Seattle

My travel to Washington state is limited to a single visit to Seattle, but it was a particularly good one. Again, it was for a conference, and the flight was long enough that we actually had a large plane - I don't know model numbers but it was one that has 2 seats on either side and 5 in the middle. It doesn't feel so cramped for a long flight as does a standard plane.

In Seattle, we visited the Space Needle, saw the famous Pike Place Market, and ate in a couple of great restaurants, one of which practically hung out over the Sound. We also saw the Seattle Aquarium and took a boat trip to Tillicum Village on Blake Island, where we ate a traditional Native American meal and saw a stage show of their dances.


Seattle has wonderful coffee. Even before Starbucks won the "every coffee shop on the corner" contest, Seattle had shops all over offering Seattle's Best. At the time I visited there, so many years back, that was a new thing.


I would like to go back. I only got a glimpse of the nearby Mt Ranier and Mt St Helens from the plane (there may have been a clear day or two while there but I don't remember). I would like to see either of them from a better vantage point.

Chicago, Evanston, Urbana-Champagne

Illinois is pretty close by, and so when I wanted a city to play in, I'd plan a trip to Chicago. I've been to many conferences there since it is a hub city that is easy to fly into. And I've visited Urbana-Champagne and Evanston as part of my tour of Big Ten universities (U of Illinois and Northwestern, respectively).


The attractions of Chicago/Evanston are twofold. One, a nice big city, lots of bookstores and restaurants and shops, combined with the comfortable familiarity of Lake Michigan from my childhood. All right, Lake Michigan is on the "wrong" side of the city from the small town where I grew up, but that doesn't matter. It's still as big and beautiful and soothing to me in Illinois as it was to me in Frankfort.


I've been to Chicago by plane, by car, and by train - the latter is actually my favorite way to arrive. I fly many places - too many, really - and after a while all flights seem the same. I don't like to drive long distances unless I have company to share the driving, and even then it seems a bit like a forced march. But on a train you can see the scenery, get a coffee, read, and there is absolutely no pressure to go faster. You don't have to worry about traffic. Someone else is responsible for getting you there, so no need for maps or triptiks or GPS announcements on where to turn. It is leisurely and I like it very much.


Once in Chicago, the El is a wonderful option for getting around, although there are numerous cabs available as well. I prefer not to drive in Chicago after one memorable trip where we were stuck on the Dan Ryan Expressway through town for several hours in 90 degree heat. Cars were overheating and dying on all sides of us and it served as a caution to me for the future.


Northwestern's campus is gorgeous - the buildings are fancy and probably reflect the fact that as a private school (the only private in the Big Ten), it is pricey. The students there do enjoy a very nice campus. Good bookstores and restaurants and shops in the area make for a very pretty college town. And a commuter train gets you back into the heart of Chicago in only a little time.

Urbana-Champagne (or sometimes, Champagne-Urbana) is the home of the University of Illinois, another Big Ten school. I don't know why the town name is sometimes one, sometimes the other way. I also admit I remember very little about the university campus or nearby area. Although we did stay at the hotel/inn on campus (almost every Big Ten school has at least one), we encountered quite a bit of rain while we were there and thus the obligatory tour of campus was obscured by viewing through rain-smeared bus windows. Nice enough, I am sure, but not memorable for me.

McAllen and Brownsville

My trips to Texas, unlike almost all my other trips to other states, have been completely personal rather than business. My parents were snowbirds for about five years. They summered in Michigan and wintered in McAllen, Texas, near the Mexican border. I made three trips - two for Christmas and once for Thanksgiving. I saw both the Dallas/Fort Worth and the Houston airports on the way.

I liked McAllen very much. It's not a huge city but felt comparable to Lansing, my home town, which is a little over 100,000 people. It had a airport, so that was convenient for visits. The terrain and vegetation were alien - cypress trees dripping Spanish moss in some places, cacti in others. At Christmas, it was pleasantly warm. (My Thanksgiving visit, it was uncomfortably hot.)

My parents spent the winters with other snowbirds, mostly their own age, in a retirement park there. The cats, experience travelers, had their own tethers so they could lie on the patio and watch people walk by, or even get up and visit passersby at their whim.

My mother and I visited a small Mexican town (Hidalgo) right across the Rio Grande. It was fun - very touristy - with lots of shops selling boots, whips, blankets, hats, and jewelry. My mother did use the trips to visit the pharmacia to stock up on meds she and my stepfather used. They were very cheap, and some things requiring a prescription in the US are sold over the counter in Mexico. I don't recall that she actually smuggled them back, but I don't recall a border agent asking us either. They really only wanted to know we were citizens. Probably unfair, but since I am blue-eyed and was blondish before I went grey, I had no problem getting back in, even before I presented my Michigan driver's license.

Another trip we took was to Brownsville, on the Gulf coast, where we spent a wonderful afternoon at the Brownsville Zoo. As I have said before, I will go to a zoo anywhere, anytime. I love animals and most zoos these days try to make a reasonable accomodation to their needs in terms of space and terrain. Sometimes I regret that they have to live in captivity but I also covet zookeeper's ability to put their hands on big cats and get to know them. I want that job.

Once my parents passed away, I had no more personal reason to go to Texas and haven't been back since. It's a nice enough place, but I don't miss it either.

Minneapolis Times Four

The only times I have been in Minnesota, I have been in Minneapolis. Knowing nothing about the rest of the state, I have to count my four trips to Minneapolis as my experience with the state - probably not representative - but since I love the city, it's all good.

All of my trips have been for conferences, three of them in the city center where the famous statue of Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat into the air stands on a street corner. I was delighted the first time I saw it, just a block from my hotel.

Minneapolis is pretty decent in the summer and fall, but my third trip there was in January. It is cold there, windy in the canyons between the buildings, and thus the skywalks are a very nice convenience. When I was in Atlanta, I saw that they also had some skywalks, but I thought those were nice but not necessary. In Minneapolis, they definitely are needed - and when the wind chill is 20 below zero, it makes walking around the city a lot easier.

Another trip was to the University of Minnesota across the river, for a conference and tour of the campus as part of our Big Ten exchange program. Again, I have been fortunate enough to visit every Big Ten campus, and while I prefer the land grant universities with lots of grass and trees, the U of Minnesota campus is urban - but very slick and modern.

However, when all is said and done, it is just another large city. There is a nice shopping area - Nicollet Mall - downtown. And for those who really really love to shop, the Mall of America is also in Minneapolis, though a bit out of the city. I was, I admit, impressed by it. I guess the amusement park, complete with a (small) roller coaster and Ferris wheel, was the memorable part. Wow, that is a big mall. I had a couple nice meals there, and bought a souvenir Minnesota Golden Gophers hoodie there. You know a mall is big when it has to have two Starbucks within it.

I like Minneapolis and would be willing to return, but I think it might be nice some time to see the rest of the state.