8 Great Road Trips

This top eight list idea started on a road trip; I love a road trip; so naturally my first list would be road trips.

Here they are in chronological order:

Geneva to Lugano 1978

This was the annual trip our high school basketball team took to the big tournament. Our school was much smaller than the other contenders, and we rarely made it to the semi-finals, but Geneva had the only McDonalds within 200 miles of our school, and our bus always stopped there before we headed back through the Alps. Those french fries and shakes made the sting of getting spanked by the home team a little less painful.

Hamilton to Virginia Beach and back 1983

At the end of the January term our senior year 3 of my college friends and I decided to take the three days we had before the spring semester and go down to Virginia Beach where my mom was living. We left at about 10 at night and drove all the way through, arriving at the ocean just as the sun was rising. We spent the day and one night and then turned back north, breaking our return trip in DC with one of my high school buddies, where we ate fondue and drank beer and Jaegermeister by the fire long into the evening.

Austin to Santa Fe 1992

The first stop was San Antonio and that tiny adobe mission we know as the Alamo, then we ate the best cheese and bean enchiladas I have ever tasted at a roadside dive outside Del Rio. We dipped into Mexico for the afternoon and then drove north on 285 through the scrubby desert in the western panhandle of Texas. Crossing the Pecos River at sunset, the sandstone gorge was glowing red, lit by the golden light reflecting off the water. I'll never forget it.

Minneapolis to Rapid City and back 1997

Early in August, my mom had a conference to attend in South Dakota, and since I was on summer break she invited me to tag along. Heading west, it wasn't long before we left the Twin Cities way behind passing first through farm land and then over the Red River and into the prairie. Until then, I didn't realize exactly where the American west was located. After lunch and fantastic homemade pie at Al's on the Missouri River, our next stop was the Corn Palace in Mitchell. There I bought a paperback of O Pioneers by Willa Cather and read that story of hard scrabble and survival on the prairie as we drove across the same land. In the next four days, we saw the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, the Black Hills, Crazy Horse Monument, Deadwood, Devil's Tower, Wind Cave, AND Wall Drug.

Arlington to Bar Harbor and Buffalo 2005

Back when my oldest nephews were kids, we used to rent a minivan and drive to Mount Desert Island for a week of hiking and blueberry picking. This particular summer, we stopped in Buffalo on the way home and stayed with Heidi's folks, where we explored Niagara Falls, including Cave of the Winds, and camped on the shore of Lake Erie. We played Settlers of Catan at the picnic table, cooked our meals over an open driftwood fire, and the boys climbed the cliffs that towered over the lake beach.

Minneapolis to Medora and back, ND 2007

Heidi and I joined my mom and a couple of her book club friends for what we came to call the "Dead White Guy" tour of the upper midwest. Our first stop was Sauk Centre, birthplace of Sinclair Lewis and thinly disguised setting for his breakthrough novel, Main Street. From there we drove through Fargo and on to Valley City, which was the childhood home of one of our traveling companions. Then it was all the way across the state, through countless fields of sunflowers, to Medora, and Teddy Roosevelt National Park, home of the North Dakota Badlands. We did the famous steak fry and western show, and toured the park, pulling our van over to witness an actual wild stallion fight. On the return we stopped at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark's first winter headquarters.

Arlington to Isle of Palms 2011

We rented a beach house for spring break, and my mom flew in from Minnesota to drive down with us. My sister and her family traveled from Atlanta to meet us in Isle of Palms. We rented a minivan, and although Emily and Treat flew down later in the week, my brother and his dog joined me, Heidi, my mom, and our dog for the trip. We listened to 70s music and laughed all the way down I-95. The first morning we were there, the beach was covered in sea stars, and we thought it must just be like that there, but we didn't see anymore for the rest of the week.

Arlington to Rochester 2019

Heidi and Lucy and I drove west to spend the month of August in Minnesota with my mom. It was a lot of highway, but we passed through Michigan City, where my grandfather was born and raised, and Chicago, the skyline bright at 11 at night. We found a couple of dog parks not far off our route so that Lucy could run a bit, and feasted on fantastic hot Italian sandwiches a couple blocks from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. We admired the glacier carved sandstone in the Dells and cheered when we crossed the St. Croix River entering Minnesota in the 24th hour of our journey. After so many years of visiting my mom out there, it was kind of cool to have my dog and my car there, too. Over the month, we drove back and forth from the Cities to Rochester many times, over the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, past the refinery where my mom worked, through farms with fields of corn and soy beans, gray barns and horses, wind breaks and wind mills to the tidy town with numbered streets and avenues and a world-famous clinic at its heart.

8 x 8

On our road trip up to Buffalo today, we did what we have done countless times before: Buckled in, punched play on an audiobook, and ventured forth. The book of this trip was Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson. To be honest, I am not sure where I read about this mystery written in a twisty classic whodunit style, but wen I saw it in my library, I knew it was the story for us.

The premise of the novel is that the narrator, Malcolm Kershaw, owns a mystery book store in Boston. Several years ago, writing for the store's blog, he published a list of 8 perfect literary murders. In the opening pages, an FBI agent shows up in the middle of a blizzard with the theory that a serial killer is using his list.

These eight mysteries are real books:

A.A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery,
Anthony Berkley Cox’s Malice Aforethought,
Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders,
James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity,
Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train,
John D. MacDonald’s The Drowner,
Ira Levin’s Deathtrap,
and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History,

and their plots and themes are woven into this story, too, offering lots of layers, especially to those who are already familiar with the eight original texts.

Near the beginning of the story, Malcolm muses on all the lists he has made as a reader, starting with those he created as a boy and working through those he has published on the blog over the years. He decides that they give him an identity beyond his own, one of authority. They are also quick and easy topics.

Hmm, he might be on to something. With that latter rationale in mind, I have challenged myself to 8 days of lists of 8.

Tune in tomorrow to see how that goes.

Reframing a Sprinkler Fail

I walked up to my garden today to make sure that everything was as set as it could be for a week away. I weeded and fertilized; inspired by Squanto, I applied some disgusting fish concoction on my three sisters mounds, and I have enormous hope that it will be just the thing. I also gave the whole plot a thorough watering using the sprinkler set-up I wrote of before, but also adding another watering spike I found tucked away in the back of the little shed I keep in the corner.

What may sound like a simple process, stick sprinkler in the ground, connect hose, was actually much more complicated. Several of my hoses have nozzles frozen on their threads, and so I had to pull out two short ones and hook them to the connector. Then it was a matter of adjusting the position, the spray, and the watering area, all while my other sprinkler was running.

Short story long? I got soaked! As I took several direct hits to the face, what an idiot I must have looked like to anyone on the other side of the chain link fence who cared to pay attention. At least the whole garden was getting watered.

And, once I was wet, I just plunged right in to the heart of the garden to do my fertilizing, becoming further drenched as I worked. Because I did not care: the sun was warm and a torpid little breeze just barely stirred the trees, and I had been sweating, but no more! Being wet was exhilarating, and I stayed even longer in the garden than I planned. There's a reason we used to play in the sprinkler when we were kids.

If the pool never opens this summer, I think I might have a lot of "watering" to do.

Hail Mary

A light drizzle could not deter me from my appointed destination this afternoon. My friend Mary had forwarded some information about the great Georgia peach road trip, and I had pre-ordered my half bushel right away, especially since the stop was at a garden center right up the hill from us.

From folding tables beneath a collapsible canopy, two young men efficiently worked to hawk and deliver their wares and in less than five minutes I had my freestones and was headed home. Oh, those 72 peaches were refrigerator-cold and hard as rocks, but I read my info card carefully, and with 6 dozen greenish-pink little fist-sized fruits clenched on the counter, I choose to be confident that they will be on their way to perfectly ripe in just a couple days.

Peaches, anyone?

Yay?

We usually celebrate the last day of school by going out to lunch for a lobster roll and then to a movie.

Well.

That's out.

I Love Nature! Except When I Don't

A flurry of wings and a raucous racket drew my attention to the sky this morning as I walked Lucy. Over my head, a crow pumped its pinions furiously, pusued by two very distraught robins. As the crow swooped closer, I saw a limp figure with downy feathers and tiny feet grasped tightly in its clutches. Clearly, it had stolen one of the robins' nestlings and they had given chase. All three birds landed on the peak of the roof to my right, the robins pestering the crow, the crow posturing in defense. Where the baby robin was, I couldn't see, but eventually the robins flew away and the crow hopped over the roofline and pecked murderously at its prize.

Those Were the Days!

The first house my parents ever owned was a 3 bedroom colonial in a Levitt community in South Jersey, right outside Philadelphia. It was actually pink when we moved in in 1966, but they painted it avocado green as the 70s approached.

There were many things I remember fondly about being a child in that house: the peach, pear, and apple trees in the backyard, the forsythia clubhouse on the side of the garage, sledding down the gentle slope of our street when it snowed, and the epic kickball games and variety shows that some of the older kids in the neighborhood organized, just to name a few.

Another great thing about the planned town where we lived was that every elementary school was in walking distance of every house in the subdivision (kids used to walk home for lunch-- that was an option along with buying or bringing!) AND every school had a public pool. Oh how excited we were about going to the pool at this time of year; it always opened in mid to late June, on the day after school got out for the summer.

My mom had a rule, though, it had to be at least 70 degrees for us to go. Looking back, especially as an adult, I think she was more than reasonable, but as kids it was excruciating waiting to see if the weather would cooperate. Once the pool was actually open, though, and we were enrolled in swimming lessons, that rule was gone.

My brother and I had to walk ourselves down to the pool in the early morning when lessons were scheduled. That wasn't so bad, but I can clearly remember wrapping my towel around me as tightly as it would go and watching my wet footprints on the cold sidewalk as I shivered, blue-lipped all the way home.