Vanishing Point

While I was in Washington, D.C., I visited two of my favorite art galleries These photos are from the National Gallery of Art, which was hosting an exhibit called "The Life of Animals in Japanese Art." There were lots of really wonderful pieces on display. Here are some photos of my favorites. When I emerged from the elevator on the level with the exhibit, the first thing I saw was a collection of designs by Issey Miyake being modeled by mannequins. I have lots of positive associations with Miyake thanks to my co-workers at IntelliCorp some 30 years ago. Many of them were seriously into sewing and other crafts, and they introduced me to the origami-inspired clothing of Issey Miyake. All of the looks on display are supposedly inspired by animals. The first one is easy -- some of the other photos are harder for me to read as animal-inspired. The walls of the room were covered with a mural inspired by the 2011 tsunami. Here are a few segments th

While I was locating articles and videos about scary bridges for the previous blog entry, it occurred to me for the first time that the bridge I was planning to drive across next was waaaaay more exposed to the elements than the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. And while I don't especially fear bridges, I do have a well-earned cautiousness about driving my van in a strong crosswind. It was kind-of windy the day before, but not enough to be a problem where I was. But what about on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel when I was planning to drive it? It's a 17-mile-plus long bridge across open water where the bay meets the ocean. It's the only feasible path to take to get to my reserved hotel room for the next night, unless I backtrack several hours that I really prefer not to. What about that? I looked at some weather reports and wasn't overly reassured... small craft advisory for some nearby areas due to wind conditions, for example... Then I found a twitter feed devoted to current

I'm on my way to visit a friend (and maybe multiple friends, TBD) in North Carolina and I'm taking the trip semi-slowly. My first day started just as the rain did -- with me heading out the front door carrying luggage and the first drops just starting to fall. In the next couple of hours I would see everything from a deluge to a brief respite from all rain, well timed for me to be able to dash to the restroom and back relatively dryly. That first restroom break was well timed in more ways than one. Just as it was becoming clear that it was time for a stop, I saw a freeway exit for a street that I lived on briefly as a first grader -- Belair Drive in Bowie, Maryland. I have dim memories that one of the ways we got home from various trips involved a long, slow-paced meander from the highway to our house. That was before we had air conditioning in our car, so in hot weather that meant that we went from having lots of air flowing in the car to just a little, and it seemed to go o

I started off the day in St. Clairsville, Ohio, where you'll find the closest Best Western to Wheeling, West Virginia. The top-rated touristy thing to visit in Wheeling is an old suspension bridge that is part of the National Road and was the largest suspension bridge in the world from 1849-1851. It is ordinarily open to motor traffic in a limited sort of way (weight limit 2 tons, height limit 8 feet, with at least a 50 foot interval between vehicles), but at the end of June, some genius decided to drive a tour bus over it. The height limit isn't imposed by the bridge itself -- there are barriers installed at each end of the bridge as a deterrent to big, heavy vehicles. According to an article I found, the barriers swing inward only, so after the bus pushed one barrier up to gain access to the bridge, it was trapped between the two barriers. You can see and read about what happened here:  http://www.theintelligencer.net/news/top-headlines/2019/06/charter-bus-crosses-2-ton

There's a road that goes from Maryland to Illinois that has a story that kind-of reminds me of Route 66. However, it's much older than Route 66. It wasn't designed for cars, it was the first developed route West out of the original 13 states.  I didn't start out with exploring this road in mind on my second day of travels. My idea was to visit the Zanesville Museum of Art, but they were closed that day in order to participate in a local arts festival. My next planned stop was Vasehenge, an attraction I found on roadsideamerica.com that dates from a community art event in 2008 involving 100 huge vases (taller than I am) that were painted and installed around the city. The pictures of the vases I saw online were from when they were shiny and bright and new, but nowadays the vases at Vasehenge have been exposed to the elements for over a decade and have become faded. The sky was sure picturesque, though! If you look closely behind Vasehenge in that photo, the p

I'm headed back to Maryland to visit my cousin, taking a different route than last year. The first day was mostly about getting myself out the door and on the road to Cincinnati. I had decided to splurge on my first night accommodations after seeing the description of this Best Western in a part of Cincinnati called Mariemont. The neighborhood feels trendy and affluent, and was originally the vision of Marie Emery, who wanted to establish an English-style country village. The historic 1929 hotel has been updated with modern fixtures. There are nice little touches like motion-activated floor lights to help with navigating to the bathroom in the dark, interesting key cards with unidentified photographs on them, and the TV is hidden behind a scrolling painting (see photos and video below). This is the back of the hotel, which was the only part lit well enough on my evening walk to photograph well: This is one of the motion-activated floor lights. They are really bright, but t