Life in the Slow Lane

One of the best things about our trip around the country is the number of things I knew but didn't know until I experienced it first hand. For instance, in case you didn't know, Texas is a big state.  Our train arrived in El Paso at about 7 in the morning and we spent all that day and into mid morning the next traveling through Texas (with the exception of our hour and a half in San Antonio, as previously mentioned ). Texas has a lot of beautiful places, but it also has a whole lot of places that look just like what we saw five minutes ago and five minutes before that and even five hours before that. While each of us three enjoyed watching our scenic routes throughout our trip, halfway through Texas, CutieBabyBoy found something far more interesting to watch than more of Texas.

It was midnight and we were finally in a taxi heading to our hotel room from the train station. We'd been in DC for two hours already but I had only seen the inside of Union Station and SOS had seen little more than I had: the Urgent Care of the hospital attached to the train station. But that is a different story. Miraculously all of our luggage had fit into the trunk of the taxi and even more miraculously, our sick baby had fallen asleep in his car seat. The streets were near empty and the route to our hotel curved around a number of museums and buildings recognizable as classic DC. We asked our driver if he knew which museums we were passing, and although he didn't know, he summoned some late night energy to tell us more about the captivating locations along our route. We rounded a corner and before us, dramatically lit against the dark night sky, was the Lincoln Memorial. SOS and I both ooed in appreciation and our driver jumped in to tell us what sight we were enjoying ...

What does a lump of coal mean to you? When we were planning our travels, I came across information about a coal mine in West Virginia that conducted tours. If I put aside my initial unease about traveling underground, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to see a significant part of our nation's history. Remembering all the lore about company stores and caged canaries and coal darkened lungs, I was eager to see first hand bits of this necessary evil on our way to true modern progress. Oh, how naive. At first, my tour seemed to reinforce my ideas. On the grounds surrounding the mine entrance they have placed a number of original buildings from various mining towns and the tiny shanty of the mine worker contrasts sharply with the luxurious home of the supervisor. The description of the company store even seems to fit. But then my little bubble of ignorance shook. We all took our seats on the rail car to travel into the mine and as we waited the tour guide handed out bumper-stickers t...

After two full days in the nation's Capitol, SOS and I found ourselves in small town America to celebrate the Fourth of July. So small, in fact, that we and our host family drove fifteen miles to find a small town big enough to have an Independence Day parade. I've never been to a Fourth of July parade that I recall, but someone passed along a bit of insight they had overheard on the subject: if you are in or attend an Independence Day parade, you are probably a Republican. I was wondering where everyone else was. We saw classic cars, fire engines and police cars. Veterans of Foreign Wars marched or rode in the bed of a big truck. Red convertibles crawled by with the city mayor and other elected officers. And then the tractors! I'm not quite sure why tractors are patriotic, but I've never seen so many tractors all in one place outside of a John Deere ad. After the tractors proceeded what may have been every red automobile in town, representing various lo...

On Wednesday all day long I sang myself a song that went something like this: remember it snows and snow is cold. Remember it snows and snow is not fun to drive in. Remember it snows and you would need to shovel it. There are many verses to this song and as we drove through the beautiful countryside I kept adding more verses. Otherwise I think SOS and I would have put an offer on a little house and moved. Really, there was nothing that we encountered all day long that detracted from the siren call of the rolling farms and wooded streams and charming architecture... Nothing except for the tenuous grasp I have on the concept of snow. As if the scenery itself weren't enough to lure us, we spent the afternoon in the town of Lititz which is home to the oldest pretzel bakery in the US. Their fresh baked soft pretzels make you forget you missed lunch. And as if more magnetic pull was necessary, this is also the home to a chocolate factory that sends emissaries of chocolate frag...

Thirty nine hours after boarding our train in Arizona, we arrived in New Orleans. Nothing sounded as good as a shower, and so we made haste to our historic once-a-bank hotel and then regrouped for our first visit of the French Quarter. On our way out the door we, inexperienced Californians that we are, thought it looked like it might rain. Assured by the concierge that there was only a seven to eight percent chance of rain, we headed out and soon were wondering how many showers we could squeeze in during our overnight in Louisiana. Hot and humid is humid and hot. We walked to the river (yes, Virginia, there is a Mississippi.) and then went looking for authentic New Orleans. Just for the curious, the things New Orleans is known for are there in a plenty. SOS and I wanted to try those things that the city is known for and we don't have moral objections to, and we started off with a muffaletta. This sandwich is the size of a medium pizza and a double double hamburger combined. I don...

If you had an hour and a half in San Antonio at ten o'clock at night, what would you do? Amtrak trains do some splitting and rearranging in San Antonio and while they do, you have the option of staying on the train without power or getting off the train. We chose to get off the train and wandered into the station. There we discovered that the tv was tuned to Nick Jr. We were initially quite pleased that at least we were not obliged to learn about the sex lives of prisoners, as we had been at the station in Arizona, but nevertheless, we could feel our brain cells dying. I asked SOS what time we needed to be back on the train three times and each time he would begin to answer but then the the tv show would kill the cells required for him to finish his answer, so I suggested we go on a walk, provided the area did not look too scary. From the parking lot we thought it looked safe enough to go a little further and from there we found a little map of the near vicinity... Ruth'...