Canada Trip #4 – Roadside Burlington

We managed to fit a bit of Roadside America into the day and a half we spent in Vermont.  When we returned to Burlington post-hike, we went off to see the World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet.  It is apparently 38 feet tall and actually comprises dozens of filing cabinets stacked on top of each other, some with their drawers open.  It was constructed as a sculpture in the early 2000s and I am not sure what it is supposed to be communicating – relentless bureaucracy possibly – but I just like finding random things when we are travelling and I like that people feel compelled to create even when the outcome is something a bit bonkers.

Which segues neatly into the final tourist destination of that day: a small troop of Flying Monkeys atop the roofs of buildings in central Burlington.  As long time readers of my blog(s) will know, I love the Flying Monkeys from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ – largely because they terrified me as a wee girl – so obviously I had to ensure that I saw these simian sculptures.  They were very easy to spot.  There were a few silhouetted against the sunny sky on top of one buildings roof and another couple clambering on the roof of another building.  I did not manage to get great photos of them but the kids and I enjoyed seeing them.

The first thing we did the following morning was head out to see Burlington’s Earth Clock.  This is a sundial, compass, and calendar built into the grass of a local park.  The time markers have the look of neolithic standing stones and the idea is that a person standing in the centre acts as the gnomon so that the shadow can accurately tell the time.  We found it was a wee bit off but it is entirely possible that was user error.

Our final stop in Burlington was the Lake Champlain Chocolate Factory.  Our youngest son is a chocaholic so this was really part of our itinerary for him.  The tour involved a very informative talk, during which we could feel and smell ingredients and enjoy some samples, while also watching workers in the factory make some of the handcrafted chocolates that the company sells.  It was an enjoyable diversion and put us in a good mood for another day of driving.

Central Burlington, incidentally, is a pretty cool place.  I liked its atmosphere a lot and there was certainly plenty to see and do in the area so I made a mental note to consider Burlington for a future mini-break.

Canada Trip #2 – Ben & Jerry’s and other Food

Before we crossed the border into Canada, we spent a couple of days pootling around in Vermont.  This enabled the boys to claim a new state.  My plan had been to take the boys to Shelburne Museum, an incredible, vast, eclectic and eccentric museum.  I had absolutely adored that museum when I visited back in 2001 but we agreed the kids probably wouldn’t find it had the same impact since we visited the similarly bonkers House on the Rock last year.  Shelburne Museum would have absorbed the entire day so abandoning that plan freed up time to do a lot more exploring.  A lot of the first day in the Burlington area was food-based – but don’t worry because we definitely earned our calories.

First up was Ben & Jerry’s.  Mr Pict had been when he was a kid and before it was an ice cream empire and the kids and I had never been before.  I anticipated a small factory tour and a lot of brand merchandising but thank goodness we turned up early enough to get on the first tour of the day because that place is crazy.  It’s like a small theme park.  By the time we were taken off on our factory tour, the reception and shop area was packed with people like herring in a barrel.  It was ridiculous.

The tour itself was efficient but interesting.  Sadly no ice cream was being produced because some part was getting replaced but we got to see the machinery and have the process explained to us, including the ways in which Ben & Jerry’s is different from its competitors.  It helped that our tour guide was an amusing nerd and it also helped that we got to sample a scoop of ice cream at the conclusion.  Extra samples meant that our youngest son lucked out and was given two samples.

After the tour, we wandered around in the “Flavor Graveyard”, the way in which the company memorialises flavours that it has tried out on the general public and then permanently withdrawn.  We had learned that there are other flavours that get withdrawn and then make a comeback.  Those are called zombie flavours.

That area of Vermont is also known for its cheese and cider so, much later in the afternoon, we went off to sample and buy some of both.  First up was the Cold Hollow Cider Mill.  While cider and apples were certainly the running theme of the store, there were lots of other products for sale too so we had a good pootle about but we kept our focus on the cider.  We watched a video about the company’s history of cider production and got to sample some.  I am generally not a massive fan of non-alcoholic cider or apple juice but it was ice cold and refreshing and just what I needed at that point in the day.  The kids were peckish so they chose a snack each.  Two of them chose hot dogs that had been steamed in cider, one chose an apple cider doughnut filled with cream, and the youngest bought four miniature fruit pies.

Then we popped into the Cabot cheese farm store.  I am lactose intolerant so had to keep my sampling to a minimum but the boys and Mr Pict had fun taste testing all of the available cheeses and I tried some delicious mustard that I decided to buy and bring home with me as an edible souvenir.

Dinner that evening was fast food of the local variety.  Al’s Food Frys is apparently a local Burlington institution so we decided to give it a try.  I must admit that the use of “Frys” instead of “Fries” made me all manner of twitchy and fast food is not my favourite way to eat but it is fun to try something new and specific to an area.  I must admit that the fries (not frys) were pretty delicious, really potatoey and with fluffy insides but crisp on the outside.  Those who had burgers said they were scrummy and my 12 year old loved the flavour of coating on the fried chicken he ordered.

Day two of our trip was definitely about “travelling on our stomachs”.

Canada Trip #1 – Hyde Park

Last year’s road trip (which saw us drive from the Philly ‘burbs to a corner of Montana and back) was a stretch for our tolerance of each other’s company in the confines of the car and the ratio of miles in a car to miles covered by foot.  We, therefore, curbed our ambitions this year and decided to try a different pace of vacation.  In comparison to our previous family road trips, our plans were extremely modest: Quebec, Montreal, and Lake Charleston, Ontario.

The first day of our trip took us through upstate New York.  Determined to achieve at least one thing beyond getting from A to B, we decided to stop off at Hyde Park, the Hudson Valley home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  This is the site of FDR’s presidential library and of Springwood, his family home.  Although the property was older, it had been owned by Roosevelt’s father since the 1860s and had been expanded and extended over the decades.  Roosevelt was born there in 1882 and, when Roosevelt married Eleanor in 1905, they moved into his boyhood home.  They lived and raised their family there and continued to visit even after FDR became president and the White House became their primary digs.

We kept our visit to perambulating in the grounds as the kids were not enthused by the prospect of a tour of the house.  I acquiesced because I had visited previously and had vivid memories of the house and the presidential library.  It was not until the end of our visit, however, that Mr Pict revealed that he thought he had never been there before.  He seriously had zero memory of ever having visited.  I started rattling off details of the interiors and finally something stirred in his memory banks and he recollected that he had at least been there.  Therefore, we probably should have forced the kids to submit to a tour.

As you may recall, I have a new domestic travel bucket list which is to visit every presidential gravesite.  I love to visit cemeteries, I am keen on history, and I am enthusiastic about travel (trifecta!) so I think it’s an eminently sensible ambition.  I have a good few checked off already and had obviously previously visited this particular grave but I want my husband and kids to “opt in” to my scheme so I was happy to have the opportunity to see the grave of my favourite US President and First Lady.

After departing Hyde Park, we had no plans beyond getting to Burlington, Vermont. We were by then thinking of food.  Our road trips often involve thoughts of food because we are always either famished or indulging.  We seem to have no mode between.  I, therefore, foolishly googled best places to eat in Burlington and, after a family discussion, booked a table for early evening.  In doing so, I utterly jinxed us.  Almost instantly, our journey went off-piste.  We had no signal for GPS and no map operating at the detail required for our cross-country hypotenuse.  We must have taken a wrong turn but, when we double-backed, we couldn’t identify the road we should have taken, so we triple-backed and forged on.  And then we realised that we had no choice but to cross Lake Champlain by ferry.  We crossed near Fort Ticonderoga on a chain ferry that could thankfully take enough cars that we made it onto the next available crossing.  Still, it set us back.

Thankfully, when we got back into phone reception, the restaurant was willing and able to push our booking back to accommodate our late arrival.  This was just as well because Mr Pict and the Pictlings were salivating for barbecue food and would have been despondent about a change of dinner venue.  The restaurant was Bluebird Barbecue in Burlington.  We ate in a screened in porch area that was lovely in the early evening air after a day inside a stuffy car.  Barbecue is not really my thing so I cannot judge the quality but my carnivorous husband was happy, my oldest son got to try out the fusion of barbecue and ramen, and I was happy because I had an absolutely delicious lavender flavoured mocktail.  It was a great way to end the first day of our road trip.

I Voted!

I voted early this morning.

I was so excited and enthusiastic.  I literally squealed when I saw my name and signature in the electoral register.  I had had nightmares about my name not being in there because I became a citizen and registered so recently and was all prepared for requesting a provisional ballot.  Turns out the admin for voting runs more smoothly than most American bureaucracies I have had to deal with.

Five years of living in a country while not enfranchised to vote has been stressful.  I am raising my kids here and I pay taxes here and I intend to stay here so I am invested in this country.  Today I was relieved to be able to exercise my right and responsibility as a US citizen.

Citizen Pict

I emigrated from Scotland to America as a Green Card holder in October 2013.  My husband has been a dual US/UK national since his birth and our children became dual nationals when they became resident in America, made official by them obtaining US passports in October 2015.  I, therefore, have been the only alien in the Pict family for quite some time now.

My original plan had been, for many and varied reasons, to wait to apply for citizenship until closer to the time when my 10 year Green Card would expire.  However, the 2016 presidential election was tough on my psyche and it didn’t get any easier to live in this country without having the ability to vote in 2017.  I have always exercised my right to vote so being entirely disenfranchised and unable to participate in the democratic process was really challenging.  That, therefore, became the primary reason why I decided to bring forward my timeline for becoming an American citizen.

The immigration process was complex and expensive.  The naturalization process was not quite as challenging and not quite as expensive but it still involved a whole load of tricky bureaucracy and a massive chunk of money.  It also involved a large investment of time and a fair dollop of stress.

The first stage was to submit my application, which was time consuming and sometimes had me raking through the dusty, musty corners of my memory banks, but nowhere near as complex as the immigration application had been.  This was then sent off to Chicago to be picked over and start the ball rolling.  However, no sooner had my application arrived in Chicago (I was tracking it) than I received a letter informing me that I was to report to a USCIS field office to have my biometrics taken.  No problem except that I had just one day’s notice between receiving the appointment card and the date of the appointment.  One day.  I flew into instant panic.  My husband was working in New York so I had to organise childcare backup for if I had any sort of delay outside school hours – however unlikely – and I had to scramble to find someone to take my place at work.  That fits neatly into a single sentence but it involved a whole lot of stress.

On the day of my appointment, I dropped off my youngest kids at school and drove off into northern Philly.  Thank goodness for Google maps because I had zero clue where I was going.  I did, however, meet almost every red light and had to stop at a rail crossing while an exceedingly lengthy cargo train rumbled past so I arrived at the USCIS field office with a mere five minutes to spare.  When I walked into the building, it was like a wasteland.  There was one other client visible and then everyone else was an employee.  The whole appointment, therefore, went smoothly and rapidly and ultimately felt like a giant waste of my time.  I had already had biometrics taken (eye scans and fingerprints) when I emigrated and I have had my fingerprints taking subsequently for volunteering and employment purposes.  The appointment, therefore, felt like replication.  The staff were friendly and courteous and worked efficiently so in no time at all I had been processed and sent on my way with a study guide for the tests.

And then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It is unbearably stressful to be in any sort of limbo situation.  We had been through this before with the Immigration process.  While we had to move forward with our lives as if we were relocating to America, the fact that at any stage either the immigration process might have had a hiccup or the employment prospects for my husband have fallen through, we would have had to abandon the whole plan and root ourselves back into our lives in Scotland.  However, that always felt as if it had forward momentum.  The Naturalization process felt like suffocating in stasis.

After the Biometrics appointment, I had zero contact from USCIS for months.  In many ways, that was a positive sign.  They did not need to request further information from me which meant my application was sound and, of course, they would have contacted me had they decided to outright reject my application.  However, to receive no correspondence for months, no update, no indication that progress was happening, however slowly, was painful.  It was also stressful because I could not commit to anything and had to opt out of certain plans because I had no idea when I might be called for Interview (and then the oath taking) but I was pretty sure it would be at short notice when it did happen.  Granted I am prone to stress and anxiety but it really was a pretty intense period of waiting.

I started to log into my USCIS online account at least once a week to see if there were any updates on my case.  In doing so, I discovered that I could monitor the progress of the Philadelphia field office through all the N-400 applications they were handling.  Whereas it used to take a few months from submitting an application to being called for interview, they were estimating at least a year.  I heard from other sources that this backlog is happening all over the US due to understaffed USCIS offices having to handle a massive increase in applications prompted by the political climate.  While not altogether surprising, therefore, it was a bit deflating.  It was estimated that I would be called for interview in the Autumn of 2018 which was not just a long time away but would also prevent me from registering to vote in time for the midterm elections.  I continued to obsessively check my USCIS account and track the field office and there was never any change.  My husband and I decided, therefore, that it was probably safe to plan out a summer vacation.  Nothing elaborate, nothing involving crossing an international border, and mostly things that could be cancelled with a full refund at 24 hours notice, just in case.

So obviously – because Murphy’s Law – a mere two days after the refund deadline had passed for the one vacation commitment that didn’t have a generous cancellation policy, I logged into my USCIS account and learned that I was being called for interview.  Of course, no date or time was provided with the electronic notice.  Nope.  It was just a notification that I would be receiving a notification by mail.  You know what a stress-head I am so you can probably well imagine the panic I had on seeing that notice and the anxiety I experienced waiting for the paper notification.  I found I was actually hoping for the same extremely short notice I had received for the Biometrics appointment because then it would be before my vacation.  I learned that the notice for an interview is usually between 2 and 4 weeks, parameters that were definitely going to scupper our travel plans.  Anxiety was developing into panic and attempts at problem-solving all the possibilities.  Could we delay our departure?  Could we return home early?  Could I fly back to Philly from random road trip location A and get a flight to random road trip location B?  After over a week of intense waiting for the letter to arrive, it was good news: my scheduled interview date permitted us to go ahead with our travel plans and I even had a day to spare.  Phew.

A few days after returning from our road trip, therefore, I entered the USCIS office in Philadelphia for my interview.  I went through security and got checked in about 20 minutes before my scheduled interview time but I had no sooner sat down – not even enough time to open my book – when my name was called.  The officer who interviewed me was friendly and jolly which immediately put me at ease.  After a little bit of introductory admin – such as checking my IDs and Green Card – I was launched straight into the tests.  There are 100 possible questions on American civics, history, and geography from which the interviewing officer will ask 10.  The first time I took the test of the full 100 questions, I got 96 correct.  After studying and really concentrating on dates and numbers (those being my weakness when it comes to memorisation) I was regularly getting 100% but you know how neurotic I am.  Those four wrong answers from the first run through niggled at me.  I was making anxiety mountains out of molehills.  I got 100% on the test.  I obviously had zero concerns about the English reading and writing tests and passed those.  I was then asked a series of questions that were really just a means of ensuring that my oral answers were consistent with those given on my submitted paperwork.  A few more bits of admin and that was it.  Interview over.  I was approved.  The letter had told me to allow for two hours.  I was done in 30 minutes.  I guess they decided that a marriage of 22 years with 4 kids probably meant this was not some sort of sham Green Card marriage and that no intense interrogation was required.

Now there was just one final step.

It took about three weeks to receive the date and time of my Naturalization Oath Ceremony in the mail and, when it arrived, it gave me under a week’s notice.  USCIS really does like to keep us on our toes.  Luckily I don’t work during the summer months and my in-laws had coincidentally flown in two days earlier to they could babysit the children.  I had swithered about having the boys attend the ceremony but I could not obtain information about provision for guests or how long the ceremony was likely to be so we decided – given the grandparents were around – to leave them at home.  My husband had no choice but to take some time off work to accompany me not just because I wanted someone there at the ceremony for me but also because I could not drive myself, having just had general anaesthesia for oral surgery.  Yeah, the timing of this ceremony was not particularly great given the state of my mouth and the level of discomfort I was in but I was not about to postpone it.

My ceremony was scheduled for 9am on Friday morning.  There were 56 other people taking the oath of allegiance with me during the ceremony and we represented 31 different countries.  I was the only one from the UK.  They kept us all very organised and had us process through various administrative processes according to the rows we were seated in.  I was the sixth person into the room and was, therefore, in the front row.  The chap who was “compering” the ceremony was very genial and warm and helped put us all at ease.  I had this weird, illogical anxiety that something might go wrong at the last moment.  A contributing factor was the fact I was still very woozy from the after effects of the anesthesia and strong painkillers which led me to make an error on one of my forms, thankfully not a critical error but one that left me with a malingering feeling of paranoia.  I had to return my Green Card as part of the Naturalization admin.  It felt weird to be giving away something that has been so important these past few years and something which was quite a bit of an ordeal to acquire.  There were some videos to watch and then we all stood for the oath taking part, which was led by another USCIS official.  At that point, at approximately 10am, I became an American citizen.  I was given my Certificate of Citizenship and all the formalities were over.

By 10.30am, I had registered to vote.  I will have to change my status with the Social Security department and then I will have to apply for a US passport so I still have some bureaucracy to plough through.  However, the big milestone is now done and dusted.  I am now Citizen Pict.

Road Trip 2018 #18 – Skyline Drive

My in-laws used to live in the suburbs of Washington DC and Mr Pict and I would fly out to visit them there and use their home as a base for exploration.  Now, of course, I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, also on the mid-Atlantic coast.  It is, therefore, actually a bit ridiculous that I have never visited Shenandoah National Park.  I really don’t know why we have never gotten around to it.  Always something else to see that was placed as a higher priority I suppose.  Navigating our route home through Virginia on the very last day of our road trip, I spotted an opportunity: I could at least do the Skyline Drive element of Shenandoah since it took us in the right direction.  I discussed my plan in quiet code with Mr Pict as I knew I would be met with resistance from the kids.  He agreed and we took the twisting turn to start ascending the mountains.

The kids were on to us immediately and were not best pleased.  This was the fifteenth day of our road trip and they just wanted to get home.  I could understand their motivation but, at the same time, I wanted to cram one more experience into our trip.  One of the things I love about America’s National Park system is that its parks result from someone just deciding that something is beautiful or unique or historic or any combination of the three and that it should consequently be preserved and protected.  In this case, said person was President Hoover who decided that a road should be built so that more people could access and appreciate the views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The views were indeed breathtaking.  The boys, however, were not appreciating them.  They were just doner than done with tourism and were 200% over road tripping.  Other than when we stopped at a ranger station, the older two even refused to get out of the car on any of the stops.  To be fair, the little grouches were also complaining about how twisty turny the road was and how queasy it was making them feel.  I too was feeling nauseous.  And the going was very slow.  I admitted defeat.  We exited the park at Swift Run Gap, rejoined major roads, and focused on getting home.

This post then concludes all of my blogging about our 2018 road trip.  Ten new states visited in just two weeks bringing me to a total of 40 US states visited.  That was an awful lot of driving (4550 miles!) and I think we probably – definitely – pushed ourselves to the limits of our tolerance for driving trips.  I don’t think I would undertake a trip involving such massive distances across just two weeks again – especially not with kids in tow.  It was too exhausting and the ratio of fun per miles was inadequate on this particular trip.  That is not to say that it was not worth it.  I would just learn from it and not push ourselves quite so far next time.  It was worth it because I loved seeing how different the landscapes of the Plains states were compared to those I had already visited.  Visiting a whole new region of the country underscored just how vast and diverse America is.  The focus of our road trip had been reaching the Dakotas – everything else just slotting into place as the route there and back – and the Dakotas did not disappoint.  In particular, I could probably have happily spent two weeks just travelling around South Dakota and exploring.  I was glad we spent more time there than anywhere else.  The trade off for that, of course, was that we barely touched the surface of some states.  I will need to go back and explore those properly at some stage.  But maybe not for a while.  I feel like I need a relaxing vacation now in order to recover from my vacation.

Road Trip 2018 #17 – Stones River National Battlefield

The final two days of our road trip were really just about covering distance in order to reach home.  Both were, therefore, slogs of days with no real time available for exploring.  On the penultimate day, however, we did indulge Mr Pict’s Civil War geekery by opting to stretch our legs at Stones River National Battlefield.

Having been to Shiloh in 2002, this was actually my second Tennessee Civil War battlefield.  I feel like I am collecting Civil War sites by association.  Confusingly, Mr Pict talks about this place as Murfreesboro, the name of a nearby town, which makes it even more difficult for me to retain the information.  We were greeted at the Visitor Center by an incredibly chipper Park Ranger.  He provided a summary of the site’s history and I, therefore, learned that this was the first place that the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced.  Furthermore, it was also on the route of the original Trail of Tears in 1838.  However, because the road charged a toll for each Cherokee, the government baulked at the expense and a different route was taken from then onwards.  Mr Pict also informed me that Stones River had the highest percentage of casualties of all the major battles of the Civil War.  And that is the extent of everything I learned during my visit.  Sometimes my brain is just too exhausted to absorb any information I am not keenly interested in.  This was one such time.

After the Visitor Center, we took a driving tour of battlefield sites.  It helps that the modern day Pike and railroad are in the same positions they were in 1863 when it comes to interpreting the battlefield landscape and understanding the focus of the conflict.  Mr Pict took a stroll through the area of rocks and woodland known as the Slaughter Pen.  A series of attacks in this spot meant that the bodies started piling up and blood was everywhere.  Staying on that theme, we also visited Hell’s Half Acre, which had ended up covered in Confederate dead.  The battle counts as a Union victory only because they managed to repel two Confederate attacks which led to the Confederates withdrawing.  And that really is the limit of my osmosis-gained knowledge.

 

Road Trip 2018 #16 – Memphis

Mr Pict and I had fond memories of Memphis so wanted to expose the boys to at least a little bit of the city.  They were not especially up for it but we dragged them anyway.

We parked up near the Peabody Hotel and entered the lobby.  Unfortunately we had literally just missed the famous procession of ducks.  The ducks were not even frolicking in the fountain, having retired to their rooftop palace for the day.  The kids were irked to have been dragged into the hotel without the payoff of seeing the ducks.  The oldest two were virtually snarling.  Our foray into Memphis was not going too well.  We hoped we would win them over with a stroll along Beale Street.

One of the Beale Street locations I remembered finding fun was Schwab’s store so we headed there for some respite from the sizzling afternoon sun.  The store opened in the 1870s selling men’s clothing, evolving into a dry goods store.  I remembered it being a bit like a junk store or jumble sale, with items heaped on tables, and lots of unexpected finds.  It basically retained that old-fashioned feel.  Visiting again, it had been transformed as items were neatly organised on tables and displays.  There were still quirky items among the usual fare so there was still fun to be had.  I was happy to see that a pair of the World’s Largest Overalls (what I would call dungarees) were still on display.  We ascended the stairs to see an area designated as a museum as it housed such items as vintage cash registers and stiff collars.  The boys, however, were much more interested in the extensive range of candy available for purchase.  Schwab’s contains a soda fountain and sells delicious ice cream but the queue on such a baking hot day was ridiculous so the kids instead chose some candy as a treat.

We didn’t feel we could bring the kids to Memphis without taking them to see the Lorraine Motel given its significance in American history.  The motel was, of course, the location of Martin Luther King’s assassination 50 years ago.  It is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum, with the motel complex preserved within its architecture.  We were unfortunately too late to go into the museum (being too late being a theme of our road trip) but it was quite powerful regardless.  We spent some time outside, in silent reflection, feeling subdued.

The casualty of our spontaneous decision to switch to Tennessee from Kentucky was the quality of our hotel room.  The hotel was shabby and run down.  I would guess it had not been updated since the 1980s.  I took the stairs rather than the elevator and could barely breathe because of the reek of cigarette smoke.  Our room was clean but very basic.  The bathroom was reminiscent of school gym showers, there was constant noise from adjacent rooms coming through the thin walls, and the ceiling fan was not working so the room was utterly stifling.  I admit I had thought of ‘The Shining’.  We consoled ourselves that at least it was not as awful as the horror hotel of 2016.

 

Road Trip 2018 #15 – Graceland

As I explained before, our road trips are always pretty meticulously planned because of the number of miles being covered and the amount we usually try to cram into each day.  However, I always have a spreadsheet full of possibilities for each stage of the journey and that includes some off-piste places, either because the place is geographically off our route or because it is random.  What we do, however, normally have pinned down is our accommodation for each night because finding affordable accommodation for six people is not always that easy.  However, on the evening after our drive through Missouri, Mr Pict and I decided to be spontaneous.  Both feeling that the second half of our road trip was hitting the skids in terms of ratio of driving to interesting places visited, we decided to rethink the last couple of days of our road trip.  Our route home was supposed to take us through Kentucky and West Virginia but this followed almost precisely the same trek that we slogged two years before.  What if, we wondered, we ditched Kentucky and West Virginia and instead drop further South and travel back via Tennessee and Virginia.  We agreed a plan and, within an hour, had booked alternative accommodation, cancelled hotel rooms, and booked tickets for Graceland for the following afternoon.

As a bonus for me, our journey to Memphis on the day took us through a little corner of Arkansas.  You know what that meant?  I could snag myself another state!  I have a mild OCD regarding odd numbers so it was irking me that I was going to be stuck for however long on a total of 39 states.  Collecting Arkansas would mean I could complete the trip with a neat 40.  As it happened, we were all hungry by the time we crossed the border into Arkansas.  There were not many eatery options so we had to plump for fast food but it filled our bellies and meant that, along with restroom visits, the kids and I got to claim Arkansas.  I will definitely come back and visit Arkansas properly some time but it felt satisfying to be ending having collected 10 new states in this one road trip and on 40 states overall.

We arrived at Graceland about half an hour before our ticketed entry time but we were permitted to begin the tour early so it was all good.  The whole place is much more expansive and commercialised than it was when I last visited in 2002.  There was a massive concourse with eateries and stores and various artefacts that had been crammed into the house were now given room to breathe in a variety of exhibition spaces.  We were delighted to encounter a family of racoons on the grounds.  I have not seen a live wild racoon since we emigrated 4.5 years ago so this was a big deal.  After a very slick introductory video, we were guided to the lines for the shuttle buses.  While in line, we were handed ipads and headphones.  Last time I visited, we had audio guides but the whole visual element was new.  Our youngest son loved having the option to play additional videos and have virtual wanders around spaces that were otherwise inaccessible to us.  In really no time at all, it was our turn to board a minibus and get shuttled across the street to the Graceland mansion.

Our 11 year old is a massive Elvis fan so he was super excited to be walking through the doors to Elvis’ house and seeing the spaces in which he lived and worked.  I was again surprised by how tasteful Elvis’ house is.  I mean, it isn’t my taste but it definitely isn’t as tacky and gaudy as some celebrity houses.  The scale of the house is also fairly modest.  Sure, it’s a mansion but is isn’t some colossal, echoey space.  Instead, each of the rooms was pretty cosy and intimate in scale.  It was, therefore, actually possible to imagine Elvis relaxing in these rooms.  The decor was definitely dated, as if it was preserved in aspic, but it still felt like more of a home than it did a museum.  The kitchen, for instance, was on a larger scale but was otherwise not dissimilar to kitchens from my own childhood.  My favourite room in the house was the peacock living room.  I love those jewel colours and liked how light and airy that room was.

The trophy room was packed with a chronological display of family history artefacts.  I particularly enjoyed seeing the carton of Crayola crayons that Elvis had taken to school.  It was somewhat poignant to see all these exhibits about Elvis’ life and family and then be disgorged out to the swimming pool and the grave site.  I realised that I was visiting at the same age that Elvis was when he died, which underscored how premature his death was.

Having been shuttled back from the house, we spent some time exploring the exhibits in the various museum galleries.  One space collected all of Elvis’ cars, from his super slick sports cars to his beach buggies and golf buggies.  My middle sons – comic book fans – were excited to spot that one vehicle, originally made for an Elvis movie, had appeared in ‘Batman’ as a vehicle driven by the Joker.  Another gallery told the story of Elvis’ time in the army and also had drawers of artefacts that could be pored over.  My two favourite museum rooms concerned costumes: one was a collection of various music stars’ costumes and the other was dedicated to Elvis’ costumes.  The Elvis clothes were arranged in roughly chronological order so our 11 year old enjoyed following Elvis through the decades and picking out his favourite costumes, from the gold suit, to the black leather costume from the comeback live tour, and then – best of all – all the bejewelled jumpsuits from the Vegas years.

I was really impressed with how Graceland had evolved from my last visit.  It had definitely become more Disney-fied but this was actually to the betterment of the experience.  Spreading all the visitors out across a bigger space and deploying ticketed entry times meant we never felt swamped by people even though the place was clearly hopping.  Furthermore, moving out all the costumes and gold discs and memorabilia to designated spaces meant the actual mansion could go back to showcasing the domestic spaces rather than being overstuffed and difficult to imagine living in.  The kids all declared that Graceland was a highlight of the road trip.  We parents felt vindicated in changing plans and relieved we had experienced tourism success again.

Road Trip 2018 #14 – Hannibal, Missouri

Missouri was my 39th state and was supposed to be the last new state I picked up on this road trip.  As Mark Twain is one of the most famous Missourians and our route took us through Hannibal, we decided we would stop off there and theme our day around Mark Twain.  It did not quite turn out as we anticipated.

My expectations were of a picturesque town full of 19th Century architecture, scenic views of the Mississippi, and lots of tasteful commemorations of and references to Mark Twain.  Well, that is not what our experience of Hannibal was.  While there were some lovely old clapboard houses, they were the exception.  While the streets were pleasant enough and the buildings were vintage, they tended to be those characterless brick built blocks.  We parked up on a side street in front of the Haunted House on Hill Street.  A lovely, friendly lady met us on the porch and encouraged us to pop in.  Why not?  I enjoy waxwork models whether they are exceptional likenesses or tragically awful so we couldn’t lose really.  We must have been in an unusually persuadable mood because we ended up purchasing joint tickets for both the waxworks and another attraction in town.

The store front was filled with jewellery and trinkets and various Halloween-esque homewares and we were led from it through what looked like a closet door.  This placed us in a darkened room and in a corridor in front of a large glass window that separated us from a whole community of wax figures.  The figures represented Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and his family members plus people he knew who inspired characters in his texts, especially ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Tom Sawyer’.  A recording was set to play that highlighted each of the figures in turn and explained their role in Mark Twain’s life and literary story.  The narrative was actually very well done and was informative – especially for the five members of the Pict family who have never read a word of Twain.  I am going to struggle to describe the wax figures because they were just eerily weird.  I don’t know where the balance was between realism and caricature but the outcome was just awry; they were both very well done and somehow very lacking; creepy pretty much sums them up. Just plain creepy.  Something that made them that bit more creepy: Tom Sawyer has actual human teeth and Mark Twain’s infant son was just a head on a stick.  From there, a doorway at the end of the corridor led us into some very dark and narrow nooks and crannies, these forming a pathway past some spooky dioramas.  The lighting and dayglow elements made the best of the visual effects but what worked most effectively were the floor panels that would trigger movements and sounds and the ankle-level rubbery brushes that would unexpectedly tickle our legs as we walked past.  We emerged out of the darkness back into the bright light of the gift shop giggling and thoroughly entertained, albeit maybe not in the way that was intended.

A stroll of a few blocks brought us to Karlocks Kars, for which we had the joint ticket.  This small museum was a collection of vintage cars, driving memorabilia, gas pumps, jukeboxes, pinball machines, and advertising, plus some vintage toys and movie memorabilia thrown into the mix.  It was all well curated and immaculately presented but random as heck.  My favourite items was the Model T Ford made entirely  from wood, including its engine parts.  Mr Pict and the boys loved the pinball machines and vintage arcade games – which enabled Mr Pict to relive his misspent childhood.  Our 11 year old loved seeing one of Steve McQueen’s motorbikes, and our 12 year old loved the Coca Cola memorabilia and the vampire seated next to his werewolf rug and Kermit slippers.  I also enjoyed all the vintage advertising, whether it was the graphic design on tin or the bold neon.

I had a vague plan that we could visit the cave that inspired the episode in Twain’s novel where Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher encounter Injun Joe.  The cave had also once been used for experiments regarding the preservation of corpses.  However, we did not really have enough time to invest in a tour of the cave so that idea was nixed.  My other vague plan was to visit Mark Twain’s boyhood home but that was met with groans and sighs from the other Picts.  As they had not read any Twain, I could appreciate that to them it would just be another old house to poke around in.  I think the biggest problem, however, was that everyone was broiling hot (it was 100 degrees out!) and started to get hangry.  Before we left Hannibal, however, I did manage to convince them to let me visit the statue of Huck and Tom that stand on a plinth near Main Street.  The statue was erected in the 1920s and I read somewhere that it was the first public statue to fictional characters in America.  The statue stands in a little green space at the bottom of Cardiff Hill and atop that hill is a lighthouse constructed as a memorial to Twain.  The connection between lighthouses and Twain is lost on me, I must admit, but ascending the hill afforded us some great views over the Mississippi.

Our day ended with a drive to St Louis.  I had hoped to see at least the Arch but I had not thought in advance about the fact we would be reaching there on the evening of Independence Day.  Yeah, it wasn’t going to happen.  We could not get anywhere near the Arch because streets were being cordoned off in advance of the 4th of July celebrations and fireworks.  Indeed, there was not even any affordable parking left in the vicinity.  We, therefore, took in the views of the Arch as we crossed the Mississippi into Illinois and our beds for the night.