Our travellers have made it to California for the wedding and are now heading back again, but not before suffering sticker shock at the gas pumps.
“Well, after paying for gas between $3.51 to $3.87, we where shocked at the price just over the border into California of $4.39. Good thing our travel in and out of California was just the wedding and not part of the tour,” writes Paul Pressy. “Once in Nevada we paid $3.76. We are outside of Salt Lake City, Utah looking out my window at snow still in the mountains.”(June 2)
“Oh yes, we arrived in Boulder City, Nevada early enough to go see Hoover Dam,” Paul writes.
He sent along some photos of the dam, including construction of a a four-lane highway across the cliffs of the dam.
What’s next?
“On to the Grand Canyon to the West and South Rim,” Paul writes.
Paul also noted the Hoover Dam lake is low following a flush of the system to clear trash and debris on the the Colorado River.
“Well, now we are on the way to Cheyenne, WY and then the next two days visiting Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Mountain, Sturgis, and the Badlands,” Paul said.
Keep checking back for more photos and thoughts from the road.
Are you taking to the road for vacation this year or coming up with creative ways to vacation around town? Let me know!
Some friends of mine are heading cross-country over the next few weeks and will be sharing their adventures, money-saving tips and photos from the road as they head to California and back. Keep checking the Web site, www.howyouspinit.com/travel for the latest on their motorcycle/RV trip to the west coast.
Share your vacation by e-mailing me at Chris@howyouspinit.com with your travel comments and photos or if you have any questions about how you can participate in our travel page.
If you visit Fort Frederick in Big Pool, Md., as suggested in last week’s column, you may come across the C&O Canal towpath like Dr. Richard Birch Jr. did as a young child.
He declared that he was going to walk it all the way to the end to see where he’d end up. A park ranger dashed his hopes for that day, but piqued his interest for the future, when he informed the youngster that the trail went all the way to Washington D.C. Several years later, 15-year-old Birch convinced his father to let him bike the entire 184.5 miles from Cumberland, Md. to Washington D.C. Ever since his own son turned 12, he’s made it an annual father-son event and expanded it to include other fathers and sons (and sons without their fathers, and men who don’t have sons) for a five-day ride in early summer. The trip never grows old.
“We’ve found some of the stuff from the original building of the canal: an old log cabin that’s fallen in, old railroad tunnels, caves. After 15 trips, last year there were two or three things I’d never seen before,” Birch said.
Birch said one of the best guides to the trail is “184 Miles of Adventure” published by the Boy Scouts. It includes both hiking and biking information along the trail, including side trails. He also recommends the “Towpath Guide to the C&O Canal by Thomas F. Hahn. Both books include canal history and a mile-by-mile guide to things you might see, creating a biking scavenger hunt of sorts.
“The canal goes through Antietam, Harpers Ferry, Fort Frederick, Falling Water—where the Civil War could have ended,” Birch said. “There are a lot of really nice historic things to see.”
Birch said that when he takes groups on the trail he tries to break it into 45-55 miles of biking each day, pacing it so the group can camp at one of the canal hiker-biker rest stops that’s near a restaurant to cut down on the amount of food the group has to carry. There are hiker-biker camp areas every 5-7 miles along the trail, available for free on a first-come basis.
Birch said that while some people bike the trail roundtrip, he usually just goes one way, arranging return transportation from D.C. He suggests preparing for the 184 mile ride with shorter trips prior to setting off on your adventure. Birch said an experienced biker can do the one-way trip in about three days, perfect for a long weekend. The one-way trip offers one other advantage, Birch said.
“It’s downhill all the way from here to D.C.,” Birch said.
About five or six years ago at a festival in Perryopolis the reenacting unit I belong to, the Redstone Living Historians, learned about the 18th Century Market Fair at Fort Frederick in Big Pool, Maryland, from one of the fort’s volunteers.
The next year the unit headed to Maryland for the weekend and came home with our vehicles stuffed with our purchases. We’ve been going back every year since, taking young reenactors to buy equipment and clothing and taking shopping lists for friends who couldn’t make the trip. It’s nice to be able to try on the period clothing, feel the quality of the fabric, comparison shop among vendors we normally only deal with on-line, or by catalog, and not have shipping charges.
This year’s event will be held April 24-27. The nearest hotels are in Hancock or Hagerstown, Md. and you might want to make reservations now….the event draws a crowd.
Since the event attracts hundreds of reenactors and even more spectators from all over the east coast, it’s a great opportunity to catch up with old friends. I’m used to seeing friends from the reenacting community there, but last year I even ran into a childhood friend that I hadn’t seen in 30 years who had brought her history-buff sons to the event from their home in eastern Pennsylvania. We were both buying homemade bread from a cart operated by a woman who, like members of the Redstone Living Historians, volunteers for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation in Virginia. The world gets smaller and smaller by the moment.
Even if you don’t know a soul at Market Days other than the folks you come with, it’s a great time. In addition to more than 100 18th century vendors such as tinsmiths, woodworkers, gunsmiths and fur traders, there are performers balancing on low-wires, juggling, and playing everything from water glasses to fiddles. Of course, you can also tour the fort and talk with soldiers garrisoned there, as well as touring the encampments outside the fort.
One of my favorite parts of Market Days is the children dressed in period clothing. No one has to tell them how to reenact history — hand them an 18th century toy and they are automatically historically correct!
All in all, who you spend Valentine’s Day with is more important than where you spend it, but face it, there’s something to be said for a romantic location. And Hawaii is near the top of the list when it comes to romance.
Last week my friend Chris Sikes shared his experiences on Oahu. Today we’ll explore the Big Island with him:
Hawaii (the Big Island) - more area than all the other Hawaiian Islands combined. While we were there we had to visit Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. We didn’t know if or when we’d be back, so we spent 24 hours there, staying overnight at Volcano House, a hotel on top of Kilauea, overlooking the Halemauma’u crater (the big one on top, but not the active crater.) Driving and hiking around to see the crater and surrounding areas was great. All around the crater, but especially on Devastation Trail, the site of a 1959 eruption of Kilauea Iki crater, was a very interesting contrast of the destruction from eruptions and the rebirth of new life: ferns, flowers, birds, etc. You wouldn’t expect a rain forest with bright orange flowers on top of an active volcano.
Hands-down our two most memorable things from The Big Island:
1. Chain of Craters Road that goes down the crater to the ocean, then along the shore back towards Hilo. Over the past 20 years eruptions have been flowing over the road. We hiked over these cooled flows with active flows only dozens of feet below us and could feel the heat radiating through the lava rock underneath us. We saw glowing lava flowing into the ocean, steam billowing from the sea, cooled black lava rock, and new land forming just yards away from us, and a rainbow arcing above it all. It almost didn’t seem real. As we hiked back that evening and it got darker, we could see the slopes of the volcano light up with orange glowing lava that we could not see during the light of day. If you go to Hawaii, this is an absolute MUST-DO.
2. Helicopter from Hilo airport over and around Kilauea and southeastern part of the island. We flow over and around Pu’u O’o, the currently active vent and source of active lava flows. This was well worth the several hundred dollars for a one-hour flight.
Again, don’t forget Chris’s tips from last week: don’t try to see the whole state on one trip, pick one or two islands to explore. You may also want to pick up a copy of The Big Island Revealed from Wizard Publications to help with your island exploration.
