R is for the Richardson Highway: A to Z Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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R is for the Richardson Highway

The Richardson Highway connects Valdez, Alaska to Fairbanks, Alaska. It's one end of the Al-Can adventure if you're following it from end to end (which is how I got there when I moved to Alaska). When you get to the end, you either have to get on a boat (which is how I got to Kodiak) or turn around and go back. 

 I also lived along this highway for a year when I was teaching in Kenny Lake. My favorite truck was destroyed in Thompson Pass (saving the life of my then-husband, who was driving it). 

It's one gorgeous stretch of road, with mountain views, a glacier with easy from-the-road access and awesome little Alaskan towns along the way. It's treacherous, too, especially in winter. Driving it was always an adventure of one sort or another. 

I wrote a poem about it once: 

It's a poetry-inspiring sort of road. 

Q is for Queen City (Cincinnati): A to Z Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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Q is for Queen City (Cincinnati)

I grew up four blocks and a bridge from Cincinnati, Ohio, in Kentucky. We used to walk across the bridge to attend Reds games (my face firmly planted in my father's back because I'm afraid of man-made heights). 

I was closer to some of the downtown pleasures than a lot of people who actually have a Cincinnati zip code. And a busy river city is never dull. There's always something to see. 

There were a lot of lovely things about growing up there. Cincinnati is a good sized city with lots of city pleasures and attractions. Museums, movies, parks, the zoo, a symphony (ah, Music Hall), and many more such things. It's big enough to attract traveling shows like the circus and all the  ___ On Ice shows (fill in the blank with popular character of the week). There are good concert venues like Riverbend and popular events like the WEBN fireworks every Labor Day.  All in all, I'm glad to have grown up there, with access to so much. 

The city has changed a lot in my lifetime, mostly for the better. I can remember when they put in Sawyer Point, a lovely city park right on the river with a great playground, lots of room to walk and a cool ice and roller skating area. I was sad when they moved my Natural History museum, but I've visited since in the new Union Terminal setting, and it's lovely. 

I've ragged on it over the years, as people sometimes do about their hometowns: seeing the flaws more than the offerings. But I always enjoy it when I make it back to visit. She really is a queen of a city. 

P is for Plaza Mayor: A to Z Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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P is for Plaza Mayor

Plaza Mayor in Madrid, Spain is the most exciting city place I have ever seen. 

First the plaza itself is beautiful! Ornate and impressive both in scale and style. There's a definite "wow factor" just in stepping food into the plaza. 

It's such a center of activity as well. Music, dance, street artists, markets, shopping, and, of course, food! 

I ate my first tapas there. Drank my first Spanish wine there. Bought my first flower from a street vending gypsy there. Heard my first live flamenco music there. 

I've been to Madrid twice now. In 1992, as an undergraduate student and in 1999, as a teacher with a group of students from Nome, Alaska. Showing those kids from a tiny town in rural Alaska this gorgeous city attraction was a thrill. That's part of why I teach: the thrill that comes from seeing a kid "get" something for the first time. And even the most well-traveled student in my group had never seen anything like this plaza. 

If you're a people-watcher looking to get a sense of what madrileños are all about, this is your spot.

O is for Occoneechee Speedway Trail: A to Z Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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O is for Occoneechee Speedway Trail

The Occoneechee Speedway is one of my favorite places in Hillsborough, North Carolina, the town I've made my home in for almost a decade now. It used to be a racetrack, a NASCAR dirt track built for the inaugural race season of 1949. 

There are reunions and community celebrations there sometimes. But most of the year, it's a lovely wooded spot where my dog and I run past the old car, judge's stand, and viewing platforms, lightening both our souls. 

I've enjoyed walking down at the Speedway ever since I learned it existed, but it's really become one of my places since I took up running about six months ago. 

If you've been reading my posts this month, you know how much I like the woods and natural places, and how much I like ruins, ghost towns, and abandoned places. And this has the best of both those worlds. 

Recently some additional trails were completed that connect the Speedway to the Riverwalk, so you can get around a fair amount of our lovely little town without leaving the woods. Since it's warm so much of the year here, you can enjoy it nearly all year long. 

If you ever come to Hillsborough, here's where you should go to stretch your legs. It's a lovely, peaceful place. 

N is for Natural Bridge State Park: A to Z Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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N is for Natural Bridge State Park

I'm a woods girl. Nothing soothes my soul like time among the trees. Maybe it's the extra oxygen, maybe it's something more spiritual than that. I don't know. But I do know that it's head-clearing and heart-lightening to spend time in leafy light. 

When I was an undergraduate student at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky, I was always running off to the news. Morehead itself is in the Daniel Boone National Forest and there's a lot of state park land, caves, and amazing rock formations in the area. I explored like crazy during those years. 

One of my favorite places for Natural Bridge State Park in Red River Gorge. It's named, of course, for the Natural Bridge, a wide platform of rock you can climb and walk on. 

It's odd because, generally, I am a bit afraid of heights. I don't like stairwells where I can see between the stairs, or looking out the window of a skyscraper. But when the heights are not human-made, I have a little more faith in them. I want to be on top, looking out at what nature has made. 

I once sat on the bridge at this park watching a storm move towards me across the horizon, lightning streaking the darkening sky. I stayed until the wind was whipping my hair around and my jacket was damp with the rain. I can still feel the charge in the air when I close my eyes. 

Places of rock and tree are magic. I truly believe so. 

M is for Museum Road: A to Z Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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M is for Museum Road

I once had a flat in Oxford England. 

It gives me a little shiver of excitement to say that. For me, it was one of those "bucket list" kind of things. A bookish girl like me simply had to see England somehow, sometime. And luckily, that opportunity came to me through grad school. 

See, I have a fancy-schmancy Master's Degree from the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College. Not where you'd expect a blue-collar background girl like me to end up. I was lucky enough to get to go there through some special funding the college received to bring their programs to rural Alaskan educators. I was a Dewitt-Wallace Readers Digest scholar. So, for four glorious summers, I was a Bread Loaf student, nearly all expenses paid. (It's a wonderful program, and if life ever gives you the chance to go: jump on it!)

One of those summers was spent at the Oxford campus, at Lincoln college. And because I had recently become a mother, I was granted a flat on Museum Row rather than dormitory space. The other grad students were grateful, I'm sure, that I wasn't trying to fit a crib into my dorm room (if such a thing would even have been allowed). 

I had never really lived in a city, having grown up in a small town (near a big city, but not in it) and having spent my adult life up to that point in *really* small places (like population 400 Kenny Lake or population 3500 Nome). 

But I threw myself into the experience that summer, enjoying theater opportunities, public transportation, street performances, delicious foods, and walking and walking and walking through the city streets and parks. Not to mention the Bodleian Library (book-girl heaven) and all the colleges of the Oxford system. Such architecture! Such history! Such inspiration! Such tea!

I'm still not a city girl. But for a few weeks, I loved playing at it. 

Thanks to my mother, and my then-in-laws, who came and helped care for my daughter while I was in class, I had one of the best summers of my life. The shabby little flats on Museum Row glow brightly in my memory. 

L is for Last Train to Nowhere: A to Z Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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L is for Last Train to Nowhere

Nome, Alaska was my home for almost a decade. Of all the places I've hung my hat over the years, Nome is one that I really felt like I belonged in. It's the place where the odds are good, and the goods are odd. 

It's the home of my heart. 

That's not to say it's an easy place to be. It's really small. Like 3500 people. And isolated, as in no roads lead there. And cold. It's only 45 miles from the Arctic Circle, and is bordered by the Bering Strait, which sometimes freezes for miles out to sea. And the landscape strikes a lot of people as bleak, though I love the flat openness of it, and the subtle beauties. 

The Last Train to Nowhere is a rather poetically named tourist attraction. It's a train that has been left to sit on the tundra, stopped "in its tracks" forever. The locomotives were part of the mining history of Nome, once famed as a gold boomtown. Nome is littered with machinery that was brought in to excavate the riches of the earth in the 1880s, then left to rot because it was too expensive to haul it back out again. There's a small tourist industry built up in showing people these remnants of the boom times of the town and countryside. 

They say that nothing ever leaves Nome, and, at least for large machinery, that seems to be true. 

If you've been reading my posts during this challenge, then you already know that I kind of have a thing for lonely, isolated places and abandoned ghost towns. They pull at something in my soul in a different way than busy, populated places. Maybe its all the stories that hover over them, and the quiet that lets you spin them for yourself in your imagination. 

The Last Train to Nowhere is my kind of train, going to my kind of place.