The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Home Archives for General Summer Vacation

Day Two: mountains, rain, rednecks, and yinzers

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This is the third installment of my summer road trip travelogue, starring Artificially Sweetened (AS), Cupcake, and this Turkey.

Morning came and we awoke. As I exited the bathroom, I found AS and Cupcake out in the room playing their respective computers like Vladimir Horowitz played his Steinway. This is a vacation, already? Oy! I wrested them from their screens and we packed up for departure. The destination for Day Two would be Pittsburgh, but first, a taste of the mountains was in store.

Just like home.
I thought we were on vacation.

We descended to the lobby to check out. Cupcake admonished me for averting the checkout line and just leaving my key cards, stating that they would likely charge me for three or four days. I didn’t feel the need to argue with a teenager who somehow surmised that she had learned all about how hotels operate, but AS chimed in that I knew what I was doing, so I didn’t need to. I just wanted to hit the road.

Staying away from Belle Chere, the art festival we had stumbled into in downtown Asheville, we found the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is one of my favorite scenic roads in all the land. After all, not only is there abundant mountain scenery, but also speeding is a Federal offense. Zbeard had once fallen asleep while driving with me as a passenger on this very stretch of road. The sinuous, narrow, two-lane strip has some impressive overlooks and drop-offs at elevations up to and greater than one mile. I think the ladies were enjoying the scenery, if not my driving.

Wounded Butterfly
Wounded Butterfly

After a while, I felt that Cupcake, who had been taking pictures through the not too clean van window, needed to get out and take some non-occluded shots for a change. I pulled off the parkway onto one of its many scenic overlooks where she could better indulge her photographic creativity. Meanwhile, AS was rescuing a partially disabled black butterfly, at least from her perspective. Soon, I heard the inevitable bickering, “Mom, like you’re not saving it! You’re like killing it. You like rubbed the black flight powder off its wings!” Then AS responded saying something about like this and like that and whateverrrrr. They were both speaking Valley Girl.

Oh, no! It’s contagious! I knew that I would have to recall the entire script from Clueless and try to pepper my sentences with “like” in self-defense from then on. [Read more…]

Day One: from flatlands to the mountains

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This is the second installment of my summer road trip travelogue, starring Artificially Sweetened (AS), Cupcake, and this Turkey.

As Day One unfolded, we managed to survive the argument about who told whom to be ready at which time versus who was actually ready when. It didn’t matter. We were ready to rock and roll, with our morning faces in full bloom. I shut off the house water and the water heater, and reprogrammed the air conditioners to keep the house toasty, but not incendiary, while we were gone. And before we had left I had made a mental note to pry more on what are scented air filters so that the house wouldn’t go fetid and dingy by the time we got back.

We had decided to use AS’s van, which was roomy and would be comfortable for a party of three and “all our crap” as Cupcake called it. As we staged for departure, we loaded up the van with our crap, AS called shotgun, and away we went. Cupcake was talkative for the first 50 miles or so, then she fell silent. She had brought along an iPod, a perpetually attached cell phone, a summer reading assignment, and a pillow. So, she was either listening to music, reading, sleeping, talking with or texting her sister or her boyfriend, or engaging in some combination of those things. Occasionally, we would alert her to the presence of something photographable, such as the “Welcome to Georgia” sign, whereupon she would snap a picture while reading and listening to the iPod.

The first memorable quote occurred when Cupcake asked whether we would be stopping anywhere or driving straight through to the first day’s destination, which, as I’ve said, happened to be Asheville, NC. AS saved me the trouble of responding. “Of course we’ll be stopping. We all do have bladders, you know!”

When we stopped at the overcrowded South Carolina welcome rest stop on I-95,  nobody’s bladder was in need of evacuation. I guess we all don’t have bladders. In any case, there was a Geocache at the rest stop that I had previously searched for when it was missing, so I wanted to see if it was there. That gave us the opportunity to get out and walk around a little. After we had nabbed the cache, we walked back to the van. As AS passed the rest area depositorium, she stated that she intended to use the facilities. ?? ???? ??????? I told her that we’d see her back at the van. She asked if either of us had to use the toilet; Cupcake and I demurred. AS grunted, “Hmph!” Now, I know that my bladder was trained on much beer over the years, but I had to wonder about Cupcake. Perhaps she had precociously and furtively pursued a similar training regimen with the same foamy substance. [Read more…]

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

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I recently returned from a fine, energizing—albeit debilitating—road trip which served as my 2010 summer vacation. Originally, I had wanted to scrawl out some private travel notes so my aging brain could remember it at a later time, but then I thought, “What the hell? Why not give everyone a dose of my literary narcotic.” So, here I am, giving you the sleeping pill you knew you needed.

Accordingly, I have decided to break up the travelogue into individual posts for each day of the journey. I will post pieces as I complete them. Just watch the category “Summer Vacation” for new installments. Of course, as I add segments, I will link them in succession.

I have to say that this summer vacation road trip differed from previous ones because it was not a solo sojourn or a bi-geekal man-o-rama. Our previous vacation was at Isle Of Wight, where stayed at this amazing cottage, you can check log cabin prices at Fairway Holiday Park Isle Of Wight if you would like to visit this cabin. We had an amazing time last year and we would love to go back to that beautiful cabin. Coming back to this year’s vacation, the artificially Sweetened (hereinafter referred to as AS), my friend, companion, and consort of the past three and a half years, whose schedule has heretofore precluded taking lengthy trips together, finally was able to join me for one. This one would work out to be about ten days. As our planning discussions progressed, we included AS’s oldest offspring, Cupcake. The other two kids were going to be visiting Grandpa during the same period.

Cupcake, Artificially Sweetened, and The Nittany Turkey
Cupcake, Artificially Sweetened, and The Nittany Turkey

Thus having established the “who”, “when”, and “why”, I took over the planning. I tried to ask AS about various options several times, but most of the time I got the same response: “We’ll go where you want to go.” I wondered if they would be happy with the non-spectacular agenda I had in mind. Although I was pretty sure that AS would like whatever I liked, I was concerned that Cupcake, a tech savvy vixen who is fourteen going on 21, would be bored out of her skull. However, AS told me to continue with the planning and that Cupcake would like whatever I decided but would never admit it. I remember when I was fourteen, when the family piled into the Model T for a spin (I think we did that once), I was indeed bored out of my gourd.

I could say that I spent many weeks doing the planning, but I actually did it in a couple of days. I knew where I wanted to go and what I wanted to see—mostly places I had been before but wanted to share with the significant people in my life. AS had seen some of the featured stops in North Carolina, but Cupcake hadn’t; meanwhile, neither had spent much time in Pennsylvania, and certainly not the places I would take them. My main task would be deciding where to stop and for how long. I decided to stay overnight in Asheville, North Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; State College, Pennsylvania; and, eventually, on the way home, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The remaining time would be spent with my old friends (and I do mean old) Toejam and Judytam, in northeastern Pennsylvania—anthracite country.

That was the plan, and we adhered to it fairly tightly. However, we decided to spend a few hours in Washington, D.C. on our way back south from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.

As you might imagine, the nearly 3,000 mile, 10-day voyage was replete with twists and turns, wisecracks and made-up facts, new scenery for all but me, and supposedly, a break from the mid-summer Florida heat. Our travels began in my driveway on a Saturday. Our first stop would be Asheville.

In the next installment, I’ll bring you our first day.