Yeah, Jenna and I are still out there exploring and loving the US of A. In fact, you can and should check in with Jenna’s epic cross-country adventure at Round-Trip America. I was able to join her for a few days in South Dakota and we had a grand time, simply grand. She’s doing tons of cool things, writing and posting gorgeous photos. Go see for yourself.
I also recently took a trip to Oregon, where I spent some time on the Oregon coast looking for storms. Big, exciting storms. Click here for a story about that trip. And Sophia in an Oregon Storm is a short video companion to the story, in which I am delightfully buffeted by the wind and rain. I love that kind of thing.
Cap*Rock winery in Lubbock. Photo by Sophia Dembling
Flyover America is getting ever-so ever-so with the wine. Wineries are as ubiquitous as spas these days across the country. They’re in the most unexpected places.
Texas is the fifth largest wine producer in the country. Close to my home, Grapevine, Texas has eight wineries. They’re all over the Hill Country. I’ve done a Lubbock wine tasting tour; my favorite was at Pheasant Ridge.
Oklahoma has wineries. Has anyone tried Oklahoma wine? The idea scares me. No offense, Oklahoma. You know I love you.
And I recently did a wine tasting at the Orchard Country Winery in Wisconsin. These wines are full of local apples and cherries. I liked one called Autumn Harvest, which combined apples and cranberries. I probably wouldn’t serve it to a wine snob, but it was fresh ‘n’ fruity.
I haven’t yet found a Flyover wine that comes within spitting distance of anything from the Napa or Sonoma valleys, but those wines were mocked in the 1970s. Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll be proud to pour a fine Oklahoma wine.
Scare you? No? Well, we’ve got a few other tricks and travel treats bubbling away in this week’s Three-fer Friday cauldron. Here, some places and experiences that left us with chills (still multiplying). Happy Halloween!
We’re joined by one of our most frightening–and we mean that in a good way–friends. Hilary Davidson, a very nice and kind person who writes about travel and gluten-free dining around the globe, also happens to pen some of the most unsettling short stories you’ll ever read. Her debut crime novel, The Damage Done, will be published by Forge in October 2010.
Photo by Hilary Davidson
Before visiting Newport’s famous Gilded Age mansions, I got acquainted with its graves at the Common Burial Ground and the Island Cemetery, adjoining but separate final resting places. Some of the headstones and markers are illegible, not surprising given that the Common Burial Ground dates back to the 1600s. It includes a colonial-era slave cemetery and a sequestered plot of Jewish graves. The Island Cemetery holds the remains of many of the area’s notable families. It’s a gated community of death: a private cemetery that has welcomed the wealthy for two centuries. There are other cemeteries in Newport, but none so clearly illustrates the separation between the classes. What haunts me is the idea that even in death, some people hold to a faith in a velvet rope.–Hilary
I don’t do scary stuff because I’m a weenie and I get scared. So the spookiest thing I have to offer here is photos of some of the creepy mannequins I’ve encountered at small museums. I love little offbeat museums but sometimes they’re like going through a haunted house for me—I turn a corner and EEK! a scary mannequin! Sometimes they’re dusty, sometimes they’re off-balance, sometimes they’re missing appendages or have rotten bits. Sometimes they’re just … creepy. Where do they get those things? Halloween stores? (For the record, Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, Texas; Greater Southwest Historical Museum in Ardmore, Oklahoma; and Geronimo Springs Museum in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.)–Sophia
1880 Newbury House
After a day scouring tables along the World’s Longest Yard Sale, I settled in for the night at Historic Rugby, Tennessee‘s Newbury House Bed and Breakfast. Built in 1880, it was the first boarding house in the utopian community foundeded by Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. On my bedside table: a thick anthology of ghost tales and a ledger filled with past guests’ stories of haunting encounters experienced in my austere but comfortable room. That night, after all the other guests were clearly asleep, the hallway remained busy. The light through the crack under my door flickered as people, silently, paced the hallway. For the rest of the night, I slept with the bathroom light on.–Jenna
The Halloween season is nearly behind us and the shopping season is just about upon us. Shopping can be odious or delightful, depending on the who (Jenna is an enthusiastic shopper, Sophia would rather not) and where. So for today’s three-fer we present three shops in which we could happily do all our holiday shopping.
Our guest contributor is Chicago-based writer Lisbeth Levine, one of our most stylish friends. Among other things, Lisbeth writes about style and travel, and she’s co-author of The Wedding Book: The Big Book for Your Big Day.
Photo by Lisbeth Levine
The aroma is comforting, tantalizing and exotic. It reaches out to greet you, inviting you inside. The Spice House in Chicago is one of my favorite escapes and one of my favorite places to buy gifts. It walks the line between decadence and necessity.
Buying the best cinnamon from Vietnam feels like an indulgence, even at just $5.29 for 4 ounces. So does trying to decide between French artisan salt smoked over Chardonnay oak barrels and red sea salt from Hawaii. Chicago spice blends include Hyde Park Seasoning, which contains ingredients from Hawaii and Africa in a tribute to President Barack Obama.
A clerk scoops out and weighs your order, giving you as much or as little as you need. The other day I left only $7.32 poorer, but the half hour I spent there enriched my entire day. – Lisbeth
By Van der Lende
There was almost too much to look at inside the Tamarack Gallery in Omena, Michigan. Almost. But owner Sally Viskochil fill the walls and the tables and the pedestals with pieces that really make you stop, look, enjoy (and think). So it’s not just a giant swirl of color. Though the artwork itself is just 3″ by 3″, I got pulled right into this piece by painter I-don’t-know-her-first-name Van der Lende. A gentle world in there, eh? I also snagged two wacky paintings of fishing scenes by folk artist Wesley Merritt. Mine mine mine! Happy. Can’t wait to shop there again.–Jenna
Photo by Sophia Dembling
The giant ice cream cone out front was the mother of all impulse purchases for Heidi Chapman, owner of the Cloverleaf Boutique in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Appropriately, since the Cloverleaf is crammed with potential impulse buys: vintage this-and-that, kitschy the other thing, purses and penny candy, toys and t-shirts, sunglasses and a cat named Sophie (not for sale) among other quadrupeds. Animal loving customers also may donate to help feed the feral cats that hang outside. To reach the Cloverleaf, turn at the giant pink ice cream cone, drive along painted-bicycle way, pass through the yard-art portal and enter the land of impulse. You will smile. — Sophia
Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Pawhuska, Okla. Photo by Sophia Dembling
No such thing as a bad photograph of the prairie. No, really.
I’ve been prairie obsessed since visiting the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Pawhuska, Okla., a year ago. Several months later, an hour tagging barbed wire fencing (as a favor to prairie chickens) in the Oklahoma panhandle convinced me that tromping across a prairie is a thousand times more glorious than even the most glorious photograph.
Instead, I’ll celebrate National Public Lands Day 2009 (woohoo!) by searching the website for a volunteer project closer to home, maybe planting aquatic plants. (I’m sure there won’t be many mosquitoes.) There’s probably a project near your home, too. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to spend an autumn Saturday?
I’ve always appreciated the sight of a windmill on the horizon but otherwise, gave windmills little thought.
That changed after I visited the boring-sounding American Wind Power Center in Lubbock, Texas where the huge collection of vintage windmills can only be described as folk art. First I was charmed, then I slapped my forehead when the center’s executive director, Coy Harris, pointed out that areas like Lubbock, with lots of wind and little ground water, could not have been settled without windmills. (Although in my defense, I was having my first taste of the powerful, persistent West Texas wind.) I’ve been a big windmill fan ever since. Windmills, they look good, they do good … surely they can do no harm.
Shattuck Windmill Museum, photo by Sophia Dembling
So I loved The Windmill Farm B&B in Tolar, Texas, where transplanted South Dakotans Chuck and Ruby Rickgauer collect vintage windmills (which Chuck also restores), and visiting the Shattuck Windmill Museum in Shattuck, Oklahoma, which has a collection as appealing, if not as extensive, as Lubbock’s.
I find modern wind turbines beautiful, too, in a different way. They are otherworldly, a little frightening, like something landed from outer space, marching ponderously over the horizon and across the prairie.
Lesser prairie chickens are not on the endangered species list, but they are in peril and wind turbines interfere with the little fellas’ breeding grounds.
Wadena, Indiana, photo by Johnny Jupiter Photo via Flickr
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
A moment worthy of a long detour to Metropolis, Ill.
I certainly understand why some readers took exception to my assertion in a recent post that Las Vegas is among the must-see sights for Americans. Vegas is, indeed, a very silly place. But that silliness is what makes me love it—I have a very deep affection for all things kitschy, and Vegas is an entire kitsch city.
Webster’s defines kitsch as “something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality”—as if that’s a bad thing.
Kitsch brings me great joy. It makes me laugh and buy snow globes and refrigerator magnets that I treasure forever (specifically, a snow globe from Weeki Wachee Springs and a Liberace refrigerator magnet.). And Flyover America is a veritable gold mine of kitsch, from the large (Las Vegas, Mount Rushmore) to the pocket-sized (jackalope postcards).
I will drive miles out of my way to pay respects to good kitsch, as this photograph of me worshiping the Man of Steel in Metropolis, Ill. attests. This photo op required a rather long detour on a road trip from Dallas to Chicago. But really, who could resist?
Are you a kitschaholic too? What’s your favorite Flyover America kitsch? I’ll go out of my way to see it.
When I heard about the Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival in Woodward, Okla., my mind went directly to funnel cakes, face painting, and maybe a parade with a Lesser Prairie Chicken Queen. Sign me up, I said! I love small-town fests.
I’m kind of a moron sometimes. It wasn’t until I had my trip planned that I fully understood that a bird festival is where bird watchers gather to watch birds—in this case, lesser prairie chickens. Not only was funnel cake not part of the event, but the centerpiece of the weekend involved waking before dawn to spend three hours in a field watching chickens dance.
Well, what the heck. I’d never heard of dancing chickens before and I love Oklahoma. I was game. So I drove six hours from Dallas to Woodward, arriving on a Friday evening. On Saturday morning, I woke at 4:30 a.m., drank one cup of bad in-room coffee (no bathrooms at the blinds, and if I scared the birds away by peeing on the prairie I would have been garroted by birders) and boarded a van with people carrying expensive binoculars and cameras with lenses the length of my arm. Then I climbed over a barbed wire fence, stumbled through cow patties in the dark, crammed into a small blind in the middle of a field with a couple of real birders, and wondered what the hell I was doing there.
And then the chickens arrived and started dancing.
The males come to the lek (an area that’s sort of a prairie chicken singles bar) to show off their moves for potential mates. They flip up two feathers on the side of their heads, swell red sacs on either side of their necks, bob their heads like they’re sneezing, warble, and stomp their feet, which makes a surprisingly loud thrumming noise for such little guys.
It was absolutely adorable and deeply moving.
As the sun came up, revealing the glorious prairie all around us, I was struck by the image of those little birds, far from everything, dancing for their lives in a world where few people know they even exist.
Over the course of the rest of the weekend, I went on other bird-watching excursions, and attended a pair of programs by nature artist Debbie Kaspari and another about prairie ecology by wildlife biologist Dwayne Elmore, Ph.D. I learned that the prairie is under pressure from many things, including the encroachment of cedar, and the lovely little prairie chicken is a species at risk from wind turbines (they won’t nest under tall structures) and barbed wire. A highlight of the weekend for me was an hour spent tromping through the golden grass, marking barbed wire fencing so chickens don’t get snagged on it and die. Not only did I love walking in the prairie, but I got to do something for the chickens who had danced so nicely for me. Well, not for me, exactly—I wasn’t the target audience, but you get my point.
Sometimes, mistakes lead you to places you never imagined you’d be, and every time I travel, I learn to care about something new, even if it’s not what I expected. On this weekend in Oklahoma, I learned about the prairie, I learned to love the dancing chickens, and I forgot all about funnel cake.
Maybe I was a moron at the beginning of the trip, but I was smarter by the end.
This video of dancing chickens is by Sharon Stiteler, aka the Bird Chick, who was the event’s keynote speaker and is a very fun human being.
I love birds, I love being out in nature, I love having something to do while I’m out in nature. Too bad I’m really bad at bird-watching. I can spot only the most obvious birds, I can identify only the most easily identifiable. Subtleties escape me. (What color are their feet? Are you kidding me?) If I’m with real bird-watchers and they do the spotting and identifying, I am capable of watching. That’s about it.
I love it anyway.
So I think the people in this New York Times article are cool—they mix birding with business trips. Birder and leadership training consultant, Cyndi Lubecke, of Prospect Heights, Illinois, likes to choose assignments in places with good birding. “My colleagues have loved me for that,” she said, “because my choices were places like Toledo, Ohio, and Fayetteville, Ark.—places they didn’t want to go.”
In a couple of weeks, I’ll be bird-watching (in my own lame fashion) and reporting from the first Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival in Woodward, Oklahoma. (And yes, there is a Greater Prairie Chicken, too. It’s larger and more abundant than the lesser variety.) The birds will be singing and dancing for love. Really. Stay tuned.
Hey Flyover friends!
I don’t do scary stuff because I’m a weenie and I get scared. So the spookiest thing I have to offer here is photos of some of the creepy mannequins I’ve encountered at small museums. I love little offbeat museums but sometimes they’re like going through a haunted house for me—I turn a corner and EEK! a scary mannequin! Sometimes they’re dusty, sometimes they’re off-balance, sometimes they’re missing appendages or have rotten bits. Sometimes they’re just … creepy. Where do they get those things? Halloween stores? (For the record, 
I love the idea of bird-watching.
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