Antietam

Location: Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Martinsburg and Shepherdstown, West Virginia, USA
Visited: March 2013

I don't usually incorporate pictures of corpses in my spreads, but Antietam commemorates being the bloodiest single day of the Civil War with loads of old photographs of dead people. So it only seemed fitting to include one here.

This was a weekend with my girlfriends and fellow Markeroons: Six, Ixy, Kate, and Ruby. The first couple pages are dedicated to the battlefield and cemetery, which we spent quite a lot of time traipsing about, while the last page is about the hotel we stayed in for two nights and the delicious little cafe we found for lunch one day, Blue Moon. Definitely recommended.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Visited: April 2010

I had no idea I was in love with Vincent van Gogh until I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. He was simply amazing. The left page is about one of the special exhibits we also saw, a collection from the Mesdag Museum. Good stuff all around.

Flagstaff, AZ

Location: Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
Visited: August 2008

A coworker and I had an afternoon to kill while on a business trip to Flagstaff, so we hunted down the San Francisco Peaks, the highest point in the state of Arizona. He'd heard that in the summer, the ski resort Arizona Snowbowl opened their lifts to the summit. It was my first ride on a ski lift (as I've never actually been skiing), and the half-hour ride each way was delightful. The view was spectacular as well; you could even see the Grand Canyon!

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Visited: April 2010

I don't remember how I heard about this place, but I managed to talk Cookie (my friend and traveling companion) into visiting this cemetery. I hadn't known it would be so artistic. It was one of those unexpected decisions that led to quite a memorable experience. The stuff you didn't plan is one of my favorite things about traveling.

Baltimore, MD

Location: Fort McHenry, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Visited: March 2013

The brochure for Fort McHenry had a huge print of the original Star Spangled Banner taking up about three quarters of one side of the sheet, so I used part of that as my background. The walk around the Fort was windy and cold, but we warmed up with some spicy BBQ at HarborQue just up the street a bit in Locust Point.

Utrecht, Netherlands

Location: Utrecht, The Netherlands
Visited: April 2010

This is another Utrecht spread that I'm not sure why I didn't scan in before. Cafe de Zaark was where we met up with other BookCrossers at the end of our tour. Everyone was just so friendly! I included my Horoscoop (why is that capitalized when April isn't?), even though I haven't the faintest idea what it says. I also purchased one of the Dom Tower coins (since that was one of the sites we saw), though for the life of me I can't recall where it went. I should go dig that out sometime.

Sedona, AZ

Location: Sedona, Arizona, USA
Visited: July 2008

When driving from Phoenix to Flagstaff, we stopped in Sedona, land of gorgeous rocks. I was interested to read that it was named after a woman, as I've never met anyone named Sedona before. It's kind of pretty.

Occoquan and Lorton, VA

Location: Occoquan and Lorton, Virginia, USA
Visited: February 2013

Sometimes while I'm out snarfing, I accidentally learn something along the way. For example, all that yellow stuff above is from the Suffragist Memorial in Occoquan Regional Park. Usually when we read about the Suffragettes, it's all about Seneca Falls, New York. I hadn't realized so much happened in my home county of Fairfax. Nearby I continued my education at the Occoquan Workhouse, where many of these women were imprisoned for their efforts to get the right to vote.

On this same trip I toured historic downtown Occoquan, including the Mill House Museum. The man working there gave me a thorough history of the region from the disappearing Dogue Indians in 1681 to the devastation of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. Fascinating, and his enthusiasm was pretty inspiring.

The Textile Museum

Location: The Textile Museum, Washington, DC, USA
Visited: January 2013

I'd never been to this tiny museum hiding back in a Dupont neighborhood. They're preparing to move to a new building, so the only exhibit was The Sultan's Garden. It was kind of nifty but after about five minutes we were done.

Renwick Gallery

Location: The Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC, USA
Visited: January 2013

My friend and I biked from Tenleytown to the Renwick Gallery, where we spent most of our time exploring the 40 Under 40: Craft Futures exhibit. There was a lot of truly strange stuff, but also a fair amount of beautiful and/or ingenious items. The huge installment on the left side of this spread was made entirely of paper.

The Newseum

Location: Newseum, Washington, DC, USA
Visited: December 2012

Though extremely well done, I found this museum far more depressing than I'd expected. Of course, I should have known: what makes the news, after all? Crime, tragedy, and politics. I loved the section with the old newspapers, and the 9/11 and Oklahoma City Bombing exhibits were interesting and heartbreaking at the same time, and the assorted homages to fake news (The Daily Show, SNL, et al) were fun. I'm not sure I'd go back, but I'm certainly glad I went.

Youngstown, OH

Location: Youngstown, Ohio, USA
Visited: November 2012

While visiting my in-laws, we had brunch at Mill Creek Park. The food was good, and the scenery was nice, though it was far too cold to truly enjoy. I'll have to go back sometime when everything's in bloom.

The Kennedy Center

Location: The Kennedy Center, Washington, DC, USA
Visited: November 2012

This was my first visit to The Kennedy Center and my second time seeing the musical Jekyll and Hyde. I had loved it the first time around and my husband had enjoyed listening to the soundtrack, but this version was kind of flat. The show itself had changed a little bit, with some songs replaced and others rewritten. A few of the changes made sense, making the story a bit clearer (I can recall, for example, not quite getting that the people killed were the board of governors when I first saw it, for example), but all in all there were far too many ballads. "Murder Murder" was slowed down and the new song "Bring on the Men" just didn't fit at all. The two leads were pop stars - Constantine Maroulis and Deborah Cox - and while the singing was excellent, the blocking left a lot to be desired. There was a lot of standing still with arms hanging at one's sides while singing. The lighting was also rather dark, making it quite difficult to discern details. I was especially disappointed with the song "Confrontation", which had so impressed me the first time around. It's a "duet" between Jekyll and Hyde, played by the same man, but for this production they chose to prerecord Hyde's part and project it onto a screen while Jekyll sang live. Oh well. We still had a great time, as we always do at the theater.

Hanover, NH

Location: Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Visited: October 2012

We visited the Hood Art Museum mostly to see the amazing Night Hunter House by Stacey Steers, but we also browsed a bit around the Australian Aboriginal art exhibit. And I got to use more gorgeous leaf pictures to fill out the page, so that makes me happy.

Bennington, VT

Location: Bennington, Vermont, USA
Visited: October 2012

This is one of the many places I never would have visited were it not for Markeroni. The sun came out just in time for my stop at the Bennington Battle Monument. The view from the top was simply gorgeous, as the leaves had almost all turned. And only $2 to get in!

Kinderhook, NY

Location: Kinderhook, New York, USA
Visited: October 2012

I was with a friend who decided to enable my Markeroni habit, so we stopped by Martin van Buren's Lindenwald for a little bit. It's a cute little place, but what really tickled me was the timeline in the brochure titled "A Master Politician's Magical Career". What, did he attend Hogwarts? "Yer a wizard, Martin!"

Ashland, PA

Location: Ashland and Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA
Visited: October 2012

I took a solo road trip a few weeks ago and my first stop was The Pioneer Tunnel in Ashland, PA. The first part was a steam train ride, where the scenery was gorgeous, if a touch chilly. It was a little weird, as the train started out by going backwards to the end of the line, then coming back forward again. Afterward, I took the coal mine tour. I'd never been in a real mine before, and it was pretty fascinating. The headlamps they used to use had an open flame, which was a bit of an early warning if you hit "heavy air" (air without enough oxygen), as it would go out and you might have time to escape before suffocating. On the other hand, if you hit a pocket of methane, your day was pretty much ruined. At one point the tour guide turned out the lights without warning. I'm not sure some of the other folks in our group appreciated that too much. He also commented that, back when this was an operating mine, the "wishing well" we'd just passed had no grate over it, and in fact descended some thousand feet straight down. Safety first!

My next stop was Centralia, famous largely for its inspiration of Silent Hill.

Centralia, like much of this part of Pennsylvania, was a mining town. About fifty years ago, the government decided to make use of the empty mine shafts as landfills, and filled them up with trash. When they got full, they had this brilliant idea to set the trash on fire in order to make more room. The fire caught a vein of coal, and then things got really bad. The fire has continued to burn all this time, and they expect it to continue for another couple centuries at least. There isn't much to see today: mostly weeds and cement slabs where buildings used to be. There aren't even any street signs. The only truly interesting part is Graffiti Highway, the closed-off section of 61 where the fire caused it to collapse. The entire length of it is covered in graffiti of varying quality.

This isn't the sort of place I'd expect most people to feel is worth the hours one would have to drive to get there (it's pretty much as far into the middle of nowhere you can get in that part of the country), but I had a good time and am glad to be able to say I was there.

One Year Already

We here at the Glue Stick Tourist are celebrating our first birthday! It's been a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy this random collage I made from stuff I picked up while at an apple orchard in rural New York. It's not really site-specific (and the lovely fall images are actually from Vermont) so I decided it'd make a nice mid-October anniversary piece. I should have other spreads from my road trip posted soon. Here's to another year of adventure! :)

Luray, VA

Location: Luray, Virginia, USA
Visited: October 2012

Because we'd never been, my husband and I visited Luray Caverns. It was beautiful, though a touch overpriced. While there we also visited a small car and carriage museum, which was reasonably entertaining if a bit small. Be sure to check out my husband's photos. Very neat to look at, but probably not worth visiting multiple times.

We also drank Dr. Wham. The end.

Fairfax, VA

Location: George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
Visited: September 2012

As part of the annual Fall for the Book event, we got to see one of my favorite authors and readers, Neil Gaiman. He was receiving an award, but before that he read an excerpt from his upcoming novel, answered audience questions, and then read an entire short story from an upcoming anthology. And I had a stupid grin on my face the entire time. If you haven't listened to Gaiman read, you are missing out.