Old Ski Area - Location
Sudbury Yacht Club - Location
We were only driving to Sault Ste. Marie today, so we had lots of time to do some nostalgia touring in Sudbury. After I graduated from Waterloo, Chris and I spent a year in Sudbury and contrary to its image, we loved it. So much so that upon returning to Toronto, we started planning our escape to the West within a couple of weeks.
The top picture is Chris mugging on the T-Bar line of the old ski hill where she had her first ski lessons - three nights a week. The hill was notable for being only ten minutes from our place, having night skiing and the brilliant displays of sparks that would fly from skis at night as they encountered unyielding bits of the Canadian shield.
The place must have closed shortly after we left, for the parking lot and lift area are now filled with sizeable trees, as you can see in the picture. I had remembered this “mountain” as being only 150 feet high, but the altimeter on my watch claims it was more like 250 feet. Certainly easier than climbing to the top of FAR though.
We also visited where we used to live, which is still there, where we worked, which aren’t, and the Sudbury Yacht Club. This was also close to where we lived and resulted in many great memories of sailing and racing our yacht - a Laser dinghy.
Thinking back it is amazing how many great memories we have of that year in Sudbury, while remembering very little of the next year in Toronto.
We drove on to Sault Ste. Marie in the continuing rain - the first time we have been on this section of the Trans Canada highway in 35 years. It is still great country.
Back on the Road - Collingwood - Location
After a week of visiting friends and relatives in the Toronto area, we have fled to Northern Ontario and begun our journey home. Yesterday we took a drive up to Collingwood and then on to Sudbury, all in pouring rain.
I started skiing during my last year at the University of Waterloo and this entailed numerous trips to the mighty Blue Mountain, which in my memory was a huge cliff. It isn’t of course, as attested to by the picture above, but the base area is really amazing. It is hard to imagine how a smallish ridge could generate the business to support a base village complex that is considerably bigger and posher than many I have seen at big name resorts. The folks at FAR would mortgage their first borns to have a tenth as much. Clearly having six to nine million folks as potential day trippers is a lot more important than slopes or snow.
Backroad Wandering
We have spent the last couple of days wandering through the backroads of West Virginia and Western Virginia. There are some seriously twisty roads in this area and I couldn’t keep the “smell the whisky burning” lyrics from Steve Earl’s Copperhead Road from floating through my head. Now I know where Nascar drivers come from.
We spent last night in Staunton, Virginia and tonight we are in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which is the site of a devastating dam break flood back in 1889. Long ago I read a great book about this flood by David McCullough, so it was neat to see the topography, including the breached dam, which is now a National Memorial.
The Smokey (in this case rainy) Mountains - Location
We spent the day in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park and then driving along part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The park was quite busy, but the parkway wasn’t and consists of almost continuous tight turns. Alas on and off rain, sometimes quite hard, spoiled most of the views. After I took this picture just off of the parkway, we took a trail of less than a kilometre length and about 100 m rise to the top of the mountain, but by the time we got there it was raining hard and the visibility was virtually nonexistent.
We are in the minuscule burg of Erwin, Tennessee this evening.
Chickamauga battlefield - Location
We spent a fair amount of time today at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. The Civil War is rather interesting to me for some reason, but I have never been to one of its battlegrounds. This park is very well done, with detailed descriptions of all the troop placements and movements and somehow puts substance to stuff only read about. Despite Street View etc., many things still require visiting physically to get a real sense of scale.
We are just outside Knoxville, Tennessee tonight.
Some roads lead to Rome
Rome Georgia that is.
I have never been in the deep South, except for some business trips to the New Orleans area long ago, and I am not sure what I expected. However a day of wandering the back roads of Alabama and Georgia left me surprised at just how delightful it is.
We will be heading towards Chattanooga today and then on toward the Smoky Mountains.
Beach in Destin Florida - Location
The beaches of the Florida panhandle are gorgeous and the water is crystal clear. Unfortunately it is also very commercial and at least on this weekend, very busy. It was a relief to turn North and escape the bulk of the coastal traffic.
Tonight we are in the deep, deep South, specifically in Dothan, Alabama, where rather surprisingly, we found a really nice Indian restaurant.
Gulf Coast Still
Oh, right. The where was I log.
Yesterday we had a reasonably miserable trip from Port Lavaca, Texas to Lafayette, Louisiana. The first part wasn’t bad and we even managed to skirt most of Houston, but eventually we were forced onto the dreaded I-10 and spent most of the day in a long 80 mph traffic jam. The antithesis of zen.
While the trip was worse than I thought it would be, the destination was better, for my only previous encounter with Lafayette was in another universe as a business trip and let’s just say my memory was not kind to it. However we ended up staying in a pretty nice part of town and found a very nice Indian restaurant and an interesting wine bar. All rather surprisingly nice.
Today we made a short drive to Biloxi, Mississippi, which sports incredibly nice pure white sand beaches. Unfortunately the water is rather brown and while reportedly clean and safe, I have some Northern reluctant to swimming in water with less than a metre visibility. Couple that with no cool waves and the fact you have to walk half way to Cuba before finding water deep enough not to stub your fingers if you were to try and swim, we just kind of ended walking around in the water for a while. BTW I am sure I have had cooler bathes than this water, but it still was wonderfully refreshing as compared to the high humidity 34+ C temperatures under a sun set on broil.
The place is also rather too touristy and busy for my hide in the woods mentality, but we will probably continue along the coast towards the Florida panhandle before turning North in search of something cooler and preferably snowy. :-)
Mustang Island Beach - Location
Drove down through Corpus Christi, past its impressive array of refineries, and out onto Mustang Island, which is a companion barrier island to Padre Island. Spent some time walking the endless beach, with the warm gentle surf lapping at us. Despite the dead seaweed fringe in the picture, it is a lovely beach.
In Port Lavac tonight and will probably work our way quickly through Houston tomorrow.
Slammer - Location
Riverwalk - Location
We are spending the night in the Bexar County Jail in San Antonio, Texas. Okay, it is really a Holiday Inn Express in a converted 1878 jail house building that is significantly more comfortable than that sounds.
Of course we did the obligatory visit to the Alamo a few blocks away, but the real attraction here is the several mile long Riverwalk, which wends its way through the centre of the city. Dating back to 1941, this has a profusion of shops and restaurants and is really nicely done.
