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…
Seein’ the DMV: Birthday Concertizing and Baseball–September 2024
Two Concerts As I debated the title for this blog post, I realized that this was the first time in a while that birthday concertizing did not mean I was the performer. I miss performing, but the time had come, as it does for all, sooner or later. Anyway, I originally had lots of activity planned for my birthday week. I wasn’t feeling well and so decided to reevaluate the plan. Some things I was able to reschedule without any difficulty. One–a lecture featuring Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on her newly released book, Lovely One–was such a difficult ticket to get that I had no trouble finding someone to take it. That left two concerts. I’m also grateful that my sister, who was originally going to join me, got a signed copy of the justice’s book for me. The first concert was the National Symphony Orchestra Echoes…
Seein’ the DMV: African American Museum Redux 081324
So my “Seein’ the DMV” selection for August was a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. As I mentioned in my earlier blog post, I’ve visited the museum twice previously in the eight years since it opened. The Metro subway system took me to within 4/10 of a mile of the museum, but that was a pretty long walk for me. Still, driving wasn’t really an option because finding parking was nearly impossible mid-day in that part of DC. Next time–and there needs to be a next time–I will see if there is a bus that would drop me off closer to the museum entrance. Anyway, I decided to go because their Afrofuturism exhibition was scheduled to close at the end of the week. As a fan of Star Trek–I’m debating whether to post a picture of my personal ST collection here, The Matrix, The…
Short Trip to the Iowa Border: DeSoto Preserve-080419
Last backtrack (I hope) of 2019 travels. I don’t remember the circumstances under which I made this trip, but I did try to get to know my adopted state of Iowa, and most parts of it were within a one-day round trip. In this case, I made the less than three hour each way drive in early August to the western border with Nebraska. The DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge is part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is located along the Missouri River in both Iowa and Nebraska. In addition to the refuge, the site houses a museum with artifacts that survived the sinking of the steamship, Bertrand, in 1865. I will simply quote from the website: On April 1, 1865, the sternwheeler hit a submerged log, twenty-five miles north of Omaha, Nebraska. Bound for the newly discovered goldfields of Montana from St. Louis, Missouri, the Bertrand began…
Two Trips to the African American History Museum
I can’t believe that I chronicled neither my 2016 nor my 2019 visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)! ** Sigh ** Anyway, since I’m hoping to return to the museum during this month (August, 2024), I at least want to leave a blog post marking the earlier visits. December 26, 2016 I visited the NMAAHC for the first time just three months after it opened to the public in September 2016. (I have always been thankful that it opened before the change in presidential administrations because I believe that they would have done all they could to “kill it in the crib.” The wait list for tickets was months long, especially if a group wanted tickets. Still, the Joneses descended en masse to see our history gathered on one site at last. My nephew and godson volunteered to be my escort, which at that…
Motorin’ to Michigan-September 2019
I was invited to participate in the Reflecting on the Past…Reaching toward the Future conference at the University of Michigan. The conference happened to be held a few days before my birthday, so I contacted my niece who lived in the Detroit area to see if she would be able to get together. She showed me a wonderful pre-birthday evening, and it was amazing to talk with the young lady who had grown up with such maturity. Unfortunately, she had to work on my b-day, so I decided to make a day of it by visiting Motown, aka Hitsville, U. S. A., in Detroit. Even though it was a Tuesday, I got one of the last online tickets for the tour. I arrived early enough to find close parking and get several exterior shots. The facility was more accessible than I had expected, so I was able to see virtually…
Finding Harriet Tubman Museum-123119
This post demonstrates the disadvantage of uploading photos without immediately writing the blog. Sooner or later, something is going to fall through the cracks. In this case, I managed to forget to write the blogs for pictures I loaded from four different trips in 2019, to DeSoto Preserve (Iowa) in August, to a workshop at the University of Michigan with side trip to Detroit and the Gerald Ford Presidential Library in September, and December’s trips to the African American Museum in Washington and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Maryland. Oh well, here comes a series of backtrack blog post…. At this point, I don’t remember why my youngest brother and I decided to make the 1.5 hour trip to the Maryland Eastern Shore town of Cambridge, location of the Harriet Tubman Museum & Education Center. However, I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that we made the trip the day after…