A few minutes after leaving Naples Airport, my driver, a 40-ish local with no pretensions about his hometown, his country, or his government, began a 46-km exegesis on life in the south of Italy.
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Category: Travel
Oregon 218 — 44 Million Years Ago
Drive north in the belly of Oregon through long, rolling rise-and-falls, seer-suckered by sagebrush, past scruff and cattle, persevering on US 97 until you find a road at Madras that leads eastward toward a tiny brown square on your AAA map labeled Clarno Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. After the intermittent, insignificant traffic on US 97, you’ll find cars on Oregon’s Route 218 numbering fewer than the miles you drive. Continue reading “Oregon 218 — 44 Million Years Ago”
Mom’s Cafe — Salina, Utah
There are sage pronouncements that should never be ignored.
In his 1956 short story collection, A Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren wrote: “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s.” I have always avoided faux physicians at poker palaces, but once, after nearly two handfuls of driving hours, I was seduced into stopping for gas and food at Mom’s Cafe in Salina, UT. Here is my review. Continue reading “Mom’s Cafe — Salina, Utah”
Happy Hour in Key West
We scheduled our trip down the Keys so as to avoid the human embarrassments that attend Spring Break. We sought spectacular sunsets, coral reefs, beachside conversation.
We came for the waters. We were misled.
We didn’t know that the Florida colleges let out their students a week early, so that they will be unimpeded in their quest to begin getting happy as soon as they arise from the previous night’s debauchery.
It should be called Happy Shift.
Little City in the Everglades
I stood on the bottom coast of Florida, with the Gulf offshore, mangrove and grassy everglades in every other direction, two hours to Miami, but times away from big town currency and gloss. There are no big boxes, chain motels, or fast food franchises in Everglades City. It doesn’t look like Interstate Everyplace, USA. It looks like what it is: a tiny (pop. 513 in 2004), off-the-trail village that lives on fishing and just enough tourism.
Shell Games
On the Gulf edge of south Florida, just a bridge away from Fort Myers, Sanibel Island is a shell-collecting singularity.
The thin island’s southern coast catches a confluence of waves, winds, and currents that drive bazillions of shells onto the beach. Continue reading “Shell Games”