CalExpeditions

Author: dennis

  • Peoria Discovered, More Than a Meme

    Peoria Discovered, More Than a Meme

    Illinois is a bright, sunny place with mild temperatures. Heading from west to east, it starts flat and then turns hilly. I drove past the town of Champaign, which is home to a state college, and on to Kickapoo State Park. I learned that Kickapoo has nothing to do with the elimination of bodily waste.

    Flat as pancake illinois blends into gentle rolling hills.

    To the extent that anyone thinks of it at all, Peoria is usually considered a mythological place, like Atlantis or the fountain of youth. It is meant to evoke thoughts of middle America. However, I have discovered that it is an actual city! A small one, to be sure, but with streets, traffic signals and mid-rise office buildings.

    Peorians are quite taken with entomology and have several downtown buildings devoted to caterpillars.

    Aside from its role representing mainstream America, it also claims Abraham Lincoln as one of its sons. Lincoln, as you may recall, served as President of the US in the 1860s. It is notable that he failed to complete two terms, despite being elected twice. This feat places him in company with William McKinley and Richard Nixon.

    Peorians were obliged to construct a large, multi-story building as a home for this giant mural of Lincoln.
    For unknown reasons, Peoria has sculptures of bison, despite being far from Wyoming.

    So, in any event, Peoria actually exists. I have photos to prove it

  • Nebraska & Iowa

    Nebraska & Iowa

    Nebraska and Iowa are essentially the same place. It is a mystery why they’re treated separately by many. I’ll lump them together and call them Nebowa.

    The management of agri-business have forgotten to harvest their crops, leaving them to waste away in the fields. This will negatively impact profitability.

    Nebowa is a gray, overcast place with a lot of rain. If you’re planning on visiting (which you aren’t), be sure to pack your rain jacket. Otherwise you’ll have to buy one at the Base Exchange at Offutt AFB.

    Lots of clouds in Nebowa.

    Similarly, be sure to check your wiper blades. If you don’t renew them at home, you’ll have to while on the road.

    Did you know that wiper blades are designed to fail at the exact spot where your eyes look out the windshield? They are.

    Also, did you know that Sprinter vans have special “wet” wiper blades that are only sold at Mercedes dealers? They do.

    You will be in luck, though, because the Omaha Mercedes dealer handles Sprinters (most don’t) and they have wiper blades in stock! They’ll even install them for free! Marvelous!

    The van, aka the Shuttlecraft, stand ready to shield us from the rain.

    Also, be aware that Nebowa is quite windy. Crosswinds, in fact. Do not be startled when your vehicle’s anti-crosswind feature activates with a terrible noise and vibration. This is considered normal.

    The eastern part of Nebowa is unnecessarily hilly. This negatively impacts the region’s agricultural productivity. If one were to have a giant rolling pin, applied with sufficient vigor, one could smooth out the hills and increase the proportion of usable land, as was done with Kansas.

    Xena, the Warrior Princess, disapproves of the rain and elects to observe from inside.
  • Coast to Coast

    Coast to Coast

    I’m off on another epic journey: Oakland to East Haven (Connecticut) to see new parts of the country and have some mods done to the van. And I got my blog working again! Technical notes for curious gear heads at the bottom; normal people can safely ignore them.

    This house is Buckland’s Station. Built in 1860, it was a remount station for the Pony Express and a general store for the soldiers at nearby Fort Churchill, Nevada.
    This curious round courthouse in Lovelock, Nevada was designed by a famous architect I had never heard of and immediately forgot.
    Atoms for Peace! I visited the first breeder reactor. It creates more fuel than it consumes, thus demonstrating that there is a perpetual motion machine!
    People were silly in the 1950s. This was an early experiment is creating a nuclear powered aircraft engine. Any wonder why it never flew?
    Spent a couple of days in Idaho Falls. It is a pleasant little town in Idaho.
    Did you know the name of”Idaho Falls” came before the waterfalls? It did and remained an aspirational statement until the waterfalls were constructed out of concrete and artfully placed boulders.
    This was my front yard for a night…Antelope Lake, Oregon.

    Xena takes a hike

    The promised technical note: When I started this blog years ago, I had no idea how to do it. Naturally, I got a great many things wrong, like hosting it at Bluehost, installing a ton of plugins I didn’t need and getting the commenting feature wrong. So, I decided to fix it all and host it on my own machine. It turned out that removing all of Bluehost’s tentacles from the site was tedious and took much longer than I anticipated. But now it is done! (I think.)

  • Rivers of Ice

    While cruising in Alaskan waters, I discovered rivers of solid ice, sometimes thousands of feet thick! I call them “glaciers” and arranged for a helicopter ride at once for a closer examination.

    I really should have been an arctic explorer. I think I rather look the part.

    My mighty steed ready to carry me to the river of ice.

    Glacial overboots. Very fashion-forward, everyone is wearing on the glacier.

    The soles of the boots with the little metal studs that bite into the ice.

    Glacial run-off. The intensity of the blue ice is incredible. It really is that bright blue, no photoshopping or anything!

    The Heart of Alaska.

    The river of ice meets the sea.

  • Seattle

    I made a quick inspection trip to Seattle, on my way to intercept the Queen Elizabeth, a Cunard liner. Seattle is very nice…a sort of clean and non-hostile San Francisco.

    I visited the iconic Space Needle. Am amazed they could build it in less than a year. One wonders what corners were cut to achieve that!

    Pie in the sky? They called it pie, but, as you can see, it is not a wedge. Pie is served in wedges. Tasty, though, despite their misnomering.

    This is Dale Chihuly, manager of a glass factory. There is an exhibit of his products at Seattle Center, near the Space Needle.

    At Chihuly’s factory, they make many bowls like these. Pretty, I suppose, from a certain perspective. Lacking in utility and not dishwasher safe.

    Luckily, Chihuly manufactures decorative forest adornments, compensating for Nature’s lack of beauty.

    I discovered a transit vehicle—a sort of train—called a “monorail.” Weirdly, it has only a single track, like a unicycle train! Engineers are still trying to work out how it maintains its balance. Most trains require two, sometimes three, tracks.

    Seattletonians specialize in odd structures like this one. The inexplicable lack of straight walls and right angles leads to an inefficient use of interior volume. Wasteful!

  • Brief Announcements

    No travels for a couple more weeks, but Xena has been busy. Also, AI takes a look at Marxism. Both are accompanied by insightful commentary by experts, so be sure to listen to the audio!

    Taking Wing: How I Conquered the Skies

    AI Analyzes Karl Marx

  • chatGPT Haiku

    Sorry, not a travelogue this time. Just a link to some AI-generated haikus that distill entire mega-topics into a few insightful lines. Enjoy!

    Whispers in the Dark: Haiku for a World in Crisis

  • Loneliest Road?

    US-50 is billed as the loneliest highway in America. I drove it, west to east across Nevada. Ha. I’ve seen lonelier, especially in southeast Utah. The drive was exciting at times…I had to drive through a snowstorm for most of the day it took to traverse Nevada. My mud&snow tires plus all-wheel-drive inspired confidence. Xena, the Warrior Princess, was unconcerned and napped, missing most of Nevada.

    Snowy Nevada roads. I could only take pics during the relatively calm parts of the drive. You’ll have to imagine the parts where the roadway was completely whited out.

    This road is much more to my liking.

    I’ll bet you think you know what a shoe tree is. Think again and look closely.

    That’s right, shoes! Hundreds of shoes tossed into this tree, right the middle of empty Nevada.

    I’ll have to give Nevadans one thing…they have a really big moon.

  • Wonderful Washington, Part 2

    While in DC, I dined at some excellent restaurants and drank at superlative bars: Afghania, The Hamilton, Off the Record at the Hay Adams, Round Robin at the Willard Hotel, and others I neglected to take note of. I attended a service at the National Cathedral. It had been a while since I have been to a service, which is ok because I don’t sin much any more. Toured Mount Vernon, the White House, the US Capitol, the National African American Museum of History and Culture, and the Library of Congress. Visited many of the monuments, including some new ones: FDR, MLK, and WWI.
    Washington National Cathedral on a gray drizzly Sunday morning.
    A brief snippet of post-service organ music, along with some idle worshippers.
    The bells! The bells! My search for Quasimodo proved fruitless.
    The Women’s Viet Nam Memorial.
    The Korean Conflict Memorial.
    Franklin and Fala.
    A UN person.
    I bet you don’t have a single spoon warmer in your mansion. The White House has them in abundance.
    This plane was the first trainer for the Tuskegee Airmen. It is at the National African American Museum of History and Culture.
    A bit of the beauty that is the Library of Congress.
    This is how people eat and drink in Washington.

  • Wonderful Washington, Part One

    I write this as I wing my way home from a most excellent adventure in Washington, DC. I stayed with my friends and wonderful hosts, Andrew and Michelle, for 3 days, then moved to a hotel for 3.

    As most of us know, Washington has one weather mode, muggy, with two variants, hot and cool. Lucky for me, this visit was in the muggy and cool variant. It was drizzly rain for most of my visit, which may sound unfortunate at first. However, with an umbrella or light rain jacket, it proved quite comfortable.

    One dangerous result of the rain, though, was the extremely slick sidewalks. All the granite and red bricks seem benign when dry, but turn treacherous when wet. Pedestrians beware.

    Washington’s public transit agency, WMATA, runs superb bus and rail service throughout the city. It was very convenient, clean, safe and usually on time. Using public transit is way better than driving a rental.

    First stop, right off the plane, the National Air & Space Museum at Dulles. Excellent as always, crammed full of planes.

    Head on view of a space shuttle.
    This shuttle is so huge when you get up close. This one spent 365 days in space. I appreciated the way the curators left it looking worn and beat up; it shows that the shuttles were real work horses.

    This P-40 has a scary shark face to frighten the enemies.

    Elegant Concorde! Such a shame she no longer flies.

    Pretty DC-3 all shiny and clean! Even the propellers have a mirror finish. The airline opted for this look to save the weight and cost of paint.