Author Archives: Bob

On top of Chocorua

Just so that people don’t think we’re saving all the excitement for our big trip south, we ventured the other direction on Columbus Day to tackle Mount Chocorua. The parents in this family stress physical fitness as a key to getting the most out of our escapades abroad, so the girls are often being asked to test their mettle. Once they saw Chocorua’s rocky top, they were giddy with glee at the thought of climbing all over it. Mettle was evident in abundance.

There was the matter of the four miles or so of rather vertical travel to make it to the rocks on the summit, and there were many tempting boulders along the Piper Trail that beckoned the girls to expend energy on the way up. The hike challenged us all, and people were astonished to see Lanie when she arrived at the top. There weren’t too many people Nadia’s age there, either. We were very proud of them.

At the wind-swept summit

The rock scrambling seemed to provide adequate payoff for those of us who weren’t concerned about being blown into the abyss. For the rest of us, the fall colors and deep blue sky that smiled down for most of the ascent were worth the trip. At the top we encountered dark clouds and gusty winds. These, along with the general altitude and the general and tendency for girls to run in three directions at once, made that part of the journey a little too adventurous for more mature tastes.

We worked our way down, thighs burning, and set a course for pizza on the way home. By the time we got to the van we had about nine miles under our belts, and, hopefully, some pictures that are worth sharing.

Who me, worry?

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Last week Jen went to a talk at the high school on anxiety. It was probably meant for parents who wanted to help their kids face school-related stresses and social pressures. Jen, I think, went so she could help me.

For the past few months whenever she has brought up the prospect of a long-term trip to some other part of the world, she got silence and a petrified stare in return. I may not be as intrepid as I like people to believe. The thought of a trip like the one she was proposing brought up images of risks and headaches, confusion and hassles.

Some people are like that. We are happy where we are and we make do with what we have. We get adventure through reading. We don’t readily embrace change.

To my credit, I think, I eventually explained my fears to Jen, and then I told her I definitely want to go on this trip. This is because of how all of our other adventures have turned out. Was I looking forward to driving across the country in our van, through the South, in summer? Not particularly. Did I relish the responsibility of guiding a rental car from Rome to Venice and 30 places in between? Not at all. The list of things she proposed and I panicked over goes on and on: buying a house, having kids, sugar-free month, vacations of all kinds. Basically, every interesting thing we’ve ever done since getting married has terrified me.

They’ve all turned out tremendously well. We shouldn’t let fear rule our lives, especially when someone like Jen is doing the planning.

Also, once I learned that we wouldn’t be driving the length of Mexico, I started to breathe a little better. It might be that we don’t have to drive at all. This is helpful. The man who rented us our car in Rome seemed to think we’d be pleased that the car had only 17 kilometers on the odometer. Anyone who has seen the Getaway Van knows how scratch- and dent-prone we are. It was a triumphant Bob who walked away from the still-pristine white Audi on the top floor of the Venice parking garage (there’s only the one in the whole city). I was still smiling hours later. Look at the picture at the top of the blog. It’s the rest of my family and a triumphant Bob.

Another thing helping me breathe more easily is that this isn’t our parent’s Central America. Costa Rica is a widely-accepted tourist’s paradise, and the countries around it seem to be trying to jump on the bandwagon. We have several guidebooks and they all present seventeen incredible sites on every two-page spread. Jen has some work in the planning department, sure. I can come along for the ride – and not have to drive.

And now I have some advice from the anxiety talk. Jen told me all about it. I am to treat my worries as if they are an external entity keeping me from enjoying the planning of the trip. I say, “Hey, worry, get away so I can think about walking around and taking the bus in Central America.”

And the worry says, “As long as there’s no driving.”

Do we have to buy the worry a plane ticket?

Ring of Tuscan goodness

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This is the official Chianti chicken. Bob is ignoring the dignified history of this symbol and doing the chicken dance
from Arrested Development.

A 7:30 wake up suggests that were getting acclimated. An 11:30 departure for the golden ring of Tuscan goodness suggests that we’re all a little distracted. For many of the kids, today’s distraction was catching tadpoles from the small water garden by the driveway turnaround. This involved washing and soaking the labels off empty jam and olive jars, then dunking the jars into the water to grab some of the little wigglers. A good dunk usually netted three or four tadpoles, and how many people can say they have caught Italian tadpoles? Ok, how many can say that who weren’t Italian kids?

Chris even got into the act by procuring a hammer and nail and poking some holes into the metal tops of the jars so that the tadpoles could breathe. It was decided that lettuce was an appropriate tadpole food (perhaps radicchio would have been better for Italian tadpoles), but since we have 12 mouths to feed we were stingy with our store-bought lettuce and we did not feel it appropriate to sacrifice Silvia’s container garden lettuce. So Zoe tore up some dandelion leaves (they have dandelions in Italy, too!) and tossed those in.

Hiking from Greve to Montefiroralle

There were other distractions, too. The dogs had to be stimulated. Blogs had to be written. Eggs had to be fried. I think Sam Brooks is making a feature film. Before we hit the road to find all the fine places Silvia had laid out for us within a close driving distance, we took one final trip to the bathroom, put the tadpole jars in a shady spot and took a good look at the map. We weren’t going to get lost, if we could help it.

And…we didn’t get lost! That is the story of the day. We pretty much knew where we were all day long. This was a nice feeling.

That’s not to say that everything went exactly as planned. We were a bit time challenged. Well, to be more clear, time challenged us. That is to say, Italian time challenged us. We went to the first stop on the Ring of Tuscan Goodness, Greve in Chianti, which you might remember from us asking advice there the other day. We parked, we found the medieval square, the whole time we knew where we were and where we wanted to go. Jen and I went to the tourist information center off the square (Chris and Wendy did not want to go in because two days ago they went and asked the lady’s advice and took none of it, even though she gave a full half-hour of advice) looking for directions to a short hike that Silvia recommended to us. We even found out where there was a public toilet.

Ok, a minor hiccup after that. There are two banks on the square and I turned off at the wrong one on our first attempt to start the hike. However, after that we went up the hill to a medieval Borgo, which is like a village, and it was all very nice. Although the lady suggested a nice loop that would have brought us to a few more villages and extended our trek a kilometer or two, it was very possible that she knew we were with the Brookses and wanted to stick it to us. So we hiked back down the mountain looking for lunch.

Here is where Italian time challenged us. Our tradition is to source various lunch components and have a picnic somewhere. Every shop we wanted to get stuff from — the forno, the fromaggeria, even the take-away pizzeria– were closed up. The daily pause. Italy’s siesta. Not much happens between 1 pm and 4:30. At least not much bread and cheese are sold.

This was problematic because we were all very hungry. Luckily, we found a restaurant that was not pausing and was able to seat 12. It was a good meal, but we still like our picnics.

After this scare, we decided that we should skip most of the rest of the Ring of Goodness. It was mostly old Italian stuff, anyway. The one other stop on the tour we did make was at an old castle town – Castellina – which boasted what was described to us as the best gelato in the world. Reviews were very favorable.

Thus sustained, we were able to withstand the rest of the ride and a substantial wait until our dinner – home-made lasagna with fresh lasagna noodles – was ready.

In the medieval city of Montefioralle

I’m too sexy for Milan

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Jen has given us plenty of information about Italy over the half-year or so, but she saved the most terrifying until almost the very end. A week before our trip, as we start packing our clothes, she tells us all: “The Italians are very fashionable people. They don’t think much of people who dress sloppy. ”

I know how crazy you all think Jen is, but her story somewhat checks out. The other night she and I went to our town’s newest (and fanciest) restaurant and we saw a fellow localite who said her family was going to Italy this year, too, and that her daughter insisted on going first to Milan to buy lots of clothes. Not Venice for the boats. Not Pisa for the leaning tower. Not anywhere for linguini. Straight to the fashion capital to outfit herself for the rest of the trip. The girl is nine. So yeah, the Italians are clothes crazy.

This is cause for concern. I’m not saying that several of us Pavliks don’t think we’re pretty snappy dressers, but Jen had to drop a real bomb on us: “Nobody wears shorts in Europe. If you wear shorts they’ll think you’re an American tourist.” This statement sure sent ripples through our family. Many of us self-styled snappy dressers rely heavily on the short pants and sandals look. Just last week, on the first sunny day of spring, Nadia was ready to trade in all her winter clothes for one pair of shorts and a tank top. That was all she’d need until December, she said.

But none of us wants to be lumped in with rude American tourists, me possibly the least. And as it stands, I think I’m the one who’s in most danger of being singled out.

Here’s why. After several hours of fretting over shortslessness, the rest of the family got a reprieve. Jen managed to explain that modestly long skirts would be comfortable and stylish, and they’ll likely be acceptable in all the famous old churches we’ll find ourselves in. The Italians really go in for skirts, Jen says. On women.

Here we get a sense of the nature of the problem. Sure, day-glow yellow
shorts, white socks and black shoes were fine in Crimea 20 years ago –
otherwise why would Kathleen, Axwig and this unidentified Ukrainian
young woman been walking the streets of Yalta with me. But I’ll have to
shift my style to adjust to a more discerning fashion culture in Western Europe.

I will have to walk the medieval streets of Lucca and Siena the way Columbus himself did, in chinos (flat-front, of course. History shows it was Columbus who began the arduous work of undermining the Native American tradition of pleated pants). I don’t think I’ll risk jeans, even. Pickpocket magnets, those are. I can wear a bathing suit for swimming – go ahead, conjure up an image of me wearing a European-style speedo, that still won’t make it happen. And anyway, regardless of my style of suit, don’t expect me to come home with a leg tan.

I do at least have some snazzy shirts to bring along, including a nice red and black number that I got at Easter. The Italians will eat that one up. I think I’ll risk the pickpockets a few times by wearing my US soccer shirt. Rude Americans don’t wear soccer shirts, I’ll venture. So I should be ok. Also I have a money belt.

That’s right, I’ve been to Yalta. And I rode the bumper cars
there with Dave Baxter.

My wardrobe will be nothing like Zoe’s, who has already packed a range of dresses, skirts and colorful capris. Nadia might fare the best of all, because she’s got a sense of style that is pretty well-developed (although she could not convince Jen – even with the unlikely backing of Grandma – that her leggings should be worn without a skirt or long shirt to cover her bottom). At any given time, Lanie will likely have on multiple shades of pink and a disarming grin, so I’m not worried about her.

It’s me who’s most likely to cause an international sartorial incident. Wish me luck and send fashion advice.

Day 26 – Reports of Hannibal, MO, might be greatly exaggerated

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Mark Twain Caves campground in Hannibal, MO

Kansas City, KS to Hannibal, MO

This morning found us back in the water park. I think our timing here was just right – a few hours in the park last night and a few hours this morning. Both days, at the end of this time, I was feeling totally shriveled and ready to get out of the water, so I can’t imagine spending a whole day here. (I should mention that the kids would strenuously disagree with this viewpoint.) In all honesty I let Bob do the brunt of the water supervision today, while I took a shower and cleaned up the hotel room in peace. I think I got the better end of the deal.

We arrived in Hannibal, MO in the late afternoon. This may seem to be a rather oddball destination, but it’s the hometown of Mark Twain, the setting for Tom Sawyer, and (we’d read) a quaint old Mississippi River town. We finished listening to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the car a couple of days ago, and we all (except maybe Lanie) had really enjoyed it.

We were staying in a campground at the Mark Twain Caves, which features tours of the cave where Tom and Becky got lost in Tom Sawyer. The campground was nice enough – basically a large grassy field interspersed with big, old trees – but seemed oddly deserted. (We later found that this would be the theme of everything we saw in Hannibal.) After setting up the tent we wandered over to check out the cave tours, and were able to book one leaving fifteen minutes later — for which we were the only guests, until another family jumped in late.

We did really enjoy the cave tour, though. Unlike the other tours we’ve done, which have highlighted the natural, untouched elements of the caves, this one had more of a historical and literary interest. The walls of many of the passages of the cave were covered with smoke stains and names scratched in the smoke – some from the 1800s and still looking fresh and new. You could imagine the scenes from Twain’s books, with children flocking through the caves, leaving their mark behind. There was a room that was supposedly the hide-out for Jesse James, and a room where some creepy doctor performed experiments in trying to petrify a human body. Plus, of course, all the stories about Tom and Becky and Injun Joe.

Graffiti from 1870

We later went into downtown in search of ice cream, and were able to locate Becky Thatcher’s Ice Cream Parlor and Emporium – at which we were the only customers, the whole time we were there. (If you have ever read the Stephen King novella The Langoliers, you have a sense of what it felt like to be in Hannibal.) We also climbed up 244 steps to a historic (and still functioning – whether for practical or entertainment purposes, I’m not sure) lighthouse on a high bluff above the Mississippi. Then it was back down the semi-deserted streets to sleep at our semi-deserted campground.

We were allowed to climb around and sit down just in this one section of the cave. You can see all the smoke stains
on the roof above our heads, from decades of explorers past.

***

From Bob:

We had a nice water-slide send off from Kansas (Jen checked us out of our room at 11, while the rest of us frolicked in the water park until noon. I think this is legal…)

Then we added yet another state to our chain. Missouri is not that much different from Kansas. There were a lot of famous people born in each. In Kansas we saw signs for birthplaces of Jesse James, J.C. Penney, General Pershing, Bob Dole and Arlen Spector (same town, even), Abraham Lincoln, and, I think, Eisenhower. At least Ike’s presidential museum is there. I don’t know if that means he was born there.

In Missouri, we have targeted the birthplace of another famous person, Mark Twain. It was my urging that got this place included in our itinerary, so I have to take credit for the fact that it’s a little of a disappointment. It seems well setup for receiving tourists, and perhaps it has received a lot of tourists, but there just aren’t a lot of tourists here. As a result, Hannibal has kind of a ghost town feel. There are a lot of boarded up shops in antique buildings that look in danger of going extinct.

In this respect, Hannibal reminds me not so much of the quaint river town deep in the heart of the New West, but as a river town in southwestern Connecticut. It was very much like Shelton, the town I grew up in, only without the Wiffleball Factory. Take away the Wiffleball from Shelton and cover just about everything with Mark Twain and/or Tom, Becky, and Huck, and you have Hannibal, MO. Gently receding toward their respective rivers are banks flecked with buildings that are not fancy, not well kept, or neither of the above. There are gaps among them, in Hannibal, and several structures look like they’re ready to come down. It’s not unlike what I remember seeing in the downtown area of the place where I grew up. Old factories, old warehouses, old stores, a new public building or two. The exceptions in Hannibal are the buildings dedicated to the Mark Twain tour, including the house where he spend most of his childhood, and the nice museum in a renovated multi-story stone building on Main Street.

Granted the Mississippi is a bit more of a storied river than the Housatonic, but based on the river traffic I saw in Hannibal today, neither river is more than a shadow of what Twain described in his writing. Huge man-made banks line the waterfront in Hannibal, and where streets intersected these levies, large gates stood, ready to keep out flood waters. This was a visible nod to the power of the Mississippi, but, otherwise it did not seem overwhelmingly vital to life here. It is muddy red, though not so much as the most of the Colorado that we drove along, and it is about half again as wide as the Housy

once it meets with the Naugatuck, say where it flows behind Sunnyside School, if you’ve ever seen it from there.

This is actually the second time we’ve crossed the Mississippi – the first being way back when we entered Iowa from Minnesota. We had a nice view of it then from Effigy Mounds National Monument, if you remember from our blog posts of about two weeks ago.

I don’t remember crossing the Ohio River (it might have been in Cleveland) or the Hudson, though we must have. We also skipped the heralded Catskill rivers by taking 80 north into Albany. We may have even crossed the Housatonic when our trip was young and we were exiting New England through western Massachusetts. Since we crossed, then re-met the Mississippi, though, we have come across several rivers that I knew by reputation and have been interested to see in real life. Have I mentioned them yet?

The Colorado, of course, helped guide us and Rt. 70 a good part of the way through the Rockies. We also took our jet boat tour out of Moab on that river. We might have even come across it in Utah. We also saw a portion of the Snake River – I’d have to check the atlas to remind myself which state that was in. There was lots of rafting action on the Snake. The Powder River we crossed once or twice. That river comes up a lot when you’re reading about the old west and Custer’s expeditions. Speaking of which, we cross the Bighorn River in and amongst the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. We also, of course, got several nice views of the Yellowstone River, which was a hot spot for fishing when we saw it.

The most fishermen we’ve seen, however, were in the Rocky Mountain National Park. The name of the river we hiked along has escaped me, if I ever knew it, but we saw dozens of people wading in or following the banks and casting. It was a small river, maybe 20 feet wide at its widest point and frequently half that. I did not see anyone catch anything on any of the rivers we’ve crossed.

More people, apparently, are reading books about fly fishing than are reading Tom Sawyer these days. The streets of Hannibal were quiet when we ventured downtown for ice cream (at Becky Thatcher’s Ice Cream Emporium) this evening. Tomorrow we’ll actually tour the museum and historic homes and we’ll see then if anyone is around.