Detourist: Postcards from the road less traveled

July 5 | 2:30 p.m. Love it, hate it: readers sound off on the Fourth

A lot of people were motivated to write in response to my previous blog entry ("Why I hate the Fourth of July"). The feedback was pretty evenly split between those who agreed the holiday was overblown and those who said I was a wimp who hated America and should move to France (which, by the way, strikes me as rather a generous thing to say to a travel editor).

Anyway, hope your holiday was fun and that all your digits are where they should be today. Here are some of the mails you sent:

4th of July hates Jeff so THERE!

"America" is the ideals, the freedom, the very way of life that we take for granted. It is not about lighting fireworks and making noise. America is not about the politicians or those in the government, it is about the people. On closing: POW/MIA: You are not forgotten.

This is the worst article i have ever read in my life. go live in iran if you dont like the 4th.

I thought I was the only one that hates this holiday. Don't get me wrong. I'm patriotic. I think it's just an idiotic way to show it, for all the reasons you mentioned. I could almost tolerate it for one night, but the pyrotechnic geeks start it in my town a week before and don't stop until a week after.

Commie.

The Fourth of July is no longer about the celebrating love for our country. It is all about the greed of big corporate America. Geez, I mean the flag may as well have about 15 stars on it, to represent the 15 or so people who now own the country....sad but true. So in honor of Independence Day, just make a new flag...and honor those people...if you would like.

What type of commie are you? Remember the "rockets red blare" !! [sic] How can you not figure our where Americas facination with fireworks comes from. If you want to get away from the fireworks. Move to France.

I couldn't agree with you more. The 4th of July as it is celebrated now appeals to the lowest common denominator among us.

Do me a favor Jeff, drink a 6-pack, invite some friends over (if you have any), throw some brats on the grill, hand some fireworks over to your kids and tell them to have a bottle rocket war. Last but not least, remove from your blog those whiney PC suggestions for what to do on the 4th. The PTA's probably closed on Tuesday anyway.

Amen! I'd LOVE to see Americans celebrate our holidays - especially the important ones - in the spirit with which they're intended. How many oafs do you know who don't know the difference between Veteran's Day and Memorial Day???

You sound so whinney about the fourth. Sounds like you need the quaalude more than your dog. Keeping up with the Jone's is chosen path and your own hell. Take a chill pill, get outa dodge and love this country another day if that'll help.

And here I thought I was the only one that really hated this time of year. Midnight the last two nights I've been woken up to illegal fireworks shooting into the sky. Their illegal for a reason but the immature idiots couldn't care less if they risk burning a few houses to the ground as long as they get to watch the pretty lights.

Fireworks should be left to the experts. Every year here in TX we hear of fireworks injury's. The ones concerning children are heart braking. Worse, is that my county abutts both Tarrant and Dallas counties where fireworks sales, nor possession, are not legal. Needless to say, the highway service roads in Ellis county, TX, just south of the these counties are lined with fireworks stands.

-- Jeff Williams

June 29 | 6:30 p.m. -- Why I hate the Fourth of July

It's too crowded, too noisy, too hot, too trafficky. I have to work the next day. My kids get freaked out. The Beach Boys. I can't barbecue to save my life. Spent cardboard fuselages litter the sidewalks the next morning. People blow their body parts off. I have to spend 400 bucks on reservation fireworks just to keep up with the Joneses. It's overdone. My dog -- who gets nervous when a door slams -- turns into a stoner after we pump her full of Quaaludes and then pees on her pillow and is too tuned out to care.

Mainly, though, I hate the Fourth because it gives the bozos in my neighborhood license to light dynamite every night for three weeks beginning in the middle of June and call it patriotism. Since it doesn't get dark till 10 this time of year where I live, the patriots are always waking us up just as we've settled into sleep. So we close the windows, soothe the dog, check the children, and sweat through the rest of the night.

The holiday mystifies me. Why, to show how much you love something, do you blow something up? We don't do this for weddings or birthdays or Easter. ("Honey, I love you this much." KA-BOOM!) And come to think of it, what would you blow up to show your love of Jesus? It would have to be big, like a country. But then it would seem not really to honor the Prince of Peace. Indeed, nothing blow-up-able really would. So why do we do it for America?

By the way, what do we mean when we say "America" -- as in the sentence: America: love it or leave it, you Independence Day-hating SOB? I mean, is "America" the government? the Constitution? democracy? the land? I'm not quite sure. But it sure feels good to kvetch. It's harder to suggest alternatives, though.

But I'll try.

Hike with your family in a national park. Visit your grandparents. Read your kids a story. Read the Constitution, or the Gettysburg Address, or "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Donate money to a cause you love, or a politician you admire. Go to an art gallery, even if you hate art. Write a letter to a soldier, especially if you're a pacifist. Lie down in a park and think of all the worse places you could live. Join the PTA. Pray for peace, if you're the praying sort. If not, meditate for peace.

It's a beautiful big-top of a country. Tell it you love it, without all the fireworks.

Jeff Williams

June 27  | 11 a.m.

I tried out for a game show over the weekend, which is meaningless except for the fact that during the actual game-playing portion of the tryout, we were asked to tell a little bit about ourselves and "what we'd like to do if we won a bunch of money on the show."

One man said he wanted to build a memorial in his hometown to men he knew who'd been killed in Afghanistan (if I am picked for the show, I'd like to donate my spot to him, but I suspect he'll make it anyway). Another, god bless him, said he'd "probably just squander it."

Everybody else, me included, wanted to travel. I said I'd like to go to France and Italy.

Isn't that boring?

Here's the thing. I used to feel that you had to travel intensely -- exotic destinations, crazy adventures, push the limits, and all that. And I did some of that. But now I pretty much feel the way about traditional destinations the way Nick Hornby feels about good pop tunes. That is, they can be popular and still be great.

In "Songbook," his collection of music essays, Hornby says, "I don't want to be terrified by art anymore." For my part, I don't want to be terrified by travel anymore. I don't need to seek intensity, it kindly stops for me. People I know and love have gotten pretty well banged up by life, or have gotten sick, or have died. "I need no convincing that life is scary," Hornby says. "It has got quite scary enough already -- I don't need anyone to jolt me out of my complacency."

So, if I win a stack of money on the game show, I'd maybe like to take my wife and kids to see the Pont du Gard, that magnificent aqueduct in Provence the Romans built out of fossil-rich limestone.

I want to walk around and think about all those layers of human and natural history, and the transience of empires. I want to plunk rocks into the river. I want to hear my kids say, "Can we go yet?" and let them, and those fossils, put everything in perspective.

Jeff Williams

June 23 | 6:30 p.m.

Quiz: In which countries are the following World Heritage sites located?

(Each answer is the name of a country playing in the World Cup, and the answers are below some unrelated-to-the-World-Cup travel-book musing.)

1. Galapagos Islands
2. Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar and Dessau
3. Cocos Island National Park
4. Iguazu National Park
5. Alto Douro Wine Region
6. Historic Centre of Oaxaca and Archaeological Site of Monte Albán
7. Persepolis
8. Historic Centre of San Gimignano
9. Chaco Culture National Historical Park
10. Kakadu National Park
11. Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara
12. Pont du Gard (Roman Aqueduct)
13. Altamira Cave
14. Site of Carthage
15. Koutammakou, the Land of the Batammariba

Unrelated-to-the-World-Cup travel-book musing
Seems I left a book or 10 off my list of the best travel books of all time. One reader wrote to ask "How could you leave out 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert Pirsig? How could you?"

To which I can only say, "I have no bloody idea. Maybe I'm just a wanker."

I read it for the first time a few months ago and thought it was terrific. I have to admit, the book was my first foray into philosophy, and much of it was lost on me. But one book always leads to another, and "Zen" led me to Bryan Magee's "Confessions of a Philosopher," much of which was also lost on me. I'm now trying to read some Karl Popper. Ditto the above.

But I digress.

In my defense, I would say that even though "Zen" describes a cross-country motorcycle trip, it seems more like a book you'd find in the philosophy section at the bookstore, rather than the travel section. But the whole "travel" category seems pretty fluid, anyway, so what the hell, here's my new top 5: 

• "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
• "Blue Highways"
• "Desert Solitaire"
• "This House of Sky"
• "Travels With Charley"

I bumped William Dalrymple's "In Xanadu" for the best of all reasons: jealousy. I'll never be the writer he is and this is how I retaliate. 

Answers to the quiz

1. Galapagos Islands: Ecuador
2. Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar and Dessau: Germany
3. Cocos Island National Park: Costa Rica
4. Iguazu National Park: Argentina
5. Alto Douro Wine Region: Portugal
6. Historic Centre of Oaxaca and Archaeological Site of Monte Albán: Mexico
7. Persepolis: Iran
8. Historic Centre of San Gimignano: Italy
9. Chaco Culture National Historical Park: United States
10. Kakadu National Park: Australia
11. Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara: Japan
12. Pont du Gard (Roman Aqueduct): France
13. Altamira Cave: Spain
14. Site of Carthage: Tunisia
15. Koutammakou, the Land of the Batammariba: Togo

Jeff Williams

June 21 | 6:30 p.m.

World Hum has posted its list of the best 30 travel books of all time.

"We know you don’t agree with every selection on our list," they say.

Too right!

"Did we leave off your favorites?" they ask.

Yes!

"What’s in your top 30—or at least your top five?"

Well, OK!

• "Blue Highways," William Least Heat Moon. An English teacher loses his job, takes to the road, and writes one of the great American travel books.
• "Desert Solitaire," Edward Abbey. A stark, gorgeous encomium to a stark, gorgeous landscape.
• "In Xanadu," William Dalrymple. An Oxford student follows in the footsteps of Marco Polo.
• "This House of Sky," Ivan Doig. One of our great writers grows up in Montana.
• "Travels With Charley," John Steinbeck. Accompanied by his dog, the Nobel laureate sets out to see the country in a camper named Rocinante.

The whole exercise begs the question, though. Should I list my favorites, the best, or the most influential? I went with the latter, the books that led me to alter my life after I read them.

Honorable mention:

• "From Paris to the Moon," Adam Gopnik (if I move to Paris in a few years, this book will move into the top 5).
• "Seven Years in Tibet," Heinrich Harrar.
• "Into Thin Air" and "Into the Wild," Jon Krakauer.
• "A River Runs Through It," Norman Maclean.
• "A Year in Provence," Peter Mayle.
• "Cry of the Kalahari," Mark and Delia Owens.
• "The Lost Continent" and "In a Sunburned Country," Bill Bryson.
• "On the Road," Jack Kerouac.
• "Dove," Robin Lee Graham.
• "A Long Desire," Evan Connell.

World Hum's list didn't include fiction, though. Here's my fiction travel top 5:

• "The Odyssey," Homer.
• "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad.
• "The Twenty-One Balloons," William Pene du Bois.
• "I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sallew," Dr. Seuss.
• "Lonesome Dove," Larry McMurtry.

Sigh. So much to read. Oh, well, I'm headed to best bookstore in the country this weekend. Gotta finish making out my shopping list.

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FOR SUBSCRIBERSThis Paralympian has two goals: Win medals and give away $500,000 to her teammates

Jeff

June 19 | 5 p.m.

For Subscribers

FOR SUBSCRIBERSCBP leaders cut out of Trump ad buy decision

FOR SUBSCRIBERSAmerican passenger drafted goodbye texts to her family as Flydubai plane plummeted

FOR SUBSCRIBERSCornell rape allegation pushes embattled New York prosecutor into national spotlight

FOR SUBSCRIBERSAbdul El-Sayed tries to woo MAHA voters as Democrats seek inroads with RFK’s supporters

FOR SUBSCRIBERSKratom-like substances are popping up in a typically benign supplement

FOR SUBSCRIBERSGOP super PAC increases its spending for Sen. Jon Husted in tough Ohio race

FOR SUBSCRIBERSRecords reveal tumultuous marriage between slain New York Times executive and wife

FOR SUBSCRIBERSFrom clean energy warrior to ‘wall of shame,’ James Talarico reverses on a fossil fuel money pledge

FOR SUBSCRIBERSCongressional staff planned official trip with luxury stops in Italy and France weeks before election

FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane

FOR SUBSCRIBERSOpenAI CEO Sam Altman to skip congressional hearing on rogue AI agents

FOR SUBSCRIBERSKey DOJ lawyers departed Trump ‘grand conspiracy’ probe amid pressure to produce, source says

FOR SUBSCRIBERSTrump’s new AI chatbot often links to a site launched under Clinton 26 years ago

FOR SUBSCRIBERSAt MAHA summit, industry CEOs the movement once vilified take the stage

FOR SUBSCRIBERSThis Paralympian has two goals: Win medals and give away $500,000 to her teammates

A pizza chain is being investigated after a woman says she found insect larvae on her pizza several hours after it was delivered. According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, "samples from pizza brought to the Buncombe County Health Center are being sent to a state lab in Winston-Salem and are expected back in several days."

My question is: What's the problem? Eating bugs has been a storied tradition ever since John the Baptist got the munchies and started dipping locusts in honey. Indeed, go to Zach Huang's Web page and you can see a menu that includes giant silkworms, mealworms, hornets, caterpillars, and scorpions. Especially impressive is the presentation on the "dead and tasty" scorpion dish. However, I'm not that convinced by Huang's statement that "Cooking probably denatures the potent poison the gland contains." Only probably?

Actually, according to site Bugfood III, eating bugs is pretty common. They're abundant and are a good source of protein. And let's face it: chances are you've got a fairly bug-rich diet already.

According to a 2004 National Geographic News article: "It's estimated that the average human eats one pound (half a kilogram) of insects each year unintentionally," says Lisa Monachelli, director of youth and family programs at New Canaan Nature Center in Connecticut. ... [C]hocolate can have up to 60 insect fragments per 100 grams, tomato sauce can contain 30 fly eggs per 100 grams, and peanut butter can have 30 insect fragments per 100 grams (3.5 ounces), according to the FDA."

If all this makes you hungry, perhaps I may tempt you with some casu marzu. As Wikipedia describes it, casu marzu "is a cheese found in Sardinia, Italy, notable for being riddled with live insect larvae. Casu marzu is Sardinian for 'rotten cheese.' " If you're interested, though, bring your protective eyewear -- the little buggers can reportedly jump 6 inches in the air.

I bet they're quite good on pizza.

Jeff

|

You don't need to travel: "[T]he pleasure we derive from a journey may be dependent more on the mindset we travel with than on the destination we travel to."

So writes Alain de Botton in the delightful book "The Art of Travel." De Botton explores why we travel and what we get out if it. His slim volume is full of illustrations and easy to read, and it left me calmed. Barely a day passes when I don't fantasize about moving to a stone farmhouse in the lavender-coated South of France and doing ... I don't know what, exactly, but I know I'd be happy, dammit. My life would be interesting! I'd be somebody!

But if I let the daydream play out, it loses a lot of its energy. My wife and kids would get bored. The farmhouse would get cold in winter. I'd start to hate the smell of lavender. I don't speak French.

"What, then," asks de Botton, "is a traveling mindset?" His answer is that it's about receptivity: "Receptive, we approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is or is not interesting. ... We are alive to the layers of history beneath the present and take notes and photographs."

Yet de Botton takes time to say you don't have to travel to cultivate this receptivity -- it's available to you wherever your daily life occurs. By the end of the book, he's walking slowly around his home neighborhood in London making sketches and jotting notes just to see his neighborhood with fresh eyes: "Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value."

Here's to seeing something new, even if you're just headed home.

Jeff

June 14 | 5 p.m.

Quiz: British food or medical condition?

Of the following 10 items, which can you eat and which should prompt you to see a doctor? (Answers below.)

1. hotpot
2. pie and mash
3. toad in the hole
4. bangers and mash
5. bubble and squeak
6. Cornish pasties
7. Victoria sponge
8. clotted cream
9. spotted dick
10. cock-a-leekie

Answers: They're all types of British food, of course.

Hotpot (or "Lancashire hotpot") is a kind of stew.

Pie and mash is a dish of minced beef pie and mashed potato. Pie-and-mash shops are also known for selling jellied eels, which according to Wikipedia are "eels cooked for approximately half an hour and allowed to cool. The juices then solidify forming the jelly." They're often served with chili vinegar.

Toad in the hole consists of sausages in Yorkshire pudding. Here's a recipe.

Bangers and mash: sausages with gravy.

Bubble and squeak is when you take leftover meat and veggies and fry them with some mashed potatoes.

Cornish pasties are meat pies. Victoria sponge is sponge cake. Clotted cream is a thick cream made from unpasteurized cow's milk.

Spotted dick is a dessert, a steamed suet pudding containing dried fruit. Suet, by the way, is raw beef or mutton fat, which strikes me as more of a main course than a dessert. But no matter.

And cock-a-leekie is a soup of leeks, potatoes, and chicken stock. I must confess that cock-a-leekie is the only one of the foods I've eaten. It was at a London restaurant called, ahem, "Tiddy Dolls."

Oh, for the record: swamp-toad soup, fish-eye tartar, and weed rat (either in a stew or served rotisserie style), are not British foods. They're "Shrek" foods.

Jeff

June 13 | 3 p.m.

Look for me in Radiator Springs
I saw "Cars" over the weekend and am ready to move to Radiator Springs, a mythical town on old Route 66 lost to all but a handful of assorted dreamers.

At one point in the movie, the hero, Lightning McQueen, asks Sally Carrera how a lawyer car like her ended up in a town like this. Her answer is a gesture at the view. (Cars can indeed gesture in the movie and, after a while, you don't even notice.) The two cars have been ascending up a winding cliff-face road and have pulled off for a rest. The land drops away to the valley floor thousands of feet below and Lightning's eyes take in a red-rock desert wonderland much like Zion or Sedona.

The town is just a wide spot in the road, and off on the horizon you can see motorists speeding by on I-40, oblivious to the treasures hidden beyond the hills.

I crave that scenery, maybe because I first visited Southern Utah when I was 7, on a backpacking trip through Zion with my father. And I kept returning, year after year. Except now, all of a sudden, a decade has passed and I feel a sense of loss. I miss those blue skies and ochre cliffs, acutely so today, since the Seattle forecast calls for five days of rain.

Zion functions for me much like the scenery around Tintern Abbey in the Wordsworth poem ("How often has my spirit turned to thee!") -- a place of solace the poet returns to in his mind.

At the same time, the poem really makes me want to visit the Wye Valley, the way Richard Hugo makes me want to have a drink in Philipsburg, Montana; Van Gogh makes me want to take in the night sky in Provence; Homer makes me want to kick the dust in Troy; a Hans Heysen painting makes me want to see Australia; an Edward Hopper -- the Great Plains; an Alexander McCall Smith novel -- Botswana; and on and on. Any kind of art, classic or mainstream, can give you the urge to get the heck out of Dodge.

So, I'm wondering if "Cars" will increase tourism to the Southwest. While Radiator Springs isn't real, Route 66 sure is. And the relationship between art and tourism, as Alain de Botton writes in "The Art of Travel," is a very old one:

Who knows, next time you're in Sedona, maybe you'll be able to drive the "Cars" trail. Send me a postcard to let me know how it was. Send it to: General Delivery, Radiator Springs.

Jeff

June 9 | 10 a.m.

The places where the Divine seeps through
I was at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon a few months ago and had a weird mixture of feelings. I suddenly felt I had enough energy to jog down to the Colorado River and back up. But at the same time, I felt I could sit on a bench at the edge and do nothing except be for an afternoon.

I'm not a meditative sort, probably because I'm a parent of two children, 6 and 3. They inhabit a nation that doesn't recognize my right to uninterrupted thoughts. "I don't get it," my daughter said, "it's just a bunch of dirt and rocks."

Still, what I got an inkling of was something like the feeling Peter Illyn had in a Pacific Northwest forest. He writes, in his essay "The Thin Places" for the National Parks Conservation Association magazine:

Illyn takes the title of his essay from the early Celtic people, who felt that the wall separating them from God (which I'll leave for you to define) was thinner in certain wild places.

You can experience that "thinness" anywhere, of course -- a moment with your children, washing dishes, listening to a symphony -- but it does seem easier in wild places. At the Grand Canyon, for example, you're confronted with time on a scale you can't really process. The feeling of your own insignificance, if it doesn't make you nuts, can help put your failures, and your successes, in perspective.

Jeff

June 8 | 1 p.m.

Beyond 'Da Vinci Code' tours
Dan Brown has fueled a number of cottage industries, among them travel tours to the places he writes about in the "Da Vinci Code," like the church of Saint-Sulpice, London's Temple Church, Westminster Abbey, Rosslyn Chapel, and even Leigh Teabing's house.

Indeed, the Washington Post reports that there are "nearly 30 companies offering bus trips, walking tours and luxurious vacation packages" around "Da Vinci Code" themes.

It's all to the good, I guess, especially if it helps Americans improve their geography knowledge. But I can't help thinking there are some authors more deserving of travel itineraries.

Like these guys:

• Jon Krakauer ("Eiger Dreams," "Into the Wild," "Into Thin Air," "Under the Banner of Heaven"): Visit lonely cold places. And Utah.
• James Joyce ("Ulysses," etc.): You only get to spend one day in Dublin (Bloomsday, June 16) but the trip will feel a lot longer and you won't understand much of what happens.
• Leo Tolstoy ("War and Peace," "Anna Karenina"): Head from St. Petersburg to Moscow, make a grand entrance at a ball, attend an opera and lose a lot of money at cards. Spend the second half of your trip on a farm in the country, where you'll cut wheat and find redemption.
• Homer ("The Iliad," "The Odyssey"): This package tour for the backpacker crowd starts and ends in Ithaca, with a long detour through the Greek Islands. Wives not allowed.
• Charles Bukowski (many books of poetry): Tour the seedy bars of Los Angeles. Hang out with fallen women. Drink too much.