Travel Archives

August 9, 2012

I Could Skip the Clown

I keep an audiobook in one of my MP3 players just for visits to the dentist’s office. An audio book and some gas makes the quarterly cleaning go by in no time. I started Stephen King’s book IT about three cleanings and a crown ago and and had barely made a dent in the book. He must get paid by the pound.

Anyway, I decided to listen to it on my trip. It got me all the way TO Cape, around Cape and past Murray, Kentucky, where I spotted this guy. (You can click on the photos to make them larger, but you may not want to.)

King’s clown a creature of evil

One of the nightmarish characters in King’s novel is Pennywise, otherwise known as “It,” a prehistoric creature of evil who can change shapes at will. “It” primarily appears in the form of a clown in order to attract its preferred prey of young children.

Some folks have commented that they developed a fear of clowns because of a mural of them on the wall of Dr. Herbert’s office, but I escaped childhood relatively unscathed in that category. I’d hate to be a kid in Murray, Kentucky, who read IT, though.

June 23, 2012

Kentucky Traffic Safety Message

We cheated death once more. pulling into Cape in late afternoon. I tried to shoot a few frames of the Nashville skyline at the split, but decided that I didn’t want the last photo before (or during) the wreck to be of the Nashville skyline.

Kentucky reinforces safety message

Had I seen this memorial to Kentucky traffic fatalities BEFORE I got to Nashville, I might not have tried to shoot the skyline photo from a moving car. I pull into that rest area on almost every trip, but I don’t recall seeing the memorial before.

June 22, 2012June 22, 2012

Northbound TN I-24

The trip back home to Cape has been mostly uneventful. Getting out of Florida was a wet slog, but traffic was light and my Rain-X meant that I rarely had to run my windshield wipers.

I’m not a big Stephen King fan, but I loaded one his books in my MP3 player and have had the miles click off listening to the horrible happenings in Desperation, NV. Maybe they’re clicking off so quickly because the book dampens any desire you have to go on backroads through desolate countryside.

Most of Thursday was spent escaping Georgia. It’s kind of disheartening to have to go through l0ng states like Florida and Georgia. You have a better feeling of making progress when you’re going through skinny states like Tennessee (if you’re going north and south, that is).

Atop Nickajack Lake bridge

Traffic was moving fine until I got to Atlanta at rush hour. Boy, RUSH hour is a misnomer. They should call it Crawl Hour.

I rounded a curve north of Chattanooga and mentally kicked myself for not being ready to shoot a high railroad bridge that crosses the highway.

I decided I’d better take advantage of the few minutes of daylight I had left to capture the foothills of the eastern Continental Divide.

The photo at the top was taken as we were starting to climb the big bridge over Nickajack Lake, about a third of the way between Chattanooga and Monteagle Pass. The second shot was taken just ever the top of the bridge.

Garish fireworks stand

This fireworks store has always fascinated me, but never enough to get off The Big Road to stop, particularly with a Stephen King horror book playing in the background.

I should be pulling into Cape late Friday afterno0n.

April 14, 2012April 15, 2012

Mount St. Helens

When Wife Lila and I traveled to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument last summer, I complained that I couldn’t see the forest for the sneeze. I had a killer cold that made me so miserable I’d have welcomed a Second Coming of Mt. Helens to put me out of my misery.

On top of that, we got a late start and it was a longer drive than we had anticipated. By the time we got there, it was late in the day and the cloud cover was heavy. It didn’t provide the best opportunities for shooting.

Hoffstadt Creek Bridge

A lot of money flowed into the area to restore infrastructure. This bridge over Hoffstadt was built as quickly as possible to help loggers salvage what trees could be salvaged.

View into the crater

We expected to see what we remembered from news photos of the aftermath of the eruption: trees laid over, stripped landscapes and mud flows. (One of my former staffers won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the event.)

Nature is much more resilient than anyone had expected. Many of the trees have been replanted, wildflowers and wildlife are returning. This view down into the crater shows a lot of green.

Fragile ecosystem

Many areas of the mountain are closed to the public to give scientists a unique opportunity to study the progression of life in an area that had been effectively stripped clean of anything living.

Photo Gallery of Mount St. Helens

I shot these photos when I was dog-sick with a cold, so it’s appropriate that I edited them when I’m (hopefully) getting over one. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.