Joshua Tree National Park

Posted on March 11, 2020 by admin

On the morning of February 26, 2020, I arrived at the south entrance of Joshua Tree National Park. Near the end of the day, I would leave via the west entrance.
The park includes sections of two different deserts, the Colorado and the Mojave. The territory around the south entrance is Colorado Desert, and not much populated by Joshua trees. It would be a while before I saw any Joshua trees, which are actually yucca plants (Yucca brevifolia), in the national park named for them.

Though folk etymologies involving Mormons exist when it comes to why Joshua trees are called that, the origin of the term is uncertain. The plant has also been called, in English, the tree yucca and the yucca palm.

One more thing: the Joshua tree depicted by U2’s The Joshua Tree album was near Darwin, California — which is close to (but not in) Death Valley NP, not Joshua Tree National Monument, as it was then. Come to think of it, Death Valley was a national monument in 1987 as well.

My first walk of the day was along the trail leading out of Cottonwood Spring. Where there’s water, there are large trees.
Then it’s off to more arid hills.
With rock formations. This one’s actually pretty small compared to some others I would see later in the day.
Small plants compared to others I’d see later. But I liked them.
North from Cottonwood Springs, the road takes you through washes: Smoke Tree Wash, Porcupine Wash and the amusingly named Fried Liver Wash. Then on to the Cholla Cactus Garden.
Looks soft and fuzzy in a picture, but in person the cholla’s got wicked spines. Wiki says that the plant (Cylindropuntia bigelovii) has the “sardonic nickname of ‘teddy bear.’ ”

Next stop, Jumbo Rocks. Including the one called Skull Rock. Looking at it this way, I thought Nostril Rock would be a better name.
Plenty of big rocks all around. The result of magma, monzogranite, rising to the surface eons ago. That or an act of creation in 4004 BC.
Not far away I started spotting Joshua trees.
Driving on the paved roads of JTNP was pleasant enough. There was some traffic, since winter is high season, and millions visit the park every year — about 2.9 million in 2018, making it the 11th most-popular U.S. national park. Not enough traffic to be a nuisance, though.

Unpaved roads were even better. At least the two I took: Desert Queen Mine Road and Queen Valley Road. Guess most of the other visitors were skittish about driving them, but they were mostly smooth with only a few large rocks to watch out for.
Admittedly they aren’t very long roads, but even so I only saw one other vehicle the whole way, which was pulled off the road a bit.

The Desert Queen Mine Road leads to a small parking area and a trail head for the Desert Queen Mine Trail. No one else was there. I took a walk. The kind of place where middle-aged men walking alone clutch their chests, keel over and aren’t found for weeks? Maybe. But you have to go down the trail if you’re going to see anything.

After about 10 minutes — it isn’t a very long trail — I came to a structure.
Someone had lived in this waste. Why? Gold. I sat among the stones for a while. The only sound was the wind, and not much of that. Then I could hear the faint, distinct whoosh of a jet. That faded, but there was another a few minutes later.

A little further on is a cliff with leftover mining equipment.
If you look carefully, you can see metal doors down in the valley. Must be closed mine shafts.

My second-to-last stop in the park: Keys View, up in the Little San Bernadino Mountains. Took a little driving to get here, but the view was worth it. Most of the Coachella Valley is stretched out before you.

At nearly 5,200 feet above sea level, it was also distinctly chilly up there. And windy. Yet I spent a while gazing.

On the road back down from Keys View, I decided to take a closer look at the Joshua tree forest I was driving through.
To do that, you get out of the car and walk into the forest.

Remarkable plants, these yuccas. If Dr. Seuss had been asked to design a plant, it would look like a Joshua tree.

SoCal Driving

Posted on March 5, 2020 by admin

Remarkable how quickly last week’s political mail becomes obsolete.

Then again, if he follows through with his promises, we’ll continue to get mail from his organization until election day. The message will just be a little different. Namely, Kick the SOB Out, or words to that effect.

Before I visited Southern California last month, I was slightly apprehensive about driving there, which was in no way rational. I’ve driven in most major U.S. metro areas, including Los Angeles, without major incident. I’ve been jammed up in traffic and had near accidents and gotten lost, but those things can happen anywhere.

Driving around SoCal wasn’t bad at all. As mentioned before, I opted out of GPS. Don’t need a box telling me where to go, especially when its advice tends to be: find the nearest freeway. I used maps — electronic maps, in this case. That’s about the best thing my phone does for me, as I discovered walking around in New York a couple of years ago.

(One strange thing that first happened during that trip was people asking me for directions, with a phone in their hands. They pointed to the Google Maps display and asked, how can I get to x from here? Dunno, man, read the map, maybe.)

You can’t — at least certainly shouldn’t — call up Google Maps while driving, and I didn’t do that, but usually it was easy enough to find a place to stop to consult a map. Also, here’s a tip for getting a light to change: start fiddling with your phone to look up a map, and it is sure to change.

Often enough I didn’t need to consult a map. Los Angeles street theory isn’t perfectly grid-like, but it has strong elements of a grid. Up one major street for miles, over another for more miles.

Not that I wanted to drive everywhere. The first morning in town, a Saturday, I drove only as far as a station on the relatively new Expo Line, which goes from Santa Monica to downtown LA, or vice verse.

I rode it downtown from the Expo/La Cienega station, through miles of the city I’d never seen before, including the edge of the University of Southern California. Good old USC — how persistent that school was in sending me mail in the late ’70s and early ’80s, inviting me to apply, even after I was attending VU.

On my second day in town, a Sunday, I got up early, strategy in mind. I was staying fairly near I-405, the 405 as it’s called locally, so I took that freeway north to I-10, the 10, and headed east from there to Western Ave. I’d read that the 405 was one of LA’s worst freeways in terms of congestion, and maybe it is.

But just before 8 on Sunday morning, I encountered smooth driving on the 405, as well as the 10, where traffic was also light. Getting off the highway, I headed north and soon found myself in Koreatown. Easy to know you’re there, because of the Hangul signs. Soon I began to wonder, just how large is Los Angeles’ Koreatown? I passed block after block after block after block of Hangul-marked buildings. How big? Really big.

Eventually, I turned west on Santa Monica Blvd. to reach the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, but also to begin the longest drive of the day, west from there to Santa Monica itself, through (among other places) West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

A virtual stage, it seemed to me — a carnival of sights to see, a spectacle of wealth and poverty, even at driving speed. Urban texture that you experience in any North American city, and yet with its own flavor. You see only glimpses, but even so you pass distinct cars and trucks, but not as many trucks as some places (because LA tends to have alleys for delivery), more pedestrians than you’d think but fewer bicyclists, chain shops and independents in strip centers, apartments, houses, office buildings, churches, schools, bars, restaurants, vacant lots, buildings under construction, parking lots, car washes — a lot of them — tall palms and short bushes, cannabis dispensaries, gas stations, graffiti’d walls, mural’d walls, billboards, parking meters, neon signs, showrooms, construction zones (but not as many as I expected), lamp posts and telephone poles, self-storage and payday loan offices, parks, playgrounds and even a cactus patch.

The Cactus Garden in Beverly Gardens Park, recently renovated. I stopped for a look at the cacti and the churches next to the park.

Santa Monica’s traffic is pretty thick, so driving was less pleasant there. To get to the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, you head north on the Pacific Coast Highway. That too was crowded. The road is probably more scenic and less crowded further north, but Pacific Palisades isn’t that far, so I didn’t see much of the highway (we saw part of it up that way in 2001, driving to Santa Barbara, though mostly we took U.S. 101).

On Monday, the plan was to reach Palm Springs by way of freeways and then San Gabriel Canyon Road (California 39) through San Gabriel Mountains National Monument to California 2 and 138. Looked good on the map.

First, though, I had to get out of Los Angeles via freeway. I knew I didn’t want to drive anywhere near downtown, because February 24 was the day of Kobe Bryant’s memorial service at the Staples Center. So I went around downtown, and avoided the 405 too.

First, Sepulveda Blvd. south, which passes through a tunnel under LAX. I didn’t know that till I looked at the map. Then I drove it. I don’t think I’ve ever driven under an airport. I’m not sure any other airport has a tunnel under it.

From south of the airport, I took the 105 east to the 605 north to the 210, the Foothill Freeway. There were some minor snarls along the way, but nothing too bad.

Radio coverage of the memorial followed me all the way along the route. Reminded me of when Princess Diana died. It was a horrible accident, but still. Radio jocks can be counted on for maudlin twaddle at times like that.

When I got to the entrance of the monument, near Azusa, a sign said that California 2 was closed in x and y places. What did that mean? I stopped to look them up. That meant that I’d have to double back if I went as far as where 2 and 39 met, way up in the mountains. Still blocked by snow, I figured.

So I drove about 10 miles into the mountains and then drove back. Scenic territory, and not much traffic in February.
Evidence of an unfortunate accident.
No name or date, though. No maudlin twaddle on the airwaves, either. The world is quiet when most people die.

I spent the next hour or so driving east through the Foothill communities, including Rancho Cucamonga, along the former US 66. Of course I wanted to drive through Rancho Cucamonga.

The Foothills are naturally more suburban in character than Santa Monica Blvd. Except for the mountains looming off to the left, in fact, and the palm trees, not so different than my usual suburban haunts. I even stopped for gas at a Costco before getting back on the freeway to Palm Springs.

Didn’t drive in Palm Springs on Tuesday; Steve took me around. On Wednesday, I left town and drove to Joshua Tree National Park, whose roads are either small and paved, or small and unpaved. I drove on both kinds. On the unpaved version, through a Joshua tree forest, traffic was extremely light. I was it. Just like driving in a car commercial. Happens occasionally.

The Branson Scenic Railway

Posted on November 10, 2019 by admin

During my visit to Branson in November 2012, I took an excursion on the Branson Scenic Railway. Nothing like hopping aboard a pleasure train pulled by mid-century locomotives.
Specifically, according to the railroad’s web site, “BSRX 98, Locomotive, 1951 EMD F9PH, rebuilt 1981, has HEP (Formerly B&O, then MARC #83).” I looked up HEP, at least: head-end power. Nice to know that the locomotive has hep.

The web site further explains: “Traveling on a working commercial railroad line, the train’s direction of travel… is determined by the Missouri and Northern Arkansas Railroad just prior to departure. At that time, the train will go either north or south. The northern route goes as far as Galena, Missouri, to the James River Valley; and the southern route extends into Arkansas to the Barren Fork Trestle.”

We went south into Arkansas, which isn’t actually that far from Branson, across water and through hills and woods and tunnels, just as the leaves were turning nicely.

“The construction of the White River Railway in the early 1900s made the area accessible for tourists and is largely responsible for the development of Branson and the Ozarks as a tourism destination… The route crosses the White River in Branson, now Lake Taneycomo, and then runs along side of it after taking a fifty-mile short cut over the Ozark Mountains.

“This was part of the Missouri Pacific Railroad between Kansas City, Missouri, and Little Rock, Arkansas. It became a part of the Union Pacific after the UP bought the MOPAC. The Missouri and Northern Arkansas Railroad now operates the line.

“In 1993, the Branson Scenic Railway was formed, and through a lease arrangement with the MNA, runs excursions through this historic route March through December.”

A train through the Alps it isn’t, but it’s scenic all the same.

Bay City State Park

Posted on September 8, 2019 by admin

It’s near Bay City, Michigan, but even so Bay City State Park strikes me as a misnomer. It isn’t that near, for one thing — you have drive some miles to reach the edge of the city. Saginaw Bay State Park would be better, because that’s the salient feature of the park.

Though it’s a bit of a walk to take in the view. That’s what we did last Sunday morning.
Worth it.
“Bay City State Park, situated on the shores of the Saginaw Bay, is home to one of the largest remaining freshwater, coastal wetlands on the Great Lakes, the Tobico Marsh,” the Michigan DNR says. “More than a thousand feet of sandy beach and over 2,000 acres of wetland woods, wet meadows, cattail marshlands and oak savannah prairies make it an ideal staging area for migratory birds.”

We spent time on the beach, but also walked around the nearby lagoon, which took the better part of an hour.
The air was neither hot nor cold, no mosquitoes bothered us — hard to believe, considering some of our mosquito experiences in Michigan — and the place wasn’t crowded at all, even though it was Labor Day weekend. The dog was happy to sniff along but didn’t pull too hard. Occasionally we’d hear a motor in the distance, but the hum of traffic you hear from every direction in the suburbs wasn’t there. Birds, bugs and wind are most of what you hear in a place like that, if you leave your noisemaking gizmos behind.

Even better than all that, we’d come some distance to be there. That seasoned the experience for the better. All in all, a near perfect walk.

The Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge & Other Austin Bridges

Posted on July 21, 2019 by admin

I’ll note the anniversary of Apollo 11 here by linking to 10 years ago. Also, I was once the sort of lad who built a Saturn V model and had coloring books that I didn’t take that seriously.

But I did more than watch TV coverage or color or build models (I had a CM and LM set, too). I had books as well and I read them avidly, along with various editions of National Geographic. None was better on Apollo 11 (at least in memory) than Apollo: Lunar Landing by James J. Haggerty, published right after the event by Rand McNally, with a 1969 copyright.

Closer to the present, we had a hot old time in Austin on July 4 three years ago. I mean that literally. Even though we were out and about fairly early that morning — our goal was the now-closed Hope Outdoor Gallery, which we soon saw — temperatures rose quickly, as you’d expect during a Texas summer.

Before (after?) we went to the gallery, we spent a few minutes walking across the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge, which crosses Ladybird Lake (Colorado River) just east of the Lamar Boulevard Bridge. In full, it’s the James D. Pfluger Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge.

Though the heat was on, it was a nice walk across.
This is the Lamar Boulevard Bridge and activity under the bridge.

In the other direction, east, is downtown Austin and a railroad bridge with prominent graffiti.

“The bridge is named for Austin architect James D. Pfluger, who designed much of the city’s hike and bike trail system, including the ones on either side of Town Lake, which are now connected by the bridge,” the Daily Texan reported when the bridge was opened in 2001.

“The walkway will also honor cyclist Chris Kern and jogger Jack Slaughter, who were killed by motorists on the Lamar bridge. Kern died in 1991 after a drunk driver rear-ended his bicycle, and Slaughter died in February 2000 when he was struck and killed by a car.”

According to the story, Kern and Slaughter have a plaque on the bridge, but we must have missed it.

Point State Park & Pittsburgh Walkabout

Posted on July 14, 2019 by admin

RIP, Patricia Deany, mother of our dear old friend Kevin Deany, and a kind and gracious lady. She passed last week at age 90.

At the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers is Point State Park, a 36-acre triangular patch of land that may well be featured in every bit of tourist literature ever published about Pittsburgh since the park’s creation nearly 50 years ago.

But that’s no excuse not walk over to the park from downtown Pittsburgh and make a circuit around the fountain at the tip of the park, which is what we did after lunch at the Oyster House on July 5.
That image makes it look like no one else was there, which wasn’t true at all.
The park offers views of various other parts of Pittsburgh, such as Mt. Washington and the Duquesne Incline.

Or Heinz Field, home of the Steelers. There ought to be a giant ketchup bottle in there somewhere.

Away from the fountain, there’s a view of the Fort Pitt Bridge, which carries I-376 across the Monongahela. It replaced the Point Bridge, which was destroyed, along with the Manchester Bridge, to make way for the park.

Besides being a pleasant green space with views, the park makes various nods to the early history of Pittsburgh. An irregular path of sidewalk follows the outline of Fort Duquesne, the French outpost. Elsewhere other sidewalks mark the outline of the somewhat larger Fort Pitt, the succeeding British outpost, also in the classic star (Bastion) shape.

The U.S. flag is a little unusual. Not in having 13 stars, but in that they aren’t the circular arrangement you usually see. Then again, no one specified how the stars in the canton should be arrayed in those days (and maybe we should go back to that).

On one edge of the park is the Fort Pitt Block House, Point State Park’s only surviving structure from colonial times, built in 1764 as a redoubt of Fort Pitt. It has endured since then in its original spot, for many years as a residence, more recently as a relic.

Our walking tour of downtown Pittsburgh started at the Block House, led by an energetic young woman, native to Pittsburgh and eager to talk about various places and buildings, though less about design and more about history.

Naturally, the names of Pittsburgh robberbarons Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick came up a lot, including the story about a dying Carnegie writing a letter to the estranged Frick asking for a meeting, presumably in the spirit of reconciliation.

Les Standiford tells the story, via NPR. A man named Bridge, who delivered the letter, was Carnegie’s assistant.

“Frick’s ire was, after all, legendary. He’d gone toe-to-toe with strikers, assassins, and even Carnegie himself, and had rarely met a grudge he could not hold. Long before Frick had constructed the mansion that would dwarf Carnegie’s ‘Highlands’ up the street, he had gone out of his way to purchase a tract of land in downtown Pittsburgh, then built a skyscraper tall enough to cast Carnegie’s own office building next door in perpetual shadow.

” ‘Yes, you can tell Carnegie I’ll meet him,’ Frick said finally, wadding the letter and tossing it back at Bridge. ‘Tell him I’ll see him in Hell, where we both are going.’ ”

Whatever else you can say about the steely-eyed bastard Frick, at least he had no illusions about his benevolence, as Carnegie seemed to have had. Our guide also mentioned the taller Frick building next to Carnegie’s, and in fact pointed them out. They are both now overshadowed by more recent Pittsburgh buildings, of course.

At one point, we passed by a building associated with both Carnegie and Frick, along with a lot of other Gilded Age and later tycoons: the Duquesne Club on Sixth Ave.
Founded in 1873 and still a social club for the wealthy, its current home, a Romanesque structure designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, opened in 1890. Just in time for Carnegie and Frick to discuss, possibly over brandy and cigars, the busting of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers.

Speaking of labor history, not far away from the club, I noticed this historic marker.
The founding convention of the AFL was in a Turner Hall. Our guide didn’t mention that, and I asked her about the Turner Hall. She hadn’t heard it. To be fair, I’d never heard of Turner Halls until recently either. To be extra fair, I’m not guiding walking tours of a major American city, so I consider that a small lapse on her part.

The Turner Hall in Pittsburgh, unlike that in Milwaukee, is no more. The site is now called Mellon Square, a 1950s park-like creation paid for by the Mellons to go with the development of Alcoa’s new headquarters building at that time.

Alcoa isn’t there any more, and the building is now known as the Regional Enterprise Tower, but it still has its distinctive aluminum skin. The New York modernists Harrison & Abramovitz designed it.

I’ve read that a Beaux-Arts palace of a theater, the Nixon, was destroyed to make way for Alcoa, causing some consternation even in the tear-it-down midcentury.

Another historic marker that I noticed (that also wasn’t on the tour).
Why Pittsburgh? I wondered. I looked it up later. NPR again: “Slovak culture is everywhere in the Steel City. It’s home to the Honorary Slovak Consulate, a handful of social clubs, cultural centers and annual holiday festivals dedicated to maintaining and celebrating Slovak traditions.

“ ‘Allegheny County has the highest percentage of all of the counties in the United States, not just Pennsylvania, of people who claim Slovak heritage,’ said Martin Votruba, head of Slavic studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Slovaks and Czechs formed a group called the Czecho-Slovak National Council of America. Because there were so many Slovak immigrants living in Pittsburgh, Votruba said it seemed like the perfect location to have a big meeting on Memorial Day in 1918.”

Along the way, we looked at a work of public art in Pittsburgh, a 25-foot bronze fountain centerpiece at Agnes R. Katz Plaza by Louise Bourgeois, completed in 1999. The eye-like smaller bronzes are actually benches, though it’s hard to tell from this angle.

By the time we got to the U.S. Steel Tower, the tallest building in Pittsburgh, a light rain was falling. It would continue at varying strength through the rest of the walk.

No aluminium for this behemoth, rather steel and lots of it. This too is a Harrison & Abramovitz design. The company made steel for its own building, a newish product at the time, corten or weathering steel, which ends up with a dark brown oxidation over the metal to protect the structure from the elements and obviate the need for paint. (The steel still has many surprising uses.) According to our guide, however, until recently the building skin had an unfortunate habit of spitting granules of this rust onto the sidewalks and people below.

Aluminium, steel and then glass. Fitting for the HQ of PPG, also a stop of the tour. Founded in 1883 as Pittsburgh Plate Glass, these days PPG is a supplier of paints, coatings, optical products and specialty materials.

The complex is actually six buildings, all opening in the early 1980s as part of the effort to revive downtown Pittsburgh. By that time, Johnson/Burgee were the go-to NY architects, so they designed the PPG. Rain prevented me from making a good image, but the tallest of the buildings towers over a plaza that features an ice rink in colder weather. It looks like this on a sunny day.

Toward the end of the tour, we made a stop at a place on Smithfield St. that has no marker of any kind and in fact isn’t distinctive in any way, except for one thing: it was the site of an early nickelodeon, thought to be the first theater anywhere devoted exclusively to movies, as opposed to a live theater with a few machines tucked away to separate patrons from their coins.

“The first exclusive moving pictures theater in Pittsburg and the world was opened in 1905 by Harry Davis and John P. Harris in the Howard Block, west side of Smithfield street, between Diamond and Fifth avenue,” one E. W. Lightner wrote in 1919.

Diamond St. is no longer called that. Oddly enough, the change to Forbes St. was made as late as 1958. I’d imagine that would have been hard to do.

Lightner continues: “Curious to say, the second exclusive picture theater of the world was opened in Warsaw, capital of Poland, by a Pittsburg Polander, who saw the Davis-Harris adventure and recognized the possibilities of presenting so wonderful and profitable a development in his native country.”

“The original and only ‘Nickelodeon’ was opened at 8 o’clock of the morning and the reels were kept continuously revolving until midnight. A human queue was continuously awaiting the ending of a performance and the emptying of chairs. Inside an attendant would announce, ‘show ended,’ and spectators would be hustled gently to the street and new spectators welcomed, seated as quickly as possible, and the picture would again respond to the magic reel.”

As you can see, it was pretty much a nothing site when Google Images came by.

Still looks that way in July 2019. There ought to be a marker there at least, or maybe even a hipster bar with a nickelodeon theme.

The Duquesne Incline

Posted on July 9, 2019 by admin

A hundred years ago, hilly Pittsburgh had a lot of operational funiculars: the Castle Shannon Incline, Castle Shannon South Incline, Duquesne Incline, Knoxville Incline, Monongahela Incline, Monongahela Freight Incline, Mount Oliver Incline, Norwood Incline, Penn Incline, and the St. Clair Incline.

Yet others had already come and gone by then: the Bellevue Incline, Clifton Incline, Fort Pitt Incline, H.B. Hays and Brothers Coal Railroad, Nunnery Hill Incline, Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Plane, Ridgewood Incline and the Troy Hill Incline.

That’s enough for a whole chapter of a coffee table book: Great Funiculars of the World, a sequel to Great Elevators of Europe. The designer of most of them was one man, Samuel Diescher, a Hungarian who came to America in 1866 and did an exceptional number of engineering projects during his career.

Only two funiculars survive in 21st-century Pittsburgh, the Duquesne Incline and the Monongahela Incline, about a mile apart on the slopes of Mt. Washington, to the south of downtown. We couldn’t come to Pittsburgh and not ride at least one of them, and so on mid-morning of July 5, we drove to the Duquesne’s lower-level parking lot and climbed the stairs on the left for access to the funicular.

The Duquesne, in operation since 1877 and restored in 1963, rises about 400 feet.
Round-trip for ages 12 to 64 is $5, and completely worth it. Though part of Pittsburgh’s transit system, on a quasi-holiday in summer, tourists seemed to be the main customers.
At the top is a splendid view of downtown Pittsburgh and the three rivers and their bridges, though things were a little hazy that morning. No matter.
A few minutes’ walk to the west of the top of the Duquesne is the small Point of View Park. Besides offering roughly the same view of downtown, the view from the park down the Ohio is nice.
The park also features two bronzes in a curiously intimate pose: George Washington and Seneca leader Guyasuta by local artist James A. West (2006).
A nearby plaque says that “this bronze depicts a meeting in October 1770 between [Washington and Guyasuta]… this work captures a moment in time between two formidable men whose actions had a huge impact on Pittsburgh…”

Looking closely at the Wiki entry on Guyasuta, I see this detail about his name: “The many spelling variations include Guyashuta, Guyasoota, Guy-a-soot-er, Guyasootha, Guyasotha, Guyasutha, Kayashota, Kayasota, Kayasutha, Keyashuta, Kiasota, Kiashuta, Kiasutha, Kiosola, Kiyashuta, and Kyasoota.”

Louisiana Capitol Views 2009

Posted on June 16, 2019 by admin

This year’s loop around the South was something like the loop I drove 10 years ago, but with key differences. For instance, I was by myself that time, and bypassed such places as New Orleans and Nashville. Instead I spent time in smaller places, such as Lafayette and Baton Rouge. In the capital, I visited the house — the state house — that Huey Long built, Louisiana’s art deco state capitol.

It’s a handsome building. Long hired a Louisiana architect, Leon C. Weiss, to design the building. No relation to his assassin Weiss, apparently.

The garden front of the capitol, whose centerpiece is a memorial to the Kingfish, is also a cemetery with one occupant, Huey Long himself.

The observation deck on the capitol’s 27th floor, which charged no admission when I was there, has some splendid views of the Mississippi and the city.

Looking south toward downtown Baton Rouge.
North toward industrial Baton Rouge.
Petrochemicals. In fact, much of the view is taken up by ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge Refinery, one of the nation’s largest such facilities.

Natchez &c.

Posted on June 2, 2019 by admin

When we left New Orleans to drive to Natchez, Mississippi, on May 15, the uninspired route would be have been I-10 to Baton Rouge and then north on US 61. Instead I wanted to drive across Lake Pontchartrain, because I’ve seen that crossing on maps for years. Better yet, it’s no extra charge, since the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway collects no toll northbound.

The morning was bright and traffic light on the causeway. It’s actually two bridges, one each way, so you don’t face miles and miles of unavoidable oncoming traffic mere feet away. An enjoyable stretch of road under those conditions. Uneventful enough driving to ponder the engineering marvel that’s the causeway while still on it.

Before going, I wondered if there would be a few minutes on the causeway when we would be out of sight of land. I’d read claims to that effect. But the answer is no, not that I saw. I spotted the north shore of the lake in the distance before the south shore had completely vanished from my rear-view mirror. Once you get to the other side of the lake, you’re in Mandeville, Louisiana. I-12 from there connects with US 61 in Baton Rouge.

By early afternoon, we were in Natchez, Mississippi. The town has some good views of the Mississippi River from a park on the bluff.
The local gazebo.
It was too hot to wander around in the noonday sun for long. We decided not to tour one of the local antebellum homes, but rather spend the afternoon heading further north on the Natchez Trace Parkway to seek out antebellum ruins instead.

Lilly drove part of the way on the Trace and I played with my camera.

Others might find the driving dull, but I like driving the Trace for its lush greenery, and also its sparse traffic. No trucks at all.

We took a diversion off the Trace before going to Port Gibson and on to Jackson, along a winding country lane called Rodney Road. Go far enough on that road, and you’ll come to the Windsor Ruins.
I can’t remember where I read about the ruins, but the place has been filed under my Possible Minor Destinations for a good while. That’s such a sprawling, unorganized mental catalog of places that it’s a wonder that I ever remember to take the right detours at the right time.

We were the only ones there once another car left a minute or two after we arrived. Considering that the ruins used to be the heart of an enormous plantation, it’s remarkable how lonely the spot now feels. History has passed it by.

The view from the ruins.
“Windsor, built between 1859 and 1861, was the home of Smith Coffee Daniell II, a wealthy planter who had extensive properties in the Delta and in Arkansas,” the NPS says. “Completed in 1861, the home was the largest house built at that time [in Mississippi], the plantation once covering over 2,600 acres.

Curiously, Daniell died on April 12, 1861. The mansion survived the war, probably because the Union army used it as soon as the area had been captured, but it burned down by accident in 1890.

The fence is fairly new, added by the state, which now owns the site. Guess the state of Mississippi doesn’t want any of the 23 massive Corinthian columns coming down on any hapless visitors. They’re looking a little dodgy.

The Chicago Riverwalk

Posted on May 1, 2019 by admin

Returning from my appointment on Friday, I took a walk along the Chicago Riverwalk — a section that wasn’t completed the last time I was paying attention — from N. LaSalle St. around to W. Lake St.

Parts of the waterfront walkway to the east were started back in 2005; the western section was only completed in 2017. The San Antonio Riverwalk, it isn’t, but Chicago has done well with what it has.

From the north end of the LaSalle St. bridge, you can see the “River Theater.”
To the west of that feature is a walkway that crosses under the LaSalle St. bridge.
I noticed that besides building the riverwalk, the city cleaned up the underside of all the bridges you can see from the riverwalk. Once upon a time, they wore their peeling paint and rust like badges of honor.

From the LaSalle St. bridge to the Wells St. bridge is a straightaway with a tubular fountain sort of feature.
On the west side of the Wells St. bridge is a fine view of that structure.
The afternoon sun in late April left a curious trace on the 300 N. LaSalle building, which rises above the Wells St. bridge.
Further to the west of Wells St.
This section, west of Wells, sports floating wetland gardens. Or maybe you can call them the Floating Gardens of Chicago. But what the city really needs are hanging gardens. Maybe they can go next to the Obama Library.
From there, the path crosses under the Franklin St. bridge, and goes to its end at Lake St., with the Merchandise Mart dominating the view. Workmen were busy installing turf on the small slope to the right (in this pic) of the sidewalk.
All the while, you can see boats plying the river.
Interesting that yellow means taxi, even on the water. I recognized the vessel in the second pic. The good tourist ship Lila passing Wolf Point.