Category Archives: food destinations

Civil Rights, long stretches of beach and a whole lot of writing

Sometimes that “what should I write about?” falls right into your lap.

While travelling, we got a heads up through a work email that January 15 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day) was to be the launch of the brand new United States Civil Rights Trail. Took us about five seconds to make a decision, tap the new coordinates into our GPS and follow the two-hour detour to Greensboro, North Carolina.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greensboro was home to the first student lunch counter sit-ins, an action that (according to MLK) gave the Civil Rights movement “a much needed shot in the arm.” That very first lunch counter sit in was held on February 1, 1960 by four young students from A&T University (Jesse Jackson’s alma mater). The stop on the new Civil Rights Trail is at the original F.W. Woolworth’s building, the site of the lunch counter sit-in. Now it is the home of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. The museum is a worthwhile stop on its own, but the highlight is definitely the completely restored lunch counter. It’s a sombre, but inspiring sight.

Craving some ocean waves, we drove southeast to our first week of camping at Huntington Beach State Park, about 20 miles south of Myrtle Beach. Great park (surprisingly, about 80% full), nice long stretch of beach, wonderful marshland boardwalks. We did detour into MB for an excellent lunch at Croissant’s Bistro & Bakery (shrimp and grits, chicken and waffles, with a shared slice of key lime pie).

It turned out to be almost a full week of catching up on writing assignments at the lovely Waccamaw Neck Public Library. Can’t end this update without a thank you to Luke from Georgetown Auto Glass whose mobile service came and quickly stopped two windshield chips. Thanks Luke!

Colorado National Monument & area – pretty photogenic …

Talk about a drop off the cliff!

The U.S. National Park Service is made up of many different types of sites. Two of the most common are National Parks and National Monuments, which are often confused. The parks have been protected for eternity by an act of Congress; monuments have been created by presidential proclamation. It doesn’t mean that there is an obelisk or statue at the latter. It’s a common misconception – the park ranger at Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction, CO told us the oddest question he gets is, “Where is the monument?”

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Well, the whole park at Colorado National Monument is the monument. There was little in the valley communities below to prepare us for the jaw-dropping scenery along the 23-mile, Rim Rock Drive following the park’s exposed ridge. Craig – ever the boundary pusher – bellied up to the cliff edge to get photos. I did a mental update on our life insurance policies.

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A highlight for us was actually inside, at the Visitor Center where the excellent short film was full of ah-ha moments about the geology of the entire Colorado Plateau. It’s available on YouTube and shouldn’t be missed if you are heading west (and especially if you are a bit of a Geology Geek).

In a nutshell, 80 million years ago, this area was flat. Between 70 and 40 million years ago, moderately-strong earthquakes along the visible Redlands Fault created the tilt and shift in huge layers of rock, forming basins and uplifts. The faultline runs right through the park and we crisscrossed it several times – the erosion of the last 10 million years has exposed the actual fault. Subsequent erosion slowly removed loose and weaker rocks that crumble, creating dramatic canyons and spires of the rocks more resistant to wind and water.

We hiked a few trails (gotta get out of the van!) along cliff edges dotted with a sparse growth pinyon-juniper woodland. Many of the scrubby junipers – scaly leaves and waxy, blue berries – are 800-years-old. In the distance we could see a group of rock climbers who’d made it to the summit of vertiginously-high Independence Rock.

Back at valley level we overnighted and dined out in Grand Junction, a college town much the same size as our hometown. The pedestrian-friendly, downtown main street looks as though it has triumphed over the hit by the big box stores on city’s edge. There are independent, interesting eateries and shops, lots of places to sit and relax, and art sculptures that range from conventional to whimsical.

Colorado is known for craft breweries, so we ate dinner at Rockslide Restaurant and Brewery, the city’s first brew pub located in a historic, circa 1900s brick building. The menu ranged well beyond standard pub fare and there was a half-dozen of the brewery’s handcrafted beers on tap. The most popular is the Widowmaker Wheat, a mildly hopped blend of pale and wheat malts. Craig (who loves Guinness) went for the Big Bear Oatmeal Stout – declared as superb!

The next day we had a late afternoon lunch at Café Sol (also on Main Street) – a fantastic dining experience. Clean, funky, colourful with an interesting menu of soups, salads, paninis and desserts created with mainly organic ingredients. Incredibly fresh foods and enormous portions (they have self-serve To-Go boxes). We were splitting a side salad that could have easily satisfied four to five.

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While we do have a strong preference for the more rustic state and national park campgrounds, our spot at Junction West RV Park hit several markers: it was super clean, centrally located for all the local stops we wanted to make, super clean, had a fast Wi-Fi signal so we could write and file stories, was quiet and spacious . . .  and did we mention super clean?

www.colorado.com 

www.visittheusa.ca

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Jo talks travel on CBC’s Candy Palmater Show

P7190240Wow … that was fun!

This afternoon I got to sit in the studio and talk about my favourite Canadian destinations on The Candy Palmater Show on CBC Radio.

It was tough to whittle the list down (I could have gone on – and on – for an hour rather than the 12 minute time slot I had).

You can find the link here to the CBC spot and the audio: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/candy/the-candy-palmater-show-for-june-30-2016-1.3659588/workin-for-the-weekend-getaway-travel-writer-shares-her-favourite-canadian-destinations-1.3659697

Thanks CBC. And Happy Canada Day!

Asheville: Loophole of the Bible Belt

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Oh, could most tourist destinations learn a thing or two from Asheville, North Carolina. This mid-size city in the Appalachian Mountains has lots going for it, not the least of which is the stunning scenery. On the urban end, the city’s energized and funky downtown core offers up a nice mix of used bookstores, speciality shops and independently-owned bars and restaurants. And most of it is dog friendly too. Rigby was welcomed into one store after another – especially the Three Dog Bakery where the sign on the door informed customers, Owners on Leash Welcome.

The locals like to joke about liberal-leaning Asheville being “the loophole in the Bible Belt.” There’s lots to see and do, including music, although we focused our time in the city on food, walking, soaking in the architecture and enjoying the work of local artisans. Our highlights? Read on . . .

Art Deco: Downtown is a mix of beautifully restored heritage buildings – with the nation’s largest collection of Art Deco architecture outside of Miami.

Southern eats: Even the funky-style eateries support the culture and heritage of the Southern mountains. We ate a great meal at Early Girl Eatery with its all-day breakfast and Southern standards on the menu (biscuits and gravy, fried green tomatoes, shrimp and grits and a North Carolina specialty, grilled pimento cheese sandwich).

Asheville Bee Charmer: Think all things bee-related and you get the idea. The new Bee Charmer has two locations, one in the heart of town and the other in the up-and-coming arts district of West Asheville. Owner Jillian Kelly is 100 per cent committed to connecting with ethical beekeepers around the world. The shop’s warmly- glowinghoney tasting bar is a blast and a way to try before you buy while learning a little about the intricacies of bees and honey production. If it’s about bees, Jillian knows it all.

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Battery Park Book Exchange & Champagne Bar: We love most bookstores but we really, really loved Battery Park on Page Avenue (right in the centre of town). A visit is like slipping into a good friend’s sumptuously-decorated living room – couches and chairs, artwork on the walls, thick Persian rugs, table lamps – with the addition of thousands of (mainly) used books filling rows and rows of tall shelves. Music softly plays in the background (“we’re a conversational bar”) and well-behaved dogs are welcome. Owner Thomas Wright quips that he is “selling buggy whips” but we were instantly hooked. Oh yeah, there’s a well-appointed bar that serves champagne and wine. So comfortable, it was hard to leave.

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Song of the Wood: A short drive outside Asheville is the stunning home and workshop of hammered dulcimer maker, Jerry Read Smith. Jerry is a skilled artisan and gracious host who loves to talk music, craft and woodworking to anyone with an appreciation for fine workmanship. He showed us his latest commission – number 950 in a long career than spans three decades. “Every single aspect of it makes a difference. A mahogany bridge will be different than a rosewood bridge,” he says. “The more you play it, the better it stays in tune.” For those who don’t have a clue what a hammered dulcimer is, take a look and listen at his excellent website (tip: it’s a percussion string instrument with about 100 strings in five octaves). He describes the unique sound best when he says: “Every note rings as long as it wants to. I think of it as music set free.”

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Biltmore Estate: This magnificent piece of architecture – at 250 rooms it is America’s largest house – is a peek into how the .001 per cent live. The estate built by George Vanderbilt in 1895 stretches across 8,000 acres, getting in and out involves parking and shuttle rides and once you are in the estate home you will be agog at the antiques, furnishings, architecture and lifestyle. It’s an Asheville must-see.

 

Banjo + Shelby = Earl Scruggs

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The banjo warrants a lot more respect than it generally gets. The place to learn this – if you doubt us – is the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, North Carolina. The instrument came to America in the holds of slave ships: like many other imports, it was taken up and embraced by the Irish/Scots settlers and remade into a distinctly American phenomenon. And of the many who have picked out a song there is no one with the stature of homeboy Earl Scruggs (1924-2012). This hardscrabble son of a sharecropper did for the banjo what Jimi Hendrix did for the electric guitar: he showed everyone what was possible.

Shelby is at the hub of the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina, which wind through the foothills of the state. This region produced more than its share of country, bluegrass, old-time and gospel music – and the fusing of these styles gave rise to a uniquely American sound and sensibility. Performed at the level of execution that Scruggs and someone like comedian Steve Martin achieve, it is nothing short of breathtaking to listen to. If your first impression of Earl Scruggs calls to mind the theme music of the Beverly Hillbillies, well, okay. Flatt and Scruggs have impressed themselves into popular music and culture forever.

But the three-finger rolling style that Scruggs innovated — “ten notes per second with a melody in the middle of it” — transformed that instrument and launched, with Bill Monroe, a style that finds a massive worldwide audience and paved the way for next generation innovators like Béla Fleck, the jazz banjo virtuoso.

The Earl Scruggs Center does justice to his music and history. Centred in downtown Shelby, it is a state of the art exhibition – complete with a banjo petting zoo – that brings you into Scruggs’ life, his art and his politics.

Your first encounter is with the instruments of his childhood, behind glass, where you see his fathers’ guitar and violin. Music, you discern, was their only form of entertainment growing up in the hill country around Shelby.

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The Center tells this story in multiple interactive ways. You can strum an electronic banjo or guitar at a large interactive digital video table where you can also isolate individual tracks to hear them out of context from the music. You can review the history of early bluegrass – from the union of Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs – and then trace the history of Earl through his opposition to the Vietnam War and his fusion of his cherished bluegrass with the rock music of his sons, in the Earl Scruggs Review, in the early 1970s. It’s fascinating and sobering and you come away with a whole new respect for the man and the music.

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The coolest thing about Scruggs was that he carried the music he loved all his life into every change that came through his life – “chasing the light,” as he described it, never letting his fingers rest until he picked his last roll.

ALSO IN THE AREA:

  • The Don Gibson Theater is an intimate (400 seats), soft-seat concert and film venue. Don Gibson is best known for his country hit, I Can’t Stop Loving You, which has been recorded by more than 700 artists.scruggsblogphoto5
  • The local Alston Bridges BBQ serves pulled pork with a vinegar-based sauce (true North Carolina style), hushpuppies and their signature red slaw (ketchup is the secret addition).

Georgia’s rich music history: Athens and Augusta

Cool things come out of university towns. The critical mass of students questing for identity and meaning, the energy of artists looking to push their own – and your – boundaries, the enabling atmosphere of a major learning institution in an era of political and cultural ferment – this combination is likely to give rise to innovations some of which will proceed to transform far beyond the municipal boundaries of their city of origin. So it is with Athens, site of the University of Georgia at Athens (UGA) and home to at least two (so far) institutions of the 20th century’s music scene: The B-52s and R.E.M.

Athens seems like a cool place to live. It’s certainly a cool place to visit. The city seems to grow out of the university grounds – which are lovely, spacious and extravagant. It’s a big city on a human scale. Lots of funky coffee shops, restaurants and bistros, bars featuring live music, a couple of cool bookstores, comic stores and used vinyl and CD outlets (including the famous WUXTRY – Georgia’s oldest independently-owned record store – where the members of R.E.M. would congregate). These co-exist on pleasantly shaded streets with upper-end shoe, clothing and sunglasses shops making for a pleasant walking experience. We did a tour with Paul Butchart, a local historian who gives Walking Music Tours of Athens’ rich musical history. Like everywhere else, live music venues opened and closed and relocated and went under at a furious pace – but out of this at least two major institutions attained escape velocity and transformed a corner of popular music.

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I did make a point, some years ago, of doing some serious listening to Michael Stipe, et al., – who emerged from various university courses at UGA to form R.E.M. These guys produced album after album of intelligent rock music. From their punk roots playing the dives and student bars in Athens, they grabbed a significant share of critical and popular appeal and rode it to its natural conclusion. When the band realized they had attained all there was to attain in pop stardom, they wound it up. What they left behind is a catalogue of excellent, insightful, danceable and thoughtful rock and roll music. Whatever the various members do next, they can be proud of R.E.M.’s legacy of music and politics.

Augusta became the home of The Godfather of Soul, Mr. James Brown. Here’s a guy with a legacy to astound. Is there another figure from the 20th century who lived long enough to put his stamp on so many different styles of music? His legacy touches rock, blues, R&B, rap, hip-hop and, of course, soul.

Not bad for a former shoeshine boy from the streets of Augusta. His life size statue stands on the centre of the boulevard on downtown Broad Street.

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Of course James Brown – they call him “Mr. Brown” in Augusta – showed promise very early. From there it was just a matter of turning talent into opportunity, but if Brown had anything other than talent it was vision: a crystalline conviction of what his sound and stage deportment was all about.

You can divine some of this at the Augusta Museum of History where they have curated a James Brown exhibit that takes you from his early youth to the final performance of his unnaturally long career. A few tidbits:

  • 95% of his stage suits and costumes were handmade.
  • He often played 300 shows a year.
  • He was the originator of “starting on the one.”
  • He was a self-taught musician with a love for gospel music.
  • He had perfect pitch.
  • He was a highly religious man.
  • He had a full hair salon in his home.
  • The dance moves he created circa 1968 were later copied by Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake.

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There’s lots more to see in Augusta too. This was – before the Civil War – a prosperous economic crossroads through which cotton and various other commodities passed en route to the ports of Savannah and Charleston. In the course of its economic development, wealthy families injected their fortunes into some pretty impressive – even by today’s standards – real estate and architecture. Well worth seeing. As is the lovely Riverwalk that features a perfect little amphitheatre looking over the river.

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EATING & SLEEPING IN ATHENS: We stopped for lunch on the dog-friendly patio at Big City Bread Cafe for a delicious Turkey Burger with a side order of Bleu Cheese Fries (yes, house cut fries topped with blue cheese and served with garlic aioli and scallions).

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We bypassed the campgrounds and stayed overnight at the dog-friendly, LEED Gold Certified Hotel Indigo, a short walk to the downtown Athens area. The service was great and the beds even better!

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LOCAL LEGENDS FROM AUGUSTA:

  • Ty Cobb retired in Augusta
  • Bobby James brought Masters level golf to Augusta
  • James Brown, Oliver Hardy, Butterfly McQueen, Laurence Fishburne and Brenda Lee are all from Augusta.

WATCH THE THEATRE: The film Get On Up (2014) is about the life of Mr. James Brown.

Macon: “Something in the water”

Travelling from north to south our focus was on sticking as close to the coastline as possible and experiencing everything that is unique about where salt water meets land  – from shrimp boats to lighthouses to incredible stretches of wild beach.

Once we hit the borderline at Georgia-Florida, we bounced back northward, but on the return trip we headed inland, looking for music destinations and regional food highlights. Boy, did we ever find a goldmine at the small city of Macon, Georgia!

There’s a word for it: SYNERGY. It’s that magic moment when – for reasons no one fully understands – the total is greater than the sum of its parts. This happens all the time, but occasionally breaks out with transformative impact. Macon is one of those places where – at a particular moment – big things happened because the stars aligned.

It brings to mind the establishment of Capricorn Records in 1969 and the recording of the first Allman Brothers Band album. Although not a commercial success at the time, the record has since come to be seen, in the words of one critic, as “the best debut album ever delivered by an American blues band, a bold, powerful, hard-edged, soulful essay in electric blues with a native Southern ambience.” More to the point, the record put Macon on the map as the preferred destination for what would come to the called Southern Rock.

Craig savoured the displays at The Big House, a lovingly curated collection of thousands of articles – instruments, clothing, hand-written lyrics, posters, tickets and rooms of furnishings. The Big House is the spiritual and actual home of the original Allman Brothers Band – the members lived and worked from here communally in the early 1970s. It is now a museum of all things ABB.

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But Macon has other claims to boast too: it’s the city that birthed Little Richard and Otis Redding. This is an incredible amount of world-class talent for such a small city (population: 90,000). The locals like to joke that “it must be something in the water.”

Of Otis Redding there is much to say. He died at the peak of his considerable power, age 26, when his plane went down en route to a gig. But the 300 songs in his catalogue and the stamp he put onto R&B and soul music have long out-lived him. It’s ironic that his best-known song – (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay – is so unlike most of the other songs in his catalogue, and that he never got to perform it. The plane crash that took his life was a mere three days after he recorded the piece. It was his biggest hit and his first million seller. But you have to see a performance, perhaps from his tour of the United Kingdom, of Try A Little Tenderness so see how this man could bring an audience to frenzy.

We had the chance to sit down with Redding’s daughter, Karla Redding, who reminisced about her dad. “My favourite piece is Love Man,” she said. “Because it’s a pure description of the man he was.” Karla spoke of his commitment to family first and foremost and his obsession with ice cream (especially butter pecan). After we left the Otis Redding Foundation and Mini-Museum we went to the waterfront to see the statue of Redding.

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“Little Richard,” Wayne Penniman, is authoritatively one of the founders of rock ’n’ roll. In his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ringo Starr jokingly blames “Little Richard” – for whom they opened in Hamburg – for the sound and stage energy of The Beatles. No less a figure than Mick Jagger claimed that he “couldn’t believe the power of Little Richard onstage. He was amazing.” Richard’s life story exceeds anything in fiction: he veers in and out of several near encounters with death, finds Jesus, loses him, finds him again and is condemned and honoured along the way for being so far ahead of his time. At this point in time there is no Macon museum dedicated to Little Richard . . . but, who knows what’s coming soon?

We finished up our incredible Macon stay at the H&H Soul Food Restaurant. The H&H was a favourite of “starving musicians” who found friendly faces (and meals) in the original co-owners “Mama” Inez and “Mama” Louise. It’s a Macon institution, an authentic “meat & three” as these traditional Southern eateries are called. The menus offer a meat – from meatloaf to fried chicken – and a choice of three sides (mac & cheese, fried okra, sweet potatoes, collards, etc.). The Allman Brothers members ate here as did Otis Redding when he was a member of Johnny Jenkins’ Pinetoppers.  The locals like to call the women who founded the H&H “the Matriarchs of Macon’s historical music scene.”

Topped it all off with a great overnight at the Lake Tobesofkee Arrowhead Campground just 15 minutes outside of town. Spotlessly clean, well maintained sites and dark, dark, dark at night.

Gracious Savannah

Savannah is a city for walking.

It’s the southernmost of a trio of towns and cities that embody the grace and architecture of the Old South: Charleston, Beaufort and Savannah. They are all beautiful and inclusive today but they have histories rooted in the plantation-era days of enormous wealth concentrated in the hands of very few, built on the backs of tens of thousands of slaves brought in from West Africa. We kept this in mind as we looked in awe at the stately mansions that were once the home of plantation owners and cotton brokers and strolled along the historic riverfront.

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We actually started our tour with a ride into the heart of the downtown National Historic Landmark district on the hop-on/hop-off Old Savannah Tours trolley (it was dog-friendly, so Rigby hopped onboard too). We got off at Chippewa Square – the green square where Ton Hanks sat on a bus stop bench in the movie Forrest Gump. Savannah was designed on a system of grids – the whole city is a very orderly crosshatch of streets punctuated by large green public squares. Streets and squares are lined by a cathedral of trees: enormous live oaks, hanging with Spanish moss.

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When General Sherman arrived in Savannah he was so taken with the city that he sent a telegram to President Lincoln handing the city to the president as a Christmas present. Savannah was spared Sherman’s March to the Sea.

We were fascinated by the infusion of Gullah culture (the Gullah people of the Lowcountry trace their rich heritage to the African slaves brought in from the Angola region of West Africa). In the vernacular of the Gullah, the word haints means ghosts. Look on the ceiling of many front porches (from small cottages to large mansions) and you’ll find it has been painted blue. The Gullah people believe the colour blue keeps the haints
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We walked and walked along cobbled streets made from the stones and bricks that were packed as ballast into the holds of ships that crossed the Atlantic as part of The Triangular Trade (goods from Europe to West Africa; West African slaves to the New World; plantation goods such as sugar and cotton from ports like Savannah to Europe). Savannah emerged as the major port in the state of Georgia.

All that walking deserves a little indulgence. And that’s how we finished our day in Savannah – with lunch and ice cream at the famous Leopold’s Ice Cream. Leopold’s has been around for almost 100 years and has developed quite a following (it regularly makes the list of best ice cream shops in the world). The patio out from was dog friendly and they even brought Rigby her own tiny cone in a cup. Now, that’s Southern hospitality!

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Savannah in the artistic community:

  • The bus stop/park bench scenes in Forrest Gump were filmed at Chippewa Square.
  • In Something To Talk About, Julia Roberts peers into a downtown restaurant and sees her philandering husband at dinner with another woman.
  • Savannah resident Johnny Mercer wrote Moon River while at his downtown home.
  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was completely filmed in Savannah.
  • The Civil War film, Glory, was filmed in and around the city.

South Carolina’s beautiful Lowcountry

Spoiler alert: There is nothing we didn’t like about the Lowcountry just outside Beaufort called the Sea Islands, a collection of small islands huddled together, separated by tidal creeks and connected by short bridges.

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The definite highlight was our stay at beautiful Hunting Island State Park – we loved it so much that we extended our visit for an additional five days. We’d set our alarm to a pre-sunrise hour, walk five minutes to the beach and be there for the sunrise over the Atlantic. In the distance there were shrimp boats (no doubt harvesting our dinner that evening). Rigby was fascinated by the small fiddler crabs scuttling along the sand (South Carolina beaches are on-leash dog friendly). The beach is long and luxurious, anchored by a lighthouse at one end and a sweeping curve of sand at the far reach. The early morning sun cast a warm glow on the palmetto palms that line the back of the dunes. It set up each day perfectly.

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In addition to the natural beauty of the Lowcountry, this region is steeped in history.

There is a long tradition of shrimping. We’d stop at Gay Fish Co. (just at the bridge from St. Helena Island to Hunting Island) to buy the freshest shrimp we’d ever tasted. Half-a-dozen shrimp boats were tied to the rickety docks. Inside, the woman weighing our daily ration told us their docks stood in for the Alabama coastline in the filming of the shrimping scenes in the hit movie, Forrest Gump. On the wall there’s a framed photo of Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise playing out a scene from the movie.

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We visited the Penn Center Historic District, preserving the Gullah community on St. Helena Island. The Gullah people – the descendants of enslaved Africans – are known for their unique culture and traditions imported from West Africa (including the weaving of beautiful sweetgrass baskets). Before bridges were built, these islands were isolated and the culture was protected and thrived. Gullah culture is all over the Sea Islands, but the Center is the only spot where the buildings remain intact and protected as a National Historic Site. When the program at the site opened it was the first school in the nation to provide formal education for freed African slaves; a path to liberation. Over time, the focus shifted to civil rights and social justice issues. Now, the Center is a part of the National Park Service’s Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, preserving this unique culture, traditions and heritage.

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One of our favourite meals was at the modest Gullah Grub Restaurant. Our lunch started with squares of rich cornbread, still warm from the oven, and glasses of “swamp water” (a mix of sweet tea and lemonade, called an Arnold Palmer on the mainland). Traditional Gullah dishes are based on whatever is seasonally available – rice, tomatoes, okra, fish. We ate local: a starter of she-crab soup, barbecue ribs and fried chicken with a side of collards doused with vinegar for some extra tang.

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We’ll be back . . . again and again and again.