Seein’ the DMV: Messiah Sing-along at the Kennedy Center
I’ve attended several events at The Kennedy Center since my return to the DMV, but this was special for me. I had missed last year’s Messiah sing-along because I had been exposed to COVID and, while I had shown no symptoms, I could not allow myself to chance exposing others–especially fellow musicians–to the disease. This year, I was good to go. Tickets to the Messiah Sing-along were free to the public. I submitted a reservation and was able to get a seat in the orchestra section that had been made accessible. The Concert Hall filled quickly–despite being a Monday evening after a workday–with other musicians and families with young children–so good to see another generation exposed to Handel. Conductor Nancia D’Alimonte came on stage before the program and warmed us up. She also informed us that the concert was the latest of a series of annual Messiah sing-alongs since the…
Hawaiian Cruise: Kauai Luau, Return to Oahu then Home (Day 9-Day 11)
I woke up in Nawiliwili on the “Garden Isle” of Kaua’i, the fourth largest Hawaiian island and the last scheduled stop on the cruise. It was Thanksgiving Day, and I was approximately 4,900 miles from home and the traditions celebrated there. Well, most of them. Instead, after a satisfying breakfast at my usual spot, the 50’s theme restaurant on Deck 6, I walked the deck and got several shots, including the panoramic one below: At 12:30, I went to the ship’s theater, where they were live streaming the Dallas Cowboys football game. The Cowboys’ season hadn’t gone as we fans had hoped due to so many injuries to players, but we faithfully watch anyway, and it is a Thanksgiving tradition, so…. The main event of the day was the luau at the Kauai Plantation. It appeared that a lot of the ship’s passengers had been bused there for the…
Hawaiian Cruise: Maui and Two Days on the Big Island (Day 6-Day 8)
WARNING: the theme of the first three paragraphs of this post is “a little–well, a lot–of disappointment goes a long way.” Bypass them as you wish. My travel agent had strongly encouraged me to select off-ship excursions through the cruise line because the line would then be responsible for any incidents related to those excursions. I followed her advice except for two activities. The one that applied here I scheduled through an outside vendor because they advertised that they could accommodate those with accessibility needs for a sunrise visit to Haleakalā National Park. The cruise line specifically indicated that they could not provide accommodations, so that choice was my only option. I will not use space here to describe what happened, but the result was that I was unable to make the trip and, thus, missed the national park. The only positive from the situation was that I got a…
Hawaiian Cruise: More Oahu, Launch and Maui (Day 4-Day 5)
On Saturday morning and our last day touring Oahu, we went south and east to East Honolulu and our quickie, first stop, The Koko Crater Lookout and its popular hiking trail. Like so much of Oahu, the view was spectacular, and even though the day started out cloudy, it was still warm enough to get away with a light jacket–the heaviest clothing I would wear the entire trip. (Note here: my Facebook buds back in the DMV posted that the weather there had turned decidedly wintry.) We next arrived at the Byodo-In Temple, located at the foot of the Ko’olau Mountains in Valley of the Temples Memorial Park. Its website describes the temple as “a smaller-scale replica of the almost 1,000-year-old Byodo-In Temple, a United Nations World Heritage site in Uji, Japan.” The temple and grounds were incredibly beautiful. I did my best to capture its beauty in a number…
Hawaiian Cruise: Journey There and Oahu (Day 1-Day 3)
My preparations for the trip to Hawaii were seriously sidetracked when I discovered that someone had broken into the Silver Bullet. The only damage to the car was to the driver’s door, but that damage surprisingly affected many of her functions. I had to drive her to the Kia dealership and make arrangements for the insurance company to appraise the damage and authorize payments for repairs. This was incredibly inconvenient, but I kept reminding myself that SB could have been stolen–a far from unusual event in the DMV–and the repairs would occur while I would be off the mainland, anyway. Still…. My very early flight out of DCA had a layover in Detroit with a nearly 11-hour flight to Honolulu. I was so lucky that I had the adjacent seats to myself on both flights so I could spread out and be as comfortable as possible during the flight. This…
Something Old, Something New–A Quickie Trip to West Virginia
It was less than two weeks before I was scheduled to leave for Hawaii, but I decided to get out of the DMV for a couple of days. I packed up the Silver Bullet and headed to West Virginia. New River Gorge National Park was only about a five-hour drive away and could have been a stop between Shenandoah and points south (in fact, I drove past that national park at two different exits heading to New River), but I was concerned about being in Florida on time. As I drove along, I saw a highway sign approaching Staunton, Virginia, indicating that the exit for the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum was upcoming. I didn’t know there was a presidential library for a president earlier than Herbert Hoover’s, so I had to check it out. The downside to this decision was that I didn’t have time to do an…
More Southern Exposure–Three New National Parks
As many times as I have driven from my hometown in North Carolina to Florida State University in Tallahassee during my years as a music graduate student and then as a music cataloger for the university’s libraries, I thought I knew the route like the back of my hand, as they say. However, most of this drive from Atlanta to Tallytown reflected the creation of shorter, faster routes on interstates. I didn’t exit onto US-319 until just north of Tallahassee. It was much too late to catch former colleagues on campus when I arrived at nearly midnight, so I checked into a local motel with the plan to get an early enough start to hunt for the elusive parking spot near the music buildings. My start was later than I planned because an incident at the motel caused the electricity to be turned off. I didn’t learn what happened until…
More Southern Exposure–Shenandoah and Carter Presidential Library
This was my second visit to Shenandoah National Park. On my first trip in February 2024, I drove to the park’s southernmost entry and headed north on Skyline Drive. This time, I entered from the northernmost point at Point Royal and took the drive south. It was October 29th, late in the fall foliage season but still beautiful and yet less crowded than earlier in the month. As usual, I stopped at the visitors center and got the latest from the rangers on duty, plus the center had quite a scenic view of the park, too. Additionally, I had found and downloaded an audio description of scenes and historical information about the park and the native tribes that had once inhabited the area. Since much of the park is not WiFi accessible, the tracks didn’t always keep up with my location, but it was interesting anyway. I look my time…
Seein’ the DMV: Air and Space Museum
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is the DMV’s most popular tourist site, so I waited until the summer ended to visit in the hope that the museum would be less crowded. Plus, October 28th was a Monday, which I hoped would further reduce the number of folks there. I ordered a free admision ticket online, which was still required to help control the flow of traffic inside Air and Space was under construction. Portions of the facilities were closed to the public. Still, what was available was very interesting, proving why the museum was so popular. I am a North Carolina native, so the display of the 1903 first flight by brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright was of particular interest to me. The museum used graphic displays and real, full-sized airplanes, satellites, and spaceships to tell the history of flight. I’m going to let the pictures tell the…
36 Hours in Ohio
This was another short trip. I planned to revisit Cuyahoga Valley National Park, this time to actually see more of the park than I did when I visited for the total solar eclipse last April. The game plan was to arrive in that part of Ohio early enough to take advantage of the Tuesday-only senior discount at the NFL Hall of Fame, then spend Wednesday riding the park’s Scenic Railroad and exploring the featured parts of the park that were accessible by car. I had to purchase the ticket to the surprisingly popular train ride well in advance online to be sure I would get a seat on the day and time I wanted. Unfortunately, this limited my timing, which I jeopardized by leaving too late to get to the Hall of Fame on Tuesday, and forced me to condense my activities to that Wednesday. So, I started that morning…