THE TOMBSTONE TOURIST VISITS - CROWN HILL MEMORIAL PARK

CROWN HILL CHAPEL

In March of 2013, while on the way to the NCAA Basketball Tournament in Kansas City, I stopped off in Indianapolis and spent some time at Crown Hill Memorial Park.  At over 500- acres, Crown Hill is Indiana's largest cemetery and the third largest non-government cemetery in the United States.  Before arriving I downloaded and print a cemetery map, but it was still very difficult to located particular graves. There are three United States Vice Presidents resting at Crown Hill, but I was able to locate on the grave of Charles Fairbanks, who served as Vice President under Teddy Roosevelt.

Vice President Charles Fairbanks

Fairbanks was elected as the 26th Vice President in 1904 and was the first vice president to serve an entire 4-year term without be called upon to case any tie-breaking votes as President of the Senate. Fairbanks also was an opponent of President Roosevelt's "Square Deal" and did not perform any significant role in the Administration and chose not to seek reelection. After leaving office in 1909, he returned to Indianapolis where he practiced law until he fell victim to ill-health. Charles Fairbanks died at his home on June 4, 1918

President Benjamin Harrison

Probably the most famous grave in Crown Hill is that of Benjamin Harrison, who served as the 23rd President of the United State. Harrison served as President from 1889-1893. He was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison and the great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, who signed the Declaration of Independence and succeeded Thomas Jefferson as Governor of Virginia. Following his term as president, he returned to his home in Indianapolis where he died on March 13, 1901 at the age of 67.

Robert Irsay

Just a short distance from the rave of President Harrison is the grave of Robert Irsay, who was the owner of Baltimore and Indianapolis Colts.  Irsay remains the most hated man in Baltimore because of his decision to move the Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis. During the early morning hours of March 29, 1984, Irsay loaded of the teams property into 15 Mayflower Moving Vans and left Baltimore for Indianapolis. The City of Baltimore never forgot and to this day many residents curse his memory.

James Whitcomb Riley

At the top of the hill above the Irsay grave is probably the largest grave monument in the Cemetery, which marks the grave of James Whitcomb Riley, who is best known as the creator of "Little Orphan Annie."  Riley's grave is located at the highest point in Crown Hill and afford visitors a grand view of the Indianapolis skyline.

Cannonball Baker

I actually stumbled on the grave of  Erwin "Cannonball" Baker while looking for the grave of gangster John Dillinger.  "Cannonball" Baker made 143 separate cross-country motorcycle speed runs across the United States and set a number of record including riding coast to coast in 1914 on an Indian Motorcycle in 11-days. His cross country runs are thought to have totaled more the 550,000 miles. "Cannonball Baker" died of a heart attack on May 10, 1960 at the age of 78.

My final stop in Crown Hill Cemetery was at the grave of John Herbert Dillinger.  Located in Section 44, the Dillinger grave is probably one of the most visited graves in the cemetery.  John Dillinger was one of the most well known of the depression era gangsters, that included the likes of Bonnie and Clyde, "Pretty Boy" Floyd and "Machine Gun" Kelly. During the years of the Great Depression The Dillinger Gang was accused of robbing 24-banks and he was known to have escaped jail twice. Throughout his criminal career, Dillinger was never convicted of murder.

John Dillinger

John Dillinger's career came to a violent end on July 22, 1934 when he and his escort Ana Sage (the famed lady in red) attended a movie at the Biograph in Chicago. Unknown to Dillinger, Sage had tipped off the FBI that she and Dillinger would be attending the movie. The two were seen entering the theater at about 8:30 p.m. and FBI Agents lead by Melvin Purvis waited outside for the gangster and his escort to exit.

Ignoring commands to surrender, Dillinger chose to shoot it out with the agents and died of gun shot wounds in a nearby alley.  Dillinger's body was taken to the Cook County Morgue and put on public display.  As many as 15,000 people are believed to have viewed the gangsters body.  John Dillinger was eventually buried here in Crown Hill Cemetery.  His gravestone has been replaced several times because vandals and souvenirs hunters.

Over all I spent about two and a half hours and managed to visit only a few of the more notable graves. If I am ever back in Indianapolis I plan to return to Crown Hill but for now I must move on.
Here is a short video that  I shot during my visit to Crown Hill Memorial Park.

DOIN' A LITTLE ----STEPPIN' OUT

Every year during the first weekend in August the Town of Blacksburg, Virginia host "STEPPIN' OUT. A large and well attended street festival that features artists and craftsmen from the immediate area and from surrounding states.  Also set up around town are three separate stages that features anything from classical music,and cloggers, to bluegrass and folk music.

I spent a very enjoyable few hours walking around downtown. I was impressed with the talent of the artist and craftsmen who were displaying and selling their ware up and down Main Street.  There were a number of food trucks and food vendors which I really enjoyed and is where I spent most of my money.

Parking is limited in the immediate area around the festival, but plenty of free parking was available in the Chicken Hill Parking Lot across from Lane Stadium.  Blacksburg Transit provided free shuttle bus transportation from the parking lot to the festival site. Buses were schedule to run every 15 minutes, but in mid-afternoon the bus broke down and a large number of passenger were left stranded for about an hour.

I was one of those passengers so I chose to walk up the Huckleberry Trail to the Parking Lot. The weather was in the mid to upper 70 with lot humidity and a light breeze, so it really didn't bother me to walk.

Here are a few photos from the day along with a short video.

ON THE ROAD TO.....RETIREMENT-PART 1

I don't usually post a lot of personal stuff here but, I am going to make an exception as I get closer to the BIG R.....Retirement. Over the years when some one would ask me "When are you going to retire?" my reply had always been, "The First!" Which always brought the followup question, "Oh, the first of the Year," to which I always replied, "No, The first time they piss me off."  Well, it finally happened and a few weeks ago, they pissed me off enough for me to finally pull the trigger and start the process.

I have been employed by the State of Virginia for the past 43-years, in fact this is the only job I have ever had. But, without going into the politics of working for the government, the last few years have been challenging and it finally dawn on me, "You don't have to do this anymore." So a few weeks ago I started looking into actually retiring.

One of the best benefits of working for the State is it's leave package. If you treat your leave like an extension of your pay check and carefully manage your leave, a seasoned employee only has to work about 8 months of the year. The problem is when you finally decide to retire the the state will only pay you for a small portion of your unused leave. So the first thing I did (after picking an actual retirement date) was to calculate my leave and figure out how much leave I have to take so that I can get paid for the max while not loosing any.

The one thing that I found is that my agency's personnel office (if you want to be politically correct - human resources office) is really little help in helping figure out my current leave balances and no help at all in calculating my future leave balances. So my own calculations show that I will have about 70-days of discretionary leave that I will have to take by the end of the year.  Figuring that each month will require an average of 20-days leave, I will have a little over 3-months of leave to take. So with that being said, I will basically stop working about the middle of September.

My next thing was to sit down and do a monthly budget. Listed my bill, and other monthly expenses. For the last year I have kept a pretty detailed log and have a pretty good idea of what I will cost me to live month to month.  Some of the expenses will go down, like gas to and from work, and eating out. Some may go up like, groceries.  So I have a good idea what it will cost me to live month to month and have found that I should have a good bit of money left over for discretionary spending, and hopefully may be able to continue to save a little each month.

So now that I have set an actual retirement day - January 1, 2018 and an actual leave date - September 15, 2017, it was time to looking in to the dreaded paper work.  I first started the process by looking on line at the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) website and downloaded the Retirement Handbook.  This is a must for anyone who is considering retiring from the state in the next year or so. It is full of information and I found it very helpful.

My next step was initiating a call to my agency's personnel office and setting an appointment for an initial review. From where I live in southwest Virginia to my agency's personnel office in Richmond it is a good 4-hour drive. I have to say that this was a total waste of time.  The person I initially set the appointment with and was scheduled to meet with wasn't working and I had to meet with another person who did little else but print off the necessary forms. She could not even get logged into the correct website to calculate my financial numbers. The entire meeting took about 20-minutes. So 4-hours up and 4-hours back for a 20-minute meeting. Waste of time. I ended calling the VRS office direct and found that they are very helpful and provide a bunch of information that my personnel office didn't. The VRS Representative also was able to correct some of the "Mis-Information" that my personnel office had given me.  Moral of the story, while you may have to deal with your personnel office for some things, I have found that it is better to go to VRS for accurate information.

Some people will disagree with my next statement but after meeting with my financial and tax people, I have decided to start drawing my social security as soon as I can. After considerable thought, there are a couple of reasons that I have chosen to take early social security.  First and foremost, is it is never ever a good idea to allow the government to manage your money. So I am going to get my money that the government has been holding for me and run with it.  The second reason is by drawing social security I will be able to leave my investments alone and they hopefully will continue to grow. I anticipate that with my monthly retirement and social security check I will be able to live comfortable while allow my investment to grow. The initial plan is to use my state retirement and social security for my monthly bill and still have enough left over for monthly discretionary spending and using my investments for emergencies and travel.

The next big benchmark that is coming up will be actually filing the retirement papers and applying for social security, and that will come in the middle of September. The VRS will not accept applications for retirement no more than 120-days in advance of the actual retirement date. Applications for VRS retirement must be files 60-days in advance and they advise 90-days is ideal.

Since I have made the decision to retire, another question that I am often ask is, "What are you going to do."  My answer is more often than not, "Nothing."  But the truth of the matter is, I plan on traveling. I have even thought about sell out and becoming a full time RV'er, but have basically talked myself out of that for a couple of reasons.  First, while I like the idea of waking up in different places, the constant setting up and tearing down does not appeal to me.  Second, I have watched a number of YouTube Videos from full time RV'ers and the one thing that they all have in common is that you are driving your house and there is always something breaking.  Most full timer's are really quite handy at fixing thing themselves but the truth of the matter is I am not that handy and if it requires much more than changing a light bulb, I am totally lost.

So, I have decided to keep a sticks and bricks home, whether it be at my current location or at another site we will have to just wait and see.  But I do plan on traveling, some times it will be just a day trip, others it will be a weekend excursion, and yet another time it may be a week or so it will just depend on my mood.  I do plan on taking a couple of extended trips each year. One in the spring of the year around the time of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and another in the late summer or fall of the year.

Over the years I have have kept a rather detailed travel journal and I have also kept track of my expenses. In 2015 I managed to take a 9-day trip to the the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Hudson Valley of New York. During that trip my average daily expenses was $107.00. Of course my biggest daily expense was lodging, followed gas and food.

In 2013, I attended the NCAA Basketball Tournament in Kansas City, Missouri. This trip took about 17-days and again I kept a very detailed travel journal and expense log. My average daily expenses was $97.00 per day. This included lodging, food, gas and tours.

A lot of people tell me that is very low considering hotels and food should be my biggest expense, and I am a able to minimize or some time eliminate some of the bigger expenses like food, and lodging.

I am a big fan of rewards programs especially hotels and gas stations.  Currently I am a member of the Choice Hotels reward program which features Comfort Inn, Sleep Inn and Quality Inns.  I really like Choice Hotel's programs as it seems like I can accumulate enough point for free nights quicker especially during the early spring and late fall when they often offer double points or stay two nights and get a free night.  Plus accumulated points don't expire.

While Choice Hotel are my number 1 hotel chain when traveling I am also a member of the Holiday Inn rewards program.  While Choice is usually cheaper than many of the competing brands, I have found that Holiday Inn are by and large more customer service friendly and the rooms and common areas are nicer.  I am usually able to keep my lodging expenses down by using my rewards points for either free or reduced stays at Choice Hotels and Holiday Inn's Nationwide.

Another way that I reduce my expenses, is in my daily food budget.  Most of the hotels I stay at feature a complimentary breakfast.  I always take advantage of this breakfast before hitting the road. For lunch, it usually hit up fast food (I know it's not healthy) but a lot of the time I opt for subway, or eating the lunch at a place that is recommended by the locals.  For supper, it usually a nice sit down chain restaurant or again a local recommended place.

Also another way that I minimize food expense is I start buying gift card a few weeks before I depart. I usually by them at Kroger's where I get double, triple, and even 4-times the fuel point which serves to reduce my fuel cost when I am on the road.

So you ask what is on the horizon. Well, first up is submitting social security and VRS Retirement applications in September.  Then in October my sister and I are off to Washington D. C. for my birthday.  She has never been to our Nations Capitol so it is going to be an awesome adventure.

Then in November I am planning on taking a short Amtrak Trip just to see how I like traveling by rail. Everybody I have talked too tell me you will either love it or you will hate it.  Where am I going, well I haven't decided yet, I am looking at either Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia. If it doesn't happen in November I am looking at somewhere in Florida in December.

January 1, 2018 will be my official retirement date and somewhere along the way, I will be getting a new car. Yes, Hannah Honda (my 2010 Honda Insight) has almost 180,000 miles and it is going to be time to trade her in before I hit the road for my first big retirement Adventure in March of 2018.

Yes, my first big road trip will be in March 2018. Right now, I am planning on a Texas vacation where I want to attend the 2018 NCAA Basketball Tournament at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.  I won't know for sure until I am able to purchase ticket in Mid-October, but right now I plan on hitting the road the first of March and spending the better part of a month piddlin' around Texas.

So that's the plan for the next few months as I make my way down the road to retirement.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY - AMERICA

The 4th of July would not be complete without fireworks.  This year despite a light and steady rain, the Town of Christiansburg, Virginia celebrated the 241st birthday of our county with a great fireworks display at the High School .  Because of the rain I chose to view the the "bombs bursting in air" from the shelter of my back deck.  Here is a short video of how our small town celebrates freedom and independence.

CHASIN' THE 611 - MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND 2017

Elliston

For the past two month the historic 611 steam locomotive has been pulling excursions in North Carolina and Virginia. The last of these excursions occurred over the Memorial Day Weekend with The Powhatan Run between Roanoke and Radford.  This is one of the shorter but one of the most scenic and most popular routes of the 2017 excursion season. The route takes passengers through Roanoke and Salem before climbing the famed Christiansburg Grade in Elliston and Sahwsville.  One of the most popular sites on the run is the twin tubes of the Montgomery Tunnel, which was made famous through the photography of O. Winston Link.  The train continues through Christiansburg passing the Cambria Depot.

Montgomery Tunnel

From 1868 to early 1950s, the Cambria Depot was the shipping point for all the goods coming into and leaving Montgomery and Floyd Counties, including the Towns of Christiansburg and Blacksburg. Every Sears mail-order house and Wishbook gift; every letter and package; every rug and factory chair and wedding dress sold by the mail order firms from New England to the West Coast; every Model T and Stutz Bearcat; and every secret decoder ring came through the Cambria Depot.

From 1868 until 1906, the Cambria Depot also served as the passenger station, including during the height of immigration. The depot and Cambria welcomed the miners from Wales and Czechoslovakia, farmers from Germany and Ireland, cabinetmakers and home-builders, masons and seamstresses. The languages spoken in the freight-house were as diverse as the last names in the County.

Elliston

In 1906, the Norfolk and Western built a new passenger station on a site east of the old depot and on top of a small spring fed pond (and we wonder why we have stormwater problems), and the old depot was converted to a freight station and a maintenance of ways & engineering office. The new station was built, not because there was a need for a new passenger station per se but because of the political, social, and cultural demands for segregation. The old depot, one of only a couple of pre-segregation depots left in Virginia, could not be segregated because of the configuration of the waiting rooms.

In its heyday, Cambria boasted of five mercantiles and general stores, a china shop, a notions shop, the Phoenix furniture factory, a grocery store, a couple of banks, more than a couple of hardware stores, three mills of various types, a creamery, four hotels, and more than its share of bars, brothels, and pool halls. She also had her share of ugliness-- a history marred by the racial divides made worse by economic woes.

Spring Hollow

Like most railroad towns, Cambria went through a period of decline, resulting in consolidation with a larger neighbor (Christiansburg) in 1965. The construction of Route 11 and Route 8 in the 1930s, increased automobile ownership, and the introduction of truck transport and bus service from Roanoke following the end of World War II spelled the end of Cambria's role as the primary shipping and immigration point for Montgomery County, Floyd County, and eastern Giles County. 

(Source/Credit: VISIT HISTORIC CAMBRIA)

From Christiansburg the excursions continues west passing under the coaling tower at Vicker Switch before arriving in Walton to make the turn and return to Roanoke.

Along the way The Powhatan routes affords you several great Photo opportunities to see the Queen of Steam. Over the three days of the excursion I was lucky enough to get some decent photo and video from West Salem, Spring Hollow (Arthur on the Norfolk Southern Route) The Christiansburg Grade at Shawsville and at Montgomery Tunnel.

Here is the Video from my three day chase. It's not my best work but it is what it is.