Ozark Plateau & Dallas Figure Eight Road Trip & Total Solar Eclipse Extravaganza

Posted on April 17, 2024 by admin

The April 8, 2024 North American solar eclipse is already old news. It was practically so the minute it was over, a news cycle balloon whose air didn’t just leak out, but popped. A thousand articles bloomed in the days ahead of the event, mostly trotting out the same information: an elementary-school level explanation of solar eclipses, dire warnings about the dire consequences of staring into the Sun, maybe a note about festivals, quaint towns and surge motel pricing in the path of totality as people gathered in cities and towns in that narrow band.

Yuriko and I headed south to Dallas to see totality, making a two-night, three-day drive of it beginning on April 5; stayed five nights in Dallas; and then made a three-night, four-day return drive, arriving home yesterday. All together we drove 2,496 miles, generally crossing the Ozark Plateau in a course that made a (badly crumbled) figure 8 on a string.

After checking into a limited-service hospitality property in the old lead mining hills of southeastern Missouri on (Friday) April 5 – T-minus three days ahead of totality on Monday – I asked the clerk if they were booked up on Sunday, the day before.

“We’re booked up all weekend,” she said.

“At high prices?”

“Some places are getting $300 or $400 a night,” she said, not willing to admit (you never know who’s listening) that the same was true at her property, a franchisee of a multinational hospitality company that surely knows a thing or two about surge pricing.

I had a similar conversation with the desk clerk in 2017, ahead of the solar eclipse that year. I’d booked a room months earlier then – and this time too – to avoid surge pricing. Eclipses can be predicted at least 1,000 years into the future, and more importantly for ordinary folk, that information is readily available in our time. So it’s easy enough to avoid motel gouging. The next night, April 6, we were in a different motel, also (probably) a creature of surge pricing, also booked early.

As for the night before the eclipse, April 7, we avoided paying for a place to stay by relying on the good offices of my brother Jay, whom we stayed with. It just so happened that the path of totality passed over Dallas, a fact not lost on me some years ago. So I planned to be there at that time, and we were fortunate enough that all went according to plan.

We’ll never be able to do that exactly again, either, since the next time Dallas – or the place where Dallas is – will be in the the path of totality is 2317.

Totality was in the early afternoon. I considered it my lunch hour, since I was working that day. The skies over Dallas that morning were uncooperatively cloudy most of the morning, but by noon the Sun peeked out sometimes. Jay and Yuriko and I joined my nephew Sam and his family and, after a quick Torchy’s takeout lunch – and a zoom interview for me – we went to the nearby Lakeland Hills Park, at 32°48’14.1″N 96°41’47.5″W, according to Google Maps.

To add to the entertainment, Sam shot off a rocket. The idea had originally been to do so during totality, but he correctly decided that would be a distraction from the main event, so he shot it off early. Twice. Small children, including his children, chased it as it parachuted to the ground the first time. The second time, the parachute failed and that was the end of the rocket’s useful life. Naturally I was reminded of the rockets we shot off in ’75.

The orange crescent Sun was visible on and off as the Moon ate further into it. People were watching.

No need to see the partial eclipse via pin-hole when the Sun happened to be out.

We assessed the nearby clouds for size and what direction they seemed to be moving. The odds didn’t look that great for an unobscured view. Darkness began closing in anyway.

Totality came, just as the astronomers said it would. Luck was with us, mostly. We saw the blackened disk of the Sun and much of its close-in corona, as apt a name as any in astronomy, though little of the corona’s tendrils that so memorably stretched into the void in the clear skies of ’17. Still, quite the sight in ’24. Even saw a few solar prominences, gold-red-orange light blips at the edge of the disk, which I’m not sure I did last time. So was the partly cloudy totality worth driving more than 1,000 miles to see? Yes. Double yes.

New York in the Days of the Omicron Variant

Posted on December 10, 2023 by admin

Has it been two years now since the omicron variant reared its ugly – head’s not quite the word for viruses, but anyway made a splash? Seems so. I happened to be visiting New York City at that moment in Covid history. I got through it. Even had a good visit, spending a lot of time outdoors, a safe place to be, I suppose, as New Yorkers went about their business.

Among other things, I enjoyed a Uyghur meal for the first time – I really need to do that again – washed down with an apple-flavored drink I’d never had before either, Laziza, a non-alcoholic malt beverage made in Lebanon.

It is really? Not something I think of when I think of moving.

It might be beyond belief even now, but not in the way meant in 2021.

What does Manhattan need that it doesn’t have? A system of alleys, for garbage pick up and other uses. There are some epic piles of trash out on the sidewalks.

The Korean War memorial in Battery Park, honoring not just U.S. forces, but all who fought against the North Koreans and red Chinese. Note the flags; others are on the other sides, including the U.S., ROK, UK, France and more.

In the pavement around the memorial are the names of those nations and how many of their troops died and were wounded. Luxembourg suffered two killed and five wounded, for instance. (If I remember right, a wounded and missing Luxembourger soldier was a plot point in a M*A*S*H episode. Yes.)

Near Little Island park.

Hard to read, but it’s (sort of) a Titanic memorial. Marks the dockside where the steamer would have docked, had it not had its date with an iceberg.

On the wall near the men’s room at Dos Caminos, a Mexican restaurant.

A comment on the food? A reference to a record label? An app I’ve never heard of? Couldn’t say, but it’s the kind of detail I like in a place.

Millennium Park ’23

Posted on November 27, 2023 by admin

On the day after Thanksgiving, we went downtown for the afternoon and into the evening. Michigan Avenue is coloring up for the season, such as at the magnificent Railway Exchange Building (224 S. Michigan Ave.).

But no seasonal colors at 150 N. Michigan, which because of the rows of lights on its roof rim, is a glowing rhombus in the sky. Still all white lights as of Friday. Maybe management decided to ax the expense of changing the lights.

The city of Chicago’s Christmas tree rises over Millennium Park, as it does every year. Chicago hasn’t shied away from calling it a Christmas tree.

We thought it looked a little unfinished, at least in the daylight. Lights, but no ornaments.

Then again, in previous years the tree has looked about as spare. But I’ve only seen a few of them. Bet their décor has changed across the decades since 1913, when the city put up the first one. For all I know, spare might be the current trend among municipal Christmas trees.

When we returned after dark, it was a different story. Lights up dandily at night, it does.

We didn’t spend a lot of time in Millennium Park that afternoon, but we did walk around the site of the Bean, a.k.a. Cloud Gate, which is surrounded by a sizable temporary fence and closed to the public. The plaza is being renovated, and the Bean stands aloof over the construction site, unable to attract visitors – multitudes of them – to its mirrored fascinations.

This fellow was celebrating something. Some accomplishment of his. Or possibly mocking George W. Bush some 20 years after the fact. If so, what would be the point of that? If it had been a summer day, I might have paused to ask him about it.

But no. The chilly air drove us on, even as he did a few different poses with the banner.

Spring Valley Animal Farm

Posted on November 20, 2023 by admin

On Saturday we took a walk on the grounds of Spring Valley, where we find ourselves fairly often. In every season. Less often we make it all the way to the part called Volkening Heritage Farm, a small open-air museum that evokes farms of the late 19th century in this part of Illinois, but we did this time. To visit the pigs, for one thing.

I seem to remember seeing a sign posted at the farm once upon a time, something along the lines of All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Maybe I’m thinking of somewhere else. Anyway, the pigs were doing what I assume are pig things, mostly rutting around in the dirt, oblivious (again, I assume) to their ultimate fate as meat.

Some of them, at least. The pigs we saw must have survived this year’s “From Hog House to Smokehouse” event, which was earlier this month. I figure it’s only a temporary reprieve.

The pigs weren’t the only animals around. A couple of cows made an appearance as well.

And some deer.

I figure they roam Spring Valley as a whole, and don’t reside on the farm.

South Ridge Park, Hoffman Estates

Posted on November 13, 2023 by admin

Sunny and nearly warm on Saturday, at least for a few hours. Time for a stroll around South Ridge Park in Hoffman Estates.

Perhaps a mile all the way around the pond. Not crowed on the path at all.

South Ridge is one of a small string of parks in that part of the village connected by walking paths, all located away from main streets. The better to be enjoyed mostly by locals, no doubt.

Skipped the playground, which includes (not pictured) an obstacle course for small fry. These days, our small fry are large fry. But there were a number of families around, enjoying the playground equipment on a Saturday afternoon in the park.

OLLU & Elmendorf Lake Park

Posted on November 1, 2023 by admin

Despite the cold, we had about 40 kids show up yesterday to collect sweets, maybe half again as many as the busiest Halloweens of the past, though I don’t count every year. We ran through an entire box of full-sized candy bars plus some other smaller confections. Almost all of the kids came before dark, which has been the case for many years now. Another example of widespread nervous parenting that’s pretty much entrenched, I figure. When I was that age, we went out after dark in our Invisible Pedestrian costumes and we liked it.

Most of the costumes this year were buried under coats, but I have to say the best of ’23 was a tallish kid in no coat and a white-and-red full-body chicken outfit, complete with a comb as prominent as Foghorn Leghorn’s. The costume might well have been warm enough for him to go without a coat. The color scheme reminded me of Chick-fil-A right away.

I’m just old enough to remember sometimes receiving baked goods and fruit on Halloween; those vanished by about 1970, victim of the lurid nonsense stories about razor blades in apples, poisoned cakes and chocolate Ex-Lax being given to kids. We found the thought of that last one pretty funny, actually.

This morning we woke to about an inch of snow destined to melt later in the day. A small preview of winter.

The cold is an unpleasant contrast to South Texas last week, where it was hot for October. (Temps have fallen there since then, I heard.) Just after noon on Saturday, I headed over to the campus of Our Lady of the Lake University, OLLU. I’d heard of the school for a long time, but my knowledge of it never rose above the level of hazy.

Main Building, the sign says. A name refreshing in its simplicity. The building’s a little more intricate.

Mere steps away is Sacred Heart Chapel.

The school recently marked the chapel’s centennial. At your feet at the entrance, a date.

“The English Gothic chapel was the vision of Mother Florence Walter, Superior General of the Congregation of Divine Providence from 1886-1925,” says the university web site. “In 1895, she looked down from Prospect Hill at a swath of wilderness and declared, ‘One day we will have a chapel here. And its spires will be seen throughout the city of San Antonio.’ ”

That must have a good day for the superior general. Funding the chapel took 11 years, but eventually the Sisters, who had founded the school in 1895, were able to hire a renowned architect, Leo Dielman, to design the chapel. A prolific architect of sacred space – more than 100 churches to his credit – Dielmann had his funeral in 1969 at Sacred Heart Chapel.

When I went in, a funeral was going on. I gazed in for only a moment from the very back of the nave. Looked like this, except for the sacrament pictured.

OLLU borders Elmendorf Lake Park, with walking trails ringing a small manmade lake, created by the damming of Apache Creek. I took a walk. When the sun periodically came out from behind the clouds, it felt like it was about 90 F. It was a sweaty walk. Needed that hat I’d left in Illinois.

Thick foliage luxuriates on the lakeshore.

Almost no one else was around on what, compared with South Texas temps only a few weeks and months earlier, was merely a warm day. A Saturday at that. The place gave out no sense of being avoided out of fear for one’s person; just ignored. A few recreational fishermen stood on the shore, angling. One was in a small boat. That was all.

Another, more hard-surface part of the park includes benches. Parc Güell sorts of benches, but without the crowds.

No human crowds, that is. Birds were another matter. An astonishing number of birds occupied a handful of the trees in the park, ca-ca-ca-ca-ing with a resounding volume, especially on a small island I saw later is called Bird Island. Thinking on it, their Hitchcockian vibe might keep some people away. A lot of people.

Birds looking something like herons with completely black plumage. I couldn’t place them, but my bird knowledge is pretty meager. Crows? They look leaner of build than crows. But what do I really know about crows?

I do know enough not to walk under them. A few of the bird-occupied trees were along the path of my walk, so I took minor detours to avoid any direct bombardment. I passed through the park without being the target of any droppings.

I thought of a Red Skelton TV sketch featuring his characters, seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliff (I had to look the names up, but not that fact that he did those characters). One of the birds noted that the beach below was very crowded. The other responded, “There’s no sport in that.” Odd what sticks with you after more than 50 years.

Spring Valley Twilight

Posted on October 4, 2023 by admin

We visited Spring Valley not long ago, just as the daylight was fading.

Not only twilight’s last gleaming, the ragged end of summer.

Along North Avenue, Chicago (Buildings)

Posted on August 29, 2023 by admin

By Saturday, the high heat of last week had disappeared, leaving too nice a day to spend too long at the Art Institute. So to return to meet Yuriko after her cake class near Humboldt Park, I took the El from the Loop to Damen station, got off and walked westward for about half an hour along North Avenue, instead of transferring to a bus.

I began at the North-Damen-Milwaukee intersection. The former Noel State Bank at 1601 N. Milwaukee Ave., I’m sorry to say, is now a former Walgreens, with the excellent building boarded up and slightly forlorn.

The handsome former North Avenue Baths (2041 W. North Ave.) has been home to a number of restaurants since its redevelopment some decades ago.

I didn’t investigate closely, but a spot called Vajra seems to be the first-floor occupant now, offering Indian and Nepalese food.

Continuing west. A slow parade of ordinary, but interesting buildings.

An intriguing former church.

At one time, it was St. Paul’s Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church (2215 W. North Ave.), as indicated on the building itself. As indicated online, it has been stuck in redevelopment limbo for some time now.

Oakley and North Ave. Oddly enough, Google Maps refers to Oakley as a boulevard south of North, but an avenue north of North.

Smaller structures, some with redevelopment potential.

Someone spent some money on both 2542-44 W. North Ave. and 2646-54.

Further west are newer developments, rather than redevelopments.

I spent some time with Google Street View, whose images of the site go back to August 2007, when whatever had been there had been razed, but the apartments weren’t in place. By March 2009, four stories had been finished — or at least the building skin was finished. At that moment, I’m sure construction had ground to a halt.

By June 2011, the developers had found the money to add another floor, which suggests to me that the interior probably wasn’t finished in 2009, either. The first-floor retail was vacant for a long time, with Be Kids Cafe appearing only by July 2019. Not good timing, but who knew?

“This is one of the few cafe/kids activity spaces in the city that is both fun for kids and great for parents,” said an early 2020 review. “Nicely made Metric coffee drinks, chill spot for parents to hang, and awesome climbing gym for kids.”

Metric coffee? Coffee by the kilo, I guess. A brand I didn’t know, but what I know about coffee brands would barely fill a cup.

Now the Etheria Cafe occupies the spot, opening early last year. It doesn’t actually sound all that different.

The corner is across from Humboldt Park which, sad to relate, has seen its homeless population rise even in the few months since we last visited.

Not a tent city, exactly, more like a village: 40 or so unfortunates, according to local reporting.

Turtle Creek Parkway, Tanks and White Line Frankenstein

Posted on August 7, 2023 by admin

Tooling along one of southern Wisconsin’s two-lane highways a week ago Friday, the radio station I happened to be tuned into – I’m not giving up terrestrial radio on road trips – introduced a new song by Alice Cooper, with a few words from the artist himself. That got my attention. Alice Cooper, shock rocker of my adolescence, is still making records?

He is, at the fine old age of 75. I never was a big fan of his, except of course for “School’s Out,” but I was glad to hear that all the same. Keep on keeping on, old guy.

For my part, I kept on driving, passing the greens and golds of high corn and the utilitarian buildings that support farming, intersections with gravel roads, hand-painted signs and, now and then, another vehicle. It was an obscenely pleasant July day, clear and warm and not nearly as hot as much of the rest of the country.

The new song came on. Title, “White Line Frankenstein.” Remarkable how consistent Alice Cooper has been through the years. What does he sound like, now that he’s a senior shock rocker? Sounds a lot like young Alice Cooper. A good showman finds something that works and sticks with it, and there’s no arguing his showman abilities.

About half way through the song I was inspired to pull off to the side of the road near where a rail line crossed the road, and take pictures.

Missed the last half of the song, but oh well.

Near Beloit, Wisconsin – close to the town of Shopiere, but not in any town, is a spot called Turtle Creek Parkway, a Rock County park. At four acres, it’s the rural equivalent of a pocket park, with its star attraction across a field next to Turtle Creek: the Tiffany Bridge, or the Tiffany Stone Bridge, vintage 1869, which as far as I know is still a working railroad bridge. (Tiffany is another nearby town.)

More than 20 years ago, I visited the bridge, accompanied by small child and pregnant wife. It wasn’t a park then, just a wide place in the road to stop. Enough people must have stopped there for the county to get a hint, I guess, and acquire and develop the land by adding a boat launch on Turtle Creek, a small rental event building, and a small parking lot.

Regardless, it’s hard to take a bad up-close picture of the structure.

Just a hunch: the arches are too sturdy to destroy in a cost-effective way, so it abides.

Rather than return to the Interstate right away, I headed out from Shopiere onto the small roads where I eventually heard about Alice Cooper. Not long before that encounter, I spotted a tank in the hamlet of Turtle, Wisconsin.

Another former Wisconsin National Guard tank, an M60A3.

It’s part of a plaza honoring veterans of the area. Interesting to run into another tank in southern Wisconsin so soon after the last one. I decided to keep an eye out for tanks on the rest of the drive, and sure enough I spotted more as the drive progressed.

Kansasville Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Wayside Park

Posted on July 20, 2023 by admin

A run of sunny days lately. The early cicadas are bleating and the early crickets are singing, and while the firefly population has been slender this year, they’ve made their high-summer presence known at dusk recently. Much of the nation is hot, we are warm by day, cool at night.

Kansasville, Wisconsin is an unincorporated community in the Town of Dover, in the southeast part of the state, not to be confused with the Village of Dover, which is not too far away, but still in a different county.

Along the highway Wisconsin 11 a few miles east of Burlington is the Kansasville Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Wayside Park. A nearby VFW post, Gifford-Larsen Post No. 7924, maintains the park.

“Post 7924 is named in honor of Master Sergeant Elmer (Bill) Gifford who was killed in action on 19 February 1944 and Sergeant Einar Larson Jr. who was killed in action on 15 January 1945 at Halten, France,” says the post’s minimal Facebook page.

A tank astride the corn.

“Initially produced in 1960, over 15,000 M60s were built by Chrysler and first saw service in 1961,” says the Federation of American Scientists Military Analysis Network. “Production ended in 1983, but 5,400 older models were converted to the M60A3 variant ending in 1990.”

Looks like this particular tank’s last stop before resting on wayside park concrete was the Wisconsin National Guard, once upon a time.

Chrysler, incidentally, sold sold Chrysler Defense to General Dynamics over 40 years ago, and as General Dynamics Land Systems, the entity makes tanks even now in Ohio.

40 mm anti-aircraft guns.

I’m not as keen to look up its details, but I will say that it is pointing the wrong direction if there’s an attack from Illinois, whose border is only a few miles to the south.

A bit of rust, a hint of impermanence.

A handsome piece of mobile artillery.

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” — President George Washington, First Address to a Joint Session of Congress (State of the Union), 1790.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Parks