Tag: Restaurants

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California Packing List, Fall River and McCloud

Gear

We took 5-weight rods but never used them. Our guides had rods set up when we got there, and it would have taken some work to get our rods re-rigged. They didn’t seem excited about redoing their effort.

We took waders and boots and used those the day we wade-fished on the McCloud. We also took our Patagonia wading crampons, which were designed to provide increased traction on wet rocks, of which there were plenty on the McCloud. We bought them five years ago for our trip to the Deschutes for steelhead, and that was the last time we used them. They had worked great on that trip, but had otherwise been sitting in a zip-loc bag in my closet for the last five years. I used mine on the McCloud, and they helped. The straps on Kris’s broke, so hers are now useless. They were a good idea, but heavy and klunky. I don’t think Patagonia makes them any more.

Northern California

The Mount Shasta region of Northern California may be the strangest place I’ve ever been. There’s plenty of stuff going on, but it doesn’t necessarily sync well. There’s skiing in the winter, fly fishing, biking, hiking, bird-watching, radical right-wing separatists, libertarian marijuana farmers, and survivalists. The town of Mount Shasta sports something like 30 new-age businesses, a lot of cute old tourist motels, and the only combination liquor store-fly fishing shop I’ve come across.

There are weekend tourists from San Francisco who have strong opinions about wine lists, and State of Jefferson separatists who want the San Franciscans to go back where they came from. The separatists took over the town government of Redding when the City commissioners tried to impose mask regulations during Covid. This is the land for which God made Subarus, and also a land of Trump flags, which just about sums up its schizophrenia. It’s mostly white folk, too, so you’d think that everybody would be driving around in a new BMW calling each other Skipper, just like God intended.

June Yu, Lenticular cloud formation at Mount Shasta, 1918. Cloud formation? Not on your life. This is actually a photo of the Lemurians blasting into outer space.

Mt. Shasta juts up in the middle of things. It’s out of place and a bit out of line with the other West Coast volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire. There is a debunked geological theory from the mid-19th century concerning the lost continent of Lemuria, so named because it explained the distribution of lemurs on the surviving continents and on Madagascar. Madagascar was thought to be a remnant island fragment of the sunken continent.

Here’s most of what you need to know about sunken continents. Because of the relative density of continental crusts, they won’t sink. They may move around some, but sinking ain’t in it. Of course this is likely one of those fake facts expounded by so-called scientists. Now back to Lemuria.

Lemuria was either in the Pacific or Indian Oceans, depending on who you talk to. Disappearing continental crusts have long been the very thing, Atlantis being the most popular, but Lemuria was right up there, or right down there as it were. 

Way down below the ocean
Where I wanna be, she may be
Way down below the ocean
Where I wanna be, she may be
Way down below the ocean
Where I wanna be, she may be

"Atlantis," Donovan Leitch, 1968

Watkins, Carleton E., Mt. Shasta, California, 1870-1880, albumen print, Library of Congress; Denney, Ewen, Aerial photo of Mt. Shasta, 2006, Wikipedia.

Little known fact: humans are descended from the Lemurians, who, realizing their continent was sinking, decamped to Mount Shasta and started a new, self-sustaining civilization inside the mountain. They’re still there. Plenty of locals run into them out in the woods around Mount Shasta–you can always spot a Lemurian because of their height, their long, flowing hair, white robes, and sandals, presumably Birkenstocks. We didn’t happen to spot any Lemurians while we were there, but I reckon we could have bought a crystal that would have helped us communicate. I bet you could too.

Some folks say that the Lemurians are from outer space, but the better information is that the outer space visitors–and the area around Mount Shasta is chock-full of UFOs–are Lizard People, who also come and go from Mount Shasta. Apparently there’s no problem with Lizard People/Lemurian cohabitation inside Mount Shasta, though that sort of thing is generally frowned upon most places, so don’t be surprised if you see them strolling along together out in the woods, long thin hand in sharp scaly claw.

Google Earth.

Mount Shasta really is the strangest thing. There it is, all 14,179 feet of it, dominating the measly 3,000-foot terrain that surrounds it. It’s so disproportionate to everything around it that you can’t help checking from time to time just to make sure you didn’t imagine it. Wallace Stevens got it wrong. That jar was placed atop a hill in Shasta County, California, not Tennessee, right on top of Mount Shasta.

I don’t know why the State of Jefferson separatists include two XXs in their Great Seal. Maybe that’s how they sign their name.

Hotels and Restaurants

We stayed in the Fall River Hotel in Fall River our first night in California. We split a chicken fried steak at the hotel restaurant, which suggested OklaTex depression origins for Fall River’s high cusine. There’s also a bar, and it’s a good looking bar. In the bar there were locals drinking whiskey or beer or something else manly but making sure I knew it was not Bud Light. I started to order a Bud Light and join them, but we went driving around instead. We saw the falls, we found where we were supposed to meet the guide the next morning, and we stopped at the grocery store and bought a couple of beers. Neither beer was a Bud Light. I’m comfortable with my masculinity so I keep meaning to drink one, but I’m not a light beer drinker and keep forgetting.

Actually, the grocery store, Rays Food Place, was my favorite place in Fall River. We went twice, and it had everything I might have wanted and good conversations to boot. Folk were immensely friendly, both the staff and other customers, and it may offer the town’s best nightlife. The next day our fishing guide brought us sandwiches from there for lunch on the river, and they were outstanding, which is hard to do with a sandwich. For breakfast, however, I’d recommend Annie’s Rendezvous Cafe. I’m not sure I’d recommend its Table of Wisdom, though. That looks like a place you can only aspire to.

Both Annie’s and the Fall River Hotel were for sale. I’m betting they still are. It may not be the liveliest of towns, but it’s still one of the prettiest rivers I’ve ever fished.

The next two nights we stayed in McCloud, 40 miles to the west and much closer to Mount Shasta. It’s not far off of I-5 that runs up the West Coast from San Diego to Seattle, so it gets more of the San Francisco tourist trade than Fall River. We stayed at the McCloud Hotel–McCloud River, Town of McCloud, McCloud Hotel. . . There seems to be a theme here, but the funny thing is that nobody is really certain about who McCloud was. He may have been a Hudson Bay Company trapper named McLeod, but if he was, folks didn’t spell very well.

The hotel was a charming old place, laid out kinda rambling and ramshackle, but it was very well maintained and pretty. I think we got some kind of suite, because we had a couch and a couple of armchairs in the room, and a huge bath tub, more of a hot tub really, right in the middle of the bedroom floor. I’ve seen these kinds of tubs other times in other places, and I figure they’re supposed to have something to do with romance. This one would likely have taken a couple of hours just to fill, which in my mind would have killed the mood. I actually think this one was there just because they had a big empty space that they didn’t know what else to do with.

Both nights we stayed in McCloud we ate at the restaurant in the hotel, the Sage, and it was the kind of ubiquitous new-American cuisine that now seems to be everywhere. I guess it’s the new comfort food. We ate there the second night too because I wanted wine after clambering around the river all day, and I don’t drink and drive. It was very good and easy to get to. Plus I liked the wait staff.

In Sacramento our flight out was at 6:30 the next morning, so we stayed in an airport hotel. It’s something I’ve taken to doing. I book an early flight, turn in the rent car the night before, then use an airport hotel shuttle to get back and forth from the airport. I’m terrified of missing planes, and usually show up the recommended two hours in advance. If nothing else I figure that if I show up really early, there’s less chance of the airline losing my luggage. So far it’s worked. The weird thing about Sacramento airport hotels is that they’re pretty far from the airport, clustered together about nine miles away. It must be one of those California things.

The indigenous cuisine of Sacramento is sushi. We picked a random strip mall sushi joint close to our hotel but far from the airport, and it was fine.

Our flight back had a connection in Las Vegas. The only place I’ve been in Las Vegas is the airport, when I’ve had a connection to someplace else. The airport makes me glad that I’m not a gambling man.

Ticks

Our guide on the McCloud warned us to check ourselves for ticks, and we did. This is not a euphemism. Fortunately waders are a pretty good tick deterrent.

You can tell this is me and not a Lemurian because I’m not wearing sandals.

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Rhode Island Packing List

Gear

We took three rods, two 9-foot 8-weights with floating lines and a 9-foot 9-weight with an intermediate line, a line that sinks just a bit below the surface. Mostly we fished with the 8-weights, but I used the 9-weight some in the fog when I was blind casting in deeper water. I caught my fish on my 8-weight, and the fish was strong enough to make me think a 9-weight might have been better.

Our guide, Ray Ramos, had suggested that we bring waders and boots in the likely event that the weather stayed bad. If it stayed bad we were going to try a bit of coastline casting. The water is still pretty cold in Rhode Island, and we’re not much used to cold, so we would have needed the waders. We never used them, which is good. No matter what Mr. Simms and Mr. Patagonia and Mr. Orvis tell you, waders are a nuisance.

When we left Ninigret Pond the second day, the pretty day, a UPS driver in shorts kidded us about our cool weather clothes and asked if we thought it was cold. We told him that we were from Houston, and that it was freezing. He told us we’d never survive the winters. I’d guess that’s about right.

A Word About Phil

Phil Shook writes about fly-fishing, and wrote Flyfisher’s Guide to Texas and Flyfisher’s Guide to Mexico, and co-wrote Fly-Fishing the Texas Coast. Phil also wrote Flyfisher’s Guide to the Northeast Coast, which covers New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, right next to Rhode Island. Last week he sent me a photo of a clip from an article he wrote in 2010 for Eastern Fly Fishing, now American Fly Fishing, about fly fishing Ninigret Pond. I should have known to talk to Phil first.

From Phil Shook.

Hotels

The first time we went to Rhode Island we were in Newport on the weekend of the boat show. Newport is an upscale East Coast tourist destination, and it is the home to The America’s Cup. I reckon it’s the center of the sailboat universe. Every recreational sailor in North America was in Newport for the boat show, and it was tough to blanch for all the tans. Because of the crowds, prices were jacked, rooms were hard to come by, and there were people everywhere. It was a terrible time to be in Newport unless you sailed, and we paid an extravagant amount of money for a depressingly mediocre hotel room.

The second time we went prices were calmer, and we found a great old refurbished motor inn, The Sea Whale Motel. It was kinda cool and not too funky, reasonably central, and so much more likable than the first place we had stayed. For this trip I booked us again for the Sea Whale.

Except I didn’t. I booked us for the Blue Whale. You see what I did there? Sea Whale? Blue Whale? See how anybody could make that mistake? Well, I certainly see it.

I was a bit surprised when we followed the GPS directions from the airport and ended up an hour across Block Island Sound from Newport. The Blue Whale was tiny, and our room was a tinier part of that tiny. It was great though, and in that tiny room I did some world class sleeping. From the Blue Whale it was a quick, calm drive to Ninigret Pond, and much more convenient than Newport would have been. Prices at the Blue Whale were even cheaper than at the Sea Whale–of course it was a bit early for beach-goers, and beach-goers are the Blue Whale’s clientele.

I’m a great planner, and from now on I’m making all my lodging choices based on whether or not there’s a whale in the mix.

Restaurants

I’ve already written about the magnificence that are clam shacks: lobster rolls, fried clams, picnic tables, chowder . . . And we ate at two that were a stone’s throw from The Blue Whale Inn, Monahan’s and Salty’s. At Salty’s, Kris asked the girl at the counter what she liked best, and the girl said the hot lobster roll, at least she sort of said that. She actually said the hot lab-sta roll. I made her say it again it was so wonderful, but I had embarrassed her and she Midwesterned her accent.

I vaguely recall that there’s some reason that we’re not supposed to be eating lobster, over-fishing probably, but I figured eating lab-sta just once was ok.

My college roommate, Robert, had sent us a photo of the Matunuck Oyster Bar, ((At least that’s what I think Robert sent us. I couldn’t find the original email, but on my possibly-flawed memory of his advice we went to Matunuck Oyster Bar and it was great, so whatever he sent Robert gets the credit.)) and we made a reservation there for our first night. We almost canceled when saw their wall of advertising in the Providence airport–airport advertising isn’t something I’m prone to trust–but the place was wonderful. Northeastern oysters are different than our Gulf Coast oysters, smaller, firmer, brinier . . . I love Northeastern oysters. Of course I also love Gulf Coast oysters, Northwestern oysters, French oysters, McDonald’s French fries, and fried bologna. You can take my judgment for what it’s worth.

We had Northeastern oysters. We had steamer clams. I had striped bass because, after all, that’s what I was in town for. The place was crowded and noisy and happy and the food was delicious. ((If you’re keeping track, that photo below is another lobster roll for Kris. We also split a lobster roll the next day for lunch. I don’t think she ate any lobster rolls for breakfast, but I can’t be absolutely certain. If the lab-sta fishery collapses, I’m blaming her.))

The next afternoon after fishing and clam shacking we drove into Providence, about an hour north of Ninigret Pond. Providence itself isn’t very big. The current population estimate is 189,692, but the population of the metropolitan area is more than 1.6 million, so there are plenty of people in the area. Providence is old, founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, and it’s the home of Brown University and The Rhode Island School of Design. It was once ground zero for New England’s Mafia.

We found a parking place where the parking meter didn’t work, but then we parked anyway. I figured that if it took them decades to clean out the Mafia, then I didn’t have to worry about a couple of hours of illegal parking. We walked around Brown and went through the excellent Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art–it’s small, but chock full of really great stuff. This, for instance, was the cover art on one of my college textbooks:

I think maybe it’s Roman, maybe older? Maybe Babylonian? I was excited to see it, but I was so worried that I had never finished my class reading that I forgot to check the signage.

Before we went back to The Some Whale Inn, we ate at Al Forno in Providence. In 1992 its chefs won one of the first Jame’s Beard awards, largely on the strength of their grilled pizza, and every few years like clockwork it gets a new nomination. Who doesn’t like pizza? And their grilled pizza is something strange and special. We ate grilled pizza. We split a roasted beet salad. We ate espresso-doused ice cream for desert. We watched the people around us eat other stuff and we envied them for what they’d ordered.

Playlist

The band Talking Heads came together at the Rhode Island School of Design, and I kept debating adding them to the Rhode Island playlist. I finally decided that each person is granted a certain measure of enjoyable Talking Heads listening, and after that the band passed their sell-by date. I think I passed my Talking Heads sell-by date somewhere in the early 80s.

You’d think that there wouldn’t be a lot of Rhode Island music to choose from, but here’s the thing; the Newport Jazz Festivals and Folk Festivals were incredibly influential, and if you just download a couple of festival compilations you’ll be set with a lot of great music. Somehow it is immensely satisfying to listen to “If I Had a Hammer” followed by Louis Armstrong singing “Mack the Knife.” I don’t care if any musician ever actually came from Rhode Island, so many musicians touched it that Rhode Island makes for a great playlist.

George M. Cohan was from Rhode Island, as were the Cowsills. On a side note, as a kid I saw the Cowsills at the Texas State Fair.

Guitar

I took a guitar, but I never played. Our hotel room was too small to open the case.

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Striped Bass, Ninigret Pond, Rhode Island, June 12-14.

State Number 34.

This was our third trip to Rhode Island to catch a fish. Kris caught a nice striped bass last year, but user errors have plagued me. I could hook fish, but then I couldn’t land fish. What I’ve learned though is that I really like Rhode Island. It’s good fishing, and you can’t throw a lobster roll without hitting a clam shack. Clam shacks are one of the best things going. Lobster rolls, fried things, chowdah . . . I could eat at clam shacks until my arteries clogged, which might not take long.

I may even prefer the clear Rhode Island clam chowder to the New England chowder with cream. I’m not much of a fan of Rhode Island clam cakes though–that’s the big lump of fried dough in the picture above. They are beloved by Rhode Islanders, but seem to have all the character of a sugarless donut, and I’m dubious that they include any clams. If I really need a cholesterol boost, give me a hush puppy any day.

The two prior times that we fished in Rhode Island, we fished from big boats–well, big for fly fishing–out from Newport where the Atlantic meets the Rhode Island shore. I usually fish inshore in saltwater, in shallow Texas bays with marshes and sea grass and, if we’re fishing really deep, two feet of water. Meanwhile New Englanders seem mostly to fish nearshore, and as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing nearshore about it. Fishing in Rhode Island, if you face north and look to your left, sure ’nuff you see a shoreline, but look right and there’s nothing but Atlantic Ocean between you and France. And I get seasick.

I was game to go to the big water again–we certainly saw plenty of fish on our prior trips, and last year with Captain Rene Letourneau Kris caught a fine striped bass–but Kris wouldn’t let me. She loved it, but she didn’t trust me. She had read somewhere that there was flats fishing in New England, and shallow water was the only thing she would agree to if I was along. No more mister nice girl for her, no more overdosing on scopolamine for me.

Read the directions. Don’t replace the patch with another when the first patch falls off. And that advice about looking at the horizon to calm your nausea? It’s nonsense. The horizon is tilted.

We booked two days with Captain Ray Ramos. Ray fishes Rhode Island salt ponds from a Mitzi Skiff. If you saltwater fly fish inshore, you know about skiffs: they’re the antithesis of big water boats. They’re built to fish the shallowest possible saltwater, and if you fly fish for bonefish or redfish you either wade or kayak or fish from a skiff.

Ray’s Mitzi Skiff is 17 feet long and 6 feet wide, which is pretty normal for a flats boat. Compared to most New England saltwater boats, it’s tiny. Ray estimates that there are maybe ten flats skiffs in New England, and that his is the only Mitzi Skiff.

We fished two days with Ray. Ray warned us that the weather reports were terrible, and that rain was forecast both days, but what can you do? We went, and we got lucky. The first day it didn’t rain, but there was heavy fog. I spent the morning blind casting to likely spots along the shoreline. I’d cast, then I’d cast some more, and then I’d cast some more. Kris wanted to make sure I caught a fish, so she left me on the bow to cast until my arm fell off, and it did! Ok, not really, but it was a near thing, and I didn’t catch anything either.

Conditions have to be reasonably favorable to sight fish anywhere, and none of the favorable conditions include fog. You need sun. If the sky is hazy or cloudy or if it’s foggy, it’s hard to see into the water even when the water isn’t cloudy. With fog all you can do is blind cast to likely spots and hope you get lucky. I did a lot of unrequited blind casting.

Of course as soon as we stopped fishing the fog cleared. It was clear, bright, sunny, perfect . . . And miracle of miracles the great weather held for our second day.

Where we fished, Ninigret Pond, is about 1500 acres, which is about the same as a medium-sized freshwater lake. Big lovely New England coastal homes surround a lot of Ninigret, and all those homeowners own big lovely New England boats. The mean depth is 4.3 feet, but of course the depth isn’t uniform. There are channels so the big boats can reach the big water, and there are acres of shallow sand flats, at most a couple of feet deep. In the late spring, schools of striped bass come into the ponds to eat cinder worms, and then for the rest of the season big stripers come onto the flats chasing bait.

We were after big stripers chasing bait.

You see that right there, right in that next photo? That’s a ball of a thousand sand eels in Ninigret Pond. In the water from a distance they look like clumps of weeds, except that they mosey across the flat like they know where they’re going. That’s what our flies mimicked. Striped bass believe them delicious, though I never much cared for them. I guess I’ve never had a batch fried up at a clam shack.

We were fishing floating lines on 8-weight rods with 16-pound leaders, and the retrieve was relatively short strips with a pause to let the fly dive. Stripers are picky fish though, and at least twice we got follows from good stripers that wouldn’t take the fly. We could see them follow the fly, and then just when we thought things were going to happen the fish would turn. Both times the fly had picked up a bit of grass, a tiny, insignificant, soupçon of eel grass caught on the hook, and that was enough.

But even the failures are great when you sight-fish, and we couldn’t have asked for better than Ray at spotting fish. Once he told us where to look we could see it all. We could watch the big dark stripers move across the flats, sometimes straight at us. Even when they were too far away to see in the water we could see them explode the surface crashing bait. They seemed different in the pond than nearshore, and I kept comparing them to other fish I knew. They shied from the boat and were picky about flies like permit; they crashed the surface like jack crevalle; I could watch them glide through the water like bonefish, but really big bonefish. . . .

It was thrilling. Every fish we saw in the water, every surface explosion we heard was thrilling. Frankly, I don’t know why Rhode Islanders ever fish anywhere but those salt ponds. It’s a good thing they don’t though, because if they knew what they were missing the ponds would be packed. I’ll leave them the big water, and I’ll borrow their ponds.

I finally did catch my Rhode Island fish. It was one of those amazingly stupid bits of business when you get lucky, and you can pretend that you planned it all along. A fish crashed close behind me, and I made a short over the shoulder fling, almost directly backwards, and it worked. Ray could see it all from the platform, and he said that as soon as the fly hit the water the striper hit it.

Like I said, I planned it all along. And big stripers on the flats fight like redfish.

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Missouri Packing List

It’s been a few weeks and a trip to Cuba since we went to Missouri, but there are interesting things to add about Missouri, and by now the tornado is mostly forgotten.

Gear

We fished part of a day at Roaring River State Park. It’s a pretty Ozark mountain river, and it’s easy to wade. It was a bit crowded though. Why do I ever fish on a Saturday? Since Kris and I are both retired we don’t have to anymore, and having a place to ourselves is such a joy. Still, it was a pretty park, and we used typical trout set ups, 9′ 5-weight rods with floating lines. I caught two fish, both rainbow trout. We fished until the park trout permit pinned to my cap blew off and floated downriver.

The river is stocked from a nearby hatchery, and it was a mix of wild and stocked trout. For some folks stocked fish may seem like opportunity, but it’s always less desirable to fish for stocked fish than wild fish. I can’t usually catch much of either one, so I guess it’s not that one’s harder to catch than the other. Wild fish are just better.

I caught both trout on the Roaring River on a mop fly over a hare’s ear nymph, both fished under the surface. Mop flies are tied from one of those fuzzy mops, and are considered by some as a cheap trick. Don’t tell anyone that I used one.

I kinda like mop flies because you can get a lifetime supply of tying materials with a single trip to Walmart.

The next day we fished Crane Creek in Crane, Missouri, which is another pretty Ozark stream, and which is almost but not-quite famous. In the late 1800s, railroad workers dumped California McCloud River rainbow trout off of a railroad bridge into Crane Creek. Cane Creek hasn’t really been stocked much since, and the fish there today are the descendants of those original fish without significant interference. They may be the purest genetic strain of McCloud rainbows in the country, including those in the McCloud River.

Cane Creek

Stocking trout in rivers that support wild trout is controversial. It introduces non-native fish and diseases, and the stocked fish are just enough competition with the natives to hurt. The stockees don’t survive much either. The best-managed states, Montana for instance, have stopped stocking where there are wild trout, and a lot of the nation’s best rivers are never stocked. A creek that hasn’t been stocked, or a creek where stocking was abandoned, is a bit of a gem. That’s why a place like Crane Creek is someplace to look for.

We were there on a Sunday, and Crane Creek was also a little crowded, but I swear they were the nicest people I’ve ever come across on a river. We were at th park in the Town of Crane, population 1,495, and people invited me over to fish next to them. It was unnatural.

Crane Creek fish are small, and I fished with my tiniest rod. This is where I get goofy. Goofier. The truth is I buy fly rods and reels not because they’re better–almost every fly rod and reel is better than I am–but because they’re pretty. If I’m going to buy a reel, I don’t go in thinking that I want this reel because it has the very latest drag system and faster line retrieve, I buy it because I think it looks good. Of all the fly fishing gear I own–and I own a stupid amount of fly fishing gear–this is my prettiest rod and reel:

It’s an 8 1/2 foot Winston Boron IIIx 3-weight rod made in Montana, a rod that is way too lightweight for most of my fishing, and it’s just the loveliest shade of emerald green, with nickel silver fittings and a burled maple reel seat. The reel is a tiny Hardy Marquis 2/3 reel made in England. Are they appreciably better than any other 3-weight rod or reel? No. Could I have found a perfectly decent rod and reel for a third of the price? Absolutely. Are there any rods that look better? Well, maybe some custom classic bamboo. My goodness they’re pretty, and when the fish are small enough it just makes me idiotically happy to use them.

On Crane Creek I caught two small trout on a size 16 hare’s ear nymph under a size 14 royal Wulff, and Kris caught another. I picked the hare’s ear and royal Wulff because, well, they’re classic flies and I thought they matched that rod and reel. I’ve got standards, and I’m not fishing any mop flies with this rod.

Royal Wulff

Branson

I don’t like Branson. Am I being a snob? Of course. I have friends and family who love to go to Branson. I don’t.

There is a Trump Store, and there are shows.

I can’t think of anything worse than going to a show, unless it’s going to a Trump Store. You say the word show to me, and I feel queasy. Las Vegas? Oh lord, don’t make me go. I don’t gamble, and in Las Vegas there are shows. My daughter says the shopping is great in Las Vegas, but how can that be? I don’t think there’s a single fly fishing shop. Las Vegas at least has a minor league baseball team. I don’t think there’s any baseball in Branson.

The last show I went to voluntarily was Cirque de Soleil some 15 years ago, and I know those performers were miraculous, and that there are otherwise rational people who think that Cirque de Soleil is the best thing going. I know in my heart of hearts that that very show I went to was in all ways wonderful, but me? I was bored out of my mind. I’m still bored just thinking about it.

Maybe I need to go to a show with some mostly-naked ladies. At least I’d like the costumes.

In Branson, there are shows a-plenty, and what’s worse they’re all shows that revel in clean living. There’s Dolly Parton’s Stampede Dinner and Show, Hamners’ Unbelievable Magic Variety Show, WhoDunnit Hoedown and Murder Mystery Show, the Grand Jubilee Show, All Hands on Deck Show, Legends in Concert Show, Shepherd of the Hills Outdoor Drama Show . . . The list just won’t stop. You think you’re on a river in the Ozark backcountry away from all the shows, and you come across a flier for the Amazing Acrobats of Shanghai Show.

I’ve got nothing against clean living, and I consider myself a reasonably clean liver. I know and love several devout Baptists, and even some vegetarians, but clean living commodified into a show? I can’t think of a less appealing combination. Branson is one of those rare places where a soupçon of depravity would improve the moral tone.

I guess they do fish with mop flies, and plenty of people consider that depraved.

Donuts

We found two donut shops, though I’m sure there were more.

Parlor Doughnuts was a bit off the beaten path in a strip center. They sold gourmet donuts,((I’ve created a donut shop classification system, and there are four categories. Traditional shops include Houston’s Shipley’s, Krispy Kreme’s, Dunkin’, or the very best donut shop in the world, Ocean Springs, Mississippi’s Tato-Nut Doughnut Shop. Parlor Doughnuts is a chain in the Gourmet Category, and gourmet donuts are a bit more creative, with upscale whatnots coming to the fore. Portland’s Blue Star or Albuquerque’s Rebel come to mind. Experiential donut shops have let creativity run amock, and they are my least favorite kind of donut shop–I’m talking to you, VooDoo. A Cambodian donut shop is a clean, well-lighted place that is almost certainly located in a strip center. Everything is basic but good enough, and the owners are at the counter. Cambodian donutries can have flashes of brilliance–the boudin kolache was invented in a Cambodian donut shop and that deserves a Michelin star, or at least a James Beard nomination. It’s fusion cuisine at its finest.)) and the donuts were a bit elaborate for my taste, but I’d go back. I’d certainly go back if the choice was the other place we tried, Hurts.

Hurts is experiential. It’s next door to the Trump Store on the main drag, and it’s huge for a donut shop. There was a long line for the donuts. There were flavors like cotton candy, and cookie monster, and dirt worms, and every donut seemed created for a 9-year old, which I’m not. When I got to the counter, they were out of plain glazed.

The donuts were cold and forgettable. Kris wanted to chuck them and go back to Parlor.

AirBnB

We stayed in a nice pet-friendly AirBnB on the lake on the edge of town. It was just far enough from Branson’s center to forget where we were, and the owner left us a plate of cookies. They were good home-made cookies, too. There was an old canoe and a beat up bamboo fly rod hung as decorations above the fireplace, and I took that as a good omen. I sat on the enclosed porch and read Huck Finn, and, notwithstanding the No Trespassing signs, took the dogs for walks down to the lake. I’m pretty certain those signs weren’t meant for me.

Fly Shops

There are at least a couple of fly shops in Branson, but we only went to one, River Run Outfitters. We were supposed to fish with guides from the shop, but they talked us out of going. It was cold, in the 40s, and all the floodgates on the dam were open. The wind was gusting up to 40 mph. It was dangerous, and what’s worse we weren’t likely to catch anything. They gave us free coffee and good advice on where to fish instead. I bought some mop flies.

Restaurants

Branson is not a restaurant town. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of restaurants, but they all seem to have names like Hungry Hunter or Pickin’ Porch Grill. There are lots of barbecue places, but I’ve made the mistake of eating Missouri barbecue once before, in Kansas City, and I won’t do that again. Those people eat melted cheese on brisket, which should only be done in leftover brisket enchiladas.

The Keeter Center at College of the Ozarks promised farm to table dining, and I guess it was, but mostly everything just seemed big. Big room, big appetizers, big iced tea. . . Big ideology. I don’t know, it just didn’t click.

See that dish right there? That’s the Brussels sprout nachos appetizer, which as i recall was a lot of chopped up Brussels sprouts and feta on a lot of fried wontons. Had they artfully arranged four or five of those on a plate and charged me $12, I would have eaten them and said that’s ok, but that pile of stuff for $12 was too daunting. All I could think was man-oh-man, that’s big.

All of the waiters at Keeter Center are students at College of the Ozarks, and the hostess told us all about it, and then the waiter told us all about it. It’s a free Christian college, well, free in exchange for work. I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t have gone there without lots of conversations with a dean.

The next night we played it safe and went to two of Branson’s sushi joints, Mitsu Neko and Wakyoto. They were fine, and there were no Brussels sprouts. There was some kale, but I think it was purely decorative.

Playlist

Missouri has produced some magnificent music, and I’m still listening to that playlist. Josephine Baker was from St. Louis, and maybe I might have enjoyed one of her shows. From Wikipedia:

Her performance in the revue Un vent de folie in 1927 caused a sensation in [Paris]. Her costume, consisting of only a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.

Now that’s a costume, and there are some fun recordings of her singing jazzy French stuff.

Missouri had great jazz. You wouldn’t think it, would you? But in the 1920s, Prohibition wasn’t really enforced there, and 18th and Vine in Kansas City was as lively as anyplace in the country. The Kansas City Big Bands had their own style, blusier than New York or Chicago, with a frantic quality that makes you drive just a little faster if your foot’s on the peddle. There are great black big bands, Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra, Andy Kirk, George E. Lee, Count Basie . . . Two of the great jazz saxophonists, Lester Young and Charlie Parker, both came out of Kansas City.

There’s rock ‘n roll, too. Big Joe Turner is a joy, then there’s Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner, Sheryl Crow, Michael McDonald, and T Bone Burnett. The Beatles went to Kansas City, or at least they were going.

St. Louis Blues has been covered by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Louis Prima, Doc Watson, Herbie Hancock, Eartha Kitt, Art Tatum, and Ella Fitzgerald, and if your name is Louis, you can still meet Judy Garland there.

Ojon Mill, Photograph of Lester Young, 1944, Time Magazine, Volume 17, Number 13, Public Domain.

Guitar

I took my old Kohno classical, and spent some time at night playing. I don’t remember what, but I’ve been working on an arrangement of Gershwin’s Somebody Loves Me. That’s likely.