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08/16/97--New Jersey to Virginia: Skyline Caverns and Skyline Drive
08/17/97--Virginia: Blue Ridge Parkway and Booker T. Washington National Monument
08/18/97--Tennessee: Oak Ridge and Dayton
08/19/97--Tennessee: Shiloh and Memphis
08/20/97--Memphis, Tennessee: Art and Civil Rights Museums
08/21/97--Little Rock and Hot Springs, Arkansas
08/22/97--Hot Springs and Hope, Arkansas; Dallas, Texas
08/23/97--Dallas, Texas: Museums
08/24/97--Fort Worth, Texas: Museums
08/25/97--Austin, Johnson City, and San Antonio, Texas
08/26/97--San Antonio, Texas: Museums
08/27/97--San Antonio, Texas: Museums and the Alamo
08/28/97--LoneStarCon II: Day 1
08/29/97--LoneStarCon II: Day 2
08/30/97--LoneStarCon II: Day 3
08/31/97--LoneStarCon II: Day 4
09/01/97--LoneStarCon II: Day 5
09/02/97--Houston, Texas
09/03/97--Houston, Texas: Houston Space Center
09/04/97--Southern Louisiana
09/05/97--Thibodeaux and New Orleans, Louisiana
09/06/97--Vicksburg, Mississippi
09/07/97--Biloxi, Mississippi: Jefferson Davis Museum
09/08/97--Mobile, Alabama: Forts and Battleship Memorial Park
09/09/97--Tuskegee and Montgomery, Alabama: Historical buildings and Civil Rights sites
09/10/97--Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama: Southern Flight Museum, Civil Rights Institute, Natural History Museum
09/11/97--Huntsville, Alabama: U.S. Space & Rocket Center
09/12/97--Chattanooga, Tennessee and Chickamauga, Georgia
09/13/97--Kennesaw, Georgia
09/14/97--Atlanta and Robins, Georgia
09/15/97--Savannah, Georgia: Savannah Museum and Fort Pulaski
09/16/97--Charleston, South Carolina: Patriots Point
09/17/97--Charleston, South Carolina: Forts Sumter and Moultrie
09/18/97--Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina: Museums
09/19/97--Greensboro and Outer Banks, North Carolina
09/20/97--Kitty Hawk, North Carolina: The Wright Brothers Memorial; Newport News, Virginia: The Mariners' Museum
09/21/97--First and Second Manassas
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08/16/97--New Jersey to Virginia: Skyline Caverns and Skyline Drive:
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Well, we are on our way under a cloudless sky. This is sort of a different trip for us. We are just taking our car and setting out. We just loaded the car and are going. My one concern is the car might not be quite up to it. I am not really a car person. We have what has been described as an 'appliance' car. I have none of my ego wrapped up in it. I just use it to get me where I want to go. It is a 1984 Toyota. We have had it more than an eighth of a century. That is more than half the time I have been married to Evelyn. Our marriage will hit the quarter century mark this trip. That is still a week and a half off. But getting back to the car it is getting old and a little rusty. We have 146,210 miles on it at this instant. It has been extremely reliable. Only once did it not go when it was supposed to and Toyota said it was a design flaw and paid for it. It died on the way to a dentist appointment. Where you going to find luck like that? Someone driving by recognized Evelyn and took her to work. Luck of Leeper is usually bad, but not with cars... Yet. Still we are abusing the one car we really depend on. I wonder if we are going to get stranded in a Southern town someplace. A lot of Twilight Zones started that way. Probably even more Alfred Hitchcock's.
We are headed south on the New Jersey Turnpike past Princeton.
There are all sorts of variety even in 18-wheeler trucks. Most are just sort of dirty and utilitarian. We passed one that was a bit garish. It was shiny with lots of chrome. The flatbed had a row of what looked like gold chains for securing freight. People find funny things to show off with. This thing looks like a 18-wheel pimpmobile.
There is a mile-long traffic jam at the end of the pike lined up for the tollbooth. The van next to us has a loose parakeet in the car. There is a kid sitting with his legs up and the parakeet is happy just standing on the leg.
We are in Delaware. This bridge used to have a ten-cent toll. Now it's two dollars.
We are getting no classical stations as we leave the big cities. I like all sorts of music, or nearly, but my preference is classical or film. I like a strong melody. I guess we will be hearing all kinds this trip. But we won't get classical when we want it. I brought some classical and some film music on cassette. We also have some novels on cassette as our 'in-flight movies.' A lot of those are Westerns. Put us in the mood for Texas. It is fairly easy to find Westerns on cassette. Truck drivers like Westerns. I prefer science fiction, but there is something to be said for Westerns. At the last Boston Science Fiction Convention (held in Framingham) one of the authors-Don D'Ammassa, I think-said he started with Westerns. Rereading them some just did not measure up. Max Brand did, he thought. A bunch of the Westerns we brought were Max Brands on his recommendation.
Near Washington we go from I-95 to I-495 then I-66. We passed some interesting buildings, but nothing eventful so far.
Ah, yes. And suddenly it feels like we are in Oz. The strange Mormon temple pokes its head over the trees, looking like a palace. And they stuck a feller on the top and called him the Moroni.
Unattended cars should be parked.
We're now in Dixie.
We just passed a tall building of the NRA. I see the NRA has fallen out of favor from the hard-core gun fans. The NRA is trying to get assault rifles off the street and there are those who see this as an infringement of our rights. I guess a man wearing swim fins, a football helmet, carrying an assault rifle on the street may have a disordered mind but he is a well-ordered militia.
On the radio there is a song called 'We Want America Back.' 'It's time for the Army of God to arise and say we want America back.' There is a spoken section where the singer complains that thirty years ago the number one TV show was Andy Griffith. He didn't say what is number one now. He says some of our schools have become like war zones. We have to stop that, but not by taking away guns, of course. Interesting country.
We had lunch in Front Royal. The places to eat all looked like chains. We picked Long John Silver's because those we don't have at home. The sign says shrimp twenty-five cents, no limit. Why would they need one? The fried wrapping is a quarter-inch thick. The fish is better but not good. The key lime pie was good, but only because I squeezed some lemon wedges over it. I always thought that it was an inauspicious name for a restaurant. Long John Silver was given the nickname to imply he would be eaten by cannibals or had been a cannibal or had served human meat-he was a seacook. Long John or Long Pork is human meat.
The plan was that after lunch we would see Luray Caverns. I looked at the guidebook and decided that nearby Skyline Caverns (isn't that an oxymoron?) sounded more interesting. Luray offered an organ that plays on the stalactites; Skyline has anthodites, an extremely rare formation of calcite also known as 'cave flowers.'
We chose the latter. Had we never seen a cavern before that would have been a bad choice. This cave is not rich in really nice stalactites and stalagmites. (Remember the former hang down from the ceiling, the latter collect and built up from the floor.) It has some weird formations, but not a lot. But we'd seen those elsewhere. The guide told us that this is the only cave with anthodites open to the public. They are unusual. They are the size and shape of chrysanthemums or some sort of sea anemone hanging from the roof of the cave. They are like bursts of stalk coming out from a center. According to the guide there is no good explanation for the formation and there are really good explanations the formation is impossible. Calcium cave formations are caused by water dripping down. It should not cause the formation of these spines going in many directions.
These caverns were discovered in 1937, as sort of another natural attraction to complement the Skyline Drive over the Blue Ridge Mountain Range. The local geology made the presence of caves seem likely to the discoverers. The cave uses indirect lighting to have minimal effect on the formations. They grow at a rate of an inch every 120 years. Anthodites grow one inch in 7000 years.
One of the feature of the cave is a stalagmite called the Shrine. Light it one way and it looks sort of like a human figure seated with its back to you; light it another way and it is standing facing you.
There are a number of shallow pools, none more than four inches deep though they look a lot deeper because of the lighting. For no good reason other than ignorant cruelty trout have been introduced to some of these pools and they live in a tight four-inch deep pools in almost total darkness, except when humans are present. We were seeing the cave as dry as it had been in many years due to a lack of rain. The other claim to fame of this cave was the discovery of specimens of a blind beetle that have been found only in this cave. Seven Pseudanophthalmus Petrunkevitchi Valentine dead bodies have been found in the cave and no other cave or any place else. The seven are at the Smithsonian.
Along on the tour there was a mother with a small child who had just discovered that if he can get somebody to repeat a message by asking 'huh?' His mother was paraphrasing what the guide told us for him and he was driving us crazy with his 'huh?...huh?...huh?' making her say everything three times, often drowning out the guide. There was also an Indian couple and the mother of one. I was going to wish them a happy independence day (yesterday was a semi-centennial), but the opportunity did not arise.
Following that we took the Skyline Drive, a national park that runs very much the whole state from north-east to south-west, sort of paralleling the western border. It goes over the peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains giving nice views on either side when the weather is not hazy, which it is almost always in the summer.
The Civilian Conservation Corps built the road during the Great Depression. As I travel the United States, I get a feel that people did all sorts of nifty things during the Great Depression. It almost makes me wish we could have a depression of our own. Herbert Hoover had fished along the ridge and was enamored of the views.
We ran into the Indian family again who it turns out were from Woodbridge, New Jersey. That is close enough to where we live that we go to a restaurant in Woodbridge.
Already we have seen wildlife closer than we saw it in Alaska. We saw a mother bear with cub crossing the road ten or fifteen feet ahead of our car. We also saw some deer crossing, but that we could see at home.
There are signs up that say 'Watch for fallen rocks.' Later they say 'Watch for falling rocks.' Perhaps they have both. Seeing falling rocks may be exciting and perhaps a bit dangerous. But seeing fallen rocks is only an inconvenience. It is like if you meet a fallen woman it might well be depressing, but it can be exciting and a little dangerous if you meet one while she is falling.
We had to stop and get gas at $1.219/gallon. Not really a bad price, about what it was in New Jersey. Of course, here it is self-serve and in New Jersey self-service is illegal.
The views of the Shenandoah Valley should have been spectacular but for the haziness so they end up looking much alike. After a while we start ignoring them, but it is a nice drive. |
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