Famous Roads. From Palmdale our route ducked around Santa Clarita, then headed to the coast on California 128. We drove up the coast a bit on the 101/1 and when the two roads split, we stayed on 101.While we had followed old Route 66 on part of our way over here, we were now following the route of Spanish/Basque explorer Juan Batista de Anza. He led a band of soldiers and families from the Presidio in Tubac south of Tucson to the coast and north to San Francisco bay, and here we were taking some of the same route.

Juan Batista DeAnza did not have such a nice rest area when he camped near here.

Solveng CA

Solvang, where we stopped for lunch. I had always wanted to take a look at this lovely Danish village. I was glad we got to make a brief stop, and hope that some day we can stay a day or two and follow the scents of Danish baked goods into the half-timbered buildings that also house craft shops and hotels.

Art in the Fields As we zipped north on 101 (after a short stretch on U.S. 5) we passed miles and miles of vineyards, fields of leafy vegetables and trucks loaded with garlic.  Approaching Salinas, we saw farm workers gathering around their dented red pick-up truck–but wait–those people are too big to be real.  And sure enough, they were lifelike, but two-dimensional.  As we drove north we saw at least ten more of these depictions of farmers doing various chores. Never found out from whence came this delightful art project.

Ken and Doris Day

Carmel Besides the wind-sculpted cypress trees, the cool morning mist,dramatic cliffs above a sandy beach, we found many reasons to love Carmel. We saw the house that poet Robinson Jeffers built and Ken looked forward to “meeting” Doris Day. Although she still lives there, the closest he got was a movie poster in the lounge of the Cypress Inn, a dog-friendly hotel that Ms. Day owns.

View from Tickled Pink room

We also visited the Tickle Pink Inn, named for a Senator Tickle. Of the many luxurious digs in Carmel, this must have the most amazing views–from every room’s balcony.

After trying Katy’s Place where the tough choices include 16 kinds of Eggs Benedict, we went the next day to The Little Swiss Cafe, with simpler food, but amazing art by André Balyon. André paints gorgeous sky-filled landscapes and realist art, but here he lets his sense of humor out to play.

Spring, by Andre Balyon

Detail of "Spring"

Now, at first glance that is a pretty picture, but play “what is wrong with this picture?” Isn’t that the couple from American Gothic? And its small in this image, but that’s Puss in Boots fishing in the canal. Here’s a closeup to show the grandest joke.

Our Carmel stay was over, but we had one more stop–The Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California.

John Steinbeck and Charlie

Carmel Beach Sunset

Photos of Balyon paintings by Andre Balyon. Please go to his gallery to see his “serious” works, although the humorous ones at Little Swiss Cafe are seriously good. Vera Marie Badertscher took all other photos and I reserve all rights. Ask before you use.

Now, you know how the kids always want to know what you brought them when you come home from a trip? Well we brought you something. Persuade me that you should have a t-shirt from the John Steinbeck Center that says, “There are never enough books.” Runner up gets a bookmark listing all Steinbeck’s books. Hurry! You have only until this coming Friday midnight. Good luck. (Check general contest rules here.)

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Road Trip Book Cover

Destination: Alabama

Book: Gods in Alabama (2005) by Joshilyn Jackson

There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s high school quarterbacks, trucks, bit tits, and also Jesus.

Sorry, guys, but this book is going to quack like Chick Lit to you.  The retelling of a road trip that more or less proves that you CAN go home again, centers on the relationship between two women, and mothers play the supporting roles.  If that does not cinch the deal, be further warned that a great deal of the book takes place in flashbacks to high school, which definitely does not make it teen chick lit.

While the women are interesting characters, the author has made the supporting role of boyfriend to Arlene, the main character, perfect waaay beyond belief. One other male character only appears in the high school scenes and the other shuffles on as a sweet contrast to his strong wife, Lena’s Aunt.

Gods in Alabama weaves a suspenseful tale that explains why Arlene (or Lena her up-north-in-Chicago name) has refused to return to her home town in Alabama for more than ten years before she makes this life-changing road trip.  The author explains the motivation with a plot structure that double dares you to figure out how it is going to end.  Jackson mixes humor with a deeper purpose of investigating the meaning of truth in the midst of Bible Belt mores.

I read this first novel because of a suggestion from Twitter. (In the 5 years since it was published, Joshilyn Jackson has published three more novels, one of them a mirror image of this one.)While I am not as enthusiastic as the person who recommended it, I breezed through and frequently laughed out loud at either the self deceptive contortions of Lena or the revealing attitudes of her small town family members.  The recreation of small town family doin’s made for a good stop on our Road Trip through the South.

The thing that I found most distracting about Gods in Alabama (which definitely has the best opening sentence I have read in a long time–see opening of this post), was the perfection of Lena’s boyfriend, Burr.  In Lena’s family’s eyes, Burr is a lawyer (good), a Baptist (good), an American Baptist rather than a Southern Baptist (bad) and black (unforgiveable). Whether to ameliorate Lena’s family or to toe the politically correct line, author Jackson creates a man without personal flaws. (Unless, of course, you are a Southern Baptist). Setting him down next to the neurotic and seriously misbehaving Lena or her whacked out family makes it even more obvious that he is not a real person, but a foil.

But then, you shouldn’t pick too hard at a boiled-frosting-topped chocolate cake or the whole thing will collapse. Just enjoy the visit to rural Alabama, say your prayers, sip your sweet tea, and eat your cake. But this being Joshilyn Jackson, watch out for what’s hidden in the cake.

Remember to check out the Musical road trip at Music Road, where Kerry Dexter always has something interesting for our ears while we’re on the road.

Thanks for sticking around the Library while I’m on a road trip of mine own.  Since I won’t be here to keep reminding people to read A Traveler’s Library, I would consider it a real big favor, if you would please remind people for me. Just use one of those buttons below, post it on Twitter or Stumble Upon, or e-mail a few friends. Thanks!

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Heron in Everglades

Destination: Florida

Book: Nature Girl, 2006, by Carl Hiaasen

And HERE’s a deal:Click here and win a trip to Florida Everglades from A & E TV, and get to play a walk on in the TV show, Glades.

I have a lot of serious, thoughtful books in my travel library. Carl Hiassen didn’t write any of them.

Hiassen’s books, like Nature Girl, are fun, quick reads with delightfully over-the-top characters. Oh, they do have  themes satirizing contemporary political foibles. One gets the feeling that Hiassen, a reporter and article writer, can let his opinions flow more easily in fiction about news items he might have covered as a journalist.

Quoting his web site biography:

Tourist Season, published in 1986, was Hiaasen’s first solo novel. GQ magazine called it “one of the 10 best destination reads of all time,” although it failed to frighten a single tourist away from Florida, as Hiaasen had hoped it might.

Sounds like I should be talking about that one, but frankly, I ran out of time to read another of Hiassen’s gems, so am reporting on a book that Ken and I chose to listen to in the car on a long trip a couple of years ago. (I checked Nature Girl out of the library to check details, because, frankly, Hiaasen’s novels don’t stick with you any longer than cotton candy.)

However, I do know that the book kept us giggling, and I’m not even going to try to tell you about the plot and multitude of subplots.  Well, all right, since you insist, the “girl” of the title plots to get even with telephone solicitors by taking one of them out into the wilds of Florida. She heads for Dismal Key with a couple of bizarre characters following her. There her little party (the phone solicitor guy and his girlfriend) run into a Seminole Indian who is trying to live in nature. That’s most of the entanglements, but you’re own your own to try to untangle them.

The book takes place in the 10,000 Islands area lying just outside the Everglades National Park, which is swampy and jungly and scary to most people. We visited the Everglades and found the area endlessly fascinating, except that the mosquitos came in such huge swarms that we had to run from car to motel room and then crank the AC down at night so the little menaces would fall asleep before we did.

Another recommended Florida mystery writer, Randy Wayne White wrote Sanibel Island, which I read while in Florida on my first visit several years ago.We had visited the delightful west coast of Florida, and loved Sanibel Island, so I grabbed his book. He focuses on the problems of over-development, and his characters are not quite as wacky as Hiassen’s. Between White and Hiassen you can travel all over Florida without actually setting foot in the state, although I’m not recommending that.

The Music Road Trip has a couple of suggestions for music from the non-touristy parts of Florida today, Jeanie Fitchen and Del Suggs for your listening pleasure on the road trip.

A previous post about Florida talked about the grand hotel built by a railroad magnate in Tampa.Two other Florida writers I like: Ernest Hemingway (he had a house in Key West which you still can visit) or Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote her autobiography, Dust Tracks on the Road about growing up in Florida and collected folk tales from people in her small town. You can read both in the American Library edition that I talked about earlier.

Photo from Flickr with Creative Commons License. Please click on the photo to see more about the photographer.  I have included a link to Nature Girl so you can buy it at Amazon.  Every purchase helps keep A Traveler’s Library going. Would you believe 109 clicks went to Amazon from my site this month and nobody bought anything?Hmmmm…..

What have you read about Florida? And I’m looking for recommendations for Arkansas and Illinois, if you’d like to play along.

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Destination: Route 66

Book: The Leisure Seeker, A Novel, by Michael Zadorian

This new book about a road trip on Route 66 is not for everyone. If you want to think about aging and how to handle it; if you liked the movie Tuesdays with Morrie; if you think the elderly have a right to determine their own destiny–then dive right into The Leisure Seeker . If any of those things make you nervous, you may want to pass up Michael Zadorian‘s new book.

Before I give you the overview, which may sound entirely too serious, let me assure you that the book’s charm includes some laugh-out-loud humor, based on Ella’s feisty persona; frequent right-on-the-mark analyses of aging and medicine; and a terrific portrait of contemporary roadside America. Zadorian seems to have visited a lot of diners in order to draw an accurate picture of the variety of waitresses, out in country where “servers” haven’t been invented yet.

Near Gallup New Mexico, Ella says:

The vastness of the mesas, the stillness of all this stone soothes my wretched body, makes me feel part of the earth.  The angling light reveals the character of the rock, how every inch is mottled and etched with time.  I look at my arm, run my fingers across the million tiny folds that cover my skin like endless lines of faded calligraphy.  There’s something written in both places, but I can’t read either.

The concept is simple. Mostly we read a monologue delivered by Ella, the wife who is afflicted with so many things that she likens her finish to a horse race between ailments. She pops little blue ills for her frequent “discomfort” which is what the medical team calls pain. She has decided that she and John, her husband of  60  years, are going to drive the length of Route 66 in their Leisure Seeker camper, and make a side trip to Disney Land. John is the driver-in-chief who also happens to have detached from the world. Although she never calls it Alzheimer’s, we can see what’s going on.

When they stop at night, they frequently put up a slide projector and watch family pictures from long-ago vacations. That and occasional calls to their scared and disapproving son and daughter, fill us in on the couple’s history. Despite setbacks, Ella plows on, indomitable–the only fear she has is being alone, but she still has John, and thank goodness, he has her.

I can’t help thinking that if he had not self-destructed long ago, Kerouac would have enjoyed just such a road trip. Ella’s life lessons fill this slim book to overflowing, and she damned well does what she pleases. Zadorian is so skilled a writer that I could swear I have met Ella and John–not to mention the waitresses.

Disclaimer on the Leisure Seeker: The books publicist made the book available for review. And do you like the little “look inside” widget? That came from the Harper Collins pages.

So are you a Rt. 66 afficiando, or are you pretty much unaware of its role in American transportation history? Fess up. Either way. (And remember, when you leave a comment, you can leave your Twitter address as well. You can follow Michael Zadorian on Twitter @MikeZadorian. You can follow ME on Twitter @pen4hire)

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Destination: North Carolina (The Sand Hills)

Book: The Last Child by John Hart (2009) Winner of this year’s Edgar Awards for best Mystery Novel

North Carolina Sandhills

John Hart nails the small towns of central North Carolina in the gripping mystery, The Last Child. I have never visited the Sandhills, but my curiosity is piqued. The Sandhills mark an ancient ocean front–leftover dunes separate the Piedmont zone from the coastal plains. The aberration of geography creates a place of eerie charm but not much wealth.

I am intrigued by the fact that I came away with a clear view of the area and the people, but paragraphs of description are nearly non-existent in the book.  The author skillfully led me into the heart of the Sandhills by dialogue and story.

For those who like their literature to come in neat categories, Hart’s novels sit in the box called “Southern Gothic.”  For us here at A Traveler’s Library, his book is a destination mystery, a tour guide to one of the stops on the road trip, a different kind of travel literature.  But I must admit, I couldn’t be happier when a book goes WAY beyond the criteria of recreating a place and culture. The Last Child scores on several fronts–fascinating and original characters, a plot to keep you breathing hard (or holding your breath), and delightfully readable writing.

The child of the title is a modern day Huck Finn, with a whole lot more book smarts. His twin sister disappeared a year ago, his family fell apart and his mother is kept in a dazed-by-drugs condition by the local power broker. Johnny decides to take the law in his own hands, despite the attempts of the leading good guy/ police detective to protect the kid from himself.

Everybody knows everybody in this rural county, which sometimes makes the policeman’s job easier and sometimes harder. Having a 13-year-old drive the plot puts a unique twist on what could be a familiar pattern of police procedural. But no danger of boring structure from  Hart, who  is an ambitious writer who does not take the easy way out with his writing. While the kid has enough good traits to make us cheer for him, there is nothing saccharine here, and sometimes you want to shake him.

More bad guys and more dead bodies than any county should have to cope with keep the reader guessing and the pages turning.

Author John Hart

Hart posts updates on his books at his website, and The Last Child seems to have won awards nearly every month since it first appeared in review copies.  His prior novels, King of Lies and Down River both won Edgar awards, also. (Not just a nomination–the top award.)

The picture to the right comes courtesy of  Hart’s web site, and the picture above from the site of the North Carolina Sandhills Weed Management Area. I owe gratitude to the publisher for providing the review copy of this book, and to the publicist for the Edgar Awards, Lisa Richardson, for alerting me to the finalist mysteries with strong sense of place.

I have written previously about the Edgar nominees, and my personal favorite Jo Nesbo, however, John Hart definitely deserves all those kudos he receives. ( But Jo Nesbo definitely has the coolest web site!)

A Traveler’s Library has previously discussed destination mystery novels from Massachusetts, Michigan, Venice, Virginia, Sweden, Yosemite. There’s no place without a mystery, it seems.

Of courese there are mountains in North Carolina, too, and Music Road finds music for the Road Trip all over North Carolina. Pick up your music at Music Road.

Have you traveled to the North Carolina Sandhills? Share your experiences. Should we go?

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The Great American Road Trip

Destination: Tennessee

Movie: Nashville (1974), directed by Robert Altman

Nashville is a honky tonk of a movie: confusing, full of music and full of star-worshiping people with big hair.

When I saw this Robert Altman film, I became an instant fan of the controversial director. He assembles a constellation of talented people and sets them free. Within a lose framework of a vague story-line the actors improvise their dialogue.  So I chose to make Nashville the travel movie representing Tennessee on our road trip.

In Nashville,  many of the actors also write and perform their own music. In fact Keith Carradine won an Oscar for his contribution, I’m Easy. Henry Gibson, comedian who became a famous face in the old TV show Laugh-In, and more recently played a curmudgeonly judge on Boston Legal, struts around in a white, fringed, cowboy suit with rhinestones. His musical turns are sappy patriotic but too close to country western music to sound entirely like satire.

Lily Tomlin sings gospel with a black gospel choir, other characters represent well known acts like Loretta Lynn (Ronee Blakely) and Peter Paul and Mary. Other big names include Karen Black, Keith Carradine, Ned Beatty and Geraldine Chaplin. And the list goes on.

All kinds of music thrive in what is now called Music City.  I never did like country music.  So when I had a chance to go to Nashville, I was in for a surprise.

The Country Music Hall of Fame changed forever my take on country music. Not only is it one of the most engrossing museums I have ever been in, it clearly shows the evolution of present day country western from folk and evolving in to rock and roll.

Country Music Hall of Fame

Music Posters

Before the Civil War, Nashville led the South in education and culture. And for the World’s Fair of 1897, they built a Parthenon so accurate in its dimensions that the Greeks studied it during the current restoration of the ancient Parthenon.

Nashville's Parthenon

The Civil War left its mark on Nashville, but the city has proved resilient. Even the recent horrendous flooding brought people together to fight to save their town.

Stretched along that river that became the enemy after record rains, the downtown area includes the beautiful Centennial Park, cultural venues, and an outdoor market as well as the famous honky-tonks.

Thinking again about the movie, Nashville, I read a conversation on line in which people wondered about the shooting at the end–which seems to have no point. The parallel seems clear to me, particularly since the entire movie leads to a political rally and a loudspeaker truck booms inane political slogans of the Replacement Party throughout the film. The movie was made while audience members had clear memories of the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and of Martin Luther King. Indeed one of the characters drunkenly mourns for the Kennedys.  And after the shooting, Henry Gibson’s character tries to calm people down by saying “This isn’t Dallas, it is Tennessee.”

As with every state we visit, there’s a great deal of variety to see in Tennessee–history, beautiful scenery, theme parks and all.

Nashville gardens

But you cannot think of Tennessee without the music thumping from Nashville and Memphis and Chattanooga. And the movie Nashville, filmed in that city, captures a large component of the spirit of Tennessee. Which reminds me–be sure and visit Music Road to get your music to accompany our road trip stop in Tennessee.

According to Wikipedia, “In 1992, Nashville was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’.”

All of the photos in this post were taken by Vera Marie Badertscher and are protected by copyright. If you wish to reproduce a photo, contact me first. My trip to Nashville was funded by the Nashville Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

Are you a Country Music Fan? Have you been to the Grand Ol’ Opry? Maybe its blues that you like? Share your musical thoughts here. And if you missed any of the earlier stops along the road trip, you might want to look at other movies for Connecticut and West Virginia.

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The Great American Road Trip

Destination: Kentucky

Book: No Heroes by Chris Offutt

Chris Offutt

“Kentuckians have a long tradition of going west for a new life and winding up homesick instead.” Chris Offutt

This memoir by Chris Offutt tells about his homecoming to the Appalachian area of Kentucky, where he takes a teaching  job at Morehead State University. He passes on a separate tale in scattered chapters when he interviews his wife’s parents about their life in slave labor and concentration camps during World War II.  Either of these stories–the attempt at returning to his boyhood home, and the stories of survival–would make a good book. At one point his father-in-law worries about how Chris is going to meld these two pieces together, and Offutt muses that maybe at the end they will come together. They do. Sort of. It is a remark of the concentration camp survivor that leads to the title No Heroes .

In the prologue, Offutt sketches life as a hillbilly. (It is alright to call him that–that is what he calls himself and his friends.) When you return home, he says:

Make sure you drive a rusty pickup that runs like a sewing machine, flies low on the straight stretch, and hauls block up a creek bed.  Hang dice from the mirror and a gun rack in the back window. A rifle isn’t necessary, but something needs to be there–a pool cue, a carpenter’s level, an ax handle.

He goes on like this for three more pages and has the reader laughing out loud–or at least this reader was guffawing. But I was not making fun of the backwoods boys, because the behavior and habits of these people frequently sounded like a description of the small town in Ohio that I grew up in.  I laughed because anybody who has lived in a small town, particularly one slightly isolated by geography, can relate.

Small town Kentucky by Autumn Harbison

Kentucky hill towns have some rougher edges and definitely more poverty than the area where I grew up, but still–the similarity was there.  And while Offutt frequently waxes poetic about the hills and woods, it is the people and human traits in general that attract the reader.  And to me, this was what ties together the stories from the Holocaust with the stories of a forty-year-old trying to return to his youth.  The stories are all about people and how they treat each other, and what they believe and what they hope for, or how they have given up hope.

One reviewer, Charles May, a professor emeritus from University of California Long Beach, says that Offutt “understands and respects  his characters.” (You can see an analysis of Offutt’s  short stories at May’s blog.) Respect, perhaps, but surely Morehead State was not too happy about their portrayal in this book.  They have been named one of the best small universities in the nation by U. S. News and World Report for several years running, but Offutt portrays the school as being (when he was teaching there) backward and ill-equipped.

Offutt has carved a niche as the hometown Kentucky writer for his generation, and has books of short stories and other full-length books that mine the hillbilly culture. Now we can also think of his books as travel books for road trip planning for a stop in Kentucky.

And what would Kentucky be without its music?  Music Road tells us about two musicians who make great Road Trip Music for the mountains or any other part of Kentucky. Music Road partners with A Traveler’s Library for this trip around the country and shares a wealth of American music.

Have you considered a road trip to Kentucky? Where would you head? Bluegrass country to see race horses? Bourbon manufacture? Daniel Boone’s history? or the hills of Appalachia?

Just a little reminder that anything that you purchase at Amazon when you use a link from this blog, earns me a few cents and helps keep the lights on at the Traveler’s Library. The small town photo is from a University of Kentucky web page and was taken by a student. Click on the photo to see the accompanying article.

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The Winton Automobile, Smithsonian

Destination: San Francisco to New York

Film: Horatio’s Drive, America’s First Road Trip, a Ken Burns PBS Special (2003)

In 1903 the world changed. The Wright Brothers took their first flight, the President of the United States sent a message to the King of England over wireless, a cable was strung across the Pacific Ocean for communication, and Horatio Nelson Jackson and his mechanic, drove  from coast to coast across America.

If you have a member of your family who gets grumpy when you start planning a road trip, find the travel film, Horatio’s Drive, and make them watch it. On the other hand, if you or someone you know is obsessed with automobiles, check out this blog about automobiles and American life.

Most rational people in 1903 thought the automobile was at best a nice toy for the wealthy, and and worst, a menace to horses. Horatio, insanely optimistic and obsessed with automobiles, begged to differ. He believed that people would use the automobile for long distance travel, and he made a little bet–$50–that he could drive across the country in less than 90 days. At that point nobody had made the trip across the country, and with very good reason.

You did not just add gasoline and take off. You carried spare parts enough to build a second car. You made friends with blacksmiths along the route. And you hoped that your car would not sink into desert sands or mud pits, seeing as how there was not a paved highway to be found. Not to mention no maps, no road signs and no motels.

Every day Horace Nelson “Nel” wrote reassuringly to his wife little notes that said things like “We had to set up the winch and tow the car 18 times” or “took the wrong road and had to backtrack 50 miles,” and ended with “but from now on everything will be fine.”

Fortunately for us, he took photographs along the way. With those photos, letters to his wife, and a lot of new footage shot on back country roads that resemble the ones “Nel” was on, Burns has made a remarkable recreation of this fantastic adventure.

Tell your family nervous Nelly, that if these guys could do it in 1903, and in only 63 days, 12 hours and 30 minutes, then you can make a road trip to a National Park that is 200 miles away.

I really loved this video, partly for the production values (narration by Keith David , Tom Hanks, Adam Arkin, and Eli Wallach, among others.) But I also loved the personalities involved, and the picture of a nation trying to come to terms with a gigantic change in daily life. It makes me think of today’s struggle to reconcile the age of print with the age of pixel.

When Horatio Nelson Jackson got back to his home in Vermont, he fixed up his car (a cherry red Winton that set him back $3,000, a real fortune in those days) and kept on driving.  A few months after his return, he got picked up and fined for driving faster than six miles per hour. Somebody should have told him that those red cars are traffic cop magnets.

I got the DVD from Netflix, but you can also find a book by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns that was published to accompany the TV show. National Geographic carried an article in 2003 about a trip retracing Horatio’s wheel tracks.

The Winton picture comes from the Smithsonian Institution, and you can click on the landscape picture to see more about the photographer. Picture used by Creative Commons license through Flickr.com

Have you had to overcome arguments against a road trip? What are the worst obstacles we face in the 21st century to taking to the road? (Tune in Wednesday as the Great American Road Trip reaches West Virginia.)

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Chesapeake Bay working ships

Destination: Maryland

Book: Chesapeake Blue by Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts writes books. Lots of books. And she is very popular with many, many readers. Until now, I had not read any of them.  I stumbled across Chesapeake Blue because it sounded like a good introduction to Maryland on our Great American Road Trip. Turns out it is the third in a trilogy about the Quinn Family, each of which focused on a different family member in the small (imaginary) community of St. Christopher on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It sounds a lot like the real life St. Michael’s Maryland, which looks like a great place to visit.

Chesapeake Blue features Seth, an artist recently returned from great success in Europe. He meets Dru, who has fled the life of the pampered rich in Washington D.C. to start a flower shop in St. Christopher. They meet and…well the rest is predictable. Seth’s mother shows up to blackmail him, threatening some unnamed horrible revelation, which turns out not to be so horrible and not to be a revelation to anyone who has been reading the novel. This is my objection to the book.  All predictable.

Of course the regular readers are looking for those sex scenes that are hot enough to melt the paint off Seth’s canvas.  Excuse me if I sound flip, but I have to admit that over-reaching metaphoric descriptions of sex always give me the giggles. It strikes me as so futile.  Why spend time reading about things that are so much more fun doing?

Nevertheless I will admit that Nora Roberts manages to describe the lure of the land as enticingly as she does the lure of love.  And her evocation of the seascapes of Chesapeake Bay have me yearning for a different kind of thrill than the painter and the florist find on a bed of rose petals. Early in the book, Roberts writes:

As he drove across the bridge, his artist’s eye wanted to capture that moment–the rich blue water and the boats that skimmed its surface, the quick white waves and the swoop of greedy gulls. The way the land skimmed its edge, and spilled back with its browns and greens.  All the thickening leaves of the gum and oak trees with those flashes of color that were flowers basking in the warmth of spring.

Chesapeake Blue Crabs

I have driven around the inlets and bays and the fishing villages of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, and can testify to its otherworldly feel. Here, just a stone’s throw from the heavy traffic and frantic rush of the nation’s capitol, life slows to a pace that feels more like the 19th than the 21st century. White board houses with bright colored trim line narrow streets that lead to the docks where fishing boats and pleasure boats pick up the same bright colors of the houses.

Water surrounds life, here.  Friends and I visited the historic village of St. Mary’s City, the 4th oldest settlement in the U.S., on the banks of the St. Mary’s River. (That’s not on the Eastern Shore, but on the more visited western shore of the Bay.) We followed the river, driving over spits of land to the very end where a ramshackle pier reached into the water and we sat at a wooden trestle table with steamed crabs spread on paper. We breathed sea air and ate our fill.

It has been many years, and I’m not sure of the exact location, but this PDF brochure of St. Mary’s County can start you exploring. If you only know the Washington D.C. suburbs or Baltimore–time for a road trip to Maryland.

Take a listen to the music for the Maryland road recommendations at Music Road, our partner in the Great American Road Trip. Don’t miss each state we visit on the Great American Road Trip. You can follow the road trip each Wednesday starting with this post about Blue Highways, and Music Road’s the music begins. These photos are compliments of Creative Commons license from Flickr. Click on the photo to see more about each photographer.

Are you a fan of Nora Roberts? Of romance novels? Or a fan of Maryland? Tell all here, and start a conversation with other readers.

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Destination: Delaware

Book: The Du Ponts: Houses and Gardens in the Brandywine 1900-1951 (2010) by Maggie Lidz

(Be sure to visit Music Road to see what music she has provided for our stop in Delaware.  It may surprise you!)

A few years ago, Ken and I took a road trip to explore Delaware. I was on assignment for an automobile web magazine and Chevrolet loaned us an HRR to drive.

HHR at the Inn at Montchanin in Brandywine Valley

With the help of the Greater Wilmington and Brandywine Valley Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, we mapped out a visit to Chateau Country–the string of Du Pont mansions and gardens along the Brandywine river from Delaware into Pennsylvania. Maggie Lidz‘ book, The Du Ponts Houses and Gardens Along the Brandywine would have been great background reading for that trip, had it been available back then.

The clannish Du Pont family, dating back to 1802 in the U.S., dominated
Delaware like no other family in no other state.   They shared a conserative business sense, inventiveness, a love of beautiful things and a gardening gene tracible to E. Ireneé Du Pont who came from France to start the family gunpowder business. Thomas Jefferson reportedly urged him to come to America, and he was friends with Lafayette, as well.

Longwood conservatory reflected in lily pond

It seems that this family just could not help but make money, and although some, like Pierre Du Pont at Longwood, lived fairly simply, they all built extensive gardens, if not mansions. Pierre, an engineer, took over the business from older family members in a sort of coup in the 1920′s and built it into a modern industrial giant.  But at the same time he was running the business, he was personally designing the miraculous sound and light shows and visually stunning gardens of Longwood (in southern Pennsylvania).

After Longwood, we visited the enormous Winterthur, purposefully turned into a museum to display the early American furniture and decor that “Harry” Du Pont collected.  He also oversaw his gardens and ran a self-sustaining farm of 2000 acres–so large that Winterthur had a railroad station and still has its own post office.

Mt. Cuba Wild Flowers

We drove through the countryside to Mt. Cuba where the wild forest paths and brook are all artful constructions and the family converted their property to research in the plants of the Piedmont.

We visited Hagley Mills and Eleutheria, home of the original powder mill and the home built in 1802 for E.I. Du Pont, who also kept his hand in the vegetable and fruit-tree garden, which has recently been restored with the original plant types.  “Harry” bought the property and gave the house to his sister Louise.(Correction. It was Henry, the father of “Harry” and Louise who gifted Louise with Eleutherian Mills. Thanks to commenter below for pointing this out.) She and her husband filled in a hillside below the Georgian house with faux ruins and wild plantings around the real ruins of the original factory works.  Unfortunately, this hillside, looking in a period painting like the forum in Rome, is now invisible because of erosion and overgrowth, but the house and many other structures are still available to tour.

Finally, we visited Nemours, the “Take This!” statement of Alfred, who was kicked out of the company in the afore-mentioned coup, and ostracized for his marital misadventures. (His biography makes for some racy reading.) We got a sneak peek at Nemours before the recent multi-million dollar restoration was complete, and would love to go back and see the spruced up “Gilded Age whirlagig of limestone, marble, bronze, glass and gilt” as Margaret Lidz calls it in her book about the Du Pont homes and gardens.

Maggie Lidz, estate historian at Winterthur, spent ten years gathering historic photographs and stories of these and dozens of other Du Pont mansions for this thick and visually exciting book.  I learned so much from this book, like “By 1942 family members had at least 70 country houses of 20 acres or more in the Brandywine Valley.” Some of the homes are still privately owned, but those open to the public make a trip to Delaware’s Brandywine Valley a very rewarding stop on anyone’s road trip.

Transparency: The trip discussed here was partially underwritten by Chevrolet, The Inn at Montchanin, and other hotels, museums, and restaurants in the Brandywine Valley. If you visit Amazon through one of my links, which I hope you will, I make a few pennies on anything you buy.

All Photos the property of Vera Marie Badertscher. Contact me at vmb@atravelerslibrary.com if you wish to use a photo.

Is it any wonder that I dreamed of buying a big sprawling house after reading this book? Do you like to visit houses and gardens when you travel? What’s the best you’ve seen? If you have missed any road trip visits to states, they happen every Wednesday, starting here.

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