The Last Weekend of Summer Vacation

Due to the hiring freeze at the university I only get two weeks of vacation during the summer this year and we can’t have more than two professors gone at any one time. As I was late in arranging my time off I ended up getting the very first slot of the summer. Here it is June 27th and I’m on my last weekend of vacation. That means a long summer to go without any vacation time.

As I said before this is going to be my “on the road” summer and I’ve already done the loop to Minnesota, on to Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Columbia and back to Kansas City. With no more vacation I’m going to have to come up some local weekend ideas.

Even though the temperature has been in the 100s all week I have already been up early to ride the bike on the Little Blue Trace Trail. I got the Jackson County Parks boat and motor permit today so I’m ready for Lake Blue Springs and Longview Lake.

This Saturday, we started early at the City Market. It was hot and crowded, but you just have to keep it all in perspective. At 10am it was on to the Art Festival at the Power and Light District. The show was different than the normal Plaza and Brookside fairs as it is ran by a private company from Florida. I would agree with one participant that called it a good and bad show; some very good work and some not so good. We made it half way through and stopped for a beer at the Flying Saucer. I tried the special, Anchor Summer, delicious. A great beer establishment but I don’t think Ill be getting the 200 beer gold plate anytime soon. Then we finished up the art festival.


In the afternoon it was on to Grinders (where done of us had been before). Yes, their South Philly Cheese steak is good. Next winter I may have to try their “as seen on TV” specials; Famous Chili Bomb Pie and Bengal Tiger Pizza. Then it was back home for a short nap in the frigid air conditioning. We had planned a late afternoon movie; cool, dark with popcorn and soda. But I got the wrong time, so back again to the house for a light dinner of cucumber sandwiches and watermelon salsa and my special vodka lemonade with Pimms. Ahhh! What a day.

June 29, 2009 Update: To celebrate my first day back at school we ate George’s Hungarian goulash at Grinders with a couple of pints of Urebrough Blanche de Chambly.

At the Lake in Minnesota

Someone in my wife’s family has been spending the summer here since the 1920’s. I have been visiting “the lake” for a few weeks most summers since the summer of 1984. This year the patriarch of her family died and I thought it might be the last of the Minnesota summers.


But come early summer Grandma changed her mind about not opening the lake cottage for the summer every again and here we are once again deep in mosquito land. The all season people have told us that it was an unusually cold winter, like they used to have years ago. And it has been a wet, cool spring. The ice was late leaving the lake this year. The water is still so cold that done of us have wanted to swim. It has been strictly a fishing visit this time.

Our families have decided that it is still fun to come to the lake, and have promised to make some time each summer to meet here again. Times have changed and in today’s fast paced tech society the cottage will no longer be a summer long home for anyone but memories are still to be made as new generations learn to swim and water ski and seine minnows and catch big sunnies off the dock.

On The Road - Day Two

I do believe every road sign in the states of Iowa and Minnesota has a bird perched on top of it. Either there are a lot of birds that like to see who is on the road or the signs are made that way, sort of a fake decoy.

Today was sunny and cool. It was great driving weather regretfully there isn’t a lot to see in southwest Minnesota except for lots of soybean and corn fields. Two new additions since my last trip were ethanol plants and large wind turbines.

I missed a turn and went out of my way for about 40 miles, but I am glad I did. I went through a town on the Minnesota River called New Ulm. It was another of those beautifully picturesque places that almost make me want to move back to the rural life.

On The Road - Day One

It rained all day my first day out of Kansas City. I left I-29 at St. Joe and turned straight north on US 71 to Clarinda, Iowa. Clarinda lays claim to both the birthplace home of Glenn Miller and the Goldenrod School (the birthplace of 4-H). I then cut over to US Route 59 to the beautiful little town of Shenandoah Iowa to see if the Corn Motel was still there. It wasn’t. I remember staying there on the way back from a summer in Canada in the early Sixties. It was the first motel that we had ever stayed at that had a swimming pool. My brothers and I were I heaven.


It was a deluge of rain when I drove through Ida Grove so I couldn’t stop. The town had a general motif sort of like castles. I’ll have to research more about Ida Grove, it was rather strange. I finally stopped for the night just into Minnesota in Worthington. I had a chance to stay at an old time motel but chickened out and went to the Holiday Inn Express instead. I couldn’t resist the lure of a swimming pool.

First I dropped by the local Wal-Mart to pick up some beer (which I found out later was 3.2 just like the old days of Kansas). Almost everyone in the store was Hispanic. Worthington is a big meat processing town.

On The Road

I am dedicating this summer to the “road trip”. Both in literature and in life. We used to move a lot when I was a kid because the type of work my Dad did. And I am feeling the call to travel again; for the first time in a long time I have the opportunity (read time and money).

My first trip will be to the old lake cottage in Minnesota. Someone in our family has been spending a summer there for the past 100 years. On the way up from Kansas City I will make it into a two day car trip. I will avoid the interstate and take the blue highways as William Least Heat Moon would do. For reading material I am taking along Jack Kerouac’s famous road trip novel On the Road and a new road novel by Jim Harrison, The English Major (to see my review visit GoodReads). I’ll be shopping at used bookstores along the way to find John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie.