Tip for Parents on Tours

Hello parents. I thought it necessary to write you a note about tour etiquette with your little youngsters. We all love kids on tours when they are really riveted to what the tour guide is telling the group, however, we don’t think that they are quite as adorable when they disrupt the tour guide with incessant crying, shouting or the inevitable “I’m bored, let me down, pick me up, look at me, I’m whining.” When your little adorable Minnie Me does any of the above, please take the proper action and remove yourself and your little grasshopper from the group until you can silently rejoin when they settle down. Yes, you paid for the tour, but your child’s tantrums should not deduct from what everyone else in the group has paid to see.

I know most parents already know this about tour etiquette, but apparently there are some who did not get the memo.

Thanks!

Ah, Charleston!

A perfect summer day for me will now forever be walking along the tree-lined streets of Charleston, among the historic mansions embellished with large colorful floral gardens and meandering pathways shaded under canopies of large oaks, willows, and maple trees.

Having never been to Charleston I walked with an unfolded map, popping up my head to find street signs and doing my best impression of Daniel Boone trying to figure out which way’s north. A girl on a bicycle rode up and asked if I knew where I was going. I guess she had seen that impression done by many other tourists before me. “Nope,” I replied, “First time to Charleston. What’s there to see?”

A tip here for future tourists to this city, just say those four words “What’s there to see?” to anyone who lives there, and you will receive a free history lesson, a free map lesson, free tips on the best places to eat, visit and who gives the best tours.

After excitedly telling me all that I should know about her hometown and where I should visit, she said, “I love this city, I grew up here, and I absolutely love it.” A bit of a fanatical fan I thought, but her statement became a common theme with everyone I met who was from Charleston. They love their city!

Using my new found knowledge, I took a tour of one of the historical mansions she recommended. It was previously owned by a wealthy lawyer who lived pretty much how you would expect a wealthy lawyer to live. His house was quite large, furnished with ornate furniture and hand-finished by the best craftsmen he could afford. The centerpiece was a tall oval floating staircase that ascended three floors. Unfortunately, this mansion was not unlike all the other “tourist” homes I have visited where they don’t allow you to take pictures. So I’ll do the best describing it in a word picture for you: It was really nice.

I also visited the waterfront park with a myriad of fountains, tall shady trees, a large gazebo and long L-shaped walkway following the water’s edge. I walked past the fire house where they keep their fire engines, visited sidewalk vendors and small shops, then stopped in to have a couple beers at a nice Scottish pub. I sipped my beer in the nice air conditioning while I watched horse-drawn buggies filled with heat-exhausted tourists go by, listening to all the information from the driver/tour guide they could have learned from my bicycle girl. Silly tourists!

Before visiting the city, Charleston was just a fancy name and a funny dance style to me. But during my stroll around town, I learned that Charleston is more than just a beautiful city with a cool name. It has something to it that is more than the historic homes and a beautiful waterfront. Something more than unbelievably nice people who call Charleston home, even something more than the beautiful parks and tree-lined shady streets, it’s something that I have rarely experienced in a community, and that is the immense and enthusiastic pride the people have for their city – and it’s contagious.

Old Man and the Gazebo

There have been very few cities I have visited that were more beautiful than the historic section of Savannah, Georgia. There are also very few cities that I have visited for a shorter time. But with the time allowed, I took a drive through this beautiful section of Savannah with shady weeping willows, large square parks and in one particular section there was a beautiful gazebo in the middle of the square, so I parked to get a picture.

While I was shooting, I heard someone ask, “You know the story of this gazebo?” Turning to find out who was asking the question, I saw an old man sitting on a park bench looking at me. He exhaled smoke and asked again, “Do you know the story behind this gazebo here?” Well I’m not one to turn down a gazebo story, so I answered quite assuredly, “I don’t believe I do.”

“Well,” he said, “this was given to the city of Savannah by Burt Reynolds, you know, the movie star actor. He was shooting a movie here back in the 60s, or was it the 70s? No matter. I think it was called Alligator, or Gator or something like that. Before he did that Bandit movie, yeah, it wasn’t the Bandit movie. But, he liked the city of Savannah so much that he decided to donate this here gazebo to us. A lot of tourists, just like yourself, drive through the city, and every one of them come here and shoot this here gazebo.” The old man was a friendly sort, so I sat down on the bench and asked him how long he had lived in Savannah.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve lived here all my life. Had a house and raised my daughters right here in Savannah. Now I live across the street in that there old folk’s home.” He pointed with his lit cigarette and dropped a long ash on his sleeve. “Yep, been here all my life. Used to be manager of the drugstore down the way there, then I got too old and they moved me in there across the street. Don’t get out much more than walking over here and sitting on this bench. Don’t mind. Had a good life. Yep, lived here all my life. My family’s from here too. I must be Seventh or Eighth generation to live here. Had a good life. Sorry, I can’t talk much. I got four kinds of lung disease.”

He sounded pretty raspy, but didn’t seem to have much trouble talking. He crushed out his cigarette with his heel, and reached in his shirt pocket for another. “Yep,” he continued, “All my life. But that Burt Reynolds, he sure did like Savannah. Gave us that gazebo, and now everyone stops to take pictures of it. Not even historical, just something made for a movie.”  He coughed with a laugh. We both sat there a while in silence, just looking at the shaded gazebo under a canopy of willow trees and warmed with a late afternoon glow. Then he spoke in a tone of admiration saying, “It sure is pretty.”

I don’t know what Burt Reynolds’ gift means to the city of Savannah, but it certainly means an awful lot to the old man on the park bench. I know he just wanted to share it with somebody. I’m glad it was me.

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Cannon Balls and Mashed Potatoes

Located on the east coast of Florida, just south of Jacksonville and north of Cape Canaveral, is St. Augustine, the oldest European-settled city in America. The seaside paradise where the town of St. Augustine resides was first discovered by the governor of Puerto Rico, Ponce de Leon. This is the same guy the Indians sent on a wild goose chase to find the elusive Fountain of Youth. Soon after Ponce’s discovery of the St. Augustine area, the French sailed in and constructed a girly man fort. This fort didn’t last very long though, because soon after the fort was built, a huge group of Spanish settlers and soldiers arrived with an Admiral Pedro, who had a very long Spanish last name. They knocked down the girly man fort, kicked out the French, planted their Spanish flag, and declared the area property of the Spanish Crown.

The Spanish intuitively knew that more battles would be necessary to keep the land, so they determined that they too needed to build a fort. Forts were really popular in those days. They looked around for building materials and decided to build it with mud and crushed sea shells. I believe this came about because one soldier, I’ll call him Juan, built a sand castle out of mud and crushed sea shells and was astonished the next morning when he found that his little structure hadn’t been demolished by the tide. With Juan’s newly discovered technology, or however they stumbled upon it, they ended up building the entire fort with this mixture of mud and sea shells, and they called it caliche, which means a mud and sea shell mixture. Caliche really looks like stone from a distance, but when you’re up close, you can hear the ocean.

The benefits of caliche became apparent when bad guys arrived with big war ships and started shooting cannon balls at the fort. Unlike structures made of wood or stone, a fort made of caliche absorbs cannon balls, in much the same way peas flicked off a spoon are absorbed into a pile of mashed potatoes. This law of peas and mashed potatoes is an intrinsic characteristic of caliche, which made the fort impregnable and earned it fame for never being captured. On many occasions the city of St. Augustine was sacked, torched, bludgeoned, and had its ashes spat upon by the enemy. And on many occasions, the fort’s high protective walls gave the townspeople of St. Augustine a bird’s eye view to watch their nice little town go up in smoke.

Somewhere along the line, the town of St. Augustine stopped getting destroyed and the fort stopped getting shelled with cannon balls. Then the townspeople built restaurants, ice cream parlors, tourist shops and information booths, and created a PR campaign complete with brochures and information packages. They also erected huge billboards along the interstate to let travelers know what a cool place St. Augustine is to visit. This is pretty much how it remains today.

Touring the beautiful town of St. Augustine is best done on foot. Use both if you absolutely must. For those of you from Robert, Louisiana, they have nice trackless trains you can ride to motor around the city. The knowledgeable drivers give you a history lesson of the town as you watch the buildings blur by. I’m not a fan of trackless trains that give history lessons, so I just meandered through the streets, stopped in some shops, tied my shoe and imagined what it must have been like to live in St. Augustine some 400 years ago. Then I went for some ice cream.

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People are funny

While standing in line to have my picture taken before boarding my ferry to Fort Sumter, I was watching a lady frantically trying to sell the portraits she took of the previous group of passengers as they were unloading from the ferry. It’s a common practice with cruise ships, tours and places like here at the ferry dock, where they snap a photo of your group, then try to sell them to you when you return. As I was watching her, the line of unloading passengers backed up and a blind man with his seeing eye dog stopped right in front of this lady who was holding a up a photo. There was a bit of a pause and then someone in line suggested, “Show it to the dog!”

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Home of the “Right Stuff”

Heading up Florida’s coast toward the hot and humid city of Orlando, I had the choice to spend the day with Mickey Mouse or to visit the Kennedy Space Center. I decided to go where over-the-top fantasies really do come true. The Kennedy Space Center is located near Orlando on a nature preserve called Cape Canaveral, where alligators, snakes, bald eagles, turtles and other native animals get the crap scared out of them at every shuttle launch.

I took a tour of the entire Space Center in NASAs very comfortable air conditioned tour bus, with a soothing, even harmonious, droning engine. Between naps, there are four stops along the route, where you can explore really cool museums, view the launch sites, and watch technicians work on actual modules for the International Space Station.

The moon shot exhibits were my favorite, and also the most difficult for me to get my head around. The absolute audacity and magnitude of the project is quite overwhelming. The early space program is explained in great detail at the Space Center, but here’s my brief summary:

President Kennedy announced that the United States would be the first country to put a man on the moon. “We will do this not because it is easy,” he said “but because it is hard.” The scientists in the early space program were in complete agreement with the last part of the statement.

At that time the space program was having real difficulties launching a rocket without having it disintegrate. Early tests had rockets going off in spirals and blowing up, flying in circles and blowing up, imploding on blastoff, then blowing up, falling over and blowing up or just sitting on the launch pad and blowing up. It was not pretty. Then a breakthrough, a rocket went up perfectly and didn’t blow up. Suddenly, one rocket scientist turned to the other and said, “whee!”

With the successful launch complete, they set out to find some guys to pilot the craft. I imagine the first recruitment phone conversation went something like this:

Recruiter: Hello Mr. Pilot Guy? I’m a recruiter with the space program, and we’re wondering if you would be interested in riding in our rocket.

Pilot Guy: Your rocket?

Recruiter: Uh, yeah. It’s like a missile, only much, much bigger. About 30-stories in height I’d say, jam-packed with highly flammable liquid nitrogen and oxygen. Then we ignite…

Pilot Guy: I know what a damn rocket is…did you say ride in it?

Recruiter: Well, yes sir. We ignite it, which will blast you off into space and…

Recruiter:  Hello?

Fortunately for the space program, a lot of guys were not like my figment Pilot Guy. They were called “test pilots,” which is Latin for “guinea pigs.” They said these fellas had “the right stuff.” In astronaut lingo this means that they weren’t afraid of heights or small spaces, they could endure long periods of time inside a huge washing machine on the final rinse spin cycle, and most importantly, they were certifiably crazy. In fact “lunatic” is actually derived from the word “lunar.” Fitting.

I saw the Saturn 5 full-size rocket replica on display. At the very top of this enormous rocket is a tiny capsule just big enough for 3 guys to squeeze into. As a kid, I really wanted to be an astronaut, but after seeing that tiny capsule on top of this huge 30-story tall rocket that is packed with liquid nitrogen and oxygen – I can state will absolute certainty that I, most assuredly, have the wrong stuff.

The visit to the Kennedy Space Center is an experience I’ll never forget, and I’m glad I skipped out on Mickey to do it. Disney’s fun, but it was awesome to see the rides that are actually expanding our understanding of human possibilities, our world and our universe, even if they are manned by crazy people.

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Get lost in the Keys

When you tell people that you are going down the Florida Keys there seems to be a bittersweet response. They’re glad you get to do it, but wish like hell they were going instead of you. Now that I have been there, I will feel the same way when someone informs me of their great fortune while I’m stuck somewhere else.

I traveled from Homestead, Florida going from town to town across the Keys, and after 127 miles I arrived in Key West. Through the entire trip I was awestruck by the beautiful seascapes. Emerald green water like I’ve never seen, blending into royal blue where the shallow shelf ends and opens to deep water. Sailboats and sport fishing yachts floated by, their shadows followed below, playing on the sand at the bottom of the crystal clear water. And now, here I was in Margaritaville. Shangri-La. Key West. Perfect!

I stopped in for lunch at a place where I could sit on the patio, facing the street so I could people watch. Tourists are always the most fun. After finishing my turkey panini sandwich and fries, I took a walk around town visiting with shop owners and some of the locals. One place in particular that I recommend visiting is Mam’s Café. It’s a tiny shop on a backstreet. Sorry, but that’s the best I can do for directions. The owner is a Jewish grandmother who knows everyone in town, and what their story is. I stopped in for a Coke and ended up spending an hour in conversation with her. She has the Key West attitude down pat, “Today is today, tomorrow is tomorrow. Enjoy your Coke.”

It is my habit to equate any new town with other places I have visited, and in the few hours spent downtown, I got the feel that Key West was kind of a conglomeration of San Francisco – New Orleans – San Carlos, Mexico – and Virginia City. Not an exact correlation, but close.

Like San Francisco, it has a large amount of people I call characters. These are individuals who thrive on being unique and aren’t really impressed with anyone’s status. They like who they are, and emit an air of: “hey, you’re ok too.” They may be rich, they may be poor, but nobody can tell the difference. In short, they don’t let convention get in the way of life. Nice people to be around.

It had the party atmosphere of New Orleans with the bars, nightclubs and their own version of Bourbon Street they call Duval. During the day, Key West is filled with mild-mannered tourists. But when the sun goes down people tend to get really thirsty, they revert to their college days, and memories vanish regarding what the morning brings. But hey! We’re in Key West! Margaritaville! …looking for my – lost shaker of salt ~

Key West was a lot like San Carlos. For those unfamiliar with San Carlos, it is one of my favorite places to go to forget about the world for a while. Located just outside of Guaymas in Sonora, Mexico, this seaside paradise is home to many ex-patriots who spend their days sportfishing and evenings watching the sun go down with friends and a cooler of beer. Before Key West, I had never been anyplace else where tomorrow is only a concept, deadlines don’t exist, and the most important thing is to live in the moment. That kind of living is really addictive, and makes you want to stay forever.

The last place it reminded me of was Virginia City, Nevada, an old mining town just to the southeast of Reno. Most people probably know this city by the popular 1960s TV show Bonanza. I don’t know what business the Cartwrights were conducting there, but they seemed to mention Virginia City every episode. Historically, it was home to one of the largest silver mines in the west. Eventually the silver ran out and the mine shut down, leaving behind a skeleton of what the town once was. Now the city is a series of souvenir shops and saloons. And Key West has a whole lot of these businesses helping the community survive. Good business to have in places like these, because there is always somebody who will spend good money to have a Virginia City tin cup, or Key West printed on a conch shell. We’re a funny bunch you know.

I left Key West longing to go back someday and spend forever there. Someday perhaps I will.

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