Buck's Blog

This morning we dropped off my son at West Point to begin Cadet Basic Training, a.k.a. “Beast Barracks.”  This is a picture of him standing in line to get into Eisenhower Hall to begin his adventure.   It was a bittersweet moment for all of us.

The drive from Mammoth Cave National Park to Charleston was very, very long, so Candy planned for to interesting stops along the way to break up the drive.  The first was in Corbin, KY, where Colonel Sanders started his motor park.  Eventually it became both Kentucky Fried Chicken and Days Inn.

They had some very interesting displays to enjoy while we waited for our food.  One idea that was interesting was that Colonel Sanders felt that women made the decision on whether to stay at which motor lodge, so he placed the ladies restroom so that you had to pass through a model of his motel room to get to it.  In this way, he thought the women would see how neat and clean his rooms were and be amenable to staying at his motor lodge.

Our next stop was at the Museum of Appalachia.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was actually quite nice.

There were a large number of buildings from all over Appalachia that had been moved board by board and stone by stone from their original locations to the museum to form a sort of farming community.  These included stores, barns, cabins, churches, and schools.  There were also two larger buildings containing professionally presented displays of rural life and some famous people from Appalachia, including Sergeant York and Cordell Hull.

The people running the museum were very friendly.  We bought a couple of AMAZING cookies that were made there.  It was a worthwhile short stop to break up the long drive.  We arrived in Charleston late that night and just had time to unpack the car and hit the sack.  The next day we got up early for a two-hour walking tour of the historic part of the city.

Our guide, 7th generation Charlstonian, provided a very interesting and informative walking tour of the historic part of the city.

The city is quite picturesque.  It had fallen into disrepair after the Civil War.  In fact, the city was in such bad shape that there wasn’t even enough money to tear down the old buildings.  In the end, this turned out to be good.  Where in other historic cities, like Boston and New York much of the historical areas had been the target of urban renewal, in Charleston, the historical buildings hadn’t been torn down when money was finally found to rebuild.

This church was an Anglican (Church of England) before the American Revolution and was the official church in Charleston (and all the British colonies).  When the Revolution ended, the Anglican churches became Episcopal churches.  The Episcopal church reunited, North and South, after the Civil War, unlike many other churches.  In the 1960’s this church left the Episcopal church and became Anglican again during the flap over the revision of the Book of Common Prayer.  Lots of history there, but not worth describing in the posting.  Many other churches have left Episcopal church in recent years for a variety of reasons, including heretical statements about the Bible by Episcopal bishops.

The old theater in town is still active, hosting theatrical shows, musical shows, and a popular chamber music series each season.  It has been beautifully restored.

After our walking tour we walked around some of the shopping areas and had lunch, followed by a couple of hours in the hotel pool.  Our hotel also has an interesting story.  It was demolished in 1968 and was rebuilt in the early 1970’s to look on the outside like the original.  It was a VERY nice hotel within walking distance of everything we wanted to see in the historical area.

That evening we walked around a few more shops and had pizza in a local establishment, Di Giovani.  Trip Advisor said that the food was very good, but everything else “sucked.”  They were right.  The food was very good, but the service, ambiance, etc. were poor.  It was one of those places where you felt they were doing you a favor to take your money.

We got up early the next morning for a boat ride out to Morris Island in the bay.  The tour guide and his two assistants were excellent.  Morris Island, site of Ft. Wagner (as seen in the movie Glory) during the Civil War, is largely barren today.  Sharks teeth, shells, and occasionally bricks from Ft. Sumpter wash ashore.

Sam and Tom found part of the tooth of a Maglodon, a prehistoric shark-like creature.  The sharks in the area are small, so the teeth were tiny.

We elected to skip Ft. Sumpter.  Others who have visited said it is disappointing.  The top 2/3 of the fort from the Civil War were rubbled and are gone.  Much of what is there is from the Spanish American War rather than the Civil War.

After returning from the boat ride we cleaned up and checked out of our hotel, had lunch, and headed up to North Carolina with a quick stop at South of the Border.  After checking into the Ft. Bragg guest house we had dinner and played miniature golf in Fayetteville.

The course was quite nice and had 36 holes.  On the final 18 holes Sam won, which she says is the first time she’s ever won at miniature golf.

The next morning we slept in a little and then visited the 82nd Airborne Division Museum.  Located along Ardennes Street in the middle of the division area, while small, it is quite nice.

Candy and the kids were pretty “museumed out” by this point, so we only stayed two hours.

Every time I come to Ft. Bragg I remember how much I liked being in airborne units.

Upon leaving Ft. Bragg we headed home to unpack the car, unpack our bags, return the rental car, and hit the sack early.  It was a long vacation, but a good one.  We completed all 50 states just three days before Tom heads to college.  This is our last family vacation while we’re all living together, which for me is a sad thing.

We left New Orleans and headed to Columbus, GA, to visit Candy’s mom.  The kids always enjoy visiting there, because they relax there, play games, and generally enjoy some “down” time.

The next day Candy and her mom had some errands to run, so I took Tom and Sam to a new attraction in downtown Columbus.  We zip lined across the Chattahooche

e River to Alabama.  Once in Alabama the kids negotiated an obstacle course.  Though it turned out to be not too difficult, I chose to skip the obstacle courses because of my recent knee surgery, but I did do the zip lines with the kids.

Because our group for the zip line and obstacle course was small, we finished before Candy and her Mom completed their errands.  I took Tom and Sam to the north side of Columbus to play a round of indoor miniature golf.  For an indoor course it was surprisingly good and would have, in fact, been a good outdoor course.  The holes were long and challenging, and the course was in good repair.

The next day we headed to Huntsville, AL, to see the space center.

 

We arrived at the space center a little after noon with the intent of staying until it closed at five.  There was a lot to see.  Candy and the kids were ready to leave before I was, and there are a number of displays I would have liked to spend more time visiting.

We have been to the space centers in Houston, Cape Canaveral, and now Huntsville.  I find them all very enjoyable and a stark reminder of what this country can do when it sets its mind to something.

<Warning: political rant>  I fear those days are behind us.  We cannot have a reasoned discourse in this country about things that matter, and instead we focus on trivial social issues and the politics of character assassination of anyone who wants to tackle the important issues.  Unlike Kennedy’s vision of going to the moon not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard, our “representatives” from both sides of the aisle focus on trivial issues like gay marriage, politically correct language, and symbolism over real action rather than important issues like fixing our economy, getting rid of a tax system that punishes success and fosters class warfare, and curtailing social programs that keep people in poverty.  Where are the leaders who will create a coherent energy strategy for the nation?  Where are the leaders willing to really take on immigration reform (like controlling the borders and expelling those here illegally) rather than merely masking amnesty policies with leftist rhetoric?  When will the Supreme Court do its job of protecting us from an increasingly overreaching and unconstitutional federal government and stopping activist judges from legislating from the bench?  When when will we get serious about stopping the decline of our educational systems compared to the rest of the industrial world?  Where are the leaders who will attack the causes of the destruction of the middle class in this country instead of symbolic, and useless, measures?</rant off>

You cannot help but be both awed an inspired by the men and women who took us to the moon in such a short time, built two space stations, and are preparing to colonize Mars.  They are doing what is hard to create new science, promote the pioneer spirit that built our nation, and generally advance America and mankind.

I learned quite a bit about the preparations for sending people to Mars.  I have been a proponent of this since reading A Case for Mars by Max Zubrin.  While NASA’s approach doesn’t follow Zubrin’s model, bit is nonetheless exciting and will involve setting up permanent habitats on the moon.  NASA says that they already have thousands of volunteers for a one-way mission to colonize Mars but not return — to instead stay there.  Now THAT is the kind of pioneer spirit that built America!

I don’t know what the climbing wall had to do with space, but hey, it was a climbing wall, so it HAD to be climbed.

In addition to all the static displays, there were a couple of really exciting IMAX movies.  We saw the one on exploration of space that talked about the shuttle missions, the international space station, and culminated with information about a future expedition to Mars.

There were three organizations that were created or enhanced as a result of the Russian launch of Sputnik: NSA (to prevent strategic surprise), DARPA (to prevent technical surprise), and NASA (to win the space race).  I have worked at the first two.  Someday, I would like to work at NASA if the right opportunity arose.  I watched Neil Armstrong step on the moon when I was in first grade and have been a sucker for space stuff every since.  How amazing it would be to have even a small role in getting men to Mars!

I really enjoyed our brief visit and would like to return to take in more of the displays in a leisurely manner.

Our next stop was the Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky.  Mammoth cave is the longest cave system in the world, with the known tunnels measuring some 400 miles and more being explored and mapped each year.  We took a four hour tour which only covered about four of those 400 miles.

The National Park covers more than 52 thousand acres.

Our Ranger was quite informative, stopping often to allow our long line of visitors to catch up and ask questions.

There were two rest stops with latrines during the four hour tour.  These “modern” facilities were cut into the rock cave in the 1950s, with sewage pumped to the surface rather than flowing into the three underground rivers that flow in the fifth level of tunnels.

Being a mostly dry cave system formed when the shallow sea bed receded some bazillion years ago, Mammoth Cave is a largely dry system.  Sandstone and other rock above, protects most of Mammoth Cave from having water seep into the Limestone, eroding it and also creating dramatic rock formations (stalagmites, etc.) that we saw in Carlsbad Caverns.  There were a few areas where the protecting cap of other rocks had eroded away and there were some of those interesting formations.

By about three in the afternoon we were ready to do something above ground.  We drove into Cave City and played some miniature golf, went down an Alpine slide, and rode in Go-Karts until a typhoon struck the area and drove us indoors.  After dinner at a local restaurant (we typically seek local places, rather than chains, while on vacation), we returned to our hotel within the National Park.

While the kids played some Frisbee, Candy and I took a short walk to Sunset Point overlook the Kentucky countryside.

We finished our time at Mammoth Cave National Park with a game in our hotel room.  The game was sort of Russian Roulette with jellybeans in which some of the jellybeans were good flavors but others were things like baby wipes, vomit, and skunk smell.  The game ended when Sam got a vomit jellybean and spent five minutes with her head in the sink.

The hotel was built in the 1970s, but has a more nostalgic feel to it.  Many pictures on the walls show tours of Mammoth Cave in the 1950’s with the typical attire of the time.  For someone (like me) who thinks the pinnacle of women’s fashions was reached in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the pictures on the walls were entertaining.