Go RVing Blog - FAMILY TRAVEL

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.

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.

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?

DRAGONS AND FIREWORKS

Brad Herzog — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:11:00 -0400

The 11th annual Herzog Summer RV Tour has taken us down the coast – through Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Philadelphia – to the nation’s capital. Today we’re going to tour the National Spy Museum and the American Museum of Art, where we’ll see a special Norman Rockwell exhibit. Somehow that seems like an appropriate illustrative synopsis of our expedition.

It is also appropriate, of course, for us to be in Washington, D.C., on the heels of Independence Day. Although it’s a celebration of America, I would describe it as one of the nation’s fiercely local holidays – in the sense that it’s very much a community event. We, however, do it differently because we’re on the road every July.

So we’ve celebrated Independence Day in Evansville, Indiana. And Syracuse, New York. And Chicago. We’ve watched fireworks light up over the Savannah River in Georgia and over Colorado Springs. We’ve spent a couple of July Fourths at minor league ballparks, watching the Great Falls (Montana) White Sox or the Mississippi Braves (postgame fireworks included, naturally).

So for us, Independence Day emphasizes a particular kind of independence – the freedom to travel safely and comfortably and at our own pace, while exploring the country that we’re celebrating. This year we did things a bit differently. We watched the fireworks on July 3rd amid the manicured grounds of our good friends’ country club in Scarsdale, New York.

Then, on July 4th, we stayed inside. There is a heat wave smothering the East Coast at the moment. D.C. has hit triple digits. Folks are sweating more than a BP executive testifying before Congress. So on the Fourth of July, we traveled through New Jersey (en route to Philly) and stopped at a place called The Funplex in the town of East Hanover.

It’s one of those kid paradise places – bumper cars and go-karts, a 4D theater ride and laser tag, a Foam Frenzy experience that involves climbing and aiming foam balls at unsuspecting victims. Gee, you think that’s something a couple of boys might like?

We spent most of our time playing ticket-redemption arcade games and roaming around an attraction called MagiQuest, a wizard-and-wand themed experience in which you hurry around the area completing quests, battling mythical monsters, seeking treasure chests filled with gold. My boys absolutely LOVE it, and our travels have allowed us to visit several incarnations of the growing franchise – in Myrtle Beach and Wisconsin Dells and now in New Jersey. We’ll be doing another one – in Mason, Ohio – in about ten days. The cool thing – you keep the wand with you, and it remembers your past achievements.

Did I mention that I defeated a dragon? Just another day on the adventure.

FESTIVALS, FLUMES & FATHERS

Brad Herzog — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:22:00 -0400

When I plan these summer-long RV trips, I try to achieve a sort of lyrical balance, sort of like Donny & Marie. A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. Education and entertainment. Off-the-beaten path and on-the-tourist-radar. Community and scenery. Frenzy and pause.

This past weekend was a bit of a microcosm of it all.

On Friday, we drove the RV a dozen miles from our campground on the Vermont border into New Hampshire and the hamlet of Hanover, home to Dartmouth College. I wanted to do a bit of research for a children’s book that I plan to write, so we parked on campus and strolled to Rauner Library, along Dartmouth’s famous Green. What a beautiful campus.

It was a fantastic opportunity to explore an iconic bastion of higher education, and I noticed that it sparked a long conversation with my sons about college and options and future possibilities. So that was the intellectual aspect of these trips that I value so much.

We started Saturday by driving a few miles from that same campground to the site of the 31st Annual Quechee Hot Air Balloon, Fine Art, Craft & Music Festival. How did that bit of serendipity happen? Well, I had chosen a campground in the Vermont town of Quechee, had read a summary of said campground in a campground book, had noticed mention of a balloon festival, had Googled said festival, had noticed that it always seems to be held in mid-June, had checked the dates for 2010 and had planned our trip accordingly. That’s how you have good luck on a family road trip. You do the research.

The festival was a cacophony of parachute jumpers and pink lemonade and pretzels and fiddlers and disc-catching dogs and jump houses and cotton candy and belly dancers and wine tasting, all under a hot Vermont sun. We didn’t see any balloons launches – it was too windy. But no matter. That was the exploration of communities and subcultures that I hope we’ll experience on each summer RV journey.

Saturday afternoon saw us driving northeast into New Hampshire to Franconia Notch State Park, one of the prettiest state parks you’ll ever see. We headed straight for the Flume Gorge, a natural granite gorge extending 800 feet at the base of Mount Liberty. Walls 90 feet high. Cascading waterfalls. Wooden walkways taking you into the wonder. Trails through the woods taking you out a couple of miles later. So that hike satisfied the scenery-seeking traveler in me.

But Sunday may have been my favorite day of the weekend – Father’s Day. And I got three gifts: Hand-drawn cards from my sons, a CD from my wife (various artists covering Beatles tunes), and my usual gift – the opportunity to watch the final round of golf’s U.S. Open in its entirety.

It’s my second-favorite sports day of the year. The first is the final round of the Masters.

And that’s what I did. I woke up late, grabbed some snacks and watched TV. I left the RV exactly once – to build a fire in the fire pit so that we could roast some hot dogs for dinner (our goal: beat the thunderstorm that was coming soon; we did, barely).

So there you have it: A road trip balance. We try to experience a sampling of everything on these cross-country expeditions. Even it if means a day of doing almost nothing.

PEACE, LOVE & ICE CREAM

Brad Herzog — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:11:00 -0400

Vermont never disappoints. And neither does Ben & Jerry’s.

We’ve spent the past couple of days repeating over and over how much we love the Green Mountain State, having arrived here by boat, in fact. In Plattsburgh, New York, we set the RV on a little (but big enough) ferry that transported us across Lake Champlain to Grand Isle, where we drove a few minutes to an RV resort in a town known as South Hero. Because my new book is about a cross-country search for what constitutes a heroic life, I couldn’t pass that one up.

It rained on us that night, but the sun muscled its way skyward the next morning and we drove into Burlington, one of the few cities in this country that I hadn’t yet explored – and one near the top of my to-do list. It didn’t disappoint either, as we strolled through a pedestrian mall and enjoyed an AMAZING lunch at a restaurant called Bistro Leunig’s – oysters, salad nicoise, duck tacos, wow.

In fact, the day was really all about food. We awoke to Amy's banana chocolate chip pancakes, followed it with that great lunch, picked up some excellent pizza for dinner at a country store half-a-block from our beautiful campground in the hamlet of Quechee, Vermont, and concluded the day by cooking s’mores over a fire at our campsite. Okay, not our healthiest or cheapest food day ever, I’ll admit it – especially because the centerpiece of the day was a trip to the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory in the town of Waterbury.

A gorgeous half-hour drive – on the Interstate no less – got us there. And really, it doesn’t get any better than what we found – a beloved company’s headquarters amid an idyllic setting, where everyone is rubbing their bellies with satisfaction, and all of the smiling employees are wearing shirts that say “Peace, Love & Ice Cream.”

Although some 2000 people a day tour the place during peak days, we were joined by perhaps two-dozen folks on a very short tour punctuated by wince-inducing humor (“Come on down! You’re the next contestant on The Pint is Right!”) and dominated by a nearly seven-minute-long movie – pardon me, a “moo-vie” in the Cow Over the Moon Theater – about Ben and Jerry and the start-up of their company devoted to savory ice cream, happy employees and community causes.

Did you know that this little company that began with a $5 correspondence course and a tiny store in an abandoned service station in Vermont is now available globally – from Iceland to Singapore? That in 1986, the founders road-tripped in an RV that they christened the “Cowmobile,” offering up a cross-country free scooping extravaganza? Apparently, the Cowmobile burned to the ground somewhere around Cleveland, which seems to me to be a near impossibility, given that it was filled with ice cream…

After the movie, we got a glimpse of the actual assembly floor. They happened to be making Cherry Garcia (apparently they do one flavor per day), and that flavor happens to be the most popular at the moment, followed by Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Chunky Monkey and Chocolate Fudge Brownie. The amiable tour guide told us that the woman who suggested the name Cherry Garcia was rewarded with free ice cream for life.

I’m sure her dietician is thrilled.

Obviously, the kids’ favorite part of the tour was the end – in which we each received a free mini-cup of Milk & Cookies ice cream. But my favorite part was the post-tour stroll up a hill near the factory – to a faux cemetery known as the Flavor Graveyard. This is where ice cream creations go to die (including, I was surprised to learn, Rainforest Crunch).

There are actually gravestones there, and the epitaphs are eminently clever. Some examples:

WHITE RUSSIAN

A concoction so to-die-for.
We were forever in its debt.
As the liqueur kicked the budget
We finally had to just say “nyet.”

HOLY CANNOLI

Now in front of the pearly gates,
Holy Cannoli sits and waits.
What brought its ruin no one knows,
Must have been the pistachios.

PEANUT BUTTER & JELLY

An unbeatable duo!
Yet somehow it managed
To flop in a cone,
So we stuck to the sammich.

There was also a short-lived flavor in 1987 that perhaps deserves a second look. It was called Economic Crunch, which is a great name. But here follow my 10 favorite names of current flavors:

Imagine Whirled Peace
Karamel Sutra
Neapolitan Dynamite
Fossil Fuel
Jamaican Me Crazy
Dublin Mudslide
Berried Treasure
Phish Food
Magic Brownies
Half Baked

At least they’re better than the names once suggested on a David Letterman “Top Ten List”: Zsa Zsa Gaboreo and Norieggnog.

OMISSION POSSIBLE

Brad Herzog — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:55:00 -0400

Generally, in this online travel journal of mine, I write about what we’ve seen on our family RV excursions. But this time, I’m writing about what we didn’t see. It was magical.

Today, we made our way from Verona, NY (just east of Syracuse) to a hamlet ten miles from Lake Placid, deep in the Adirondack Mountains. Along the way, we could have stopped to take a day trip on the Adirondack Scenic Railroad. But we didn’t. We might have gotten wet at Water Safari water park. But we passed it by. We considered roaming the expansive Adirondack Museum. Nope, sorry.

Instead, we spent the day meandering. We took our time, navigated by whims and impulses, savored the moments. And it was my favorite day of the trip so far.

In the morning, at the RV park in Verona, we decided to take a hike before hitting the road. There were a handful of trails leading into the woodsy wilderness on the outskirts of the campground, and we made our way along one of them, not quite sure where it was going to take us. Physically, it took us over boardwalks spanning swampy creeks as green and thick as split pea soup and along muddy trails lined with cattails. But nine-year-old Luke decided to turn it into an expedition through the various warrior clans of a book he was reading (about warrior cats, in fact). “By the looks of things,” he would say, “we seem to be coming into the shadow clan’s territory…” (Such distractions are a great way to get him to keep walking).

So the day began with us wandering into adventure, and that became the theme of the drive, as we cruised along the curves and climbs of Highway 28 through the Adirondacks, past the inns and lodges and lightly touristed towns that constitute this getaway Mecca in the mountains, past the towering pines that stretched toward a robin’s-egg sky striped with wispy clouds, past signs depicting snowmobile crossings and the ones saying things like “Caution: Snowplow Turnaround,” past quaint hamlets with names like Old Forge and Eagle Bay and Inlet (“Remember Inlet,” the small billboard implored, “Where mountains and memories meet.”) until we found ourselves at a place called Blue Mountain Lake, where a gaggle of geese waddled through a park alongside one of those pristine mountain lakes that take your breath away.

So that’s where we stopped for a late lunch. Sandwiches in the RV. With a million-dollar view.

The boys decided to use their usual post-meal adrenaline rush to wrestle around on the queen-sized bed in the rear of the RV. Amy and I opted for a stroll by the lake, serene and sun-drenched.

Then I hopped back behind the wheel, and Amy popped in a homemade CD, and we spent the next hour oohing and aahing through the big front windshield – a big-screen movie of American wonders accompanied by a near-perfect soundtrack of Willie Nelson and Van Morrison and Jack Johnson. “I got no time that I got to get to where I don’t need to be,” sang Johnson, as if he were reading our minds.

When we arrived at the ultra-charming little city of Saranac Lake, we veered into town and headed straight for a restaurant that I had discovered on the Internet back when our summer trip was just a hope and a plan. I’ll write more about the Eat ‘n Meet Grill in a later post, but let it be known that this little takeout joint amid the Adirondacks offered a menu as mouth-watering as the scenery.

We grabbed the food and climbed back into the RV just as the setting sun was turning an already gorgeous drive into a jaw-dropping wonderland. Picture yellow stampedes of wildflowers and lavender regiments of lupine and fly fisherman standing waist deep in the Ausable River, with Whiteface Mountain looming in the background, as the last rays of daylight danced on the water’s surface.

We arrived at our campground in a lofty hiccup called Wilmington and enjoyed our plantain dumplings and potato-and-onion perogies as dusk settled beneath the pines, marking the end of a very good day.

PLATO AND PLAY

Brad Herzog — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:15:00 -0400

Several years ago, when I was driving cross-country to research my just-published travel memoir, TURN LEFT AT THE TROJAN HORSE, it seemed as if every sign and image I saw reminded me of the ancient Greek myths that were the foundation of my journey. I visited towns named Athena and Apollo and Troy. I saw businesses named Olympyk. I parked next to RVs with “Odyssey” stenciled on the side. Heck, I even injured my Achilles heel. Sure, I was attuned to it, but the coincidences were so many that it became rather eerie.

Well, it’s happening again.

Yesterday, we stopped in the town of Brockport, New York, for an evening author event celebrating that very book. So where did we grab dinner, half a block away? A Greek restaurant named Mythos.

Then we drove to Rochester, where I was scheduled to do a VERY early morning TV interview the following day. As we occasionally do, we parked the RV overnight in the TV station’s parking lot (one of the benefits of a house on wheels). The tiny street we turned down to get there? It was called Ajax, who was the strongest of the Achaean soldiers during the Trojan War.

Following that TV interview, we drove a few blocks to the Strong National Museum of Play, which just may be the finest museum of its kind in America (I know I said that last year about the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, but it’s like comparing Kobe Bryant and Lebron James. Either way, you’re right. They’re very different from one another, and they’re the best.)

So upon entering the museum, I saw this giant quote on a wall: “Life must be lived as play.” You know who said it? Plato.

This is a welcome reminder. It’s tough to sell books these days, and it’s usually up to the author to do the bulk of the marketing. Publishers’ publicity budgets, such as they are, do not often extend to the writers who need them most. So while a book launch can be exhilarating, it can also be stressful and frustrating, particularly if you’re bursting with pride about the work.

Thus, a museum dedicated to play – they don’t call themselves a children’s museum; they prefer “family museum about history” – seemed just what the therapist ordered. Billing itself as “the only museum in the world dedicated to the study of play as it illuminates American culture,” the Strong Museum fits nicely into my road trip mantra of education disguised as entertainment.

More than 500,000 play-related objects cover more than 150,000 square feet of interactive exhibit space. There’s a fully restored 1918 carousel, a re-creation of Sesame Street (including Big Bird’s nest and the iconic stoop at 123 Sesame Street), and a year-round indoor butterfly garden.

In the Field of Play section of the museum, the kids enjoyed experimenting with perspective and viewpoint, something I hope our annual RV trips offer as well. They stood on either side of room specially created to alter height perspective, stumbled through a slanted room and made their way through kaleidoscope tunnel.

In the Mindbender Mansion, they solved a series of mind games (some of them requiring every bit of Dad’s brainpower) to obtain a collection of clue to find several passwords to obtain a certificate of completion.

A whimsical journey in a new section of the museum, Reading Adventureland, was a particular treat for Amy, Luke and Jesse (prolific readers all) and me (a writer after all). It was essentially, a journey through the wonders of children’s literature. The kids could sit in Cinderella’s carriage and climb Jack’s beanstalk and stroll through the Gingerbread House from Hansel and Gretel. There were artifacts from Encyclopedia Brown’s detective agency, Harry Potter’s Nimbus 2000, an early manuscript of “The Hobbit,” a Narnia board game, a Wonka bar, even a replica breakfast – green eggs and ham, naturally. Seeing the wonders of Seuss and Tolkien and the others collected in such a way made me proud to be a children’s author, if a bit envious.

From there, we walked into an exhibit called “American Comic Books Heroes” – an homage to Captain America, Superman, Wonder Woman and the rest. The kids had two favorite there – the exhibit in which an immovable object suddenly became easy to lift after the pushed a super-strength button, and the one in which they could snap a photo to make it looks as if they were climbing (or in my boys’ case, hanging on dramatically) on the side of a skyscraper.

If I had to pick a favorite spot in the museum, however, it would probably choose a second-floor exhibit – the National Toy Hall of Fame. Think of iconic toys from yesteryear, and there were there, behind glass, properly celebrated as the integral elements of American culture that they are – from Tinker Toys to Tonka trucks to the Teddy Bear. More examples? How about Mr. Potato Head, Slinky, the Jack-in-the-Box, the Frisbee, the Easy-Bake Oven, the Big Wheel, Crayola crayons, Lincoln Logs and Silly Putty.

For me, however, the most fun of all was an old Atari Set. A working Atari set offering so many options from my childhood, when video games seemed like magic. I got to play a vintage 1978 version of “Space Invaders.” Suddenly, I felt 10 again. No worries beyond a slow-moving alien invasion.

So yes, the Strong National Museum of Play was a much-needed lesson in perspective, even as we rumbled through the American countryside. In fact, there was a small exhibit there called “U.S. of Play! It featured a U.S. map festooned with various items representing “Fun From Coast to Coast” – Mickey Mouse ears in Florida, a lobster Beanie Baby in Maine, a snowboarding Scooby Doo in Colorado, a Mt. Rushmore puzzle in South Dakota, a Vermont teddy bear. But you know what dominated the map, right about at the Grand Canyon? A Tonka Winnebago.

Plato was right: “Life must be lived as play.” And Jack Kerouac was right, too: “The road is life.”

A BARREL OF LAUGHS

GoRving Admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:51:00 -0400

A couple of years ago, after a day of exploring natural wonders and kitschy kid stuff in Colorado Springs, my sons declared that afternoon and evening to be (in their own charming way) “the bestest day ever.” Well, apparently we have a new one.

The winning locale: Niagara Falls.

Did you know that Niagara Falls is actually moving backwards? The millions of water that flow over the falls annually wear down the rim one or two feet each year. So over the millennia, Niagara Falls has moved several miles upstream. Seriously, you could look it up. I’ll call that Falls Factoid #1 of this post.

We arrived here after a journey of a couple of days. From Detroit we cruised through Cleveland and Erie and Buffalo and finally to a quiet and expansive campground on Grand Island (in between Buffalo and Niagara Falls). We pulled in on Sunday evening. The next morning, we drove the RV about seven miles to a parking lot just a few blocks from Rainbow Bridge, which leads across the border. Our plan: Walk into Canada.

Falls Factoid #2: There are two primary falls – American Falls (below which rest massive boulders created by spectacular rockslides in 1931 and 1954) and Horseshoe/Canadian Falls (which are more majestic, sending mist several hundred feet high). According to the U.S. Geographical Survey, however, nearly one-third of Canadian Falls lies within U.S. territory.

Anyway, our plan worked perfectly. But before crossing into Canada, we enjoyed the one must-see experience of Niagara Falls – the Maid of the Mist boat tour. It’s only a half-hour long. But wow. The raincoats handed to us didn’t completely suffice, just like words don’t adequately describe an up-close view of the falls. It was exhilarating and breathtaking, and I’m pretty sure my kids are going to rate it at or near the top of our best-of-the-summer list when all is said and done.

Falls Factoid #3: Speaking of superlatives, some 750,000 gallons of water per second plummets over the combined falls.

Then we walked in Canada, a quarter-mile or so over Rainbow Bridge and toward the Clifton Hill section of Niagara Falls, which may be best described as Las Vegas for kids. Or maybe Wisconsin Dells in Canada. It’s a collection of haunted houses and wax museums and mini golf courses and arcades and ice cream shops… you get the picture. Adults may roll their eyes, but for 7- and 9-year-old boys it was paradise.

Falls factoid #4: Speaking of seven year olds, in 1960 a seven-year-old boy was accidentally swept over Niagara Falls, along with an adult who had been supervising him. The man didn’t survive. The boy, wearing just a lifejacket, apparently suffered only some bruises before being rescued by a “Maid of the Mist” crew.

After lunch at the Hard Rock café (beneath guitars signed by the Grateful Dead, Cheap Trick and… John McEnroe?), we headed first for the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, a remarkable (or remarkably nauseating) collection of two-headed kittens, eight-legged calves, four-leaf clover collections, optical illusions, tongue-piercers, eye-poppers, unicorn-horned men, massive hairballs, contortionists, daredevils and eight-foot-tall giants. It’s enough to make your question people’s sanity – including your own for actually enjoying the tour.

Falls factoid #5: Speaking of crazy, the first person to go over the falls in a barrel and survive was a 63-year-old former schoolteacher. She did it in 1901. Since then, there have been a number of tightrope walkers and barrel plungers. Some have survived. Some haven’t.

After Ripley’s, it was Dinosaur Park Mini Golf, a course festooned with – you guessed it – various prehistoric creatures. Jesse is a big fan of miniature golf, and he was a bit frustrated at his high score – until the 18th and final hole when he recorded the only hole-in-one-hole of the round. It was that kind of day. We followed that with a visit to the Great Canadian Midway arcade, the Fun House, and finally the Movieland Wax Museum of the Stars.

Frankly, I don’t understand wax museums. I find them rather boring and somewhat creepy. This one had its moments – Elvis looked like Elvis. Captain Jack Sparrow looked like Captain Jack Sparrow. Gandalf looked like Gandalf. But Meryl Streep looked like Glenn Close. And Glenn Close (from “Fatal Attraction”) looked like Bette Middler. And Bette Middler… well, they spelled it “Middlar.” But you know what? It was kind of fun to critique the wax figures (if kind of pathetic on my part). Naturally, the kids enjoyed all of the frozen faces.

Falls Factoid #6: Speaking of frozen, Niagara Falls never actually freezes in the winter. However, once – on March 29, 1848 – the flow of water at both falls stopped completely due to an ice jam in the upper river. People actually walked out and picked up artifacts from the riverbed.

After dinner, we concluded the day with a ride on the Niagara Skywheel, a Ferris wheel that took us 175 feet above Clifton Hill and offered a fantastic view of the wonder that drew all these tourists and tourist traps in the first place. That balance – natural wonders, touristy attractions and goofy kid stuff – is something we try to achieve with each RV journey. We tend to do it well. Niagara Falls was, paradoxically, that balance in the form of extremes.

PLANES, TRAINS AND WEINERMOBILES

Brad Herzog — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:09:00 -0400

The two primary components of an RV vacation are where you go and how you get there. Each is pretty much inseparable from the other, allowing you to not only reach various places, but also to feel as if you are immersed in that locale or subculture or piece of Americana. Yesterday, on Day 2 of our 60-day summer adventure, we explored an attraction that represents both of those aspects in a big way – and all in one place.

We spent an afternoon at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, an eye-popping, flag-waving, era-harkening kind of place.

Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of Henry Ford as a human being. For all that he accomplished, he had some major flaws. But Henry Ford the collector? Wow. In 1929, he began a collection that would grow to include millions of artifacts and dozens of buildings in an attempt to capture the breadth and wonder of the American experience. Billed as “America’s Greatest History Attraction,” it just may live up to the hyperbole.

We started with Greenfield Village, which spans more than 300 years of history over 90 acres. They call it the place to “rediscover America.” Ford’s thinking was that people can learn history a lot better if they see it instead of reading it in a book, which pretty much encapsulates the educational appeal of the RV experience.

What does that mean, exactly? Well, even though we were hundreds of miles from their native Dayton, Ohio, we saw the Wright brothers’ actual cycle shop where they developed the design of the Wright Flyer. It was situated right next to their family home. We visited Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park complex. We saw centuries-old homes once lived in by everyone from George Washington Carver to Robert Frost. We watched and listened as craftsmen and craftswomen in period costume displayed their skills – potters and weavers, printers and (the kids’ favorite) glassblowers.

The possible rides at the Village are many. You can ride an 1880 steam locomotive, cruise aboard a paddle-wheel steamboat, ride in a vintage Model-T, get dizzy on a 1913 carousel. But the Henry Ford Museum – that’s where the “how you get there” notion is displayed on a jaw-dropping scope. It’s one of those places – like the House on the Rock in Wisconsin or the Smithsonian Museum of American History – that you can’t possibly complete to satisfaction in one day. But we did our best.

Consider this: Amid the hundreds of vehicles inside the massive complex are these American icons: the bus that Rosa Parks made famous, a 1952 version of the famed Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, the rocket-like Goldenrod that set a land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Charles Kuralt’s “On the Road” motorhome, Teddy Roosevelt’s horse-drawn carriage, the presidential limo in which JFK rode on the day of his assassination, the massive 600-ton Allegheny coal-hauling locomotive, the first working helicopter and a replica of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.

RVers that we are, we were also interested in another way in which Lindbergh got from Point A to Point B. Alongside displays of a 1928 “Nomad” House Car, a mid-1920s “Gilkie” Camp Trailer and a 1916 Packard Camp Truck was Lindbergh’s 1935 “Stage Coach” trailer, given to him by Ford after Lindbergh mentioned that he was looking for a means to get away and write. Now, I’m not a huge fan of Lindbergh either. But the get-away-and-write thing? I can relate.

Walking through the museum was a bit like time-traveling through Americana. We saw replicas of an old Texaco station, a Holiday Inn sign, a drive-in theater, old Burma Shave signs, an Airstream trailer, a 1939 Soap Box Derby car, a 1902 mail wagon, an 1896 electric bicycle. And then, when the tour was over, we had the pleasure of climbing back into a 21st-century RV.

AND WE'RE OFF

Brad Herzog — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:40:00 -0400

The Herzog family’s 2010 RV adventure – which I’ll be writing about all summer – officially began today. The trip is planned, the campgrounds reserved, the research complete. Most important, the RV is packed. So today the four of us – dad Brad, mom Amy, 9-year-old Luke and almost 8-year-old Jesse – hit the road. We drove from Chicago to the Detroit area, which will likely be our longest one-day drive of the summer.

Where will we go in June, July and part of August? Throughout most of the Midwest and the Northeast. How will we get there? In a 33-foot Winnebago Vista. What will we see? Well, I’ll give it to you thematically:

We’re going to make our way to Buffalo and Burlington and Bangor. We’ll explore Acadia National Park in Maine, Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on Michigan’s western edge and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We’re going to visit Lake Placid (New York) and Mystic (Connecticut). We’re going to enjoy a balloon festival near Woodstock (Vermont).

We’ll watch a minor league baseball game in South Bend, stroll through an amusement park in western Pennsylvania and take a couple of factory tours – Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont and Louisville Slugger in Kentucky. We’ll visit the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit, the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester (NY) and the RV Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Indiana.

We’ll meet up with cousins in Ithaca, Boston, Pittsburgh and Grand Rapids. We’ll find family in Washington, D.C. and friends in Westchester County. We’ll pass through the native cities of Dr. Seuss (Springfield, MA), Ben Franklin (Philadelphia, PA), and Johnny Appleseed (Fort Wayne, IN). We’ll gawk at New York’s Adirondacks, New Hampshire’s Mount Washington and Niagara Falls. We’ll visit the White House, the Bluegrass and the Green Mountains.

That’s a serious scope of stuff over 60 days. Meanwhile, here’s a look at our ride:

LEAVING EDEN

Brad Herzog — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:00:00 -0400

I live on California’s Monterey Peninsula. It’s a gorgeous place – rocky coastline, mystical cypress trees, the occasional white sand beach and world-class golf course. The photo below – showing McWay Falls in Big Sur, just north of where I live – is evidence of the beauty around here.

In fact, I’ll offer as more evidence a title from a book from John Steinbeck, my favorite author, the guy who seems to appear in this traveler’s journal a lot, for one reason or another. When he wrote one of his classic books, East of Eden, he set the story in the Salinas Valley, just a couple dozen miles east of the Peninsula. In other words, at least according to Steinbeck, I live in Eden.

But you know what? As stunning and serene as our hometown may be, my family and I can’t wait to climb into an RV and hit the road each summer.

Steinbeck had a theory about Americans’ urge for travel. In Travels With Charley, he wrote, “Perhaps we have overrated roots as a psychic need. Maybe the greater urge, the deeper and more ancient, is the need, the will, the hunger to be somewhere else.” I can understand this notion – not necessarily as it might apply to a permanent shift of locale, but rather as a temporary desire to explore new wonders, to escape your routine for a while, to mix it up a bit.

Now, summer isn’t the best time of year around here. I happen to love our foggy climate, the way the wisps move in during many afternoons and the weather can change abruptly. But during June and July, the fog lingers too long. It’s rarely warmer than 70 degrees. So when we travel, we can experience a season that might otherwise have passed us by.

Sure, it gets too hot sometimes. I’m thinking of a 118 degree day in the Palm Springs area a couple of summers ago, a ridiculous state of affairs that led us to try (unsuccessfully) to fry an egg on the sidewalk. But at least it’s a summer. Steinbeck wound up moving from the Monterey Peninsula to Long Island later in his life, expressing a sentiment that he had once lived in a good climate and it bored the heck out of him. “I like weather, rather than climate,” he explained.

But our travels are more than just chasing the summer. They’re an opportunity to take a breath of fresh air, to step back from our daily existence and consider our place in the world from a new point of view. When we return, we come home contented – satisfied, even proud, of the life we lead for 10 months out of the year and the place we have chosen to set down roots. But we’re also grateful for the two months every summer that allow us a dose of perspective, a peek outside the bubble of our usual existence, an opportunity to explore the world instead of waiting for it to come to our neighborhood.

The Herzog’s family’s 2010 summer journey begins in a couple of weeks. And I love the fact that our house-on-wheels expeditions allow us to travel at our own pace, on our own terms, in whatever direction we choose. But maybe I’m just under the illusion that I’m the one in control. After all, here’s something else Steinbeck wrote: “After years of struggle we find that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

TWO'S COMPANY

Brad Herzog — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:08:00 -0400

The photo below shows a couple of RVs sunning themselves side-by-side in Malibu, California. There’s an RV park there, set a couple hundred feet above the waves. The view of the Pacific is sublime. But my point in showing the photo – taken almost exactly five years ago – is this: The company was even better.

For the past ten summers, Amy and I have had the luxury of piloting a house on wheels across the country – and our sons (ages 9 and 7) have traveled with us for all but the first one. But five years ago, we spent a month cruising through the Southwest during the winter. And we weren’t alone. Our good friends, who were then living in the Minneapolis area, joined us.

It was a perfect confluence of time, place and opportunity. Our friends Adam and Steph are the directors of Camp Nebagamon for Boys in northern Wisconsin. It’s a special place to all of us – in fact, it’s where Adam and I met more than 30 years ago. Every winter, Adam embarks on a camp reunion and recruiting tour, including stops in places like Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas and Oklahoma City. When we realized that his tour and ours could coincide, we started hatching plans. At the time, our four sons (that is, two each) were all in pre-kindergarten. The time was perfect for a winter caravan.

We left from our house on California’s Monterey Peninsula on a sunny day in early February, made our way south to Malibu, stopped at Disneyland for a couple of days, enjoyed SeaWorld in San Diego, toured Joshua Tree National Park, visited Phoenix and Tucson, spent an afternoon marveling at White Sands National Monument in southern New Mexico, hiked through Carlsbad Caverns, strolled through the Alamo and along the Riverwalk in San Antonio, and played at Space Center Houston before making a U-turn and steering ourselves back to the California coast.

We all got along famously, our four boys included, over the course of the month-long caravan. And we saw some remarkable sights – made all the more memorable by the fact that we got to share the experience with close friends. Adam had brought along a couple of walkie-talkies – one for each RV – and we would comment on the scenery as it passed by, or trade jokes and barbs, or make plans for where and when to stop for lunch. It was all sort of nerdy, but also thoroughly enjoyable. It’s one thing to tell your friends about the wonders of the open road; it’s quite another to experience it with them.

In fact, while Carlsbad and White Sands and Joshua Tree and the rest were truly breathtaking, my fondest memories of the trip are the moments after we’d parked for the night. They would situate their rented RV next to ours – at a campground in Lordsburg (New Mexico) or Laughlin (Nevada) or Lost Hills (California). Sometimes, we would each cook our own dinners in our own RVs. Other times, we would barbecue together and sit around the fire. Almost always, however, after we put the kids to bed, Adam and Steph would bring a baby monitor into our coach. Then the four of us would hang out for another couple of hours. You could probably hear the laughter echoing in the trees.

It was at those times, surrounded by drawn shades and the black of night, that we could have been excused for forgetting exactly where we were. Tucumari? Elk City? Amarillo? But I think we all suspected there was probably no better place to be.