(It’s warm tonight and I’m wearing shorts for the first time in 2014. Possibility of severe weather looms.)

Monday, we were in Little Rock for a regular appointment for Karen with her rheumatologist.

After that, since we were in Little Rock, we decided we should do something.  Years ago, we would have gone to one of the malls or somewhere to do some shopping (looking).  Now, though, going through stores just for the sake of going through stores has very little appeal.

We actually did stop in Barnes and Noble.  It was the first time we had been in a bookstore since stopping in one in Duluth, Minnesota in September.  That time we had stopped to use their free wifi since we had no Verizon reception at the campground and, thus, our mobile hot spot wasn’t of much use.  Karen found a tea there that she really liked – and that was the reason we were in Barnes and Noble this time in Little Rock… so she could pick up a new supply of the tea.

Barnes and Noble was once a favorite store.  Then we got our Kindles.

After Barnes and Noble, what to do? Head on home… or… what?

We decided to check out the “new” pedestrian bridge by the Clinton Library – an old railroad bridge over the Arkansas River converted for pedestrian and bicycle use.  After we walked across to North Little Rock and back, we decided to go though the museum at the Clinton Presidential Center.  It had been 9 years since I visited and a bit more than that for Karen.

The glass sculpture shown above is “The Millennium Tree” by glass artist Dale Chihuly, made for use in the White House for the holiday season of 1999.  There is to be an exhibit of Chihuly’s work at the Clinton Presidential Center from May 17 to January 5.

I put together a new page – Clinton Presidential Center and Park – over on Haw Creek.  It includes a new video, mainly from photos and video on the bridge and in the library that I took with my iPhone.  Check it out.

This photo was taken yesterday, the last day of March.  I’m working on new material that will share more.

Update: See A bookstore, a bridge and a library where the glass object in the image is identified.

A few days ago, I posted Identify the movie this is related to.

Alan G, of course, knew the answer, because he lives in the city where this old attraction resides.

Grannymar apparently knew the answer, saying she was “whistling down the wind in the wrong direction” and “I’m back again, but I’m ‘gone’ I don’t give a damn,” the last, I’m sure, in reference to Rhett Butler’s closing line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

The Old Mill appeared for just a few seconds in the opening credits of the civil war era  Gone with the Wind. The mill appears at 1:31 in the video below.

The Old Mill at T.R. Pugh Memorial Park – An authentic reproduction of an old water-powered grist mill, this striking structure appears in the opening scene of the classic 1939 film Gone with the Wind and is believed to be the only building remaining from the film. Built in 1933; designed to look old so it would appear as if it was built the 1800s. The park is decorated with sculptures of toadstools, tree stumps, and a tree branch-entwined bridge that connects the mill to the rest of the park. Senor Dionico Rodriguez, a sculptor and artist of Mexico City, was responsible for all the details of each piece of concrete work made to represent wood, iron or stone, as well as the designing of the foot bridges and rustic seats. The Old Mill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Old Mill vicinity was probably quite rural when it was built.  Now, though, it is in a very urban area – in a nice, quiet residential neighborhood.

A tour from the air via a drone:

The Old Mill from Tim Donar on Vimeo.

This “blooper” was a Warner Brothers inside joke and wasn’t released publicly until 2006.

Note: If you have visited here or live near here, please don’t give away the answer.  Instead, provide hints.

It’s almost April and, for the most part, it still looks like winter.  Working outside yesterday, I was still wearing a sweatshirt.  It was about 55°F (10.2°C) and quite breezy.

We’ve been working clearing some overgrown areas and taking care of some weather damage to trees.  We think the dead tree above died due to the 2012 drought.

I was waiting for felling wedges ordered Duluth Trading Company before dropping this tree. I wanted to try a different technique for felling trees that park director Terri Dinesen told us about when we were checking in at Minnesota’s Upper Sioux Agency State Park. It came up when she was explaining why the office had been closed.  She had spotted us in the parking lot as she was driving by from working safety monitor for a worker felling a tree elsewhere in the park.

I dropped that tree exactly where I wanted to.

I hadn’t used the gas-powered chainsaw since last year.  It’s been a real pain to start, even after it was in the shop last year.  After it wouldn’t start yesterday, I’d had it – time for something different.

I’ve been using an electric chainsaw with a 10-inch bar.  It can be used by itself or mounted on a pole for pruning branches.  However, it’s too small for cutting down larger trees like the dead pine.

We really don’t cut enough to warrant one of the better gasoline powered chainsaws.   But what about a larger electric saw?

That’s what we bought – at about 1/3 the cost of the better gas-powered saw.

I’m chainsaw “carving” one section of the log for a planter for Karen, with the understanding that it will rot in place, providing nutrients for a small flower bed as it does.

Note: I’m using a bunch of Karen’s pictures for this post.  She takes a lot of pictures for use on her blog, Quilt’s… etc..

Looking back, it’s a little funny, but then it wasn’t.

We had been gone from home almost 7 weeks, traveling from Arkansas to as far away as Great Falls, Montana, with great stops along the way.

Our last night of camping was September 27, 2007 at a  KOA at El Reno, Oklahoma.  Although night-time temperatures were forecast warmer that we had seen during the trip, we decided not to use the air-conditioning.

Feeling a bit a little chilled during the night, I thought it was due to cool air coming in the open windows, but, in the morning, after I had been up for a while, I realized I was sick from something.

We considered staying another night because I was feeling bad, but I thought we just should head on home – even after spending time in the bathroom being sick.

I’d rather be sick at home than sick in a camper at a travel campground next to the interstate when we were only about 4 hours from home.

So I just toughed my way through getting set to leave, though I guess I was actually pretty wimpy about it. We did manage to hit the road a little after 10 A.M.

I drove as Karen had never driven the truck when we pulled our fifth wheel trailer.

I assumed I was sick because of something I ate.

The Oklahoma rock-and-roll, bumpity-bump interstate highways didn’t help with how I was feeling. I’ve never had motion sickness before, but it seemed to aggravate whatever was wrong with me.

We made it though Oklahoma City and stopped at the first travel first rest area after it,  just past Shawnee heading east.  I was sick again in the men’s rest room.  When I came out,  I laid down on the seat of one of the picnic tables for a while.

At the rest area just before the Arkansas state line, I was sick again.  I laid down on our bed in the camper and got about 15 minutes of sleep.

Our next stop was home – and more problems.

We knew we had a problem with the water line to the refrigerator. Our daughter and her boyfriend had found the leak right after it started several weeks ago.  They had managed to stop it and Karen’s brother had stopped by to check on it later, so we hadn’t worried.

Unfortunately, somehow, the refrigerator got unplugged — so we had stuff in the refrigerator and the freezer that hadn’t been cooled in weeks during an Arkansas late summer with the air conditioning turned off.

Pheewww!

Even after Karen tossed all of it out, the refrigerator and freezer still stunk.

Meantime, I was in the bathroom again, being sick.

After we got home, Karen had turned on the water heater at the breaker panel.  A while later, she yelled that there was water spraying out of the water heater – it  was actually the pressure relief valve opening at too low a pressure.

Forgetting that I had installed isolation valves at the water heater, I opened faucets in the bathroom to cut the pressure and headed under the house to isolate the main water line.

When I got there, I heard water splashing.

All  the water going into the bathroom sink was spilling out on the ground under the house from a drain line break.

Fortunately, we had dumped the camper’s waste water tanks at the KOA, so we had the camper restroom available.  Because of the sewer complications, we decided to sleep in the camper – just in case we needed to go in the middle of the night.

After discovering all of this, I still wasn’t feeling well.  I had a slight fever and a bad headache.  I hadn’t eaten much, just a couple of peanut butter crackers and a few more after getting home.

So where’s Chevy Chase when you need him? This trip ending reminded us of the Clark Griswold’s calamities it National Lampoon’s Vacation – just not as funny when bad stuff is really happening.

This article is a rewrite of a post, Terrible End to Our Trip — Shades of National Lampoon’s Vacation, first published on Haw Creek on the day it all happened, September 28, 2007.

We still have the refrigerator, but bought a new one shortly after this incident.  The old one is in storage in the workshop.

The water heater was an easy fix – replaced the relief valve.

I completely replaced almost all the drain lines under the house from where each line comes through the floor to where it goes into the ground to the septic tank.

While I remembered each calamity of the day, until I came across this while working on the new website, I had forgotten that they all happened the same day.  Of course, I’m sure I waited until I felt better before fixing anything.

Image sources:

1. National Lampoon Vacation image from Wikipedia, © 1983 Warner Bros. Pictures – included link in image to Amazon should anyone visiting here want to buy a copy; I’m not affiliated with Amazon at this time.
2. Oklahoma, US 281 overpass over I40, evening of September 27, 2007
3. I-40 Westbound in Oklahoma – by Brian; Creative Commons License: License  Some rights reserved by NCReedplayer; no changes have been made to the image
4. Sick – by Claus Rebler; Creative Commons License:  Some rights reserved by Claus Rebler; no changes have been made to the image.

I rediscovered my material for this post while merging two old blogs into one at the new Haw Creek pages.  The year referred to in the note as “This year” was 2009.

and

the answer to “Shades of Mad Max.”

These giant metal structures are test stands containing atomic jet engines.  They are remnants of a joint US Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission program to build a nuclear powered airplane.

When the program began in the early 1950s, no one knew for sure whether a nuclear reactor could power an airplane engine.  Engineers designed a series of three Heat Transfer Reactor Experiments to prove the principle. 

The experiments took place on these test stands. HTRE-1 was later converted to HTRE-2.

The next step would have been tests using an actual aircraft.  But many leading scientist and officials opposed it.

 “Heater 3” components included reactor shield, single chemical combustor mounted behind the reactor shield assembly, two modified J-47 turbojet engines and interconnecting ducting.

On March 28, 1961, President John F. Kennedy cancelled the entire nuclear bomber program “effective immediately.” The development of intercontinental ballistic missiles had made the bomber obsolete before it was developed and reports that the Soviets had an operating nuclear aircraft proved to be false.

The atom powered bomber was expensive, impractical, and obsolete almost before it was conceived.  Missiles and conventional jet bombers would soon be able to do the same job – long-distance delivery of nuclear weapons – more cheap;y and efficiently.  Despite the fact the plane was never built, the research done advanced the state-of-the-art in many respects.  For example, the experiments tested the behavior of metals and materials at very high levels.

“Most of today’s high temperature metals and materials technology we learned from the work on aircraft engines.” Richard Meservey, Nuclear physicist.

Heater 1 / 2 and Heater 3 are on display at the EBR1 National Historic Landmark east of Arco, Idaho at the Idaho National Laboratory.