Final Travel Visits

Today as I was driving to work in my new state, for whatever reason it hit me that I'll probably never go back to Illinois.  I suppose work could take me back there, but it's unlikely.  A trip to my alma mater could be in order, but I'm getting a little long in the tooth to cheer on a bunch of undergrads in sporting events in person when I can do so from the comfort of my own home.  Truly, there's very little that recommends that I return there.

That got me thinking about places that had meaning to me, either for one day or over the course of time, that I'll never see again.  Places that are etched into my memory because they hold a special significance to me that I know I'll never visit again.  In terms of tourist value, they hold very little.  But to me there's some significance, and I'm beginning to realize that with time and age considerations beginning to blend together, I'll never see these places again.

One that comes readily to mind is Cariño, Spain, not far from the port of La Coruña, whence the Great Armada sailed to its doom in the English Channel.  I went there in 1985 because I wanted to mail our Mother a letter with that postmark on it.  I took a bus that cost me about four hours there and back simply so I could send her a letter whose name translates in English to dear or affection.  My stop in the northwest was the last big trip I'd take, as I left Spain some two weeks later and didn't return for fourteen years. Cariño is a small little backwater town that has virtually no tourist value, but I went there for my Mom.

A little farther east is another smallish town with nothing to recommend it called Ribadeo.  I stayed there on my way to Santiago de Compostela only because a student of mine told me his company, ENDASA, S.A., had a plant there.  He told me candidly that it was a wasteland of a town, and he was right.  Whereas there is some romantic reason to try to visit Cariño again, there is absolutely no reason to see Ribadeo.  Even so, I treasure the little hórreo made out of aluminum that my student gave me as I left Spain, since it may very well have been made in Ribadeo.

Farther east still are two towns, Cangas de Onís and Arriondas, that hold very special memories for me.
Cangas has an old Roman bridge, seen here:

and is proud of its sidra, or hard cider.  A few years after I'd returned home, I happened upon a movie that won the Best Foreign Oscar, Volver a empezar, that was filmed in and around Cangas.  It's a small backwater town that made it into an Oscar-winning film, and I happened to stay in it.

Arriondas was the stop at which I got off the narrow-gauge train to make my way to Covadonga.  It's actually the place where a huge kayak and canoe race starts each summer:

I only spent five hours there, but I spent about three of them sitting by the Sella River with a pistola de pan, some queso manchego and jamón serrano, a cold Coke and my trusty Swiss Army knife and had one of the best lunches I ever had.  It was also where I walked into a bar to hear the theme from The Greatest American Hero incongruously playing loudly above the bottles of liquor lining the back wall.

Just inside the border I visited Hendaya, France.  I went there to get my visa updated (this is long before terrorism made travel so difficult).  I arrived in the very train station where Hitler met Franco and where the latter frustrated the former about not granting the Wehrmacht passage to attack Gibraltar.  I also had a chance encounter there that I'll save for another blog.  I'll never revisit Hendaya, if for no other reason than the French were rude there.

In Portugal I visited Coimbra, a university town north of Lisbon.  It's a beautiful town that I wish I'd been able to explore more.  I'll never go back there either.

The five star hotel into which I snuck into south of Valencia is another place I'll never visit.  That hotel was simply a place to rest my head, but it's the focal point of one of the wildest weekends of my life.  I'll never go back there either.

Door County, Wisconsin, has Cana Island, where there's a hundred yard causeway that, depending on the tides, one can walk across in water no higher than one's knees.  I'd like to show it to Karen, but there are so many other things we'd like to see and not nearly enough time.

But the only place that I'll never see again, in all likelihood, that means the most to me is our Mother's gravesite.  I know that she's not really there, but it's a touchstone for me.  It's nearby where I grew up, where she liked to paint landscapes and it's a simple, unaffected cemetery.  With urban sprawl, I don't know how long that will last, and I'm not sure I'd like to see her final resting place surrounded by subdivisions.  I have pictures of her tombstone and memories in my heart.  Those should do just fine.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles