Category Archives: Travel

Travel

Memory

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Beltane          Waxing Dyan Moon

Acela Lounge,  Washington, D.C.

Leg two of the trip begins in about two hours, the Capitol Limited to Chicago.  This is, again, a sleeper.  The first few hours in daylight will take us through Maryland, West Virginia and into Pennsylvania.  As night comes, we’ll travel through western Pennsylvania and Ohio, reaching Chicago at 8:40 a.m. on Sunday, June 1st.

This morning I saw the Phillips collection again.  It’s strange the way memory shapes expectations.  Two falls ago I went to New York and revisited the Cloisters, once one of my favorite places.  This time it seemed smaller, less magical.  Why?  I can’t say.

The Phillips collection was the same.  Though there were a couple of Bonnards and Cezannes that drew me in, the Morris Louis paintings, especially his blue column and the Rothko room, the rest left me flat.

The D.C. metro though was as good as I recalled.  It’s clean, easy to use and reasonably priced.

I took it to the Freer where the piece that jumped out at me was Whistler’s Peacock Room.  So overdone, but at the same so cohesive and beautiful.

A meal at the Smithsonian Castle Cafe and I headed back to the station.  It’s the afternoon.  Hot.  I remembered.  Besides it’s also the time when I take a nap.  Which I plan to do right now.

Travel

The End of Masonry Forts

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Beltane              Waxing Dyan Moon

Savannah Hilton Head Island International Airport

The rental car has returned to its stable, now a “dirty car” in the lingo of the rental car world.  The KIA was ok, but seemed a bit tinny to me.  Might have just been the crank windows, separately locked doors and no cruise control.

Ft. Pulawski on Cockspur Island covered the north and south shipping lanes into Savannah for the new American government, part of the Third build-out of forts to protect the east and gulf coast.

It fell into Confederate hands when the state of Georgia took it with state militia prior to its secession.

The role of Ft. Pulawski in military history is an odd one.  On April 10th, 1862 Union soldiers began a bombardment.  It used the usual smooth bore cannons and mortars largely to no affect.  There were however a few Parrot rifled cannons.  After a day of bombardment the Parrots broke down the seven foot thick masonry walls (bricks) and the next day projectiles began to strike near the powder magazine.  The Fort surrendered.

This spelled the end of masonry forts in military history.

Travel

Fried Foods. Enough.

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Beltane         Waxing Dyan Moon

Folkston, Georgia           Gateway to the Okefenokee

The Okefenokee Restaurant is the place to eat in Folkston.  It has a country buffet.  When I looked at the fried entrees, I asked for a menu. It said, “We encourage you to try the buffet.”  This after a short menu of fried food.

There was however enough fruit and vegetables to satisfy me when I reinspected the buffet.  Hah.  After a week plus in the south, the sight of fried food has begun to have an aversive affect on me.

This is the area of Georgia known as the piney woods, the growth on the sandy soil here that is not swamp.  Some of it is the remains of an ancient barrier island, Trail Ridge, which forms the eastern boundary of the Okefenokee.  In the day of the barrier island the Okefenokee was a salt marsh protected from the Atlantic by the island.

Travel, Weather +Climate

The Sun! The Sun! The Sun!

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Beltane            Waning Flower Moon’

Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Imagine the little guy on Fantasy Island.  If he were here on Hilton Head Island instead, he would be running around saying, “The Sun!  The Sun!  The Sun!”

Yes, on our last day here the sun has come out for the morning and it makes all the difference.  The gloomy, chill atmosphere of the last few days falls away and the Island takes on its vacation place cast.  Everything sparkles and the trees now provide shade rather than reinforcement for gray mornings.

I’m glad because it gives me a chance to see this place in all its parts, not only as it looks under the influence of a tropical depression.

It was laundry time today, so I drove over to a laundromat not far from here, washed clothes for the further journey to Panama City and the train ride home, then went to the Plantation Cafe for a true country breakfast.  All the while I marveled at the transformation created by the sun.  It is no wonder so many societies have worshipped that flaming presence in our sky.

Gray and gloom appeal to me in their place, such as a Minnesota early spring or late autumn, but when they defy sunny expectations their affect proves that much more intense.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Travel, Weather +Climate

Hi and Lo

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Beltane      Waning Flower Moon

Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Cloudy again today.  Yesterday afternoon, for a couple of hours, the sun shone.  I just looked at the forecasts for Panama City.  Thunderstorms followed by thunderstorms.

It finally came to me yesterday why this weather looked so familiar.  It looks like the pre-hurricane footage from the weather channel.  And for good reason.  There is a tropical depression slowly twirling off the east coast of Florida.  Its northeast quadrant, around Jacksonville and the panhandle, has already dumped a lot of rain.  2 ft. in one location over two days!  Remember Florida barely has a grip on the surface;  a lot it will go early when the oceans rise.

As I worked out today on hard sand just above the surf racing ashore, I felt another of nature’s cycles, the tides.  They pull in and out four times a day, hi and lo.  These cycles remind us of the cycles in our own bodies and in our lives.

Last night at the Jazz Corner the crowd’s age showed in the gray heads dominating the room.  We are the outgoing tide for this generation of living humans.  We washed ashore in one of the biggest birth events in US history and we will go out as one of the biggest death events.  Cycles,spirals. Change.

Art and Culture, Humanities, Myth and Story, Travel

It’s A Beautiful World

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Beltane              Waning Flower Moon

Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Kate and I went out to the Jazz Corner tonight.  We listened to the Earl Williams Blues Band.  They were excellent musicians.  Earl played New Orleans most of his life and his patter, his stage presence made us laugh, drew us into his songs.

He happened to meet Kate and me at the door.  He introduced himself, “I’ll be playing the music tonight.”  I asked him what he played and he gave a list of instruments not all of which I recognized.  I knew the saxophone(s), the harmonica, but the occa and others I had not heard.

Near the end of the first set Earl turned to Kate and me, said, “I’d like to dedicate this next song to Katie and Charlie Ellis.  From Minnesota.  They drove all day just to be here tonight!”  He then gave a credible imitation of Louis Armstrong singing his It’s a Wonderful World.

We had table for two against the wall, the furthest toward the front.  At one point, engrossed in the music, following it with my heart, a realization popped into mind.

We were in a setting very similar to Max Beckman’s Blind Man’s Buff.  In that tryptych, which hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the center panel has a band playing in a cabaret setting.  The side panels have cabaret patrons in various enigmatic poses.

Beckman said the band in the center are the gods playing.  I imagine them playing the world into existence.  We sat off to one side, in one of the panels.  In that situation the other panel would have people far across the room from us.  We listened to the same music, sat in the same cafe, but we could not communicate.

The world at the end of World War II had many people in the same cafe, listening to the same music and unable to communicate.

Great Work, Travel

Sun Almost Shines

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Beltane             Waning Flower Moon

Westin, Hilton Head Island

Some heat has returned.  I only needed my gray great river energy zip up for the first half of the morning.

The Coastal Discovery Center sits about a mile, maybe two from Port Royal Plantation. It tries to deal with the cultural and natural history of Hilton Head.

There is an inherent problem with history here.  How to deal with enslavement?  The Coastal Discovery Center does not skirt the issue, it mentions enslavement in the pre-Civil war days, breathes a sigh of relief and passes on to the era of freedom after the war.

The best part of the Center for me lay outdoors.  Live oak trees reach gnarly branches out in twisted directions, some very low to the ground and all hung with the gray beards of Spanish Moss.  Loblolly pines shoot up high; red cedar grows in bulbous clumps, one such specimen has an estimated germination date of 1595.

Three boardwalks jut out into that complex eco-system, the salt marsh.  Here fresh water and salt water meet, creating an environment where only the toughest need apply.  This does not include, by the way, alligators or turtles.  It seems they dehydrate in salt water.  There is one turtle that lives in the marsh, but only one.

This is an area dominated by sea grass, fiddler crabs and oysters.

Docents guided classes of school children enjoying an outdoors break at the end of the school year.

I wandered around, shooting this and that with the camera and have returned to eat lunch with Kate.

Travel

Savannah–Creek for Marsh Grass

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Beltane            Waning Flower Moon

The Gray Line Tour of Savannah did its job.  It was a quick overall view of the city with a dash of information on Hilton Head Island.

Savannah and Philadelphia (according to the guide) are the only cities in the US laid out to plans conceived before their planners arrived in this country.  Savannah’s plan came from London, a scheme to rebuild it.

When I lived in Irvine Park in St.Paul, it was much like the older squares in Savannah.  It had Federalist architecture as well as later 19th century styles.  In fact, Savannah reminded me of St. Paul, especially Summit Avenue and Irvine Park.

The strange part, though, was the weather.  Yesterday Savannah had the lowest maximum temperature (66) of any year since 1875!  It has been rainy and chilly since I got here.  The tour itself lost something of its Southern ambiance with the chill.

I did see the house where the murder (or misfortune, as the people in the house now call it) occurred that prompted the book and the movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Tours rarely attract me, but I wanted a quick look at Savannah to see if I might want to spend more time there. I’m not sure.  Period houses lose their appeal for me pretty quickly.  Maybe if it warms up.

Kate and I had a low country buffet with her pediatric colleagues tonight.

Family, Travel

Green Stars and Irish Wolfhounds

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Beltane     Waning Flower Moon

Another gray morning, but the temperatures will head up today.  Low 70’s by this afternoon and high 70’s tomorrow.  That will change the look and feel of Hilton Head Island.  A lot. Sunshine, of which we have had none since I got here on Sunday morning, will also alter the appearance of the gray Atlantic.

Kate and I had supper last night charlie’s etoile verte.  The setting was French provincial and the food lived up to the French gastronomic standards.

We talked again over dinner about Irish Wolfhounds.  They present us with a delicate dilemma.  We loved them, each one of them, with an intensity that made them members of our family.  I don’t know how to describe the difference between our feelings for them and for the whippets, whom we also love, but the difference is qualitative.  Each of their deaths felt and feels like a family member died.

These big dogs occupy a space in our lives commensurate with their size.  We have had 8.  Their short life span, often as little as 5 years and in a couple of instances even less than that, makes loving them an exercise in sweet torture.

We would love to have more Wolfhounds, but I can’t imagine another Wolfhound death.  Too, the size of the Wolfhounds, Tor weighed 200 pounds, creates a problem.  Moving them when they are sick is difficult.  As we age, it becomes more and more difficult.  So, at least for now, we have decided against any more of these animals we love.  A hard place.

GeekWorld, Travel

A Lazy Morning. Kindle.

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Beltane        Waning Flower Moon

A breakfast buffet and finishing a novel.  That’s all I’ve done this a.m.

The gray line folks have a six hour tour of Savannah.  I booked it for tomorrow.  I find grayline a good way to get a quick overview of an area.  After that I can explore more what I find interesting.

The gothic side of the south has always appealed to me, as if it contains the nation’s shadow–which it may.  The part of me that delights in horror and dark fantasy gets revved up in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Mississipi, Louisiana, too.

This trip promises to be fruitful from a creative perspective.  I’m doing what I can to expose myself to as much of it as I can.\

The Kindle, Amazon’s electronic book.

Yep.  I bought one.  You would not believe how much it lightened my baggage.  I have 12 books loaded on it right now and have finished two already.  It has already become my most appreciated possession.

When I finish one book, I just move the cursor up the menu and click on the next one.  Like having a portable library right along with you.  Plus, books are cheaper in electronic form.  About half what they are in printed form.  That means a reading junkie like me will easily save back the cost of the device.

Still rainy and chilly here.  Good for atmosphere.