Trip Peek # 122
Trip #84
Finding Holland

Posted on February 19, 2023 by Denny

This picture is from my 2010 Finding Holland trip. It was my first time seeing two musicians that I’ve since seen many times and whom I now consider friends. That’s Josh Hisle on guitar and Michael G Rondstadt on cello. At the time they formed a duo named “Lost in Holland” which is where the trip title came from. I did not then realize that Holland is the name of Josh’s son. Although ostensively a shake-down outing for the duo’s about-to-launch tour, many other musicians were on hand and contributed to a great evening of music. The concert was in Rising Sun, IN, which I took advantage of by booking a room in a historic hotel I’d long had my eye on. In the morning, I drove west to Madison before turning east to my home.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Trip Peek #121
Trip #153
Kitty Hawk Holidays

Posted on November 20, 2022 by Denny

This picture is from my 2018 Kitty Hawk Holidays trip. It was a Christmas Escape Run so obviously the December 25 holiday was included but it started sufficiently early to include another holiday — the 115th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight on December 17. Stops on the way to Kitty Hawk, NC, included the National D-Day Memorial and Appomattox Court House. The anniversary was celebrated with ceremonies at Kill Devil Hill then I stuck around the area a couple more days in order to drive some of the Outer Banks Scenic Byway and check out other points of interest. Christmas was spent in Knoxville, TN, which I reached largely on US-64 and the Dixie Highway with several stops and side trips to Charlotte and Mount Airy. I reached home on December 27 following a last meal on the road at the since-closed Parkette Drive In in Louisville, KY.

Trip Peek #120
Trip #115
Wild and Wonderful Christmas

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Denny

This picture is from my 2013 Wild and Wonderful Christmas trip. It’s the lodge at Oglebay Park in Wheeling, WV, where I spent the first night of the trip. While there, I rode through their Festival of Lights on a trolley and set out to do it again in my car but the ultraheavy traffic convinced me to return to the lodge. You probably know that “Wild and Wonderful” is West Virginia’s welcome slogan and West Virginia is where I spent every night of the trip. There were only three. In addition to the night at Oglebay, I spent two nights at the lodge at North Bend State Park. That’s where I spent Christmas and enjoyed the holiday buffet. Additional stops included the Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum, the Marx Toy Museum, and Berdine’s Five & Dime (established 1908).

Trip Peek #119
Trip #34
PA Potpourri

Posted on September 11, 2022 by Denny

This picture is from my 2005 PA Potpourri trip. It is of the incline built in Johnstown, PA, just two years after the infamous 1889 flood. This trip was one of a cluster of work-related trips to central Pennsylvania augmented with some personal time. Previous trips had been focused on US-6, the Lincoln Highway, and the National Road. This one, as the name suggests, focused on nothing in particular. I used it to visit some sites that those roads did not. The potpourri included, in addition to Johnstown, the still-burning town of Centralia, a coal mine in Ashland, the nation’s oldest brewery (Yuengling), the world’s oldest roller coaster (Leap the Dips — not operating on the day I was there), and some parts of the National Road.

Trip Peek #118
Trip #151
Only Rock and Roll

Posted on August 28, 2022 by Denny

This picture is from my 2018 Only Rock and Roll trip. The picture is from part two of the three-part outing. It started with a day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH, continued with a Tubes concert in Akron, OH, and concluded with a Little Steven concert in Wabash, IN. I had been to the Hall of Fame a couple of times, had seen the Tubes once, and had seen Little Steven Van Zandt several times. In the past, he had been backing Bruce Springsteen as a member of the E Street Band. This time he was fronting his own fifteen-piece Disciples of Soul and it was glorious.

Trip Peek #117
Trip #127
2015 LHA Conference

Posted on June 26, 2022 by Denny

This picture is from my 2015 LHA Conference trip. The conference was unusual in that it did not take place on the Lincoln Highway. It was held in Ann Arbor. MI, and focused on Detroit, MI. Detroit had never been served by the highway but had been home to the association’s headquarters for its entire existence. In 1915, LHA President Henry B. Joy drove to the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco on the LH after connecting with it in Indiana via a feeder route from LHA headquarters. That trip would be recreated with a tour immediately following the conference. I was present at the start of the tour but was not a participant. I did get to experience the feeder, however, even if it was in the opposite direction. Prior to the conference, I joined a small group in Elkhart, IN, that followed the feeder to near Ann Arbor. I followed it the rest of the way on my own after the conference. The picture of the Irish Hills Towers was taken while following the feeder on the way to the conference.

Trip Peek #116
Trip #63
National Road Festival

Posted on June 5, 2022 by Denny

This picture is from my 2008 National Road Festival trip. It was taken in Addison, PA, where I encountered a wagon train encampment on the way to join a different wagon train in Clear Springs, MD. I became “embedded” in the Clear Springs train for the purpose of producing an article for American Road magazine. Because of that, I avoided using photos or other items destined for the article in my journal. Even so, I managed to include a few pictures from my two days with the train and plenty from the before and after travel days. Post-train travel included a visit to Antietam National Battlefield and some time on the Lincoln Highway as I headed home. That Lincoln Highway time included a stop at the Flight 93 Memorial which still had a very “homegrown” appearance.

Trip Peek #115
Trip #47
Natchez Christmas

Posted on February 20, 2022 by Denny

This picture is from my 2006 Natchez Christmas trip. It shows the gilded hand atop the steeple of the First Presbyterian Church in Port Gibson, MS, that mimicks a gesture the church’s founder and first pastor often used in his sermons. The photograph was made while traveling north on the Natchez Trace Parkway after spending Christmas in Natchez, MS. On the way south, I’d spent a night in Clarksdale, MS. My northbound route followed the parkway all the way to its terminus near Nashville, TN, but I slipped off to visit things like the Vicksburg National Military Park, Elvis’ birthplace in Tupelo, and this flying finger of faith in Port Gibson.

Trip Peek #114
Trip #159
Corner to Corner to Corner II

Posted on July 11, 2021 by Denny

This picture is from my 2020 Corner to Corner to Corner II trip. The corners involved are the southwest and northeast corners of Ohio and the II identifies this as a repeat of an earlier outing. The first Corner to Corner to Corner was in 2001. It was just the third trip documented on this site and was partially a practice run for a much larger trip that would follow in four months. Similarly, this trip, the first of the COVID-19 riddled 2020, could be considered a test run for a larger trip planned for two months in the future. Pretty much by coincidence, the larger trip being prepared for in both instances was a retrace of a trip taken by my great-grandparents in 1920. In what was perceived as a way to limit exposure to COVID, the trip was organized around two nights at a motel near Medina. I reached the motel on the first day by following US-42 north and returned home on the third day by following OH-3/3C Highway south. in between I followed those same roads in and out of Cleveland and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Trip Peek #113
Trip #150
Spontaneous Nash Dash

Posted on July 4, 2021 by Denny

This picture is from my 2018 Spontaneous Nash Dash. The two concerts around which this trip was centered had been on my radar for a short while but the decision to attend really did occur spontaneously on the morning of the first concert. I left home on Thursday, and that night took in The Cleverlys at the Station Inn. That’s when the featured photo was taken. The other concert that was used to justify the trip was The Long Players on Saturday night. That left plenty of daylight hours to take in the new Patsy Cline Museum, the Gallery of Iconic Guitars, Santa’s Pub, and the Lane Motor Museum with a stop at Bobby’s Idle Hour on Friday night.

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