Cross-Country Route Confusion

Road tripping made this woman very happy. Photo courtesy of R.P. Piper via Flickr (Creative Commons license).

Nearly 4 million miles of roads. That’s what we’ve got here in the U.S. Those of you who have been reading Flyover America for a while (or, even, for just a post) probably realize that a number like 4 million presents a problem if you’re a Flyover America type in the midst of conjuring up a cross-country road trip. Because, of course, an FAer thinks there’s a story down every road. Well, almost every road. A few are dead ends.

As I mentioned last week, I just gave up my NYC digs. At the moment, I’m happily writing from the family not-an-estate in the highly misunderstood state of New Jersey. OK, some of the criticism is justified. (More on all of that in the coming months.) But, though I have yet to buy a car, I’ve already started dreaming up my first cross-country road trip. I’m 39. It’s about damned time I took that drive. (Sophie took her first at 19. I feel so lame. I know. It’s not a competition. But still.)

My plan: drive from Jersey to Alaska next spring and then back the other way in the late summer/early fall. That’s the dream, man. (Ooh, is there a VW Bus in my future?) But, already, route confusion is pulling me this way and that. I know I’ll skitter around a bit and take a wibbly-wobbly route to visit friends, and see this, that, the other thing, but…I’d like to start with somewhat of a plan.

So, your favorite cross-country routes? Discuss. Oh and…see you for dinner when I’m out there?

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Hotel Rooms We’d Love to Get Stranded In

There’s a lot of go-see-do to travel. But, every now and again, weather puts the kibosh on out and about plans. (Phew.) Here, some rooms we’re happy to get stranded in.

Today’s Three-fer Friday guest writer is Hilary Nangle. When it comes to the go-see-do (and get stranded) of Maine, she’s our must-read writer of choice. Author of Moon Coastal Maine, Moon Acadia National Park, and Moon Maine, Hilary also writes for publications including Yankee and The Boston Globe, and blogs about Maine (and more). Beyond the writing, she’s also just a truly enjoyable person to know. Consider yourself lucky if you ever end up sitting next to her at a meal.

As for those rooms worth getting weathered into…

Photo by Hilary Nangle

Please, please, strand me at the Camden Harbour Inn. I could survive for days, perhaps weeks, in the living room/lounge of this contemporary, color-infused, year-round gem in Camden, Maine. Once a stodgy, overly floral Victorian summer hotel, its Dutch owners have reinvented it as a boutique inn with a European vibe, comfy yet stylin’ furnishings and service that sings. Fireplace? Check. Telescope trained on those stormy seas? Yup. Plentiful sweets and hot drinks? Of course. Free Wi-fi and a guest computer? You betcha. A library of intriguing reads, along with glossy mags and daily papers? Yes, yes, and yes. But wait, it gets even better: Add a lounge menu with choices ranging from lobster spring roll to a Vietnamese sandwich.–Hilary

Photo by Dan Hershman via Flickr (via Creative Commons)

I stayed at the Overleaf Lodge in Yachats, Oregon just once for just one night but dream frequently of returning … specifically for bad weather. Its location makes it ideal for the popular Pacific Coast pastime of storm watching. All the Overleaf’s rooms have ocean views for wave (or whale) watching. Many rooms have balconies, some have window seats, some have fireplaces and breakfast is always included. And even if you’re not fortunate enough to catch a storm, the 804 trail passes right in front of the hotel, so you can settle for hiking and beachcombing. Not a bad consolation prize.–Sophia

After the Iditarod passed through. Photo by Jenna Schnuer

Unless you’re running a dog team or want to bump along a couple hundred miles on a snowmobile, the only way to get to–and from–Alaska’s Winterlake Lodge is by ski plane. I love a tiny plane but didn’t mind–nope, not one bit–when my flight back out of Winterlake got full-on weathered out. It gave me an extra day to hang out in chef and co-owner Kirsten Dixon‘s kitchen. Though the lodge’s comfy den beckoned, I put in overtime delighting in the warmth of Dixon’s kitchen, and chatting with her about the how-tos of turning out seriously gourmet grub in the Alaskan wilderness.–Jenna

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Focus on America’s National Parks: Images of Yellowstone

It has finally arrived. Yesterday, the first episode of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea provided the best excuse in recent memory to avoid all to-dos, to step away from the musts, to ignore text messages and e-mails.

The show began with a quote from John Muir: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.”

I thought back on some of the beauty I’ve experienced in the National Parks. The day at Denali when, with just a few other people around, I watched a moose taking a midday bath with her newborns. The afternoon a foghorn broke through the quiet of a hike in Acadia National Park. And the hundreds of images I focused on during a three-day photography workshop in Yellowstone National Park. Here, some of the photos I settle into when I need to pull back from daily life. I hope you enjoy them.

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From Microbrews to Margaritas: Memorable Bars Across America

Some people pick one and stick with it through a trip (or a lifetime). Some beeline for the trendiest/newest/hippest this or that. Other folks play fast and loose, stumbling into every semi-interesting place they happen upon. Whatever. There’s no one right way to choose a bar.

As of this Friday Three-fer, a new Flyover America tradition takes off. Each week a guest writer will add his or her voice to the chorus with Jenna and Sophia. First up: John Patrick Pullen, a Portland-based writer and, at some of the city’s finest pubs, Quizmaster.

The move from Boston to Portland, Oregon was no small decision for me. Like most Bostonians, I routinely referred to the city as “The Hub of the Universe.” But in Portland, my (then) fiancee introduced me to the city’s microbrew scene at McMenamins Kennedy School. Back when smoking was legal, their detention lounge was where all the ashtrays lived. While McMenamins is admittedly Portland’s most mainstream microbrewer (their mini-mall based locales have caused local beer snobs to revolt), they pair their tasty suds like their Ruby Ale and Terminator Stout (I order up a half-n-half mix called a ‘Rubinator’) with Grateful Dead-eque murals and other assorted whimsey.–John

Photo by purotic via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Tom and I walked a couple of blocks from the Hotel Albuquerque to Old Town, where everything was dark except the unpromisingly named High Noon Restaurant and Saloon. We took a shot, securing a table in the small lounge and ordering margaritas and spinach dip. The room, in a 1785 adobe building, was warmly lighted, furnished with sturdy wooden tables and Santos tucked in nooks. A group of attractive, artsy, middle-aged New Mexicans—all flowing clothes and funky glasses and earrings—occupied a cluster of nearby tables. Between sets, the classical guitarist performing in the restaurant joined them and played guitar. New Mexico chic and great margaritas.— Sophia

Over time I’ve realized I love something no real traveler is supposed to love: hotel bars. It’s the chance criss-crossing of all those lives. But the bar has to have character and a distinct lack of sleazebags. (I’m not talking about airport hotel bars here.) Though I spent just a few hours there, the elegant Fletcher’s at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage made an impression. A long polished wood bar. A bartender who wasn’t just talking to pass time; he was a great storyteller–and listener. And, because the hotel celebrates the legendary explorer through art and other goodies, you even get to take in some history and culture on the way to the restroom.— Jenna

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Flashbulb Memories, Take One

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With cameras on cell phones, cameras in lipstick containers and cameras on the back of Toyota Priuses, it’s practically un-American in this day and age to travel without the means to photograph. In the spirit of capturing images from the road, we thought we’d each share some of our favorite travel photos and the stories behind them.

This isn’t a one-time thing, mind you. Check back once a month for another installment of what we’re calling “Flashbulb Memories.” We admit that we didn’t coin that phrase ourselves: A Flashbulb Memory is a moment so emotionally powerful, that you remember it vividly. For example, many people have flashbulb memories of where they were when they learned of the attack on the World Trade Center, or when President John F. Kennedy was shot. Here are some of ours.

If only it were better than crunches.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? Except when you’re drunk, meandering around the mall at the top of the Stratosphere and you (quite literally) stumble into a bunch of folks filming an Infomercial. Yes, that’s my belly in this picture. And yes, I’m wearing an AbTronic, one of those (ill-fated) abdominal electro-stimulators that promised to help you shed pounds without doing squat. My buddy had enough sense to shoot pictures during filming as evidence of the event. Months later, I saw myself on TV as “Matt from New York,” extolling the virtues a gizmo I didn’t even own. —Matt

No Orcas, but still an adventure

Dodgy late-May weather, a shut-tight car rental office, and a pebbled parking lot that turned my smooth-rolling suitcase into a wobbily clunker had me questioning my visit to Cordova, Alaska. My mood improved greatly after arriving at Orca Adventure Lodge, a fish cannery-turned-hotel that sits on Prince William Sound’s Orca Inlet. A few hours after dinner, I was treated to this view. Instantly, like turned to love. And that was before I even got to see the sea otters playing out in the water —Jenna

Storm clouds over Woodward

Those storm clouds over Woodward, Oklahoma helped create the thick red mud in which a truck full of birdwatchers got stuck. Our group stopped to help out, and while the big strong men among us (and one scrappy woman) went to help push the truck, I turned and saw the light on this red, white and blue scene, which struck me as beautiful. Still does. The truck was soon freed and we were on our way–Sophia

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Lining Up Happy

Flippering Out. Photo by Jenna Schnuer.

Since writing about author Gretchen Rubin and her upcoming book The Happiness Project, I’ve been a now-and-again reader of her blog. A read of it today turned up a post about keeping a non-journal of one liners about happy times. Rubin writes: “Studies show that recalling happy times helps boost happiness in the present.” OK, sign me up–in Flyover America style, of course.

1. Watching dolphins leap behind a boat in the back bays of Gulf Shores, Alabama.

2. Flying over a moose on an ultralight flight outside of (and high above) Fairbanks, Alaska.

3. Making my first purchase during the Highway 127 Sale (a groovy 1960s belt buckle featuring a scene from Alice in Wonderland).

4. Hanging out with Cool Dog, a white-as-snow sled dog, in Door County, Wisconsin.

5. Diving under a bigger-than-expected wave on the waters off of Long Branch, New Jersey.

6. Surfing a wave, albeit briefly, on the last run of my first surfing lesson.

7. Getting a sneak peek at some of Nashville-based crayon-crazy artist Herb William‘s newest work.

8. Hiking in Acadia National Park–and hearing foghorns from far off in the distance.

9. Beating back my skiing-related post-knee surgery fear of downhill sports during a snowboard lesson in Utah.

Yours?

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It Happened In A National Park

Pretty soon everyone is going to be talking about our national parks; Ken Burns’ latest project is a six-parter called The National Parks: America’s Best Idea and will debut on PBS on September 27.

We’ll be watching, for sure, but in the meantime we decided to get a jump on the chatter with our own national parks memories—three little moments that left a lasting impact.

Photo by Jenna Schnuer

The first day of a photography workshop in Yellowstone National Park served up bubbling mudpots, hot springs with colors that would shame the brightest wildflowers, and plenty of elk. Old Faithful was ahead but, in my mind, it was the stuff of kitsch and cartoons. I wasn’t excited. With my camera set on the spot, I waited for the geyser to blow. Ho hum. Whatever. And then she did. Thousands of gallons of boiling water shot more than 100 feet into the air. Instantly, the earth owned her again. She was released from kitsch and cartoons. She was beautiful. —Jenna

Mid-July 2003 in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park. It’s 4 a.m., but the sky is bright. I’m alone in a kayak near the Beardslee Islands, floating, when a juvenile male humpback surfaces ten feet from my starboard bow. Beneath the water’s surface, his basketball-sized eye looks straight up at me as if to say, “Yo.” Then, the blow: putrid, soggy air from the animal’s lungs bursts from the blowhole, soaking me in an instant. We float together, side-by-side, for what seems like an eternity. Then, without warning, he arches his back, salutes with his flukes and sinks to the depths.–Matt

Photo NPS/Eric Leonard

I’m doing a little solo day-hiking in Texas’ Big Bend National Park among the fragrant pines high in the Chisos Mountains. I find a outcropping with a view and sit to contemplate life for a few minutes when a hawk—I’m not bird-savvy enough to know what kind, the park is home to several—flies by just overhead. I’ve never been this close to a hawk in flight and the stately swoosh … swoosh of the powerful wings moving against the air is startling, stirring, and unforgettable.–Sophia

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I Want to Go, er, Live There

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Boston's Liberty Hotel

With apologies to Tina Fey for, above, bastardizing her character’s now famous line, here, the hotels/B&Bs/other-places-with-beds-that-aren’t-our-homes that we would like to move into permanently.

Jenna’s Picks

Few hotels–if any–merge whimsy, history, and upscale delights like Boston’s Liberty Hotel, which is partially housed in a former jail. I would spend my Saturday mornings doing Yoga in the Yard and my evenings sipping cocktails at Alibi, the drunk tank turned bar.

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt as welcomed in anybody’s home–including my own–as I did at Grand View Bed and Breakfast in Fairbanks, Alaska. Owners Dave and Clodagh Thompson are, quite simply, the warmest kindest B&B owners I’ve ever come across. And the full Irish breakfast? Yes, please.

If I could only choose one breakfast and one place to eat it for the rest of my life, it would be room service oatmeal at Nashville’s Hermitage Hotel. I would vary the routine a bit by, some days, bathing in the super-deep bathtubs before breakfast and, other days, after.

Sophia’s Picks

The Wildcatter Ranch Resort in Graham, Texas

I could easily settle down in one of the suites at the Wildcatter Ranch Resort and Spa in Graham, Texas, where the porches, pool and hot tub share a phenomenally soothing view of rolling Texas hills.

I spent a couple of snowy days curled up by a gas fire in a cottage nestled in the forest at the Inn and Spa at Cedar Falls in Logan, Ohio. The memory remains one of the happy places I go in my head when I need mental escape.

Keyah Grande, an eight-room mansion retreat on 4,000 spectacular acres in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, is pleasantly over-the-top (each room is decorated in the theme of a different country); it’s like visiting a filthy-rich relative’s summer cottage. The flying deck gives me vertigo, but the pool view is perfect.

Matt’s Picks

Solage Calistoga

Situated along the route of the old Pony Express, The Lodge at Red River Ranch outside of Teasdale, Utah, blends rustic and regal perfectly. My heaven: curling up with a book in front of the crackling fire in the three-story Great Room.

Every year my wife and I spend time at Solage Calistoga, a klatch of individual (and uber-modern) cottages nestled on the outskirts of Calistoga, California. We ride the complimentary bikes all over town. Then we luxuriate in the spa.

Even if it weren’t one of the most eco-friendly resorts on Earth, The Lodge at Sun Ranch in Cameron, Montana, would still be among my faves for its great fishing, sustainable cuisine, and the best bird-watching outside of Alaska.

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Sizing Down

Flying out of big airports these days can be so impersonal—the ticketing kiosks, those different boarding groups, and the newsstand cashiers that hardly speak English. With the same Cinnabons and Starbucks, the big boys also look and feel the same.

Perhaps this is why I love departing and arriving at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, California, near my home.

Never mind that the airport itself (Code: STS) is named after the guy who invented Peanuts. The place is so tiny that both security and the boarding area reside in a double-wide trailer, and said trailer doesn’t even open until 45 minutes before the scheduled departure time.

I was reminded of how small my local airport is recently, when, on a ho-hum puddle-jumper flight to Los Angeles, the lone TSA guard stopped me in my tracks.

“Mr. Villano, we haven’t seen you in a few weeks,” he said. “Did your wife have the baby yet?”

“Um, not yet,” I replied, dumbfounded that he a) remembered me, b) remembered my wife and c) remembered that my wife was pregnant. “And it’s good to see you, too.”

This fellow and I proceeded to hold up the security line and cook the kasha (that’s “chitchat,” for you gentiles) for the next two minutes, covering subjects ranging from the weather (of course) to the on-field struggles of Barry Zito, a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants.

Then, I was off.

I’ve experienced similar small-town charm in other small-town airports. Years ago, for instance, at the Gustavus Airport (Code: GST) in Gustavus, Alaska, the same woman who helped unload baggage from my Alaska Airlines flight kindly drove me to the Glacier Bay Lodge, saving me the 7-mile hike in the rain.

Last year, at the Helena Regional Airport (Code: HLN) in Helena, Montana, the bartender at Captain Jack’s Bistro & Bar bought me a drink while I waited for a buddy to come pick me up.

Elsewhere in this great nation, I’ve turned a rental car attendant into a hiking partner at Canyonlands Field (Code: CNY) in Moab, Utah, and been hugged by a pilot at Owensboro, Daviess County Regional Airport (Code: OWB) in Owensboro, Kentucky. (Don’t ask about the hug; it involved a nail-biter of a UK game.)

The bottom line is that while the spiraling economy and a trend toward homogeneity has sucked all the character and romance out of the international airport experience, I am happy to report that eccentricity and joie de vivre remains alive and well at small airports across the country.

I’ll now pay extra to avoid the big-boys. Call me crazy, but that little extra panache goes a long, long way.

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The Great Scent Escape

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Stonington, Maine. Photo by Jenna Schnuer.

It was best to stand with your heels hanging off the edge of the concrete, your toes just touching the metal of the vent. We pushed our faces forward a bit to catch the stream of air escaping the vent behind the library at Boston University. It smelled of books. It was the condensed version of the library’s extensive collection of volumes on African history, of the complete works of Shakespeare, of the texts on contract law, broadcast journalism, and biographies of key members of the Dada art movement. They had all joined together and moved to the vent. It was their great scent escape.

It’s been years since I thought about that vent. It was behind the library, on a grassy strip that most students favored for daytime bikini bathing but that my friends and I took for our own at night. It grabbed hold of me yesterday, the place and scent so right there, when a friend posted a link to “in the library,” a perfume by Christopher Brosius.

Though scent frequently pops to mind when I think about the steamed lobsters, cinnamon rolls, or warm biscuits I’ve devoured while on the road, I rarely think of the scents connected to places. So, yesterday, I closed my eyes and just tried to open myself up to the aromas–good and bad–attached to past trips. While I didn’t set a rule for myself that I could only waft away to U.S. locations, I noticed that those were the scent memories that filtered in first and strongest. There was a brief thought of the migraine-inducing bus exhaust fumes from a trip into the mountains of Ecuador but it felt distant. The scent of used goods along the route of the Highway 127 Sale. The brininess of the waterfront in Stonington, Maine, just after the sun had slipped out of sight. The slight muskiness of the pilot who took me up in an ultralight plane just outside Fairbanks, Alaksa. Those poured in and, along with them, a quick mental video show of each trip.

Smell is one of the greatest memory triggers around yet it rarely plays a role when people tell each other about their travels. We can show each other photos. We can play back the sounds of a place. But to really get a person to understand the scents of a place, they have to go there on their own or buy a high-end scented candles. So, perhaps, scent is a secret key back to places we love. It lets us keep part of the trip just for us. Moving forward, I’ll be sure to take more notice of it.

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