Graceland, Nashville, & Memphis

I went to Memphis because I’d heard of it and it was in a state I hadn’t yet explored. I had no idea what was there but someone suggested I go see Graceland. OK. So I parked at a little strip mall right next to Graceland and spared myself $10 parking. Oddly enough I was the only one smart enough to figure this one out. I perused the stores… ELVIS ELVIS ELVIS! And nothing but. So much tacky and garish things… I wandered over to Graceland a few yards away. This place was by far the honkiest place I’ve ever been and likely will ever be, at least I damn well hope so. People swarmed the place and paid $34 a person to see Elvis’ mansion and airplane. Seventy year old women with Elvis tatooes teetered in and out of the gift shops clutching bags filled with glitter and shot glasses. I stared at the postcards… Young Elvis, old Elvis, civilian Elvis, military Elvis, thin Elvis, puffy Elvis, Elvis in normal clothes, Elvis giving a young Elton John some fashion hinters, Elvis, Elvis, Elvis!

I can’t say I was ever that fond of Elvis. Why was I here again? Better yet why is the blasphemous Harley shop down the street listening to Cher? I bought a few postcards, if only so I could write indecent things on them…

While I was looking at the postcards I noticed one said “Beale Street, Home of the Blues!” I insisted on going there to even the honkiness out a bit. So I went to Beale Street, which wasn’t terribly far away, and I noticed immediately it beat Graceland hardcore. There was a voodoo/headshop here, BB King’s Blues Club, lots of places to eat, and music notes like the Hollywood stars lining the sidewalk with notable Bluesmen (and a couple of women.) I took a photo of BB King’s note, and was taken inside by a barker who offered to show me Lucille. So I went in.. and looked at one of four replicas of Lucille. He told me Lucille was BB King’s guitar which he auctioned off for charity, but which 4 replicas were made of. It was signed by all sorts of interesting people and the guy told us how Lucille got her name. Apparently BB King had been in a bar fire. He got out of the burning building only to dive back into it to save his guitar. Later he found out the fire started when two men were fighting over a woman. One smashed open a bottle of booze and threw a match to it. The woman’s name was Lucille and if Lucille was good enough to fight over than that was the perfect name for the guitar!

I had a soda and chatted up the bar tender for awhile. Being a hot day with little people in here he seemed happy to talk. He’d done a number of interesting travels in his own day and I compared notes. I gave him a few ideas of where to go next. I left soon after to catch the parking meter. All and all it was a fun street with friendly down to earth people. Much better than Graceland. Less creepy too. A lot less creepy. Especially the voodoo shops. I’ll take those over eighty year women in skin tight leopard spots any day.

After Memphis I went to Nashville… why? Because. I went to find the Grand Ole Opry, again just to say I’ve been there as country music is yet another thing I’m not fond of (for the most part – a little Cash is always good though…) I found out it was currently being swallowed by a shopping mall that was being built and for the most part was gated and fenced off. The rest was blocked by trees. Whatever. I left not too broken hearted.

***I apologize for any missing photos and galleries as I continue to work getting Catching Marbles fully migrated to a new host. Please come back soon for restored photos and thank you for your patience!***

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July 14, 2011 0

Joliet – Route 66

I decided I should see the beginning of “the mother road,” historic (and now completely renamed) route 66. People in the Chicago area seemed clueless about this and by the time I hit Joliet it was too late for anything to be open except travel centers, gas stations, and a very bleh Wal-Mart. None of these places seemed to have anything. So I stayed in the area… went to the gift shop/museum in the morning. They had what I wanted, finally. I also stopped by the Route 66 park and the ice cream place with the Blues Brothers dancing on their roof. I guess the Blues Brothers was mostly filmed here or something… it was amusing. Even more amusing was the fact that the woman at the gift store said she often got Dutch people coming in there. This makes no sense to me. Why would America’s most nostalgic highway be of any interest to someone living in another country? What an odd concept! Oh well, to each their own. Route 66 is pretty damn cool. Someday I may drive it straight instead of weaving on and off it, backwards…

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July 12, 2011 0

Chicago

Chicago was a happy surprise. I had heard from several people who’d been there that it didn’t have much to offer, it was just a city. Of course there were museums, one containing the ever-controversial Sue the T-rex, but those all were pricey. I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to find a parking garage with a high enough allowance to let the Jeep and it’s on-roof luggage through, and which had its prices listed. All of them said something like $5 for the first 15 minutes! Or Early Bird Special! But none had their actual prices listed.

So I drove around and around and everyone seemed to be frowning. I figured, “Great, another one of those cities…” I finally settled in the first garage I initially saw after fighting the cab drivers ferociously. They all seemed to be angry old men waving their fists and cursing even though by far they were the ones causing the problems parking in the turning lanes and trying to pass people where they just were not legally allowed. I hadn’t seen drivers this bad since California…

I ended up walking to Millennium Park first. It was supposed to be a sculpture garden in the middle of the city, which is cool, but I wasn’t expecting much of it. The first thing I saw was two huge rectangles spewing water down their sides and women with their children lined up in bathing suits and swimming trunks to play in the massive water puddle the display created. The kids made swimming motions flopped on their bellies in the two inches of water and teenagers shoved each other in it to get their companions soaked. Everyone here was happy for the respite and I was suddenly joyous watching everyone too. The park also offered shade in many parks and there was a music festival going on so in every corner there was someone else playing something else. I was really enjoying myself here. It seems in every city I go to I find all that’s good in humanity within the artistic districts. Wherever there is art, there is hope.

From the Park I made my way down State street as I thought it was their main shopping road. I found a little Chicago gift shop. The place was absolutely tiny and packed with people. Someone accidentally broke a shot glass on the floor and everyone in the shop froze and looked up for an awkward 30 seconds. It was if everyone was expecting someone to come out with a tommy gun for killing a poor shot glass. Finally a guy came around with a broom and a pan and said it was OK. A woman broke the silence as well exclaiming, “Thank God it wasn’t one of our kids!”

I asked the people here where to get a good deep dish pizza and they told me that about a block away there was a place called Giordano’s. I was very hungry so I went up there. It was a nice little restaurant and had pizzas on its menu with the number of suggested people they could feed. The smallest, the ten inch, said it served one to two people. I thought this was a misestimation. Still when the pizza came out I was a bit shocked. I ate one piece and was STUFFED… however I paid $30 for this thing and its bad to be wasteful… I attempted a second slice, got halfway through and felt like I was going to ralph it back up. I couldn’t take anymore! So one and a half slices of pizza went uneaten. “Serves one to two people?! That is so not right! Should really say serves one to two Americans…”

After the pizza I took my bloated achy belly for yet another walk, this time ending up at a little artsy store called Arts and Artists. I asked the woman there were the actual main shopping street was and she was sweet enough to lead us to the window and point it out. So we walked across the bridge, took some pretty photos there, and entered a much different looking part of town. The buildings here were ornately decorated and absolutely beautiful. We ended up browsing through Utrecht, an art supply store I went into pretty much because of its business title which is a town in Holland. They had some really nice handmade papers and neat supplies. If only..

The next place I went into was a neat surprise. I walked into this place that said it was an art gallery but it was the size of a walk-in closet. A man was there saying this was just the entrance, that the rest of the gallery was on the fourth floor. He escorted me to the elevator and pushed 4. I was a bit nervous, having no idea what just happened really. I entered into one of the largest art galleries in the country. It was isolated from a mall that took up the rest of the building and it had some of the most exquisite art I could have possibly hoped for. There were blown glass flower shaped bowls for a good 15 grand. There were portraits, still lifes, scenery, and abstract paintings. I kept picking the same pieces until I absolutely fell for this one artist, who did not sign his or her work. There were maybe ten painting, all in black, orange, and a few other dull colors, which were swirled and allowed to drip like they were melting. It looked cosmic and absolutely amazing. These weren’t on the wall, carefully labeled with artist and price. These painting were stacked one against another on the floor leaning against the wall. They were unsigned and had no price tag. I had no idea how the most beautiful pieces could be treated in such a way. I wanted to know more but what did it matter? I knew I couldn’t afford it whatever it was… I asked the woman painting up at the top of the gallery about them but she was clueless and directed us towards sales. I don’t think she understood much English. Still I left that place feeling so peaceful and intellectually fulfilled.

I eventually walked back to the Jeep, by this time feeling sooo uncomfortable from the pizza and walking. I had walked so much I was feeling sore! As I got to the Jeep I hopped in only to realize I had to pay the ticket first at the little office before they’d let me out. This was only after I was unable to find an exit to the place and ended up on too high a level for the tall roof compartment. SCRATCH, I hit the ceiling. From here I had to drive the Jeep in reverse, hoping to god that no other cars would come by to screw up the process, until two levels down I found a two-way spot to exit! Finally! Always nice to start and end every city visit with something stupid and stressful…

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July 12, 2011 0

Mall of America – Minnesota

I wasn’t really planning to go to the Mall of America but seeing as I was in the area and it is the biggest mall in the US I decided to go check it out. The place was just as enormous as was expected but what I hadn’t anticipated is the center of the mall, the entire area of which was some sort of amusement park for about three million screeching children. Just like an auditorium the noise amplified and seeped into every corner of the mall. I wanted to get close to the guard rail and peer down to see what was going on down there but I valued keeping my hearing more.

The place was huge. It had no parking lot, just two parking garages which fortunately had a high enough clearance for the encumbered Jeep. I walked into the place from the big Macy’s store on one of it’s corners. The mall itself was four flours of clothing stores and tourist traps. I walked around each level and poked my head into only the stores I took an interest in. Shame I wasn’t still looking for cool clothes, this place had so many options! You could get butt-ugly purses at Guess, dress yourself up as a southern slut at Garage, morph into a highly perfumed cave bat at Abercrombie and Fitch, or actually go for something classy at some of the better stores. They did however have one store that really upset me, I think it was called Spoons Spa for Children. In its lobby in front of the window there was a tenish year old girl, leaning towards the tom-boy side of the spectrum, slouched uncomfortably in a chair, her mother cooing her on. If she could have slid straight to the floor she would have. That was the most miserable looking child I’d seen in a long time, staring at her nails like they were morphing her into some sort of freakish monster. I had two major issues with this place. 1) You shouldn’t be encouraging your daughters to look like tarted up whores before they even hit puberty. 2) You should not be beating into little girl’s minds that they have to be pretty and feminine to be successful. You might as well just tell them it’s nice to have a personality buuuut, the world would like you much better if you just acted like everyone else! Its disgusting and I can’t say I’d ever support it. In any event we were soon walking by anyway.

The LEGO store was packed full of people but the giant Lego statues of a tiger, a minotaur, and a bunch of other things, left me pretty impressed, as did the mix and match Lego stand that resembled a candy stand. Here you could get old fashioned Lego pieces like you saw sold in buckets in the good old days… not gimmicky kits but actual make-it-yourself styled blocks. Tempting. I’ve always been a bit bitter my mother never allowed us to have any as children, claiming she wasn’t going to get us anything of the sort because they were too painful to step on barefooted. She had a point, sort of, but I still think this sort of building toy is great for developing minds… and bored adults alike!

There was a Microsoft store, which was set up exactly like a less sterile-looking Apple store. It was a bit weird, like it was trying but in a half assed sort of way. Some of the stores in the mall had weird dummies, I guess to attract more people. One store had hot pink dummies, another store had intensely realistic dummies in life-like action poses that just coincidentally didn’t have any heads. I ended up in a store called Marbles. It was as if the place was made for this little blog. It was a little store stuffed full with brain teasing games and puzzles, many of which you could play with other people. They were very neat and a salesman was doing demonstrations. Everyone here looked like the kind of people I’d like to be around, and everyone was poking curiously at things, smiling. If I had money I probably would have bought the store out, it was just that neat.

I ended up walking through several Minnesota gift shops, none with anything at all interesting in them. I ended up buying a few postcards. After this I wandered around, eventually walking all four floors. There seemed a strong lack of little novelty shops and of course being a mall it didn’t have any of the shops I appreciate, you know the rock and fossil shops, Goodwill, antique stores, art galleries…

The mall was easily walked and had a killer food court with everything you could have possibly wanted. That was quite possibly the biggest highlight of my visit today – that and the ensuing battle over the Jeep’s parking space when I left.

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July 9, 2011 0

Mesa Verde National Park Colorado

While I was camping I came across a pamphlet to Mesa Verde. I had known there were old cliff dwellings somewhere in the area but I mistakenly thought it was Chaco Canyon and I skipped it the last time I was here because of that little mix-up. I decided to go check it out… it was phenomenal!

Driving in I asked the woman who took my entrance fee if it was a hike to see these things. She said yes but otherwise was of no help with my questions, only saying there was an additional guide fee to these places. I really hadn’t the energy to hike into the middle of nowhere and the idea of paying an additional fee for a guide annoyed and confused me. When I ended up at the visitor center everything was cleared up. Basically there is an auto road, free where you can see a lot from a fair distance. Then there is a cliff dwelling you can go into for free, but it is a short hike down and then back up the cliffs. The rest, the guided tours, were to get into all the other dwellings and have someone teach me about them. Each tour had a group of 50 people and were an additional $3 per site to see.

I went into the Spruce Tree House, the free cliff dwelling. There was lots of people. The structure was still a ruin but a very interesting one, there were windows and different rooms, corn grinding stones, and an underground kiva that you could get to by ladder. There was a line for that and I watched as an impossible amount of people file out of it like a clown car. I waited and went in after they came out, making jokes with the girl aside us. “This is the first time I have waited in line to get into someone’s basement.” It was a round and very dark room, reinforced by a number of logs. There wee little niches here and there but all and all it wasn’t that big of a place. After this group of people went in, probably numbering twenty or more, we all filed back out. It was interesting.

I walked back up the cliff. I was huffing and puffing. Hikes straight up hills and cliffs always get to me. When we got to the top we took some photos. I accidentally got in the way of an Asian couple taking a photo (I hadn’t seen them there.) I backed up, smiling.

I entered the museum after this and I fell in love with their black and white pottery which looked so much like some of my own artwork it was a bit eerie. Here they had all sorts of things on display, a set of dioramas displaying the engineering of the structures. The fact all the Indians were depicted wearing loin cloths made me quite tweaky because if they really dressed that way they’d freeze their asses off in winter! Surely enough the next display was on a bunch of clothes remnants archeologists had found… full clothing, head to toe. SIGH. White people are so racist. It reminded me of my grade school text books where the Native Americans celebrating the first Thanksgiving were also prancing around in loin cloths… as if! As much I am in support of such liberating clothing I’ve been in Massachusetts in November. Suffice to say if you don’t want to get frost bite on your balls you better cover up.

I also got to play “guess what the object is for” with a bunch of little items that still baffle anthropologists. I think I had good guesses… rings, game pieces, etc. It was a neat little museum.

Afterwards I decided to take the auto road, with thunder booming in the background and threatening me with rain. The first stop was an overlook of The Square House. It took all my breath away. It looked so perfect and serene sitting in the middle of a cliff. I pondered how they even got into that crevice to build it in the first place, it seemed to be a sheer surface both above and below it. The other tourists remarked how amazing it was and what a lovely surprise.

The next stop I got to see the evolution of the pueblos. They hadn’t always been on a cliff. Apparently the Anasazi were one of the first cultures out here to settle down and make permanent residences instead of living nomadically. At first they built homes underground. I got to see what was left of them. Some still had pottery in tact and venting systems. It was really neat.

I drove around and looked at these things, all under modern structures to keep them preserved. This was fortunate as by now it was pouring. The rain finally let up at the end of the road when I reached the Sun Temple. I could walk around the outside of it and then there was the most amazing thing of all… an overview of almost all the structures here in the park. There before me in the cliffs, hidden, were whole little villages and homes, scattered everywhere. It was like seeing something completely camouflaged come to life. I took photos and gawked for a very long while. The sheer engineering and beauty of these structures was more than enough to marvel at. I was very happy with the trip here.

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July 5, 2011 0

Dinosaur Footprints Arizona

There was a big tacky sign aside the road reading “Dinosaur footprints!” with a depiction of… Godzilla mixed with a critter and dressed up in psychedelic colors? I’m not sure what the artist was trying to say there… but with a sign that confused how could I not stop? I had a suspicion it was a tourist trap where unwary tourists disappear never to be heard from again. At the time this seemed a fair enough risk. It actually wasn’t bad! I was flagged down as I drove in by a guy standing next to a jewelry stand. He proceeded to take us on a tour, showing us all sorts of footprints from allosaur and velociraptor and two others that either weren’t identified or I forgot. Oddly no herbivorous footprints but I did see baby velociraptor footprints bounding along next to their mommy and one set of baby allosaur footprints ambling alongside its mommy. The neatest part was a track showing where a velociraptor was running full speed, jumped, and then slid in the mud before gaining its balance again. It painted the picture of an athletic and perhaps somewhat clumsy creature. I could imagine them playing in the mud a bit like a big cat.

I was also shown a dinosaur ribcage still embedded in the rock as well as a claw and lots and lots of dinosaur poop. I was given a chip of fossilized vegetation, a little coprolite (fossilized poo) and a sliver of petrified wood found here as well as some red rocks the locals use to make jewelry. I think this may have been just because the guy liked me (I showed genuine interest and didn’t bring any screaming destructive children.) At the end of the tour I was happy and gave our tour guide a tip/donation for the journey back into time. It was really rather neat! He also told me where to find some Anasazi petroglyphs that were about to be fenced off from the public due to vandalism. That pisses me right off by the way… vandals who destroy precious pieces of history like petroglyphs from the eleventh century from an extinct tribe! What the hell! Keep your kids on a fucking leash if they’re the type that does this! I’ll end my rant here.

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July 1, 2011 0

Monument Valley – Again – Utah

I kind of drove around Monument Valley / Valley of the Gods the first time I went through this area and thought it might be a good idea to actually drive through it this time. I was told the road was “primitive.” You could call it that… you could also call it a road best suited to horses. None of it was paved, and there were potholes half the size of the Jeep every three feet or so. You could almost see the shocks shoot off the car in front of you. In fact if you decide to drive this road you better have the toughest car you can think of and a carton of heavy cream. The cream is so you can have fresh butter by the end of the trip.

That all being said it was well worth the tribulations I put the poor Jeep through. It was gorgeous and you could see most attractions from various points just driving this loop road. There were viewpoints you could park and take photos of and all sorts of people attempting the trip. I also learned later that if you were not foolhardy enough to take your car they did offer bus and horse tours. I strongly suggest the horse tour as this area seems like it’d make a very relaxing ride and their prices were reasonable. $35 for a half an hour all the way up to $120 for six hours, which I think would have been superfluous. A horse could have probably easily walked by the bouncing groaning Jeep.

I took lots of photos, postcard quality and I have the feeling this was worth the trip back. I really shouldn’t have skipped it the first time!

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July 1, 2011 0

Ashfall Fossil Beds – Nebraska

The Ashfall Fossil Beds was something I found looking at the pamphlets in other fossil places. I had no idea what to expect but it looked neat.. Apparently they had a rhino barn. I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything but that’s alright, I was about to find out.

It was a $5 admission fee per person, plus an additional $4 Nebraska parking permit fee. I guess the Jeep needed admission too. The place was small but had very nice specimens of all sorts of things. They had the evolution of the horse hoof, a fossil turtle, and pieces of diseased bone fragments. Outside I walked a very short path listed with the evolutionary timeline. Soon I found myself in the rhino barn, lined with posters of weird creatures I’d never heard of that they’d found here. There were saber toothed deer, several species of American camels, tons of dog species that there’s no longer an equivalent to, several species of horse, and even a horned rodent that looked almost like a rhino and a gopher got together one strange dark evening.

At the end of the rhino barn three paleontology students worked to brush aside the sand and reveal a mass mortality of rhinos. Apparently a super volcano went off ten million years ago and killed the whole herd, adults, babies, even a fetus. As morbid as it was it was fascinating. Another student loitered at the sides, desperate to be doing something. She said if I had any questions just ask. Her high strung energy was a bit much but I suppose.

Outside was another small building, another girl worked here to pick tiny bones out of the sand, salamander vertebrae, bits of turtle shell, the toes of a desert mouse, the tail of a rattlesnake. I asked her if there was a favorite critter she likes to find. She replied the salamanders made her the happiest. We talked for a while. She seemed enthusiastic and sweet. After this I left. It was a neat little place, definitely worth checking out, even though it made me trek through the most boring stretch of grasslands in the country for hours on end…

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June 29, 2011 0

Mount Rushmore South Dakota

As a history buff and a lover of art you’d think I’d be thrilled to visit mount Rushmore. I mean it’s so…. big. Surely if someone had put that much time and effort into making a sculpture you can probably see in outer space it must be amazing, right? yeah, I wasn’t convinced of that either…. but still I find myself here.

I actually missed the exit to go to Mount Rushmore so I ended up going to its antithesis first. Crazy Horse Memorial is a Rushmore-esque mountain carving of the famed Native American leader, basically put up on the mountain in a moment of spite. Hey, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. The face is absolutely stunning. I just had hoped more of it was done than the face since it had boasted to someday be a full figure riding a horse. Nope… I saw it, I snapped a quick photo, I left.

Rushmore wasn’t much better. It was free to get into but $11 parking and no way you could see it unless you drove in as trees conveniently blocked the view everywhere else. I walked in. There were people and obnoxious children everywhere. Lining the way was a collection of flags representing each state. NH was faded to the point I’m not really sure what was supposed to be on it (and memory fails to remind me.) The sun was glaring so bad I could only see it by squinting real hard. My cameras were no more fond of this lighting. Still, the story behind it was impressive… one guy’s dream, to sculpt a whole frickin’ mountain… Of course he had to stop at just their heads but isn’t it the thought that counts? Perhaps if Crazy Horse is ever finished then Mount Rushmore might get a make over too. They had an enormous gift shop with overpriced goods, absolutely packed with people. No interesting magnets. The postcards were crap too. I didn’t even buy any. We left.

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June 29, 2011 0

Museum of the Rockies

The Museum of the Rockies reportedly has one of the best fossil collections of any museum in the country. I had wanted to check the place out for years.

Outside the museum there’s a large bronze T-rex skeleton. A cryptic sign to his side reads, “Don’t climb on Big Mike.” Inside I was given stickers to identify me as I paid my admission, they were in the form of a fingerprint that was doodled on to look like the head of a T-rex.

The first exhibit, and a rather large one, was a set of vivariums, all with bizarre frogs in them, many even I hadn’t seen before, with a few familiar faces peering through the poison dart frog and American bull frog habitats. They were adorable, even the odd pug-faced one. I realize frogs are great indicators of the health of an ecosystem and are studied by many universities but I still wasn’t expecting this.

I moved on and found a little local history section of the museum, complete with horse buggies, a Model A, a surplus army buffalo hide coat, buffalo hide mittens that looked like they’d been sloughed off Big Foot, and a number of strange devices you had to guess what they were. Here in their mock up of an 1880 kitchen I recognized a familiar tool, one part of my own kitchen, a set of hand crank egg beaters. Maybe I am old fashioned but I still far prefer these to the electric beaters most people have which are big, clunky, need room to store, and are a pain in the ass to clean. Besides, how else am I to work up my arm muscles if not making home-made whip cream?

Next I came across a section in the museum where photography was expressly denied. In the pamphlet it read, “Learn about the people who came before us.” I am not sure they could have worded that any worse but I winced going in. There were wax figures of Indians, and descriptions of their gods and beliefs. I don’t know… I can see why photography was forbidden. I had a strong feeling this would piss people off. Sort of like if I made an exhibit of an alter and put a plaque up about the crazy shit Catholics believe…

Finally I got into the dinosaurs, and fish, and sharks, and various other fossils. The largest T-rex head was here. She was impressive (though if I remember right had a male name, “Big Al” or something similar, poor dear.) One of the more impressive displays was that of the growth of a triceratops. They had the smallest little baby to the biggest adult. They also had baby miasaurs, and a baby pachycephalosaur which stole my heart. In the good old days paleontologists thought these baby dinosaurs were completely different species because they looked so drastically different from their parents, especially pachycephalosaur, whose babies were once called Draco Rex because they look exactly like a dragon. I was thrilled. I had known growing up that if you want to go into the paleontology field you get schooled here.. where research continues to be ground breaking, no pun intended. Montana remains the most fossil rich state in the union and routinely provides rarities like nesting sites and baby dinosaurs, rare sharks, and other dazzling little oddities. There were three women working in the lab here, dissolving rock in acid and extracting the bones. Another woman took some children around for a tour, making a big show of a dinosaur found with raptor teeth scattered all around it. Apparently it’d been lunch at some point in time.

I had fun, this place was neat, although I must admit they really overdid the feathers on some of the little dinosaur statues. One of them looked like a reptilian drag queen. C’est la vie.

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June 27, 2011 0