Sunday Afternoon Post: Really Small Town America

Smithfield, Pennsylvania, is one of those towns where if you hold your breath you can make it through by the time you need to exhale.  They do have a traffic light there, though, at the corner of Church and Morgantown. 

Its not that I am not used to small towns, I've lived in and around them most of my existence, but this particular traffic light reminded me that while this was still a full functioning town, it was also a very... small one.  There it was, standing all by itself, like a toll collector at a bridge that never gets used.  It seemed very superfluous, as if to say to the odd out-of-towner that Smithfield was something to notice while passing by, maybe even a nice community to live in, but that it would not be surprised or upset if you just kept passing on through.  That's the sort of feeling I got from that off the beaten path part of Pennsylvania in general.  Sure, Pittsburgh and even Morgantown were nearby, as were notable attractions like Fort Necessity, but this is one of those parts of North America that seemingly got skipped over for the next level of frontier. 

Sunday Afternoon Post: "Fly Over"

Or even "drive through".  Such is how Oklahoma through Saskatchewan get labelled by people who think there is no life outside of large cities with water or mountain views.  If you focus on the manicured farmland (which does, by the way, feed us) and preconceptions, then sure, it's all a bit like this:

Kansas, heading north on Kansas 177 somewhere between Council Grove and I-70.

I have to admit, the first time I headed west I was intending to zoom through boring old I-80 as fast as possible.  Along the way though, I started wondering just what I was zooming through.  The prairies, it turns out, are not pancake flat for the most part, and were never a uniform sea of grass.  Nebraska features cliffs, forests, and incredible river valleys.  Kansas, seen here, ranges from forests to near desert like conditions in its extreme southwest.  The sound of the wind is incredible, the storms are quite the sight, and the flowers... let's just say try to find a natural "meadow" around where you live and get back to me on how boring grasslands are. 

In our next post, we shall explore misconceptions about location!

Sunday Afternoon Post: Poutine

I decided to make this first of bad-for-you destination food posts on our perennial heart-stopper, monsieur poutine, short and sweet.  I have written about him before:

http://americanvoyages.blogspot.com/2012/07/poutine-mes-amis-poutine.html

Alas, then I did not have a picture to share.  I warned the timid readers out there before that it might look disgusting, and to quite a few people it does.  Voila!

Come closer.  It won't bite. 

Yep, that's the real deal, from Riverview Snack Shack in Mattawa, Ontario.  Coincidentally, they have the best hamburgers in the world there as well, but I can save that for a more detailed post.  Today, just enjoy the thick gravy, melted curds, and amazing fries sitting together in French Canada's answer to the query "and what shall your street food be?"  In our next post, the gravy train goes to visit Philadelphia, home of the cheese steak sandwich. 

Sunday Afternoon Post: Between A Rock And...

This poor Virginia Pine (Pinus Virginiana) seems to be posing for a glamor shot in the latest publication of Rock Gardening monthly. 

Pinnacle Overlook, one of the most accessible and scenic view points in the central-Southern Appalachians!

The forest directly below the pine is Virginia, whereas the small town down there is in Tennessee.  The vantage point this was taken from was straddling Virginia and Kentucky.  Fun!

Sunday Afternoon Post: Looking Like A Southern Pine

Just a little picture today to keep the blog going.  When I will reference comparisons between pines in the coming posts, I probably will be bringing up the noble Red quite a lot.  Here she is:

Such a lovely, open crown.  This was taken in Ontario, home of the best Red Pines.  Sorry, Minnesota. 

Red Pines (Pinus Resinosa) are definitely a creature of the north, not making it farther south than Milwaukee in the west and sticking to the mountains only as far south as Scranton in the east (with an isolated anomaly in West Virginia), but they bear a striking resemblance to the Loblolly Pine (Pinus Taeda), which never even come 100 miles near each other at the closest extremities of their range.  While it might be interesting to think of the two trees as subspecies of one another, the Red Pine has needles in clusters of two, while the Loblolly keeps them in threes.  Their cones are also a bit different, with the Red Pine's being brittle and open, and the Loblolly's being spiny, tough, and closed. 

Other than that, they present a similar crown profile in advanced stages of growth, with nice globular masses of needles arranged as if they were ornaments on the trees.  They both like things well-drained and even exposed and windy, the Red Pine being immune to the worst of winter cold and the Lobolly able to handle the worst of southern summer heat.  They also get treated as second fiddle to the two botanically worshiped pines of their same ecosystems, The Eastern White (Pinus Strobus) for the Red and the Longleaf (Pinus Palustris) for the Loblolly. 

Sunday Post: Balancing Act

Our dry continent has a scenic advantage over wetter parts of the world.  We have amazing rocks here.  Since my recent days have become something of a topsy turvy adventure, I figured I might post this wonderful shot from Arches National Park.

Arches is often described as a place that you not only must see before you die, but must see soon before it falls apart.  While the process of erosion is not nearly that dramatic on the dry Colorado Plateau, things do still crumble now and then.  Arches, like much of the plateau, is a great way to introduce kids to the magic of the natural world, and the wonders here are enough to usually make even the skeptical adult take a second look.

As you can see, it is also full of life.  The smells after a fresh rain are beyond compare.  

Sunday Post: Looking Down

Yesterday as we explored Mother Seton's home turf we ventured a gaze up the slopes of the Appalachian wall.  Today I figured we might as well look down.

Shenandoah is a remarkable place and one of the easiest to access for people simply looking for some good views.  From atop the crest of the Blue Ridge onlookers can gaze well across the piedmont region, on clear days as far as the coastal plain.  Or, as is the case of this picture, they can look westward into the Shenandoah valley.  While pre-industrial views would often feature a natural haze in the area, the effects of rapid development in the capital region has somewhat added to the veil.  Still, vast horizons or otherwise, looking down the mountain often gives a new appreciation of scale, all the more so in an age when distance is otherwise traveled so easily.

Sunday Afternoon Post: John Smith

Here we have the John Smith statue in front of the excavated ruins of Jamestowne.  He faces the James River, which he probably stared at a lot while his colony was going through the pains of growth and alternating decay.  The people he brought with him were settlers, while he and many who would follow him were not content to merely stay by the river, but explore it further upstream and into the wilds beyond.  Behind him is a lovely tidewater pine and baldcypress forest, probably looking not that different from when he first set ashore here.

Sunday Afternoon Post: The Yucca Forests of Southern New Mexico

Along I-10 in New Mexico, between Deming and Lordsburg, one drives through a literal forest of yuccas.  Pictures do not do the scenery justice, but they can afford a taste of the experience.

I-10 westbound looking north.  There were way more of them there than the picture suggests, probably because we were moving at a decent clip.

I was expecting creosote flats typical of the basins of the hot deserts, but instead found a lush, if sharp, forest.  Our deserts are as dry as the rest of them, and far more hot than so many around the world, but somehow have a lot more life to them.

Sunday Afternoon Post: Sagebrush Flat on the Colorado Plateau at Dusk.

Utah 24 southbound looking west.  The range in the background is part of  Goblin Valley State Park.  The night skies here are among the most spectacular in the world.

Sunday Afternoon Post: Life on the High Plains of New Mexico

New Mexico's High Plains can get cold.  They can see a snowy winter, over 100 days of frost, and chilly nights befitting a land the lies above 5,000 feet for the most part.  These lands are often not considered to be grasslands, probably because even the slightest rise in elevation brings forests, and the wildfire regime is different enough here to let junipers creep out into the grasses, along with the wonderful Tree Cholla (Cylindropuntia Imbricata), a pretty hardy cactus that can take whatever extremes of summer and winter this place can throw at it.  

Lovely scenery from Pecos, New Mexico, truly a land in between everything.

This is northeastern New Mexico, a land not quite in the plains, not quite in the mountains, and not quite in the deserts.

Sunday Afternoon Post: Exotic North American Prickly Pears in Southern California

While not exactly a place where you can grow everything (no true tropicals or cold weather species), southern California is the next best thing to heaven when it comes to gardening potential.  Inland parts of the coastal basins border on desert conditions while still having enough rainfall and lower temperatures to keep everything from looking like the land over the nearby mountains.  One of the hallmarks of the inland regions would be the numerous cacti grown in most yards, most of them exotic introductions that grow far to the north of their usual haunts, but do just fine here because of the mild winters reasonably devoid of frost that such places experience.

In the spirit of Cactus Weekend (who knows, it could become a real thing one day), here are two such beauties that qualify for inclusion on a blog about things of natural North America.

Indian-Fig Prickly Pear (Opuntia Ficus-Indica) taken in a private garden... er... mess in Fontana, California.  

This pear, as you can see, is quite capable of trunking.  Its pads cup a little bit, and you can see one in flower here.  This cactus is native to central Mexico, and gets planted anywhere warm enough not to hurt it with bouts of cold less than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.  They seem really fond of them in Virginia Beach, and they can handle moist as well as desert conditions.

Wheel Cactus (Opuntia Robusta) taken in a private garden in Claremont, California.

This cactus also trunks and features striking pale blue pads.  I have never seen one in flower, but apparently they send up bright yellow blooms.  They are native and endemic to the southern Chihuahuan Desert in central Mexico.  In my travels I have only seem them cultivated in southern California, and only in the Los Angeles basin and surrounding basins and valleys.  

Stop by tomorrow for a change into something non-prickly.  

Sunday Post: July 1st, 1867

Heh, try getting an assembly like this to agree on something these days!

Happy Canada Day!

Sunday Afternoon Post: Where the Plains Rise

After a sweaty afternoon of tromping through a tamarack fen to eradicate Glossy Buckthorn (Frangula Alnus), a venture in which I got stuck in the fen muck quite a few times and got swarmed by every kind of insect ever, well... my thoughts turn to someplace much drier and muckless.

7 miles east of Longmont, Colorado.

This would be along US 36 Northbound at, as the title suggests, the diminutive birth of the Rockies as the Plains rise up into something resembling stubby mountains.  It's a pretty dry place, with only some junipers managing to take a lease on life and then only on the places where the slope and a slight rise in elevation both captures more moisture than normal and change the wildfire regime.  The grass cover is deceptive; there are a ton of yuccas, small cacti, and even sagebrush growing in there.

Sunday Afternoon Post: Beneath the Appalachian Divide

Much like the great crossing of I-70 over the continental divide in Colorado, the passage of I-70 over the divide between the Gulf and Atlantic drainages in Pennsylvania goes through a tunnel.

Don't worry, both lanes are for the same direction, and yes, they could stand to do some maintenance on this tunnel, and no, I don't normally use a GPS when driving as I think they make navigators sloppy.

Sunday Afternoon Post: Epoufette

In 1859 Amable Goudreau, a French-Canadian fisherman from Quebec, traveled to the upper peninsula of Michigan and founded a small commercial fishing venture on the northern shores of Lake Michigan.  A town emerged out of this operation, Epoufette.

Some of his descendants still live in the small town today, proof that the Franco-North American presence did not leave Michigan when Frenchtown (Monroe) got sacked in the War of 1812.  Many of the town names in the eastern upper peninsula, in fact, have French names.

Sunday Afternoon Post: The Straits of Memorial Day Weekend

Northern Michigan is under a population surge during the long weekend, so it seemed only fitting to pass along a picture of one such popular expanse of water, the Straits of Mackinac.

This viewpoint is looking south towards the lower peninsula of Michigan, with the hills in the background being the edge of the Mio Plateau.

Sunday Afternoon Post: Restoring the Prairie

Very little virgin prairie of any form exists in North America anymore, and even recovering stretches are mostly found in remnants belonging to government lands.  This is a shame, because restoring prairie is a wonderful way to help bring depleted soil back from the brink, and it tends to look far better than whatever sort of a mess tends to get poorly managed in fallow fields.  Among the initiatives taken to restore our grassy heritage are measures in place to let highway medians return to tallgrass and wildflowers.

This is one such strip in Illinois, about thirty miles north of Springfield on I-55.  Much of I-55 in Illinois has medians and margins that consist of restored tallgrass prairie, and in some cases neighboring property owners have permitted the restoration to spread into their land.  In other places, such as this one, the tallgrass intermingles with the oak-hickory forests just as it would have in pre-development times, engaged in a never ending struggle for dominance between grass and tree.   

Sunday Afternoon Post: The Incredible Diversity of the Great Lakes

On Belle Isle in the Detroit River is a museum dedicated to the exploration of the local flora and fauna.  While nothing extravagant, the museum does a decent job showcasing how rich in biodiversity the Detroit River and surrounding parts of the Great Lakes are.  One particular exhibit displays specimens of fresh-water mussels.

There are many coastal areas of the oceans that do not have claim to this many species of mussels, let alone other lakes.  

Sunday Afternoon Post: Debating the Pines

In order to give my portfolio and resume a little boost, American Voyages will soon be joined by a second, more technical blog on North American botany.  It is also my hope that the focus of this second monster will guide the purpose of this blog back into more of an exploration of North America and less of a "what do I need to be mad at today" sort of venture.  Anyway, today we look at our good friend, the Eastern White Pine, Pinus Strobus.  Here is a fine specimen from the Oak Openings Preserve just outside of Toledo.

Normally, Eastern White Pine do not naturally seed and disperse in this area, at least according to most data maps.  

Courtesy USGS.  R.I.P., Elbert Little.

I could tell that many of the specimens in the preserve were planted as an aesthetic feature, under the concept that this park was created to be a recreation area as much as it has since become a great preserve.  While pines do often occur in pure stands, the absence of any large stands in the western Lake Erie environs makes it pretty obvious that much of these trees were planned aspects of the landscape.  That said, all the growing conditions for the pine are present in these savannas.  Eastern White Pine require well-drained soils, of which the sands of the savannas certainly qualify.  They are moderately fire resistant, and when mature enough could easily withstand the grass fires that sweep through and eliminate shrubs and most other trees.  Finally, the savannas were in part maintained by lightning-induced fires.  What better lightning rods are there than these pines which often stick out nicely, not only in the open, but also in the canopy?  

They could very well have been more widespread in pre-settlement times, before much of the population was harvested for its excellent wood.  At any rate, they make a lovely scene, graceful pines spread amidst the graceful flowing grasses.