The best dishes and trips always seem to be born out of accidents. My journey up to Chicago was no different. St. Louis was more of an accidental destination, a stopover point to recharge and rest up for the final push to Chicago. An accidental journey often begins with the search for things that you probably never would seek out on a regular basis. As the drive grew tiresome and by accident, I had the car detour off of the road to Springfield, Missouri to meet a fork in the road. Angling up a three story building and measuring 35 feet tall, what claims to be the world’s largest fork Continue Reading
Sitting on the Corner of Colorado History at Ninth Street Historic Park
Almost like a hallway linking classrooms, students make their way ever so casually to class by way of the oldest restored block of residences in the city of Denver. They layout on the grassy thoroughfare to take in the sun in between classes amidst homes that were present long before Colorado was even declared a state. It is an unusual scene, one where the youth of college and university life coexists with the city’s earliest days. Within structures hailing from 1872 to 1906, ordinary collegiate business is conducted from transfer services to honors programs. Not a spot often sought out by Continue Reading
Lincoln Travelogues: Notes on Traveling to the Famous for the Unknown Journey
Travel is often all about chasing the famous. Sites that we have seen our whole lives on book pages are suddenly real. They are tangible and no longer images on a page. Then again, travel is often all about just chasing the journey, to feel something that we wouldn’t have felt staying in the comforts of home. The journey is usually unknown to the traveler. They can’t foresee it or expect it. Finding this balance of both awe-inspiring, famous sites and the mere journey is not always obtainable. Sometimes we get one and not the other. We set out to see Paris and the journey there ends up being Continue Reading
Louisville, Kentucky Wishes You Were Here
I gaze up on a baseball bat measuring 120 feet tall and weighing around 68,000 pounds. Its proportions, to say the least, are monumental. This replica Babe Ruth baseball bat leans ever so nonchalantly against the Louisville Slugger Museum, where the famous Louisville Slugger has been made since 1884. It doesn’t surprise me that a city with baseball bats to the moon and products fit for Major Leaguers is truly in a league of its own. In fact, there isn’t just one way to say Louisville. It is a tongue twister and a back of the throat gurgle. Is it pronounced Luhvul, Loouhvul or Looeyville? Just Continue Reading
Nashville, Tennessee Wishes You Were Here
I begin my trip to Nashville not with a lesson in country music, but a lesson in one of this Tennessee city’s other traditions, pancakes. Opened in 1961, the Pancake Pantry has become a Nashville staple, a pancake stronghold of the South. You wouldn’t know it by the down-to-earth atmosphere of the place. Not overly stuffy or pretentious about pancakes, I order up a stack of blueberry pancakes and fill up on Nashville in perhaps its sweetest form. Music City might be the ultimate pilgrimage for country music fans but with one bite of these pancakes, it could easily be Flapjack City. Being Continue Reading
On the Rocks on Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail
It’s roughly just after noon as I take a sip of bourbon. I don’t have a problem. I can wait until 5 o’clock somewhere but when in Kentucky, bourbon consumption and education starts early. I am following the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. Needless to say this isn’t a path that follows the straight and narrow. It is a trail past honest Abe’s log cabins and over rolling Kentucky bluegrass. In between the history is a culture for bourbon, a path that never did run smooth but a course of bourbon finishes that might be. Formed in 1999, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail is the work of the Kentucky Distillers’ Continue Reading
From Woodshop to Homerun Hero, Exploring The Louisville Slugger Museum
I can hear peanut shells snapping and the bellowed out drawl of the umpire. I listen for the sound of the pitch and the crack of the bat. I can hear all of the elements for America’s pastime. Baseball is after all a game for the senses. My ears are burning for baseball and I’m not even in a stadium. I stand in the Louisville Slugger Museum in downtown Louisville, Kentucky surrounded by game winners, and losers, in the making. To some, the Louisville Slugger is merely a type of baseball bat. To others like me, it is the game of baseball. In Major League baseball, the Louisville Slugger Continue Reading