Home at last!

This is going to be a quick post, no pics, sorry. We got home this afternoon, and our friends Lisa and Stephen, from Ann Arbor, are here for a couple nights, so we've no time to think about what to write.
The drive home was uneventful, we just wanted to get home, pick up Yunker (thank you again, David and Lindley!), and sleep in our own beds tonite. The biggest hassle was not having a luggage cart and elevator to get our bags into the house!

We will write more in the next couple days to give you some stats and reflect on the trip, so stay tuned. Talk to you later!

Looks a little bit like the moon out here...

Day 17 was a leisurely drive across the desert, crossing the Arizona state line (no hassles from the man) and getting just a little closer to home. We decided to make a couple of stops along the way, because yesterday's drive was pretty boring. Oh, I forgot to mention a really good restaurant in Albuquerque last night. If you want some good food and are on the west side of Albuquerque, try Marisco's Altamar; very popular with the locals.

We visited the small, but impressive Petrified Forest National Park for a picnic lunch, probably the last of our trip, since we finally used up all of the peanut butter and jelly we've been toting around for 2 weeks. Finally, we can have a proper roadtrip lunch - McDonald's! The scenery in the Park was really beautiful, and it finally was not bakingly hot.

obligatory photo to prove we were there

The Painted Desert, by Manet

Blythe went a little shutter-happy along I-40 in Arizona, capturing many local landmarks. Please note all the dinosaur statues below, they are a fairly common site.

Roadside Arizona, No. 1

Roadside Arizona, No. 2

We had to stop at the Meteor Crater, outside Winslow, AZ, because how could you possibly pass up the world's best preserved impact crater?!? I'd wanted to stop there when I drove cross country in 1998, when we moved from New York to LA, but it was my last day on the road and I really just wanted to get it done. So we visited today and my, they have a lovely racket going on there- $38 for the three of us to get in! We got a good look at an impressive hole in the ground, but it's still just a hole.

walking to the top of the Crater rim

Meteor Crater - large enough to hold 20 football games on the crater floor...

and hold 2 million spectators to watch them

are we there yet?

An interesting window on the high desert

Tomorrow we will be home! We decided to cut Hoover Dam out of the itinerary, the extra miles and time to take the dam tour with a dam guide were too much for the final day. We'll be glad to see our house, with our housesitters Lisa and Steven, and to sleep in our own beds at long last. Talk to you later!

We'll NOT be taking a left turn at Albuquerque

Day 16 was a return to the long drive, 540 miles from Oklahoma City to Albuquerque. We didn't expect to see too much along the road (I-40, for you highway aficionados). We did see this rather large cross outside of Amarillo, one of many signs that we've been in the Bible belt for the last week or so.

2nd largest in the hemisphere? It doesn't look that tall...

The biggest change was the scenery was seeing some real undulations on the horizon after too many flat days.
Steve: "It's nice to see some hills again."
Allegra: "Yeah, what a relief."
Steve: "Like a relief map!" Ba-da-dum!

A welcome change of landscape as we got into New Mexico

We got to Alburquerque in a little more than 7 hours, so we had some time to walk around Old Town, which has the usual touristy stuff, of course, in a part of town that is more than 300 years old.

Feel the history!

In Old Town we did check out the San Felipe de Neru Church, which has been serving the town since 1706. It is very reminiscent of the California Mission churches.

300 years and going strong!

a really lovely setting for your wedding

We were glad to get away from the oppressive, no, abusive heat of the last few days, and home is just a couple of days away. Talk to you later!

OOOOOOOO...KLAHOMA!!!

just a few empty seats today at OU...

We parked in the shadow of Oklahoma Memorial Stadium  to check out the OU campus. The stadium gates were open, so we decided to walk in, and Blythe walked all the way down onto the field, in front of 82,112 empty seats. We weren't too impressed with the campus in our short drive around, very little architectural "style" to be seen. I guess that figures when the Architecture School is located underneath the stadium stands.

so Blythe could get onto Owen Field

We made quick work of the sights in Oklahoma City - State Capitol Building...check.

You can actually SEE the heat - the Capitol is actually dark brown

Milk Bottle Building...check.

Gold Dome..check. (yes, it really looks like that)

Murrah Building site...check. 

Bricktown and the Canal...check. 

the raging Canal Falls of Oklahoma City

Actually, Bricktown is kind of cool, reworking and restoring 100 year-old warehouses, much like the West End we saw yesterday in Dallas.

The Canal is a nice little walk thru this restored area

Not sure who this represents - maybe he's trying to push the heat away...

The Oklahoma City National Memorial (Murrah Building site) is a somber place; the reflecting pool and empty chairs, representing those who were killed in the bombing, are very nicely done. We passed on the Museum, feeling no need to go back over the right-wing craziness that led to that awful event.

A thought-provoking installation

Quick funny note: while escaping from the heat in Bricktown we walked through this indoor "marketplace" and I saw this photo - kind of a bad spelling error to make! If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times: it's Pittsburgh with an "H"!

We are done with the sort driving days, unfortunately, and have a 540-mile day on tap for tomorrow, all the way to Albuquerque. So we have to hit the sack, and we will talk to you later!

Greetings from the Grassy Knoll!

Who's that in the shadows, under that tree?

Today was our last full day in Texas, and it's been fun, if unbelievably hot. We stopped at Baylor University in Waco, which is a lovely campus, and where they have two resident black bears.

could your name be Oski?

We tried to imagine Cal keeping a couple of grizzly or brown bears on the campus, as mascots for the school. The tree people protesting the stadium expansion would have nothing on the animal-rights enthusiasts sure to flood the campus if they did that in Berkeley.

We got to Dallas pretty early but were able to check into the hotel and walk around the historic West End, which is a very cool neighborhood (not in the climate sense, 100 degrees again today!). The areas is a mix of very old warehouses (its right next to the original rail yards in Dallas, from 1872), turned into lofts and offices as well as new buildings built in a similar style, lots of brick facades and nothing higher than 10 stories. There's lots of restaurants and shops, and the light rail system connects right in the middle. This area must have been crazy when the Super Bowl was here in February.

The West End is also the location of Dealey Plaza and other sites associated with the JFK assassination - a park and memorial, designed by Philip Johnson, and the Sixth Floor Museum.

Johnson's imposing, but calming, JFK memorial

clever logo

We walked around Dealey Plaza first, standing where Abraham Zapruder took his famous film, and looking up at the window was a little strange. There are even X's on the street marking where the limo was when JFK was hit.

The window

Zapruder stood here - note the Old Red Courthouse in the distance

The museum was much more elaborate than we expected. The main exhibit, titled John F. Kennedy and the Memory of a Nation is mostly photos and text on boards.Unfortunately, no photography is permitted in the museum, so all of these images are taken from the website.

typical exhibit element, photos and text

The sniper's corner, preserved behind glass

The view of Dealey Plaza and Elm Street, from the windows in the photo above, are a bit chilling, knowing what happened that day. The accompanying audio tour did a nice job of connecting the wall panels together, with interviews from witnesses of that day, police recordings, news broadcasts. The exhibit also covered the events immediately afterward - Lyndon Johnson taking the Presidential Oath with Jackie Kennedy and Lady Bird at his side, Oswald's arrest and killing by Jack Ruby, and the societal impact of the assassination.

A silent (except for military drums and bugle) film showing how reactions to the assassination around the US and the world, with a lot of footage of crying mourners, was quite emotional.

The museum has the model of Dealey Plaza that the FBI built for the Warren Commission, pretty neat. Both the Warren Commission report and the House Select Committee on Assassinations reports are discussed, as well as some of the conspiracy theories. The Museum comes down squarely in the single-shooter, Oswald-did-it camp.

The FBI's Dealey Plaza scale model

Well, tomorrow we say farewell to the Lone Star State, off to Oklahoma. It's been fun, but it's not like we're thinking of moving. Talk to you later!

An awesome time at an awesome museum

Day 13 was a quick drive from College Station to Austin, between towns engaged in a fierce rivalry for more than 100 years. So we were careful not to flaunt any A&M gear in this Longhorn town.

Our final Presidential Library, for Lyndon Baines Johnson, was today, and we definitely saved the best for last. It was incredible. The LBJ Library is the only one that has no admission charge, something that President Johnson insisted on, and he set aside part of his own family fortune as an endowment to ensure that it remains free of charge.

just a few campaign buttons there

The (obligatory) introductory film was very good, describing both the positives and negatives of Johnson's political career and presidency, and did a very good job relating his early life experiences to the huge issues that he worked to improve in American society - race relations, educational opportunities, and economic opportunity. It also described how the Vietnam War, and the strife it caused in the US, overshadowed many of his monumental achievements and caused him to (prematurely) end his political career.

Probably LBJ's most natural pose

The exhibits on Johnson's life and long (33 years, despite Lady Bird's entreaties that he not enter politics in the first place!) career in Congress very well done. There were also extensive displays on the Vietnam War, civil right legislation and its impacts, and the Great Society, of course. What really struck us was how the exhibits were structured - there was great use of location and color and design to show how the 1963, when LBJ became President after the JFK assassination, and 1968, when so many calamitous events took place in the US, were the bookends on the years when LBJ was at his greatest power but resulted in the end of his "can do" approach to politics.  

The museum had many source documents on display, such as this classified FBI report on the Student Peace Union, claiming that it was a Communist organization. Those sorts of documents help you to better understand how and why President's made the decisions that they made, right or wrong, which is the real purpose of these Presidential Libraries. The Reagan Library recently added information about Iran Contra, the Clinton Library includes an exhibit on Whitewater and the impeachment, and the Nixon Library even has many of the secret tapes available for public review. The Libraries don't have to show balance every positive with a negative, as they are meant tributes to their subjects, but they shouldn't gloss over the negatives, either.

This photo of the stairs captures the feeling of the place, grandiose but subtle, as you move out of the LBJ exhibits and into the archives.

Got enough papers there?

The temporary exhibition was "Left to Right: Radical Movements of the 1960s", and it was also excellent. It  started with background on Saul Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals (which we purchased in the gift shop!) and then described varied social movements including the SCLC,  Hippies and Yippies, Black Power, Womens' Liberation, Free Speech (at Berkeley, especially), The Silent Minority, Sexual Liberation, Environmentalism, John Birch, and more. There was a great combination of photo, video, and audio materials, and it would take many hours to view every last bit of it. Starting it with Alinsky and the principles of organizing communities and movements was the key, because all of them followed his rules, no matter if they were left or right-wing.

After the awesome library, we had a very nice picnic lunch, with some insistent squirrels, under some shady trees on the UT campus. We were also able to pick up a "Johnson-Humphrey" bumper sticker in the gift shop - just in time!

The view during lunch

We took in some more of the UT Campus, and picked up still more college gear (burnt orange for everyone!) at the University Co-op, a literally endless array of UT-licensed merchandise, and Allegra posed with a famous longhorn. We were surprised the paint didn't melt off in the heat, only 97 degrees today.

We also took a walk in and around the Texas State Capitol, maybe the most impressive of the capitol buildings we've seen so far.

Where's Rick Perry?

The dome is very cool, with portraits of all of the governors of Texas circling on four levels, and an elaborate floor design, best seen from the 4th floor. But it's tough to get a pic of it without anyone walking into your frame. You don't want to yell at them!

Hey, you're in my shot!

A lot to take in in one day. We are nearing 3,500 miles driven so far, and after Dallas and Oklahoma City in the next couple days, we have some long drives in store. Time to get some sleep - talk to you later!

Mmmmmmm, Rice!

Day 12 of our epic voyage took us from Houston to College Station, away from the big city and out into the gorgeous rolling countryside to the northeast.

Farewell to the seemingly endless sprawl of Houston...

We did stop, on our way out of town, at Rice University, the Cambridge of the Southwest, to look at the surprisingly picturesque campus. And, of course, to acquire a few mementos from such a lovely school - Blythe and I would willingly travel to Houston if Allegra chose to attend this prestigious university (#17 in the latest US News rankings, not that those mean everything)..

It looks almost just like St. Catherine's College at Cambridge

We really like Rice

It was a really nice drive through the Brazos River Valley, rolling from maybe 100 miles from Houston to College Station. A nice short drive (for once) as well.

Our fourth Presidential Library was on the agenda for today, the George Bush, #41, on the campus of Texas A&M University. Why is it there, when President Bush is from Connecticut or Maine (depending on who you ask)? 

Even the flags are too hot to wave

The introductory film poses that question to the President, who answered that he 'just loved the feeling, the energy of the campus.' I presume it was solar energy, because the sun was almost painful out there today, our first in the triple digits! 

The George Bush Museum seemed very different from the other three that we've seen so far, with many fewer source documents on display, even electronically. There were a lot of laudatory letters (from the public and officials), some publicly issued reports, but that was about it. The one document that wasn't in that category was a letter President Bush sent to Saddam Hussein in August 1990 after the invasion of Kuwait.

At least they let you have a little fun with the President - nice glasses, George!

Way to aim high!

The other museums had a large number of memoranda and previously classified materials on display, even the Clinton Museum. It's difficult to believe that 20 years on there are still classification and presumptive "national security issues" that prevent more source-level materials to be widely shown to the public. It would make the museum a more engaging place.

Truly a piece of history 

Like the Bush presidency, the installations about foreign policy, including the Gulf War, dwarfed the domestic stuff. The piece of the Berlin Wall in the museum is very evocative, and while there are a lot of items and information about the Gulf War itself, the whole of that part felt a little stiff. The photos of the environmental damage from the oil field fires and spills were more emotional.

We took a little drive around the HUGE Texas A&M campus, snapped a photo of the imposing Kyle Field  and found our way to the bookstore, which has been temporarily relocated into the former volleyball arena (who new they had one at A&M?).

Is that sign big enough? Can you see it from space? It seats more than the population of the town!

We actually found a place to get a good salad for dinner tonight, our vegetable intake had fallen to dangerously low levels. We are off to Austin and the final president on our trip, LBJ, tomorrow. Talk to you later!