi Memorial Highway (I-490E toward Rochester, NY)

5. Purple Heart Trail (Hwy 4 in New Hampshire)

6. Ex-Prisoner of War Memorial Highway (I-395 in Connecticut)

7. Ragged Mountain Highway (Hwy 104 through New Hampshire)

8. Victory Highway (Hwy 102 through Rhode Island)

9. Yankee Expressway (I-84 through Hartford, CT)

10. Christopher Columbus Highway (I-91 in Hartford, CT)

11. Benjamin Franklin Highway (Hwy 422 in western Pennsylvania)

12. Presidential Highway (Hwy 2 from New Hampshire to Maine)

Even better were the names of the less-traveled roadways, those boulevards and lanes and drives and dirt roads that are fed by the above-mentioned highways. In fact, I can come up with my 25 favorite road names from our trip through 18 states this summer:

1. Flutie Pass (Natick, MA)

2. Cat Mousam Road (Kennebunk, ME)

3. Notta Road (Carthage, ME)

4. Lois Lane (Katonah, NY)

5. Boulevard of the Allies (Pittsburgh, NY)

6. What a Vu Way (Jay, NY)

7. Bellsqueeze Road (Clinton, ME)

8. Ampersand Avenue (Saranac Lake, NY)

9. Muhammad Ali Boulevard (Louisville, KY)

10. Man O’ War Boulevard (Lexington, KY)

11. Poverty Lane (Lebanon, NH)

12. Robinhood Drive (Hermon, ME)

13. Tee-O-Wanna Road (near Old Forge, NY)

14. Cozy Retreat Road (Schellsburg, PA)

15. Rushing Wind Lane (Lexington, KY)

16. Tippecanoe Street (Wolf Lake, IN)

17. Train Wreck Point Road (near Inlet, NY)

18. Crooks Road (Green Bay, WI)

19. Crooked Road (Bar Harbor, ME)

20. Purgatory Road (Sutton, MA)

21. Chagrin Boulevard (Beachwood, OH)

22. Hot Metal Street (Pittsburgh, PA)

23. Happytown Road (E. Orland, ME)

24. XY Avenue (Moore Park, MI)

25. Lombardi Avenue (Green Bay, WI)

BUSINESS ROUTE

Brad Herzog — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:48:00 -0400

This past summer, our RV excursion took us along myriad small town Main Streets and rural highways brimming with establishments attempting to lure passersby. Here follows a list of my favorite names of various types of businesses:

Toy store: The Tiny Acorn (Waterbury, VT)

Gift shop: Maine-ly Maine (Ellsworth, ME)

Wood-themed gift shop: Once A Tree (Camden, ME)

Handcrafted furniture store: Good With Wood (Pellston, MI)

Imported furniture store: Far Fetched (E. Hanover, NJ)

Landscape designer: Garden of Eagen (New Castle, PA)

Theater: Headless Sullivan Theater (Geneva, NY)

Tavern:
1. Johnny Bravo’s Tavern (Rome, NY)
2. Two-Bit Tavern (south of Butler, PA)

Bowling alley: Bowl Winkles (Lake Placid, NY)

Motel: Stumble Inn (White Lake, NY)

Cheese shop: Yancey’s Fancy (near Batavia, NY)

Ice cream shop: Sunny Daes Ice Cream (Fairfield, CT)

Beer and wine supply store: My Old Kentucky Home Brew (Louisville, KY)

Hair salon:
1. Bee’s Hive of Beauty (New Rochelle, NY)
2. Head Turners Hair Salon (Thomaston, ME)
3. Back to Your Roots Hair Salon (Boonsboro, MD)

Manicurist: Gossip Nail Studios (N. Providence, RI)

Laundromat: Bear in a Tub (Inlet, NY)

Daycare: Piggyback Rides & Slippery Slides (Bristol, NH)

Car wash: Carcuzzi (Saranac Lake, NY)

Farm: Pooh Corner Farm (near Bethel, ME)

Shopping Center: The Old Bag Factory (Goshen, IN)

State park: Sleeping Giant State Park (CT)

Book store:
1. Present Tense (in Batavia, NY)
2. Bearly Used Books (Enfield, NH)
3. The Alphabet Garden (Cheshire, CT)

Fly shop: Tie By Night (South Hero, VT)

Bait store: Happy Hooker (Carroll Township, OH)

2010 SUPERLATIVES

Brad Herzog — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:35:00 -0400

In my last post, I recalled our recently-concluded summer RV excursion – 60 days, 18 states, everywhere from Wisconsin to Kentucky to Maryland to Maine – in snippets. This time, I’ll do it with some quirky superlatives:

Most charming town:

1. Spring Harbor, MI
2. Woodstock, VT
3. Camden, Maine
4. East Grand Rapids, MI
5. Saranac Lake, New York
6. Boonsboro, Maryland
7. Butler, Ohio

Most charming little city:

1. Traverse City, MI
2. Burlington, VT
3. Petoskey, MI

Most charming minor league ballpark:
The Cove, home of the South Bend Silver Hawks

Best minor league team name:
The visiting team – the Beloit Snappers

Goofiest town names:

1. Paw Paw, MI
2. Manville, NJ
3. Point of Rocks, MD
4. Hollsopple, PA
5. Acme, MI
6. Mianus, CT
7. Connoquenessing, PA
8. Killingly, CT

Most lyrical neighboring towns: Parsippany and Whippany, New Jersey

Best waterfall:

1. Niagara Falls
2. High Falls in Wilmington, NY
3. Flume Gorge in Lincoln, NH (Franconia Notch NP)
4. Brandywine Falls (Cuyahoga Valley National Park)

Best crossing signs:

1. In the Adirondacks: Snowmobile Xing
2. In northern New England: Moose Xing
3. In northern Michigan: Bear Xing

Most scenic river crossing:

1. The Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River from NY to CT
2. The Potomac River at Point of Rocks, MD
3. The Susquehanna River in northeastern Maryland

Best name for a waterway:

1. Passagassawakeag River in Maine
2. Skookumchuck Brook in New Hampshire

Cheapest gas: Whippany, NJ -- $2.37 per gallon

Biggest spectacle: The World’s Largest Tire (a Uniroyal) outside of Detroit

Cleverest church marquee: “May all your days have son shine” (near Sandusky, OH)

Cleverest Best business marquee: “Leopard or not, clean the spot.” (Rainbow Cleaners in Whitney, CT)

Most curious team nickname: Escanaba (Michigan) High School is the “Home of the Eskymos.”

Coolest library architecture: Ypsilanti (MI) District Library

Most confusing location: Isaac Street Drive in the hamlet of Oregon, Ohio

Most road construction: Inland Maine and western Pennsylvania

Least favorite drivers: Connecticut

Most road kill: U.S. 30 through Pennsylvania

Most hair and nail salons per square mile: North Providence, RI

Best indication that you’re not far from the Canada border: the Runaway Truck Ramp sign is also printed in French: “Sortie d’urgence pour camions.”

Best reaction while watching a movie while we drive (My 9-year-old son Luke watching the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance scene from “Back to the Future”): “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Yes! It’s about time!”

And here’s my favorite photo from the summer – a late-afternoon lake scene in Quechee, Vermont:

TOTAL RECALL

Brad Herzog — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 03:25:00 -0400

The 2010 Herzog Family Summer RV Adventure – our 11th epic summer RV trip in a row – is complete. We started in Chicago, setting off from my childhood home (where my parents still live). And we’re back in Chicago – after a 60-day trip through 18 states, covering some 5,500 miles.

How does one encapsulate such an epic journey? It may turn out that I’ll remember the experience in snippets – moments frozen in place and time.

I’ll remember what we did:

Cruising on a pontoon boat along the St. Joseph River in Indiana. Crossing the Mackinac Bridge into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Strolling through the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in D.C. Hiking through Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Bounding down a 200-foot sand dune at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Puddle-jumping along a hiking trail alongside our campground in Verona, New York. Riding in the RV atop a ferry boat over Lake Champlain and into Vermont. Skipping stones into Western Bay in Bar Harbor, Maine. Playing a brings-me-back-to-childhood Atari game (Space Invaders!) at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Pitching horseshoes at a campground in Williamsport, Maryland. Exploring a tall ship in Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport. Plummeting on a log ride at Idlewild amusement park in Pennsylvania.

I’ll remember what we saw:

A Green Bay Packers training camp practice a couple hundred yards from Lambeau Field. A gaggle of geese parading through a parking lot in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. “Maple Syrup For Sale” signs throughout the Adirondacks. A covered bridge in Woodstock, Vermont. Birch trees leaning toward the highway along Maine’s Highway 2. A late-afternoon lake in Quechee, Vermont, reflecting the forested shore like a mirror. Amber waves of grain in rural Pennsylvania. “Moose Horns 4 Sale” on the side of the road in Rumford, Maine. A man in full clown regalia driving beside us on the outskirts of Cincinnati. A dramatic crossing of the Susquehanna River in Pittsburgh. The rolling hills and undulating fences of Kentucky’s horse farms. Myriad rock walls throughout New England. A sunset in central Ohio that turned a cornfield into a landscape painting. A multi-hued masterpiece etched onto the cliffs at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. A marquee outside of Farmington, Maine: “Just when I got used to yesterday, along came today.”

I’ll remember what we heard:

The roar of Niagara Falls from a boat beside the torrent. The shuffle and ruffle of a chipmunk following us through the weeds along a trail in New Hampshire’s Flume Gorge. A choir comprised of various alumni joining voices on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. The baritone belch of a bullfrog in a pond at our campground on Grand Island near Buffalo, New York. A pair of fiddlers making music at a hot air balloon festival in Vermont. A young woman playing a blue electric violin as part of a band at a street festival in Traverse City, Michigan. The distant buzz of racecars being driven on a road course a few miles from our campground in Watkins Glen, New York. The boom and crackle of fireworks over a fairway at a country club in Scarsdale. A cacophony of cicadas at a campground in Louisville. The Vines singing the Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping” as we cruised along the back roads of Rhode Island: “Keeping an eye on the world going by my window…”

I’ll remember the smells and tastes:

The smoke of a campfire in Twin Mountain, New Hampshire. The scent of the sea as we approached Acadia National Park. The unmistakable whiff of horses and history at Churchill Downs in Louisville, and peanuts and crackerjack at a minor league baseball game in South Bend. Oysters Rockefeller in Burlington, Vermont. Plantain dumplings in Saranac Lake, New York. “World famous” red hots with sauerkraut at Gus’ in Plattsburgh, New York. A lobster roll in Bar Harbor, Maine. A sample of Milk & Cookies ice cream at the Ben & Jerry’s factory tour in Waterbury, Vermont.

Other than that, I don’t think I’ll remember a thing.

PICTURED ROCKS

Brad Herzog — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:32:00 -0400

During my childhood summers, when I was an eight-week resident of Camp Nebagamon for Boys in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin, I would gather the courage to take one wilderness trip each year. They always took me to some pretty spectacular places like the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota and the Porcupine Mountains of Michigan. But the experience that most resonated with me was my excursion to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore as a 12-year-old.

But even awe-inspiring images fade with time. So it was with me and Pictured Rocks. Until Saturday, when I returned there with me wife and my two sons, who are only a few years younger than I was back on that backpacking trip in 1981.

On Friday, we crossed the remarkable, 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge, with Lake Michigan on one side of us and Lake Huron on the other. On Saturday, we made our way across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to the shores of Lake Superior. We parked the RV and climbed onto a boat for a three-hour tour of Pictured Rocks.

Yes, insert the “Gilligan’s Island” joke here. We certainly did. But I’m telling you, I wouldn’t even trade the view of those breathtaking cliffs for an eternity with Mary Ann.

I’m not sure I can properly itemize the wonders. I can’t really decide which was most breathtaking. Was it the masterpieces of many colors painted by minerals on cliffs hundreds of feet high – the blues and greens of copper, the reds of iron, the blacks of manganese? Was it the rock formations like a massive lakeside sculpture garden – Miner’s Castle, Battleship Row, Indian Head? Was it the caves and arches carved into the underside of the cliffs – places like Rainbow Cave and Lover’s Leap? Was it the waterfalls cascading down into the coldest and deepest of the Great Lakes?

Or maybe it a simple tree, the one in the right side of the picture below. There it sits – on a rocky outcropping that has become a sculpted island of its own. But if you look closely, you can see that the tree draws its sustenance from roots that stretch over to the mainland. It’s remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like that.

And maybe there’s a metaphor in there for me and Pictured Rocks. Time and the elements may result in a certain distance from one’s formative experiences. But strong roots hold firm.

BIG HEAPS

Brad Herzog — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:22:00 -0400

I can’t seem to see a sand dune without thinking of a philosophy class that I struggled through in college. We explored something called the Continuum Fallacy, which is basically this: If you have a heap of sand – say a million grains of sand – and you remove one grain, is it still a heap? Sure, right? But then where does it suddenly cease existence as a heap? It was synapse-snappers like that one that led me right into the only C-minus of my life.

Yet, I still love sand dunes. In fact, thinking back on the sand dunes we’ve seen along our RV travels, I can come up with some criteria for what I consider great dunes:

1. Enormity. Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado fits the bill. It’s mind-bogglingly big. The heap of all heaps. They say it takes a healthy person an hour and a half to reach the top. We didn’t even make it one-tenth of the way.

2. Scenery. About two weeks into our very first RV excursion 15 years ago, Amy and I and a couple of close friends made our way into (and up) the sand dunes in Death Valley. There’s a stranded-in-the-Sahara sort of vibe, but the view from the top was spectacular – a struggle to the peak of the highest one, yet still you find yourself below sea level.

3. Climbability. Yes, I’ve made up a word. I’m thinking, for instance, of Bruneau Dunes State Park in Idaho. There are a couple of massive dunes there, but you can climb to the top (from any side), and you feel like you’ve scaled the Great Pyramid.

4. Uniqueness. How about the White Sands of New Mexico. Dozens of square miles of white gypsum sand, unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else. It’s like wading into a stark white ocean – and if you’re not careful, you lose your bearings. We left some markers along the way, so that we could make our way back to our RV.

All of which is another way of me explaining why I’m crazy about Sleeping Bear Dunes in northwestern Michigan. We visited there on Tuesday, having long wanted to return after experiencing it the first time around a decade-and-a-half ago. It didn’t disappoint.

Sure, I love the fact that I now write children’s books for a wonderful Michigan-based publisher called Sleeping Bear Press. But that’s only part of why I’m a fan of Sleeping Bear Dunes. Mostly, it’s because it offers all the elements of classic dunes:

Scenery: We drove along the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, though forests that would open up into overlooks offering dunes backed by vistas of Glen Lake.

Uniqueness: The dunes rise almost vertically from the shores of one of the Great Lakes – a view of a seemingly endless sea from atop a heap of sand. Looking down from the viewpoint at one of the overlooks, we could see tiny people wading in the blue-green waters.

Enormity: That particular dune rose 450 feet above Lake Michigan. The brave folks who tried to climb it could be seen clawing and crawling at various points, like ants making their way up a ginormous anthill. Which brings me to…

Climbability: We drove another few miles to the Dunes Climb, and made our way a couple hundred feet up, where we sat for a while and enjoyed a breathtaking view. But the best part was the sprint down…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMY

Brad Herzog — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:58:00 -0400

Today is my wife’s birthday. I won’t give away how old she is, but it’s somewhere between 40 and 42. I gave her a gift that I had ordered online and then hid in the RV for nearly eight weeks. It’s a print that shows a little red trailer festooned with hearts and beneath it a few words:

THE JOURNEY
NOT THE ARRIVAL
MATTERS

And over the past decade or so, Amy’s birthday has usually taken place right in the middle of a journey. In fact, it has emerged as a traveling tradition amid our summer RV excursions. Last year, Amy was in Washington, D.C. with her sister. The year before, she was in her hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, with her parents. The year before that? San Francisco. She turned 35 in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin, joined by my parents at the summer camp that has been special to our family for generations. She turned 31 in Malibu, our RV parked at a campground on a bluff high above the Pacific Ocean.

Amy isn’t big on celebrating her birthday. She prefers to escape the hubbub, figuring it just means she’s one year older. But at least these varied locales provide her with an annual sense of uniqueness, a notion that each birthday is special in its own way. So this year, Amy celebrates the anniversary of her birth in… Buckley, Michigan.

Now I know there must be some of you out there wondering, Is that really what Amy wants to be doing on her birthday? Is that really where she wants to be? Well, consider our day:

We woke up and did a quick TV interview (in the RV) on the Fox news affiliate in Grand Rapids. Which went well, except for the part when the hand microphone fell apart mid-interview. But that was a temporary blip. Then we spent the rest of the morning strolling around the grounds of Meijer Gardens, which is truly a jewel in that city. It is a garden (sculpture and plant), but also a children’s playground, a boardwalk hike through wetlands and a sort of landscape art gallery (Dale Chihuly’s blown glass masterpieces were masterfully coordinated with the surroundings, as if part of it).

Not a bad morning.

Then we had a late lunch in the RV – ham, brie and apple sandwiches. Afterward, we drove a couple of hours north along Hwy 131 through the forests and lakes of Michigan (the boys watched a movie; we watched the scenery through the big windshield – actually, Amy spent most of the drive receiving birthday wishes on her cell phone).

Not a bad afternoon.

When we arrived at our campground in Buckley, we played a family game of Wiffle ball, followed by some cheese, chicken and broccoli baked potatoes for dinner, then a family game of Nebagamonopoly (it’s a version of Monopoly devoted to that summer camp – I had it specially made for my dad’s 70th birthday this month). The kids ate ice cream sandwiches for dessert, then they read books in their bunk beds for a half-hour or so before turning out the lights.

Not a bad evening.

That’s pretty Rockwellian day, no? Almost nauseatingly so, right? But really, not a bad way to spend a birthday.

Still, my favorite traveling birthday for Amy was the one in 1996, during a 314-day excursion that represented our inaugural foray into the RV experience. On July 26 of that year, we were headed toward a lonely South Dakota hamlet called Faith, along an unpaved road, past long-abandoned homesteads. That’s when the weather rolled in – armadas of dark clouds, followed by thunder like cannonballs and the relentless pounding of a Heartland hailstorm.

We pulled over to the side of the road and waited. And then, a few long minutes later, it stopped as suddenly as it had arrived. We were bathed in bright sunlight and beautiful silence. Just the two of us. And a rainbow arched over the prairie, gift-wrapped for my wife.

THE FAME GAME

Brad Herzog — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:11:00 -0400

It ain’t Cooperstown. It’s Elkhart, Indiana, the RV Capital of the World. And it’s not the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But it’s still 80,000 square feet of Americana. On wheels. Yes, a couple of days ago, we visited the RV/MH Hall of Fame. That stands for Recreation Vehicles and Manufactured Housing.

And you can find the Herzog family in there. Sort of.

Mostly, you could find us romping around the two exhibition halls dedicated to the RVs of yesteryear. A 1913 “Earl” Travel Trailer, the oldest one in the world. A 1916 Telescoping Apartment, originally sold for $100. A 1928 Pierce Arrow Fleet Housecar. A 1931 Mae West Housecar. A 1935 Bowlus Road Chief. A 1954 Shasta Travel Trailer. A 1958 Airstream – “The Little Prince” – that was the smallest one ever built. A 1967 Winnebago Motor Home, the first motorized RV built by the iconic Iowa company. A 1979 Starcraft Converted Van. Etc. Etc. Etc.

It is, essentially, a walking tour through the 100 years of RV history. But there’s also a nod to the current state of the industry, a Go RVing exhibition celebrating the advertising campaign’s role in the evolution of RVing. It includes a continuous screening of TV ads, interactive versions of print ads and a computer kiosk that allows visitors to search GoRVing.com. So naturally, I clicked on the “You Are Here” Family Travel Journal to find my family’s smiling faces. And I left it on the screen as we strolled through the rest of the museum. So you could say I’m a Hall of Famer in much the way my baseball hero Harold Baines is. His bat is in Cooperstown. My blog is in Elkhart. Same thing. Sort of.

Actually, there are photos of real inductees in the RV/MH Hall of Fame – men and women who have been integral to the industry over the past century. And we had the pleasure of being invited to a barbecue at one Hall of Famer’s house last night. B.J. Thompson has been a driving force in the PR and advertising efforts of the RV industry for decades. But yesterday, he drove the four of us – along with his lovely daughter, his son-in-law and his grandchildren – on a pontoon boat along the St. Joseph River.

So it was like visiting Cooperstown and then breaking bread with Johnny Bench. Again, sort of.

Thus we experienced the How and What and Who of the RV industry. But it was only while we were leaving the Hall of Fame that we received a reminder of Why. A family from New Jersey was walking out the door with us. They were about our age, their kids only slightly older than ours. They were driving their RV back from a month-long visit to Banff and Jasper and Glacier national parks. We traded insights and suggestions and bid each other safe travels – two families heading in different directions, but really sharing the same journey.

THOROUGHBREDS AND SLUGGERS

Brad Herzog — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:36:00 -0400

My kids are not particularly fervent sports fans. Not at all, actually. It’s ironic because I launched my career as a newspaper sportswriter, and most of my children’s books are about sports. But I’m okay with it. My kids are voracious readers, after all. And they’re remarkably creative. I’d say that’s more important.

But once in a while, I make sure to put sports on the agenda. Louisville fit the bill.

On Tuesday, we visited Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum. Although we had been there a couple of times before, the twin spires of that iconic horseracing venue are always an inspiring sight, and we all enjoyed the museum. Jesse liked the simulated race atop a faux horse. Luke had fun trying (largely in vain) to properly call a race in a sound booth. Amy, somewhat out of character, was enamored with the chance to practice betting on a race. Me? I parked myself in front of the TV monitor that allowed me to replay any Kentucky Derby from the past 80-plus years.

The tour of the racetrack was interesting, too – including a glimpse of 2002 third-place finisher Perfect Drift. Our guide, Hannah, was fantastic – an enthusiastic walking encyclopedia. We liked her a lot. And I’m not just saying that because, when she took my name at the ticket counter, she informed me she had purchased TURN LEFT AT THE TROJAN HORSE the day before. Really, I would have liked her anyway. I swear.

So it was the sport of kings on Tuesday in Louisville. On Wednesday, it was the national pastime – the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum. As a baseball history buff, I was like a kid in a candy store – if that store sold Reggie Bars and baseball card gum. What did I like about it? Well…

• The Walk of Fame throughout downtown Louisville, honoring everyone from Jimmie Foxx to Josh Gibson to Johnny Bench.

• The ginormous baseball bat – largest in the world, 120-foot-tall replica of a Babe Ruth modle – fronting the factory,

• The wall bearing signatures – once emblazoned on bats – dating back centuries and including 80 Hall of Famers.

• The factory tour guide’s opening line: “You’ll see why we are the hardest hitting name in sports.”

• His joke about how all the bats are hand-inspected “and defective ones are shipped to the Chicago Cubs.”

• The chance to hold a replica of 19th-century star Pete Browning’s bat – the original Louisville Slugger – which, compared to today’s bats, was like holding a tree trunk.

• The cubby holes next to the bat-making machinery, bearing billets of lumber to be turned into bats. The names above them included: Jim Thome, Hanley Ramirez, Adam Dunn, Evan Longoria.

• The Babe Ruth 1927 bat (60 homers!) behind glass in the museum.

• The temporary Negro Leagues exhibit that included beautiful paintings of those early 20th century stars. Also in the room: Satchel Paige’s glove, Jackie Robinson’s last game-used bat and a jersey worn by Willie Mays.

• The free mini-bat you get at the end of the factory tour.

Some interesting trivia for you:

• The company didn’t start out making bats, but rather butter churns and bedposts.

• Billets of lumber were turned into baseball bats by hand up until the 1980s, which took about 20 minutes per bat. Today, machines do it in about 30-60 seconds. More than 2,500 bat models – particular to each batter’s request – are stored in a computer to drive the machinery.

• Big league ballplayers order 100-120 bats each season, and the factory churns out 2,000 to 5,000 bats per day. About 60 percent of major leaguers swing Louisville Sluggers.

• Each year 40,000 northern white ash and maple trees are used for Slugger bats. The leftover sawdust is used by an Indiana turkey farmer as bedding for his birds.

So that was Wednesday. On Friday, we’ll likely be seeing the bats in action. It’s part of our annual tradition of catching a minor league game. Sure, I’ve been to a bunch of big league ballparks but I prefer the minor leagues in much the same way that I’d rather explore the tiny dots on the map than the muscled metropolises. Minor league baseball is Americana on display. So we’ve seen games featuring the Salem (Virginia) Avalanche and the Great Falls (Montana) White Sox and the Mississippi Braves.

This year, we’re doing it in Indiana. It’s the South Bend Silver Hawks hosting the Beloit Snappers. Single A ball. Midwest League. We have seats a couple of rows from the field. Four tickets to paradise – if one’s idea of paradise is local outfield wall advertisements and silly between-inning promotions and ballpark hot dogs and would-be heroes swinging lumber carved from the U.S. countryside.

I look forward to it. Even the hot dogs. With relish.

ROAD ROYALTY #12

Brad Herzog — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:29:00 -0400

My 11 installments of “Road Royalty” over the past couple of years have been symbolic in nature – photos of the RV in king-for-a-day surroundings. I was speaking figuratively, of course. But this one – a stop we made today in Versailles, Kentucky – is about as literal as I can get when talking about kingly surroundings.

It’s Castle Post, a structure built on a hill overlooking Highway 60 in the early 1970s and now essentially a high-end B&B in the Bluegrass. That’s right, a palace in Versailles.

Only they pronounce it “Ver-sales.”

BRANDYWINE AND SPIRITS

Brad Herzog — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:11:00 -0400

When you think of national parks, you don’t think of Cleveland. But maybe you should.

Or I’ll put it this way: In the pantheon of U.S. national parks, there are a few kings: Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon. And a notch below that, at least on the general public’s radar, are the Dukes of Natural Wonder – places like Arches, Zion, Acadia, Sequoia, Redwood, Glacier, Great Smoky Mountains, Mesa Verde, Carlsbad Caverns, Crater Lake and Rocky Mountain.

Next come the ones that much of the U.S. population has never heard of, although national park enthusiasts might rave about them. I’m thinking about Kings Canyon in California, Bryce Canyon in Utah, Big Bend in Texas, North Cascades in Washington.

And then there’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It’s just a few miles south of Cleveland. Chances are you didn’t know it even existed. But did you know that it’s one of the ten most visited national parks in the country – roughly 2.5 million people per year, which would place it roughly between Zion and Grand Teton in popularity.

It helps, of course, that Interstate 80 passes right through it in heavily populated Ohio.

Passing through Cleveland as we did yesterday, we decided to stop for a while in Cuyahoga, which means “crooked,” a reference to the 90 miles of twists and turns of the Cuyahoga River. The national park consists of 33,000 preserved acres along 22 miles of the river between Cleveland and Akron. Its origins are part reactive (an attempt to stave off spreading development) and proactive (an effort by the National Park Service to establish urban recreation areas to bring natural wonders to city folks). Cuyahoga Valley has officially been a national park for ten years now.

The options and attractions are many – scenic railroads, bike and hike trails, horse trails, a historic village, a music center, a theater, forests, gorges, coyotes, great blue herons. We opted for a 1 ½-mile hike along the Brandywine Gorge Trail, which started and ended at 60-foot Brandywine Falls.

It was a hot day, and Luke and Jesse weren’t incredibly enthusiastic about the prospect of a hike. But I kept them enthralled (distracted?) by telling them the idea for a new children’s chapter book that I had just conceived, as we strolled along the road and path and boardwalk that formed the trail. By the end of my story, we were just about at the end of our hike. So either it was a truly pleasant stroll along a sparsely-traveled path through a little-known national treasure… or I have a heck of a good future book on my hands.

By the way, I still haven’t visited Glacier, Rocky Mountains and Big Bend. I’d probably put those three at the top of my national park to-do list. Anyone out there have a Top Three National Park Wanna-See List that they’d like to share?