Posted on January 15, 2015 under Thursday Tidbits with one comment

One of the nicest people I met on the trip

 

 

I met and chatted with this most charming man outside of a hotel in downtown San Francisco. This hotel was a bit pricier than the one we stayed in! By the way, if you happen to go San Fran some day, let me give you a hotel tip. The Hotel Beresford on Sutter Street is the best deal in the city. It is quite expensive to stay in a hotel in the downtown core of any major city. By any standard, this hotel is a bargain.  It is a quaint old hotel and the rooms are immaculate. It is literally a two minute walk to get on a cable car that will take you to Fisherman’s Market. One other thing. Valet parking is a must but for $30. it’s a steal as parking anywhere else is very expensive. The room rate includes a continental breakfast. The day we were there they had fresh croissants and muffins along with an array of fresh fruit and better than average coffee.

And why am I passing along this tip? Well, I am planning to write an epic essay about my epic journey with my son. Throughout the piece , I plan to give some of my own “travel tips.” For example, at all costs, avoid traveling through Los Angeles during supper rush hour. It will definitely spoil your supper. Another practical piece of advice: do not attempt to cross the desert with anything but a full tank of gas! And absolutely, positively, do not attempt a long road trip without a GPS. We had one ( fortunately ) and it made the trip infinitely easier.

This story will take me a bit of time to put together. It won’t surprise you that I kept a daily log on the trip. Tentatively, I plan to call the story “ Transcontinental Travel Tips: A Journey With My Son.” When I am done, I promise I won’t mention the trip again.

One of my concerns along the way was that I was putting too many posts on my website and on Facebook. It can be grating when people post pictures from exotic destinations that scream “ I am here having tons of fun and you are home shivering your ass off.” Nothing could be further from the truth in my situation. I write stories and you can’t go on a long trip without coming up with story ideas.

I was very happy my first day back to work when I bumped into a few people on the street who thanked me for sharing my stories and Peter’s exquisite pictures.

Coming up this weekend is the story “ A Taste of Bourbon” which describes New Year’s Eve in the French Quarter in New Orleans.  I never thought I could stay up until midnight but I’m glad I did in order to witness this spectacle.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Posted on January 8, 2015 under Thursday Tidbits with one comment

I left my heart ( and my wallet ) in San Francisco

 

 

My big transcontinental trip with Peter is drawing to a close. And what a trip it has been. We have travelled through two provinces and 17 states. Most of the time has been spent in the car which is understandable when you’ve put on 10,000 kilometers. But, from time to time, we stopped to smell the roses ( and cow manure…more on that later! ), do some sightseeing and take lots of pictures. Spending close to 10 hours a day in a vehicle gives you a lot of time to think.

The last few days travelling through New Mexico, Arizona and California have been a real eye opener. We had scarcely crossed the Texas/New Mexico border when we saw the largest cattle pen imaginable. We actually smelled it before we saw it as it was a rendering plant. There were thousands upon thousands of animals and the conditions they were spending their last hours seemed less than desirable. I am not a member of PETA but it does cause one to think.

The scenery in New Mexico and Arizona is absolutely breathtaking with deserts sharing space with majestic mountains.

One of our travel days ended in Yuma, Arizona which is right at the border of California and next door to Mexico. I have come to the conclusion that when we win the lottery (! ), Yuma would be a lovely place to spend the winter months. The climate seems ideal and it appears to be a very well kept city. They even have sidewalks in the areas off the Interstate ramps which is an anomaly. In most places, when you come off the highway to an area with service stations, hotels, food joints and shopping malls, there are no sidewalks. I don’t know what the planners are thinking. How is one supposed to get from the hotel to a restaurant crossing several lanes of traffic with no signals and nowhere to walk? Baffling.  But the good folks in Yuma seem to have figured this one out.

On the morning we were departing for California, I received an e-mail from some folks from back home who winter in Yuma. They were wondering if we happened to be passing through the area. As it turns out, our hotel was about a drive and a 7 iron from their house. Even more amazing, these same people were the subjects of one of the stories in my new book. We arranged to meet at a McDonald’s ( which has become the new coffee shop for seniors in the United States. ) We spent a delightful hour and they gave us several tourist tips. The problem with a whirlwind trip is that there is so much to see and so little time.

We did take their advice and left the city via the famous “veggie fields.” These fields stretch for miles in every direction and produce a massive bounty of fresh produce for the continent … it is reputed to be the largest supplier. The Mexican border was just 8 miles away. We had decided early in the trip, that a side trip to Mexico was not in the cards because of time constraints and safety issues. We were assured by Eleanor and Richard that this one , at Los Algodones, was perfectly safe. This small town has more dental clinics and laser eye surgery clinics than all the Tim Hortons stores in Canada. And they do heart surgery. Apparently this is where Danny ( “millions’ ) Williams, former premier of Newfoundland, had his heart repairs done, a while back. Americans, and many others from around the world, come here as the prices are 80% lower than in their home countries.

We parked our car on the U.S. side and walked across the border. We saw the spectacle, had lunch and left two hours later. ( No dental work, Dan! )

And then we came upon a sight that completely caught us off guard. Just inside the California border there is a stretch of land that looks like it was transplanted from the Sahara Desert. The Imperial Sand Dunes stretch for forty miles and are five miles in width. Jaw dropping.

We agreed to take a pass on a planned stop in L.A. ( Los Angeles … not Lake Ainslie! ). However, we still had to pass through East L.A. and as fate would have it, our timing could not have been worse. It was rush hour and we were driving into a blinding sun. Thankfully ( mercifully! ), Peter was driving and he did a masterful job navigating the chaos. We overnighted in Bakersfield… not to be confused with Bakersfield, Texas where we ran out of gas. Besides having the world’s largest ice cream plant ( which we didn’t get to tour ), it is also an agricultural community and yes, thousands upon thousands of cows call this home.

The next four hours was mesmerizing as fruit trees by the millions crowded the landscape. Did you know that 80% of all the almonds in the world are grown here? Besides almonds, they grow every kind of citrus fruit. There is a severe drought going on here and the farmers are screaming bloody murder about water restrictions.

And then that familiar smell hit us. Amongst all of the fruit trees came the unmistakeable smell of cattle. I love going to the dairy farms in Antigonish. They are clean, the cows are well looked after and the scale of the operations are small. The smell at these farms is one we know and appreciate.

We came into an area not filled with trees and there it was: the largest holding area for cattle in the States ( and possibly the world ). There were 100,000 cows according to the Google search. These cows produce 150 million pounds of beef annually, much of it for the “In and Out” hamburger chain in the U.S. After witnessing the conditions, I am not apt to try one of those burgers any time soon.

Early in the afternoon, we crossed the Bay Bridge and slid into San Francisco. We rode the cable cars, did a 2.5 hour sightseeing tour , including passage across the Golden Gate Bridge and had a fabulous dinner at an Italian restaurant two doors down from our hotel. And speaking of hotels, if you happen to come to San Francisco, you should check out the Beresford Hotel on Sutter Street. It is a boutique hotel and the rates are easily the lowest in the city core where you can easily pay $350- $500 a night. We paid $119 + $30 for valet parking. And yes, all you old hippies, our sightseeing tour took us through Haight Ashbury.

Yesterday we spent the entire day in San Francisco and bid farewell to the city as the sun started its descent over the Golden Gate bridge.

Have a great day and thanks for joining us on the drive. It was good to have company from home.

Posted on January 1, 2015 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

One of the may jazz bands in the French Quarter

 

By the time you read this, New Years Eve will have come and gone and you will be staring at another long list of resolutions. These will last all of three weeks if you’re lucky.

We changed up our plans yesterday on Tuesday. We had every intention of spending part of a day in Memphis Tennessee but decided to head south to New Orleans so that we could catch New Years Eve. And why, pray tell, did we not make an appearance at Graceland? Well, we met Elvis in Nashville… in person and yes, he is alive and well. All these reports of his untimely demise in 1977 are simply not true.

Before leaving Nashville, we toured the famous Ryman Auditorium where all the greats in Country and Western music cut their teeth. We actually got to stand on the stage. The building is simply amazing and I guess the acoustics are among the best in the world. We then moseyed on over to Gruhn guitars. If you are a guitar junky, then you know the name well. In addition to an amazing collection of guitars and mandolins, they have a separate floor of the building for vintage guitars. You can only access it by private elevator in the company of a staff person. Peter charmed them into letting us go take a peek. He got to play an older Martin and the price tag was $37,000. Earlier in the day, they sold one for $100,000 and some Gibson’s have gone for as much as $350,000. Just a wee bit out of our price range.

Our last stop before leaving Nashville was another venerable institution… the Bluebird Café. Many an aspiring artist got their start in this small, non descript building in a strip mall. It is far removed from the hustle and bustle of Broadway. Unfortunately, they weren’t opening until the supper hour so we didn’t get a look inside.

Our detour took us through the heart of Alabama and Mississippi. We passed through Birmingham and I gave Peter a brief history lesson ( with the aid of Google ) about the civil rights movement  and all the troubles back in 1963 when a peaceful protest turned ugly when dogs and water canons were turned on young people. Martin Luther King was jailed and only got out through the intervention of President Kennedy. It is hard to believe how African Americans were treated back then. We eased off the highway at Tuscaloosa, home of the “Crimson Tide” football team at the University of Alabama.

We drove the final few hours to New Orleans yesterday. We spent the afternoon in the French Quarter and it was bedlam. Besides the usual chaos which I’ve heard about, there was the specter of  New Year’s Eve a few hours away and the College football championships at the Superdome tomorrow. ( Alabama vs. Ohio State. ). The streets were teeming with revellers. Lots of great street musicians ( mostly jazz. ) It will be too late to post, but we planned to go back to the French Quarter to see the  New Year arrive.

The very best to all of you in 2015!