Not long after Interior Secretary Gale Norton assured me that the Bush administration is more interested in upgrading the existing national parks than in adding new ones, the National Park Service added a new one.
I have been writing a series on our national parks for years, and by late 2003, I thought I had visited all 56. But in November of that year, Congress elevated South Carolina’s Congaree National Monument to national park status. I went there last spring and wrote about it. Nice trees.
Figuring Congaree–No. 57–would be the last national park to come online until long after I hung up my hiking boots, we published what I thought was my final profile of a national park–National Park of American Samoa (visited early in 2003).
I had interviewed Norton as part of my reporting for a national park wrap-up, a salute to the best in the system, a grimace at the worst, a few favorites, that sort of thing. Our “last in the series” essay included a heartfelt wish that government would keep the parks pristine and free from mining, clear-cutting, oil exploration, excessive snowmobile traffic and other inroads of civilization. We’ll see.
That Travel section hit the streets in mid-June, and just a few weeks later, Great Sand Dunes National Monument in southern Colorado became national park No. 58. I went there in October. It snowed. I saw the 30 square miles of sand dunes, an incongruous Sahara tucked into a corner of the Rocky Mountains, and I couldn’t argue with its receiving that higher rank. Incredible. My report will appear this spring. And when more national parks come online, the Travel section will cover those too. Like it or not, we’re committed.
No rest . . . etc., etc.
Well, yes, there was, actually. A January project sent the staff to far-flung beaches. I took Miami Beach, South Beach to be specific, and I would take it again. It’s glitzy but oddly relaxing, a bit short of St. Tropez, but what isn’t?
And then, the very next month, came the cruise to end all cruises. Roger Naber, the Kansas City promoter who arranges the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise every year, booked Holland America’s Veendam and filled it with 1,200 music lovers and R&B headliners like Taj Mahal, Little Milton, Curtis Salgado, Susan Tedeschi and Walter “Wolfman” Washington, to name just a few.
We spent a week in February rocking through Central America on a cruise with no formal nights, no art auctions, no chorus lines, no antic magicians–just one non-stop party with music, dancing and sleepless nights. Ooo-weee, as Howard Dean might say.
My ears were still ringing when I set off for New York City a couple weeks later to look at the former homes and social haunts of past literary figures. Manhattan alone would have been overwhelming, so I narrowed the quest considerably and focused only on Greenwich Village. Even then, my notebook runneth over. Alphabetically speaking, the list starts with Bernice Abbott and ends with Richard Wright. But who could forget O. Henry, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Edgar Allan Poe and so many more?
Looking around Bedford Street one afternoon, not far from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s old townhouse, I noticed a lot of other out-of-town visitors standing around and taking pictures. I was impressed at the literary interest shown by those young Heartlanders, until my guide, James Nevius, pointed out an ordinary tenement on the corner.
“That’s the building where the characters in `Friends’ lived,” he said. “It’s the one they show in the exterior shots.”
Oh, yes, there’s that. Could I be more naive?
So much of Greenwich Village is historically landmarked and therefore protected that I could see actual literati-occupied or frequented townhouses and apartments, saloons and cafes, rather than mere plaques. Only a few of the former residences could be described as grand (hello, Edith Wharton), which just goes to show that underpayment of writers isn’t anything new.
I met one of the more prosperous ones in March, when author Paul Theroux passed through Chicago. I interviewed him for the Tempo section, and afterward we were chased out of Union Station by security cops. They said the Tribune photographer couldn’t take any pictures in the station if they were for “commercial purposes” because that might breach security.
Theroux, of course, is a travel writer, and it’s always an adventure when he comes to a place.
I guess he leaves out the boring parts, like the two days in July when I tried to travel from Glasgow to Munich using one of those cheap regional European airlines. Because none of those carriers actually goes from Glasgow to Munich, I had to fly to an airport in a far-flung Frankfurt suburb. From there, I took a long, late-evening bus ride to Frankfurt’s main train station, found it closed, stayed overnight in a cheesy hotel until the next morning and then caught a train to Munich.
Thankfully, before and after that enervating period, I enjoyed some truly wonderful days.
I was in Glasgow because I figured the time had come to write about golf the way it’s played in Scotland. There, the courses lie close to golf’s historical roots, and they eschew the manicured prissiness of so many American golf venues. St. Andrews, the Old Course, a Mecca for golfers like me, is a part of the community. Townspeople treat it like a park, riding bikes across the fairways, picnicking in the rough, jogging past the practice putting greens.
Caddies–by sheer dint of personality–allow players a glimpse into the lore, the pub gossip, the plain-spoken wisdom and good nature of Scotland’s skilled labor force–sporting division. “Aim for that wee farmhouse,” one might say, or, “Try the Doll’s House for dinner.” They would always be right.
I’ll skip past those boring two days in Glasgow and Frankfurt and get right to the pilsner.
Ah, Munich. Keeping focused on the present helps in the appreciation of its colorful markets, quaint buildings and lively beer halls. I was there to find out how they go about planning Oktoberfest, but I convinced myself that the project also required strolling along intriguing streets, exploring the wonderful parks and mingling in the beer gardens with a lot of seemingly carefree people–most of whom weren’t around 60 years ago.
It was a year with a few family occasions, too: a long drive in May to Northampton, Mass., for my daughter, Amy’s, college graduation; a golf trip, later that month, to Michigan with my son, Gabe. The latter excursion resulted in another golf story (and the reason we won’t print my Scotland adventures until later on; wouldn’t want to give you too much of a good thing).
We also spent a few June days in Belize for a niece’s wedding, a lovely ceremony on the palm-lined beach at Ambergris Caye–preceded by days of sailing, swimming, diving and late-night carousing with relatives and friends.
Come to think of it, the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise had stopped in Belize on that long-ago February when guitars, boogie pianos and wailing singers took center stage and cruise destinations didn’t.
A period of 12 months with Belize and golf trips in there twice–hey, that just has to count as a very good year.
———-
Over time, Robert Cross has compiled a long list of places he wants to revisit and an even longer list of destinations he hasn’t yet seen.
Suggestions? E-mail him: bcross@tribune.com
