Category: Travel

Impending Travel (South Carolina)

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If James Brown is the godfather of soul, is “Weird Al” Yankovic the godfather of novelty records? Or would that be Dr. Demento? And who is the godfather of boy bands? And why is it always god? Are there any devilfathers out there? Actually, “devilfathers” sounds like some kind of snack food. Maybe deviled ham and deviled eggs served in a sandwich, where the bread is actually devil’s food cake. Which leads me to wonder, why is Satan so heavily involved in our food? And are deviled eggs allowed in heaven? I demand answers!

Anyway, none of the above is relevant, because I’m just here to talk about my upcoming trip to coastal Carolina! Next week, I will be heading to the south end of the North Carolina coast to spend a day or so with some long-time friends from Iowa who will be visiting the area. From there, I will be heading into South Carolina. I will be seeing Myrtle Beach for the first time, though I’ll just be passing through. The bulk of this trip will be spent around Charleston, SC. Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, Capers Island, and multiple mansions/plantations are on my itinerary. And we must not forget the Arthur J. Ravenel Bridge! On the way home, I will likely visit Congaree National Park and/or a pinball place in Rock Hill that I recently learned of. I bid you eye dew, or something.

Insomnia and Other Happenings

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I mentioned a month ago that I was trying Yet Another Drug for insomnia, and that I would reserve comment until I had been on it for awhile, since previous treatments had worked initially but not in the long term. Well, I think the long term has arrived, so I can confidently say this one works! Mostly. The drug in question is Mirtazapine. My Parkinson’s specialist told me to take half a tablet each night, and to increase to a whole tablet if the half tablet wasn’t working after about a week. It wasn’t, so I did. After a week at the increased dosage, it still wasn’t helping. So the doc told me to increase it again – to a pill and a half. Since then, I’ve been getting between five and seven hours of sleep almost every night. Five hours is not ideal, but it’s a definite improvement! However, I still have the occasional night where I wake up shortly after midnight and can’t get back to sleep. Such nights are happening no more than once a week now, and I can handle them at that frequency.

Throwback Thursday this week will be part three of the Arizona trip I took a few years ago., with the conclusion coming a week later. There will be no Throwback Thursday for the two weeks after that. Instead of writing about trips from the past, I will once again be excreting near-realtime Trip Reports. This time, I will be road-trippin’ to the South Carolina coast, mostly in the vicinity of Charleston.

In other news, I’m considering moving again. House prices are going berserk here in the Charlotte area, and I have been receiving unsolicited offers for far more than I paid when I bought my home just a year and a half ago. The obvious problem is, I would have to pay an equally inflated amount to get another house in the area. So, I’m back to where I was when I quit working a couple years ago…pondering a move to Somewhere Else. I saw in the news recently that Mankato, Kansas is offering financial incentives to folks who want to move into their fine city. But “Mankato” sounds suspiciously like “Mansquito” so I’ll probably have to pass.

Texas Trip Report (Day 7)

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Hey! Here I am on the road, and I haven’t ridden any roller coasters in the last FOUR days. Time to do something about that! But first, breakfast…or maybe not. When I went downstairs for the breakfast that’s included in the price of my room at Holiday Inn Express, I was greeted by a handwritten sign declaring the kitchen to be closed. The gentleman at the front desk explained that their oven was on the fritz – it just refused to turn on. I thought about the breakfast I’d had there the previous morning, when the oven was still among the living. They had (among other things) Froot Loops®, orange juice, fresh fruit, and pre-packaged Otis Spunkmeyer® muffins. I was about to ask him why they needed a working oven to serve these particular delicacies, when he suddenly launched into a glowing endorsement of a (relatively) nearby restaurant called Snooze A. M. Eatery. It sounded better than a Holiday Inn Express breakfast, so rather than harangue the hotel staff, I drove to Snooze. I did not lose. There’s a section of the menu devoted to variations of Eggs Benedict. I did a half-and-half order, with their Habanero Pork Belly and Pork Chili Verde benedicts. They was both yummy!

Next, I made my way to the Kemah Boardwalk, home of the Boardwalk Bullet. The Bullet was under construction when I was working in the area 15 years ago. Even unfinished, it looked awesome! This bad boy is the twistiest of twisters – the track passes in and out of the support structure, over and under itself, more than any other woody in the world with a total of 42 crossovers. To pull this off, the ride repeatedly “hops” from side to side – so when I finally got to experience it today, I found it reminded me of Dollywood’s Thunderhead and ValleyFair’s Renegade. But both of those coasters do their hopping over a large amount of land, whereas the Bullet packs its 42 crossovers into a MUCH smaller footprint. So most of this coaster is inside itself – you are completely surrounded by the ride’s own structural timbers, which makes it feel even faster than it really is. And at 51 MPH, it’s way fast for a woody! This is definitely in my Top Ten wooden roller coasters – maybe Top Five.

With my coaster lust satisfied, it was time for a leisurely four-hour drive from Kemah (southeast of Houston) to Corpus Christi. This drive was uneventful, apart from a few fights with my GPS navigation app. But I’ve gotten used to those.

Texas Trip Report (Days 4 and 5)

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The dawn of Day 4 found me in the “NASA suburbs” southeast of Houston. Way back in 2007, I spent five non-contiguous weeks in this area when my employer at the time had a contract with NASA. This is the first time I’ve been here in the 15 years since. I only got about three hours of sleep overnight. That combined with a weather forecast calling for “the hottest day of the year so far” (over 90 degrees Fahrenheit) led me to decide that this would be my “day off” from this vacation. So I spent most of the day inside my air-conditioned hotel room, writing for this very blog, then just drove around checking out some of my old haunts. Nothing exciting or compelling, so let’s move on.

I am a museum geek. That’s not exciting or compelling either, but that won’t stop me from writing about the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS). I spent the whole day there, and I could easily go back and spend more time! The Hall of Paleontology is the star of the show. Most natural science museums I’ve visited had one or two complete dinosaur skeletons, and lots of individual bones. HMNS has probably a dozen complete dinosaur skeletons, as well as fossilized dinosaur skin on display. And it doesn’t end with dinosaurs. They also have skeletons of mastodons, huge extinct sloths and armadillos, saber-toothed cats, and much more!

There’s also a Hall of African Wildlife (current species, not dinosaur-age beasties). Unlike many similar museums where the visitor is in the middle of the room looking into dioramas, the displays at HMNS intrude in the visitor space, allowing you to see the dead animals up close, and from several angles. This is the best natural science museum I’ve seen, hands down. No, wait! Keep your hands where I can see ’em! Now wave ’em in the air like you just don’t care. OK, stop it!

I’ve been experiencing some strange vision-related phenomena lately. I’ll try to remember to write about them in detail once I get home from this trip. In the meantime, it’s a patty melt and onion rings from Whataburger for dinner.