Way down in southern Nevada, on the border with Arizona, lies Hoover Dam. It creates Lake Mead, supplies water to Las Vegas, and produces electricity for Nevada, Arizona, and Southern California. It was a huge construction project (the largest concrete structure in the world at the time), built in the depression of the 1930s. Laborers flocked to the project, even though the work was hard, summer temperatures were extreme, and wages were slim.
Lake Mead is currently only fifty percent full, and has been dropping ten feet a year since 2000, due to reduced flow of the Colorado River, which in turn is a result of diminished snowpack in the Colorado mountains. If the drought continues, Las Vegas will soon suffer a severe water shortage, and Lake Mead — the largest man-made reservoir in the U.S. — will dry up entirely by 2021, according to researchers.
Political trivia: The dam was originally named Boulder Dam, after a planned location in Boulder Canyon. The name stuck, even when the project was relocated to Black Canyon. Then, as construction began, the name was changed to Hoover Dam to honor then-president Herbert Hoover, who had played an important role (as Secretary of Commerce) in getting the project started.
But Hoover lost the 1932 presidential election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, quickly removed Hoover's name from the dam and reverted it to Boulder Dam. It was fifteen years later, after Ickes had retired, that Congress, by near-unanimous vote, restored the name Hoover Dam, the name by which it has been known ever since.
Friday, April 25, 2008
California
Early in April I arrived back in my home town for my high school class's reunion and was delighted to be there. It was three days of joyous partying, eating, drinking, reminiscing, taking photos, and posing for photos, accompanied by music from our high school years. It was a blast.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Arizona
South of Tucson is the Titan Missile Museum, the only Titan missile silo open to the public — a real 1960s missile silo with a real Titan missile (sans fuel, sans warhead) in it. A guided tour takes you underground to the control center, which was staffed 24/7 and was always ready to fire the missile if the order from the president ever came (and thank goodness it never did). They even demonstrated how to launch it — one officer turns this key over here, while simultaneously another officer turns that key over there. Then there's the walk down the underground tunnel to the silo itself, where you can look in and see the Titan, poised for takeoff. The missile is huge — a hundred feet tall, ten feet in diameter — and the payload was a nine-megaton atom bomb, the largest used in a missile, targeted somewhere in the USSR. You can understand the part Titans played in the Cold War's "balance of terror" or "mutually assured destruction" policy which successfully kept us and Russia from firing a single missile.
Heading north, we drove Interstate 19 and noticed that the road signs show distances in kilometers, not miles!
East of Flagstaff we came upon the Arizona Meteor Crater. Have you visited it? Even heard of it? No? Well, it's worth seeing, because it's four thousand feet in diameter, and five hundred feet deep. In human terms, there's room for 20 football fields in its bottom, and if the Washington Monument were placed in it, the top would be level with the crater's rim. They figure the meteor was 150 feet wide, weighed a million pounds, and came screaming out of the northeast sky at 40,000 miles an hour when it impacted with the equivalent of a 20 megaton bomb. Formed fifty thousand years ago, it's quite well preserved, with little erosion (this part of Arizona has little precipitation) and no glacial bulldozing (Arizona wasn't overrun by glaciers as Minnesota was). Recommended.
Heading north, we drove Interstate 19 and noticed that the road signs show distances in kilometers, not miles!
East of Flagstaff we came upon the Arizona Meteor Crater. Have you visited it? Even heard of it? No? Well, it's worth seeing, because it's four thousand feet in diameter, and five hundred feet deep. In human terms, there's room for 20 football fields in its bottom, and if the Washington Monument were placed in it, the top would be level with the crater's rim. They figure the meteor was 150 feet wide, weighed a million pounds, and came screaming out of the northeast sky at 40,000 miles an hour when it impacted with the equivalent of a 20 megaton bomb. Formed fifty thousand years ago, it's quite well preserved, with little erosion (this part of Arizona has little precipitation) and no glacial bulldozing (Arizona wasn't overrun by glaciers as Minnesota was). Recommended.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
New Mexico
Carlsbad Caverns
I've wanted to see the Carlsbad Caverns for a long, long time. My parents never took me there as a kid, and none of my own travels had taken me close — until now.
The Carlsbad Caverns are way down in southeastern New Mexico, and, in my opinion, are a real gem of the National Park system — well presented, well preserved, well staffed. You follow a path that leads down, down, into the huge mouth of the cave, enter the cave, and gradually leave daylight behind. Ahead are the famous stalactites and stalagmites, softly lighted for your viewing pleasure. On and on you walk, with something new around each bend in the path. Finally you arrive at the Big Room, which really is big — a quarter of a mile from end to end, with a high ceiling — and it feels so astonishing to realize that you are there, seven hundred feet underground, in such an enormous cave filled with such amazing stone formations. When you've had enough amazement, they let you ride an elevator back up to the surface.
Roswell
Why did I visit Roswell? To see the UFO museum. You see, on a summer day back in 1947, something landed in the desert outside Roswell. A rancher found the wreckage, and brought people to see it. The local paper reported on the front page that a UFO had landed. The Air Force took charge, cordoned off the area, confiscated all the wreckage, and whisked it away for examination. The official announcement was that it was just a weather balloon that had crashed, but people who had seen the wreckage (and even handled it) said it didn't look like a weather balloon to them. Then everything about the investigation was classified Top Secret and anyone who had seen the wreckage was visited and sternly warned never to talk about it. No one has been able to pry loose any information from the government — even though it's been sixty years since it happened. So the big question remains: Why the secrecy? What did they find that they still can't release to the public? Roswell folks continue to believe that it really was a UFO, and folks everywhere else believe the "weather balloon" story and chuckle about the whole affair.
Alamogordo
White Sands is home to the Air Force's missile test range, where missiles have been launched since right after World War II, when captured German V2 rockets were shipped there for examination and testing. There's a nice space museum with lots of artifacts from the missile and space programs. A photo on display captures Dr. Werner von Braun at the moment of his surrender to the allies at the end of WWII, and he's relaxed and smiling. A full-size model of Sputnik, the size of a basketball, is pretty underwhelming today, although it was quite something in 1957, when Russia put it in orbit. (You remember, don't you? The Missile Gap, the Space Race?)
Feeling well rewarded for the time we'd spent in southern New Mexico, we wandered off toward Arizona.
I've wanted to see the Carlsbad Caverns for a long, long time. My parents never took me there as a kid, and none of my own travels had taken me close — until now.
The Carlsbad Caverns are way down in southeastern New Mexico, and, in my opinion, are a real gem of the National Park system — well presented, well preserved, well staffed. You follow a path that leads down, down, into the huge mouth of the cave, enter the cave, and gradually leave daylight behind. Ahead are the famous stalactites and stalagmites, softly lighted for your viewing pleasure. On and on you walk, with something new around each bend in the path. Finally you arrive at the Big Room, which really is big — a quarter of a mile from end to end, with a high ceiling — and it feels so astonishing to realize that you are there, seven hundred feet underground, in such an enormous cave filled with such amazing stone formations. When you've had enough amazement, they let you ride an elevator back up to the surface.
Roswell
Why did I visit Roswell? To see the UFO museum. You see, on a summer day back in 1947, something landed in the desert outside Roswell. A rancher found the wreckage, and brought people to see it. The local paper reported on the front page that a UFO had landed. The Air Force took charge, cordoned off the area, confiscated all the wreckage, and whisked it away for examination. The official announcement was that it was just a weather balloon that had crashed, but people who had seen the wreckage (and even handled it) said it didn't look like a weather balloon to them. Then everything about the investigation was classified Top Secret and anyone who had seen the wreckage was visited and sternly warned never to talk about it. No one has been able to pry loose any information from the government — even though it's been sixty years since it happened. So the big question remains: Why the secrecy? What did they find that they still can't release to the public? Roswell folks continue to believe that it really was a UFO, and folks everywhere else believe the "weather balloon" story and chuckle about the whole affair.
Alamogordo
White Sands is home to the Air Force's missile test range, where missiles have been launched since right after World War II, when captured German V2 rockets were shipped there for examination and testing. There's a nice space museum with lots of artifacts from the missile and space programs. A photo on display captures Dr. Werner von Braun at the moment of his surrender to the allies at the end of WWII, and he's relaxed and smiling. A full-size model of Sputnik, the size of a basketball, is pretty underwhelming today, although it was quite something in 1957, when Russia put it in orbit. (You remember, don't you? The Missile Gap, the Space Race?)
Feeling well rewarded for the time we'd spent in southern New Mexico, we wandered off toward Arizona.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A Romp Across Texas
We left behind the Midwestern snowbird's winter nesting grounds, the Rio Grande Valley, and set off on a tourist's romp across Texas.
Heading north along the coast, we came to Corpus Christi, a city with its own aircraft carrier, the Lexington. Launched during World War II and long since retired, it's now a popular tourist attraction. I walked its decks, climbed its stairs, toured its bridge, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, knowing that thousands of sailors and pilots had been there before me — this wasn't Disney, this was real.
We stopped for a couple of days in Victoria, a thriving medium-sized inland town. On Sunday I attended the only UU church there, where twelve of us sat and listened to a recording of a sermon that had been delivered twenty years ago. It was an interesting sermon, about Michael Servetus (take-home point: he was burned at the stake by Protestants, not by Catholics) and afterward we turned our chairs into a circle and discussed. The members, although few, were friendly and welcoming, and I joined them later at a benefit lunch where we all ate wonderful soup and talked some more.
Near Edna we stayed overnight in an RV park nestled up against a forest, and before nightfall a half-dozen deer came out to feed. Menominee took interest in the deer, instead of sensibly watching from a distance — she walked directly toward them! The deer took one good look at her and ran back into the forest!
When we reached Houston, the Real Big City On The Coast, we enjoyed the hospitality of my old college roommate, Andrew. For two days he and I talked and talked about our old classmates and professors, and one afternoon we ventured onto the Rice campus. The familiar old buildings were still there, but we were perplexed by all the new buildings — new, that is, since we graduated forty years ago! One evening we went to an Italian restaurant where I ate, for the first time, Saltimbocca, which (Al Sicherman once wrote) translates "jumps in the mouth." I didn't notice any jumping, but my mouth did savor the rich mushroom sauce over veal and spinach.
This was late February, and already the azaleas were beginning to bloom. On the road west, the grass beside the roadway was green, wildflowers were budding, birds were singing, and cows grazed with their calves.
In Lockhart I had lunch at Smitty's Barbecue, where you can see the fire that smokes the meat and the barbecue is authentic Texan — it's served without sauce, so you can fully appreciate the flavor of the meat. Another day I had a wonderful lunch at Friesenhaus, a German restaurant in New Braunfels, a small town settled by German immigrants beginning in 1845. Over in the tiny town of Shiner, I toured the brewery that makes what some say is Texas's finest beer, Shiner Bock.
San Antonio is a big city with a charming old downtown. As we drove around, sightseeing, I spotted the famed Riverwalk out the window and longed to walk it myself. But there was no place to park the RV on the narrow streets, so we just continued driving around. (Perfect occasion for a motor scooter — ride downtown on the scooter and park it easily. I still want a scooter!)
Then we left civilization behind and headed west on a long and desolate road. As I gazed out through the windshield at desert and sky, hour after hour, I pondered the similarity with the pioneers who passed this way long ago — we both carried our belongings and lodging with us and sat up front, doggedly following the trail west. Besides, the road I was on was probably built on their trail.
We were headed for southern New Mexico.
Heading north along the coast, we came to Corpus Christi, a city with its own aircraft carrier, the Lexington. Launched during World War II and long since retired, it's now a popular tourist attraction. I walked its decks, climbed its stairs, toured its bridge, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, knowing that thousands of sailors and pilots had been there before me — this wasn't Disney, this was real.
We stopped for a couple of days in Victoria, a thriving medium-sized inland town. On Sunday I attended the only UU church there, where twelve of us sat and listened to a recording of a sermon that had been delivered twenty years ago. It was an interesting sermon, about Michael Servetus (take-home point: he was burned at the stake by Protestants, not by Catholics) and afterward we turned our chairs into a circle and discussed. The members, although few, were friendly and welcoming, and I joined them later at a benefit lunch where we all ate wonderful soup and talked some more.
Near Edna we stayed overnight in an RV park nestled up against a forest, and before nightfall a half-dozen deer came out to feed. Menominee took interest in the deer, instead of sensibly watching from a distance — she walked directly toward them! The deer took one good look at her and ran back into the forest!
When we reached Houston, the Real Big City On The Coast, we enjoyed the hospitality of my old college roommate, Andrew. For two days he and I talked and talked about our old classmates and professors, and one afternoon we ventured onto the Rice campus. The familiar old buildings were still there, but we were perplexed by all the new buildings — new, that is, since we graduated forty years ago! One evening we went to an Italian restaurant where I ate, for the first time, Saltimbocca, which (Al Sicherman once wrote) translates "jumps in the mouth." I didn't notice any jumping, but my mouth did savor the rich mushroom sauce over veal and spinach.
This was late February, and already the azaleas were beginning to bloom. On the road west, the grass beside the roadway was green, wildflowers were budding, birds were singing, and cows grazed with their calves.
In Lockhart I had lunch at Smitty's Barbecue, where you can see the fire that smokes the meat and the barbecue is authentic Texan — it's served without sauce, so you can fully appreciate the flavor of the meat. Another day I had a wonderful lunch at Friesenhaus, a German restaurant in New Braunfels, a small town settled by German immigrants beginning in 1845. Over in the tiny town of Shiner, I toured the brewery that makes what some say is Texas's finest beer, Shiner Bock.
San Antonio is a big city with a charming old downtown. As we drove around, sightseeing, I spotted the famed Riverwalk out the window and longed to walk it myself. But there was no place to park the RV on the narrow streets, so we just continued driving around. (Perfect occasion for a motor scooter — ride downtown on the scooter and park it easily. I still want a scooter!)
Then we left civilization behind and headed west on a long and desolate road. As I gazed out through the windshield at desert and sky, hour after hour, I pondered the similarity with the pioneers who passed this way long ago — we both carried our belongings and lodging with us and sat up front, doggedly following the trail west. Besides, the road I was on was probably built on their trail.
We were headed for southern New Mexico.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Texas — The Rio Grande Valley
After hundreds of miles of lonesome roads, we came upon a fertile valley, a series of small and large towns strung like pearls on a necklace — the Rio Grande Valley, way down at the southern tip of Texas.
The average high temperature here for the winter months is around 70°, which we found hopeful, but we experienced wide swings every few days, from the fifties to the eighties. It all depended on which way the wind was blowing, whether we got cool, dry air from the north, or warm, most tropical air from Mexico.
The valley is a major winter destination for Midwesterners — most of the license plates we saw were from Minn, Wisc, Ill, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri — and Midwesterners are greeted with signs of "Welcome Winter Texans!" There are lots of RV parks here competing for winter visitors with heated pools, Jacuzzis, and free WiFi Internet. I enjoyed the variety of restaurants, from national chains to local cafes serving Texas barbecue. We were glad to have the benefit of large supermarkets and major retailers we hadn't seen in weeks — the likes of Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and Home Depot. Being in this welcoming valley among friendly Midwesterners felt good, so we lingered there for a month.
It was in our RV park there that Menominee climbed a tree for the first time. She felt frisky one warm night, out late under a full moon, and right before my amazed eyes she jumped up on a tree trunk and climbed it to the first branch, high above my head. She seemed quite unfazed, as if she climbed trees every day, but I worried how to get her down. I had no ladder; where could I borrow a ladder late at night? Then I waited a while and what do you know, she got bored and came down, all by herself, with a modesty that belied her achievement.
I researched UU churches and found two congregations, one each in Brownsville and San Juan. I went to the one in Brownsville one Sunday and liked the minister there. Next Sunday I went to the other one and was surprised when I walked in and saw same minister, who turned out to work half-time in each church.
Brownsville was the southernmost point of our adventure, 26 degrees of latitude, which is south of everything in the continental U.S. except the tip of Florida. That's 30 degrees (or 2,000 miles) south of our northernmost point in Canada, last August.
From here, of course, we headed north.
The average high temperature here for the winter months is around 70°, which we found hopeful, but we experienced wide swings every few days, from the fifties to the eighties. It all depended on which way the wind was blowing, whether we got cool, dry air from the north, or warm, most tropical air from Mexico.
The valley is a major winter destination for Midwesterners — most of the license plates we saw were from Minn, Wisc, Ill, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri — and Midwesterners are greeted with signs of "Welcome Winter Texans!" There are lots of RV parks here competing for winter visitors with heated pools, Jacuzzis, and free WiFi Internet. I enjoyed the variety of restaurants, from national chains to local cafes serving Texas barbecue. We were glad to have the benefit of large supermarkets and major retailers we hadn't seen in weeks — the likes of Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and Home Depot. Being in this welcoming valley among friendly Midwesterners felt good, so we lingered there for a month.
It was in our RV park there that Menominee climbed a tree for the first time. She felt frisky one warm night, out late under a full moon, and right before my amazed eyes she jumped up on a tree trunk and climbed it to the first branch, high above my head. She seemed quite unfazed, as if she climbed trees every day, but I worried how to get her down. I had no ladder; where could I borrow a ladder late at night? Then I waited a while and what do you know, she got bored and came down, all by herself, with a modesty that belied her achievement.
I researched UU churches and found two congregations, one each in Brownsville and San Juan. I went to the one in Brownsville one Sunday and liked the minister there. Next Sunday I went to the other one and was surprised when I walked in and saw same minister, who turned out to work half-time in each church.
Brownsville was the southernmost point of our adventure, 26 degrees of latitude, which is south of everything in the continental U.S. except the tip of Florida. That's 30 degrees (or 2,000 miles) south of our northernmost point in Canada, last August.
From here, of course, we headed north.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Texas — Big Bend National Park
You may never have heard of Big Bend National Park, off in southwestern Texas, far from any city, nestled in a bend of the Rio Grande river. It has pretty mountains, and Texans flock here, even in mid-winter.
The Rio Grande, which means "big river" in Spanish, is surprisingly small here because water is removed upstream in New Mexico and El Paso. Being narrow and shallow, it would be easy to wade or swim across, but of course crossing the river into Mexico is highly illegal and would result in your being caught, prosecuted, fined, and thrown in jail, so no one does it. It's even illegal to do business with a Mexican who swims over to the U.S. side bearing tourist trinkets for sale (your trinkets would be confiscated). As we all have heard, patrolling our borders is a top priority these days.
I stayed in an RV campground and drove around the park sightseeing each day. I enjoyed a couple of good meals in the park lodge's nice dining room, where I first tasted and came to like Shiner's Bock, a beer brewed in a little brewery in a little Texas town.
It was in the lodge's lobby that I overheard a woman talking — she was so loud, I couldn't tune her out. "When my daughter grew taller than me, she mouthed off and said she didn't have to listen to me any more. I grabbed her and threw her against the wall and she looked at me, terrified. After that, my word was law." I paused and reflected on this description of domestic violence. How typically Texan, I thought — the legacy of the state's legendary past, from the battle of the Alamo to child abuse today. But I was wrong. If I had been paying better attention, I would have noticed that the woman's accent was not Texan. Further listening revealed that she lives in Maple Grove, Minnesota! So much for easy stereotypes and hasty conclusions.
Just north of the park are three unexpectedly distinguished little remote towns. Alpine and Marathon each has an independent bookstore on its main street. So excited was I to see one that I parked the RV, went in, found three books I wanted to read, and gladly bought them at full retail price. The third town, Marfa, not only has a swanky independent bookstore but its own public radio station, as well as mysterious lights in the night sky which some people have seen. (I'll have to come back in warmer weather to look for them.)
Driving down a state highway, I came upon a ranch with a small roadside shack selling barbecue. Food lover that I am, I pulled off the road and parked the RV. Simultaneously, the rancher came out of the house and over to the shack. He turned out to be a happy, garrulous Texan who joked as he sold me some barbecued beef. (Having trouble opening a plastic bag, he remarked, "I guess you have to be smarter than the bag.") He introduced me to his new ranch dog, Blackie, a stray who had shown up just the previous week. A medium-sized mongrel with plenty of pep and a happy disposition, he had already made himself at home on the ranch.
We continued down the two-lane highways east and south toward the Rio Grande Valley.
The Rio Grande, which means "big river" in Spanish, is surprisingly small here because water is removed upstream in New Mexico and El Paso. Being narrow and shallow, it would be easy to wade or swim across, but of course crossing the river into Mexico is highly illegal and would result in your being caught, prosecuted, fined, and thrown in jail, so no one does it. It's even illegal to do business with a Mexican who swims over to the U.S. side bearing tourist trinkets for sale (your trinkets would be confiscated). As we all have heard, patrolling our borders is a top priority these days.
I stayed in an RV campground and drove around the park sightseeing each day. I enjoyed a couple of good meals in the park lodge's nice dining room, where I first tasted and came to like Shiner's Bock, a beer brewed in a little brewery in a little Texas town.
It was in the lodge's lobby that I overheard a woman talking — she was so loud, I couldn't tune her out. "When my daughter grew taller than me, she mouthed off and said she didn't have to listen to me any more. I grabbed her and threw her against the wall and she looked at me, terrified. After that, my word was law." I paused and reflected on this description of domestic violence. How typically Texan, I thought — the legacy of the state's legendary past, from the battle of the Alamo to child abuse today. But I was wrong. If I had been paying better attention, I would have noticed that the woman's accent was not Texan. Further listening revealed that she lives in Maple Grove, Minnesota! So much for easy stereotypes and hasty conclusions.
Just north of the park are three unexpectedly distinguished little remote towns. Alpine and Marathon each has an independent bookstore on its main street. So excited was I to see one that I parked the RV, went in, found three books I wanted to read, and gladly bought them at full retail price. The third town, Marfa, not only has a swanky independent bookstore but its own public radio station, as well as mysterious lights in the night sky which some people have seen. (I'll have to come back in warmer weather to look for them.)
Driving down a state highway, I came upon a ranch with a small roadside shack selling barbecue. Food lover that I am, I pulled off the road and parked the RV. Simultaneously, the rancher came out of the house and over to the shack. He turned out to be a happy, garrulous Texan who joked as he sold me some barbecued beef. (Having trouble opening a plastic bag, he remarked, "I guess you have to be smarter than the bag.") He introduced me to his new ranch dog, Blackie, a stray who had shown up just the previous week. A medium-sized mongrel with plenty of pep and a happy disposition, he had already made himself at home on the ranch.
We continued down the two-lane highways east and south toward the Rio Grande Valley.
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