If you came of age in the 1990s and it’s along your route anyway, you stop at Kurt Cobain’s childhood home and the nearby memorial. You just do. On one of our summer road trips, we drove a segment of highway from Forks, Washington, to Astoria, Oregon, in a single day. When we realized we be going through Aberdeen, Kurt Cobain’s hometown, we thought to ourselves, why not? The house and small memorial park only take a few moments to see, and on a road trip like ours, you look for interesting places to stretch your legs. A Little About Aberdeen Aberdeen is a small town at the foot of the Olympic Peninsula. The main industry there is timber, and Kurt Cobain mentions this fact in the book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, saying that he wanted more from life. He wanted to create art, visual and…
When my birthday rolled around in July, we were ready to get out of town for a few days. After examining a few possibilities, we settled on Nashville. Besides a quick stroll downtown a few years ago, I hadn’t been since I was a teenager. When I discovered that I could get tickets to the Grand Ole Opry on my birthday, I knew what I had to do: We’d be launching my next trip around the sun with Nashville’s historic show. Country Music and Me I won’t lie; I’m not a huge country music fan. I can look at some acts in the past with nostalgia; I remember road trips with my family as Johnny Cash, Elvis, or the Everly Brothers played on the radio. And I love some of the big names over the years–Dolly, Patsy, Loretta, The Judds, and Alabama. If you’re my age, you lived through the…
The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle may very well be my favorite museum I’ve ever visited. As I researched our road trip that passed through Seattle, I encountered information on this fun museum over and over. The more I read, the more I knew my family would love it. The Museum of Pop Culture, also known as MoPOP, celebrates all things that have become America’s favorite obsessions–movies, stories, video games, and music, especially Seattle’s influential music scene. The museum opened in 2000 as the Experience Music Project. Founded by Microsoft’s Paul Allen, this museum has undergone changes and rebranding over the years, including adding the Science Fiction Museum and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame at one time. The museum became its current incarnation in 2016. Along with viewing great exhibits, visitors can also create music and participate in other interactive activities. The museum also hosts film…