Tag Archives: Travel

I’m rich, I’m rich

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I’m rich, I’m rich … and no, I haven’t won the Powerball lottery – at least, not yet!

The days and weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are always filled with excitement, but this year – this day – seems to be even more so, what with all the talk about a $550 million Powerball jackpot that may – or may not – go out tonight.

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I succumbed to the desire to have a little Lottery ticket in my hand come 9:59 p.m. The excitement of what is to come is worth the little bit of money I spent; and the excitement that awaits the eventual winner … well, I can’t imagine!

The thing is, I think I like dreaming about coming into that much money more than I would appreciate actually winning it. Becoming an instant millionaire is a life-changing experience, and maybe I’m comfortable with my life the way it is.

I have a roof over my head, clothes in the closet, food in the cupboards, a full-time job, family, friends, hobbies and enough needlework fabric, patterns and threads to last my lifetime.

What more could I possibly want when I have so much more than so many people in this world?

Sure, I wouldn’t mind having a home with a larger bathroom (first priority) and a larger kitchen (second priority); but my house is just the right size for one person – and proves to be too much to clean already (blame it on that needlework stash previously mentioned!)

I wouldn’t mind going from extreme basic cable to expanded basic either. Then I could watch my favorite Hallmark and Lifetime movies and get my daily inspiration from HGTV and CMT. Heck, if I won the lottery, I might even invest in one of those big flat-screen televisions. For now, I’m perfectly happy with the older model.

If I won the lottery, I could afford a membership to a gym and actually hire a personal trainer – maybe even a personal chef. I could afford to get healthier.

If I won the lottery, I could give more money to my favorite charities – church, the American Cancer Society and 4-H. I could create scholarships for at-risk youths, and ensure all of my nieces and nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews had an opportunity to get a college education.

If I won the lottery, I would invest in land. I would travel – oh, how I would love to travel.

If I won the lottery, I could afford to try a new career. Maybe I’d become a travel writer, or maybe I’d be a stay-at-home writer of books – kids books.

If I won the lottery … I’d really hope that it wouldn’t change me.

For the love of bridges … Not!

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I had a dream – or perhaps it was a nightmare – about bridges the other day. I don’t know why they were on my mind, other than I recently heard a friend tell me of her experience crossing the Mackinac Bridge on a recent vacation.

“Oh, I hated crossing that bridge,” I said, still getting shivers up my spine when I recalled crossing that massive span for the very first time in my pretty little neon blue Chevy Beretta. It was about 15 years ago when a former co-worker and I decided to take a road trip to meet the “Yoopers” (those are Upper Peninsula of Michigan residents, in case you didn’t know) with our cameras, several rolls of film and a map of all of the lighthouses along the way.

Neither one of us had heard about the Mighty Mac – the Mackinac Bridge – until we pulled up to a toll booth on our way to Michigan’s lower peninsula. Ahead of me, all I could see was bridge and water – a very tall, scary looking bridge!

It was either cross the bridge to see the Mackinaw City Lighthouse or turn around and go back home, and Beth and I both decided we’d come too far to turn away because of a bridge. As my tires hit the steel grates and the signs warned of strong crosswinds, my fingers tightly grasped the steering wheel.

“Just look straight ahead,” I kept telling myself. “Don’t look down – you can see the water. Don’t look to the right, you might drive the car over the edge. Just look straight ahead.”

From shoreline to shoreline, the bridge spans five miles. The part of the bridge that extends over the Straits of Mackinac (Lake Michigan and Lake Huron) is only 3,800 feet, but I use the word “only” lightly. In case you haven’t been able to tell yet, I’m not a fan of the long and high, steel grated bottom bridges.

The Mighty Mac is the third-longest suspension span in the U.S., and the 12th largest worldwide. When we had to cross the bridge to return home, I made Beth take my keys and drive across it. I’m pretty sure she agreed with my assessment – it was the scariest bridge ever!

On any future trips to Michigan’s lower peninsula, I will not hesitate to drive the southern route through Chicago if it means avoiding the Mackinac Bridge at the northern end. Of course, the solution to this would be to find a travel partner who would kindly blindfold me and put me in the back seat before crossing the Mighty Mac or any other monstrous bridge, for that matter.

The talk of bridges reminded me of one of our travel days on our recent journey to the Outer Banks. It was on our second night that we stayed in Beckley, W.V., and as Dad fumbled with the TV remote, I looked through the book of things to see and do around Beckley.

I was flipping through the pages when, all of a sudden, my eyes fixed on this very high suspension bridge. Immediately, I feared it was on our travel path and, needless to say, I didn’t sleep well at all that night.

The New River Gorge Bridge may have looked beautiful with the flowing river and the fall color-changing leaves in the photograph, but if I had to drive over that thing it would not be pretty!

The bridge spans 3,030 feet in length – a bit shorter than the Mighty Mac – but also 876 feet above the New River Gorge near Fayetteville, W.V., in the Appalachian Mountains.

According to what I read online, the New River Gorge Bridge was the world’s longest steel single-span arch bridge for many years, but it now stands in third. It is the fifth highest bridge for vehicles in the world, and the third highest in North and South America.

And, here’s a bit of trivia I learned when I researched the New River Gorge Bridge – it can be found on the back of your West Virginia State Quarter.

After my very restless night of sleep thinking about having to cross that awful bridge, I received wonderful news from the hotel’s desk clerk the next morning. Our travel plans took us in a different direction.

“You made my day,” I told him. “No, you made my week. You made my vacation!”

Peanut producin’, cotton-pickin’, tobacco-tyin’ North Carolina agriculture

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As a farm reporter with retired farmers for parents, we’re always interested in seeing agriculture in other parts of the country, and this trip to North Carolina offered several opportunities to learn first-hand about them.

A cotton field near Windsor, N.C.

For starters, after we left the Outer Banks on Friday morning, we headed across Roanoke Island and back to the mainland (where, by the way, there are signs along the highway telling people not to feed the bears). I had found a peanut farm during my pre-trip research, and planned to stop by and learn a little about peanut production.

Our stop at Bertie County Peanuts, located right in the middle of North Carolina’s peanut belt, included a visit with a peanut farmer and peanut buyers, as well as an opportunity to watch a short video about peanut harvesting. We’d missed the peanut harvest literally by a day. The farmer who’d stopped in while we were at Bertie County Peanuts had finished the day prior, and would have been more than willing to show us how they harvest peanuts.

Stacking tobacco leaves at the North Carolina State Fair’s agriculture demonstration area.

As the farmer and my dad chatted about peanut production (they generally get about 2 tons of peanuts per acre, but this year was an exceptional year for them and some farmers harvested closer to 4 tons of peanuts per acre), I picked out a canister of “Blister-fried” peanuts to bring back to Worthington. I’m waiting for just the right occasion to open them — maybe they’ll be a snack for the family Christmas gathering.

While we missed out on seeing an actual peanut farm, we were quite intrigued by other crops we saw along the road. A couple of farms were growing turf grass, and several more had these branches with fluffy white stuff stuck to them. Yes, my parents and I saw our first cotton fields.

Tying tobacco leaves to hang over a wooden stick.

Later that day, we arrived at the North Carolina State Fair (a sudden addition to our excursion when we learned it would be the first full day of the fair on the day we’d be passing through.)

The fair offered us another new experience. They were doing a tobacco-tying demonstration while North Carolina’s agriculture secretary talked of how important tobacco production is to the state’s economy.

A tobacco drying building is part of the landscape on the North Carolina State Fair grounds. Here, tobacco leaves would dry for a week, and then be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Dad spent the afternoon watching the demonstration, even helping out when they needed a volunteer from the crowd to help them soak tobacco leaves. He was disappointed we didn’t get a picture of him soaking leaves, but Mom and I walked around the entire fairgrounds, admiring especially the crops exhibit that featured ginormous sweet potatoes (more than 10 pounds), monstrous watermelon (196 pounds was the largest), and entries you wouldn’t see at a Minnesota fair, like persimmons and tobacco leaves.

After several hours and loads of information about North Carolina’s culture (you can learn a lot from a state fair), we took the shuttle back to our car and headed out of Raleigh.

Our trip was still three days from completion, and though we knew we’d be spending much of that time driving, we paced ourselves with a few more stops along the way. On Day Nine of our travels we toured the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tenn., in the morning and admired the exhibits at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Ky., that afternoon.

The Mark Twain Lighthouse overlooking the Mississippi River in Hannibal, Mo.

On the 10th day, our final day of this incredible journey, we started out at 6:20 a.m. from

Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer – a tribute to Mark Twain in Hannibal, Mo.

our overnight stop in Mount Vernon, Ill. Mom snapped photos out of the passenger side window as we passed the St. Louis Arch (I’d never seen it before), and we spent about an hour in Mark Twain’s boyhood hometown of Hannibal, Mo., getting one last lighthouse marked off my list (the Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse stands high on a hill overlooking the Mississippi River).

We made it back to Worthington at about 8:30 that night, logging the final 700-plus miles of our journey. With the exception of Dad doing a bit of Iowa driving on the way out, and Mom doing a bit of Iowa driving on the return home, it was me behind the wheel, getting us through several major cities, over two very scary bridges (both crossing the Ohio River — entering Louisville and exiting Paducah), through one underwater tunnel and onto two ferries.

It was a fun-filled, exhausting journey, but what an adventure it was!

Sky and Sea: Wright Brothers and fishing on the OBX

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The Wright Brothers Memorial at Kitty Hawk. The hill in the distance is Kill Devil Hill, and at the top of it is a tribute to the brothers’ first flights from that spot.

The Wright Brothers Memorial was one of the first

The memorial.

places we stopped during our stay on the Outer Banks, mostly because it was a bit drizzly that first morning and we could spend our time inside, looking at artifacts from Wilbur and Orville Wright’s quest to build and fly the first airplane. The museum includes paintings of many individuals who influenced flight, along with short stories about their efforts.

Outside the museum, markers were placed to signify each of the brothers’ first four flights and, at the top of Kill Devil Hill, which was their take-off point, a large monument stands in honor of the aviation pioneers. My parents opted to stay in the car while I walked the long, paved path to the top of Kill Devil Hill. (Signs urge people to stay off the grass because it is littered with prickly pear cactus.)

The view from Kill Devil Hill. Follow the sidewalk leading away from the memorial, all the way to the end, and the markers signifying the landings of flights one through four are beyond that point.

From the monument I had a great view of the Wright Brothers’ historical first flights — not to mention my first panoramic view of the Outer Banks coastline and the Atlantic Ocean. My only regret was that we didn’t return on a sunnier day to take better photos.

With the weather starting to clear by late afternoon, we found other indoor options to see in the area closest to our home away from home. Manteo, located on Roanoke Island and accessible from the Outer Banks by bridge, is home to the North Carolina Aquarium. Filled with fish species from the coastal and fresh waters of the state, it was neat to see so many species you won’t find in the waters of Minnesota.

It wasn’t until the next day, however, while taking the free ferry from Hatteras Island to Ocracoke Island, that we learned more about the fish of the Outer Banks. Joining us on the ferry were several fishermen (the southern Outer Banks are primary fishing villages, as compared to the large hotels, numerous restaurants and seemingly hundreds of gift shops in the area between Kitty Hawk and Nags Head). We had time to chat with one of the fishermen on the 45-minute ferry ride.

This is how fishermen on the Outer Banks travel with their rods and reels. (The truck was on the ferry to Hatteras Island when my mom captured this image.)

On this particular day, he was headed to Ocracoke for some “surf fishing,” after spending the day prior fishing by boat.

He told us he was still tuckered out from his previous day’s adventure — he managed to catch what he believed to be at least a 60-pound stingray. He battled with it for quite a while before getting it close enough to the boat that he could clip the line.

For his day of surf fishing, he was going to use cut up pieces of mullet fish for bait, in hopes of catching some freshwater drum. The way he talked about the fish, I figured it was similar to how we Minnesotans worship the walleye.

Later that day, we stopped at Jennette’s Pier at Nags Head and talked to more fishermen. The pier is rather interesting in that it also contains an aquarium, bait and tackle shop and a gift shop.

A bluefish caught from Jennette’s Pier.

From what I read online, the summer months include fishing how-tos from the pier for those who would like to try their hand at fishing. For me, it was just fun to walk down the pier and watch the flurry of activity, whether it was people baiting hooks or reeling in fish, or the surfers down below, waiting and trying to catch a wave.

This surfer catches a wave near Jennette’s Pier at Nags Head, N.C.

Lighting up the night

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Our second full day on the Outer Banks was filled with lighthouse visits, a ferry ride to and from Ocracoke Island, a stop at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum and a visit to Jennette’s Pier at Nags Head.

In other words, it was an absolutely wonderful day around the water.

From the time we arrived on Ocracoke Island Wednesday morning until we returned to Kill Devil Hills that night, we visited three of the four lighthouses that lured me to coastal North Carolina.

Actually, it was one lighthouse that lured me — Cape Hatteras. The other three lights on the Outer Banks were simply bonuses.

Cape Hatteras is the tallest lighthouse in the world, and the one that lured me to visit the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is the tallest brick lighthouse in the world at 198.5 feet. It’s the equivalent of a 21-story building, and is open during the summer months for people to climb to the top for a mere $7 fee. With my fear of heights, I wouldn’t have even attempted to climb the structure even if it were open the day we were there. The winding staircases are made of slated steel steps, allowing people to look straight down to the cement floor at the base.

While the actual conical structure was closed, we visited the museum and took in a short movie about the climb to the top. We missed out on the movie of the light station’s historic 2,900-foot move in 1999, which was done to save the buildings and lighthouse from an eroding shoreline.

While Hatteras is the tallest lighthouse, the Ocracoke Lighthouse is North Carolina’s oldest operating light. It was built in 1823, about 47 years before Hatteras was completed. Not open to the public for climbing, the lighthouse grounds were rather quiet when we were there — the only one around was a very friendly, large tabby cat.

The Ocracoke Island Lighthouse is located in the village of Ocracoke, on the south end of a 12-mile-long island. The island is accessible only by ferry. We took the free ferry from Hatteras Island to reach the lighthouse.

Just getting to the island was an interesting experience. Hatteras Island provides a continuous free ferry to Ocracoke. Unfortunately, I was the first in line when we reached the ferry dock. I say this only because I’ve never driven a car onto a ferry before, and it’s not exactly a very comforting feeling when the guides make you drive right up to the opposite edge of the watercraft and then place blocks in front of your front tires, just so your car doesn’t roll off and nose-dive into the water.

Needless to say, I stayed in the car — with my seatbelt on — during our ferry journey.

When we returned to Hatteras Island, we took in the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum (it houses the original Fresnel lens from the Hatteras Light) and had lunch at a local hangout, where fresh fish was the dish of the day. We all wanted to try the scallop cake, but it was such a popular choice they only had one meal left. We let Mom have it, since she was the first to decide on the daily special, and Dad and I ordered the shrimp —yum, yum.

Driving back toward Nags Head, we made one final lighthouse visit for the day, the Bodie Island Light. We’d actually stopped in on our way to Ocracoke Island that morning, but we were there an hour before the museum and gift shop opened.

Bodie Island Lighthouse in the midst of renovation.

The late-day stop offered just the right sun angle for me to get some excellent photos of this lighthouse that is currently undergoing renovations. This light, built in 1872, still has its original, first-order Fresnel lens.

On Thursday, we traveled north to Corolla for the Banker horse adventure tour and visited the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. This lighthouse was open for climbing, also for a $7 fee, but just looking up the winding staircase was dizzying for me.

Currituck Beach Lighthouse on the northern Outer Banks at Corolla. At 162 feet high, there are 214 steps to reach the top. It’s open for climbing, but my fear of heights kept me grounded.

The keeper’s quarters on the ground is still in the process of being fully restored after it was left to the elements for decades. Another, smaller keeper‘s quarters serves as home to a gift shop filled with lighthouse-related items. (In other words, my favorite kind of store!)

The Currituck Beach Light first shone on Dec. 1, 1875. Unlike the other three lighthouses on the Outer Banks, which feature white or white and black exteriors, the Currituck Beach Light was never painted. Its light was automated in 1937.