Mortuary Museum, Miniatures, Mothman, and Exquisite Cuisine on American Countess Adventure

A special post from guest blogger and cruise specialist Kathy Witt takes us aboard for a most unique cruise experience.

An embalmer’s technical reference handbook—and the machine that accompanies it. The exquisitely sculpted ballerina from “Black Swan” standing en pointe. And a mythical harbinger of doom that evolved into the centerpiece of an annual festival attended by 20,000 people from around the world.

One of the biggest draws of a river excursion with American Queen Voyages (besides the luxury-level experience, genuinely friendly crew and outstanding cuisine) are all the unexpected surprises on the itinerary. As the vessel calls at one charming river town after another, a mix of highlights—museums, bustling markets, scenic parks, historic homes, Main Street shopping—offer variety and allure. The specific attractions of a given destination are detailed during a daily port review, and all are included as part of the line’s guided hop-on hop-off tours.

Especially intriguing are discoveries aboard the American Countess’ Ohio River voyage between Louisville, KY, and Pittsburg, PA, that include a taboo topic, a creature from the paranormal realm and one of the world’s finest collections of miniatures.

IT’S A SMALL WORLD

No matter your age, your inner child will be hooked upon seeing the world-class fine art collection, numbering more than 15,000 pieces and in 1/12-scale, in Maysville, KY, a picture-postcard river town whose downtown is lined with yesteryear architecture punctuated by church steeples. The Kathleen Savage Browning Miniatures Collection at the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center is an extraordinary sight to behold.

Wander through the Palladian-style gallery filled with miniature houses, room boxes and vignettes—each showcasing exquisite and historically accurate re-creations right down to the tiny accessories, like a pair of vintage roller skates and a key to tighten them; building materials such as bricks on the Russell Theater’s exterior; and authentic carpets made on real looms.

In the “Lincoln Herndon Law Office,” the artisan room box replicates the office Abraham Lincoln shared with his partner, right down to the miniscule handwritten documents scattered across the desktop. The necklaces, bracelets and baubles in the “Savage & Sons Jewelers” room box are made with authentic gold, gems and crystals. Tiny copper pots and pans hang from the wall in the kitchen of “Le Plaisir De Venice” and itty-bitty puppets dance at the end of strings held by the toymaker in “McTavish Toys & Fairy Garden.”

The collection’s pièce de résistance is the re-creation of Spencer House, the magnificent eighteenth-century aristocratic palace and ancestral home of Princess Diana. Three floors showcase the fine furnishings and decorative arts objects that are true to the mid-1700s era and the exterior replicates the home’s neo-classical architecture.

RUN, DON’T WALK: IT’S MOTHMAN!

“What stands six feet tall, has wings, two big red eyes six inches apart and glides along behind an auto at 100 miles an hour?” asked reporter Mary Hyre in a November 1966 newspaper article. Hyre was covering the spectral sighting of a creature that became known as the Mothman, first seen hovering over an abandoned government WWII ammunition manufacturing facility—dubbed the TNT area—north of Point Pleasant, WVA, and later dubbed a harbinger of doom.

Coverage of Mothman sightings held the nation in its grip for more than a year. Every time the winged creature was spotted, tragedy seemed to follow in its wake, including the Silver Bridge collapse 10 days before Christmas in 1967, which resulted in the deaths of 46 people. The sightings spawned dozens of newspaper articles; a New York Times bestselling book, The Mothman Prophecies, written by journalist and UFOlogist John A. Keel; the 2002 movie of the same name, starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney; and a 2017 documentary, “The Mothman of Point Pleasant.

The legend of the Mothman is recounted at the world’s only Mothman Museum. Memorabilia includes a recreation of Harris Steakhouse—considered a time capsule of 1960s Point Pleasant—which would eventually become known as the Mothman Diner. The museum’s small theater runs the documentary on a loop.

Outside, a 12-foot-tall, polished steel sculpture of Mothman standing atop a landscaped pedestal shows off his claws and glowing red eyes. And every third week in September, 20,000-plus visitors from around the world converge on Point Pleasant for the Mothman Festival (www.mothmanfestival.com).

‘KEEP EXERCISING. WE CAN WAIT.’

A little gallows humor framed and hanging on the wall of the garage greets those arriving at the Peoples Mortuary Museum. Tucked in a residential neighborhood in Marietta, Ohio, it was one of the most unexpected stops on American Countess’ itinerary—and a real eye-opener for those who braved a visit.

The museum began as a place for William Peoples, current owner of and a funeral director at Cawley & Peoples Funeral Home, to store his antique car collection. Peoples had a particular interest in hearses and several of them are parked in the museum among the caskets, funeral equipment and clothing, mourning jewelry and other artifacts.

The collection dates back to the late 1800s, when funerals were typically held in private homes and the collection’s ice box coffin would have been the casket of choice. (Embalming wasn’t yet the customary practice.) An infant’s coffin illustrates the design—narrow at the feet and wider at the shoulders—that got it dubbed the “toe pincher.” It is fitted with a small removable cover for viewing and fancy hardware, including ornamental screws and handles, to allow a more personal touch to the coffin.

Also in the collection are a Sayers & Scovill Horse-Drawn Hearse from 1895, a 1934 Studebaker Presidential Hearse and a 1927 Henney Hearse called “Miss Henney” that has appeared in several Hollywood movies, including Woody Allen’s “Radio Days,” Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Get Low,” a 2009 movie with Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray.

SEE THE TREASURES OF SMALL-TOWN AMERICA

American Queen Voyages’ 245-passenger American Countess is a paddlewheel boat with contemporary design. Photo: Karan Kiser

Book an American Queen Voyage (AQV) to find the unexpected in America’s river towns. Besides including unlimited guided tours/shore excursions, AQV cruise fares include unlimited beverages, including wine, spirits, local craft beers and specialty coffees; open bars and lounges, including a morning juice bar; locally sourced and regionally inspired cuisine; and live, daily onboard entertainment—which is among the very best on any body of water anywhere—plus enrichment programming

AQV also now includes pre-paid gratuities and port taxes and fees in its fares. Additionally, a one-night pre-cruise hotel stay with free transfers between hotel and vessel is part of the cruise package.

Voyages are on authentic paddlewheel riverboats, boutique exploration vessels and expedition ships on America’s inland waterways and Great Lakes and shores from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to the Yucatán Peninsula and Alaska. 

Information: www.aqvoyages.com.

Award-winning writer Kathy Witt is a monthly cruise, travel columnist and the author of several books, including Cincinnati Scavenger: The Ultimate Guide to Cincinnati’s Hidden Treasures and Secret Cincinnati: Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure.

GOING PLACES: THE TECHNOLOGY OF TRANSPORTATION TAKES OFF AT ARIZONA SCIENCE CENTER

Ride a mini hovercraft, guide a blimp through sky hoops, and land an airplane on a flight simulator!

Arizona Science Center presents Going Places from Friday, September 2, 2022 – Monday, January 2, 2023. Fasten your seatbelts; Going Places – the Technology of Transport has arrived! 

Created by the renowned Scitech in Perth, AustraliaGoing Places is an interactive science exhibition that explores the technology humans have developed for travel. If you have ever wanted to pilot an airship, ride on a hovercraft, or control traffic in a city, now is your big chance!

“This exhibition is packed with innovation,” said Guy Labine, The Hazel A. Hare President and CEO of Arizona Science Center. “It demonstrates the way mankind has developed new technology to overcome obstacles such as gravity and distance while providing great fun for children, parents, and students.”

Tom Zaller, President, and CEO of Imagine Exhibitions states, “Imagine Exhibitions is proud to partner with Scitech to bring Going Places to Arizona Science Center. Human modes of transportation have changed so much in just the past 150 years. It is exciting to present an exhibition that allows visitors to dive deep into these innovations, get behind the wheel (literally!), and speculate on where we will go in the next 150 years.”

Explore!

Explore how different modes of transportation have shaped society and get hands-on with a multitude of challenging interactives. Fly a plane, ride a hovercraft, race your friend on a recumbent bicycle, or learn to fly an airship! YOU are the driver in Going Places’ interactive exhibits—providing the chance to experience transportation in ways you never dreamed possible!

As well as exploring the technology that gets us around every day, visitors will also explore the way that travel has shaped the social fabric of our time. Visitors will even see new technology and get a glimpse of where our future is headed.

Exhibits and Kiosks

With 18 exhibits and eight information kiosks detailing the incredible technology pioneered by humans to make the farthest reaches of our planet accessible, Going Places is a wild ride!

This exhibition invites guests to observe, understand and use an incredible range of travel technology to see how it makes our lives easier and better. It also highlights how we’ve leveraged design and innovation to respond to Earth’s awesome size and natural processes, like gravity, wind, currents, waves, friction, and changing landscapes..

With so many hands-on exhibits, Going Places promises to be a wild ride.

Information

Going Places is open daily to the public from 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. for a limited engagement through January 2, 2023. Pricing for the exhibition is $6.95 for Members and $8.95 for Non-Members. General admission tickets are required. Children under 3 are always FREE. Tickets are available to purchase at Arizona Science Center and azscience.org

Going Places: The Technology of Transportation is created by SciTech and produced by Imagine Exhibitions and is generously supported by Waymo & Amtrak

About Arizona Science Center 

The mission of Arizona Science Center is to inspire, educate, and engage curious minds through science. The Center, located at 600 E. Washington Street in downtown Phoenix, features more than 300 hands-on exhibits, live demonstrations, a range of interactive online science content, the state-of-the-art Dorrance Planetarium, and the five-story Irene P. Flinn Giant Screen Theater, and exciting science programs for people of all ages. CREATE at Arizona Science Center®, adjacent to the main building, is a 6,500-square-foot community maker space that provides workshops, including 3D printing, laser cutting, woodworking, and sewing. Arizona Science Center offers programs for all ages, including CAMP INNOVATION, Teen programs, Professional Development and Learning for Educators, and so much more. To learn more or to reserve tickets, visit azscience.org or call 602.716.2000.

About Imagine Exhibitions

Imagine Exhibitions is currently producing over 40 unique exhibitions globally in museums, science centers, zoos, integrated resorts, and non-traditional venues, with millions of people around the world visiting our exhibitions each year. In addition to developing successful traveling exhibitions, Imagine Exhibitions designs, opens, and operates permanent installations and venues, and consults on building, expanding, and directing museums and attractions. With decades of diverse experience in the museum and entertainment industries, Imagine Exhibitions consistently develops exhibitions that educate and excite while exceeding attendance goals. For more information, visit ImagineExhibitions.com or find us on Facebook.

Silver & Tequila in the Sierra Madres: The Tale of San Sebastian de Oeste

High in the Sierra Madres, we follow the twisting road from Puerto Vallarta and the seaside on our way to San Sebastian del Oeste, once a  booming mining town in the Sierra Madres northeast of the city and one of the wonderful Pueblos Magicos or magic towns on Mexico. Our journey took us through green jungles and blue plantations. The latter are agave farms, owned for generations by jimadores or farmers who specialize in growing, harvesting and distilling the pinon or heart of the agave into gold and silver tequila and reposado, a type of tequila aged in oak.

Crossing the long spanned bridge over Rio Ameca, the road curves around a ridge and into the tiny village of La Estancia near Hacienda San Sebastián, a family owned raicilla and tequila distillery (for raicilla think tequila only much stronger and likely of inducing hallucinations in anyone who drinks too much).

San Sebastian, now on the way to nowhere, was for years a major stop between the Bay of Banderas on the Pacific Ocean to Guadalajara when its mines produced riches of silver.

When San Sebastian was at its glory, the residents of Puerto Vallarta, then a tiny port and fishing hamlet called Las Penas, were harvesting salt–a necessary ingredients for smelting the ores taken from the mines– loading it onto mules and trekking 4500-feet up to San Sebastian.  The bridge we cross into San Sebastian takes us from the paved highway main street made of dirt and pitted with rocks. It probably hasn’t change that much since the mules came through carrying salt centuries ago.

Founded in 1605, San Sebastian’s boom lasted until the early 1900s. Because it was so remote, modernization never came again to sweep away the historic buildings dating back centuries.

The families of many who live here now can trace their lineage back to the early Spanish colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain period and the town was wealthy, with some 25 mines producing lead, silver and gold.

Walking along the cobblestone streets, past walls covered with red, purple and orange bougainvillea, we take a turn past the town’s zocolo centered around an ornate gazebo. Nearby is the Colonial Spanish Baroque Iglesia de San Sebastian, notable for such architectural flourishes as Corinthian columns, ornate bell tower, and vaulted ceilings painted with frescos. Dedicated to San Sebastian, the church was built in the 1600s and then, after an earthquake, rebuilt in 1868. As we continue on, we pass the Hotel Los Arcos de Sol with its white washed exterior. It too is old, built more than 200 years with a restaurant that gets good reviews. Along the way there ae small stores, housed in historic buildings, offering a variety of goods but we don’t stop to shop.

Casa Museo de Dona Conchita Encarnacion

Instead we’re on a mission to visit Casa Museo de Doña Conchita Encarnación the small museum run by Lupita Bermudez Encarnacion, the great times four granddaughter of a Spaniard who came here to run Santa Gertrudis, one of the mines here, in the 1770s. There is a hiking path to the old mine.

The museum,  once the home and office of  Santa Gertrudis and built in 1774, is packed with an array of family momentos, furniture, silver studded trunks, books, photos, clothing such as lace and satin christening gowns more than 150 years old and odd artifacts including 3D pornography with its own special reader dating back to 1904 and a 19th century photo of the family holding a cadaver. It seems that, according to Lupita, it was a family tradition that when a family member died, before they were buried (and remember it’s very hot here), a photographer was summoned to take a photo of the deceased. It could take days, but that’s how it was done.

Over all the story of San Sebastian del Oeste is one of glory and loss. At one time the town had a population of 20,000; now there are about 1000. San Sebastian was founded by three families who immigrated from Spain and to keep their blood lines pure, they only intermarried with each other. So through the centuries uncles married nieces and aunts married nephews.  Thus Lupita says that her mother, Dona Conchita, married a man who was  her cousin and nephew and so Lupita’s father was also her nephew, cousin and uncle.

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As our guide Victor Avila continues to translate Lupita’s many tales, we learn her great great uncle Jose Rogello Alvarez (and who knows how else they were related) and other men, carrying rifles and riding on horseback, guarded 40 mules loaded with silver and gold as they made the five day trip through the mountains to Guadalajara to deposit their money. Then it was five days back on the narrow mountain passage. Of the many runs they made–at least five a year– bandits only managed to rob them twice. Even then the weight of the metal made it impossible for the bandits to carry only much away.

Pancho Villa Ruins It All

In 1910, as the Mexican Revolution raged, Lupita’s family’s wealth disappeared. She blames Pancho Villa and his men who kept raiding the town demanding ransom and money until it was all gone.

Those that probably never got rich were the laborers in the mine who were paid by money printed in the office here by Lupita’s family which made spending it anywhere else except San Sebastian almost impossible. Talk about owing your soul to the company store. As an aside, I’ve visited other mines in Mexico and was told that on the average, because of the dangers of mining (no OSHA here), the life span of a miner was ten years.

Plantacion de Cafe

Organic Coffee Farm

Owners Rafael Sanchez, his wife Rosa and Lola, Rafael’s sister are the fifth generation family members to grow coffee hereLa Quinta Café de Altura, an organic coffee farm.

The family’s home and business is located in a building dating back more than 140 years. Out back they tend 11 acres of coffee trees, some as old as the house. The family handpicks 30 tons of beans each year. They’re then dried, roasted, and gound. Sometimes sold just like that, the family also makes blends such as a mixture of ground beans with cinnamon and sugar for the making traditional Mexican coffee–now hard to find, Hot coffee samples are provided and Rosa’s sells her homemade candies such as guava rolls and sweets made from goat’s milk. In an interesting aside, we learn that the Sanchez’s parents married early (the Don was 15), a union lasting 68 years and producing 21 children. Their grandfather did even better, having 28 children, though that took both a wife and several mistresses. 

Comedor Lupita

Walking along the cobblestone road, past a massive 300 year plus ash tree and cascading white frizzes of el manto de la virgin, we enter Comedor Lupita. Here terra cotta platters loaded with chicken mole, fresh handmade tortillas (in America they’d be called artisan tortillas), refried beans and something I’ve never tasted before – machaca, a dish of dried beef mixed with spices and eggs, are placed in front of us. As we eat, we watch the family busy behind the tiled counter, making even more food.  One woman’s sole job seems to be quickly patting masa into paper thin tortillas. Victor Avila, who lives in Puerto Vallarta, is entranced with that.

“It’s so hard to find handmade tortillas anymore,” he says.

Through the windows we see splashes of bright purple from the masses of bougainvillea that drape the stone exterior walls and here the sounds of caballeros, their horses’ hooves striking the centuries old street. We sip our sweet agua de Jamaica water, eat tortillas fresh from the griddle and help ourselves from heaping platters, we all feel time slipping backwards into the past.  

Machaca Marinade:

1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
Juice of 4 limes
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
1/2 cup olive oil

Machaca:

2 lbs. skirt steak, cut into strips
1 large sweet onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
1 14 ounce can diced tomatoes with green chilies
1/2 cup beef broth
1 tablespoon oregano
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon hot pepper sauce (Tabasco or a Mexican brand, such a Valencia)
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons oil 

Whisk all the marinade ingredients together, and then add the skirt steak. Marinate at least 6 hours or overnight tablespoon Remove meat from marinade, drain, and pat dry. Bring to room temperature. Discard marinade.
In a large heavy pot, heat oil. Sear the meat well on both sides, in batches so as not to crowd them. Remove the meat as it is browned and set aside.

Drain fat. Add in the onion, peppers, and garlic, cook until tender, then add tomatoes, broth, pepper sauce and spices. Bring to a boil, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot. Return beef and simmer, covered, for two hours, stirring from time to time until tender. Cool and shred.

Lay meat on a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake at 250º for 20 minutes or until meat is dry. 

Machaca con Huevos

2 chopped scallions (white part only)
1 hot green chili
2 tomatoes
1 cup dried machaca
2 eggs
Chopped cilantro

Sauté scallions and peppers in oil until tender, add tomatoes and beef until heated. Remove from pan, add eggs and cumin. Scramble, then stir machata mixture. Garnish with cilantro and serve with hot tortillas.


Glory Days

Photo courtesy of Getty.edu

So posh it needs only two words in its name, The Getty is really two places, the much better known Getty Center and the magnificent Getty Villa, a recreation of a Roman country house circa 1 A.D.

Photo courtesy of getty.edu

The latter is all-ancient Roman and Greek art—running the gamut of paintings, pottery, sculptures, glass and all that made this period so culturally rich but don’t look for anything newer than the fall of the Roman Empire amongst the 23 galleries and in the four glorious gardens brimming with plantings of pomegranates, oleanders, stone pines and damask roses, all known to have existed several millenniums ago.

17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, 310-440-7300; getty.edu