Road Trip 2026 - Part I

 My grandson and I just completed a road trip of just over two weeks that completely took me out of my reading rhythm - and I'm still struggling to get back into it. I did fall asleep while reading in bed each night, though, and managed to finish one 345-page book while on the road. But things are still so frantic at home, what with dealing with lawyers and tax people concerning the estate problem we are trying to solve, that I just haven't been able to settle back into my old reading patterns even now.  

Despite that, I wouldn't trade those two weeks for anything, so here's just a little taste of the experiences we had while driving over 3700 miles inside the boundaries of nine different states:

This is the "famous" Cadillac Ranch just outside of Amarillo, Texas. As you can see from the photo, the cars have been spray-  painted now by so many people that they are barely recognizable as Cadillacs. The paint is so thick that big sections succumb to gravity every so often and harden on the ground where some enterprising locals scavenge the hardened paint in order to turn it into "jewelry" to be sold to tourist types like us. We did pass on that opportunity despite the rather surprising appeal to the eye of the jewelry tidbits.

We did a good bit of driving on the historical Route 66 that, in theory, still goes from Chicago to Los Angeles. I say "in theory" because much/most of the old route has been covered over by an interstate highway now. But in Adrian, Texas, we did spot this sign across the street from a large gift shop. It marks the official halfway point of the long drive and must have been quite a milestone for travelers to reach in the pre-interstate highway day.

The old gas station/gift shop at the midway point

There's an old "ghost town" called Puerto de Luna near Santa Rosa, New Mexico, that we drove about 20 miles out of our way to take a look at. The funny thing was that we could see it from the road long before we could find a way to reach the surviving buildings. We had no GPS at that point and couldn't find anyone to give us specific directions, but we eventually managed to get a few pictures. It was all kind of sad, really.

 Remains of the 1907 courthouse

Sideview

Main Entrance to old courthouse

Remains of the old county jailhouse

Another view of the old jail

The sad result of the damage done by vandals in recent years

We did end up having a nice chat with the Native American postman who services the tiny community nearest these old buildings who gave us a 30-minute oral history of the area and his tribe. It was quite interesting, and he seemed very proud of his tribal history. He was a nice man, ad we won't soon forget his generosity.

I'm going to stop here for part one of my trip recap. If you would like to see an enlargement of any of the pictures, just click on them and they will expand.

More to come in a day or two.

A Brief Visit to College Station Pays Off

College Station, home to Texas A&M University, is only about 75 miles from my front door, so I enjoy driving up there every few months to see what might turn up in the city’s bookstores. Even though I ended up doing more selling (I hope) than buying this time around, I did come home with five additions to my home library. I’ve decided to begin selling off my collection of Civil War books, nonfiction and fiction alike, and a little indie bookstore in Bryan (College Station’s neighbor) has shown some interest in those. So there’s that.

The new book I’m most tickled about is the 1943 wartime edition of Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Buried Clock, shown above. Despite its age, there is no spotting or discoloration on any of the book’s 250 pages. Considering that this Grosset & Dunlap edition is just a cheaper edition of the William Morrow "Victory Edition"of the book, that’s a pleasant surprise. The inside flap of the book jacket says this in red letters:

This book, while produced under wartime conditions, in full compliance with government regulations for the conservation of paper and other essential materials, is COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED.

The book’s copyright page adds this:

* VICTORY EDITION*

 The typographical size and format of this book are in accordance with the paper conservation orders of the War Production Board.

I saw almost a dozen other Perry Mason books from the same era today, but the pages in all of them were so discolored that I passed on buying any but this one. From the drastic difference in its condition compared to the others on the same shelf, I don’t think it was acquired by the store from the same seller. 

I also found three Carlos Ruiz Zafón paperbacks published in the UK. Two of them The Prisoner of Heaven and The Angel’s Game are part of Zafón’s well known “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books” series, a series you should definitely try if you haven’t already done so. Because I’ve not read any of Zafón’s shorter work, I’m particularly looking forward to the third, The City of Mist, a slim collection of eleven of the author's short stories. The covers of the three are very similar, so I’ll just share this one to give you an idea of what they look like:

And finally, there’s this collection of critical essays by Harold Bloom on the key works of novelists ranging from Cervantes to Amy Tan. If I’ve counted correctly, there are 77 essays, sorted by birth year, with Cervantes being the oldest and Tan the youngest. I’m really curious to see what Bloom had to say about Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian because I’m still very underwhelmed by it at the 60% mark. I can tell that the collection's previous owner, a female with beautiful handwriting, started reading the collection with great intentions - but she seems to have lost interest pretty quickly. I hope I use the book more than she did.

I really enjoyed the day, so much in fact, that I plan to make a similar trip up to Huntsville sometime in June or July. Sam Houston University is the school in that town, and Sam Houston is very much a part of that city’s history. I haven’t visited for a couple of years, so it will be fun to visit Sam’s gravesite and the spectacular museum dedicated to his memory again. And maybe they have a bookstore worth visiting now…who knows?

What We Left Unsaid - Winnie M. Li

Sometimes I think I live for road trips, but not just any old road trips. I like to get out and wander aimlessly for two or three thousand miles before doing the same thing on my way back home. That kind of trip has led me to countless unexpected places, and to friends I would have otherwise never known over the last several decades, and it’s still one of my favorite things in all the world to do (although I had to skip doing a trip in 2025). 

And that is what led me to Winnie Li’s What We Left Unsaid, a novel about three middle-aged siblings on a drive from Chicago to California to visit their seriously ill mother. First, though, I fell in love with the cover because of the way that it so perfectly captures the serendipitous spirit of a four-wheel ramble across America. I wanted to experience someone else’s road trip, and I did that. But that’s not all there is here.

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My What We Left Unsaid impressions and takeaways:

• The basic plot (three rather estranged Asian American siblings forced to spend days together on a cross-country drive) is a solid one,
•  Flashbacks to their last road trip together, when the three were children, effectively explains their current family dynamic,
• Too much of the plot heavily depends on coincidence, and this many critical coincidences start to feel overly contrived and forced before very long,
• Li tries to hit every hot-button social/political issue on this roadtrip of about a week’s duration: overt racism, gun violence, gender issues, gay marriage, politics with a definite anti-Trump tone, it’s all there,
• the ending is predictable enough to be disappointing because most readers will see it coming long before the novel’s “big reveal,” is officially unveiled, and
• despite the book’s almost 400 pages, the last quarter of it seems rushed and overly (and very negatively) stereotypical.

Overall, I was disappointed in What We Left Unsaid despite enjoying its road trip aspects. It proved to be too one-sided for me to suspend my disbelief long enough to buy its message. All the “good" guys in the story are exceptionally “good,” and all the “bad" guys are exceptionally “bad.” Li’s failure to include any grey areas or characters in her tale leads to the book’s predictability. And that’s my main gripe about this one. Reluctantly, I’ll give it three stars because it did keep me engaged enough to finish it.

I'm Back - Just in Time for the Storm Watch

Even though it's been only fourteen days, it seems like I've been gone forever. Turns out that reading while wandering the backroads of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana (along with a little bit of Tennessee) is not nearly as easy as I hoped it would be - mainly because I was pretty much exhausted by the heat by the end of each day for the entire trip. I am way behind on book reviewing - and the books are growing hazier in my mind by the minute - but I decided to begin with a quick "Hello Post" and a few pictures as I ease myself back into Book Chasing. 

So here are a few pictures that give a taste of what I've been up to for the last two weeks:

One of the 20-or-so murals on buildings in Clarksdale, MS

A view from the side of B.B. King's Gravesite 

The only surviving structure in the Vicksburg Battleground Park

 

Another of the Clarksdale, MS, murals

Friendship Cemetery, Columbus, Ms, site of America's first Memorial Day celebration

"Contraband Camp," Corinth, MS, home of freed slaves during the Civil War

Birthplace of Elvis Presley, Tupelo, MS

Muscle Shoals Studios, AL; toilet Mick Jagger composed "Wild Horses" on 

Hellen Keller home near Muscle Shoals, AL

Louisiana State capitol building, Baton Rouge, LA

View from one side of 27th floor, LA State Capitol

Cathedral in Lafayette, LA

 

500+ year old tree on cathedral grounds

All of these photos should be "clickable" for a larger, more detailed look.

The pictures are kind of all over the map - and so was my wandering. I never had more than a general destination in mind, and usually lost a lot of potential road time in favor of long conversations with the locals. It was a great trip, and it was exactly what I needed at that moment. More later if anyone is interested, but I do promise to get back to book-talk very soon. I've missed all of you, and can't wait to catch up on what everyone has been up to.

...as for Hurricane Beryl, it's looking better for the upper Texas Gulf Coast today. We are likely to get some decent rain, but not the flooding rains we often get - and not a lot of wind.

Avery Island, Louisiana: Home of McIlhenny Tabasco Sauce (July 2019 Photos)

 As a quick follow-up to yesterday's review of McIlhenny's Gold, I thought some of you may be interested in a peek at the handful of photos I took there in July 2019 during a relatively brief visit to the island. I regret not having spent more time on the island so that I could see all of the island and not just the museum, company store, and bottling factory facilities there. I hope to rectify that sometime this summer while visiting relatives in that part of the state.

Tabasco Peppers on Display

Chili Mash Aging Casks

Huge Processing Vats

Almost Ready to Be Shipped

  

"Pepper Pickers 1903"

There's so much wildlife and other interesting sites on the island to see that I really regret now that the clock ran out on me when it did. I arrived too late in the day to see anything else. 

(A click on the photos should enlarge them.)

The Salt Path - Raynor Winn

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a big fan of books written by people who test themselves by long, cross-country trips. It doesn’t matter whether they are walking, riding bicycles or motorbikes, boating, or even driving, I’ve always envied the authors. But now something a little different has come along: Raynor Winn has written a long-walk kind of memoir with a twist. The Salt Path is about the 630-mile walk along part of England’s southern coast that Raynor and her husband Moth took on only because they suddenly found themselves homeless and jobless. Needless to say, this time around I don’t envy the author one little bit.

It could perhaps be argued that Raynor and Moth brought their problems upon themselves, but the only thing they were really guilty of was being a little too naive and trusting when it came to doing business with a man Moth had known since childhood. When that man’s business failed, he wasted little time coming after the couple’s home and business to compensate himself for their supposed share of the failed company’s debts and obligations. Raynor and Moth tried to defend themselves in court, but not being able to afford a competent attorney turned out to be their downfall- and at the end, they were left with only a few days to vacate the property. Everything they owned, and life as they knew it, was gone.

Well, it could just not get much worse than that, could it? The short answer is “yes, it could,” and it does exactly that when within a matter of days of losing their home and everything they own, Moth is diagnosed with an illness likely to claim his life within five years. So, with no place to go, and no money other than the minimal benefits they are eligible for each month, Raynor and Moth begin walking westward along England’s southern coast even though they have no idea what they will do once they come to the end of the trail months later.

The Salt Path is Winn’s account of what it was like for two people in their fifties to strap rather heavy packs onto their backs and trudge along during daylight hours without having any idea where they will be pitching their tent at the end of the day. Along the way, the pair endures the heat of the day, cold and wet nights that make it near impossible to sleep, the constant problem of finding enough water to keep themselves safely hydrated, and living on whatever meager diet they can afford. And if that is not already bad enough, they have to live with the societal stigma of being homeless when people they encounter along the way more times than not treat them as if they are carrying the plague simply because they are homeless. It is almost as if homelessness is a contagious disease. 

Bottom Line: Sad as The Salt Path is, for this reader the saddest part of all is the way that their fellow citizens treat Ray and Moth as soon as they learn that the couple are not voluntary hikers/campers out on some lark. This is particularly disappointing when the penny drops in the middle of a conversation and Ray and Moth’s new “friends” abruptly excuse themselves and leave the area as quickly as their feet can carry them away. The Salt Path has a sequel titled The Wild Silence, but I’m not sure that I’m up to reading that one just yet.

Author Raynor Winn & Her Husband Moth

Not Tonight, Josephine: A Road Trip Through Small-Town America - George Mahood

Because I enjoy wandering the back roads (I hate interstate highways with a real passion) so much myself, I’m always on the lookout for a well written travel memoir about that kind of trip. It doesn’t matter if the travelers are walking, biking, or driving; I’m ready to make the trip with them. I’ve made lots of those trips in the US and Canada, even a bunch in the UK when I was younger, so George Mahood’s Not Tonight, Josephine: A Road Trip Through Small-Town America from my first glance at its cover seemed just about perfect. 

Two young Brits, author George Mahood and his buddy Mark, decided to spend the better part of a year exploring America, having correctly assumed that the experience would be a much better way to learn about the country and its people than exclusively following the usual tourist track instead. Their plan, however, changed even before they landed in New York because Mark was granted only a 90-day visa, leaving George on his own when it was time to turn their rather ancient Dodge Caravan (called Josephine) around and head back to New York for the flight home. (George would inadvertently have his own visa problems later on.) Thankfully, Mark was able to join George before anything happened to George as he wandered around solo through places like some of Baltimore’s most drug-infested neighborhoods on foot searching for a place to sleep. 

Not Tonight, Josephine is every bit as much fun as I hoped it would be. Because the boys, due to budget restraints, spent the bulk of their nights sleeping on Josephine’s too-small seats, parked wherever they felt relatively safe, they had more than a few encounters with local cops who spotted them parked overnight in unusual spots. And because the trip began so late in the year, they often woke up with ice on both sides of the windows and chattering teeth. Even some of America’s cheapest, dirtiest, and weirdest motels began to look good to them at that point. 

There is even a love story happening in Not Tonight, Josephine despite the fact that George and Rachel have the Atlantic Ocean firmly fixed between them. At one point, as George continues to move westward and Rachel decides to relocate to Ireland, they manage to put more and more miles between them. For both, it is a new relationship with an old friend, and George fears that he is destroying it even before it begins. After Mark returns to England, George wants nothing more than to have Rachel join him for the return leg of the trip, but she is not so sure that is what she wants to do.

Bottom Line: I ended up liking Not Tonight, Josephine even more than I expected I would. George and Mark steered Josephine through many of the small towns and more-isolated regions of the country that I’ve explored on my own, and reading about their experiences brought back some good memories. It’s the “little things” and unexpected encounters that make this kind of trip a true success, and despite all the things they barely missed seeing on their travels, George, Mark, and Rachel ended up experiencing a very successful road trip with a lot of help from Josephine. This one is fun.

George Mahood

Road Trip 2021 Is History; Part One: The Buddy Holly Trail

Buddy Holly Statue at Lubbock's Walk of Fame

Road trip 2021 may be history, but it will likely prove to be one of the most memorable ones I've ever taken. I left home early on Sunday, July 18, along with my nineteen-year-old grandson, with zero miles on the trip-counter, and we completed the trip on Sunday, August 1, with 5,035 miles on the meter. 

This is a quick summary of the 15 days we were on the road:

1. Houston to Lubbock, TX: all about Buddy Holly,
2. Lubbock to Clovis and Roswell, NM: personal tour of the Norman Petty recording studio in Clovis where Holly recorded the hits,
3. Roswell, NM to Albuquerque, NM: the "alien" sites in Roswell along with stops in Lincoln, NM (site of the Lincoln County War) and White Sands National Park,
4. Albuquerque to Kayente, AZ: with a long visit to the famous marker in Four Corners, USA, where you can place yourself simultaneously within the boundary of four different states,
5. Kayente to Kanab, UT: with a Navajo guided tour through the beautiful Monument Valley,
6. Kanab to Page, AZ: in between the two cities, we spent much of the day enjoying Zion National Park with my step-grandson who is interning there this summer,
7. Page to Cedar City, UT: with an invigorating visit to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon that we enjoyed despite all the smoke from this summer's wildfires,
8. Cedar City to Evanston, WY: with visits to Temple Square in Salt Lake City and to the Great Salt Lake itself,
9. Evanston to Cody, WY: spent the day in Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park (which was overwhelmed by tourist traffic) before arriving in one of my favorite cities,
10. Cody to Sheridan, WY: after spending much of the day exploring the wonderful Buffalo Bill Cody Center,
11. Sheridan to Rapid City, SD: visited Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument (both with good crowds),
12. Rapid City to Ogallala, NE: highlight of the day's driving was the fascinating Wall Drug, one of the most iconic "tourist traps" in the country,
13. Ogallala to Dodge City, KS: with a fun visit to the Boot Hill Museum in town,
14. Dodge City to Lubbock, TX: to complete our Buddy Holly tribute by visiting the museum that was closed on our earlier visit to Lubbock,
15. Lubbock to Houston: a ten-hour day of travel to complete the circuit

The first two days were largely spent immersing ourselves in the tragic history of one of both our favorite singers, Buddy Holly. Buddy was from Lubbock, Texas, but he did his earlier recordings at the Norman Petty recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico, so we spent time in both cities walking in Buddy's footsteps. Sadly, Buddy's career lasted only 18 months before a 1959 crash in a small plane claimed his life along with the lives of Richie Valens, J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, and the plane's pilot. 

We both find the man's music to be so much fun that it's impossible not to be in a good mood when you're listening to the songs. 

Buddy Holly (Holley) Gravesite in Lubbock, Texas

Lounge Area of Clovis, NM, Recording Studio (everything is original)

We had a wonderful tour of the Norman Petty studio, just us and a man who spent much of his life working with and for Petty. We were able to spend some time not only in the studio itself but also in the small apartment attached to it that was used by the musicians when they recorded all night long. All of the original furniture, pictures, etc. from back in the day are still in place there. It was like waking up in the 1950s. 

Go West, Young Man - B.J. Hollars

Go West, Young Man, B.J. Hollars’s account of the Oregon Trail road trip he shared with his six-year-old son, Henry, will be a fun read for anyone who enjoys similar road trips of their own. Smartly, Hollars spends a substantial amount of time in this travel memoir exploring his evolving relationship with Henry (who, if he is even half as precocious as his dad portrays him to be here, is quite the character) as the long hours in the car began to wear a bit on both of them. It didn’t hurt, too, that I read Go West, Young Man during my own 5,000 mile road trip with my nineteen-year-old grandson. As we came upon some of the landmarks highlighted in the Hollars book, I knew what to expect, which landmarks to explore more deeply, and was happier and happier that my grandson was enjoying the trip — and (supposedly) my company — as much as I had hoped he would.

B.J. and Henry were on a mission to rediscover America, both as the country was in the past and the way it is today. And they did it the hard way. They usually camped out along the way, very rarely breaking up the camping routine by a hotel stay or a night spent in the home of friends. And I suspect that the occasional thunderstorm or heavy winds they endured and conquered will likely turn out to be some of their strongest memories of the entire trip. 

Father and son met their goals: they completed the Oregon Trail together and they met enough people along the way, including cross country truck drivers, to get a good feel about both the things that still bind Americans together and the things, mostly political, that so destructively divide those same Americans today. Mr. Hollars used the trip as a means of educating his young son to the realities of the exploitive nature of America’s move west, and what he has to say on the subject is a disturbing reminder of how destructive the westward migration of settlers was to the native peoples already there. 

Bottom Line: Go West, Young Man is fun. I think it’s a little heavy-handed at times on the guilt trip associated with the author’s reaction to how terribly our native peoples were treated by white settlers of the day, but there are plenty of reasons — and takeaways — to read this fun travel memoir. I have to admit that I particularly enjoyed reading about the author’s interface with Henry during such an extended road and camping trip, but I also learned much about the key spots along the Oregon Trail and how important it was to this country’s westward expansion. I recommend this one to all the road-trippers out there. You’ll enjoy it.

B.J. Hollars

Review Copy provided by Publisher

On the Road Again: Road Trip 2021

My Hero: Willie Nelson
King of the Road Trip

I'm leaving in the morning with my 19-year-old grandson beside me on a much anticipated road trip...the first in just over two years. You never know how many opportunities are left to spend this kind of time with a grandchild, so I'm putting aside my uneasiness and going ahead with the trip. We are going to be extra cautious, though, as you would know if you saw the number of cleaning and sanitizing items, masks, etc. we are packing along with us. 

So, we'll be taking it one day at a time, and as long as we both feel comfortable being out on the road, we will continue on - hopefully, for at least two weeks. The plan is literally to wander around New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska to see what we stumble upon. I'm a stickler for not over-planning a road trip (well, not planning it at all is closer to the truth) so we may not make all of these states, depending on what we find to take up our days - or what the COVID conditions are in some of the states on the list. 

This means that my blogging will be sporadic, at best, through the end of July and maybe into early August - as will my reading. I do plan to check in with a post or two when decent WiFi is available, though, and who knows what I'll have to say? Certainly, not me.

Much Needed Day Trip to a Historic Texas Cemetery

I decided yesterday to drive out to a little community northeast of Austin to see if I could locate an old cemetery someone on Facebook was talking about last month. After driving the 150 miles to get within what should have been just a few hundred feet of the little dirt road I needed to turn left on, I couldn't find it. And then, just when I was about ready to give up, I spotted a gate with a sign on it that I hadn't noticed before...and there it was: 

The Hornsby family cemetery is located about a quarter of a mile down this road, but this section of the road is misleading, to say the least. There are long ruts just a bit past this section where the road curves to the left that are so deep that I had to almost scrape the fence line in order to make my way past them.

The state of Texas put up this historical marker in 1936 to mark the spot where the Hornsby family settled exactly 100 years earlier. The marker is almost 100 years old now itself, but it can still be pretty easily read if you click on it for an enlarged view.:

The gravesite shown below is one of the biggest ones in the section devoted to the Hornsby family, and it tells a little bit about them. There are also numerous Texas Rangers from the era buried in this section:

The Rangers' graves all have the small crosses with badge replicas near the headstones.

Only a "hurricane fence" separates this cemetery from the one that contains the graves mostly of Mexican Americans and (possibly/probably) Tejanos who were buried here a few years before Texas became first an independent nation and then one of the United States.  The gate to that section looks like this:

Just as in the Hornsby part of the cemetery, people continue to be buried here on occasion, but the Mexican-influenced part of the cemetery is much more colorful.

There are at least two older graves that ended up being on the "wrong" side of the fence that segregates the two populations:

And, baseball fans will want to note that the Hornsby cemetery is also the final resting place of one of the greatest players of all time, Triple Crown Winner and Hall-of-Famer Rogers Hornsby who played for the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, among others. Note the little pony someone placed on the grave marker in respect, I suppose, for Hornsby's love of betting on the horses:

This little trip marks the first time in over a year that I actually believe that we are getting closer to returning to pre-pandemic days now. I even stopped off for a burger - and ate inside the restaurant - on the way home. What a wild and crazy guy.