A History Lesson

Late spring 2005. The ride north through the Smoky Mountains along the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway was spectacular. Vistas like this at every turn. Took a long time to navigate that road. Had to stop to take pictures all the time.

Fall 2004. Niagara Falls. It's relatively close by and magnificent. Need I say more...

Fall 2004: I was camping on a bluff above Lake Superior in the extremely remote Pictured Rocks National Park on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as the sun was setting. I think there was just the three of us in the whole park. Superior spot.

Fall of 2004. It was raining pretty hard early one evening as I was sitting inside an open tent on the eastern edge of Lake Ontario, the west "coast" of New York state. I had just finished cooking dinner when I looked up and was overwhelmed by this sunset. Took these photos, top-to-bottom, in the space of 10 minutes. The shifting hues and splashes of color were amazing.

If you drive down Route 95 south, this scene is familiar to you. Signs for the South Of The Boarder tourist trap in South Carolina start in Pennsylvania. Thousands of them. They are legion. (Effects are mine in honor of that cartoon locale come to life.)
I've vowed to myself several times that some day I am going to count these signs. I've tried twice. You lose focus. There's a lot of "South" signs among a real lot of other signs. Hundreds within thousands. So count? Ahhh..... maybe not.

Love this photo. Fall 2004.Traveling northwest up through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (the closest thing to Alaska we have in the Lower 48), I rolled by this place. Spying the sign out of the corner of my eye, I doubled back. Note the razor wire fence fronting the maximum security facility across the road.

In early 2005, I was crossing eastward through the Everglades one day during a particularly dry period when I realized I was surrounded by an abundance of wildlife, like the Great Blue Heron pictured above, road-side searching for water. Lots of gators, all manners of birds, dozens of giant herons close enough to touch, and, at one point, what must have been a panther flashed across the road ahead of me. Those suckers are big and they can motor.

A 50-States primer: How? Why? Some answers, observations...  

Can't call the 50 states my stomping grounds because, truth be told, the lion's share of my life, up to age 24, was spent in Winthrop, Mass. in the USA, the Back Bay of Boston my nocturnal playground for the next 16 and then, like finding a personal lodestone, South Boston was home for the next eight years.
All neighborhoods worth loving and and all part of what I've become -- for good or bad. Had a lot of laughs, fun... great friends, comparatively few outright enemies, I think.
On my ledger, the good outweighs the bad about 100-1. Been lucky like that, but final accounting to follow...
Winthrop's a small town on a southern New England peninsula, its eastern shore dueling daily with the Atlantic tides and its western containing Boston Harbor. Growing up in big house atop a hill overlooking Logan Airport and, behind that, the Boston skyline, I traveled freely about New England, NYC, New York state and New Jersey a lot, camping, ski trips, weddings, concerts, lost weekends, road trips, vacations, what have you?
I ventured many times as far south as Washington, D.C. through Delaware and surrounding Virginia and Maryland (I love D.C., one of America’s tip-top attractions. The monuments, the museums, the iconic government edifices flanking the National Mall, living history. The zoo! Go there.)

Several times in the mid-70s, I thumbed from the Boston area to Capitol Hill with a buddy. Those were the days. None of my friends had a job. There weren't any, along with no gas. But we were free, unafraid and, we thought, bulletproof. I attended Jimmy Carter’s D.C. inauguration in January 1977. It was a freezing cold day. An omen? Perhaps. (Yeah. Me, Carter. I know! No e-mails please.) Have spent a lot of time in D.C. since.
In 1992, shortly after the first attack there, I spent some time on the outside observation deck atop one of the World Trade Center  towers, then located in lower Manhattan. I took photos in each direction, Wall Street, Jersey, Statue of Liberty and uptown. I'm going to dig those up and post them. That was a day I'll would have always remembered, because I seek out top floor lookouts and this perch was the cream of the crop. But now, with what happened there nine years later and now over nine years ago, it's a day I'll never ever forget.

I went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and Kitty Hawk, birthplace of air travel. Competitive sports fishing is huge there. The Atlantic was warm and blue and so full of salt out there that you floated like you were lying on a bed. True story.

I attended the Indy 500 several times, trips with my niece, now The Major, and her husband, also an officer (Her Major?), and their Air Force pals sprinkled among a half-million other spectators. The speed. The noise. Startling but exquisite.

We camped once at the Speedway and one night, wandering about late, I met a group of maybe 10 deaf female students from an Atlanta college sitting around a campfire. They were in the middle of a spirited argument, using sign language. An unusual sight. Anyway, one told me they came to the race every year because they can feel the sound.

I added Ohio (the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton), and Kentucky (the Newport Aquarium in Covington, right across the Ohio River from several Cincinnati professional sports stadiums) to the list then.

I spent a lost weekend in Chicago with some Alaskan buddies. Illinois? Check.

Heck, on four separate journeys, I spent almost three months total time, hopping on-and-off tiny bush planes, camping and paddling a kayak all over Alaska, thanks to my gracious host and pal, Nome’s own Little Joe. Wild life like I've never seen. And that's just in the barrooms on Front Street in Nome. Plenty of animals around that area too.

I was up in the Space Needle overlooking the magnificent sloping skyline ringing a section of Puget Sound in Seattle, Wash. on the first trip out to Alaska and then gambling in a Reno, Nev. casino during the return phase.
After meeting up with Little Joe and two additional hearty Alaska veterans, kindred spirits all, in Seattle, I tagged along as, at best, a junior partner as we embarked from Bellingham, Wash., just north of Seattle, on a car ferry, bound for Ketchikan on a route of the Alaskan Marine Highway ferry system. The large ship slowly ambled up the southerly, Canadian portion of the iconic Inside Passage between British Columbia and Vancouver Island, a trip of almost three days length. As advertised, pure eye candy. Weather is paramount up there. Good weather is celebrated. Bad weather affects everything you do. Many folks pitched tents on the open deck, but Little Joe situated us in a sleeper cabin. It was quite the party. Good time had by all.
Ketchikan's ferry terminal was where we changed boats, soon to embark north on a smaller vessel to Wrangell, launching pad for our trip into the "bush." Ketchikan's a city of about 8,000, fifth largest in the state by the way, and is labelled the "Gateway to Alaska." It's in an area known for its totem poles and prodigious annual rainfall. Notable as the wettest spot in North America, the city averages 152 inches of rain per year. Boston, by contrast, gets 44. It did not disappoint.
It was pouring, buckets of rain, so much so that visibility was just a couple of feet as we slogged up and down the ferry ramp, toting off our gear. We were soon to pile our gear and ourselves into a series of taxis, bound for a motel where we would loiter for about eight hours, waiting for the next high tide to allow our ferry in. Commerce and travel along the Alaska coast are largely dependent on tides.
Captains often switch off ships here and, at one point, I was on the wide ramp beside the two officers as they passed each other, each well swaddled in oilskins and going in different directions. The outgoing captain wryly remarked, "Nice day!" Reaching up to tip his cap, the embarking officer cheerfully replied through weather's drumbeat, "Is for Ketchikan!" Amazed at the moment, the weather and their ambivalence to it, I kept moving.
It was in Wrangell that Little Joe had arranged for his cousin Tim, a captain, to pilot his shrimp boat for us the travel on. It was about eight feet across and maybe 30 feet long. Tim was available during this peak summer period as he was on crutches, nursing a broken leg suffered slipping on an icy pier ramp the previous winter. Complicating his recovery was the fact he had only one leg, the other lost in a long-ago highway accident. Despite these setbacks, Tim was a very competent captain, fisherman and native guide.
We had waterside cabins in three different locations in the Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest national forest. This arctic rain forest covers most of Southeast Alaska and the 1,100 small islands that make up 300-mile long Alexander Archipelago. It's so quiet, it's eerie at first. And the air tastes good. It's like your lungs are on vacation too.
We kayaked, fished, shot a variety of guns (strictly target practice), and saw amazing wildlife and nature sights. Bald Eagles are to SE Alaska what pigeons are to a city: everywhere!
Black bears were plenty too. In the very first free moments after we settled in the first cabin, I walked the short distance down to a nearby stream. Shortly thereafter I was joined by my pal, Richie from Pittsburgh. We both leaned on a uprooted cedar tree so wide that, laying on its side, it was up to our shoulders.
Just then a black bear emerged from the woods across the stream maybe 20 feet away. Couple of hundred pounds at least. It was too late to move, so we stayed stock still. The bear then ambled to the water's edge, dipped a claw in and snagged one of the abundant salmon.
He sat back, gripped the salmon with both claws and split it in half. He lapped up the desired salmon eggs the heroic fish has struggled mightily upriver to deliver, and then tossed the remainder back into the stream. I stood there, awed.
Richie, who at that point was well into double digits on visits up there, turns toward me and half-whispers, "Welcome to Alaska." An Arctic woods baptism unlike any other.
Little Joe often says of Alaskans, "We eat in the top percentile of the world." And he didn't disappoint, preparing unbelievable meals based mostly on what we harvested: fresh salmon and Dolly Varden (a sort of river trout) we took while fly fishing, a 200-plus pound Pacific halibut Tim landed off the shrimp boat, Alaskan crab taken using Tim's traps off the pier of one of the cabins and so many huge shrimp we had bartered for with a trawler captain that we couldn't finish it all. And I'm talking a five big appetites.
After almost a month, I was fully relaxed and felt accepted. I loved it. I could have gone home, stayed there and died happy. I learned so much from those guys. For me, the trip of a lifetime.
Alaska's a long story. There's a lot more...
Four trips so far. Lots of ground covered in lots of different fashions. Multiple Brown bear (or Grizzly) encounters, one was epic, two were scary, fishing forays with world-class fishermen, including a world champion flycaster plus a meeting with a herd of hundreds of Artic musk-ox (you smell 'em before you see 'em).
We were grounded by fog for three days once on a island in the southeast. The commercial plane stopped on the island once a day. The fog was so bad it wouldn't land, so every day the couple of tiny motels near the airport would empty out and the impatient passengers would hoist their gear and troop on down a hill to the airport. You could hear the engine of plane overhead but never see it. It would pass a navigational beacon, make a turn then go on to the next stop. Well, maybe tomorrow... The frustrated would-be passengers would then troop back up the hill and re-register at the motels.
Lots of flights taken on bush planes too, including a circle-the-drain  water landing on a river just north of the Aleutians, the type of which would later claim the life of a former U.S. Senator nearby, but the most shaky and amusing was on a flight on a major airlines before it left the ground.
As time goes on, I'll dig up some pictures and attempt an overview at least. (In the meantime, go there. You owe it to yourself. Take the cruise if you must, but go)
One last Alaska note: When you fly up to Nome on the Norton Peninsula in the northwest, you must at least land, and sometimes change planes, in Kotzebue, at an airport a little over 200 miles north-northeast of Nome and situated at the northern edge of a long skinny peninsula jutting out into the Bering Sea. You must land there. Don't know why. Anyway "Kotz" is inside the Arctic Circle.  I know. It's an airport stop, but it's an Arctic Circle airport stop, not the 5 p.m. shuttle out of Idlewhile. Got a few of both and, trust me, Kotz is the more memorable.

I visited Austin and San Antonio, Texas on separate trips to visit family members. Loved both spots. The Hill Country in between the two cities is chock full of wineries. The state capitol building in Austin is the equal of the the U.S. Capitol in D.C. No lie. Been inside both. After all, Texas was its own country for a while. The history, the Austin music scene, the BBQ. What’s not to love?

I visited my sister in Key West, Fla. many times. Great place, with a ton to do there night and day, but the native Conchs got almost all the good jobs.
Spent some time over in Naples on Florida’s west coast at another sister’s home (100 golf courses in that Gulf of Mexico resort city), several times navigating the Everglades while in transit between those two points.
I many times camped on and snorkeled along the reefs of the Dry Tortugas islands, America’s remotest national park 90 miles off Key West out in the Gulf of Mexico. It's the site of largest brick structure in the Western Hemisphere, a fort built in the mid-1800s and a birder's paradise, the resting point for hundreds of species in seasonal transit north-to-south (Unbelievable place. Go there too.)

In the fall of 2004, I set out to swim in every Great Lake… and I did. The spot I chose for Erie was pretty grim, a quick dip, but the others, H, O, M & S, were spectacular. Six weeks, great trip.
After a week of camping in and around the huge Adirondacks State Park in the upper tier of New York and a sojourn of the shores of Lake Ontario, I set off across the border to explore Canada's marvelous and massive province of Ontario, including Algonquin, Killbear and Bruce Peninsula provincial parks and, of course, Parry Sound for all you No. 4 Bobby Orr! fans. Being from Beantown, I was a celebrity from the minute I opened my mouth there. Those folks couldn't have been nicer.
Algonquin's legendary, Killbear - on the shores of the Georgian Bay - is a protected animal habitat, with abundant signage warning drivers to "Brake For Snakes" and The Bruce is at the tip-top of a peninsula splitting the Georgian Bay from Lake Huron.
That area around The Bruce is known as the "Skindiving Capital of Canada" and home to the clearest water your correspondent has ever seen. Took a fantastic hi-speed ferry trip out of nearby Tobermory, through the Fathom Five National Marine Park and north to its sister port of South Baymouth.
Fathom Five is home to its own island of Flowerpots, a geological anomaly of rocks sprouting tall out of the earth, shaped like flowers. South Baymouth is on Manitoulin Island, largely a native reservation,and a wonder scenery-wise.
Heading north, then west, I crossed back over into America at Sault Ste. Marie.
Next I checked off Michigan's Pictured Rocks and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshores off the list
After several day's drive, I made an overnight stop back in Boston for refueling and restocking and then spent maybe a week camping at several choice spots in Maine, Hermit Island on the south coast and beside Moosehead Lake in the north-central part of the state. I also finally and fully explored Maine's beautiful Baxter State Park then.
I then headed east and then up and down, up and down, and finally over the border mountains and into the Canadian Maritimes, including a day stop at the Bay of Fundy, known for its own famous Flowerpots and incredible tidal range.
While at Fundy, I spoke to a Canadian National Park Ranger who scoffed at the idea of Flowerpots on the Great Lakes, right up until I showed her the Fathom Five literature. She Xeroxed my copy and hurried off to show her colleagues.
Been to Quebec, Montreal and Quebec City, a couple or three times.
When time allows, I'll attempt an overview with photos of the Great Lakes trip as well.

I drove south several times between the Boston area and Florida, adding Georgia (two nights in Savannah; I know, sounds like a porno) and South Carolina to the list. You can’t miss South Of The Border. I didn’t … a couple of times.

I spent the winter of 2005-06, living in the trailer I eventually took across country, on Big Pine Key, an island nature preserve about 30 miles north of Key West and the world’s only home to miniature Key deer. That was freedom revisited.

But it was a trip north from Florida to Boston, which sold me on the 50-State Strategy.

It was the late spring of 2005 and Florida was roasting. I took the inland route through Georgia and Tennessee, picking up the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway. Spectacular terrain and views (see top photo above). I stayed a few days at Pigeon Forge, Tenn. poised on the northern edge of the Smoky Mountains National Park.

Pigeon Forge is home to Dollywood and hundreds of other cheesy attractions.

It's filled with solid family style eateries and cheap lodging. No kidding, my motel room was $19 a night. Of course it was some sort of theme motel. The whole place was themes, like B-roll Disney meets Revere Beach, circa 1963 minus the mobsters.
While looking for a good place to coop for a night, I stopped one late afternoon and asked a Tennessee shopkeeper who insisted I head for Pigeon Forge. Why? “It’s like Branson, only closer,” he confided, adding, “You’ll love it!” He was right.

Back on the road north again I visited several Civil War battlefields, including that triple crown of war futility, Harper’s Ferry, West Va. and the spectacularly haunting cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa. I was there at dusk one evening. The ancient trees, scarred and split by warfare, tombstones scattered among them, were particularly memorable. Definitive proof that there had been some trouble. Lincoln spoke there. Spooky...
Finally back around Boston, I was flicking through an atlas and, for the first time, realized I had been to all but three states east of the Mississippi River: Alabama and Mississippi itself in the south and Wisconsin to the north. And I already had Nevada, Washington state and far-away Alaska, one of the two great “gets” in an endeavor like this (the other being my last target, Hawaii), checked off.

OK! That's a good head start, I thought.

The 50-State Strategy was born and soon took me on a circular route around the country where I enjoyed three and a half months on the road and visited 15 states out west for the first time. Saw some great sites (Southern Utah. Five national parks, each one like going to a different planet. Spectacular. Go there! Right away!) and met some great people. It’s all laid out in the posts below (just click on older posts to check  it out).

That left “The Middle” - Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, a trip I recently finished and will detail above in the coming weeks.
Hawaii, strangely enough, should be an fairly easy get. I’ve got family there too.

That's the how. Now, here's the why:

I realized when I was traveling around the Great Lakes area that I really enjoy the feeling of not knowing what's next, what's around the next corner? What will today bring? A fresh challenge I hope. A puzzle writ lifesize. Something new, different, something I've never seen or done before. Please. Many may see this as a character flaw and, I can assure you, I'm rife with those. But I think it builds character.

(In closing, I will attempt in the future to dig up some photos - including pre-digital hard copies I have about 10,000, a daunting task - from earlier trips, add them in and to edit the blog, adding a little copy here, trimming lots of copy there and then finally rearranging the blog in chronological order. That may take a while. I’ll post you a link when that happens…)