Urban Sleuth
Eugenia Woo Joined: March 20th 2007
Logged in: July 29th 2010
Logged in: July 29th 2010
Travel Blog Posts
The Red Menace
After blitzing across America in 23 days, I am home. I am in serious food detox—trying to keep to a diet of Asian food, seafood (not fried), fresh produce, and green tea. I know I’ve scared some of you with the food I ate on the trip but I chose only to highlight (and take pics) of those dishes I thought would have the most effect. It worked. Hee hee. It’s also good to be back in the land of no-smoking in public places. The trip was fantastic. Cathy (as always) was a great travel buddy. She’s an excellent driver and has amazing directional sense, not to mention just being an all-around super kewl friend. The Road Chicks took the States and I’m glad all of you were able to join in the fun vicariously. ... read more
Road out of Wyoming
I love Montana. I must have been a Montanan in a previous life or something because there’s just something about the place that seeps into my soul. Montana actually deserves its own travel blog but this is not the time to do it. Unfortunately, on this trip, we’re just driving through Big Sky country and the Idaho panhandle to get back to Washington state. My first visit to Montana was in 1995 on a trip with friends to Flathead Lake and Glacier National Park. I was hooked. I’ve been back twice since then, both times traveling with Cathy throughout much of western Montana. This time we head up north from Sheridan, Wyoming into the rolling hills of southeastern Montana. The brown hills are covered in fresh snow. Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is right off ... read more
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Note: This entry has a lot of photos so keep advancing to the next page until done. You won't want to miss some of the images! I’ve been looking forward to coming to South Dakota all trip long. How can one go wrong with the Corn Palace, Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands, Wall Drug, and Crazy Horse all in one state? We’re also back in cool neon sign country. There was a dearth of them in the South for some reason. Sioux Falls has a nice compact business district with late nineteenth and early twentieth century brick buildings. We have a good breakfast at the Phillips Avenue Diner. My search for gloves continues as we walk over to the Great Outdoor Store after breakfast. They only have men’s winter gloves and they are way too big. ... read more
St. Louis, Missouri
We wake up to heavy rain in St. Louis—first time since the Amarillo deluge way back when on the trip except that lasted for only a few minutes. The rain here doesn’t let up but we have no choice and must go to the Arch. Driving through downtown, we see some cool old historic buildings like Union Station and the old Courthouse but much of downtown seems to have been bulldozed and replaced with buildings from the 1970s through 1990s. This is even more evident when we get up to the top of the Arch and get a better view of the layout of the city. We see a fountain with a bronze statue of a runner in the center but the water is orange. Yes, orange. Cathy calls it the Tang fountain. No obvious ... read more
Talladega, Alabama
The drive west across Georgia is uneventful—the corridor of trees can be monotonous, but I slept a good part of the way as Cathy drove. Satellite radio has been our salvation except when 88.1 is a local Christian station that messes with the reception. We’ve also been listening to Harry Potter on CD. Thank you Kris and Tom for letting me borrow your entire collection of books one through six (all 87 CDs). Both C and I have read all the books but the CDs were recorded by this amazing British actor who does all the voices. As soon as we hit Alabama the topography and landscape become more interesting—it’s hillier and greener. Nice surprise. I look at the road atlas and notice there’s a Talladega National Forest, a town called Talladega, and then, OMG—Talladega ... read more
Savannah, Georgia
Ok, so I didn’t see any of the sights associated with the book but the title is just too good to pass up. I’ll have to read it again now that I’ve been to Savannah. Somewhere outside of Charleston, the MINI reaches 4,000 miles on the trip. Woohoo! No problems until we get to Savannah. We stay in a flat in a historic building on Lafayette Square—great location with beautiful mid-1800s homes and a church surrounding the square. The back of the inn has parking so I drive down the alley and pull into the parking space but the MINI gets stuck. There’s a dip in grade between the alley and the parking space and the MINI is too low to make it through. Cathy gets out of the car and notices a plastic thing ... read more
Asheville, North Carolina
We were surprised to read that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was the most visited national park in the country. Seems the term “mountains” is relative. What people east of the Mississippi call “mountains,” we in the west consider mere hills or bumps in the landscape. The highest point in the eastern U.S. is Mount Mitchell (6,684 ft) in North Carolina. Ok, so at one time, it was part of a real mountain range but that was so billions of years ago. We’ve been scoffing at what are called mountains, what with our native states being California (me) and Washington (Cathy). Not to mention that C’s father is a world-famous mountain climber who is climbing a mountain in Chile as I write this. Asheville, North Carolina gets my vote for most interesting community visited ... read more
Memphis, TN
We drive across Arkansas, passing by a town called Hope (where Bill Clinton is from) and zipping through Little Rock. Our destination is Memphis, Tennessee. We get in around 9:30 pm and find out the hotels near Graceland are all booked including the Heartbreak Hotel. Seems that Priscilla is in town with Thomas Kinkade, “Painter of Light,” to unveil a new painting to honor fifty years of Elvis purchasing Graceland. I shudder whenever I think of Kinkade and his insipid frou-frou paintings. The Days Inn sends us to a Holiday Inn Express several miles away. We check in and go look for food—there’s nothing but chain restaurants in the area so we go to Chili’s. The waiter tells us margaritas are two for one so we order what we thought were two margaritas (one each) ... read more
Kimbell Art Museum, Ft. Worth
I got my high art and architecture fix at the Kimbell Art Museum and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth—they are conveniently located across the street from one another in the Cultural District. Designed by master architect Louis I. Kahn, the Kimbell is one of those places where archigeeks like myself make pilgrimages to. It’s a travertine temple to late Modernism. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth was exciting to see because I haven’t seen any of the architect’s (Tadao Ando) work in person. Lunch at the Modern’s café, Bon Appetit, was delish and the stylish Saarinen dining chairs fit right in to the well-designed space. The day ended with a fantabulous late dinner at Lonesome Dove Western Bistro (billed as “fine urban Western cuisine”) located in the historic Stockyard District. I had ... read more
Amarillo, Texas
The morning in Amarillo begins with a threatening stormy sky. We gotta get to Cadillac Ranch before the rain comes pouring down. I’m excited because this is the start of the hi-brow/low-brow portion of the trip which starts in Amarillo, takes a detour to Oklahoma City, comes back to Texas (Dallas/Ft. Worth), and culminates in Memphis at Graceland, the holy grail of pop culture. There’s a side of me that appreciates museums, the arts, and culture (hi-brow) and then there’s the side of me that can get just as excited over tacky kewl roadside attractions (lo-brow). Cadillac Ranch can be seen from I-40 going eastbound between exits 60 and 62. It’s about 200 yards south of the highway. We park on the frontage road and walk across a land mine of cow dung in a ... read more
