Travelcraft Journal – Page 83 – Championing the makers, artists, and wanderers in all of us.

September 10, 2015

Landmark Routes

When you get to a new city, do you ever find yourself using one particular route as your main reference for navigating the area? It doesn’t have to be the main street, just your main street – somewhere that connects where you’re staying with places you want to go.

It may not even be a regular surface street. It could be a transit line, a freeway, a pathway. It’s where you say, “if I can find _____, I can follow it to where I need to be.”

For example, our Denver-area friends humored us by aways giving us directions – whether it was to the Botanic Gardens or just a nearby drugstore – that started us off on Arapahoe Road. Since that’s how we got to their house, that’s where we felt most oriented.

(Farther north, my Denver street of choice becomes Colfax, because it goes all the way across town and still passes landmarks I remember from childhood, like Casa Bonita and Elitch’s.)

When I spent a summer in Sevilla, Spain, there was a particular bus (maybe the 34-?) that stopped near our dorms, ran by several of the University’s campuses and to the city center. Most of the time, it was the only bus I needed. If I ended up in another part of the city, I just had to find a 34 bus, and it would take me home.

Is there a name for this type of central navigational lifeline? I feel like we need one. Landmark route? Reference road?

I’m open to suggestions.

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PS Yes, that last photo (probably taken by someone in our group) is a skinnier, not-glasses-needing, 1999 version of me in Sevilla. ¡Viva España!

September 7, 2015September 8, 2015

Moving in

We finally have everything moved over to the new place – bookcases that need to be reunited with their shelves, a disassembled desk, an armchair that’s still covered in shrink wrap, stacks of boxes and bags and baskets.

But we got our bed set up. And the coffeemaker plugged in. And, even if there’s nowhere to sit in the living room, the patio is quite cozy.

Despite this cardboard jungle phase, it’s already starting to feel like home.

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September 3, 2015

Awash

I have a packed suitcase, and I won’t be sleeping in my own bed tonight – but I’m not going anywhere.

My bed, my dresser, and various other furniture items and boxes of things are already in our new place, down the road.

Moving is a little like standing in a doorway. Or like the feeling when the edge of an ocean wave foams up over your ankles and then pulls back, dragging the sand beneath your feet with it, until just when you think you might lose your footing completely, and it withdraws, leaving you alone to steady yourself in the sand. Piece by piece, everything shifts, and then it’s done, and you find your balance again.

Tonight, we’ll roll out sleeping bags on the floor. In a matter of days, we’ll have these rooms emptied and cleaned out, and we’ll lock the door on the bittersweet memories of our years here and begin to settle in to a new space.

It’s only a few miles away, but it feels like a fresh start.

August 31, 2015January 3, 2018

Grandma’s Sunburn Remedy

I sunburn easily.

I blame my genes. Basically, I descend from a mélange of peoples, who, I assume, just kept walking north until they got to the regions of Europe that were cold and cloudy enough not to punish their pallid skin.

Generations later, I was born in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, wearing the maladapted melanin of my kin. Here, summer rays can be intense enough to burn a Celtic lass like me within 10 minutes.

My grandma used to tell me to put vinegar on sunburns. “The sooner the better,” she’d say. Being a teenager, I’d roll my eyes and/or ignore her advice.

Then, after one sunburn that left my skin ablaze like a village after a Viking* raid, I finally gave in and tried it. The pain was gone almost instantly. I did smell like vinegar, but I had no intentions of going back outside anytime soon anyway.

Now I wear a moisturizer with sunscreen in it daily. If I do get a sunburn, I have no problem reaching for the vinegar and gently daubing some on. Totally worth smelling like a salad dressing (or maybe a jar of pickles) for a few hours.

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*I also have Viking ancestors. I like to think of them as not the village-destroying type, though. Maybe horned-hat-wearing and fierce – like you wouldn’t want to mess with them – yet somehow kind hearted. (This may not be historically accurate.)

August 29, 2015August 29, 2015

7 Things You Didn’t Expect to Find in Madison County, Indiana

There’s a view that the middle of the U.S. is nothing but farm fields.

Drive an hour or so northeast of the of the Indianapolis Airport, and you’ll find yourself in Madison County (not the one with the bridges). It has its share of agriculture, for sure, but there are also cultural and historical sites, and people passionate about things they make.

I bet you didn’t know you could find all this in Madison County, Indiana:

1. A performing arts theater that makes you feel like you’re sitting in a Spanish courtyard under a starry sky. The Paramount Theatre Centre is one of only a handful of remaining atmospheric theaters by architect John Eberson.

2. Large, 2000-year-old heaps of earth built up by mysterious ancient people(s) to align with heavenly bodies at Mounds State Park.

3. Free public wifi throughout downtown Anderson (the county seat), thanks to dozens of hotspots. (PDF map)

4. The House of Glass, a family-run artisan glass studio, which still crafts each piece by hand in the tradition of their French ancestors.

5. A gospel music recording studio that also serves insanely good house-made cakes, Pure & Simple Restaurant at Gaither Family Resources. (Phillip wants me to add that the pot roast skillet was also delicious. So was the chicken bacon mac and cheese.)

6. The first historic district to be added to the National Register of Historic Places – West Eighth Street Historic District. (Walking tour map)

7. The world’s largest ball of paint, a baseball that’s been coated in more than 24,000 layers of paint over the last 37 years and now weighs over 4,000 pounds.

Where to Stay

Our homebase while we explored Madison County was a suite at the conveniently-located Best Western Plus in Anderson, which included breakfast every morning and coffee all day. (Yeah!)

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A big thank you to Anderson Madison County Visitor and Convention Bureau! We were their guests at the Best Western Plus and at Pure & Simple Restaurant. But I wasn’t kidding about that cake.