Author Archives: kerrylreis

New England and Mid-Atlantic States Road Trip – Part 3

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The New England portion of my New England and Mid-Atlantic States road trip had been completed, so when I woke up in my motel room in Vermont, I quickly loaded the rental car, stopped for a quick breakfast, then headed out onto the road for a day-long drive down to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where I had made my next hotel reservation online. The next three visits on the trip were to upgrade perspectives from mainly childhood trips and stops, and due to these visits being just about an hour from each other, I planned to handle them in one day, starting with Gettysburg NHP, then down to the national mall in Washington, DC, and ending up visiting Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland. My one advantage in visiting three cities in one day was that I was doing it on a Sunday.

When I reached Gettysburg after my long drive from Vermont and checked into my hotel by mid-afternoon, I realized that I had another advantage, a long summer’s day. I drove over to the nearby Visitor Center to check out the sites in the park. Since the civil war battle extended over a wide area around the city, there were many battle locations protected around the small city. After a conversation with a park guide, I accepted the recommendation to head over to the nearby location of East Cemetery Hill. Besides the various memorials and statues within the hilltop park, there was a representative cannon looking out on the small valley that confederate soldiers tried to climb up the hill against the union defense line. Across the street on the other side of the hill park was the Soldiers National Cemetery, a more personal memorial to the historical battle site. My history perspective had been upgraded.

Gettysburg NHP, PA

The next morning, I checked out of my hotel and headed for Washington, DC. The Maps app got me close to the National Mall, but I had to drive around to look for an appropriate parking location. I wound up finding a street side parking spot a couple of blocks from the west side of the National Mall and walked down to explore. I took distant photo shots of the Capitol building behind the Washington Monument on the east side of the National Mall, then began to explore the Vietnam War Memorial Wall near the Lincoln Memorial. I checked out a few more war memorial sites, then I went up to enter the Lincoln Memorial. Having upgraded my childhood memories of my earlier Washington visit, I walked back up to my rental car and drove up to Baltimore to experience Fort McHenry National Monument, the site that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the US national anthem. It was impressive to explore the fort, observe the flag with the number of stars at the time of Francis Scott Key flying over the fort, and check out the Chesapeake Bay view seen from the fort. It was a good day of perspective. I headed over to my nearby hotel reservation.

Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC – Fort McHenry, Baltimore MD

For the next day schedule, I had included a natural visit along the Maryland coast to Assateague Island, known for its herds of wild horses, but I noted a directional concern in the Maps app, so I decided to skip this stop and head directly to the First State National Historical Park in New Castle, Delaware. When I first found the site in my research for a location to represent Delaware in my road trip, I assumed that it would be some sort of memorial statue or structure honoring Delaware’s status in history. However, when I reached New Castle and found a street parking spot near to the site, I discovered that the park was a simple small grass park behind an historical courthouse. I took photos in the park and drove a couple of blocks down to the Delaware River, where I walked around the riverside paths. After a few more photos, I drove back up to the main street location to enjoy lunch where I learned that the historical courthouse had a tour. Even though I joined the tour halfway, I was amazed to discover how Delaware became the first colony to accept the newly written constitution to become the first state of the union. Essentially, since the constitution was written in Philadelphia, this gave Pennsylvania the first opportunity to be the first colony to approve the constitution, but a few representatives delayed the discussion by a couple of days, giving the much smaller group of Delaware representatives who received the written constitution copy just a day after Pennsylvania started their review to beat Pennsylvania in being the first colony to officially approve the constitution. The underlying history was fascinating.

Historic Courthouse, New Castle, DE – Steel Pier Amusement Park, Atlantic City, NJ

After leaving the historical courthouse, I got into the rental car and drove on to Atlantic City, New Jersey to check into my next hotel a couple of blocks from the boardwalk. After checking in, I walked down to the boardwalk and started taking photos of the beachside, casinos, and the amusement park pier. Monday afternoon foot traffic on the pier was light, so many of the rides were not operating, but walking along the pier was nice. Since the Hard Rock Casino was directly across from the pier, I chose its restaurant for my dinner. The nice, relaxing afternoon truly honored reaching my bucket list goal of visiting and taking a photo within every state in the United States.

Even though I had accomplished my bucket list goal, I figured that navigating New York City traffic to reach La Guardia airport for my flight home, so I had scheduled an extra day on my road trip plan. This gave me time to make one more stop on my tour. During my trip planning, I had noticed that Ellis Island was located close to a national park service location along the Hudson River called Liberty Park in northern New Jersey. On a map, I had noticed what appeared to be a small bridge from the park to Ellis Island, so after I checked out of my Atlantic City hotel, I headed to Liberty Park to check out Ellis Island. However, once I reached a visitor center near this bridge, I was informed that the bridge was built just for park employees and access to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty was only through a roundtrip ferry trip that launched hourly at a northern port in the park. Each ferry trip headed out from the Liberty Park port to the Ellis Island port, then headed on to the Liberty Island port, before heading back to the Liberty Park port. For passengers, the round-trip ferry cost was not restricted to one ferry, allowing groups to exit the ferry to explore each stop, then boarding the next ferry to take on the next leg of the trip. Since I was not sure about the New York City traffic, I stayed on one ferry, skipping the island tours, but taking excellent photos of Lady Liberty looking out towards the New York skyline. After arriving back at Liberty Park and retrieving my rental car, I successfully navigated the New York traffic to get to my Long Island hotel. The next morning, I dropped off my rental car near La Guardia and caught my flight back home. I relaxed on the plane, contemplating my very successful road trip journey.

Statue of Liberty facing New York City skyline

 

New England and Mid-Atlantic States Road Trip – Part 2

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My New England and Mid-Atlantic States road trip had a good start with my stops in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and I was ready to take on the other four New England states and one national park on my list to upgrade my earlier perspectives. With the next phase of the trip starting in Massachusetts, basically the most foundational New England state, I planned two stops to explore, the Cape Cod seashore and Salem. I felt that trying to include the historical sites within Boston would be tricky trying to navigate the traffic within the major city on a tight road trip schedule. I started out early from my motel and headed for the main road into Cape Cod. My planned trip had the national seashore at the end of the cape, but when I discussed the planned trip a few weeks earlier with one of my neighbors, he recommended that I make a quick stop at Hyannis, a small port along the south side of the cape, so when I saw the exit sign to Hyannis, I decided to make the short stop. I took the exit and focused on following the road signs, but somewhere I suddenly found myself on a westbound road heading away from Hyannis. I turned up to head back to the main cape expressway, but since this turnoff trip had taken a few hours, I decided to skip the trip to the national seashore and headed off toward Salem.

Even though I had concerns about Boston traffic, I was able to navigate the west bypass expressway in sufficient time to make it to Salem by early afternoon. My choice of Salem as a stop on the trip was based on finding a mention of an historical cabin related to the Salem witch trials in late 1600s, which made me feel this stop would be a quick one. However, when I arrived at the small center area of the city, I realized that most of the locations were better reached by foot, leading me to park in a three story garage next to the city’s visitor center. Taking the time to make a quick stop at the visitor center, I discovered there were more interesting things to explore in Salem. I walked over to the Salem Witch Museum, checked out a small city park with a World War II memorial, bought a tarot deck in a witch gift store, walked down to the Salem Wharf National Historic Site to look out into the Atlantic, and went over to the historic House of Seven Gables, which was the inspiration for the classic Nathaniel Hawthorne novel. The afternoon was an inspirational experience into the early colonial history of this country.

Witch Museum/House of Seven Gables – Salem

After an impressive afternoon in Salem, it was time for me to head to the nearby hotel in which I had reserved a room online the night before through Expedia. Since the hotel’s location was a bit more complicated than my first two hotel stops, I went on the Expedia app on my cell phone to get the proper address information to search on the Apple Maps app. I noted that Expedia had a Maps link on the reservation page to direct the location into Maps to view. What surprised me was that as soon as the location was displayed on Maps, a calculated route path from my current location was instantly displayed. I quickly learned how to use my phone as a GPS guide for the rest of my road trip, something that would have been helpful earlier in the day to make that side trip to Hyannis.

The next morning was the start of a scheduled road drive day to Maine. Since my next exploratory stop was to be Acadia National Park, I had planned a full day in my schedule to re-experience the park 48 years after my first visit, so I had reserved a two-night stay at a nearby motel surrounding the day. I used the travel day to get used to the Maps GPS program on my phone, which I was able to keep charged up with a USB connection in the rental car dashboard. The only side stop beside gas and lunch along the drive was a quick stop at the Maine Welcome Center just across the border from New Hampshire. Besides picking up travel pamphlets, I also took a few photo shots of the forest area around the center, then headed on to my target location.

Acadia NP – Maine

The majority of Acadia National Park covers more than 50 percent of Mount Desert Island, which lies right next to the Maine mainland with a small bridge connection. My two-night stay motel was in a small town on the north side of the island. After enjoying breakfast at the motel, I gathered my camera and positioned my national park pass hangtag on the rear-view mirror, then headed out to experience the park. My first mission was to drive to the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse location at the southernmost peninsula of the island. One Kodak photo from my visit 48 years ago was taken by my friend of me sitting on the rocky shore in front of the lighthouse, and my goal was to get a park ranger or another visitor to get an updated photo of me in front of the lighthouse. However, once I reached the location parking lot and carefully walked down a rocky shore area with other visitors, I discovered that the rocky shore had ebbed back from the ocean, taking away the broad open view of the lighthouse I had witnessed so long ago. The few shots I took barely show the lighthouse peeking out from the trees beside it. I headed back to my rental car and drove up to the main attraction of the park, the drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain. Because Acadia National Park is one of the most visited parks in the eastern US and Cadillac Mountain is its prime attraction, the national park service now required an online reservation to enter the road up the mountain. Before I started my trip, I had gone online and paid for my reservation for 2pm on my scheduled day to visit the park. I drove up to the road entrance and handed over my reservation before heading up to the top of the mountain. The ocean and bay views were fabulous as I trekked around the small trails around the parking area. I took my camera shots and headed back to the car. Having experienced the park, I headed back to the motel, picking up a dinner along the way. My timing proved to be perfect, as a thunderstorm built up and started pouring as soon as I settled back into my room.

White Mountains Creek/Lake Champlain Bay

The next day I headed out to experience New Hampshire and Vermont. Per my schedule, I headed west to drive along the Kancamagus Scenic Byway through the White Mountains National Forest in New Hampshire on the way to my motel reservation in Colchester, Vermont, next to Lake Champlain. In a bit of bad fortune, the previous night’s thunderstorm left a cloud cover over the upper New England area, so my quick stops along the byway gave me a darker cloudy view of the White Mountains and the nearby rocky creek area, but the natural experience captured was still interesting to view and experience. When I got to Colchester, I discovered the motel I had made my reservation in was a small 12 room location next to a four-screen drive-in theater. Each room was named in honor of a Hollywood legend, and my room honored the only living legend who was slightly younger than me, Tom Cruise. Check in was by phone, and the key was left in a flowerpot next to the door of the room. Inside, I found a complimentary ticket to the drive-in theatre. However, since it was around the first day of summer, I felt I had time to head toward the lake, and even with the cloudy skies, I would get good photos. As I headed down roads marked on the Maps app as ending by the lakeshore, I discovered that the ends of the roads became private entries to lakeshore homes. After driving around for a while, I discovered a small parking lot in a forested area which had a small dirt path to a bay shore attached to Lake Champlain. I collected a few good photos to represent Vermont and headed back to the motel. I had covered the New England states, and tomorrow would be a long drive to get to the Mid-Atlantic States on my journey.

To be continued…

 

New England and Mid-Atlantic States Road Trip – Part 1

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Due to some unforeseen financial issues, it had been two years since I had taken a travel vacation to add more checkoffs from my bucket lists and increase my perspective of my country and the world. Three years ago, I had completed my basic goal of having been within all 50 states in the United States, but as I noted in my last travel blog two years ago, this basic goal was flawed as it did not consider whether I had actually stopped and truly experienced a perspective of each state and had the advantage of taking photo images of an important location within each state. This was the reason that I flew to New Orleans two years ago to truly experience Louisiana beyond the previous drive-through experience I had back in 1975. What was unmentioned in my blog from two years ago was that Louisiana was just the start of the states that needed a true upgrade of my perspective. Going through the list, there were 10 other states, as well as Washington, DC, which needed to be revisited. Luckily, all these locations were closely connected, as they consisted of the six New England States and four Mid-Atlantic States, so my road trip this year was planned to cover the complete set of states to fulfil a more complete perspective of all 50 states and the nation’s capital.

Growing up down south in Florida, my parents mainly planned our yearly family vacation to be a drive up to upstate New York to visit my grandparents and other close family members. For most of these trips, the only stops were for gas, lunches, and a motel visit. For a couple of years, I was able to convince my father to make an extra short stop on the way home, which included one year to be a stop at Gettysburg NHP in Pennsylvania, but we had no camera to record the quick visit. We also drove through Maryland back and forth on these yearly vacation trips, but the drive was through the shortest section of the panhandle which took us around a half-hour to cross. My one time in Washington, DC was right after I graduated from sixth grade in 1969. I had been a patrol boy at my school in sixth grade, a service that was honored to all patrol boys in the city’s school system with a special trip to the nation’s capital in the following summer. I only have a few black-and-white shots from a single-use Kodak camera to represent the trip. In 1976, after my first year at UCLA, I flew back to my parents’ home in Florida for the summer and reconnected with my high school best friend to take a road trip up to New England. During this trip, we drove through Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut, before making a quick visit in Newport, Rhode Island, where we used a single-use color Kodak camera to take a few shots outside a few of the mansions. We drove on through Massachusetts and New Hampshire to head to Acadia National Park in Maine, only the second national park I had visited at that time, but the first where I was able to take a few photos on another single-use color Kodak camera. After enjoying a day in Acadia NP, we drove back into New Hampshire where my friend wanted to do some antiquing at a few yard sales. After he got a tip at one sale location, we drove over to Vermont where he found the antique he was looking for. After a few other minor stops, we headed back and completed the journey. Even though these young period trips allow me to claim that I had been in these 10 states, 1 national park, and the nation’s capital, eight states were basically just drive-throughs, and poor photos represented the two other states, a national park, and Washington, DC. My summer road trip this year was designed to elevate my perspective in these states, allowing me to properly claim that I have truly visited all 50 states in USA.

After a diligent research on the representative locations I wanted to visit within each state and prospective map directions to reach these locations, I determined my best and most fiscally sound plan was to use New York City’s La Guardia Airport as my start and end point. On a Sunday in mid-June, I was on my way to LaGuardia. After landing and departing the airport, I picked up my arranged rental car and drove out to my first hotel stay in Stamford, Connecticut, using the timing to avoid major New York City traffic. The next morning, I was off to my main location to represent Connecticut, the seaport town of Mystic. The town sits just within the small bay of Mystic Harbor and is split by Mystic River, which only extends a short distance within Connecticut. Once I reached Mystic, I was able to find a street parking space in a neighborhood on the east side of the river, and I walked back down to Main Street, which was the one small bridge connecting the east and west sides of the town along the river. It was amazing seeing the sailboats and small marinas along the river on both sides of the bridge, then checking out the stores along west Main Street, which included Mystic Pizza, the pizzeria that inspired the 1988 rom-com movie. I turned around and walked back over the bridge, just as a large sailboat was coming down the river toward the harbor. Lights started flashing and bars came down on both sides of the bridge, stopping the light traffic. A section of the bridge rose up, providing a pathway for the sailboat to float on through to the harbor area. After the boat sailed through, the bridge section lowered and cars were allowed through. It was an amazing event that I captured on my camera and gave me a wonderful perspective of Connecticut living.

Mystic Main Street Bridge – Marble House, Newport

I walked back to my rental car and drove on to Rhode Island. My goal was to revisit Newport and get a deeper perspective of the Oceanside beaches and historical mansions that I and my friend had visited in 1976. When I reached Newport, I started my journey around the Ocean Drive loop, stopping at a beachside park to take a photo of a memorial statue of a Revolutionary War hero and making a couple of other ocean side stops to take interesting beachside photos. At the east end of the loop, I came upon the area of historic mansions. I parked in a small lot and walked over to take a tour of the Marble House, a mansion built by William Vanderbilt for his wife around 1890. The Marble House is one of eight mansions currently protected by the Preservation Society of Newport County. On my 1976 road trip with my friend, I can only recall seeing a couple of these mansions from the outside, so enjoying the tour of the Marble House provided me with a better perspective of the Newport mansions and history. The photos I took were clearer and better than the poor Kodak shots I took on the road trip 48 years ago. After the tour, I drove on to the motel reservation I had made just across the border in Massachusetts. With two states upgraded in my perspective, this first day was a wonderful start to my journey.

To be continued…

 

A Year of Reviewing Indie Books 2023

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The dour seeds of my 2022 spread out into 2023 as the costs to cover the heating and appliance replacements brought about by the cold 2022 winter snap upended any plans I had for a 2023 vacation trip, as well as some other recreational ideas. More continuing hectic HOA and family issues continued to eat into my time which led to a very poor year of reading and reviewing fellow indie authors’ works. In the end, I was only able to read six books, two of which were combined into a two-part epic, bringing me to only provide five reviews this past year. Still, the works I read were very enticing reads with no review landing below the 3-star level.

For a quick reiteration of my review standards, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3- star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4-star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5-star effort.

The one 3-star review was a fictional tale of seeming horror in the late 1800s based on true historical details that felt slightly stretched in the telling. The two 4-star reviews were for works by authors I had previously reviewed, one a game of terror that horror fans will enjoy and the other the two-part intense epic of surviving a criminal life in Brazilian culture. My two 5-star reviews went to an expertly told mystery novel, one of a series of novels centered around an expert detective, and a WWII historically fiction tale of a Ukrainian family seeking to migrate away from Russian and Nazi oppression, a story concept that I felt resonated with the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

With the joy that I had experiencing these works and enjoying the creativity of these fellow authors, I wished that this past year would have given me more time to enjoy more works, a hope I wish will be more prevalent in this new year. With my two self-published works, I hope readers feel they live up to the standards I have used to judge these works of my fellow indie authors. If avid readers do check out Legacy Discovered and Disappeared and Found and decide to purchase and read either or both of them, I hope they decide to let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.
My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

A Year of Reviewing Indie Books 2022

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The year 2022 proved to be a challenging year for many around the world. Even as the COVID pandemic signs began to improve, the global disruptions pushed forward a wave of economic inflation and uncertainty, a worldwide issue that was further exasperated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On my end, I was able to maintain some sense of calm in my life, but my travel plans were restricted to a single day trip to New Orleans. Along with the continuing HOA board issues in my community, I also found a way to host my sister for a month during the summer, while her husband handled a major renovation project in their home back east. Then, as a final blow from the year, my heating unit and water heater both died just prior to a major arctic blast in the midst of the holiday season. The pandemic easing did bring back the major book fairs, which finally gave me an opportunity to display my second book, but even this process was not perfect or easy. In the end, the see-sawing uncertainty affected my time and connectivity in reading and reviewing my fellow indie authors works, as I was only able to delve into 11 works this year, including 2 by the same fellow author. However, only one work landed below average in the 2-star range, with two works showing promise in the 3-star range, 6 works pulling forward in the 4-star range, and 2 works excelling in the 5-star range. It was still a good year to enjoy reading.

For a quick reiteration of my review standards, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3-star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4-star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5-star effort.

My one 2-star review fell on a long saga that seemed to start in the Victorian era that swept psychic para-normality within a mental asylum environment, but also brought back future time, creating confusion. My two 3-star reviews ranged from an epic dysfunctional family prequel that required patience in delving into the characters to a quick fantasy novella between a boy with teen angst issues suddenly helping a goddess-like star surfer girl find her way back home in space.

My thoroughly enjoyable six 4-star reviews were found in the range of a teenage mystery adventure, the finale of a parallel time universe series, a wintery rural police mystery, a Cold War spy thriller adventure in Eastern Europe, a novella log by a woman seeking to overcome the psychological hurt of a breakup through a course of non-emotional sex, and the true life blog posting adventure of the author experiencing a journey of homelessness with his pet dog. The different perspectives were very fascinating to experience within the stories that were well written.

The two books that gained the 5-star reviews were works from two authors from whom I have read previous works. The year before I read an interesting treasure hunt action adventure from Martin R. Jackson, but I realized soon after I had read and reviewed the book, that he was more excited about promoting his thrilling mystery series based in Victorian England, so this year I read his work, To Hook a Gilded Bird. The mysterious story and historical elements were truly exciting and well written, so I truly feel honored to actively promote this work.

My second 5 star rated book is the first of a new series from science fiction author, Doug J. Cooper, whose previous two series I avidly read. His new series brings the best elements of a police procedural mystery into a future space station community orbiting Earth, beginning with his first book, Lagrange Rising. His scientific knowledge and creative story telling proved to be a thrill to experience. I cannot wait to see what his protagonist’s next mystery will be.

Even as it was a light year of reading, it was a good year of reading and enjoying the creativity of fellow authors. With my two self-published works, I hope readers feel they live up to the standards I have used to judge the works of my fellow indie authors. If avid readers do check out Legacy Discovered and Disappeared and Found and decide to purchase and read either or both of them, I hope they decide to let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.

My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

Louisiana Day Trip

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Last year’s Midwest road trip around Lake Michigan allowed me to visit the last two states I had never been in and officially claim that I had visited all fifty states within the United States. However, I realize that in a way, this claim in regards to having a clean perspective of all the states is basically flawed. Yes, I can state that I have consciously been within every state, but having only the opportunity to drive through a state without stopping to visit a site and being unable to take a photo within the state is pretty much the most minimal perspective that one could experience within the state. In 1975, after growing up in Florida, I applied to and was accepted at the University of California, Los Angeles. With a rental trailer full of my personal items attached to the family car, my parents, my sister, and I drove across the country to drop me off in my new life in Southern California. We crossed through seven states on the one way journey, which included a stop at the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas, with no camera to record anything along the way. In the years since, I have been able to revisit Las Vegas and explore other areas of Nevada; made a few visits to Arizona, including a multi-day stop at Grand Canyon National Park; had a few visits to New Mexico to experience its national parks and Roswell; had a couple of visits to Texas, including a day stopover in Houston, a couple of decades ago, where a friend was able to give me a personal tour of the NASA space center; added a stop in Tupelo, Mississippi, during my Central Plains road trip to experience a small National Battlefield Park and Elvis Presley’s childhood home; and made a stop during a small road trip with my mother in Huntsville, Alabama, to attend the wedding of an early childhood neighborhood friend, giving me the opportunity to visit the space museum at the same time. However, the only state on the 1975 journey to which I had not had a chance to return was Louisiana. It was time for me to extend my personal perspective of the bayou and Cajun culture.

All of the other states around Louisiana I had visited as part of an extended road trip or as a stopover tied to another trip, but this had made Louisiana an outlier, making it difficult to include it on any future broad road trip, so I decided to plan this as a solo trip. A two day road trip back and forth was way too long to consider for what I considered to be a single day visit, so I considered a simple round trip air flight schedule. I realized that the humid swampy environs within the Mississippi Delta region would make a summer trip overly hot and uncomfortable, so I considered planning a spring weekend trip which would not interfere with my volunteer tutoring schedule. I then discovered that the tutoring program for which I was volunteering would be ending its school year in mid-May, giving me an open week just prior to the lead-in to the Memorial Day weekend. This provided me with the opportunity for a quick Tuesday to Thursday hop over which would avoid weekend travelers and upcoming summer vacationers. Using an online travel service, I booked my roundtrip flight schedule, two nights at a local inn in New Orleans, and a rental car. Luckily, my planned schedule just avoided weather and other travel issues that forced flight cancellations shortly after my return. The timing of my short vacation turned out to be perfect.

After flying in on a nice Tuesday afternoon and making my way to the inn in a New Orleans neighborhood midway between the airport and the French Quarter, I had my first chance to sample a bit of Cajun and Mexican fusion in the adjoining restaurant with a Louisiana crawfish quesadilla, before going back to my room to plan out the next day. My goal for my one day trip was to split my time experiencing the nature of the bayou and exploring the culture and wonder of the French Quarter. I had researched on the national park service website before my trip about the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, which honored an historic Louisiana smuggler who joined Andrew Jackson’s forces in battling back the British army at New Orleans during the War of 1812. The park and preserve is actually located in six different locations, including the Barataria Preserve, a natural bayou preserve just a few miles south of New Orleans. My plan would be to drive down to the preserve right after breakfast and enjoy a few nature trails during the cooler morning hours, then head back up to the French Quarter to explore the small 80 block historical wonder of New Orleans.

Barataria Preserve images

The next morning I headed over the Mississippi River down to Barataria Preserve and arrived before the Visitor Center had opened. I grabbed my camera and walked down the quarter mile Visitor Center Trail. Along the way, I found the entrance to the mile long Palmetto Trail was closed for service, so I went back to the Visitor Center, which opened shortly after I returned. I was informed that the Bayou Coquille Trail Head, a mile up the road, was open, so I drove up to the parking area and walked down and back the half mile trail, taking more pictures. Despite the signs directing visitors to not feed the alligators, I did not come across any gators, snakes, or mosquitos during my walk. It appears that it was too early in the morning for them, but not too early for some lizards, hawks, or flies. I got my taste of the bayou and was able to drive back up to the French Quarter by mid-morning.

French Quarter images, New Orleans

At the southwest corner of the French Quarter, I found a long-term parking lot to park my rental, then spent the next three hours walking the famous cultural area of New Orleans. I looked out over the Mississippi River on the Moon Walk in front of Jackson Square, while streetcars passed by. I bought playing cards from a voodoo gift shop. I had a combo Cajun lunch and listened to a street group playing jazz in front of the Supreme Court building. I experienced the unique architecture style of the corner hotels and apartment buildings, then checked out the jazz musician statues at Musical Legends Park on Bourbon Street. I strolled slowly through the Louis Armstrong Park across the street from the north side of the French Quarter. The cultural beauty was amazing to experience. After my long stroll through the French Quarter, I circled back to the parking lot and drove my rental back to the inn. For dinner that night, I walked down to another nearby restaurant recommended by the clerk at the inn and enjoyed another Louisiana meal, a classic Po’Boy. As I flew back home the next day, I truly felt I had experienced the Louisiana culture.

 

A Year of Reviewing Indie Books 2021

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Last year, 2021 started out in a scuffle with the breakdowns from 2020, then began to project hope with positivity through the summer until COVID and world political disruptions arose again to bring concern back to broad populations. Marketing opportunities for my two self-published books were still tampered down with COVID uncertainty, and political rifts even reached down to my community HOA board which disrupted projects and maintenance procedures, but the summer calm did give me a chance to take on a road trip around the Midwest states, fulfilling one goal of claiming to have visited all fifty states in the United States. At the same time, the same uncertainties I faced in 2020 in connecting with fellow indie authors once again lowered the number of works I was able to read and review from the previous year. Last year, I only had the opportunity to read twelve books during the year, but it was a good year for reading, as I only rated one book with 2-stars, three books at 3-stars, seven books with 4-stars, and finished out the year with a 5-star reviewed book.

Now to reiterate my review standards from the past year’s postings, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3-star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4-star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5-star effort.

To start out, the one work which I rated at the 2-star level hinted at a suspenseful mystery thriller, but severe plot errors, blended with the grammatical and typographical errors, could not reach the promise of fulfilling the suspenseful thrills. The three 3-star works provided basic enjoyable tales in multiple genres. In the procedural mystery, a private investigator, who is a former police officer, takes on a missing person case that turns into a job of protecting an innocent from a Russian cabal. The horror story has a couple leading their neighborhood in a battle against a zombie pandemic. The sci-fi fantasy has new residents of a future domed colony on Titan, one of Jupiter’s moons, discovering their family history has a more mythological, extraterrestrial foundation.

In the 4-star zone, one of the works was introduced to me by my neighbor, who was friends with the indie authors of the tale. The epic Bermuda Triangle yachting saga reaches across several genres from gambling thrill and heroic defense against villainy to legendary sci-fi fantasy to create an impressive adventure for readers who can keep up with the multiple themes within the epic. The other six 4-star books stretch across a broad range, including one historical non-fiction psychological comparison of Frankenstein author, Mary Shelley, and late 1800s American mass murderer, Anton Probst. The fiction works include a tough romance between a teacher getting out of an abusive relationship and one of her recently-paroled adult students working to get his GED, a murder mystery investigation novella based in London during the early height of the COVID pandemic, a romantic thriller between a teen sci-fi author and an artificial-intelligence entity who join up to fight a villainous business tech exec, a sci-fi thrilling start of a trilogy where a group of friends begin to deal with the news of an asteroid heading toward earth, and an action adventure treasure hunting tale with a recovery gang trying to solve the clues of a Knights Templar map while defending their actions against another group seeking to take the same treasure.

The last book I read for the year turned out to be the one 5-star book in my reviews. Innocent Bystander by C.A. Asbrey is the third book of The Innocents Mystery Series. Set mainly in the 1870s American Wild West, the leader of a train robbery gang and a female Pinkerton detective agent connect to track down the agent’s sister who has run off to San Francisco to marry a man that has a history of marrying wealthy women who mysteriously die shortly after the wedding. Normally, I would have started with the first book of the series, but the first two books of the series had already achieved a sizable number of good reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, and since my goal is to help fellow indie authors, I decided to read the first book of the series that was still light in reviews. Of course, the excellent reviews for the first two books were a good indicator of how excellent a storyteller I was about to experience and prove deserving of a 5-star review.

Even as it was a light year of reading, it was a good year of reading and enjoying the creativity of fellow authors. With my two self-published works, I hope readers feel they live up to the standards I have used to judge the works of my fellow indie authors. If avid readers do check out Legacy Discovered and Disappeared and Found and decide to purchase and read either or both of them, I hope they decide to let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.

My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

2021 Emmy Voting

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The continuing pandemic has fluctuated the past year, as the arrival of vaccines have helped ease conditions, but continuing misinformation and a deadlier variant has continued to upend the hopeful rebound. For me, I had to conduct my volunteer tutoring virtually and only needed to fill my car’s gas tank about three or four times this year, until it finally felt safe for me to handle my most recent road trip around the Midwest this August. At the same time, the fluctuations of the year also continued to affect television production of new broadcast and streaming shows, and as a member of the Public Relations Peer Group of the Television Academy, I noticed how the fluctuations once again affected the scheduling of the nominations and voting for the 2021 Emmy Awards, as it did for the previous year. This year’s nominations were announced in mid-July, but the viewing and voting platform was not open online until mid-August with only a two week period to view and vote by the end of August. This viewing period was also tighter for me, since I had just returned from my road trip and needed to catch up on other concerns before I could focus on binge-watching the nominees in categories I was eligible to vote on. The rules for voting require Academy members to view all nominees in a category before voting, but for series or limited series nominees, members only needed to view one episode of the six provided of each nominee in order to vote. I cleared my schedule for the final week of August and was able to view the nominees for five categories and vote on them.

This year, I wanted to include the Outstanding Competition Program category, because one of my favorite programs was a nominee. This is one of the few categories where broadcast and cable has an advantage over streaming programs. Only one nominee, Nailed It!, was a streaming original on Netflix. CBS’s The Amazing Race and NBC’s The Voice represented the broadcast networks, while Bravo’s Top Chef and VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race represented cable programming. It was obvious that since some other regular past year nominees were not on this year’s list, the pandemic had affected the ability to produce some of these close competition shows. A couple of the shows demonstrated creative adjustment in dealing with the COVID restrictions, as Top Chef had to replace their competing chefs’ grocery store race and purchase segment with a computer pad order and delivery segment to handle food supplies for the cooking challenge, and The Voice had the audience displayed on a wall of monitors behind the celebrity chairs, as well as the competitors’ families presented virtually on monitors as well. However, I was aware of how the pandemic had affected my favorite competition show, The Amazing Race, as I remember watching the full season earlier this year, when it was announced at the opening episode that this race was filmed just before the pandemic shut down global travel. It was decided at the time that the airing of this race would be delayed and was finally aired as the pandemic was easing earlier this year. The goal of blending global culture and perspective is still an inspiration in this competition series, so it still deserved my vote for the Emmy.

There were five nominees for Outstanding Television Movie: Lifetime’s Robin Roberts Presents: Mahalia, HBO’s Oslo, Netflix’s Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square, and Amazon Prime Video’s Sylvie’s Love and Uncle Frank. It was interesting that none of these movies appeared to have a current time frame. Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square was not specifically set in a specific year, but the town square set was totally constructed within a closed studio, and the story of an angel and her trainee seeking to change a Scrooge-like rich woman who is trying to evict a town’s population being told in a continuous musical format has an old Hollywood style to it. Two movies are based on historical fact, as Oslo provides a behind-the-scenes rendering of the Norwegian diplomats involved in the 1993 Oslo Peace Accord between Israel and the PLO, and Robin Roberts Presents: Mahalia is a biopic about soul singer Mahalia Jackson during the 50s and 60s in the Martin Luther King era. Sylvie’s Love is a common touching love story between two young adults who connect in a record store in the 50s, are separated and then reconnect in the early 60s, while Uncle Frank is a tough tale of a homosexual man who must deal with his very southern family during a patriarch’s funeral in the 70s. It was a tough decision, but I was impressed with the creative conflictive presentation of Uncle Frank for my vote.

The five nominees for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series was also difficult to decide, especially since I only had time to view the opening episode of each series. HBO had two nominees with I May Destroy You about a woman dealing with a date rape, and Mare of Easttown with Kate Winslet as a small town tough detective having to take on a tense murder case. The three other nominees were streaming offerings with Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit about an orphaned girl who becomes a chess prodigy while dealing with a drug addiction caused by the orphanage, Prime Video’s The Underground Railroad about a slave couple trying to escape to freedom through a real underground train system, and Disney+’s WandaVision about a superhero couple in a 50s sitcom. I feel I would like to have seen the full series of each nominee, but I felt more enticed by the dramatic mystery being presented in Mare of Easttown which received my vote.

There were eight nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series, but only one was not from a streaming service, ABC’s Black-ish. Netflix had three nominees with Cobra Kai, Emily in Paris, and The Kominsky Method. HBO Max had two with The Flight Attendant and Hacks, while Hulu came in with PEN15 and Apple TV+ presented Ted Lasso. The Flight Attendant and Cobra Kai did not seem to truly belong in this category, as the main story arcs were more dramatic, thrilling, and suspenseful, even if some of the characters had a comic seasoning in their reactions. The comic flavoring that enticed me more was the cultural conflict stories of Emily in Paris and Ted Lasso. In the end, Ted Lasso with its opening arc of a Texas champion football coach being hired to coach an English football (soccer) team was an easier series to understand the culture conflict comedy, so it got my vote.

The eight nominees for Outstanding Drama Series proved to be the hardest to consider. The thematic range was broader than the other categories. The only network series nominee, NBC’s This Is Us, has had a few seasons dealing with a family drama told between the present and the past. On cable, FX Networks’ Pose focused on the dramatic competition within the LBGT urban community. Under the hyper sci-fi, superhero dramas, Disney+’s The Mandelorian and Prime Video’s The Boys pulls out the CGI power. Netflix’s two nominees, Bridgerton and The Crown, deal with British royalty drama, even if Bridgerton is in the early 1800s, while The Crown was focusing on the historic drama in the arrival of Diana in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale continued its dystopian future drama, while HBO’s Lovecraft Country has black family members who have faced the racial prejudice conflicts in the 20s suddenly having to face the monsters in the world of H.P. Lovecraft. It was amazing to experience the breadth of racial inclusion within these series, but Lovecraft Country drew me in a little better, so it got my vote.

The 73rd Annual Emmy Awards is scheduled to air on Sunday, September 19 at 8PM ET on CBS. We’ll see at that time how my votes match with the actual winners. It continues to be an honor to provide my voice in deciding the recipients of the Emmy Awards.

Update: The Emmy recipients of four of the categories I voted in were presented at the 73rd Annual Emmy Awards on Sunday, September 19 on CBS. The Emmy recipient for Outstanding Television Movie was presented at the Creative Arts Emmys on Sunday, September 12, which aired on FXX on Saturday, September 18. The Outstanding Television Movie Emmy went to Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square. During the annual Emmy Awards on September 19, The Outstanding Reality Competition Program went to RuPaul’s Drag Race. The Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series went to The Queen’s Gambit. The Outstanding Drama Series went to The Crown. The one Emmy award that matched my vote was the Outstanding Comedy Series which went to Ted Lasso. Congratulations to the winners and the other nominees.

 

Midwest Great Lakes Road Trip – Part 4

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My Midwest Great Lakes trip was now heading into the east Lake Michigan part of the tour. The boat tour around Apostle Islands National Lakeshore was the last scheduled boat or park tour on the trip, so my last two stops at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Indiana Dunes National Park would be just personal exploration hiking tours, requiring no advance bookings. I fully expected to be able to see both sites in one day of travel. I checked out of my comfy motel stop in St. Ignace, had breakfast in a diner down the road, and headed for the Mackinac Bridge, the main connection between the two Michigan peninsulas. The Mackinac Bridge was a part of Interstate 75, allowing me to enjoy a limited access expressway for the first time since I headed up to Duluth through Minnesota. However, the bridge was going through its own summer road repair season as traffic was reduced to a couple of lanes on the southbound side. The bridge crossed over the connection strait between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, giving me a good view of both lakes as I crossed over, which allowed me to now claim that I have had the chance to see all of the Great Lakes in my lifetime. Just a few miles south of the bridge, my path directed me off of the interstate, which was heading down the center of the Lower Peninsula, onto US routes that were headed along the Lake Michigan shores of the peninsula in order to get to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which only led to more cross traffic and summer road repair season sections along the way.

By late mid-morning, I reached the Sleeping Bear Dunes Visitor Center in the nearby town of Empire and got some exploration tips from a ranger. I drove up into the park and turned off onto a scenic drive in a forested area along the top of the dunes. I found a parking area and hiked up a small path to a point where the open sand dunes sloped sharply down to a small shore along Lake Michigan. The views were fascinating and inspiring. It was also amazing to see the number of people who decided to try and walk down the steep slope. The perspective of understanding how geology, an ice age, and time dug out the deep areas that became the Great Lakes was in full view at this overlook. I took my photos and headed back to the car. I completed the scenic drive and drove back down to Empire, where I had my first non-tote bag lunch at a busy café near the visitor center.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore montage


After lunch, I drove out, following the mapped out directions that would lead me down to Grand Rapids, where I would reconnect with the interstate highway system into Indiana. However, the dreaded summer road repair season, including a twenty mile northbound detour for one small section of a fully closed road, created delays in my time schedule. Once I got to Grand Rapids and back on the interstate highway system, it was in the late afternoon, and I realized that I would not be able to make it to the Indiana Dunes National Park Visitor Center before it closed. I headed directly to the Chesterton hotel I had booked my room and checked in for the night. After getting my dinner, I connected online to determine my hotel options for the final segment heading back home. Since my visit to Indiana Dunes National Park was now moved to the morning, delaying my start back west, I decided that the little side drive up to the southern portion of Wisconsin was not necessary. The rural area around Bayfield and Apostle Islands had given the Wisconsin perspective, so after visiting Indiana Dunes National Park, I was going to hop onto Interstate 80 and head back home to Colorado. I booked a hotel stop west of Des Moines.

The next morning, I enjoyed my hotel breakfast, checked out, and headed directly to the Indiana Dunes National Park Visitor Center, where I got some guidance from a ranger on the best trails to experience. Indiana Dunes was the smallest of the five natural destinations I had planned on this tour, and it was interesting to see that the central, easily-accessible beach area between the two ends of the park was still under the Indiana State Park system with an entry fee, while the national park areas were free. Per the ranger guidance, I headed to the eastern side of the park to a parking area near Kemil Beach. Since Indiana Dunes had only been re-designated from a national lakeshore in 2019, it was interesting to see that the park signs still had not been updated to Indiana Dunes National Park. I started out by taking a small hike around the forested Dune Ridge Trail, then I walked up the road to the small sand trail out to the beach area. The dune and beach area was a lot more level than the impressively steep slopes at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park, but I still admired the simple natural vibe of the southern lakeshore of Lake Michigan in this newly re-designated national park.

Indiana Dunes National Park montage


After taking in another great perspective, I drove out of the park and hopped onto I-80 just a couple of blocks away. I reached my hotel in Des Moines that night, and then made it back home the following day. As I was driving through Iowa on the first day of this trip, I was amazed to see the many wind power farms along the way, so on the way back home, I stopped at a rest area in Iowa and took photos of a nearby wind farm. It was a perspective that was just as important as visiting the national parks, as it demonstrated our ability to continue to learn how to use the wonder of nature to empower us all. This was another great road trip.

Midwest Great Lakes Road Trip – Part 3

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At the second Duluth hotel I stayed at, I considered my schedule for the next two days of my Midwest Great Lakes trip. Due to the tight booking at hotels and tour transportation that I had already experienced during the Isle Royale National Park and Voyageurs National Park segment of my trip, I felt that I needed to book both nights to cover myself during this time. According to the website, the Apostle Islands grand tour would cover three hours, and I surmised that I would then be able to travel across the Michigan Upper Peninsula within the afternoon to arrive at St. Ignace, where I figured I would be able to take the ferry over to Mackinac Island and enjoy a dinner in a horse-buggy town before ferrying back to St. Ignace. I found a room available online at a small hotel in St. Ignace and booked it for the next night. I then considered that the next day I would be able to cross the Mackinac Bridge, head down to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for a quick view, then make it down to the recently re-designated Indiana Dunes for a quick stop before checking into my next hotel. I found an available room for that second night in a hotel in Chesterton, right next to Indiana Dunes, and booked it. I felt I was ready for the next two days.

The next morning I got ready to head over to Bayfield, Wisconsin, where the tour boat was scheduled to depart at ten, but I would need to check-in early at nine-thirty. Since Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is actually closer to Duluth than the Isle Royale departure point I dealt with two days ago, I did have the opportunity to enjoy the hotel breakfast amenity before checking out and heading east to the Wisconsin border. Since Isle Royale was considered to be a part of Michigan, the moment I crossed the state border into Wisconsin, I knew I could technically consider that I had now been in all fifty states, but I decided to hold off on the celebration until I had crossed into the Michigan Upper Peninsula later that afternoon. Even though I was driving along the upper lakeshore of Wisconsin, I still noticed a few dairy farms along the way giving me the agricultural perspective of the state. I circled around small Bayfield Peninsula jutting off the north side of Wisconsin into Lake Superior and reached Bayfield, a much larger town and take-off point than Grand Portage in Minnesota. Instead of a small pier, the tour boats were taking off from a larger marina harbor with multiple piers and a car ferry dock for visitors seeking to get over to the largest Apostle Island, Madeline Island, for a chance to drive around an island. I parked on an unlimited parking side street, grabbed my last tote bag lunch and camera backpack, and then headed to the check-in center next to the marina.

The tour boat was much larger than the Isle Royale transport boat, and I found my seat on the open upper deck on top of the center cabin, just behind a young family. Our boat slowly backed out of the harbor and started up North Channel between Madeline Island and Basswood Island. As we traveled through the various islands, we experienced the sandstone cliffs next to the luscious forests on the islands. One island had been the site of a sandstone quarry, and we were shown a place where blocks of sandstone had been left when the quarry was closed. As we went further north, we saw where the lake had created sea caves into the sandstone cliffs and was shown one of the sea stacks, a jutting rock islet from one of the islands. As we reached the northernmost island on our tour, the island’s name, Devils Island, showed itself as the lake waters began to rock our boat as well as splash against the sea caves under the lighthouse on the island itself. As we turned and headed back, I took the time to bring out my last tote bag lunch and enjoyed it. We found quieter waters as we headed around Raspberry Island and admired the quaint lighthouse along the side. The islands were an amazing perspective of the power of Lake Superior, and an interesting comparison to the ridge island of Isle Royale.

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore montage


The three hour tour actually came closer to being four hours in length, so after a quick stop in the gift shop after leaving the boat and heading out the marina pier, I found my car and headed off east for Michigan. However, besides the extra hour on the boat tour, I also realized that I had not taken into consideration that I was changing time zones at the Michigan border, losing another hour on the afternoon trip. In addition, besides the Michigan Upper Peninsula not having a smooth interstate expressway across it, I continued to experience the Midwest summer road repair season on the US and state routes along the way. This led to me finally arriving to St. Ignace by ten that night, way too late to take the ferry to Mackinac Island for a relaxing horse-buggy dinner. Since I had already booked my hotel room for the next night down in Indiana, I knew I would not have time to enjoy Mackinac Island the next morning and would have to apologize to my friend for having to pass up his recommendation. I headed for my night stop and found out it was a small old-fashion comfortable motel with the owner living on the property. I parked in front of my room door and used the old-fashion metal key to enter the room. In a way, it was good that I had booked the next night’s hotel room back in Duluth, as I did not need to worry about having a Wi-Fi connection. Instead, I jumped into bed and relaxed into thinking about my next day heading into the Michigan Lower Peninsula.

To be continued…