Category: Travel

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Carolina II: Support your Local Artists & Bookstores

One thing we can argue about nearly as much as politics is the arts. You enjoy a nice country ballad; I love a nice bit of Bach on the harpsichord. You like that singer with the nasal whiny voice; I like the painter that throws splotches all over the canvas. I look forward to curling up with a nice meaty Henry James novel; you would like to get through more than two paragraphs on your lunch hour. We don’t always feel the same way about the same artists. But we can probably agree on one thing.

Life would be pretty bleak without the arts.

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North Carolina artist Kathryn Abernathy

This theme kept popping up in North Carolina last week as we drove through the windy Appalachian hills. Our friends live near Blowing Rock which was the definition of Quaint. Small towns in America work hard at developing that proper Quaintness – enough shops to wander in and out of, a nice park or two, a  restaurant with good fried pickles, and the best place to get ice cream. Along with the good ice cream and the old-fashioned barrels of candy, the coolers with Cheerwine and SunDrop, there was a lot of local art that was pretty darn good. Continue reading “Carolina II: Support your Local Artists & Bookstores”

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Carolina on My Mind

In my mind I’m gone to Carolina
Can’t you see the sunshine?
Can’t you just feel the moonshine?
Ain’t it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind?
Yes, I’m gone to Carolina in my mind.

James Taylor forgot to mention the trees. North Carolina is a state full of trees.

I’m used to the hills of my Bay Area home, but those are spread with golden grasses that turn gray in the dry of the late summer, where these are waves of rounded green mounds that undulate out to the horizon. We were bombing down the Blue Ridge Parkway all last week, traveling between Raleigh, Charlotte, Boone and Asheville, a trip full of conversation and scenery, heavy on the friendship and light on the tourism.

Isoprene-happy oak trees
The blue of the Western Appalachians is a little unique, according to www.ourstate.com, and can be traced to the isoprene-happy oak trees that make up most of the forests. The hydrocarbon isoprene is produced by these trees in part to protect themselves from excess heat. The hydrocarbon mixes with other molecules and acts like a kind of smog to create the haze of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Continue reading “Carolina on My Mind”

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Road Trips: America in Miniature

“Kathy”, I said,
As we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh,
Michigan seems like a dream to me now.
It took me four days
To hitch-hike from Saginaw.
“I’ve come to look for America.”
–Simon & Garfunkel, America

Everybody journeys. Everyone takes trips on roads, travels to see new worlds, journeys of self-discovery and trips to the store, commutes to work and visits to see family. But there is a particularly American invention – the Road Trip.

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via responsecrafting.com

The United States is a large country with substantial variation in climate and terrain, crisscrossed with interstates that allow travel through and to nearly all of it, though it takes hour or sometimes days.  In early civilized history up until the 20th century, towns were near waterways whether in Europe, Africa, or North America.  Now they are all aligned along interstate hubs or around airports and the arterial traffic system is perfectly designed for long car journeys.

Continue reading “Road Trips: America in Miniature”