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Sumiki

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Blog Entries posted by Sumiki

  2. Sumiki

    Nickeled and Dimed

    By Sumiki,

    We checked out of the hotel and passed the Saratoga Raceways on the way out of the always-packed Saratoga Springs downtown. We saw a few horses being groomed and ridden, but no races were slated, so we just looked around to see what we could see from the streets.
     
    Our first stop of the day was a little ways from Saratoga Springs at the Saratoga Battlefield. Despite being one of the most influential battles in the history of the world, the Saratoga Battlefield is not as well-traveled or built-up as, say, Gettysburg is. Nevertheless, the visitor center is well done, despite the clear lack of funding. It was also fairly well-traveled, which is surprising considering that the only access is on secondary roads with utterly frivolous hairpin turns.
     
    The two battles in September and October of 1777 marked the turning point of the Revolution and thus of world history. British forces occupied New York City and Québec, and were preparing to come down Lake Champlain and the Hudson River to cut off the revolutionaries, who were mostly confined to New England.
     
    The beginning of this strategy worked, as the British captured a series of small forts, including Ticonderoga. In order to stop the advance, the American forces rallied near Saratoga, at a natural choke point along the Hudson called Bemis Heights. Sitting on the choice of going down the river and getting slaughtered by American forces or trying to beat the Americans on Bemis Heights, British General John "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne chose to attack.
     
    The September battle was somewhat of a stalemate, with the Americans still on Bemis Heights. The British dug in, and the second battle on October 7th ended with the Americans routing the British. This got France on board with the revolutionary cause, declaring war on Britain.
     
    We drove around the battlefield and got a sense of the terrain, which is remarkably well-preserved. The visitor center even had one of the original cannon used at the battle.
     
    The most interesting thing about the battle - and, in fact, Fort Ticonderoga as well - is that Benedict Arnold, commonly known only as a traitor, was incredibly influential. Had he not married a Loyalist half his age and attempted to surrender West Point to the British, he'd be considered one of the greatest American heroes. As it is, without Arnold's heroism at influential points, the Revolution could just as easily have been a failure. As one of the volunteers put it, "we'd be looking at Arnold's face on the one-dollar bill."
     
    It took us nearly three hours to complete the driving tour, including our many stops to walk around and see things. We pulled onto the road and found ourselves to be incredibly low on gas - which made sense, considering that we hadn't gotten any since we stopped in rural Québec.
     
    My mom took much longer than expected getting snacks and drinks inside, so I went in to find her at the counter, 75 cents short. I procured three quarters from the car and gave them to the man behind the counter.
     
    This was not to be the last fun we'd have with loose change.
     
    We got onto I-87 and rolled on through Albany, where we lost a considerable amount of traffic and entered the toll road, where we spotted a few deer along the side of the road. I'd forgotten this about New York toll roads - you pick up a ticket on the way in, and then turn in the ticket wherever you exit, with the exit number corresponding to a particular toll amount. Thus, the state can tax individuals who use more of the road.
     
    With the toll for our exit at $2.70, my mom and I rummaged for change, and we ended up paying the $2.70 almost exclusively in nickels, which took the lady at the toll booth nearly a full minute to count out. Her parting words to us were "hey, next time - use pennies!" - although her words were nearly incomprehensible through her laughter.
     
    Now driving a slightly lighter car, we arrived at our hotel at 4:30 and checked in, getting to our room and immediately looking up local places to eat in Kingston. We couldn't find the place that we originally wanted to go - the girl at the front desk confused the place we'd looked at with a different place on the other side of town, and our stupid little GPS is now officially on its last legs, getting all turned around, spinning in circles even when we were at a complete stop. We eventually saw a sign for a grill up in a mall, which we pulled into.
     
    It was a bit of a sports-bar kind of place, but it wasn't all that loud. The server was entertained by my order of extra blue cheese on my blue cheese burger and the fact that a lemon seed had perched itself right on the end of my straw after a particularly difficult sip. If I hadn't taken as long of a sip, it would have slipped back down the straw, but if I'd gone just a millisecond longer, it would have gone into my mouth.
     
    Tomorrow: the FDR Presidential Library at Hyde Park, with the aim of getting as far south as Pennsylvania.
  3. Sumiki

    Fort-itude

    By Sumiki,

    We meandered through Burlington at 11:00 and worked our way south along US 7, eventually getting out of the city and through countryside. We paralleled Lake Champlain as it narrowed, crossing over it into New York at noon. We continued south to Ticonderoga and traversed a surprisingly long unpaved road up to Fort Ticonderoga itself.
     
    The fort is exceptionally tiny, especially after seeing the monstrous forts in Halifax and Québec. It was built by the French during the Seven Years' War (or the French and Indian War, as the theater in North America is usually referred to), captured by the British at the end of that war, then was taken without a shot by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys at the beginning of the Revolution. It was eventually re-taken by the British, only to be re-taken by the Americans.
     
    Fort Ticonderoga had degenerated into ruins by the mid-1800s, but was later refurbished and restored with help from funding from an affluent tycoon. Nowadays it's run by a nonprofit organization - not the National Park Service, strangely enough.
     
    We wandered in and around the fort - it's not that big - leaving ample time for ambling around museums and exhibits that weren't always air conditioned. It took us two hours to get around when all was said and done, but most of our time was spent indoors, marveling at their impressive collection of muskets, powder horns, and other artifacts - including a trundle bed once owned by Benedict Arnold.
     
    We climbed up into the Adirondack Mountains, cutting across scenic landscapes and paralleling Paradox Lake, eventually intersecting with a deserted I-87 heading south to Saratoga Springs. Traffic picked up considerably as we continued on the road.
     
    It was somewhat backed up getting into Saratoga Springs, but it did not delay us much, and we checked into the hotel at 3:30. As we unloaded our bags, my dad got us a reservation at the Wheatfields Restaurant, the local restaurant institution in Saratoga Springs. We cleaned up (well, as much as we could, as my dad and I are sporting some exceptionally ragged facial hair) and headed out, navigating the absurdly cramped streets of downtown Saratoga and eventually paying ten dollars for parking because there was literally no other parking spot in the entire downtown area.
     
    Wheatfields was larger and different to my dad vivid descriptions, although his last visit was 23 years ago. The menu and décor were significantly different, but their main attraction - pasta made in-house - was still there. Having had little to eat all day, we thoroughly enjoyed the fresh bread, with butter that had just enough of a hint of garlic to make it interesting. We all split two appetizers - calamari, lightly breaded and glazed with a spicy Thai sauce, and crab cakes. I ate the majority of the calamari, including the delicious tentacles. It was easily the best calamari I've ever had.
     
    The squid, however, ended up being the highlight of the meal, as our respective pastas were much more mediocre than we'd come to anticipate from the bread and the appetizers.
     
    Tomorrow: the Battle of Saratoga en route to Kingston, New York.
  4. Sumiki
    We got on the road a little before noon after sleeping in a little bit. Leaving Fredericton was much easier than getting in - just a few merges and we were on the Trans-Canada Highway, first westbound and then northbound to Québec.
     
    We crossed many small brooks and paralleled the St. John River all the way up. We were never more than a few miles from the border with Maine, and made excellent time up the highway.
     
    We pulled into a gas station in Woodstock, which was, to our surprise, full-service. We got some drinks and snacks, topped off gas and oil, and - most interestingly - purchased some lobster-flavored potato chips, which were okay. They had a more general fish flavor, which got gross after three bites.
     
    Around 1:30 we saw a female moose on the side of the road. Aside from a few designated areas (so as to not interfere with migration patterns), the major routes through New Brunswick have specialized moose fences that lead them away from the highway if they get on the wrong side. This particular moose was on the other side of the fence, which was a good sign - the fences are doing their job.
     
    Around the Grand Falls area, signs - which are provincially mandated to be bilingual - began featuring French much more prominently, with the French words first and the English words second and usually smaller. We kept on rolling up the road to Edmundston, the only town of any considerable size before the Québec border. There, the French language was everywhere - most places, there was no sign in English.
     
    Though the town was kind of dirty, reminding us of Elko, Nevada - and nothing about the parts of Elko that we saw was redeeming, except the fact that there were roads out - we had to have some lunch, so we got Subway. It was the most mediocre Subway sandwich I've ever eaten, and that's the nicest thing I can say aside from the fact that it didn't make me sick.
     
    A few kilometers up the road and we entered Québec, the ninth province I've ever been in. It was then that the little English that we saw completely ran out, although we've learned enough through our Rosetta Stone lessons and from observing the bilingual signs in New Brunswick to get by.
     
    We stopped in at the welcome center and talked to the young lady at the desk. We tried out our French phrases, finding that we're not nearly as bad as we though we were. Since most everyone has become bilingual, it wasn't that far removed from our experiences in Chéticamp.
     
    It was in Québec that we crossed back over into Eastern Time, gaining an hour by going from 3:00 back to 2:00. The road also got worse, but the ruts and potholes were welcome, and although the brake was neither hot nor odd-smelling any time we checked it, it's still advisable to give them a good jostling every now and then.
     
    In addition to the obligatory Useless Road Work, the roads after the border featured the most absurd hills, wherein the speed limit would switch from 110 km/h to 70 km/h, which is pretty much impossible when you have a car carrying our kind of weight - not to mention our current brake situation. The few policemen we saw didn't seem to care even when Québécois flew past going much faster than us.
     
    A little after 3:00 we passed the village of St-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, notable for being the only place name in the world to have not one, but two exclamation marks in its name. There are conflicting theories as to how this name came to be, and even the girl at the welcome center admitted to having no idea why the name is like it is.
     
    We got our first glimpse of the St. Lawrence Seaway at around 3:45, turning westbound and paralleling it for the rest of the day as we approached Québec City. The road flattened, although mountains of considerable size were visible on the other side of the St. Lawrence. Most interestingly was the boardwalk between the highway and the Seaway, which saw use mostly from bicyclists.
     
    At 5:30 we crossed over the bridge into Québec City, which was where the fun began. Traffic was backed up coming out of the city for a considerable distance, and we thought that we'd been able to avoid such a rush hour by coming into the city. But we got stuck in traffic, often boxed in by exceptionally tall trucks in front and Québécois who wanted to get to their respective destinations seemingly as much as we did.
     
    The brakes got tested, but they came through as we inched our way through the heart of the congested city to our hotel. Dad wheeled and dealed his way through a snafu at the front desk and entertained the valet drivers outside. The result: two days in the same room at a cheaper price, with access to the executive lounge.
     
    From our perch, we had a view of the Old City - a walled, fort-like, European-esque city that hugged the shore of the St. Lawrence Seaway, often said to be one of the most beautiful cities in North America. The people looked like ants from our altitude, so it was a good overview of the city.
     
    After eating, we walked across the street to the Québec Parliament Building, modeled after the Louvre and extremely intricate and detailed. Statues and gardens abound outside of the building itself, and the statues that could be Yoderized were Yoderized.
     
    We tried our best to avoid the school groups, but there were too many of them, and we kept lagging behind and catching up to a few of them. We walked down into the Old City, passing under the sally port into the heart of Old Québec.
     
    It's basically like walking under a bridge in Canada and coming out in Europe. The difference is striking, as every building is unique, architecturally interesting, and old. Horse-drawn carriages clopped up and down the streets, and everything was just really interesting to look at. Nothing is boring in the Old City.
     
    While somewhat long, it's not a wide city, and we were able to walk from the sally port to an area fairly close to the water in not a long time at all. We passed extraordinarily intricate statues and overly elaborate fountains, but for all its gaudiness, it fits together. It feels like you're actually in France as opposed to Québec.
     
    After scoping out the sites we want to see tomorrow - including a funicular that takes folks right down the steep slope to the waterfront itself for only a nominal fee - we went back up the way we came. It was then that one of the most bizarre things happened: my dad greeted a maître d'hôtel outside a restaurant with a wave and a jovial "bon soir!" only to have her put out her hand out and give him an enthusiastic high-five. With her hand still held out, I received a high-five as well.
     
    I'm still not sure why that happened, but she seemed happy enough, so we just sort of went with it.
     
    We walked around back up to the sally port, only this time we walked up the steps and on top of the walls, which still are traversable around the city. We took the wall around and made it back to the hotel as the sun set, sampling the coffee maker in the lounge. It was good, but mine was quite tart, requiring four sugar packets of reasonable size to make it palatable. We even had an entire conversation in French, asking the friendly fellow who was in charge of closing the lounge down what time breakfast began and ended. It was short and likely not grammatically correct, but it was successful.
     
    Tomorrow: a day on the town, with a thorough tour of Old Québec.
  5. Sumiki

    L'Isle Joyeuse

    By Sumiki,

    After awakening in Charlottetown, we headed downtown to see the sights and nab some lunch. We got to a parking deck - they call them parkades in Canada - and walked around the downtown, although it was somewhat slowed by accounting for road work. We stopped in to exchange some more money at a bank since we were down to about twenty cents of hard Canadian currency.
     
    Charlottetown is a really interesting city - it's not a big city by any means, so it's basically a big small town. Charlottetown's - and Prince Edward Island's - only real historical claim to fame is the Province House, where the Charlottetown Conference, which initially outlined the terms of what would become Canada, was held back in 1864, and where the PEI assembly still meets to this very day. Interestingly, PEI didn't join Canada until some time after, as they didn't quite like the initial terms of confederation. It was initially to discuss a Maritime union, but the province of Canada - present-day Ontario and Québec - invited themselves.
     
    They've kept it up to its Victorian appearance, and it's as architecturally interesting as it is historically interesting. There wasn't a whole lot to see, but we picked the brains of the tour guides there.
     
    Charlottetown is small. For the largest city in the province, any given street feels like it'd be at home in any small town. We walked down near the harbor, avoiding even more construction vehicles, and - most interestingly - walking behind a couple who were getting their marriage pictures taken, only to have a sudden gust of wind blow the marriage certificate out of the best man's hand towards us. (The certificate was retrieved without further incident.)
     
    We walked back towards the middle of town and walked inside St. Paul Anglican Church. We were greeted by an older Newfoundlander on a scooter, with whom we chatted - not as much about the church itself, although the late 1890s structure was built with an intricate wooden ceiling that arched this way and that to resemble an upside-down ship - but about our travels and his travels.
     
    The last vestiges of regret that we had about not going to Newfoundland or the French islands off its eastern coast were assuaged by that fellow, who said that nothing in Newfoundland looked any different than the Maritimes that we've explored for the past week, and that the only reason for going to St-Pierre et Miquelon was to "get your passports stamped" because there's pretty much nothing there.
     
    After thanking him for his time (and ogling at the architecture of the church) we headed back out for lunch, just a few blocks up at Famous Peppers, a local pizza place. With no one there when we ate, we were able to take our time ordering and talking to the owner.
     
    The pizzas were just delicious. We got three nine-inch pizzas: the Doctor, which had olives and tomatoes and a generous helping of feta cheese, the Cardigan, with a little heat to it from its ground beef, pepperoni, and bacon, and the Maple Chicken, which had a maple cream base instead of the usual tomato sauce. I was initially skeptical of this, but it was delicious ... well, the one slice I had was. I think my dad ate the rest of it. It was an interesting flavor - not too sweet, not too overpowering, but just enough to give it a unique flair. The lack of tomato sauce probably did as much for the flavor as the maple cream did, although according to the owner, many customers are willing to pay to get jars of the maple cream sauce.
     
    We ate all but three slices of the Cardigan, which we packed up in a box for later with the promise that we would do what we could to open a Famous Peppers in North Carolina if they ever decide to franchise. The main problem with franchising is that they're sort of confined to Prince Edward Island as their menu is now, as they've made it so that everything that they can get fresh, they do. PEI isn't big, but it has a heck of a lot of farmland, and aside from specialty items such as the black olives, everything that goes into their pizzas is grown on the island.
     
    Oh, and I did I mention the crust was excellent? I don't usually consider myself a crust kind of guy, but the crusts were off the charts.
     
    With stomachs full and a pizza box half-full, we ambled back over to the parking de-excuse me, parkade and rolled on out, getting stuck at an intersection as a repaving team was inching - or is it centimetering? - their way along the cross street. They were causing all kinds of traffic problems because they didn't bother to put up a detour like, y'know, normal people, but we were nonetheless able to avoid them before they took a serious bite out of our time.
     
    We weren't looking to get off the island quite yet; our destination was Prince Edward Island National Park, located along the north shore. We didn't have to pay to get in, as all of their facilities were closed, but that also meant that the park was almost completely deserted.
     
    One of the first bits of the park we got to was Dalvay-by-the-Sea, a famous hotel built in the 1890s and kept up to its original appearance, including the absence of televisions. We didn't go in, but we took a look at it from the outside, which was enough to tell us why the Queen of England stays there during her visits to Prince Edward Island. Also apparently Will and Kate stayed there, but I feel like the only person in America who really doesn't care.
     
    We walked out to the beach, which has some of the strangest beach scenery I've ever seen - it's like they took a slice from the middle of North Carolina, tore a jagged edge off of it, and plopped it down on any beach in the world. The result is downright bizarre - terrain full of rolling hills that just stops suddenly, the red clay visible underneath and spilling out onto the beach.
     
    We went out and touched the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then retreated back to the regular land. With no hills, the beach features a cold wind, steady but not strong. Standing around was a little nippy.
     
    There was little to do in the park aside from look at a few beaches, but they were enjoyable for the same bizarre characteristic of the land dropping off to the sea. We exited the park on the other side and worked our way down back to the Confederation Bridge via rural provincial routes that, aside from the usage of the Metric system and some confusing road sign placement, looked exactly like rural North Carolina. I know I keep mentioning it, but the resemblance is just way too uncanny.
     
    We dumped out in Crapaud and arrived at a small community on the PEI side of the bridge, where we got out to stretch our legs, check the brakes (everything still sounds, looks, smells, and feels good), get an ornament for my mom's Collection, and try the one thing that was on my dad's PEI bucket list - eat Cow's Ice Cream, an institution in these parts. We found one with a gift shop, and got a small postcard that featured a cow dressed up like the Eleventh Doctor getting out of the TARDIS, with the logo above not as "Doctor Who," but "Doctor Moo."
     
    Their gift shop was full of puns and parodies on bits of pop culture, featuring cow parodies of Gangnam Style, Duck Dynasty, Angry Birds, and more. The ice cream was delicious - all locally produced, just like the pizza - but I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been a warm day. As it was, the chilly air blowing in from the Strait of Northumberland made me in more of a hurry to finish my ice cream than enjoy it.
     
    We then steeled ourselves for the grand drive back over the Confederation Bridge, upon which there was, thankfully, no incident. We ran over a few small potholes to loosen anything stuck in the brake, and put the hammer down to Fredericton.
     
    Other than a short precautionary brake check about eighty miles from Fredericton (everything was still good), we didn't stop, and got to our hotel before 8:00. Fredericton is a pretty old city, which means that the roads are just completely messed up - although they would be a lot easier to navigate if we were expecting half of the crazy things that popped up in our route, like a sudden massive incline in the road where all of the sudden the street went all San Francisco on us with no warning.
     
    If this had been on the highway, we could have coasted, but there was a stoplight right in the middle of this incline. The brakes performed well - not as much as a peep from any of them - but they really should put a warning to gear down before the hill begins. It's a menace to society.
     
    With a long day of driving and exploring behind us, we wanted nothing more than to sit down a while and eat at the hotel, so as to not have to drive anywhere anymore. I'd eaten the remaining slices of pizza - still good cold! - en route to Fredericton to stave off hunger, and I ended up eating nearly all of a burger that had what felt like an entire grocery store as a topping, which, rather predictably, ended up falling apart about halfway through. My parents split a club.
     
    Afterwards, we explored the hotel a little bit, eventually stumbling on a baby grand piano at the end of a long hallway near the back of the building. It was a little out of tune, but I enjoyed getting my fingers back into shape. I played for about an hour and a half, playing previous recital pieces, renditions of 80s music, and improvising.
     
    Tomorrow: We hug the Maine border up to Québec and into Québec City, completing our collection of provinces that can be accessed without ferry or unpaved road.
  6. Sumiki

    Breakdown Cruise

    By Sumiki,

    The man from the repair shop knocked on our door at about 10:00 to tell us that our brake had been fixed. My dad went down the street to get it, as my mom and I packed up in the room. The problem was in the emergency brake, and we were told that we should be good as long as we remembered not to use it.
     
    We set out back up the Cabot Trail, retracing our steps almost to the site of the brake-flame. Our destination was the gorgeous Skyline Trail, an almost five-mile trail on the top of French Mountain, overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Cabot Trail itself as it winds its way down the next mountain over towards Chéticamp.
     
    The walk there was uneventful - lots of woods, even more moose droppings. We didn't see any wildlife, save for two small light brown ground squirrels and one small gray snake. That was just fine by me - I've already seen bear and moose from the safety of the car, and I have no intent of ever seeing one without the protection of a motor vehicle.
     
    The trees cleared and we walked out on the boardwalk overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean ... but the fog had rolled in. Fog comes into the area around Chéticamp very rarely and we'd heard that the conditions can change suddenly at the series of viewing areas, so we waited.
     
    We sat down and waited, occasionally stretching our legs out, for the better part of an hour. Just as the wait became unbearable, the fog began to lift around the mountains, slinking back along the water.
     
    We were above the clouds, The long tip of the mountain, jutting out towards the Gulf of St. Lawrence, was completely clear, as were the peaks surrounding it. One could see the Cabot Trail as it wound around the mountain, down into the clouds and then back up again.
     
    It was a wonderful view.
     
    We stayed there for a long while, thinking that the fog might just break so we could see a bit of the ocean, but it never did. Once the locals started turning back, so did the few tourists - including a family from Orlando, who we talked to for a while. I took a few group shots on their camera for them and they did the same for us.
     
    It was a long haul back. It's one of those trails that just sort of feels uphill both ways, and once we knew what we had ahead of us, with nothing to look forward to, and no fog to keep things cool, it was a slow haul back to the car. But get there we did, and we set back off down the Cabot Trail towards Chéticamp in low gear.
     
    We stopped at every available pull-off, making sure not to hit the emergency brake. The brakes seemed fine, didn't smoke, and didn't smell bad. But as we headed into Chéticamp, the brakes sounded bad - specifically, that back right one that had had all the problems. As we pulled into a restaurant parking lot, the brake sounded like a muffled scream mixed with the sound of fingernails on a blackboard.
     
    Hoping that the brakes were just overheating, we ate a late lunch. My dad split after he ate in order to drive the car down the street to get looked at by the same folks who took care of it earlier. My dad, meanwhile, limped back on down to the service station. By this point, he said that the brake was smoking again.
     
    My mom and I got out of the restaurant and walked another mile or so to the service station, where we got the scoop: the brake was not totally disengaging. It was too late to call the dealership in Sydney, the nearest major city, so they will do that in the morning.
     
    We walked down another block, got a room at the same motel as last night, and crashed.
     
    Tomorrow: If the dealership in Sydney has the brake part we need, our car will be fixed by 2:00 and we can get farther down the road closer to the Prince Edward Island ferry. If not, we may have to patch it back up and see if we can limp down the road to Antigonish, which has a dealership.
  7. Sumiki
    We began the day at the Alexander Graham Bell museum, along the Cabot Trail around Baddeck. We thought it'd be interesting to poke around - after all, we figured it'd be mostly about the making of the telephone. As it turned out, Graham's life and inventions far surpassed the telephone - as a noted teacher of the deaf and proponent of his father's system for teaching deaf students to speak.
     
    In fact, what was most striking was that the museum didn't talk all that much about the telephone - a good chunk of it was dedicated to the Silver Dart, the first manned flight in the British Empire, flown not far from the site of the museum. Bell assisted in the creation of the Silver Dart, and lived a short distance from Baddeck.
     
    Bell's forward-thinking spirit and childlike enthusiasm for tinkering meant that he ended up producing tons of prototypes, some of which were almost a century ahead of their time. Bell actually produced the first cell phone - similar to his telephone prototype, only that the electrical signals were sent via light. Though he called it his greatest invention, it would have been impossible to commercialize at the turn of the century. Still, the principle of bouncing electromagnetic waves around to send signals sans wires was the same one behind the invention of the cell phone.
     
    After a lively walk around and new information in our heads, we started of on the glorious Cabot Trail and began the great loop around Cape Breton Island. The road conditions were somewhat poor to start off, but improved immensely once we entered Cape Breton Highlands National Park.
     
    We poked around the nearly deserted visitor center and then entered the all-but-deserted park. We stopped at the pull-offs and traversed some of the smaller trails ... but the trails gave us worse views than from the road, so eventually we decided to stick to the places that we knew we could see stuff from. The fresh bear droppings along our first trail kept us on our toes - or, should I say, in the car.
     
    Rain and mist came in and out, on and off, for most of the day. Hungry, we stopped at a place featured on the Canadian equivalent of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, a show called You Gotta Eat Here - Coastal Restaurant in Ingonish, a place that did a pretty good job at advertising its television appearance. I got the burger that was featured on the show - the Ringer Burger - which is piled with onion rings and some kind of sweet honey barbecue sauce. It looked a lot bigger than it really was due to the onion rings, but it was still quite filling.
     
    We headed back on the Cabot Trail, winding in and out of the park. Most of the prettiest scenery on the Trail was on the other side, which we got to as we turned and began heading north and back down on the north edge of Nova Scotia.
     
    Of course, this is the time that Murphy's Law began to kick in.
     
    We began a slow climb up a mountain, stopping at the ample pull-off areas for breathtaking panoramas of the seascape and landscape - the Trail far below, mountains above, valleys with small babbling brooks, and the Atlantic Ocean, stretching out until it met the sky.
     
    At the second of these pull-offs, my dad said that he felt the car acting funny - like it wasn't rolling all the way. He chalked it up to trying to start from 0 on an incline with a lot of weight in the trunk ... that is, until we got to the next pull-off. Something smelled kind of funny, and sure enough, our back right tire was smoking slightly.
     
    We figured that it just got a little hot while going up and down massive inclines, so we stopped for a good while until it had stopped smoking and no longer radiated heat. I kept an eye on it in the rearview mirror and my mom kept her window down so she could smell it if it started smoking again.
     
    Without any signs of trouble, we reached the next pull-off. My dad slowed the car down, put the emergency brake on, and we all heard a pop. The next thing we knew, smoke was coming out of the brake apparatus anew, and my mom briskly warned us that there was a small fire.
     
    I launched out of the car and threw what remained of my water bottle on the tire, which steamed up. We dumped quite a bit of our water supply on the tire. It was still hot when we were done, but the fire and smoke had gone out. The smell, as thick in the air as the midges we would come to hate, was still there.
     
    It's at times such as these when faith in humanity is restored, for half a dozen different cars rolled up to see if we were fine. We must have been quite a sight - three folks gesturing and talking around a tire with a veritable puddle around it. We met a family from Salt Lake City visiting a family member in Maine, who took my dad down to an emergency call box two kilometers down the Trail. (We had tried OnStar, our cell phone, and the cell phones of anyone else who had offered help, all to no avail. There's no reception on the Cabot Trail.)
     
    We met a independently-minded older lady from Austin out on a free-wheeling road trip of her own. She didn't know where she would end up before turning back, but was thinking about hopping on the ferry to Newfoundland. She offered us fruit and water, but we assured her that we had plenty of supplies.
     
    The Salt Lake City folks returned and my dad emerged from their small sedan. We thanked them profusely for their trouble and offered to pay them, but they refused. He'd contacted a tow truck in Chéticamp, where we were originally planning to spend the night anyway. We had to wait another hour or so, but we spent it talking to the families that drove up to offer us their help.
     
    Eventually a man came up from Pleasant Bay, a little village that we'd gone through at the base of the mountain upon which all of these events transpired. Interested in the car - as many guys who know cars are - he poked around and posited a few theories as to the origin of the fire. Whatever it is, it will likely be a pretty easy fix, even if they have to bring in parts from Sydney - which is just a few hours' drive away along the northeast edge of Nova Scotia.
     
    Eventually, the tow truck came barreling up the mountain, right before we were totally eaten alive by the pesky and ever-curious midges. We gave the driver a brief rundown of the situation, and my dad drove the car up onto the bed.
     
    Unfortunately, the cab was even smaller than the one we all had to cram into in Texas last year. We were all crammed into an area of about one and a half seats. We maneuvered around to the least uncomfortable position in the cab, to the amusement of the driver. I was originally going to sit equally on parents' laps, but to do that, I would have had to basically lean over because my head wouldn't fit upright. So I got the other window seat, my dad was in the middle, and my mom sat halfway.
     
    This meant that there was no room for seat belts. My mom leaned over onto my dad or myself depending on the curve. We were packed into that cab like Sardines playing Twister, and we were keeping the driver laughing by cracking jokes left and right. By the time we had traversed the most scenic parts of the Cabot Trail and made it into Chéticamp, our driver felt like an old friend.
     
    We rolled into the small repair shop, met a fellow with green teeth, and got a ride to the motel just up the street. I had my reservations (no pun intended) at first ... but this place is actually pretty nice. People up here put pride into what they do. It's a small-town kind of feel without Americana ... Canadiana, perhaps?
     
    For dinner, we walked a little ways down the street and ate at the restaurant adjoining the Harbor Inn. It was good food and good ambiance - I ended up with the haddock, with some kind of dill sauce on the side. Dessert was fried ice cream. All in all, not our best meal, but it was excellent. (My dad ordered his first beer in 32 years.)
     
    Tomorrow: depending on the car situation, we'll either get a little farther down the road (after backtracking to see what we missed on the last little stretch of the Cabot Trail) or staying in Chéticamp another night. At most, we'll spend just one more night in this sleepy little town, but that would be unexpected.
  8. Sumiki
    We caught up on some well-deserved rest and ended up leaving the hotel a little after noon. Our first stop of the day was an optical illusion called Magnetic Hill. Magnetic Hill has been known since Moncton was founded and the road was put in - there were reports of wagons and goods rolling uphill since the early 1800s. It was more publicized in 1933, and today, there's a whole Magnetic Hill complex around the illusion itself.
     
    Magnetic Hill is bizarre. To look at it, you'd say that the road dips down before coming back up on the other side. But once we reached the bottom, we put the car in neutral (as the sign directed us to) and we began rolling backwards - what appeared to be uphill.
     
    After reaching the end of the hill, we drove forward again and I hopped out to capture the illusion on video. However, I have to say that the illusion pretty much vanished as soon as I stood up, for even though it looked uphill, I could definitely tell it was downhill.
     
    Disinterested in the rest of the Magnetic Hill complex, we got some gas and began the trek to Halifax.
     
    The drive was surprisingly hilly, very woodsy, and utterly desolate. A brief change of scenery occurred right before we entered Nova Scotia, when we dipped down into a lower, more marshy area.
     
    After getting information at the Nova Scotia welcome center and surviving the vicious wind in the area, we stopped in Amherst to get a cash advance at a bank. It took half an hour to get through the clogged line, so my dad did that while I walked around and took pictures with Yoder the Duck next to creepy statues.
     
    We stopped for a quick late lunch at a Subway and then rolled out. We passed Oxford - Canada's Blueberry Capitol - and saw forested mountains in the distance. We paid a four-dollar toll and kept trucking to Halifax, and checked into our hotel a few minutes after 5:00.
     
    Still hungry, and knowing of a great place just a few minutes from the hotel, we set out for it ... only to get turned around by the insane road system of Halifax, going over one of its two bridges over to the heart of the city, ending up near Citadel Hill, home of quite a bit of Halifax history - mainly, a fort that was used for defense against the French and updated for different wars, being manned and used for various purposes until World War II.
     
    We paid a small fee to park and walked around the hill, though it was not open. Still hungry, we got back in the car, drove past an iconic clock tower on the edge of Citadel Hill, and took our second shot at finding the restaurant.
     
    We found it - but only after going over the other bridge, winding our way through intersections with almost no lane markings, an extra helping of potholes, and no signs telling you what road you're on or what road you're intersecting with.
     
    Despite all this - and did I mention the road work? - we found the place - Cheese Curds Gourmet Burgers and Poutinerie - about five minutes from the hotel, but a trip that took us very nearly an hour.
     
    It was worth it. I got a burger with a large hunk of fried mozzerella and some spicy chipotle mayonnaise. The bun was flimsy but the mix of flavors was delightful. My parents split a chicken burger and a lamb burger - but my mom couldn't finish her half of the lamb burger, so I tasted it. It featured a lemon hummus - a little strong, since I didn't know it was coming, but it had a unique flavor.
     
    As a side, we split a poutine. This was not the fake, flimsy poutine we got in Moose Jaw last year - this was the real thing. A bed of freshly cut fries on the bottom, topped with a ton of cheese curds and a thick, rich gravy. Best of all, I finally got my dad to try a poutine. He exhibited some apprehension towards trying a poutine - which is strange, considering his general adventurousness, but I convinced him to try a bite, which he rather liked.
     
    Tomorrow: Cape Breton on the northeastern end of Nova Scotia. We'll be traversing one of the prettiest drives not just in Canada, but the entire world - the Cabot Trail - over the next couple of days.
  9. Sumiki
    We left Ellsworth before noon, gassed up amidst what appeared to be an octogenarian biker gang, then braced ourselves for a drive on "the Airline" - the local name for Maine Route 9. The moniker doesn't refer to air travel, but in the sense that predated mankind's first flight; it's because it's a faster route to Canada than going up and around on the modern Interstate route.
     
    The grades were steep and there were a few potholes, but it wasn't anything like the 20 miles we had to traverse on Route 179 in order to get to Route 9. The frost heaves had frost heaves and the potholes went down multiple layers. We survived this hilly and bumpy route intact, and the Airline was a smooth ride all the way to the New Brunswick border - but we did top off our gas tank.
     
    Our trip odometer at 1,668 miles, we experienced what was our easiest and quickest border crossing ever, then got to New Brunswick. New Brunswick is in the Atlantic Time Zone, so we skipped an hour ahead as we looked for some kind of visitor center.
     
    We exited at one of the first opportunities, at St. Stephen, the Canadian chocolate capital. As is the norm with cities on this edge of New Brunswick, it's named after a saint. After getting a massive amount of information on New Brunswick from a particularly bubbly Wicker, we crossed the street for a late lunch at a place called Pizza Delight.
     
    Pizza Delight, it turns out, is a small chain with locations around New Brunswick. We were the only people in the whole place, and after admiring my extremely bent fork, we decided to split something called a Donair.
     
    A Donair is kind of a local thing - you don't see them much outside New Brunswick. It consists of a pizza crust, a little tomato sauce, Donair meat (similar to the thin lamb meat you'd find in a gyro), pepperoni, and cheese, all baked like a pizza. On top go fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and a thick, sweet garlic sauce called Donair sauce.
     
    It's fairly hard to describe, but just think of a meat lover's pizza with a minimalist salad on top and you'll be close. I was skeptical at first but then came to love it.
     
    We entertained the two waitresses there for a while before getting back on NB 1 to Saint John, which we got to and passed through within the span of five minutes. It's the largest city in New Brunswick, which tells you a lot about the population of this province.
     
    There wasn't much in the way of scenery between Saint John and Moncton, which is the largest city in the tri-province area where New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island meet. The number of hills was surprising, as was the dearth of birds. I got us from Hampton - just a few kilometers from Saint John - to Moncton.
     
    The lack of traffic on main Canadian corridors always surprises me. Two lanes in both directions and you still wouldn't see a car for long periods of time.
     
    We rolled into Moncton - where the hotel has almost no one in it aside from us and the staff members - and entertained the girl at the front desk who was obviously bored out of her mind before our arrival due to having no other human to talk to. She suggested a few places to eat in downtown Moncton, and we chose a place called Catch22 - a lobster bar just a short drive downtown. We also got three complimentary beers (!) and some maple candy. We took a picture of her posing with the one and only Yoder the Duck.
     
    My mom got a lobster roll, and my dad and I both got the same thing - the massive Fisherman's Platter. Each had half a lobster, shrimp, scallops, haddock, crab cakes, rice pilaf, and a roasted vegetable medley of broccoli, zucchini, and carrots, all served on a massive translucent fish-shaped plate.
     
    The utensils in the place were worse than the demented fork I'd experienced at Pizza Delight - the knives, while cool-looking, had their handles twisted 90 degrees around their axis. Ergonomically sound, there was just no place to put it. My dad knocked his first knife clear off the table, and I nearly dropped mine into the booth cushion - only some catlike reflexes prevented a second mess.
     
    We started a few running jokes with the waitress about seeds, the utensils, and a few other things. After we'd cleaned our plates, we got a banana and strawberry flambé, set aflame right at our table. We also got their last peppermint crème brûlée - but this was complimentary.
     
    Upon our return to the hotel, we got some more maple candy from the front desk and learned a few interesting tidbits regarding the non-standard operation of our hotel. Suffice it to day that the inner workings of this place sounds like a mix of McHale's Navy and Fawlty Towers.
     
    Tomorrow: we make the drive to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I am bound and determined to get my dad to try a poutine.
  10. Sumiki

    Bforoad

    By Sumiki,

    We explored our Mount Washington hotel thoroughly. We saw the Gold Room, where the setting up of and signing of the International Monetary Fund took place, and a few old fuses - well, I thought they were old. It turns out that the fuses, part of the original wiring put in by Thomas Edison, were actually still partially in use.
     
    Honestly it sounds like a fire hazard, but I'm not an electrician.
     
    We decided to skip the treacherous Mount Washington Auto Road due to the fact that it's a private road that doesn't have guardrails, and doing so in a car that has well over 100,000 miles on it and has just come off of its fifth road-trip repair in three years is just kind of asking for trouble, especially when the road is notorious for burning out transmissions and brakes.
     
    It was just as well, since that was well out of our route.
     
    We worked our way through sleepy towns in rural New Hampshire as we wormed our way back down amidst the towering granite faces of the mountains. As we kept on the route to Portland - towards the stadium of the Portland Sea Dogs (or, as my dad called them, the "Portland Dog Drips") - the towns increased in size and had signs that designated earlier and earlier dates of incorporation.
     
    The roads leveled out as we neared the Maine border, but we could still look back and see mountains - some still with traces of snow near their peaks.
     
    Conway was one of the towns we passed through, and its quirks included a motel with different "themes" for each room like storefronts in the Old West as well as bizarrely funny shop names.
     
    Around 12:30 we entered Maine, and got some literature at the welcome center from a guy who was born in North Carolina but moved to Maine when he was young. He'd long since lost any southern accent he might have once had, replacing it with a thick northeastern accent that turned "Bar Harbor" into "Bah Hahbah" and "Bangor" into "Bangah." I didn't hear anything close to that in Boston, where I thought I would.
     
    The potholes got really bad as soon as we crossed the Maine border. Only a few were absolutely unavoidable - the fault lines - but these were eased over as best we could. We slalomed through the rest, only hitting one - which was pretty good considering that there were as many potholes in one mile as there are living humans on Earth.
     
    It didn't slow us down considerably, so we stopped by the Sea Dogs and got our customary pennant, then set off for the Portland Head Light. Before doing so, we ate pizza at a local place called Otto's, which converts old gas stations into "filling stations" - for your stomach.
     
    The crust was flaky and buttery - one of the few crusts I actually liked. Onions, sausage, and marinara sauce gave it a little bit of kick. It was a filling and delicious late lunch.
     
    We then got to the Portland Head Light, which was absolutely gorgeous.
     
    The Head Light was built at the directive of George Washington and is now part of a municipal park complex encompassing both it and an abandoned fort. Rolling green grass saw much use from local citizens, but our main objective was to see the Head Light.
     
    We saw so much more than that.
     
    The Head Light itself was interesting - especially since it's still in use! - and the high-intensity fog signal that blasted out was close to deafening if you got too close to the lighthouse. We spent most of our time down on the rocks below, climbing and clamoring over the jagged rocks that claimed so many ships, even after the Head Light was fully operational.
     
    Seaweed and assorted flotsam would get tossed up into the rocks. Most of it would just run off back to the ocean, but in a few places, it would pool up in large rocks. An algae that looked like grass flourished in these tiny ponds, anchoring themselves onto the rock bottom of their little world.
     
    We were out on the rocks for the better part of an hour, enjoying the challenge of navigation, investigating interesting details in the rocks, and getting as far out on the rocks as was safe before heading back, taking care to avoid the slippery bits.
     
    After this rather extensive exploration, we headed back to the car, over a curved drawbridge, and back onto I-295, which eventually merged quite unexpectedly with I-95.
     
    Our destination was Bangor, just a short drive away from Bfahome. (He says that it's pronounced "B-F-A-Home," but I pronounced/sneezed it a little more as it's spelled.)
     
    My dad and I met him at a bar & grill in Orono. By the end of the day, we wanted to keep him around to be our new GPS, found out that he owns every university from here to Kingston, Ontario, recited bits from old BIONICLE games and the asdfmovie series, discussed the fun and hats of BrickFair, and generally had a blast. 10/10, would Bfahome again.
     
    Tomorrow: Acadia National Park.
  11. Sumiki

    Thoreau-breds

    By Sumiki,

    We left the labyrinth disguised as a hotel at 11:00, having traversed 1031.5 miles at that point. By 11:22 we'd found our first stop at the Lexington Commons, site of the first skirmish of the Revolutionary War. Green troops on both sides panicked after hearing a gunshot somewhere, and began opening fire around the Commons. Only a handful of people were even harmed, but it nonetheless marked the beginning of the Revolution.
     
    We visited the tavern across from the Commons, which houses the original door - a door which gained significant fame by having sustained a bullet hole during the skirmish. It's no longer the door, but is hanging inside, protected by a sheet of plexiglas. According to one of the tour guide ladies, most visitors to the tavern do so to see the door, not to stand in the very room the militia gathered in before heading out into the Commons on that fateful night.
     
    The next stop was at the Minuteman National Historical Park, which runs along the road between Lexington and Concord and chronicles the events between the battles of both towns.
     
    After a brief tour of the area, we drove around Concord to see the homes of the great Transcendentalist authors - first, the house of the Alcotts, then of Emerson, then Thoreau's Walden Pond (which is honestly more of a lake than a pond), and finally "The Old Manse" - the home of Hawthorne.
     
    Between our visits to Walden Pond and the Old Manse, we stopped in downtown Concord and ate lunch at a café. They served what was possibly the best reuben in existence, despite having a typo on the menu that flipped the word's consecutive vowels. This time, it was my dad's turn to have a massive sandwich - a gigantic club that could have fed any lesser man twelve times over.
     
    He ate it all.
     
    We then headed back out to see the Old Manse, which was next to the North Bridge, the final part of the Minuteman Park and where the British were sniped heavily by the Americans in their retreat to Boston. Seeing this after Bunker Hill means that we're working backwards, chronologically speaking.
     
    After this final Concord stop, we headed up the back roads to Lowell, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the city with the second-most canals in the world (this side of Venice, of course), and the home of the Lowell Spinners. We stopped in for our customary pennant and hat, talked with the sales guy, and then got back on the road towards New Hampshire.
     
    We entered New Hampshire (only two more states to go until I've been in all of the 48 contiguous!) at 4:00, and almost immediately saw the White Mountains - a hundred miles due north but still clearly visible. We went through a few toll plazas and exited in Manchester to get a pennant at the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.
     
    Of course, that was before we realized how backed up the traffic would be. All the traffic fed over a bridge, and even though the stadium wasn't but a mile or so away, it took us ten minutes because the traffic coming into the city not on the exit would keep going until it backed up through the intersection, regardless of the light. Once we got in, though, it was easy to get back out again.
     
    We talked with the guy in the team store for a little while about our travels to minor league stadiums around the country before leaving. Though getting into a little bit of traffic, it wasn't anything like trying to get in.
     
    On the road again at a little before 5:00, we passed through the second Concord of the day - this time, the capital of New Hampshire. The traffic on I-93 was busy, but not slow, and it gradually thinned out as we traveled northward.
     
    We stopped at a rest area, and then for gas in the community of Northfield. However, there was no re-entrance to I-93 northbound, so we had to go through the sleepy downtown of Tilton to access the highway again. This didn't put us back very much, and we saw more of rural New Hampshire than we expected.
     
    After an ominous-looking "MOOSE CROSSING" sign, we entered the White Mountains. The White Mountains are unlike many other mountains - sheer granite, poking straight up or curved. Many seemed unnatural at first glance.
     
    We never saw a moose, though - it figures. The moose never find us - we find them.
     
    It took us a while on a road with little to no people, but we wormed our way through these scenic mountains all the way to Bretton Woods, where we checked into the very same hotel that the Bretton Woods Financial System was agreed upon in 1944, with the end of WWII imminent and the world in the need of a new monetary order.
     
    The only downside to this historic and fancy hotel is that they're hosting a prom from a town an hour farther north, and thus most of the four-star dining establishments in the hotel are booked. We did, however, get 8:45 reservations at a place with the same food but a little more casual dress code, which was appreciated - although we brought along suits and assorted nice bits of clothing, we really didn't want to get overly dressed after a long day on the road.
     
    It was, quite simply, one of the best meals that I have ever had.
     
    It was easygoing, unpretentious, quiet, and serving four-star food without necessitating getting all dressed up. We took a shuttle over to a small cottage-like converted house, originally build in 1896. The server was polite, knowledgeable, and agreeable. My dad and I had a melt-in-your-mouth filet mignon, served with a bacon-sweet potato hash, roasted asparagus, and a delicious Vermont blue cheese fondue - a cold, brown, delicious cheese sauce on the side. My mom had the Israeli couscous salad - a warm mixture of pearl couscous, tomatoes, summer squash, asparagus, and green onion.
     
    Before the main course, we were served some kind of polenta-based concoction served on a demented-looking spoon. It was the only part of the meal I didn't like - it was followed by two kinds of bread with butter sprinkled with brown Hawaiian sea salt, and then a small dollop of apple sorbet to cleanse the palate before the main course.
     
    Afterwards, we split a marvelous maple crème brûlée and were served two rounds of peanut butter fudge as another palate cleanser - but it was hardly necessary. The brilliant, succulent, and buttery filets were enough to serve as dessert in their own right.
     
    We took the shuttle back to the hotel and looked around. The loud music and general busyness on the prom-hosting wing of the hotel precluded us from seeing the room where the Bretton Woods deal went down - we'll see that tomorrow morning - but we looked around the parts of the sprawling hotel that we could. They have multiple restaurants, an astonishing attention to detail kept up through the years from 1902 to the present, with unique features in every room - from massive pocket doors to curved chairs that look like they're from the set of the villain of a late-60s Bond film.
     
    Poking around the basement a little - and even ducking into a former speakeasy known as "the Cave" - we eventually decided to head back to our room in preparation for tomorrow's travels.
     
    Tomorrow: the possibility of Mount Washington, en route to Portland, Maine, and then possibly the Bangor area if we feel up to it.
  12. Sumiki
    my parents' 31st wedding anniversary



    We had a small breakfast at our Hyannis hotel, then checked out, loitering in the lobby at the business-center computers looking up routes to Boston until the dealership called. They called, and we left, the last time I'd ever be in that terrible excuse for a car, the loaner Saab. As always, it barely turned over, but it got us to the dealership amid rain, wind, and cold blowing in off of the Atlantic.
     
    Back in our car by 12:15, we rolled out of the dealership and made good time off of Cape Cod. We stopped for gas a little before 1:00, knowing that we'd likely get snarled up in traffic as we approached Boston. We'd looked at several different routes, but there was little difference in time between them - going up secondary roads or just sucking it up and going up the Interstate into Boston would get us there at the same time. As such, we just decided to go up the Interstate, which would be the most direct route.
     
    Our first stop, however, was the town of Plymouth, site of the famous Plymouth Rock. We found some parking and got out to see the rock, which is underneath a neo-Gothic façade which keeps people from touching it yet keeps it on the beach, near its original location. While it has shrunk in size to about a third of what it was - due to tourists grabbing their own chunks, as well as the natural forces of erosion - and has been moved from its original location for display elsewhere, it's still there to see.
     
    I wish I could say that it was impressive, but ... well, it's just a rock. There's really not a whole lot to it.
     
    Plymouth Rock itself is in a complex also housing a replica of the Mayflower, which we would have gone to - but the weather was very bad. It threatened to rip hats off and send us flying into the air aloft on our umbrellas à la Mary Poppins. The cold - about 50 degrees - turned into a biting chill with the help of the wind, and the rain, while not hard, sliced diagonally at anyone unfortunate or insane enough to be walking around.
     
    We made surprisingly good time out of Plymouth and onto the Interstate up to Boston. Traffic increased and there were some slower sections, but we never came to a complete stop. Along the way, the most interesting thing was a truck built to re-arrange the concrete barriers along the side of the highway. It'd roll through the lane, feed the barriers through its body, and deposit them on the other side, thus marking off the lane.
     
    At 1:49 we crossed over the river into the Boston city limits, and a little after 2:00 we'd parked in a parking deck in Cambridge, just across from the U.S.S. Constitution. The ship - "Old Ironsides" - was our first stop of the day, although we tried to keep our time spend outside to a minimum. The Constitution was never officially decommissioned, and thus could still officially be sent into active duty - although her weaponry is over 200 years out of date.
     
    We toured around above and below deck, saw some things, asked a few questions ... but all in all, there was nothing particularly special or mind-blowing about this ship as compared to other old ships I've been on. As far as history is concerned, the Constitution has a long and gloried one - many victories in the War of 1812, a trip around the world in the 1840s, and has sailed under her own power in 1997 and 2012.
     
    From the Constitution, we hoofed it over to Bunker Hill. Though the celebrated Battle of Bunker Hill was a victory for the British - a fact sometimes overlooked or downplayed by jingoistic historians - the casualties for the British were immense. The American loss was due to lacking another round of ammunition for their muskets - when the ammo was out and hand-to-hand fighting commenced, the British were the only ones with bayonets.
     
    One of the more interesting characters in the battle was Joseph Warren, a doctor who was commissioned as a Major General in the Massachusetts militia shortly before the battle began. He opted instead to enter the battle as a private, and was killed during the final British assault. His death served to spur on the movement for independence, as he was the first real martyr of the Revolutionary War.
     
    After the battle, his mangled body was identified by none other than Paul Revere, who organized a proper Masonic burial. Despite having relatively little impact while alive, he was immortalized in statues and in town and county names across the nascent nation.
     
    Ironically, most of the fighting at the Battle of Bunker Hill didn't actually take place on Bunker Hill, but rather on nearby Breed's Hill. While most of these hills are now taken up by quaint houses, the spot where Warren was killed now has an immense stone obelisk. We got our tickets inside the Bunker Hill museum and proceeded to walk up the hill.
     
    For the obelisk is not a solid structure - it's hollow, with 294 granite steps to the top.
     
    It was a long walk - one which I made much faster than my parents - but the views from the top were excellent, although the windows were rather small. After resting from the climb at the top (and looking down the grate right down the center of it), we went back all 294 steps, which was a considerably easier endeavor.
     
    With some light left, we headed back out into Boston itself - technically these first two stops were in Cambridge - along the Freedom Trail, a link between historical sites in and around Boston denoted by red bricks in the pavement. Getting to Boston meant walking over a bridge. The walking surface was a massive grate, which meant that one could look down all the way into the water below ...
     
    (At the beginning of the bridge, there's a spray-painted sign on the ground: "Acrophobia Friendly Zone." I don't think they're kidding.)
     
    Once across the bridge, we decided - a little on the spur of the moment - to eat in an Italian restaurant. It was exceptionally authentic - I'm pretty sure our server was the owner and a first-generation Italian-American. I got a dish of calamari (tentacles and all - yum!) served with a rich tomato sauce over linguine. My parents got the same thing, some sort of crab-farfalle concoction which was a little bit of a let-down. Despite this, we enjoyed the authenticity, appreciated a little time away from the bustle of Boston, and really came to appreciate the quick service.
     
    We got to the Old North Church five minutes before they closed up. It's still in use today, and you can tell that they've kept it up - the pews are boxed off and rented out to families, who could, historically, do what they wanted to do with regards to decorating them. The pulpit was accessible by spiral staircase, the week's hymns were put on a board for all to see, and the place, in general, looked simply divine - pun intended.
     
    Leaving the Old North Church, we continued along the trail to Paul Revere's house. We got there just a few minutes before it closed as well, and were able to have enough time to leisurely work our way through the four rooms of the house open on the tour and pick the brains of the two ladies who served there as tour guides.
     
    We learned interesting information on the production of accidental stained glass, the fate of Paul Revere's manufacturing company, his immense family, and architectural trends of different periods, as the downstairs was decorated like the 1690s, when the structure was built, and the upstairs like the 1790s, when the Reveres lived there.
     
    Working our way back, we noticed something - we were in Little Italy. We heard Italian spoken on street corners, saw dozens of Italian restaurants, and saw three shady-looking characters dressed in all black, loitering outside a building. I generally like to assume the best in people, but I'd honestly be surprised if those guys weren't involved in some kind of black-market dealings. They were simply too stereotypical.
     
    With the wind and rain having long since stopped, we worked our way back through the quaint and surprisingly quiet little neighborhoods, then back out over the bridge and finally to the car. We'd managed to do everything we'd come to do in a little less than four hours.
     
    At 6:00 we left the parking garage and began worming our way out of Boston. This was insane, mainly because we had to go through a traffic circle. Now, traffic circles are generally not that bad. In fact, for most low-traffic intersections, I'd like to see more traffic circles. But this one had about a million people in it, a million people trying to get off of it, a thousand people cutting a thousand other people off, and exactly zero demarcated lanes.
     
    You read that right - there were none of those handy dashed lines to mark off the lanes, which turned the traffic circle into a road-rage-fueled free-for-all. After getting through this mess, we were confronted with even more roads without lane markings, until we finally were back on the Interstate, with the same start-stop traffic as earlier.
     
    After a few interchanges, we made it to the hotel.
     
    Now, most hotels are generally built as a solid block, with the lobby, amenities, and maybe a few rooms on the first floor, with the upper floors devoted exclusively to rooms. This hotel is built nothing like that - it's sprawling, spreading its wings and floors out to fifteen different counties and three time zones. It took ten minutes of walking to get to a room only a floor above the lobby.
     
    After a long day of walking - not to mention up and down those 294 steps - we really weren't looking forward to walking anywhere, but we were still hungry and we knew we had to. With the traffic of the day, it was an easy decision to eat at the hotel. My parents split a lobster roll, and I got the second-largest sandwich that I've ever seen, which consisted of a massive hunk of fried cod, garnished with massive slices of vegetables - but, despite the immenseness of both tomato and lettuce, they just seemed puny when compared with the enormousness of the fish.
     
    I ate it all.
     
    We finished it off with a cheesecake garnished like a turtle - caramel and chocolate sauce over the top, with three chunks of walnut over that.
     
    Tomorrow: more history at Concord and Lexington before heading north to New Hampshire. The second leg of this trip is about to begin.
  13. Sumiki

    Saab Story

    By Sumiki,

    Early this morning, my dad went and got the car looked at. The steering was funny when he drove in, with some terrible sounds emanating from the steering vicinity. Sure enough, the power steering system had a few leaks in it, necessitating a full overhaul.
     
    As a courtesy vehicle, the dealership loaned us practically the only car they had available for the purpose - an ancient Saab which didn't have back lights, had trouble turning over, made funny noises, and sounded especially bad if you tried to go anything over 30 miles an hour.
     
    By the time we'd straightened all of these things out - including a futile attempt at canceling our Boston reservations - we were ready to get lunch, which is where my mom and I had our first experience in the infamous Saab.
     
    We ended up at the same place we had dinner at last night. I had the same thing - lobster ravioli - except this time I had a clam chowder all to myself. My dad copied my order and my mom opted for a salad and a bowl of lobster bisque.
     
    After lunch, we got back to our rooms, where my parents took naps. I could tell they were tired, as they kept finding the most mundane things inordinately funny - "Cape Scrod" was one of the things that kept my mom rolling. Eventually they fell asleep, and were out for about an hour and a half.
     
    Upon their return to normal consciousness, we all felt a little hungry, so we debated where to go. None of us really wanted to get into that dang Saab any more than was absolutely necessary, so we went to the small hotel restaurant. I'd heard good things about their clam chowder, and it didn't disappoint - it was more peppery than the award-winning chowder I'd sampled previously, but I'd have to rate them pretty much equals.
     
    After dinner, we went out for a bit of exploring. In hindsight, this was a particularly ill-advised decision, although we did not know it was at the time. We didn't have the right light or the right car to go any farther eastward down Cape Cod, where it's said that the beaches are the best in the country, so we just decided to go south to see what we could of the sea.
     
    En route to the sea, we saw a store called a Christmas Tree Shop. I'd seen a few of these elsewhere on the Cape, and I thought that it was sort of a strange thing to base a year-round chain on. As it turns out, Christmas Tree Shops don't have Christmas trees ... or anything Christmas-themed ... or any trees. It's essentially the Cape Cod equivalent of a Dollar Tree, as we found out when we looked around to see if we could find an ornament for my mom's Collection.
     
    With that out of the way, we found the sea. With the sun rapidly setting, the temperature at 55 degrees and dropping, and the wind billowing in at a steady 30 MPH, we bolted out to the beach, got a few pictures, and bolted back to the safety of the Saab. We wondered if the car would fall apart upon our return journey, but it made it back, despite many desperate squeals from the engine region.
     
    (Side note: it turns out that there is a strong Brazilian community here near Hyannis. Brazilian markets, churches, and pizzerias abound along one particular area of our route between hotel and beach. We asked the lady at the front desk about it, and she said that, though many nationalities visit, the Brazilians have made a permanent home in Cape Cod.)
     
    We're now winding down, enjoying what's left of this off day before we get back on the road tomorrow. We'll be going through Boston as opposed to staying in Boston, as there are literally zero available rooms anywhere in the greater Boston area. I don't know what's going on there, but our plan is just to see history and move on through to New Hampshire.
  15. Sumiki
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDcHnKh2Ouc
     
    Lowell Liebermann is a modern pianist-composer from New York. His music, a blend of traditional structure and profound invention, has made him one of the most popular and most often-played of modern-day classical composers. As a pianist, a good chunk of Liebermann's works have been for or include the piano, including three Sonatas, eleven Nocturnes, and his most famous piece, the epic Gargoyles.
     
    His fourth Nocturne is one of my favorites - although it takes a good while to build up, the dreamy (and polytonal) opening motifs give way to the luscious harmonies and textures of the surprisingly violent middle section (building up to a crashing fortissississimo). One of my favorite musical moments occurs at this transition, which occurs around 2:38 in the video.
  17. Sumiki
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L5nc_G9Gus
     
    Kaikhosru Sorabji was a composer who was known for writing long and technically demanding pieces, mostly for solo piano. His early music blended styles from well-established virtuosos. His later works use dissonant polyrhythms and vague tonalities and is generally inaccessible. Most people who have heard of him know him solely for one piece - the four-hour, twelve-movement Opus Clavicembalisticum. (Opus Clavicembalisticum is not even Sorabji's longest; his Symphonic Variations for Piano clocks in at a whopping nine hours!) The difficulty in accurately performing such monster works means that not only have many of them have not yet been premiered, but that Sorabji himself put a "ban" on unauthorized performances of his works. This has led to many of his more accessible (but still brilliant) works to fall by the wayside.
     
    This piece might well be my favorite. It was one of his earlier works and uses bar lines and consistent rhythms (something that his later music generally lacked), but filled with luscious harmonies and dreamy textures. His Piano Sonata #1 and his Nocturne Gulistān are also worth looking into if you like this. This piece was one of three pastiches published in 1922. The other two are based on Bizet's Habanera [from Carmen] and Chopin's "Minute" Waltz. One of the more interesting things about Sorabji's piano music is that it's generally written on three staves as opposed to two; generally, the topmost one is an octave treble clef to facilitate passages in the higher registers without the use of an 8va marking. The more complex the piece, the more staves Sorabji added, to the point where his piano works sometimes look like full orchestral scores.
  19. Sumiki
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow1dznt-RrU
     
    Charles Ives stands at the forefront of American music. Ives was not a full-time composer and his works were largely ignored during his lifetime; publishment of his pieces was done out of his own pocket. A millionaire from his insurance business, Ives' tireless promotion of his own work was the only thing that ended up saving them from languishing in obscurity. Of his oeuvre, only perhaps a dozen are to my liking, but those dozen are special pieces in their own right.
     
    A devoted experimenter who utilized free dissonance, polytonality, and quarter tones, Ives' music is chaotic and dissonant with only occasional forays into traditional harmony. "A Son of a Gambolier" is not one of those pieces; its traditional structure is indeed at odds to most of what he wrote. It calls for one of the larger ensembles utilized in his eclectic collection "114 Songs" - in addition to the voice and piano, the score calls for a kazoo chorus, two trombones, and assorted violins and fifes. It's an incredibly clever piece which - surprisingly - lacks a whole lot of singing.
  20. Sumiki
    Slowly gettin' through the pictures, over a month afterwards. As always, hover for information.

     
     
     

    Day Twenty-Two



     


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    Day Thirty








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    Well folks, that's it. Hope you've enjoyed reading these past few weeks of entries as much as I've enjoyed reliving the adventure by posting them.
  24. Sumiki
    More pictures than the first week, enough to do something with BZP's BBCode parser near the end of day 11. As such, the remaining Week Two pictures will be relegated to a separate entry. Hover over pictures for background information.
     

    Day Eight


     


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    Day Nine








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    Day Eleven








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  25. Sumiki
    We wanted to leave our hotel room as soon as possible, so we ended up getting on the road out of Louisiana at around 9:20. Our first stop of the day was Vicksburg, Mississippi, which we arrived at around 11:00. We entered the visitor center and watched a short movie detailing the events of the Vicksburg campaign before going on the auto tour around the battlefield.
     
    Vicksburg was a stronghold along the Mississippi River and widely considered the key to holding the river by both Confederate and Union forces. The Confederates stationed at Vicksburg were led by General John Pemberton, who was one of the more incompetent generals of the war. Ulysses S. Grant, along with other Union generals, had tried various times to get to Vicksburg with no success, but Pemberton left Vicksburg eastbound and engaged Grant's forces. Grant routed Pemberton's forces until Pemberton - for some unknown reason - thought it was a good idea to retreat the entire way back to Vicksburg, which was built up with fortifications.
     
    When Grant arrived, he was anxious enough to get the campaign over with and secure the Mississippi for the Union to order frontal assaults on the nearly impregnable fortress that Vicksburg had become, but these were unsuccessful. Eventually, having more supplies than the Confederates, he outlasted them in trenches until the southern forces could no longer bear the hunger and disease through the ranks. The surrender of Vicksburg occurred almost exactly the same time as Gettysburg.
     
    The auto tour took us along various sights along Union lines and trenches. While veritable forests have grown up almost everywhere on the battlefield now, the hills are clearly unnatural and are the remnants of the Confederate stronghold. We worked our way past large stone and marble monuments set up by states to commemorate where their infantry units were located along the battlefield, and in that regard it's very similar to Gettysburg. The open spaces there were made it easy to see the eerie hilliness of the terrain, with the lines clearly distinguishable by the naked eye even today.
     
    (As far as monuments go, Illinois had the best one: a massive domed structure with the names of every known Illinois native present at the battle. They were organized by unit and within unit they were alphabetized, making it easy to spot various set of brothers who had signed up at the same time. The floor had a mosaic design depicting Illinois' seal, and at the very top of the dome was a hole the same size as the seal on the floor. I'm sure there was more symbolism in the structure there than I noticed.)
     
    The heat was ridiculously oppressive, as the dry heat we'd accustomed ourselves to in the southwest had morphed into mugginess so thick I'd venture to call it a warm airborne slush. Opportunities to walk around outside were already severely limited due to the fact that they don't want people climbing all over the battlefield and that there are no less than three species of poisonous snake in the region, so we didn't miss anything.
     
    (Not only did the siege of Vicksburg result in one of the first uses of trench warfare in history, but also featured a crater blown into Confederate lines - both tactics used at Petersburg later on in the war.)
     
    Before the road looped back around to go back along the Confederate lines, there was the USS Cairo on display as well as a small museum dedicated to it. The Cairo was one of seven steamboat warships that made up the Union's small inland navy, and was sunk by the first usage of electric torpedoes (or what we'd call "mines") as it rolled along at its max speed of a whopping nine MPH along the Yazoo River. All of the hands safely got off the ship, but the Cairo sank to the bottom of the river and was covered by silt. The ship was lost and nearly forgotten until the 1950s, when scientists ascertained its position underneath the silt on the bottom of the river. In the mid-60s, a crane - itself, ironically, known as the Cairo - helped to lift the ship out of the water. After accidentally cutting the ship in two, it was towed away for restoration which continued into the early 80s. It was then transported to Vicksburg for display under a gigantic white tent.
     
    How good a shape the ship is in cannot be overstated. While load-bearing beams that had rotted were replaced during its restoration, almost everything on the ship was still original, including the boiler area and gigantic pistons that drove the water wheel. (The ship ran on a ton of coal an hour when running at top speed.) The explosion that led to its sinking is still visible near the front of the ship, and the coolest thing about the experience is that they built a trail through the ship so you can actually look at what the sailors did while on it. The museum next to it showcases the preserved artifacts found on the ship, such as vases that look as good as new and smooth-looking, nearly unworn leather shoes. The brass firing mechanisms used on the cannons were in astounding condition and bottles of ammonia were not only still intact, but also half-full. The bell recovered from the ship had actually trapped 1863 air and, when it was recovered, burped it back out.
     
    After exploring the Cairo, we'd had enough of the mugginess and got back to the car to get around what remained of the battlefield, which mainly consisted of more monuments for Union and Confederate units alike.
     
    We left the park around 1:30 and headed on I-20 to Jackson, which is not only Mississippi's capital city but the home of the Mississippi Braves, the Atlanta Braves' double-A affiliate. Their stadium was nice and we purchased two pennants (one for the minor and major league teams alike) from a very dull lady who barely talked and reacted blankly to the things we said. We thanked her anyway and were back on the road within short order. In about an hour's time we arrived in Meridian, the last town of any repute before the Alabama border. We got gas there, and - quite hungry by this point - we went into town in a futile attempt at getting something to eat. We got a sense of the Meridian downtown in as far as we wanted to get, but we left hungry.
     
    We continued along the highway as magnolias began in the median and along the sides of the roads. The magnolias got bigger as we approached the Alabama border, which we did a little after 4:00. We stopped at a badly laid-out welcome center and learned that the double-A Birmingham Barons were not playing today, but were yesterday and would be tomorrow. This threw another wrench in the debate between stopping in Birmingham and just sucking it up to get to Atlanta, which continued in the car in various forms as I drove us into Birmingham, where we finally found a parking space at a hotel and went in to inquire about getting an Internet signal for the iPad map software and possibly a room for the night.
     
    The hotel was full, despite their severe lack of parking due to repaving of half their lot, but the stop was not a waste as we met and talked with their assistant general manager, who is originally from Wilkesboro, North Carolina. He knew a lot about the evolution of Charlotte as well as the Kannapolis/Concord area due to the fact that he'd worked in Concord hotels, and is neither a fan of racing nor the rampant Dale Earnhardt worship present in that region of the state. Hungry but fearful of eating too much, we split a club sandwich and hit the road again to a hotel an hour away, which we'd booked in Oxford on advice from the Wilkesboro fellow, who spoke highly of the hotel quality in the area.
     
    The sun began to set as we worked our way through the surprisingly upscale Birmingham. We avoided a lethal time-killing combination of road construction, backups through multiple stoplights, and a crash ripe for rubbernecking by getting on the Interstate and heading on out to Oxford. We made good time as we worked our way through more NC-like terrain at the southern end of the Appalachian chain where the mountains are no different than large hills. Despite an utterly black road that no one could possibly see - dark to the point that I was convinced it sucked light in and ate it like a ravenous wolf on steroids - and small, highly faded stop signs away from the road to the point that only I saw them - and out of the corner of my eye at that - we made it safe and sound to the hotel at 8:30, where we ordered a proper dinner of three hamburgers. While not great they were certainly serviceable enough, and we wolfed them down along with many glasses of lemonade. (We didn't go the pitcher route this time, though I think we easily could have finished one off.)
     
    Tomorrow: we return home after a month on the road. Today marks the day we go beyond the 28 of last year, but, ironically, we may just end up with fewer miles even though we could nearly encircle last year's route with this year's route. I suppose we've cut down on the meandering this time.
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