Friday, June 29, 2018

Discovering the Monongahela





April 18-20

It took about five hours to drive from Winchester, Kentucky, to Fairmont, West Virginia. There was a time when I could have driven twice as far in a day and not felt it. No longer.

It was a delightful ride, though. Very bright, not a cloud in the sky. Traffic wasn’t too bad.

I stopped a few times to stretch, eat a snack, buy fuel. Other than that, it was a straight push. The countryside is beautiful, too, hills and woods dotted with small towns and forgettable advertising on billboards.

The only wrinkle was at the end of the ride. I couldn’t find the Clarion hotel. I wasn’t sure which way to turn off the exit ramp. So I started by trying to head to the town of Fairmont. No luck that way.

There was an appliance store. They deliver refrigerators. They should know where everything is. 

As luck often has it, the man behind the counter was from another town. He used his phone to look up a Google map.

He showed me where the Clarion was supposed to be. I wasn’t so sure. It looked like I had been there already, but hey, I’m not going anywhere else. So I gave it a try.

After a couple of miles beyond the spot on the map, I turned around. I pulled into a gas station to ask for directions. 

Just as I was about to step out of the car, I looked into the rear-view mirror and saw a small sign across the road for the Clarion. It sits on a high knoll and you get to it by taking a winding narrow lane.

By a strange coincidence of trees and line of sight, you can’t see the Clarion sign from the highway.

Once I was settled, a search for places with good beer turned up the Rambling Root on Third Street in downtown Fairmont.

This was one of the homiest meals of the trip—two generous slices of meat loaf and a few half pints:

Stumptown Holy Citra was heavy on those citrusy-flavor hops, which made it reminiscent of Lagunitas but even better, because not quite as sweet. 

Greenbrier Valley Cardinal Red is a dark brown opaque Scotch style ale with a scorched-malt flavor.

Nate’s Nut Brown from Chestnut Brew Works is malty, a little smokey. It has a good bitter hit too. But its’s rich, though, and I wouldn’t want two of them in a row.

Crow’s Kaw black IPA from Weathered Ground Brewery is a heavily hopped porter. It was good, but I think the Greenbrier black IPA at Gibbie’s in Morgantown was better.

Fairmont actually has a downtown. It has several office buildings more than a dozen stories high.

The town traces itself back about 200 years to a founder with the terrific name of Boaz Fleming. It covers a steep hillside on the bank of the Monongahela River.

I crossed into the old town because I took a wrong turn that turned out to be a better one. It brought me to Jefferson Street, which runs past the impressive Beaux Arts courthouse built in 1900.



The top end of Jefferson is one of the steepest streets I recall. Traffic turns right into a narrow lane. Otherwise they’d just have to let the cars roll back downhill.

The public thoroughfare continues uphill, but it is made of concrete stairs.

Like so many towns in this area, it isn’t as prosperous as it once was. But that courthouse is one hell of a building to be sitting in a rural county seat.



It was near 70 degrees on Tuesday, but when I left Fairmont on Wednesday morning it was in the 30s and snowing. I guess everyone on the East Coast has been having similar ups and downs in the weather.

I drove to the old town to walk on the main street and take a few pictures.

It was little more than three hours on Thursday to reach the Super 8 in Chambersburg, Pa. It snowed on and off much of the time. The snow was sticking to the trees and grass at higher elevations in Maryland. 

I keep forgetting that Maryland has some high hills—well, high by New Jersey standards. A couple of mountains that I crossed on Wednesday rise almost to 3,000 feet. The peak they call High Point in New Jersey tops out at 1,800.

Wet snow had been driven by wind and clung to the sides of the trees from root to crown. It looked like an attack of some kind of white fungus. God knows I hate snow.

Chambersburg was the last stop before New Jersey. I’m glad it was only one night. The place is almost as boring as Pierre, South Dakota.

I asked Google about craft beer. There was a brewery serving beer but no food about 10 miles away. Everything else was a link from a national chain. 

I settled on one that was new to me, Texas Roadhouse. At least it had beer and served more than wraps and wings.

There was one IPA on tap. It was called In Perpetuity and I think it’s from Tree House Brewing. It wasn’t very fragrant, but it was thoroughly bitter. 

Everything else on draft was a lager, so I had a Guinness from the bottle to go with dinner.

I ordered grilled barbecue chicken. I was going to take Joanna out for steak when I got home Friday, so I wanted something different. That may have been an error. Maybe the Roadhouse is a place where you should only order steak.

The chicken breast had no skin and no bone, which means all the flavor was removed. It hadn’t been barbecued, only grilled to a dry, rubbery consistency and then covered with a thick layer of sweet red sauce. It was like something you get at a fast-food counter.

The green beans were good, though. They were cooked soft and had bits of ham in them for added interest. 

On the way back to the hotel, I went to a convenience store to pick up a six-pack. The lady behind the counter told me that this was “a dry township.” I had to go to the next exit up the Interstate.

The Sheetz at that exit also had no beer. The lady there directed me to the next Sheetz north. But that was on U.S. 11, not Interstate 81.

I passed a Wal-Mart with a grocery store and tried there. Struck out again.

The Sheetz on Highway 11 may be the only place selling packaged beer within a dozen-mile radius. The lady had to card me at the counter.

I may have been older than her father. 

I hadn’t had so much trouble getting beer since Joanna and I were in Utah. Then I had to drive 20 miles (or was it 200?) from the Dinosaur National Monument to Colorado to get it. And that may have been illegal too.

Friday brought me home without incident. 

It was another fine, bright day. Joanna and I went to Branch Brook Park in Newark to enjoy the cherry trees. They are just about at peak. At certain stretches, they were blooming so thick that we couldn’t see through them.

Thousands of trees line the park road and walks. It’s like pink and white lace. 

We walked for a half hour or so and took the picture of the day.



I’m in Montclair right now and will be going to Jersey City next week. But that trip is for jury duty so I won’t have much to write about.

But there are good bars in town, so I’m looking forward to it.

Be well, all. Enjoy your travels and stay out of dry townships.

Harry

Monday, June 25, 2018

From Cave to Cabin





April 16-17

Monday I had tickets to the wimps’ tour. It is billed as fully accessible. No stairs anywhere. You even enter by elevator, a trip of 200 feet or more below ground.

This tour was led by Ranger Elaine, who led the Frozen Niagara tour on Sunday. 

Instead of taking a bus, you drive in your own car to the entrance for the tour. This trip had four cars with a total of nine people led by the rangers in a park van. There were no canes, walkers, or wheel-chairs, so maybe that constitutes a spry group for this event.

Mammoth Cave is a labyrinth of passages whose cumulative length is unknown. More than 400 miles of passages have been explored so far. Only a tiny fraction of that is open to tours for greenhorns.

After all, we’ve paid attention to the movies. You never can tell what kind of cannibal society has developed down there over the millennia. Can’t have taxpayers wandering into that.

There had been four or five known cave systems in the area, and tourism began there as far back as 200 years ago.

Cave explorers trekked through the guano for years. Those that weren’t eaten by cannibals eventually discovered that the different caves were all connected and part of one greater cave structure. 

And they’re still trekking, crawling through tight spaces, following an errant breeze because it may mean that a passage leads somewhere.

There is one tour available to the public that lets you play spelunker. Everybody puts on protective clothing, knee pads, and miners’ hats with lights in front. But hey, I’m way too claustrophobic for that.

The accessible tour starts in a passage that was a tourist destination in the 19th century.

It follows a tunnel with an oval cross-section cut by an underground river before the water table dropped. The Green River, where the cave waters drain, is eroding a deeper bed, and as it sinks, so do the cave waters. The current underground streams are about five levels down in the cave.

One of the first sights we came to was a historic bit of graffiti:

SUSIE ARMSTRONG
AUG. 27, 69

… As in 1869.

It was written with the smoke of a tallow candle, in large pixels—dots of about an inch, one at a time.

According to Ranger Elaine, Ms. Armstrong would have had to walk for about eight hours to get to this spot from the natural entrance, which was the only way in at the time.

We came next to an old cafeteria counter and picnic tables. It gave me flashbacks to the Seattle Underground tour.

But in this case, we were in a rock chamber whose ceiling is pocked with bumps of gypsum. An observer once said the place looked as if a bunch of children had thrown snowballs at the roof.



People actually used to cook there, and over the years smoke turned the gypsum black. 

Volunteers cleaned the roof and walls with a bleach solution. Maybe not the best restorative method, but it did recover some of the lost whiteness. The snowballs now have a grey patina, like maybe the kids who threw them had sooty hands. 

The cleaning also uncovered considerably more graffiti, including a plug for Hoofland’s Tonic, which has been found elsewhere in the cave.

One in pencil reads: To Nick the Guide.

Nick is identified as Nicholas Bransford, one of several slaves who led guided tours in the 1830s and ’40s.

The most famous of the enslaved guides is Stephen Bishop, who not only led tours, but also explored the place extensively on his own. He discovered several features that are parts of current tours, including the gypsum-covered chambers and passages where the accessible tour went.

He was also first to draw a map of Mammoth Cave. When it was included in a book years later, he was actually given credit for it by name. It made him an international celebrity. They say people came to the cave from as far away as Europe and requested Bishop as their guide.

But recognition didn’t set him free, at least right away. He wasn’t freed until he was 56. He died a year later.

Water for the cafeteria came from the Upside Down Well, so called because the drillers began in a deep underground passage and drilled upward to reach an aquifer. The well made it into Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Another section of the tunnel ceiling is covered with gypsum flowers. Like most of this stuff, I had never heard of them before. All I know now is that they are the result of slow water activity, and under the right conditions, the gypsum is deposited in swirls that do indeed look like exotic flowers.

Souvenir hunters used to cut them off the roof, so there are smooth places where flowers used to be. According to Ranger Elaine, people would carry them away in baskets.

The weight of the baskets grew heavier as the people walked back to the entrance. Eight hours is a long walk, even without a bag full of rocks.

So discarded gypsum flowers, products of millennia of water droplets, are found abandoned on the route back to the entrance.

There is also debris left by picnickers among the rocks. They stuffed empty bottles and broken crockery in niches. The stuff has been there so long that it’s not litter anymore, but historical artifacts, which are left in place.

Neither of my tours came near the historical entrance, which is a short walk from the visitor center. It’s in a deep ravine, and at least on Monday, after days of rain, a thin waterfall veiled part of the great opening. As you go down, you can see there is a tunnel going into the mountain.

It’s one of those spooky places where you expect to see a lady dressed in white and get to ask her questions about the future. 

It’s the picture of the day. You don’t see the Sybil because she ducked out for a smoke.

Paleo-Indians used the cave for almost 3,000 years. They left or lost artifacts like straw slippers, burnt-out torches made of cane stalks, and empty vessels. 

According to the notes in the museum at the visitor center, the oldest have been dated to about 5,000 years ago. The most recent Indian artifacts are 2,200 years old.

Did they stop going in? Nobody knows. Maybe they just got more careful about leaving litter behind.

Tuesday was moving day. My route to Winchester, Ky., passed near the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park. 

The visitor center is at farm site called Sinking Spring, near Hodgenville, Ky. It focuses on Lincoln’s time as child in Kentucky, before the family moved to Indiana.

I picked up an odd bit of useful trivia there. During his Kentucky years, Lincoln and his sister briefly attended an ABC school, also known as a “blab school,” because paper and writing implements were scarce and so children recited their lessons aloud.

It suggests a new dimension to Walt Whitman’s phrase “blab of the pave.” 



The big feature is a neo-classical monument. It sits on a rise, and you have to climb 56 steps, one for each year of Lincoln’s life, to reach it. Inside is a one-room log cabin.



At one time it was thought to be the actual cabin where Lincoln was born. An entrepreneur for a while made it into a touring exhibit. He would take it apart and rebuild it in various cities.

It was finally brought here to be housed in the monument. 

Teddy Roosevelt headlined the laying of the cornerstone on Lincoln’s 100th birthday in 1909. Taft dedicated the finished monument two years later.

More years later researchers turned up evidence that it couldn’t be the original cabin at all. So now it is considered a symbol of Lincoln’s humble beginnings.

The birthplace farm was known as Sinking Spring because the property has a small spring that runs through rocks and falls into a vertical cave. It looks like a miniature version of the Mammoth Cave’s historical entrance.



Who knows? Somebody in a miner’s hat may eventually find that it, too, is connected to Mammoth Cave.

Thomas Lincoln’s title to the Sinking Spring farm was challenged and he lost. He moved the family a several miles away to a place called Knob Creek where he leased 30 acres. The site is part of the birthplace national park.

His landlord’s title was challenged a few years later, and the tenants, including the Lincoln family, faced eviction. That’s when Papa Lincoln gave up and moved everybody to Indiana.

Next to the Sinking Spring part of the park is a log store and several small log cabins called the Nancy Lincoln Inn. It opened in 1928 and is privately owned. It was closed when I was there, but whether for the season or permanently, I don’t know.


The Knob Creek site has the Lincoln Tavern, which opened in 1933 and also was closed when I was there. It is a large log structure. Unlike the Nancy Lincoln Inn, the property wasn’t chained off, so I got a close-up look.


One continuous wall is two logs long. The pairs of logs are joined in the middle by making a cut in the end of each one so two half-circle cross-sections come together.


Another small cabin sits nearby. It is said to be the cabin of a neighboring family named Gollaher and was moved to the site at some point. There is a story that the Gollaher’s son, Austin, pulled Abraham Lincoln out of danger after he fell into a river. Lincoln couldn’t swim.

Dinner was at the Engine House Pizza Pub. One of the house specialty pies is called Luca Brasi Sleeps With the Fishes. It’s a combination of pepperoni, capicola, sweet sausage, giardiniera, and Kalamata olives. 

It was terrific. A little over the top, maybe frightening, just like Luca Brasi, but terrific.

The beer selection was limited. I managed to get West 6th amber on tap and Against the Grain Brown Note in a can. Both were good, and very different from each other. The amber was close to an English bitter; the brown ale had an almost burnt grain flavor.

Then I went back to the hotel to sleep with dreams of fishes.

Good night, all.

Harry



April 19

Hi, Grasshopper, 

I've clearly been in Provence too long (or maybe not long enough).

When I saw the word "cave" in your subject line I got all excited thinking you found a wine producer to visit!

But happy, nonetheless, to learn you are having fun. 

One more week here, dinner in Aix-en-Provence on Thursday, after which, I will be staying at a hotel near Marseille-Provence Airport, a la mode de Harry Hutchinson. 

I'll have a layover on Friday in Amsterdam long enough for lunch, a beer, and a joint or two with Sir Michael. 

Let's try to talk when I get back to Bangkok. 

Ciao and happy travels. 

Larry

April 19

Sounds like you're having a good time too, Sensei.

Can I use part of this on the blog when I post this trip?

If you want, I'll cut the part about the joints with Sir Michael if you don't want that published.

Yes, let's talk in a couple of weeks.

Grasshopper


April 19

I'd be delighted if you'd publish it, Grasshopper. And no need to censor. 

Not to take anything away from the entertainment value of your blog, but I doubt my Thai employers are regular readers of Harry Travels.

P.S.  You can use this email, too. 
Invoice for both is pending. 

Larry



Friday, June 15, 2018

Adventures Underground





April 14-15


I’d been keeping watch on the weather forecast which had been warning about high winds and heavy downfalls—rain south, blizzards north—for the Midwest.

I didn’t make plans beyond Richmond and Fort Boonesborough and kept my options open. One plan was maybe to go to Chattanooga for a couple of days. Mammoth Cave was another option. So was heading east to the Carolinas to escape the heavy weather.

As of Friday, hey, ho, the wind and the rain were on their way directly toward the Carolinas. That put a literal damper on one option.

The rain was on its way to Kentucky, though not in a form as dire as originally predicted. Chattanooga had a similar short-term future.

An indoor activity seemed to be in order, so Mammoth Cave became Plan A.

One of the things I did on Friday was to set up the Mammoth Cave leg of the trip.

Saturday morning I took the route out of town that passes the Richmond (Ky.) battlefield. 

In August 1862, a Rebel army invaded Kentucky from Tennessee. Not knowing at first whether it was a raid or a full-scale invasion, the U.S. Army sent a force of about 6,500 men to the area around Richmond.

According to information posted on the site of the battle, most of the Union troops were untrained. Many had enlisted only a couple of weeks earlier and then found themselves in boxcars going to Kentucky.

Fighting lasted two days. The Union army lost more than 5,300 men, most of whom were captured.

There are several buildings from the time still standing, including the house that is now the visitor center. Farther down the road is a brick church, Mount Zion Christian, which was used as a field hospital. Beyond that is a large brick house with several outbuildings.



I didn’t get the name of either house. The wind was really kicking up and rain was imminent, so I didn’t stay long.

The route to Cave City, which was the day’s destination, took me through a town called Berea, named for a Greek city mentioned favorably in the Acts of the Apostles. 

It’s home to Berea College, which was established in 1855 in a one-room schoolhouse and was the first coeducational and interracial school in the South. Probably one of the few in the world at that time.

The college’s website has an account of its early history. Its founder, the Rev. John Gregg Fee, set out to create an institution that, as he put it, “would be to Kentucky what Oberlin is to Ohio, anti-slavery, anti-caste, anti-rum, anti-sin.” 

The original Cassius Clay (not Muhammad Ali, but the Abolitionist) was involved. They were run out Kentucky by slavers and didn’t come back till after the Civil War.

The school is tuition-free. According to the website, part of Berea College’s mission is “To provide an educational opportunity for students of all races, primarily from Appalachia, who have great promise and limited economic resources.”



After I checked in at Days Inn in Cave City, I took an exploratory run to the Mammoth Cave park visitor center. It’s easy to find. You follow one road, which changes its name from time to time, until you come to Mammoth Cave Entrance Road.

That intersection is a short way past Little Hope Cemetery. 

It’s not a comment, but rather the name of the church that once stood there, before the federal government bought the land. The congregation meets these days in a different building outside the park.



I had surprisingly good Mexican food for dinner at a place called El Mazatlan, about a half mile from the hotel. Th menu offered a flight of enchiladas—one bean, one ground beef, one chicken, and one cheese—and a side of rice. They were excellent with the sauce, lettuce, tomato, and sour cream. 

The beer selection was typical. Throwing in that slice of lime makes lagers like Modelo and Dos Equis taste better.

For dessert, I picked up Country Boy Cliff Jumper IPA. That’s the same brewer that makes Cougar Bait.

Another culinary surprise came the next day at lunch.

I had a ticket for the 3:15 tour called Frozen Niagara, named for the flowing rock formations, at Mammoth Cave and so left the hotel a little after 12. 

The exhibits in the visitor tell you more than you want to know about sinkholes, rainwater, karst formations, limestone, eyeless fish, and other fascinating details of the geology, flora, and fauna of the area. 

It also has a restaurant where I tried an appetizer of fried green tomatoes. 

I expected two or three slices of something like tomatillo sauteed in oil. No, they were huge slabs of vegetable Dixie fried. Duh.

They were not segmented, as I’d expect a tomato to be, and they were almost hard.  Had to slice them with a knife. They were good, but pretty heavy.

I had that with a bowl of cheese and potato soup, which I had expected to come in a cup.

Needless to say, I was ready for the ramps and stairs inside the cave.

The tour was fascinating. The bus driver told the rangers that there were 29 ticket-holders. I guess they’re careful about the head count to make sure nobody gets left behind in a crevice.

The bus dropped us off at a man-made entrance to the cave. It looks like a cinderblock shed built into the hillside.



That opens to a route of narrow passages with low ceilings that look like rough plaster, but they are indeed natural limestone formations.

The cave leaks all over the place. That’s what shapes the limestone.

With all the rain over the past couple of days, there were puddles on the floor, drips from the roof, and generally lots of real cave fun. 

There were creatures all over the walls that look like spiders, but as we learned later, are crickets. Their antennas are very long and help them find their way in the dark. They leave the cave periodically and somehow bring stuff back that feeds many of the other small creatures that don’t get to forage outside.

The tour gets its name from the cascades of limestone in this part of the cave. According to our tour leader, Ranger Elaine, when rain falls, it picks up CO2 and becomes acidic. It flows directly underground through sinkholes, and dissolves the limestone.

As the water loses its CO2 content, it deposits the limestone solution, which hardens into flowing forms of stalactites, stalagmites, columns, and various illusions.

Domes and pits are covered with natural decoration. Some formations look like lace.

One resembles a turkey, so the chamber where that was found is called the Thanksgiving Hall.

I tried to photograph some of them, but the light is so dim that it takes a long exposure to resolve an image. Too long for me to do it holding the camera in my hand. Here’s a fuzzy shot of an overhead formation.



One particularly ornate section, called the Lace Hall or the Tapestry Hall or something like that, is 49 stairs down, which means it is also 49 steps back.

Yeah, I can do that. I used to stay in a fifth-floor walk-up in New York before I retired. This would be like reaching the street and having to go back up to get something I forgot.

I did all right. Ninety eight steps round trip and I made the first 86 with no strain. I was proud of myself. 

The last dozen made me humble, though. At the top, I stopped to catch some breath, smacked myself on the chest, and didn’t pass out.

The tour included a blackout—brief and intentional, mind—to demonstrate what total darkness is. 

The bus came back to a place by the park hotel where we had to walk on a mat saturated with some kind of cleaner. The caves are infested with a fungus that causes white nose syndrome, a disease fatal to bats.

Walking on the mats disinfects our shoes so we won’t carry the fungus to bats somewhere else.

I went to a local steakhouse, the Sahara, for dinner, mainly because I wanted a side of green vegetables and wanted something that goes well with red wine instead of beer.

The steak, a sirloin, was cut very thin, but they still managed to send it to me rare. The green beans were done the way I like them, cooked to death.

I bought a bottle of wine at the local liquor store. The selection wasn’t very broad, mostly California wines. I chose a pinot noir from Cupcake Winery.

It turned out to be rather sharp and acidic. I’ll finish the bottle, because I always do, but doubt that I’ll buy anything else with that label.

So that was it for the day. 

Be well, all. Don’t underestimate those steps, and keep the lights on when you’re underground.

Harry



April 17

Harry, sounds like you're having fun.

I wanted to tell you I've been watching “Peaky Blinders” because of your recommendation, but wish it had subtitles because those are some thick-ass accents.

Karl