Strange Souvenier from South Carolina -- Man Holding Severed Head

Ted and I were in South Carolina last week, and I found this at a gas station / hardware store / antique store between Savannah and Charleston. The clerk didn't have a clue about its origin, but I thought it was kinda neat and picked it up to hang on the wall.

The little cups beside each bird look like they might hold candles. The figure has a curved sword in his right hand, pointing to his head. In his left hand he holds a severed head. There are what look like numerous wagon wheels, and near the bottom, two double-headed birds. Possibly eagles? It's brass, I think, has no makers marks, and each section is held to the one above with small nails, bent at the tip, instead of hinges. The figure itself reminds me of Colonial era funerary art for some reason. Anyway, it's like nothing I've come across before, and I haven't had any luck with Google.

Thoughts? (You can click the images for a better view.)

Light Fixture Fetish, Part 3

Last week, Ted and I took a (slightly) impromptu road trip to Charleston and Savannah. That's right, we drove all the way from Chicago to South Carolina/Georgia and back in six days. That meant several days in the car, but we did break it up with a few well-chosen detours to stretch our legs. One of our favorites was in Atlanta, where we stayed just long enough to grab breakfast and tour the Atlanta Fox Theatre before heading back out on the highway.

Now, the two of us are huge, I mean HUGE fans of 1920s era movie palaces. We're passionate advocates for Chicago's Uptown Theatre, and would love to see that one restored. And there are few movie palaces out there that have been restored to the level of detail as Atlanta's Fox. It's what every restoration effort should be.

The Fox was built at a time when Tutmania and a fascination with Moorish art was sweeping the country. So much of the decor reflects Egyptian themes. It's just beautiful. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures in the auditorium while we were there, due to copyright restrictions for the set of the current show, so I had to satisfy myself with snapping photos of the elaborate--and completely original--sconces and lights in the ballrooms and other areas of the theatre. So, if you'd like to see more, definitely visit the Fox's Web site.

We're slowly working out how much of a 1920s Egyptian theme we want to pull off for the living room. It's easy to go over the top. These light fixtures definitely serve as inspiration!

Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota, Some Buffalo, and Custer State Park

Road Trip, Day Six and Home

"Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam, and I'll show you a dirty house..."

I haven't thought of that in years, but a memory of my mom singing that to me when I was little just popped into my head as I was looking at the photos of our trip.

Our last night of camping--and the only night it didn't rain--was in Hot Spring, South Dakota. Our only reason for picking this town was so we could go to The Mammoth Site in the morning. The site is the world's largest mammoth research facility, and over 55 mammoths have been identified in the dig, along with the remains of giant short-faced bears, camels, and llamas. Yeah, camels and llamas in South Dakota; who knew?

We spent far more time at the exhibit than we planned; it was a very well put together museum, and the staff was great. You could even go down to the research labs, where people were working, and watch them through the glass. It was set up so you could ask questions through the window. Very cool

Because we were there for so long, we got a much later start back to Chicago than planned. Still, we decided to take the longer route through Custer State Park, which has a large herd of buffalo and other assorted critters...

...and some very twisty roads.

We stopped briefly in Rapid City to take a walk down the historic stretch, gawk at the architecture (including the Hotel Alex Johnson, on the National Register), and grab some lunch.
From there, it was 14 or so hours straight across on Interstate 90 to Chicago, non-stop. Fourteen very, very long hours through South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. The first leg of the trip was through a coffee-shop-free zone, or at least it seemed that way, so before leaving Rapid City we packed some iced coffees into the cooler for our later enjoyment. I know, it was a little pathetic. But a Venti Starbucks Doubleshot on Ice is so loaded with caffeine, it really does help you stay alert on the highway. Well, jittery at any rate.

And yes, those are Wisconsin cheese curds packed beside the coffee. Yummy! We were set for the road.

Crazy Horse and Mt. Rushmore and the Dramatic Prairie Dog

Road Trip, Day 5

We were on the go from six in the morning until ten or so at night, hiking and doing the tourist thing. The day started off with a visit to the Devils Tower Visitor Center, where we learned the formation was a monolithic igneous intrusion, sacred to many local people, and the first United States National Monument, so named by Theodore Roosevelt. It rises 1,267 feet above the surrounding terrain. Afterwards, we took an hour-long hike around the base, and then went to visit a prairie dog town. That's our P.T. Cruiser parked alongside the road; there was a narrow trail through the prairie dog town that we walked.

I was on the trail, about six feet away from one of the critters, when I took this picture:

Not as dramatic as the Dramatic Prairie Dog, but still fun.



Most of the day was spent at Crazy Horse Monument, a work-in-progress begun in 1948.

One day, the entire mountain will look like the model done by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski . It is the largest mountain carving in the world. Just how big is big? Well, the entire Mount Rushmore carving can fit where Crazy Horse's head is. That's big.

I thought this was sweet, a 23-year-old cat that hangs out at the Crazy Horse Museum gift shop. The caution sign is placed wherever the cat flops down, so nobody steps on it.

A visit to the Black Hills is not complete without a trip to Mt. Rushmore. We took a hike to the base here, and were appalled at the conversations of those around us who admitted out loud that they didn't know who the people carved in the mountain were! These were not foreign tourists; these were Americans. Sad.

Close Encounter With Devils Tower, Wyoming

Road Trip Day 4

From Deadwood, it was less than two hours to get to Devils Tower in Wyoming. Remember the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind? (Which, by the way, recently released the 30th anniversary edition on DVD, making me feel ancient.) The alien contact site was Devils Tower.


We found an awesome campsite right by the park. It was still quite chilly, so there were no other tent campers. We had the campgrounds practically to ourselves, with an incredible view of the tower.



It was so close, I could almost reach out and touch it.


This is Pooh Bear. He has traveled with me since I was five.

Here's Ted, who has traveled with me since I was 33.


Note the beer we're drinking:


Each night, the campgrounds have an outdoor showing of the Close Encounters movie. Even though it was nearly freezing, we bundled up in several layers, dragged our camp chairs to the viewing patio, wrapped ourselves up in blankets, and hunkered down with a whiskey and a bag of Jolly Time Popcorn. There was another family there, but they didn't make it to the end of the film. It was so much fun to watch the movie and see the real tower at the same time. If you're ever camping cross country, it's definitely worth stopping here.

The view of the tower at six in the morning was just as spectacular.

Deadwood, South Dakota

Deadwood

Road Trip: Days 3-4

We're big fans of the HBO series Deadwood, so decided to spend our first night in the Black Hills camping a mile outside of this historic town. Just like those early gold miners, except with access to a hot shower and toilet. It was Memorial Day weekend, and we figured camping would be the most economical option. Even so, it was still around $30 a night for a tent spot without hookup. But that's the price for hanging out in a tourist zone, I guess.

We pulled into the campgrounds way after dark, after driving through one hell of a brutal storm with flash floods and water cascading down the highway. The camp office was already closed, but we found our site assignment on the message board and more or less stumbled through the dark to find it. It was pretty late, and the grounds were quiet. There were people next to us, and after nodding a hello to them without getting a response, we set up our tent. It was lightly drizzling.

It's been years since we've slept in a tent; our last time was in Peru, when we hiked the four-day trail to Machu Picchu, and that was in 2002. We were a little out of practice setting up a tent in the rain, a little cranky from the long day's drive across the state, and a little bit argumentative because we hadn't agreed on how to get to town yet. It was only a mile, and we wanted to go get a late night whiskey (it was Deadwood, after all) in one of the 80-someodd casinos. Walk or drive? It wasn't far, but it was along a two-lane road, in pitch black drizzly rain, with a narrow shoulder in some stretches. Drive? Well, someone wouldn't be getting their whiskey.

So, as we finished setting up camp and were shutting the hatch of the car, one of us--not sure who--accidently hit the electronic key for the car and locked the doors. And the car alarm went off. We each looked at the keys in our hands, and tried to turn the alarm off. No luck. Usually, just unlocking it again works. If not, then getting into the car, closing the door, and putting the key in the ignition works. "Hold the umbrellas," Ted said as he slid behind the wheel. But the alarm stubbornly refused to go off. And then we started sniping at each other, because the car was loud, the campgrounds quiet, and we were disturbing everyone within earshot.

"Why won't it go off?" "How the hell should I know? Did you try turning the key?" "Well, duh, of course." "Just get in the car!" "Huh?" "Just get in the car, let's go."

When nothing worked, we did the only thing we could think of, get the heck out of there. So, loudly honking the whole while, we rolled on down the hill and back onto the two-lane road to town. And the honking stopped.

"Problem solved. Just drive to town," I snapped. "I'll be the designated driver tonight."

"Why? We should just go back, park the car, and walk in. Our whole plan was to have a whiskey in a saloon."

"Casino."

"Whatever."

After some more arguing, we drove into Deadwood, parked the car, and I started to stomp off. Just as it started to rain again.

"Well, let's at least take the umbrellas with us," Ted said.

And it dawned on me. In my haste to jump into the car, I had tossed the umbrellas aside. They were sitting on the ground at the campgrounds, open, no doubt filling up with rain. The absurdity of it made me laugh, and I couldn't stop. "I love you," I said to Ted, who was also chuckling. "Let's take the car back and walk in." Just as we got back, we discovered a shuttle bus waiting in the parking lot, ready to transport people into town! If only we had known it was running!

As near as we can figure, one of us must have accidentally hit the "panic button" on our key, and in our panic to shut the alarm off, didn't realize what we had done. Oy!

Deadwood itself is amazing. The entire town is a National Historic landmark. Nowadays, many of the historic buildings house casinos--which makes for pretty cheap drinking. $2.50 for a Manhattan, $3 for straight whiskey. In Chicago, that generally runs us around eight to twelve bucks a piece (which is why we don't go out drinking very often). So we found an outdoor table, got ourselves a drink, and watched the people walk up and down Main Street. What had started out as such a stressful visit mellowed out nicely; we ended it by eating some canned peaches, which if you haven't watched the show will make absolutely no sense to you.

The next day, we did the tourist thing. The first stop was the town museum. Although a very small museum by most standards, the Adams Museum was one of the most well-organized, informative museums I've been to. We spent about four hours there, pouring over the materials. I was particularly interested in the photo albums of local architecture, and the exhibit on Deadwood's "Chinatown".

We also took a walk up to the Mount Moriah Cemetery, Deadwood's "Boot Hill," which had a fantastic overview of the town and the graves of Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock, and Deadwood's former lawman, Seth Bullock.

Tomb of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, Deadwood, South Dakota

There was also a Calhoun family plot were the folks were "at rest;" this is my Calhoun guy trying to look like he is resting. I know, we're big dorks.

Seth Bullock's grave was actually on a hill above the cemetery, amongst the Ponderosa pines. When we hiked up there, we discovered that people had left him all sorts of trinkets. Rocks, pretty leaves, mardi gras beads, an airplane-sized bottle of whiskey. I wonder if people have always left gifts at his grave, or if it's directly related to the popularity of the Deadwood TV show?

In any case, we saw that someone had left Bullock a cigarette, but no matches, so we left our book of matches for him.

I really meant to take more pictures of Deadwood's architecture, but didn't get around to it. That always happens. I'm so busy rubbernecking, that I forget to take pictures. But you should definitely go to Flickr for some amazing shots that other people took.

I did take this picture, however, just a random one of someone's house. We're trying to decide on paint colors for the portico of our house, and this is just about what we had in mind: cream for the pillars, with muted shades of red, blue and green for the trim. I took several pictures of the trim of this house from various angles.

Well, from Deadwood we headed on over to Devils Tower, just on the other side of the border in Wyoming. Come on back tomorrow for those picture

Jackalopes and Ice Cold Water, Must Be Wall Drug

Road Trip: Day 3

I've driven through South Dakota a few times before. Once, when I was maybe seven or eight, we took a family vacation to the Badlands and the Black Hills. I don't remember much from that trip; the one thing that stands out was trying to find a hotel in Rapid City. This is long, long before online reservations, so we drove from one hotel to the next, searching for a room at a reasonable rate. Dad would stomp out of each hotel or motel office, looking crankier and crankier. "Rapid City?" he'd mutter, scowling darkly. "Ha! More like 'Ripoff City.'"

I drove through South Dakota again when I was 28. This time I was alone, making a solo trip from Chicago to San Francisco in my Jeep Wrangler rag top to visit a friend. I made it through the state in one shot, stopping long enough to take a mini hike in Badlands National Park before pushing on to Wyoming for an overnight stop.

(I looked really cute driving that Jeep. Sniff. I still miss that car. Stupid drunk driver totaled it, and almost totaled me as well.)

So this trip marked my third venture into Dakota Territory. Now, anyone who has ever driven I-90 across the state knows there are two attractions that must be seen. The Corn Palace and Wall Drug.

Corn Palace, Mitchell, South Dakota

Corn Palace. Sounds like a "largest-ball-of-twine" kind of attraction, doesn't it? But it's actually kinda cool. The first incarnation of the palace was built in the 1890s to show off the varieties of corn and grain that could be grown in the rich soils of the area. The murals--with new designs each year--are made from different colors of corn and grain. Seriously, go read up on it here. The current palace was designed by Rapp and Rapp, a firm that designed some of the greatest movie palaces in the world, including the Loew's Kings Theatre in Brooklyn and the Uptown and Chicago theatres in Chicago. This is one of the smallest of their commissions that I've seen.

Corn cutout self portrait.

We loaded up on on gas and a fresh round of Diet Cokes, and four or five hours later along the interstate, we hit Wall Drug. We knew it was coming. We couldn't help it. Signs for the granddaddy of all tourist traps span out for hundreds miles in every directions. I kid you not, we actually started to see them in Iowa.

Here's a sign for it in Antarctica, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Basically, Wall Drug is a sprawling tourist mall, home to All Things Tacky. Need a stuffed jackalope head? Got it. Want your picture taken with an animated T-Rex head? You can do that here, too. At any rate, it's worth a stop to stretch your legs for an hour or so. After passing literally hundreds of billboards (supposedly, Wall Drug spends $400,000 a year on billboard advertising), you couldn't possibly drive past without stopping. They snare something like 20,000 people a day in the summer.

Me sitting atop a jackalope, holding my free Wall Drug bumper sticker.

Ted making sure he fills up on the free ice water. Note the little t-rex on the cup.

From here, it was another couple of hours and a drive through a violent storm until we stopped for the night in Deadwood, South Dakota. Tune in tomorrow for those photos.

Historic Galena (Illinois), a Family Reunion, and the Barn Quilts of Iowa

Road Trip: Day One

It was a mutual love of travel that brought me and Ted together. We met through one of those online dating sites. Wanna see my profile pic from back then?

Heh heh. I know, I know. Devil horns, a four-foot clip on pony tail, and black mini skirt were just asking for weirdos to respond (even when it's obviously a Halloween costume). And they did, in droves. But amongst the kooks, I received a very sweet reply from a guy with an awful lot in common with me. And the rest, as they say, is history. You really can find True Love this way.

Anyway, our obsession with travel took us on vacations three, four times a year and we'd stay away weeks at a time. But for many reasons, including the fact that The Box House sucks up nearly every spare moment and dime we have, it's actually been several years since we've gone anywhere. And for two travel bugs, that can really leech away the spirit.

So we said the heck with this rut, and we took a mini trip to South Dakota, via a family reunion in Iowa. We're home now, but because one post cannot adequately convey everything we saw, I'll be stretching it out all this week.

The reunion was in Sioux City, Iowa, near where Ted's dad grew up. I went to college in Iowa, but somehow never made it out to the western part of the state much. We decided to take a route straight across the state along U.S. Route 20. According to Google Maps, it would take 20 minutes or so longer than the Interstate, but through several towns neither one of us had been through.

Because we were wildly trying to finish up with client work before we left, we didn't sleep at all before loading up the car and taking off. We're both pretty good about sleeping in the car, so figured we could catch some shuteye along the way. Besides, the tollroads around Chicago are pretty dead at 4:00 a.m. and we could zip along.

Our first stop to stretch our legs was in Galena, Illinois. As we pulled into town, it suddenly struck me how ridiculous it was that I'd never been here before. It's less than three hours from our house, with something like 85% of the buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For old house junkies like us, it was like a little slice of heaven. My jaw nearly dropped when Ted jostled me awake and I saw the great brick house of Ulysses S. Grant, civil war general and president of the United States.

Gorgeous! Although I may have been even more impressed by the gigantic hostas growing on the hill below the house. A whole mini forest of them! This is how I want our yard to look.

At eight in the morning, there really wasn't anything open, but we took a walk up and down the main drag anyway.

Here's another view that someone took for Wikipedia:

All in all, it's a very cool town. Too bad we weren't visiting during this conference, however:

UFOs and golf. Gotta love it.

It's about a nine-hour drive from Chicago to Sioux City; we tried to make as few stops as possible, but some things could not be skipped over:

Ted's a Calhoun, and we were heading to a Calhoun reunion, so this photo op in Calhoun County was necessary.

And this just cracked us up, a whole yard full of vintage washing machines like the one we're using as a planter.

But the most interesting bit of the drive was through Sac County, home of the Barn Quilts.

Can't believe I never heard of these before, with my mom being a quilter and all.

There's an extensive Web site, so if you're a quilt fan, it's worth a look. All the barn quilts are done up in bright colors and are on barns or corncribs that are at least 50 years old.

We pulled into Sioux City early enough that we thought we'd be able to take a nap before the festivities began--no such luck. There were already scores of Calhouns roaming the halls of the hotel, so we freshened up just a bit and headed downstairs for the first night of socializing. It was great to reconnect with folks we hadn't seen in a while, and I was lucky enough to chat with one of Ted's aunts and learn more about the family history. She had put together a book about the family, and I look forward to borrowing a copy from Ted's dad. I go goofy over family history stuff.

Finally got to go to bed at nine o'clock, perhaps the earliest I've voluntarily gone to bed in years! But by that point, we had been up for 36 hours or so.