Südwestdeutschland

Porsche Cars North America sent me on a business trip to Stuttgart, Germany in May of 2011 so I asked Mary to come along.  We were staying in Ludwigsburg for a week so we figured we could enjoy Southwest Germany over the weekend and do some sightseeing.  Some outdoor sightseeing.  The weather was glorious while we were there, so we did not spend much time indoors.

I went 10 feet into the Porsche Museum, just enough to get something at the gift shop.  We didn't even consider going to the Mercedes-Benz Museum.  Apparently these are must-see destinations in Stuttgart.  We bypassed them in favor of other attractions.

Mary spent one day touring the palaces in Ludwigsburg.  They have one tour in English, so book early if you want to understand the tour guide.  We found out early in Südwestdeutschland that it really helps if you can sprechen sie deutsch.  We got by because I memorized nouns for food and drink thanks to my workplace German classes and Mary still recalled her verbs from high school and college.  Hand gestures helped as well.

Here are some shots of the palaces:

In Stuttgart we spent a whole afternoon walking the length of Rosenstein Park to the Wilhelma Zoo and Botanical Garden.  We highly recommend it.  Buy some ice cream -- we felt out of place because we seemed to be the only ones not walking around with a cone in our hands.  There are many enjoyable sights throughout the park, from the many sculptures, to the rosegarten, to the dozens of young people carrying their beer coolers for what was probably their first drunken picnic of the season.

We've all been to Zoos.  No pictures of caged animals here.  I do consider it a 5-star zoo.  With one amazing surprise: a stand of redwoods! In Southwest Germany!  How curious.  Turns out the German royals planted sequoias between 1845 and 1865.  The giant redwood trees are just starting to show their glory:

The last city we visited on this trip was Heidelberg.  A short train ride from Ludwigsburg.  The main tourist destination here is Heidelberg Castle.  You can spend an entire day inside this centuries-old structure, seen here on the hill above Mary.

Think of the biggest fort you've toured in the southern USA and now imagine something much, much older and 20-50 times bigger.  I'm just going to copy paste from Wikipedia the words of the man for whom this blog is named after, Mark Twain, after he saw the castle around 1880:

"A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. This one could not have been better placed. It stands upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green woods, there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude."

These two pictures barely do the castle justice, but a tourist has to try:

Go see Heidelberg Castle in you are in the area.  You will not be disappointed.  The city of Heidelberg is also a treat, with much to see while walking around or sitting down for a meal.  Here are some pictures we took in and around the riverside:

I trust the photos showed how lucky we were with the weather in Germany that May in 2011.  We leave you with a picture of our last lunch in Südwestdeutschland, a quintessential German meal:

Yeah, the beer was already one-third gone.

Travel in style -- Porsche plug

What is your favorite way to travel?  I tolerate flying, never been cruising, and hiking is what we do once we arrive at our destinations.  But in order to get "there", at least here in the States where public transportation is often lacking, that usually means driving.

Well, if you're going to drive, there's no finer way to enjoy our roads than in a new Porsche.  I had the fortune of working at Porsche Cars North America from 2003-2011 and as an employee you can lease their vehicles at a decent rate.  Employees used to be able to enjoy the Porsche Driving Experience (PDE) at  Barber Motorsports once a year.  Apparently that's no longer the case, so if you're interested in racing Stuttgart's finest then go here instead: Porsche Driving Experience.

Enough promotions concerning my former employer.  Let me list all of the cars we were able to enjoy over the years.  Yes, we name most of our cars, a tradition started by our kids after they played the fabulous Putt-Putt games from Humongous Entertainment in the late 90's.  Over 8 years we drove 3 Cayennes

• Black Dog
• Blue Dog
• Ugly Dog

2 Boxsters

• Raven
• BABS (Big Ass Boxster S)

plus 1 Carrera (Sally) and very briefly one Cayman (Snowflake).  We also borrowed a Cayenne S and a Panamera for one week.  We took these vehicles all over the Southeast, driving up to Nashville, TN in one of the Boxters and down to Sarasota, FL in Sally.  I must say, some of the looks we got on the roads and some of the compliments we would receive at gas stations would make me feel a little sheepish.  I would usually reply with me "it's not mine, it's a company car" to which the retort would be along the lines of "Nice company!".

Here is the first Cayennes we leased, Black Dog, parked in our garage:

This was the first series of SUV's sold by Porsche in the USA and it had a couple of minor issues.  The one that annoyed most was the broken cup holders.  Yeah, I know, "First World Problems".  Black Dog was followed by Blue Dog:

To this day I wondered what our distant neighbors thought when they would see a new Porsche driving in every 6 months.

Here are some picture from the PDE.  The first year Mary talked me into going (yeah, I'm not a car guy).  The second year I was able to take some friends (on the right of the photo) thanks to my colleagues on the left.

It was quite expensive, so we only drove Sally the 911 for 6 months.

Here is the Panamera (before this series had been released to the public for sale) we enjoyed for a few days:

The 4-door sedans and SUVs saved Porsche the company.  It turns out that rich soccer moms don't like small 2-seaters and dads occasionally want trunk space beyond just storing golf bags.  But Mary loved her Boxters.  To this day she pines about no longer being able to drive somewhere with the top down.

All good things must come to an end.  I left the company in 2011 to join a hard-core software development firm.  Our last company vehicle was a Cayman, which is a 2-door coupe that is half-Boxster, half-Carrera.  So your journey in style ends with Snowflake:

North to Northwest

Back in 2006 we figured we could take one more family vacation before the kids eventually went off to college.  So glad we did because the four of us have not traveled together since that summer.  Ceci & Tony chose Seattle, where Mary and I honeymooned 20 years prior.  I wanted to take them to National Parks one last time and the Emerald City is one of the best launching areas in the country to do that.

We flew into Sea-Tac and immediately headed South, then West, to the Olympic Peninsula, so we could spend one night in Ocean Shores with a view of the Pacific.  This was the first week in June and we seemed to be the only guests at our hotel and in its restaurant.  The next morning took US-101 north to the Hoh Rain Forest.  If you don't mind getting wet and aren't afraid of the color green, and enjoy seeing sights like this

then add Hoh to your bucket list.  Put it this way: where else can you enjoy a rain forest without dealing with all those pesky wilderness problems you saw in the "Tarzan" and "Jungle Book" movies?  But you are going to get wet.  It's amazing we don't look more miserable in this shot:

The entire time you are on the Olympic Peninsula you are never far away from the Pacific Ocean.  Where else can you begin one day by exploring what washed up on the beach and then end your trip at eye-level to glaciers? Sit down, you Kiwis from New Zealand!

However, we didn't travel that quickly.  We spent 3 days in the Peninsula, spending one night in Forks.  "Forks?", Ceci exclaimed, as she added that her friend would be so jealous.  Turns out that horrible series, "Twilight", was set in the town of Forks.  In case you're into that.  Or into fishing.  The cabin we rented in Forks had a large sign as you walked in: "No gutting fish inside the cabin"

We will not bore you with pictures of Seattle proper.  You probably know that you should go to Pike's Market and get a dungeness crab sandwich.  Really, you should.  Then go up in the Space Needle.  Maybe take in a Mariners game.  Oh, I just read a blogger's guide.  Apparently there are some "must posts", like pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge or Times Square.  Fine.  Here.  It's not a good pic:

But we're here for the National Parks.  We did not visit the North Cascades because we didn't have enough time.  A bigger regret was skipping Snoqualmie Falls, right off I-90, which Mary and I had seen before.  I didn't know that future Ceci would one day binge-watch all of "Twin Peaks", despite my advice to stop after the 4th episode (the one with the dancing dwarf dream sequence).

Since the weather was fantastic at the end of our week in the Northwest the entertainment decision was easy: we're spending the rest of our time in Mt. Rainier National Park.  Seeing this volcano from your airplane window, or maybe from the Space Needle, does not do it justice.  If you have the time to drive to the park then you must go and enjoy the many hikes in this park.  It's endless fabulous views.

Just make sure to drive slowly and carefully through the park.  This little beauty was not on the road on our way to see Mt. Rainier.  But it tumbled down and was waiting for us on the drive back to see if we purchased the extra insurance on the rental car:

My kind of town, Chicago is

We waited decades for one of our companies to send us to the Windy City for some conference, but it never seemed to work out.  So in May 2010 Mary and I decided to finally spend a long weekend in Chicago on our own dime for my 50th birthday.  No regrets.  Chicago is a must-see for anyone who loves museums or architecture.  Or a walkable big city.  For 3 days we strolled down Michigan Avenue until our feet were throbbing.

We wanted an older hotel so we chose The Allerton Hotel on The Magnificent Mile.  Smallish hotel room, but it suited us fine.

The hotel was perfectly located to see most of the famous Chicago sights.  But our time was limited and we only walked South each day.  Therefore we did not go North and see Wrigley Field or the Lincoln Park Zoo (very unlike me to pass up a zoo) or the Chicago History Museum.

The first day we took an architectural boat tour of the city.  It doesn't matter which tour company you choose.  All of the tours cost the same and they're all 90 minutes long and it is something you have to experience.  The camera cannot really capture the grandiose buildings, but I do have to include this one shot for any Wilco fans who like the cover of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"

That is the Marina City complex, designed in 1959 by Bertrand Goldberg and constructed 1961-1968.

The other days were spent going down to see The Art Institute of Chicago and The Field Museum.  You can click the links if you want to go through the buildings.  I must post one photo since I have always wanted to pose with Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever found:

One pleasant surprise along Michigan Avenue was Millennium Park, which has The Bean.  The public sculpture is named Cloud Gate, but everyone calls it The Bean and these shots show why it has become a tourist destination since its dedication in 2006.

We were fortunate that the weather was spectacular on the first weekend in May.  Bad weather would preclude the boat tours on the river, but you could still take public transportation to the museums (and maybe do a dinner cruise out on the lake).  Luckily we had clear blue skies and enjoyed these sights as we walked South with Lake Michigan on our left:

I have not mentioned food in this post because that was the one thing that was not memorable about the Windy City.  Perhaps it was bad luck, but the two fine restaurants where we ate did not impress us.  Chicago hot dogs are still hot dogs (just don't put ketchup on them).  Lastly, we are on Team John Stewart when it comes to NYC Pizza > Chicago Deep Dish Pizza.

PIZZA vs. Tomato Soup in a bread bowl indeed!

Yellowstone is best experienced with children

Sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas":
5 ... Boiling ... Springs!
4 Stupid People,
3 Howling Coyotes,
2 Mountain Bears,
and a lone Wolf eating something big!

Those were some of the lyrics the youngsters in our car came up with as we drove around the first National Park in the USA.  Just like old time circuses and Disney's parks, Yellowstone is best experienced with kids.  Nearly 20 years ago we headed out with our children, one of their grandmothers, our best friend and her daughter to see Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Park.  All crammed into a rented minivan we picked up in Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City is a perfect airport for visiting Yellowstone.  You are only 5 hours away and you have a couple of scenic ways to get to Northern Wyoming.  On the way up we took I-15 North and stopped in Pocatello, Idaho because we wanted to see the Craters of the Moon National Monument.  We returned via smaller roads, driving by Bear Lake and the town of Logan, Utah.

Craters of the Moon is an interesting experience if you want to walk through lava flows without going all the way to Hawai'i or Iceland.  Since we booked our hotel in the town of West Yellowstone it was a decent way to start our nature trip.

Pro Tip: if you live on the East Coast and are traveling to Western National Parks, stay on East Coast time!  That is your superpower.  While the kids weren't very happy about getting tossed into the back of the minivan at 6:30 AM, that allowed us to be one of the first people in the park every morning.  Before 8 AM, on our first day, we believe we saw one of the wolves that had been recently reintroduced into Yellowstone.  The large canine, larger than the coyotes that we saw a few days later, spent over 10 minutes chewing apart something the size of a marmot or a woodchuck.

The only day we slept in and did not get to Park's entrance until 9:30 AM we spent almost an hour in stand-still traffic just inside Yellowstone because of a large Bison jam.  Sure, it's neat to take a picture like this one out of your car window, but not when you don't move an inch in 45 minutes.

The bountiful wildlife in Yellowstone is enough to keep children entertained as they try to be the first one to spy the next bison or elk in the largest national park of the lower 48 states.  The Lamar Valley in Northeastern Yellowstone is the recommended spot for wildlife viewing and we also had great luck driving South to Yellowstone Lake from Canyon Village.  Towards Lake Hospital.  The friendly hospital where our son received quite a few stitches near his eye after he fell while balancing himself on a dead log.

We knew the kids would enjoy seeing the megafauna in the park, including a couple of bears we encountered when driving through the mountain pass.  They also got to see three coyotes howling at each other as they worked their way through a herd of bison.  The children were also delighted by the boiling mudspots and hot springs in the park.  The geysers in the Old Faithful area were OK with them.  But the best eruptions they saw were in the less well known Norris Geyser Basin.

This cannot be stressed enough: Yellowstone is a dangerous place.  It is not Disney World.  When I was not driving I read a macabre book purchased in one of the gift shops: "Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park".  Many of the accident involved boiling yourself in a hot spring or getting too close to a bison.  Which is why we turned around on this particular walkway:

After reading some of the less gruesome stories in the Death book to the kids they began looking for tourist doing stupid things, like a woman taking a sip of the water at the Grand Prismatic Spring or someone standing too close to the edge at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  Yes, Yellowstone is so immense it has it's own Grand Canyon, with a spectacular waterfall.

To this day the kids still talk about this Yellowstone trip.  With us, with their friends, and among themselves.  And it's always the Yellowstone trip.  The not-so-humble Grand Teton National Park never gets mentioned.  I supposed that is because the magnificent scenery cannot compare to all of the wildlife and geothermal activity in the  neighboring park right above it.

Having visited both parks in a small RV a decade before this trip, we can confirm that it is much better to experience the natural beauty of Yellowstone through the eyes of a child (or three).  Besides, only when traveling with kids would a minivan headed to back to Salt Lake City keep singing over and over:

5 ... Boiling ... Springs!
4 Stupid People,
3 Howling Coyotes,
2 Mountain Bears,
and a lone Wolf eating something big!