Tag Archives: travel

Greetings from Tallwood!

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As expected, I’m now in Maine.  Wells, Maine, to be exact.

This is not my final destination – that’d be at Schoodic Woods Campground in Acadia National Park tomorrow afternoon – but it is the place that I’m staying tonight, and I think I’m in love with my hotel.  This place has vibes from the 1960s and 70s, before every overnight stay was in a corporate hotel chain.  Tallwoods Motel is one of those places where you park directly in front of the door to your room, the room itself is about 12×15, there’s a window A/C unit, and you have to walk to the office to get ice.  I’d post some pictures now (maybe I will in the future), but I haven’t figured out yet how to link my phone’s gallery to this tablet, so you’ll just have to imagine it.

I started the day today in Winchester, VA, in one of the aforementioned hotel chains (a Sleep Inn, as I recall).  I chose it because it was the cheapest I could find in the Winchester area that didn’t give me the idea that I’d be in a crack house.  I still kinda felt like I was in a crack house.

The drive from Lawrenceville to Winchester (on Thursday) was at once boring and incredibly stressful.  Somewhere south of Boone, NC, my car screamed at me that “EyeSight” (that which is responsible for cruise control) was no longer operative.  It then flashed a series of warnings at me, telling me that my transmission was shot, that my brakes weren’t working, that my backup assist was toast, that my windshield wiper fluid was empty, and that my engine needed checking.  In short – and this is no exaggeration – every check light that could possibly come on came on.

After an initial freak out, I did not freak out.  You ask, “Why not?”  Well, because the exact same thing happened to me two years ago when I was driving to my fall vacation in Michigan.  When it happened back then, I was just south of Knoxville and – mainly because of the “transmission oil overheated” warning – I searched out the closest Subaru place and made my way to it, hoping to save my car from death.  I’m not sure why I didn’t actually have anyone check it out, but I didn’t.  I literally drove through the parking lot and continued on my way to Ohio – without cruise control, which sucked.  I did a bit of research that night and someone had said that the same thing happened to them and it was because of a rear proximity sensor and they’d cleaned it off and everything was fine.  So the next morning (this was two years ago), I wiped off all of the rear sensors, got into my car and started it, and everything was fine.

So yesterday when all this happened, I didn’t freak out (after the initial freakout).  I drove to the next rest area, went to pee, came back and wiped off the rear sensors, and started the car. 

Still had the check engine light.  Still had no Eyesight.  Still had no cruise control.

So I continued on my way to Winchester, got to the hotel, and pulled up Copilot (an AI software that wasn’t available two years ago), and told it the whole story, including what happened two years ago.  Copilot told me not to worry about it, said it was probably an intermittent electrical problem, and that it would bet that the problem would be cleared when I started the car this morning.

I felt good.  I felt confident.  I started the car this morning.

Check engine light was still on.  Still didn’t have cruise control.

So I resigned myself to driving to Maine without cruise.  Not a happy thought, but what else was I gonna do? 

After about 20 minutes on the road, I stopped for gas and thought, “Maybe it’s a vacuum thing with the gas cap and all will be well now!”  Got back into the car, started it….check engine light on, and no cruise control.  Shit.  Drove to Dunkins for some breakfast.

Came out, started the car…..everything was fine.  So…..I’m still thinking it was a gas cap thing.

At any rate, I’m really glad I had the cruise control working because the drive from Winchester to Wells absolutely sucked.  I think the blame is shared by northeastern drivers (who have no concept of a speed limit or of staying in their own lane) and by the road planners (who’ve made entering and exiting major interstate highways ridiculously hard).

But after about 10 hours, I did make it to the Tallwood Motel in Maine, and I’m happily contemplating sleeping in a tiny room with a window A/C unit while I listen to trains passing about 200 yards from my window.  Most people would hate this.  I love it.

And tomorrow? It’s on to Acadia!  Haven’t been there in 50 years, and I can’t wait!

Wilderness State Park – 2024

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As the title would imply, I’m at Wilderness State Park in Petosky, MI, this week. I arrived yesterday afternoon, late enough to take everything out of the car, put it in my cabin (the Sturgeon Cabin), drink some bourbon, and go to bed.

This morning, after a breakfast of granola and berries (I’m hillbilly like that), I drove to the Walmart in Cheboygan and picked up 3 new lanterns. The cabin is DARK. Got back, got things organized, and I guess my vacation can now REALLY begin. On Election Day, no less.

Wilderness State Park? I found this place last year, when I was trying to book a week at Pictured Rocks and discovered that Michigan is now closing a lot of its parks (yes, Pictured Rocks is a national park, but I group them all together) on October 15th. This did not sit well with me, since I like for my Michigan sojourns to be at least a bit chilly, so I went on the hunt for the northern-most park in Michigan that I could reserve in November. I found Wilderness. And I spent a week last November living at the park in a tent.

It was glorious.

On one of my walks last year, I stumbled upon the Sturgeon Cabin, and instantly fell in love with it. It’s a log cabin that’s about 3 miles from anywhere, right on the shore of Lake Michigan. No power. Hand-pumped (tannin-filled) water out front. A vault toilet about 100 yards away. Wood crib that holds about a two cords of wood. So secluded that you almost don’t see it if you drive past on the “road” (literally a couple of dirt ruts) that goes past it. When I saw that I could reserve it for the second week of November, it was a no-brainer to grab it. I’ll have some pictures up in a future post.

This is smaller than the cabins I’ve stayed in at Cheboygan State Park. It’s probably 18×22 inside, with two bunk beds and another single bed, a table and benches, a counter with two shelves, and a wonderful little wood stove. Behind the stove is a stonework that looks like it may have been an actual fireplace at one time, but it is now just a great place to store wood – and whoever was here before me left me a good supply, so I probably won’t have to go to the wood crib before I leave.

Behind the cabin is a short path through some trees and shrubs to a private beach on Lake Michigan. I say “private” because – due to the way the land lies – you’d have to REALLY want to get to this beach from anyplace other than the cabin. On the other three sides of the cabin are fairly thick woods. This is the type of place that I’ve fantasized about retiring to for the last 30 years. I may never (let’s face it, I’ll never) get to realize that dream, but I can live it a couple of weeks every year.

So that’s a description of where I am. Over the next week, I’ll try to get daily entries in – with photos – so I can remember what I did this week in November of 2024.

Wilmington Trip

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Sandie and I took a long weekend and drove up/over to Wilmington, NC, last Friday. She lived there for about 14 years and wanted to show me around a bit and reconnect with some old friends.

We tried to go to a seafood place at Wrightsville Beach for dinner Friday, but the line to get is was so long that we bailed on the idea and got Mexican food instead.

Saturday, we went to the historic district, took a walking tour, and got some seafood at a bar and grill (which was actually really good). Saturday night, we drove past Sandie’s old house and she spotted a neighbor “kid” (now with two kids of his own) that she recognized from her time there, so we wound up spending an hour at their house. Not overly thrilling for ME (shoot, I didn’t know anybody), but she had a good time.

Sandie and one of her old buddies pose in front of a giant basket of French fries

That evening, we went to one of her old hangs – a pool/dart bar – and hung out with some of her old friends while being filled with bourbon by one of her old bartenders.

Fortunately, we got an Uber driver for that last, because the bourbon was pretty freaking good.

Wilmington has an extraordinary history as one of the earliest, largest, and most influential towns in North Carolina – Cornelius Harnett, for example, was a signer of the Articles of Confederation and a native Wilmingtonian – but it also has a pretty dark period which was nearly forgotten until just the last 10 years or so. I’m speaking, of course, about the Wilmington Massacre of 1989. During a few days in November of that year, a group of White Supremacist Democrats not only completed the only successful coup d’etat in American history, but also exiled the majority of the city’s prominent blacks (and a good number of sympathetic whites), and murdered between 10 and 200 other blacks (nobody seems to have a good grasp on the actual number). As a result, huge numbers of blacks fled the city, flipping it from majority black to majority white literally overnight, draining it of skilled and unskilled labor, and pretty much handcuffing it economically.

The massacre can in some ways be considered to be the spark that spread Jim Crow throughout the south, as it became a blueprint for Southern Democrats on how to disenfranchise blacks without also losing the poor/illiterate whites. One enduring legacy – in 1898, blacks made up 56% of the population in Wilmington. Today, that number is 16%. This is not a spurious relationship – Wilmington today is still seen by many blacks as somewhat of a sundown town.

If you’d like to learn more about this, check out Wilmington’s Lie – a well-told and well-researched tome covering the event itself, the political causes of it, and the political fallout from it. I found it to be eye-opening, depressing, and fascinating – and quite relevant to today’s political and racial climate.

Grave of Cornelius Harnett