Picture Perfect: Niagara Dry

Niagara Falls, New York
June 1969

The walk is called the Cave of the Winds, but there is no cave anymore, and on this day no winds. No water either. Had my sisters and I been here a few weeks ago, the spray from the falls would have lashed our yellow rain slickers with gale force. Today, we face dry cliffs and tumbled rock. Niagara’s American Falls have been turned off.

The much larger Canadian Falls that have carved a horseshoe-shaped curve across the Niagara River between the Canadian shore and New York’s Goat Island still plunge into a curtain of mist, as grand as always. But on the U.S. side, massive rockfalls over the past few decades have reduced the vertical drop of the American Falls.

To determine if the rockfalls could be cleared out and perhaps the relentless erosion of the falls forestalled, a plan was created to dewater the American Falls for five months. The Army Corps of Engineers built a 600-foot-long cofferdam across the branch of the Niagara River that flows along the New York shore. On June 12, 1969, the final boulders were dumped into place, and the American Falls diminished to a trickle. We are among the throngs of visitors who have come to see Niagara stilled and silenced.

Earlier today, we walked out onto the dry rocks of the river above the falls, where raging rapids would have swept us downriver and over the brink, like the two people whose bodies were discovered among the rocks. In the final analysis, engineering and public opinion will hold that nature should be left to carve its own course. The rockfalls will remain in place and the dam dismantled. But for now, we can experience Niagara Falls as never before.

Picture Perfect is a series of occasional short posts, each focused on a single image that captures a memory from travels past.

David Romanowski, 2021

Picture Perfect: Grace

East Lansing, Michigan
December 31, 1979

I bike down to the campus early this morning in thick fog. It is New Year’s Eve. No one else is around. I walk along the Red Cedar River and into the woods. I have never seen anything like this, or anything like this since.

It is called hoarfrost, what happens when water vapor in relatively warm air contacts a frozen surface. Everything around me is furred with ice. Delicate crystals a half-inch long spike from branches and twigs. The fog lingers; the crystals grow longer. “A softness floats above the river,” I write later that day, “a fine mist, like the breath of God, lingering in the trees.”

To recount the 18 months I lived in Michigan, I risk sounding melodramatic. How I moved here to further my career, and left having lost it. How I arrived engaged and left estranged, never to see her again. How I made some of the best friends here I ever had, and then lost them too after I left. How I spiraled down into a maelstrom of depression, and spent years struggling out.

I shot only one role of film during those 18 months. Not of the cross-country trips I would take by train and car. Nor of the canoe camping trips in Michigan and Ontario I would take with those friends. Only of that morning, that astonishing sight, that moment of grace, before it melted away.

Picture Perfect is a series of occasional short posts, each focused on a single image (or in this case, three) that captures a memory from travels past.

David Romanowski, 2021

Traveling Lightly

Back in the late 1970s when I lived in Boston, I took a continuing education course on backpacking. It culminated with a two-day, two-night camping trip and hike up Mount Chocorua in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. It was my first experience with backcountry camping and my first hike to the top of a mountain. I was hooked.

Based on what I learned in that course, I bought my first backpack, tent, sleeping bag and ground pad, cooking gear, hiking boots, and more. I collected trail guides and topographical maps so I could plan my own adventures. I embarked upon several short backpacking trips, either alone or with a friend.

I returned to Chocorua and backpacked up other peaks. Along the way I discovered that the sections of trail I enjoyed most ran alongside or near rushing waters. So I began searching for trails that followed rivers and streams. I backpacked into the White Mountains’ Pemigewasset Wilderness, on a trail that paralleled the river of the same name, and camped there alone in probably the most remote place I’d ever been.

After I moved to the Midatlantic, I hiked to a primitive campsite on Assateague Island, where I camped on the beach with wild horses grazing nearby. On a driving trip through Shenandoah National Park, I backpacked down a trail at nightfall to a backwoods campsite, amid the deafening screech of multitudes of bats. I backpacked with a friend up Ramsey’s Draft in George Washington National Forest, where a destructive flash flood overwhelmed our trail during the night, forcing us to find another way out. (Meanwhile, the Forest Service was considering sending in search parties; another story.)

Shenandoah was only an hour’s drive or so from where I lived, so I mostly went on day hikes there and in nearby West Virginia. But I never grew to love the Blue Ridge and the central Appalachians as I did the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont. The terrain and trails here seemed monotonous, with none of the lakes and ponds and few of the rushing streams that made hiking in New England so beautiful. Even the mountain vistas seemed less grand.

*   *   *

I recently digitized some of my old photographic slides, including those few I took on that first backpacking trip. Looking at them again got me wondering what it was about backpacking that so appealed to me—and still does.

Our first-night campsite in the woods below Mount Chocorua.

Heading up the mountain along the Liberty Trail.

Clothes came off as the morning wore on.

Jim Liberty Cabin, a half-mile from the summit.

Our campsite below the summit.

The view from the summit, looking north.

The view from the summit, looking west.

Clouds enveloped our campsite in the morning.

Aside from the joys of being in the woods and scaling summits, I think much of why I liked backpacking had to do the satisfaction I derived from traveling self-contained, living simply, and carrying only what I really needed.

But the “simplicity” of self-contained travel requires careful planning and preparation, and no small amount of cash to acquire the clothing and gear you need. Weight is paramount. You think twice about every item you choose to bring. Each must address some basic need, serve to fix a potential problem, or make life on the trail or in camp a little more bearable. You may allow yourself some luxuries—a book or a journal, say, or a plastic flask of Grand Marnier—unless you’re like the fanatic our backpacking instructor told us about, who cut his toothbrush handle short to save a fraction of an ounce.

Hiking up a mountain while carrying a tent, sleeping bag, cooking gear, food, water, and clothing to keep you comfortable in all foreseeable conditions isn’t most people’s idea of fun. You can’t be fastidious about cleanliness and comfort. You have to be willing to get dirty, sweaty, wet, hot, and cold. It’s physically demanding and involves some amount of risk. But the rewards are great: a stronger and healthier body, a powerful sense of achievement, and getting to go places and experience things most other people never do.

All of this applies to bikepacking as well, which I began doing about two decades after my backpacking days. Things I learned from backpacking directly carried over to traveling self-contained on a bike. I think my bicycle travels were a natural outgrowth of my backpacking experience.

Whether traveling with a pack strapped to my back, panniers clipped to my bicycle, or even luggage packed in the back of my car, I have strived to travel lightly, with only what I need. It’s not the easiest way to go. It complicates packing, and sometimes it just isn’t worth the effort. But it’s how I learned to travel a long time ago, when I first strapped on a backpack and headed up a trail.

I haven’t gone backpacking in over 30 years, but I still have that blue Lowe Alpine Systems backpack I bought in Boston in the late 1970s. Its bendable internal frame still conforms to the curve of my back. Its scent takes me back to the woods. Despite my compulsion to lighten my load of possessions from time to time, I can’t quite bring myself to give it away.

David Romanowski, 2021

More Postcards from the Road

Last February, I posted Postcards from the Road, which featured a selection of postcards I’d collected on my travels around the country. I recently discovered a couple more batches, bringing my collection of postcards to nearly 300. And that’s not counting the dozens of vintage World War II era postcards in my mother’s photo and memorabilia albums.

While scanning those newly discovered postcards, I decided to revisit my collection and create another blog post on them, this one organized a little differently. So here are a few more postcards from the road.

On the Road

Get your kicks . . .

Be careful where you park in Arizona.

I love these kinds of graphics, with lots of cartoonish detail.

This illustration for a 1959 Standard Oil Company roadmap shows cars on the Natchez Trace Parkway.

Artist Jennifer Lake Miller created a series of delightful paintings called “Celebrate Oregon” that appeared on notecards and tee-shirts. This one shows Mount Hood surrounded by numerous Oregon landmarks.

Sightseeing

One of the famous roadside dinosaurs in Cabazon, California.

The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, displays the camper truck John Steinbeck drove around the country in 1960, the trip that was the basis for his book “Travels with Charley.”

The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. An heir to the Winchester gun fortune bought an 8-room farm house in 1886 and spent the next 36 years adding on to it. The 160-room mansion contains many architectural quirks, like stairways and doors that don’t lead anywhere.

Abraham Lincoln gets his annual face lift at Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

The beautiful San Xavier del Bac Mission south of Tucson, built in 1783 and carefully preserved.

You’ve seen lots of pictures of the Alamo from the outside. Here’s the inside of the so-called Alamo Shrine.

The International UFO Museum in—where else?—Roswell, New Mexico, draws “flying saucer” devotees from all over.

A reproduction of a vintage postcard of Lucy the Elephant in Margate City on the Jersey Shore. It’s no longer a hotel, but you can still visit and climb up inside.

A vintage postcard of Washington, D.C.

The Haunted Mansion in Walt Disney World in Florida, “where 999 ghosts, ghouls and goblins are just dying to greet you.”

Unique Lodgings

The Curly Redwood Lodge near Crescent City, California, was built from the wood of a single curly redwood tree, one that has curly rather than straight grain. The motel opened in 1957.

If you’d like to spend the night in a caboose, the Railroad Park Resort in Dunsmuir, California, is the place for you. I’ve also stayed in a caboose motel near Strasburg, Pennsylvania.

This postcard doesn’t begin to show what awaits you at the Madonna Inn in San Louis Obispo, California. Each motel room is unique. The one we stayed in looked like something out of “The Flintstones,” with rock walls, rock sink, and rock shower.

On Route 66 in Gallup, New Mexico, the El Rancho Hotel served as home base for many Hollywood film shoots. Its long list of notable guests includes John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Katharine Hepburn, and Ronald Reagan.

In 1996 I attended a museum conference at the YMCA of the Rockies’ Estes Park Center, a beautiful conference center and resort near Estes Park, Colorado.

The historic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, was the inspiration for Stephen King’s 1977 novel “The Shining.” The 1997 TV miniseries based on the novel was filmed here.

On a 2002 trip through New England, Sue and I stayed at several old cabin court motels, including this especially cute one, Hearthside Village Cottage Motel in Bethlehem, New Hampshire.

Wakulla Springs Lodge in Wakulla Springs State Park just south of Tallahassee, Florida, is a historic hotel located right next to the world’s largest and deepest spring. Sue and I had planned to stay here again with friends last March, but the pandemic nixed that.

The Northwest

The Yellowstone River drops more than 300 feet at its Lower Falls in Yellowstone National Park. This image doesn’t quite capture the spectacular colors of the canyon walls.

The wildfires that devastated Yellowstone in 1988 came perilously close to Old Faithful Village and historic Old Faithful Inn.

In case you didn’t believe the sign.

Built by the Great Northern Railway in 1914–15, Many Glacier Lodge is one of several historic lodges in Glacier National Park.

Prince of Wales Hotel sits a bluff in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada, just across the lake from Glacier National Park in Montana.

This aerial view of Crater Lake in Oregon shows the rebuilt Crater Lake Lodge on the very edge of the volcanic caldera.

This springtime view of Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood is another Oregon painting by Jennifer Lake Miller.

A classic view of the Oregon Coast, looking south from Ecola State Park toward Cannon Beach.

Not what you might expect on the Oregon Coast: a 40-mile stretch of sand dunes, some reaching 500 feet in height, in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area south of Florence.

Paradise Inn on Mount Rainier opened in 1917 and is one of the grandest of the historic national park lodges.

The Southwest

The Kolob Canyons area of Zion National Park in Utah. At the Grand Canyon, you mainly look down from the canyon rim. At Zion, you mainly look up from the canyon floor.

Classic 1930s touring cars still motor around a few western national parks. This one sits outside Bryce Canyon Lodge, a classic itself, in Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park.

Meandering through downtown San Antonio, the Riverwalk is a great place to take a slow boat ride or relax by the water with a Lone Star beer.

Coffee Pot Rock near Sedona, Arizona. They don’t call it red rock country for nothing.

This vintage postcard of the Grand Canyon is postmarked May 2, 1946. Its message reads, “Having a wonderful time – the trip is grand, and marriage is all you said.”

Grand Canyon Railway runs a steam train between Williams, Arizona, into Grand Canyon National Park. Visible just behind the depot is the El Tovar Hotel, which overlooks the canyon.

White Sands National Monument in New Mexico contains the world’s largest dune field made, not of quartz, but of soft white gypsum grains.

Death Valley in California is the improbable location of Scotty’s Castle, a wealthy businessman’s vacation retreat built beginning in 1922.

Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley National Park looks like a mirage. The name of this luxurious hotel has since been changed to The Oasis at Death Valley, which is fitting.

Rocks are known to slide mysteriously across the flat surface of the dry lake bed called the Race Track in Death Valley. Researchers think a soaked surface after rain or snow coupled with high winds are the cause.

Badwater Basin in Death Valley hasn’t changed much since this photo was taken in 1934. At 282 feet below sea level, Badwater is the lowest point in North America.

Las Vegas is not really my kind of place, but it’s certainly unique.

Other Scenic Views

Badlands National Park in South Dakota, a region of eroded layers of siltstone and sandstone. The bands of color are caused by varying amounts of iron.

A nice view of South Beach in Miami Beach and its famous Art Deco hotels along Ocean Drive.

Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco is a renowned shopping center and home of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory. I ate many a decadent ice cream sundae here during my early visits to the city.

Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head, the famous Oahu landmark. I stayed in the farthest beachfront hotel when I was here to work on an exhibit project at Pearl Harbor.

The Kohala Coast on the Big Island of Hawaii. Snowcapped Mauna Kea in the background rises nearly 14,000 feet above sea level. From its ocean base, it rises 33,500 feet, making it by that measure the tallest mountain on earth.

That’s all folks!

David Romanowski, 2021

Picture Perfect: Traveler

Somewhere in the Midwest
November 1980

Tom took this picture of me and my car at a rest stop while driving from Michigan State to Pasadena. We were traveling to an educators conference at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where we would witness Voyager I’s historic encounter with Saturn. We could have flown to California, but I talked Tom into taking annual leave and driving.

I bought the car—my first—only two months before, a 1980 Toyota Corolla Sport Coupe Deluxe, the least expensive trim. To economize further, I opted for no air conditioning or even a radio. I was still learning to work the manual shift when I drove off the lot.

As I headed home to Buffalo that Christmas in a snowstorm, a speeding semi blew past me on the slippery Thruway, sending the Corolla into a snow-blinded spin. It slid to a stop in the median after threading the needle between a drop-off and a mile post—backwards. It would not be the last time the car would get me through a treacherous drive safely and unscathed.

I moved back to Boston from Michigan two months later, the recession having cost me my job. In the difficult years that followed, the car became my lifeline, my haven, my means of escape. It took me to the mountains and shore, and back and forth to Buffalo, my plastic, dash-mounted “I ❤ NY” coffee mug steaming the windshield, sunrise illuminating the rearview mirror.

In 1983 I drove it one way to Virginia, where I would reboot my life and career. By the time the car turned 14, we had traveled together 131,000 miles. In 1994 I took it, rusting and ailing, on one last drive to Shenandoah before signing it over to the American Cancer Society. I snapped some final photos just before the tow truck arrived. After it disappeared from view down the street, I opened the Pentax to extract the film and discovered the camera was empty. Tom’s picture of me and Traveler remains the best I have.

Picture Perfect is a series of occasional short posts, each focused on a single image that captures a memory from travels past.

David Romanowski, 2020