Friday, April 30, 2010 Road Junkies 0 Comments

 Day 1:  Peachtree City, GA to Charlotte, NC
On the Road Again  (1 May 10)

Day 2:  Charlotte to Raleigh, NC
Don't Wake Anyone!  (2 May 10)

Day 3:  Raleigh to Williamston, NC 
Bear with Us  (3 May 10)

Day 4:  Williamston to Chesapeake, VA
Carry Me Back  (4 May 10)

Day 5:  Chesapeake, VA
Birds of a Feather  (5 May 10)

Day 6:  Chesapeake to Exmore, VA 
Life Takes a Toll  (6 May 10)

Day 7:  Exmore to Salisbury, MD

Day 8:  Salisbury to Rehoboth Beach, DE

Day 9:  Rehoboth Beach to Atlantic City, NJ 

Day 10:  Atlantic City, NJ
There She Is  (10 May 10)

Day 11:  Atlantic City to New Brunswick, NJ

Day 12:  New Brunswick to Tarrytown, NY
Inspired by Rip  (12 May 10)

Day 13:  Tarrytown & environs

Day 14:  Tarrytown to Lenox, MA
Up the River  (14 May 10)

Day 15:  Lenox to Great Barrington, MA

Day 16:  Lenox to Brattleboro, VT

Day 17:  West Dover, VT to Wilmington, VT
Vermont Variety  (17 May 10)

Day 18:  Wilmington to Durham, NH

Day 19:  Durham, NH to Wells, ME

Day 20:  Wells to Portland, ME
We Saw the Light  (20 May 10)

Day 21:  Rockland, ME & St. George, ME

Day 22:  Portland, ME

Day 23:  Portland to Ellsworth, ME 
Fiddle-dee-dee!  (23 May 10)

Day 24:  Bar Harbor, ME & Acadia NP 

Day 25:  Bar Harbor & Northeast Harbor, ME

Day 26a:  Ellsworth, ME to Calais, ME
Maine Streets  (26 May 10)

Day 26b:  Calais, ME to Saint John, NB
Oh!  Canada?  (26 May 10)

Day 27:  Saint John, NB

Day 28:  Saint John to Moncton, NB
Now You See It...  (28 May 2010)

Day 29:  Moncton, NB
Got Butter?  (29 May 10)

Day 30:  Moncton, NB
The Loonies Gave Us Away  (30 May 10)   
Day 31:  Moncton to Charlottetown, PE
Blowin' in the Wind  (31 May 10)

Day 32:  Cavendish & Summerside, PE
It's the Economy  (1 Jun 10)

Day 33:  Charlottetown to Halifax, NS
Great Scot!  (2 Jun 10)

Day 34:  Halifax, NS
In a Fog  (3 Jun 10)

Day 35:  Truro & Noel, NS

Day 36:  Halifax, NS

Day 37:  Halifax to Sydney, NS
Drivin' in the Rain  (6 Jun 10)

Day 38:  Louisburg, NS to Place Bay, NS

Day 39:  Sydney to Ingonish, NS
A Slice of Paradise  (8 Jun 10)

Day 40:  Ingonish, NS
(Sigh!)  (9 Jun 10)

Day 41:  Cape Breton Highlands National Park 
The Bonny Highlands  (10 Jun 10)

Day 42:  Ingonish, NS to Stellarton, NS 
Paradise Lost  (11 Jun 10)

Day 43:  Stellarton to Fredericton, NB

Day 44:  Fredericton to Presque Isle, ME
Out of This World  (13 Jun 10)

Day 45:  Presque Isle to Quebec City, QC
Vive le Madawaska!  (14 Jun 10)
  
Day 46:  Quebec City
The Island Life  (15 Jun 10)

Day 47:  Quebec City
Vieux-Quebec  (16 Jun 10)
  
Day 48:  Quebec City to Montreal, QC

Day 49:  Montreal
Heart and Flowers  (18 Jun 10)

Day 50:  Montreal to Ottawa, ON
Rocket Man  (19 Jun 10)

Day 51:  Ottawa
Ottawow!  (20 Jun 10)

Day 52:  Ottawa to Bowmanville, ON

Day 53:  Bowmanville, ON
Where's Ken?  (22 Jun 10)

Day 54:  Bowmanville to Hamburg, NY
Niagara Fell  (23 Jun 10)

Day 55:  Hamburg to Cranberry T'ship, PA
Love and Harmony  (24 Jun 10)

Day 56:  Pittsburgh, PA
Clean and Green  (25 Jun 10)

Day 57:  Pittsburgh

Day 58:  Pittsburgh to Weston, WV
Water Under the Bridge  (27 Jun 10)

Day 59:  Weston to Princeton, WV

Day 60:  Princeton to Asheville, NC
Fancy Meeting You Here  (29 Jun 10)

Day 61:  Asheville to Peachtree City, GA
Home Base  (30 Jun 10)

60 Days on the Road

Epilogue
Canada, Eh?   (3 Jul 10)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010 Road Junkies 0 Comments

WESTERN TENNESSEE:  
April 24-28, 2010
  
The Blues Leg:  Memphis.  For some people, genealogy is a fascinating hobby, a treasure hunt for long-lost family members and the unravelling of threads leading to unknown ancestors.  Others just don't appreciate the thrill of this particular kind of hunting.  Generally, we're in the latter group.  But when Dianne and her sister cooked up a "roots and blues" tour to western Tennessee, we were on board.  We met up at Jeanne and Don's home in west Alabama and the four of us headed for our first stop-- Memphis (the blues part of the trip).

Obviously we couldn't go to Memphis without at least a drive-by past Graceland.  Elvis's legendary home is bordered along the street (Elvis Presley Boulevard, of course) by a long fieldstone wall, every inch of which is covered by graffiti. 
  
Messages to Elvis
Another Memphis tradition on our radar was the Peabody Hotel's March of the Ducks. Admittedly, the sisters were a bit more enthusiastic about this show than the guys but they went along patiently.  The duck march custom at the Peabody dates back to the 1930s, when the hotel's manager and some friends had just returned from a weekend hunting trip in Arkansas. They thought it would be amusing to leave their live decoy ducks in the hotel fountain and watch the reactions of hotel guests. 
  
March of the ducks at the Peabody Hotel
The guests loved the idea, and since then, ducks have played in the fountain every day.  They march to the fountain daily at 11 a.m. and march from the fountain into the elevator at 5 p.m.  When not on duty in the lobby, the ducks live in their Royal Duck Palace on the hotel's rooftop.

Knowing that Memphis is famous for its barbecue, we asked everyone who might know, "What's the best place to get barbecue in Memphis?"  The reply was universal:  Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous.  Opened in a basement on an alley in 1948, this legendary Memphis eatery reportedly serves their famous dry ribs to several thousand people on a typical Saturday night. 
  
A Memphis institution
As we rounded the corner a little past 7 on this Saturday night, we found the alley jammed with hungry rib eaters waiting to get in.  When we wound our way to the hostess stand, we were told the wait for a table would be about an hour.  The 'cue was reported to be good, but was it worth that long a wait?  Pulling out our "full restaurant back-up plan," we asked if there was a bar (yes) and whether meals were served at the bar (yes!).  Heading downstairs to the bar area, we found four seats within seconds and were soon ordering our meals.
  
After an amazingly delicious meal at Rendezvous (they even had a vegetarian barbecue dish!), we walked over to the famed Beale Street to seek out some Memphis-style blues.  Our first stop was B.B. King's Blues Club.  Who would know more about the blues, right?  But B.B. wasn't in the house (he also has locations in Vegas, Orlando, Nashville, NYC, and West Palm).  It was our assessment that the band that was playing at B.B.'s had never even heard any blues; they were playing rock and playing it loud and hard.  So we moved on down Beale Street and were drawn into the Blues Hall Juke Joint.
  
In the Blues Hall, we found Robert "Dr. Feelgood" Potts and his band serving up some of the Memphis-style blues that originated in the Mississippi Delta where Potts was born and raised, as he sang in his Greenwood Mississippi Town.  Dr. Feelgood is a long-time Memphis performer and, like most local artists, doesn't get paid much for playing sets in Memphis clubs, so on breaks he was selling copies of his latest CD.  He also had a hilarious and very effective song called Tip the Band, which ended each set.
  
Dr. Feelgood Potts at Blues Hall Juke Joint
And he was just what we were hoping to find on Beale Street-- real local blues, a great live performer, and someone who appreciates his fans, old and new, often giving shout-outs to audience members by their hometowns.  Between sets he was constantly visiting with club patrons.
  
Dr. Feelgood with two new fans
With his masterful harmonica and his original songs, Dr. Feelgood kept us entertained until closing time, something we seniors don't see very often. Both couples left with a copy of his CD, Going Down to Memphis. We had already heard and loved most of the tracks.  

The blues leg of our Roots and Blues Tour was everything we had hoped for-- scrumptious barbecue and authentic Memphis blues. 

The Roots Leg: Ripley, Henning & Dyersburg.  Our maternal grandmother often told us that her mother Clara's parents died in the late 1800s when Clara was just a young girl.  According to our memory of Grandmother's story, a family in western Tennessee took in young Clara and some of her siblings after their parents' death.  Our mission for the roots portion of this tour was to learn the names of Clara's parents.

Our first stop was Ripley, one of the towns where Grandmother said Clara had lived. Sure enough, at the Lauderdale County courthouse, we found the old record book where Clara's marriage to James had been recorded in 1902.
  
Cool to see this 108-year-old document
A serendipitous conversation with other customers at a local restaurant led to a contact with a local history buff, Bobbie. When we mentioned the names of the family that cared for Clara, Bobbie pointed us to the nearby town of Henning.

After finding everything we could in the excellent local history section of Ripley's public library, we headed off to Henning. Like Alex Haley, we did find some pieces to our puzzle there. In fact, in the same cemetery where Haley's celebrated ancestor Chicken George is buried, we found the graves of the couple whom our grandmother always described as the foster parents who raised Clara. 
  
Incredible to find these names we've heard so often
We came up empty in our search of this cemetery for graves that might be Clara's parents. Our only other lead was a local couple we had learned about from Bobbie. 

With no introduction, we found the phone number and called Frank and Pat. "We're visiting from Alabama and Georgia, and we think some of your ancestors may have taken care of our great grandmother when she was a girl," we explained. "Come on over!" they replied and gave us directions to their farm.

Our friendly "almost-cousins"
Frank and Pat live on a "century farm," called such because the farm has been owned and operated by Frank's family since his great grandparents established the farm outside Henning in 1861. Today they raise cattle and horses. 
  
A treasure trove of old photographs and information
Their appreciation for history bode well for our mission. They brought out album after album of old photos of their family. We recognized some of the names as friends who had visited Clara in Alabama when our grandmother was a girl. There were even photos taken in the small Alabama town where they lived.

So many familiar threads were there but we were unable to tie them all together. Our search for the names of Clara's parents will continue. Maybe our future efforts will benefit from the good luck charms Frank and Pat insisted we take with us as a memento of their farm.

As if their gracious hospitality weren't enough

APRIL 25-28, 2010

Fertilizing the Azalea Trail

Friday, April 16, 2010 Road Junkies 0 Comments

Mobile, AL
April 12-15, 2010

After the Wood family reunion in Tallahassee, FL, we headed across the panhandle for some letterbox planting and scouting in Mobile. For some reason, letterboxing hasn't really taken root in this port city, so we're trying to get things jump started.  To misquote Shoeless Joe, "If you plant, they will come."

Originally a part of French Louisiana, the Alabama Gulf Coast was a focal point for colonial exploration and settlement. Located upriver, Mobile was the first capital of the French colony. Disease and flooding upriver caused settlers to move the town to its present location on the coast in 1711. After the warm humid climate led to the deterioration of the wooden stockade fort constructed to protect the town, a new brick and stone fort was built in 1723 to guard against Spanish or British attack on the strategic location of Mobile and its Bay as a port to the Gulf of Mexico.
Named Fort Conde in honor of King Louis XIV's brother, the Prince of Conde, the fort served as a defense for Mobile and as a base for French exploration and expansion into much of the modern state of Alabama. After guarding Mobile and its citizens for almost 100 years-- during times of  French, Spanish, British and American rule-- the outdated fort was dismantled in 1820, and commercial and residential development spread over its former site. About one-third of the fort was reconstructed at 80% scale during the 1970s. Fort Conde now serves as the official Welcome Center for the City of Mobile. Visitors can explore the reconstructed walls and rooms where exhibits relate the history of Mobile and the fort.  At the visitors center, we obtained some useful information about city locations and found a spot for a future plant.

One of five letterboxes we brought to plant honors French explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, one of the city's founders.  On paper, Bienville Square, a classic downtown park, seemed the obvious choice of location. 
Bienville Square
In reality, there wasn't a single spot in this block-size park which would provide a safe haven for the box.  On to plan B, but we did enjoy our visit to this lovely spot which has been a public park since 1824.

Mobile's oldest cemetery, Church Street Graveyard, was our next stop.  There was actually a letterbox to find here, planted coincidentally by another Atlanta boxer.  This historic cemetery was founded in 1819, replacing a graveyard at the site where a new cathedral was to be built. 
City officials divided the cemetery into three sections:  one for Catholics, one for Protestants, and one section as a "graveyard for strangers." There were enough interments of all types that Church Street Graveyard was closed to new burials since 1898. However, city officials have made exceptions to allow a few notable citizens to be interred there.
Many gravestones have significant stone carvings, and some beautiful examples of early wrought and cast iron work still grace this old burial ground.

In the Spring Hill area of Mobile, Langan Park features lakes, natural spaces, and a tennis center, as well as playground and picnic areas.  Opened in 1957, the park is also home to the city's botanical gardens, the Mobile Museum of Art and a local theater company.
With 720 acres, Langan was the perfect place for some letterboxes. We planted one and found locations for a couple of future treasures. While at the park, we visited the art museum and had lunch the at Palette Cafe, a full-service restaurant in the museum's atrium. It was a perfect sunny day so we thoroughly enjoyed our view of one of Langan Park's lakes as we ate. The menu offered a variety of tempting soups, sandwiches and salads, as well as homemade cakes and pies.

After lunch, we took the opportunity to play with the sculpture on the museum's front lawn. Bruce Larsen, a local sculptor, created the 18′ interactive butterfly on a 30′ steel grass blade. Like most of Larsen's constructions, the butterfly was transformed from a complex arrangement of a variety of found objects. The lever at its base allows visitors to flex the butterfly's wings.

According to the people of Mobile, Alabama, the earliest Mardi Gras celebration in the "New World" was held in Mobile in 1703, 15 years before the founding of New Orleans. Though some in the Big Easy may dispute this claim, Mobile is still proud of its Carnival traditions and history and in 2005 opened a carnival museum.  We had a box to plant there.
The museum exhibits a myriad of costumes and other Mardi Gras regalia. Admission was inexpensive and well worth the price, and we located a perfect hiding spot for the box on the grounds.

Near the museum we visited Spanish Plaza, a downtown park that honors the Spanish occupation of the city between 1780 and 1813. It features the Arches of Friendship, a fountain presented to Mobile by its sister city of Málaga, Spain. 
Around the park are benches decorated with ceramic tiles images of scenes from various Spanish cities. This bench depicts La Albufera, a fresh water lagoon near Valencia. 

At Spanish Plaza we happened upon the long-lost Little Colt, who had only recently returned to the park. Presented as a gift to Mobile from the city of Cordoba, Spain in 1967, the Little Colt is a reproduction of a statue which sits sits atop a fountain near Cordoba's city center.   In 1979, Hurricane Frederic ripped the Little Colt from its pedestal in Spanish Plaza and damaged its rear legs. The statue spent the next two decades in a warehouse full of tombstones, all but forgotten. After a city worker rediscovered the colt in 2000, it took another 10 years for the sculpture to be repaired and returned to its original pedestal in March.  This little guy definitely deserves a commemorative letterbox to tell his comeback story.

With such a long and varied history, Mobile provides many inspirations for letterboxing. After three days in the city, we had planted five boxes and left with ideas for at least a dozen more.
After we return with the new crop, we'll learn whether Shoeless Joe was right or not. Will the finders come?

Sunday, April 11, 2010 Road Junkies 0 Comments

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA:  
April 8-11, 2010
  
A veritable forest of Woods gathered in Tallahassee for our triennial family reunion. Even though some family members were unable to attend and were missed, we had a wonderful time.
  
Balloons mark the spot.
Bruce and June, the epitome of gracious hosts, opened their beautiful Tallahassee home to our big group on Friday evening. Informality was the rule of the day and renewing family bonds was top priority. 
  
Reconnecting with family
With a nod to Wood family tradition, the evening was punctuated with a homegrown fireworks show. Thankfully, since we were in an urban neighborhood and not the family farm, the show did not dissolve into a Duncans vs. Thorntons bottle rocket war. Maybe next time we're at the Lonesome Pine.
  
Let the fireworks begin!
After some fun explorations of Tallahassee sights like Florida State University and nearby Wakulla Springs State Park on Saturday, we gathered the whole group for some family photographs.  Though the posed group shot was awesome, our favorite was the one in which Woodie captured everyone's reaction to a funny remark made by Bruce (of course).  We admired Tom and Baylinn for maintaining self-control and holding their pose when the rest of us lost it.

We enjoyed a delicious meal at a local restaurant with the surprising name of Stinky's Fish Camp ad retired to the reunion hotel for Wood family style entertainment.  As always, for "the cousins" the most fun was in the rehearsal.
  
Duncan boys laughing
In fact, we were having such a barrel of laughs at our rehearsal session, we almost missed the actual performance.  It was another fabulous Wood famly reunion spent sharing old memories and making new ones.  Can't wait for the next one!
  
Cousins minus three (Alison, Andy & Deb)

APRIL 8-11, 2010