48stateroadtrip.com

Some random road that my GPS told me to get on.

Driving into the Adirondacks was pretty. Heck, *the Adirondacks* were pretty. And if my transmission would’ve only taken one week longer to get fixed, they probably would’ve been even prettier. ‘Course, the days are already too short, so — you know.

bkd

PS, I know it’s only because it’s part of a headline, but it’s a relief to finally be able to legally capitalize the name of a season.

The Reader’s Digest book suggested that, while in Rochester, I should visit the George Eastman house. As a result of my obedience, I now have a new idol. A dead one, sure, but I’ll take what I can get. Reasons for my idolatry:

1. Single.
2. Liked photography.
3. Enjoyed planning vacations.
4. Traveled a lot.
5. Chose the name of his company because he felt that “K” was a strong letter that people would respond to (it ended up being a pretty decent brand).
6. Adopted new hobbies frequently and was driven to become competent in many things.
7. Didn’t like being the center of attention.
8. Enjoyed giving stuff to people (although I don’t know that he did it primarily only when changing residences).
9. When he shot himself (at age 77 and with a calcified spine), he had a second gun ready just in case the first one malfunctioned.
10. Had really good taste in houses.

On that last point:

The billiard room.

Decoration over the study doorway.

Double stairway with view into the conservatory.

Coolest ashtray ever.

And the outside looks like this.

Fine if you disagree on the taste, but I’d like to think I’d do something similar if I invented roll film and got rich off it.

The site is also the location of the world’s first photography museum. The museum itself is pretty small — only two real galleries. One of them had “50 Photos by Jessica Lange” in it. Um, aside from not being famous, I’m a better photographer than Jessica Lange. The other gallery had an exhibit that was first displayed there in 1975 that was entitled “The New Topographics” and apparently pioneered the non-judgmental photography of “man-made landscapes”, i.e., buildings (many of the photos from the exhibit can be found here).

Thus inspired, I went out to the parking lot and took this picture:

No judgment passed.

I really no-joke kind of liked some of those photos. And then I drove away (in my own car, not one of the two above).

bkd

I’d been warned before going to Palmyra that there wasn’t much to see and you know what? There’s not much to see. (For non-Mormons, this is another Mormon history site — sorry/you’re welcome/meh, depending on your attitude.) That said, the woods behind the Joseph Smith farm did seem peaceful (though there were more mosquitoes than I’d figured on) and was a nice, flat place for walking around and occasionally pausing to look into the trees and ponder.

Grove, trees. Joseph Smith may have prayed *right here*. And I’m surprised more people don’t get lost roaming around this place.

And then the trees, being looked up into.

And with that, the only prime LDS history site I haven’t been to is Jackson County. Suppose I ought to go to Israel some time also. Maybe next year. Seriously — maybe.

bkd

Which is sort of hard to admit with as anti-hype as I usually am. Just that I’ve never seen such a massive waterfall complex. Either of the major falls by itself would’ve been fantastic, but those two in the same place? Worth the hype maybe.

Of course, in my drive to keep the 48-state road trip pure, I declined to cross into Canada for the full-frontal photos. I’m guessing it would’ve been mostly mist anyway.

If I ran the world, I’d force people to rename everything currently named “Bridal Veil Falls” to something a little more thought-provoking.

American Falls seen from the correct, American side.

I would’ve preferred they film the dancing scene while I was watching, but whatever.

Horseshoe Falls with attendant mist.

American and Horseshoe: Two Great Falls that Fall Great Together

Should probably be “fall greatly”.

Ways I Would Fix the Niagara Falls Experience:

• Reduce the number of people visiting by 98%.
• Get rid of all the buildings.
• And tour boats.

You know, I go to National Parks and it sometimes feels like the Parks Service is trying to prevent people from seeing the park. Then I go to Niagara Falls and better understand what they’re trying to prevent. Oh well. Mighty falls, regardless. Would probably look better without all the hotels and people. And it should be possible to walk yourself down to river-level without having to pay some concessionaire to ride their elevator.

Should.

bkd

Oh yes, a previous home-state. I paid taxes here once — no, twice! Ah yes. Fond memories of taxes I have.

It would kind of be cool if the bug splatter were on the sign. Then again, that would be a very large bug traveling at a high velocity, which might actually not be that cool.

I stayed at a campground at Lake Erie State Park that night, whatever day this was. No idea, seriously. Anyway — was a decent enough campground right on he lake, no need to worry about trees separating campsites (because there weren’t any, you see). $17/night, pretty average. BUT there were free showers available, BUT the showers were really moldy. Tough.

I also had a skunk run through my campsite that night that tore through my garbage. It was a little weird listening to a skunk eat stale potato chips, so I put my headphones in. No one and nothing got sprayed, most importantly.

bkd

That makes three-eighths (3/8ths) of the way there in terms of states. It’s not like I’m excited about blowing through states, just that it happens so I might as well enjoy it.

Daylight! Legible! Huzzah!

Someone on some other website told me I should visit Presque Isle in Erie if I happened to be driving through, so I did and I’d sort of like my 40 minutes back, although I took this photo of a lighthouse:

Bravely warning sandcrabs away from the 25-mph park road!

I’m sure real lighthouse people (they have those, right?) could explain why it makes sense to put lighthouses somewhere other than right next to the water, but it’d probably be a long and boring explanation, so — you know.

I’m also now saying that I’m in the “northeast” and no longer in the “northern states”. It’s a fine line. A fine line that I’ve drawn between Ohio and Pennsylvania. And it was weird starting out driving in Bengals AM radio country and then traveling through Browns and Steelers territory before ending up in Bills AM radio land. It’s also weird how much of AM radio is now on FM.

bkd

And I had this dream last night where I was rafting down a river with members of my family and we got to a spot that looked like a waterfall, but everyone else said it wasn’t, but I was pretty sure it was so I jumped out of the raft and then they all continued and it turned out to be a 20-foot waterfall and I called 911 and couldn’t quite figure out where I was (I thought I was in Central California in a river near a national park other than Yosemite, Sequoia, or Kings Canyon, but I couldn’t think of what that park would be called and then someone helpfully suggested it was “Hehla Park”, which meant “holy” in some unknown language, but that person didn’t know what he was talking about, so I disregarded), but then it turned out that no one got (physically) hurt, so I hung up.

So I went back the next day, got there before the doors were open, and was the third one to get his name on the list to take the bus out to the Experimental and Presidential Planes area. It’s a little unfair that you only get to spend an hour out there in that IMHO the experimental part is the most interesting (and essential) part of the museum.

I suppose I could have included this with yesterday’s post.

Before my 9:30 tour bus left, I went back and re-considered the museum’s WWII wing, including this C-47 Skytrain.

An Me-262. First second one of these I’ve ever seen in real life (and one of only three currently on display in the US).

‘Course there’s one of these in *every* flight museum, so no need to comment I figure.

It’s not the original X-1, but it’s still a pretty unique plane to have around.

It’s an XB-70 Valkyrie — sort of the museum’s centerpiece (even though it’s a long ways away from the rest of the table). They only ever built two and the other one crashed during a photo shoot. Here’s a photo of one not crashing.

I overhear a lot of conversations. While looking at the XB-70, I overheard:

• “Of course, the Soviets had one of these as well.” (No they didn’t — the movie you’re thinking of is Firefox and it starred Clint Eastwood.)
• “They were also going to build a Concorde, but they never got around to it.” (Yes they did — the plane you’re not thinking of is the Tu-144 “Concordski”.)

Some days I wish I were deaf. Moving on…

I’m guessing the forever-entombed XB-70 and the YF-23 share a sort of kinship. Kind of like the one Teddy Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh had, only without the murderous criminal aspect.

One of two surviving X-15 space planes. A couple of times these guys went into actual outer space (the plane was dropped from a B-52 at Pima Air Museum, although the B-52 was not at the museum at the time of the dropping). Pretty slick.

The cockpit window on the X-15. If you stare at it long enough, it winks at you.

A couple of Air Force Ones before they were called that.

And the props that, well, propelled them.

And a C-119 like my dad used to fly in the USMCR.

Phew. Posting photos on here often feels like hard work. Slow-ish connection and all. You understand. Glad I went back for the second day and the other hangars, wish I’d have arrived in a more plane-centric mood the day before. And that there hadn’t been all those runners.

If anyone’s thinking of going, I thought it might be useful to assemble a list of the must-see planes there:

• The B-29 (Bockscar) — It’s not as famous as the Enola Gay, but it’s got its place in history.
• The Me-262.
• The B-2 — Still not an airframe you’re used to seeing at eye level.
• The FA-117 — Ibid.
• The XB-70 — Worth a visit in its own right.
• The X-15.
• The X-1B.

So if you only got, oh, three hours or so, that’s probably the list to attack. IMHO. If you got another couple hours beyond that:

• The Doolittle’s Raid exhibit.
• The Vietnam POW stuff.
• The B-36 — Not a lot of these left and it *was* the first inter-continental nuclear bomber we ever had.
• I dunno — everything else, I guess.

It’s a good day-long museum, unless *important* running events force you to alter your plans. They made some weird choices at the museum. A lot of the plaques for planes are hard to find, which I haven’t really experienced before. I think they may also have too many airplanes for their current capacity — those hangars feel cramped and I’m guessing this may add to the plaque-finding problem.

And then I was a little baffled as to why they didn’t make a much bigger deal out of the WWII B-17 flights. That’s gotta be the most iconic thing the (Army-) Air Force has ever done, but it felt like a footnote next to Doolittle’s Raid (which was, of course, pretty cool). For that matter, more explanation of the nuclear bombings would’ve been a good inclusion. Maybe they’re just bitter they didn’t get the Enola Gay.

It’s hard to compare flight museums and say where they rank. I’ve been to all the major ones in the US now (Smithsonian, USAF, and maybe Boeing make up the Holy Trinity — feel free to suggest others) and they’re all unique enough. The USAF museum feels a little more biased than the other two — but then, it *is* the Air Force’s museum. I dunno. I think if you combine the stuff on the mall with the stuff at Dulles, the Smithsonian probably wins. But I’m not sure it’s fair to do that. I wish the USAF exhibits had been outside (granted, it’s not December) so you can walk around them more and get a better sense for the plane (the Pima museum is the champ when it comes to that). It’s a shame you can’t get a sense for the XB-70 as a whole due to all the visual and physical “clutter” in the way.

All is well, all is well.

bkd

Eh, it wasn’t scrubbed entirely. I showed up at the general Wright-Patterson Air Force Base area around 10:15 only to find the streets clogged and cops directing traffic due to the air force base marathon that started and finished at the museum. I don’t understand the mentality that compels people to run in marathons, therefore I have little tolerance for having my museum flooded due to one.

Anyway — couldn’t park in the museum parking lot, so was directed to a parking space on the grass, right next to the sign that says not to park on the grass. From there, walked to the museum, which was packed with people wearing too-short shorts and limping slowly. Ugh. When the marathon’s over, you should go home and get off your feet. Stop ruining other people’s museum experiences by manning up for your wife and six-year-old who came to watch you jog.

The worst part, of course, is that due to the marathon the museum canceled all their morning tours of the experimental and presidential wings of the museum, which are sort of the most important parts. As a result, by the time I got through traffic, parked on the grass, waded through throngs, and stumbled onto the tour sign-up desk, the afternoon tours were filled up. As such: scrubbed.

I mean, I still looked through the rest of the museum, but — anyway. Here:

History’s second most-famous B-29. It’s a pretty big drop-off to #3.

The MiG 17, NATO Codename: Pig Snout. Not really. It was “Fresco”.

The plane in the bubble. It’s a B-47 Hustler reflected in the aft bubble (window?) of a B-36 Peacemaker (six turning, four burning, none pictured here).

The ol’ B-2 Spirit. The flesh still seems willing.

Got a bumper crop of missiles coming in this year!

But the runners killed this. I dunno. Maybe it was all the driving the day before and *then* the runners. I appreciated the museum more when I came back on Day 66, so I’ll do a bunch of bullet points and stuff on *that* post instead.

Maybe just one note:

• It’s hard to photograph planes when they’re all cramped into hangars like this.

Well it is.

bkd

The photos are still illegible, but at least we’re back to a prime number.

Pennsylvania will be legible. Promise. But hey, you can just about make out the speed limit!

Good times, overcast skies in Ohio. Stayed in hotels two nights in a row! Seventeen states means 35% of ’em down.

bkd

Drove from Chicago out to Dearborn, Mich. to meet with my ol’ mission buddy Jeff and his wife and to take in the #8 hamburger of all time. (I’m not sure why I never take photos of people I meet up with on this trip. And if I started now, it would seem sort of mean toward everyone I didn’t already take photos of.)

Right, so Dearborn has this bridge that I drove under and that I thought looked cool.

But my real cameras were packed in my backpack and it would’ve been an awkward place to get out of my car.

Then we hit Miller’s Bar. Kind of an odd neighborhood — some beautiful, old, small residential homes (like 20 of them) right behind the bar, but otherwise car dealerships and closed-up restaurants dominated. Ah well.

When we sat down the waitress came to ask what we wanted, at which point Jeff informed her that we hadn’t seen the menus, at which point she seemed a little flustered before answering: we don’t have menus, we only have hamburgers or cheeseburgers and french fries and onion rings. At which point Jeff said, “Oh”. Per the GQ list, I ordered the hamburger. They brought a cheeseburger, though, but I don’t think GQ would really disapprove.

With a bun that shiny it *has* to be good!

I can’t explain why exactly, but of the straight-up burgers from the list, this is my favorite so far. I don’t know.

• It comes out with just bun, burger, melted cheese.
• The waitress brings slices of onion on a napkin and there are pickles, ketchup, and mustard on the table.
• You’re on your own from there.
• Ordered medium-rare, yet the bun remained firm and true without disappearing.
• I don’t know. I just don’t know.

It just tasted fantastic. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t eaten all day or anything. I really think it was the burger. Maybe they put good spices on it, or maybe they’ve got a meat grinder in the basement and are pulling a Sweeney Todd on us, but whatever. Simple, yet transcendent.

So of the eight I’ve eaten so far, here’s my rank order:

1. Miller’s Bar – Dearborn (#8 in GQ)
2. Houston’s California Burger – Santa Monica (#6)
3. Le Parker Meridien Hotel Burger Joint Cheeseburger – New York (#9)
4. Red Mill Double Bacon Deluxe w/ Cheese – Seattle (#17)
5. Keller’s Drive-In #5 Burger – Dallas (#10)
6. Poag Mahone’s – Chicago (#18)
7. The Counter – Santa Monica (#15)
8. Burger Joint – San Francisco (#16)

I’d say IMHO, but no: this is not a matter of opinion. This is fact.

bkd

(PS, I think I’ll only get to six more on this trip — outside shot at seven, but they get packed in pretty tightly in the tri-state area upcoming and I can’t eat more than one hamburger a day without getting sick.)