Tunnel Vision

June 15-17

After a big lunch on Thursday, we weren’t ready for a full dinner, so we went to the old part of Brockville to the Keystorm Pub to have a couple of appetizers.

Joanna started with French onion soup with Swiss, not bad but not French onion, either. That needs Gruyere, baked over the side of the bowl.

I suggested the baked Brie, which came with candied walnuts, cranberry chutney, and garlic bread. I could have done without the garlic, but otherwise it was perfect.

The draft selection was OK, but not great.

I had three pints: 

MacKinnon Brothers Cross Cut blonde ale contains 5.2% alcohol but tastes stronger. The flavor has a hint of sweet and is a bit light. It’s not outstanding, but still OK.

Molson Stock Ale, a Canadian mainstream commercial product, tastes much like a lager but avoids the lager aftertaste. It’s made by Molson Coors in Ontario. This isn’t like making love in a canoe, maybe a rowboat instead. It’s not quite as close to water as other Coors products.

Lagunitas is not one of my top IPAs, but it's a solid option nonetheless. Sometimes it hits me as having too much citrus, possibly from citra hops rather than from added fruit. According to Lagunitas, it’s brewed “with 43 different hops and 65 various malts.” I don’t know if they’re serious about that.

Friday, we started our meandering in Courthouse Square. There’s a cross street behind the courthouse called Jail Street. 

There are also a few interesting churches besides the 19th century courthouse.

The figure of Justice on top of the courthouse is a replica of the original, which was carved of cedar. Somehow Justitia in Brockville has picked up the nickname “Sally Grant.” Nobody seems to know why.

For lunch, just for the hell of it, we stopped at Cosies English Tea Room. It serves scones and sandwiches that I guess are associated with English high tea. I had one with cheese and Branston pickle. 

The pickle is not cucumber cured in brine, but pickle more in the sense of chutney or relish. It is a sweet-and-savory mix of fruit and other things. It was fun to try, but like chicken feet, not something I’m going to do very often.

Joanna had a tuna and cheese toastie, an open sandwich with cheese melted in an oven. 

The shop is decorated in old furniture bought from the Habitat for Humanity thrift store. Maybe the ladies’ room too.

Near the east edge of town is Fulford Place, an imposing stone mansion built by a Canadian senator named Fulford. He was also a druggist who marketed “pink pills for pale people.”

The house overlooks the St. Lawrence River from a terraced lawn punctuated by venerable maples. The grounds were designed by the Olmstead firm.

A small formal garden has marbles of Adam and Eve. When we were there, the poppies and peonies were out in force.

And bees were in the roses.

Next we backtracked to a riverside park that used to be a railroad depot. It is at the south end of what Brockville claims is Canada’s first rail tunnel, built in the mid 19th century.

The tracks have been paved with a concrete walkway. On either side of the path are strings of colored lights. Every once in a while, a stretch of red light zooms down the tunnel to the sound of a locomotive whistle.

Sometimes the walls are green, sometimes blue. You get the idea.

It’s where Joanna caught the shot of the day.

Water is constantly dripping, by design. If the tunnel didn’t leak, the buildup of ground water would collapse it.

The drips leave streaks on the walls much like those in a cavern, but for some reason, the deposits build up faster in the tunnel than they do in a natural cave, about a millimeter a year, the sign said.

Walls are streaked with red and green from trace minerals, mainly iron and copper. At some places along the tunnel, the walls are covered with cascades of deposits, maybe calcium, that look like icing.

Dinner was an experimental burger at the Union Jack, an English-style pub that got my attention partly because it has signs for Old Speckled Hen and Hobgoblin in the windows. And also because the front is painted flag blue.

The burger was made of brisket and served with some kind of sweet-sour chutney. It was different, but I won’t do that again. Joanna opted for some surprisingly good grilled salmon.

The Hen was good, as always, and the Goblin even better.

I led Joanna across the street to the Georgian Dragon where I had a pint of White Water IPA for dessert. It’s a very fragrant ale, with good hops and some malt on the end.

Next morning it was time to go to Montreal.

Somehow Google gave me directions that included a highway under construction so I couldn’t get there from here.

Just about the time I was sure that I was on the wrong road, orange signs started showing up with arrows for the Rue Sherbrooke detour. 

That was convenient. I actually know something about Rue Sherbrooke and how it fits into downtown Montreal. We went there last year to the art museum.

Once we got out of the bumper-to-bumper traffic and were on Sherbrooke, I spent a few minutes parked by the curb to compare the tourist map of the city with the Google printout. 

Once I figured it out, we drove quite a way on Sherbrooke to turn right on Rue Peel. A few blocks downhill, we turned left onto Boulevard Rene Levesque. Hotel Travelodge was maybe a half kilometer from there.

I would have preferred to put us up at the Holiday Inn, where we stayed last time. Its feng shui, after all, was assured by an expert consultant. Can’t beat that.

But when I tried a couple of weeks in advance, the hotel was already full.

The Travelodge is a block away, still on the edge of Chinatown and near the Old City. The room’s tiny but otherwise it’s OK. Holiday Inn Centre-Ville is still my first choice for Montreal.

A Google search for French restaurants in Montreal turned up fewer in midtown than I expected. There is one we have visited a couple of times, La Gargote, on Place d’Youville in the Old City. 

There was also one that looked very promising, La Maison du Magret, three blocks away from the hotel. It specializes in duck. 

We sat at a table near a mirror runs the length of one wall. On it is a passage from a La Fontaine fable. The letters looked like they were written in lipstick and stretch too far to be read easily when you’re sitting up close. 

I did make out one bit, about a stork who marched on his long red legs and spoke Egyptian.

Actually, that bit read: “la cigogne marchait sur ses longues jambes rouges et parlait egyptien … .” It wasn’t till I looked it up that I learned that a cigogne isn’t a swan but a stork. The fable is “The Ugly Duckling.”

After we ordered, the waitress brought a complimentary plate of foie gras with coarse and wonderful bread.

Joanna’s duck confit was excellent. The skin was crisp. She shared some with me and ate some of teh skin herself—almost unheard-of for Joanna.

I had the magret, for which the place is named. It consisted of thin medallions of rare duck breast. It was terrific. So were the fried potatoes and grilled vegetables.

Both dishes, Joanna’s and mine, came with a mild foie gras sauce.

If you’re near downtown Montreal, you don’t want to miss this place. If you’re a vegan, you may want to take the day off. This was tear-jerkingly good food.

I had two glasses of a Pays d’Oc cabernet de cabernet. Never heard of that before. I don’t think it was a typo for sauvignon because I heard the waitress say the name and it tasted nothing like cabernet sauvignon.

It was slightly acidic, fragrant, and fairly full bodied.

She brought a merlot-cabernet blend for Joanna that had less bite than mine, but still carried plenty of flavor.

Next morning at breakfast, we ran into the Iranian robotics team. We saw other teams during the day in the hotel and on the streets in the neighborhood.

There seems to be some kind of gathering, probably a competition. I think they're in town for RoboCup, a competition of soccer-playing robots, which is being held at the Palais de Congres, across the street from the Holiday Inn.

That may explain why Holiday Inn was booked solid. It could be filled with nerds in team jerseys. 

Nerds always have more fun.

After breakfast, we tried something new. We took the Metro to the Pie-IX station to see the botanical gardens, which are near the Olympic Park, which dates back to the 1970s.

Pie IX is the name of a boulevard northeast of us. Google says the name refers to Pope Pius IX.

We got there easily with the help of the lady at the Metro ticket booth.

Most of the Montreal botanical garden is a formal layout. The bit we saw is heavy on annuals, different arrangements planted each year.

We didn’t feel like paying $20 each to see another formal garden, no matter how big. We walked around the plantings outside the fence, and that was enough.

This is the Great White North, but even so, temperatures were in the high 80s. It was time to duck out of the sun. So we made for the bar to have a muffin and a beer.

One of the taps was labeled Juke Box. When I heard it was an IPA, that settled it.

I’ve looked it up and am not sure but believe that it is brewed by a Montreal company called Oshlag. Two other taps at the gardens bar were labeled “Oshlag.”

Juke Box is spectacular. It has a rich bitter flavor, and the fragrance from the hops is downright floral.

I wouldn’t drive all the way to Montreal just to get it, but the next time I see it, I’ll buy a pint.

We got back to the hotel in one piece and took a break.

Then we set out on a journey around the corner for dinner in Chinatown. We walked up and down. There are a lot of shops that are heavy on dumplings and noodles—which are good, but not what we were in the mood to eat.

I had wanted snake soup, but Joanna said it is a winter dish and probably not available. We didn’t see any signs advertising it.

We wound up at a spot on the very edge of Chinatown on Rue Gauchetiere. It’s called Mon Nin, Cantonese for 10,000 Years.

They brought us soup with pork and dried bok choy as a starter. It was pretty tasty.

Then came my dish. It was described as snails in black bean sauce. In French it was “escargots.”

But this is a lot of work. The snails are much smaller than the ones cooked in escargots Bourguignon. 

They’re sauteed in black bean sauce, as advertised, but also in the shell. So to get at the meat, you have to hold each slippery shell in your fingers and pick the snail out with a small wooden skewer.

I’ve never met a snail I didn’t like. So this was very tasty. But it took so long to get a dozen or so snails out of the shell, that by the time I was halfway through them, they were cold.

Joanna had a dish of salty pork with preserved egg. It was delicious over rice. It had added appeal because it didn’t come stuck inside a shell.

I had a Tsingtao with dinner, and then we went for a walk.

It was getting late and we were getting tired, so we didn’t wander far.

I managed to pick up a couple of pints at an IGA near the hotel. They were a red ale and a session IPA from a Montreal brewer called St. Ambroise. 

Both were very good. The red was rich and malty without being sweet. The IPA had the fine pine flavor and some perfume, although less than this afternoon’s Juke Box.

I came back and worked on this report before I conked out. I’m finishing it up on Monday morning.

We move on to Trois Rivieres on Tuesday and will stay there a couple of days before we go to Quebec City.

Be well, all, and when you’re in a tunnel, don’t forget to duck.

Harry

June 17

That’s a really really great photo, Harry!

Tell Joanna it’s better than I could do!

On my bucket list is one more road trip with you!

Best

Art

The Other Syracuse

June 10-14

Joanna and I set out on Sunday for three weeks on the road. 

Joanna had received a call from her best friend, Pat, earlier in the week. Pat said she was making a visit to New Jersey and wanted to know if Joanna would be home. 

We were already planning the trip, which would put us somewhere in Quebec Province around the time Pat would be in Jersey. It was easier for us to leave a few days earlier to visit Pat and her husband, Bob, near Syracuse.

So that’s how the front end of the trip got started.

Joanna and I left Montclair on Sunday and took I-80 West. The first stop was in a place called Clark’s Summit, a few miles north of Scranton, so we had plenty of time to stop along the way.

It started to rain, though, just about the time we left in the morning—one of those spring rains ranging from drizzle to downpour and back again. Sometimes visibility was so bad we had to hang back and go slow. At other times, the wipers were doing fine set at that now-and-then swipe across the windshield.

It was still raining when we entered the Delaware Water Gap. We parked near a trail head and saw the forest was soaked. So we decided not to get out for a walk, but to stay in the car and have a snack for lunch.

We shared a smoothie we had made that contained fruit, yogurt, flax meal, soy (or maybe almond) milk, and maybe some things I forget. We also had some unsalted cashews and dried cranberries. 

In other words, it was disgustingly healthy-sounding food for a road trip, and I was determined not to do too much of that.

We sat watching the steam rise through the trees on the Pennsylvania bank. Smoky mountains majesty. It was gloriously spooky.

About an hour later we stopped at Archbald Pothole, east of Scranton on old U.S. 6. The pothole is a result of glacial activity in the last Ice Age. 

The theory is that a hole formed in the glacier and water, mixed with grit and stones, bored a wide hole about 40 feet into the ground.

The space filled with gravel and nobody knew it was there until the 1880s. Coal miners touched off a blast that broke through to the hole. When all that gravel and water started to flow into the mine, they thought they were goners.

There’s a platform built at the edge so you can look straight down into it. The walls aren’t smooth, but instead look almost helical. Imagine a giant corkscrew gouging out the rocks and dirt.

We stayed at a Comfort Inn on U.S. 11 in Clark’s Summit. It was easy to find—one of the first things we saw as we came from Interstate 81.

About a tenth of a mile up the highway is a bar and grill called Tully’s Good Times, part of a regional chain. The rain had quit, so we tried to walk. 

But it isn’t easy. We were waiting at the light to cross the highway when we saw a sign right across from us, a walking man in a red circle with a bar through it. That means “no walking here” or “no stick figures.”

So to be safe we took the car to a place we could see from the hotel parking lot.

Tully’s has an OK list of craft and imported brews on tap. None was new to me, but many—like Neshaminy Creek County Line IPA and New Belgium Fat Tire—are old stand-bys.

We were able to get surf and turf (steak and shrimp, that is) without the Cajun rub, or whatever it was supposed to be treated with, and so we stayed.

Monday we headed north on I-81 to Baldwinsville, near Syracuse.

We traveled over more hills, past more farms and forests. We paused at the New York State Welcome Center near Binghamton.

We missed a turn near the end of the ride, but stopped for directions at a Red Apple convenience store.

We made it on the second try. Joanna saw Pat and Bob on their balcony when we arrived shortly after one.

When we got out of the car, Pat came up to me and asked, “Do you remember me?”

I surely did. “You’re the star of one of my favorite travel stories.”

In the autumn of 2011, Joanna and Pat took a river tour through eastern Europe.

They would spend a couple of days in Prague at the start of the tour, so I decided to  fly over so I could take Joanna to dinner.

I was wandering around the city because I had a few hours to kill before I met Joanna at her hotel. I was crossing the crowded Charles Bridge, when I heard somebody call my name. 

That’s not unusual. With tinnitus and a shaky conscience, I hear that all the time, and nobody’s usually talking to me.

But this time it kept up. I turned and saw under the sun Pat and Joanna.

Pat had seen a guy in a suit and a pony tail and asked Joanna if it could be Harry.

We took it easy at the house for the rest of the day and set off the next morning, Tuesday, for Alexandria Bay, a town on the New York side of the  St. Lawrence River at the Thousand Islands.

Of course, the thing to do here is to ride on a boat for a couple of hours looking at the islands large and small and the structures large and small on them.

We took a two-hour boat tour through the islands, in the area called Millionaire’s Row. Some of these imposing castles are real Gilded Age veterans that have sat on their islands for more than a hundred years.

We also passed  the statue of St. Lawrence on a bluff overlooking his river. The Thousand Islands is also the site of the world’s shortest international bridge, which links two small islands, one in the U.S. and the other in Canada.

We stopped to share a few appetizers at Riley’s by the River, a bar across the street from the pier where our boat came in.

One of the selections on tap was an Empire Brewing pale ale. It was bitter and fragrant enough to qualify as an IPA, and probably would have been perfect with bread pudding.

Wednesday’s plans ran into rain. Instead of going to Cooperstown, we detoured to the local history museum and the Eberson art museum in Syracuse.

The history museum was filled with curious artifacts and stories. Smith-Corona typewriters made in Syracuse accounted for something like 40 percent (or was it 60 percent) of the world’s typewriters at one point.

There were salt mines nearby at the shore of Lake Onandaga. 

Champlain led an expedition against the Iroquois near the lake. He had maybe 2,000 men, and there was one battle which the French won decisively. After that, the Indians withdrew as the army advanced, and the French mostly destroyed villages and crops. 

According to one account, Champlain was nearly 70 and had to be carried in a chair.

The art museum is fun. Most of them are. A local artist named 

Darryl Hughto is the subject of the major exhibition right now. 

His work is a little abstract for my taste, but still fun. Early paintings use the diamond as a recurring theme. Then there are later abstractions of sailboats, which continue the angles and hard lines of the diamond paintings.

There is also a gallery showing some of his portraits. 

We stopped for lunch between museum visits at Dinosaur BBQ in downtown Syracuse. I had some very good pulled pork with a side of collards. I sampled a bit of Bob’s rack of ribs and Joanna’s Dixie-fried catfish. 

It was like being back in the Carolinas. Maybe better. I was able to have all this with a Saranac root beer, one of the best.

Thursday we traced the route to Alexandria Bay, but bypassed that and continued across the international bridge to Brockville, Ontario.

We went to the historic district for a walk. I showed Joanna the courthouse and the monument to Gen. Isaac Brock, “the Savior of Canada,” for whom the town is named. 

Brock had successfully driven off U.S. invaders during the War of 1812 and was trying to drive off more at a place called Queenstown. He was “targeted by a sharpshooter stationed among the enemy.” 

Brock has a marble monument in St. Paul’s London. It is distinguished because in addition to the dying Brock being comforted by a British officer, the group includes an American Indian, whom I have heard may be Tecumseh.

Joanna and I saw that monument in London only a matter of a week or two before my first visit to Brockville during Memorial Day weekend in 2012.

We stopped for some OK Chinese at a place in Brockville called the New York Cafe.

Mine was a mild Singapore mei fun and Joanna had beef with bok choi. She has been missing vegetables because they are hard to get when you’re on the road.

The plates were huge but we polished everything off. That was lunch and dinner combined.

Right now we are in Days Inn just outside Brockville. Joanna has just woken up from a nap, and so we are going to a bar where we will have dessert.

I had four beers Sunday night, none Monday, and only one on Tuesday afternoon. I think the beer-drinking is about to commence.

Good night, gang. May you keep your whistle wet and your feet dry. Be well. 

Harry

June 15

Dear Harry,

Fast backward: When Bob first took me to Syracuse to meet his family—this was shortly after we’d married—he instructed me that when his mother asked if I’d seen the statue of the family patriot in downtown Syracuse I was to say yes. 

Otherwise we’d have to spend the whole day on it. I followed Bob’s order. The upshot is that I’ve never seen it.

It’s a statue of David Williams, who captured Major Andre thus averting West Point’s falling into British hands.

You might well see it on your Syracuse excursion. If you do, please let me know.

Beatrice

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