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Smithsonian's 1955 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon. Photo courtesy American History Museum

With Labor Day Weekend at hand, everyone’s talking about hitting the road. We’ve combed through Smithsonian’s collections to find the best vacation artifacts, from before the automobile to the interstate era.

1. Pullman Parlor Car: Back in 1888, before the car or airplane, taking a ride in a luxury train like this was the way to see America. This photo in the American History Museum‘s collection shows the plush carpeting, swivel chairs, and ornate chandeliers that made Pullman cars the standard for comfort in early train travel. The company’s founder, George Pullman, also innovated the world’s first sleeper bunks in railroad cars.

2. The Golden Gate, Yellowstone: When Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872, it was still a remote hinterland, accessible only to rugged adventurers. Over the next several decades, roads were arduously carved out of the steep mountainsides, as shown in this 1891 oil painting by Grafton Tyler Brown. By the time the road trip had become a staple of American leisure time, in the 1950s, Yellowstone would be one of the country’s most popular parks and vacation destinations.

3. The Beach House Brochure: The Jersey Shore has been a tourist hot spot for some time. As the Smithsonian Libraries blog explains, The Beach House, in Sea Girt, N.J., provided ocean view rooms to visitors at the rate of $3 a day. This circa 1896 brochure details all the activities vacationers could enjoy during their stay, from croquet to archery.

A section of Route 66 from Oklahoma, now in the Smithsonian. Photo courtesy American History Museum

4. Section of Route 66: The creation of the legendary Route 66 in the 1920s and 30s, from Chicago to Los Angeles, set the stage for the road trip to become a mainstream vacation activity of choice. While the “Mother Road” revolutionized interstate commerce, it also provided a conduit for ordinary Americans to explore the country at their own pace, epitomizing the freedom of the open road. A fifty-foot concrete slice of it, poured in 1932, was donated to the American History Museum in 2000.

5. 1934 Trav-L-Coach House Trailer: House trailers, the precursors to today’s RVs, emerged in the same decades as the country’s first highways as a means for road trippers to travel in comfort, visit less developed areas, and save on lodging. This trailer was used by the Cate family of Lakeport, New Hampshire for their seasonal visits to Maine as well as occasional road trips to Florida and Vermont. The cozy wooden trailer was equipped with a kitchen, bedroom, and closets–but passengers would have had to venture outside to use a bathroom.

6. 1955 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon: Ever wonder why so many station wagons are covered with imitation wood? Many of the “woodies,” like this 1955 Ford , were made of steel but designed to resemble their earlier ancestors, which had evolved from the small wooden buses used to ferry affluent passengers to rural estates and country clubs. The Harders, a family from California, used this station wagon to visit National Parks, with the rear cargo area serving as a playpen for the children during downtime.

"Honeyboy" Edwards' album with Smithsonian Folkways, "Mississippi Delta Bluesman"

David “Honeyboy” Edwards was born in the farm community of Shaw, Mississippi, on June 28, 1915. Yesterday, he passed away as one of America’s pioneering blues guitarists and vocalists at the age of 96.

“He’s what we would think of as a tradition bearer,” says Barry Lee Pearson, a folklorist and professor at the University of Maryland. “I would consider him to be the epitome of a walking musician—a walking jukebox. He was a musician, first and foremost.” As perhaps the oldest surviving original veteran of the Delta blues style, Edwards leaves behind a legacy as an influential bond between the acoustic blues from the deep south and the electric Chicago style that would lay the roots for modern rock and roll.

Pearson wrote the liner notes for Edwards’ 2001 Smithsonian Folkways album, “Mississippi Delta Bluesman.”

Growing up in Shaw, Edwards quickly showed he had an aptitude for music. “He picked up a little guitar as a youngster, but really learned when [Delta blues guitarist] Big Joe Williams came through. Big Joe noticed he could play a little bit, and asked his father if he could take him along with him as a road musician,” Pearson says. After traveling with Williams, Edwards split off on his own and continued to develop his craft. “By the time he got back home, he surprised everybody with how good he could play,” says Pearson.

Over the next several decades, Edwards toured the South from Memphis to Oklahoma, performing virtually anywhere he’d be welcomed and traveling by hitchhiking, hopping on rail cars, or by foot. He lived at a time when simply being a musician was dangerous, says Pearson. “He always claimed the authority figures down south, especially the farmers, did not like musicians at all.”

“Usually his strategy was that he stayed in all day, so nobody would see him, and then after 6 o’clock he’d go out,” Pearson says. “That’s because if they saw you during the daytime, they’d put you in jail or put you out on the farm somewhere.” Once, he was arrested for riding the rails without a ticket, and had to befriend a guard to get released.

Eventually, Edwards hitchhiked up to Chicago with Little Walter, the Louisiana harmonica player whose legacy is legendary in blues and blues rock traditions, and over the next several years switched to electric blues, his career tracing the evolution of the genre from a rural Southern entertainment to an urban nightclub phenomenon. Although he never made a chart-topping record, Pearson says Edwards “always claimed that he wasn’t at the right place at the right time to do recording, that he was always on the move.” But Edwards recorded a number of albums and played with all the major blues musicians of the era, Pearson says.

Edwards’ relationship with the renowned guitarist Robert Johnson, who died in 1938 at the age of 27 after sipping a bottle of whiskey laced with strychnine, is a particularly interesting footnote. “They played together in Greenwood for a couple of months or so, until Robert Johnson was killed,” Pearson says. “Honeyboy was with Johnson the night he was poisoned, and has one of the more trustworthy descriptions of that entire event, because he was also supposed to play at the same juke joint that Robert Johnson was poisoned at.”

Having long played in relative obscurity, Edwards enjoyed a resurgence in popularity over the second half of the century, as the influence of blues on modern music genres became more well known. He continued touring into his 90s, retiring only in 2008. Among other honors, he was named 2002 National Heritage Fellow and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2010.

“I always found him to be a very friendly, charismatic, warm-hearted, really a nice guy,” says Pearson, who has conducted several interviews with the late musician. “But I think there was a side of him, especially when he was younger, when you would say ‘tough guy,’ which you had to be in those days. I had great respect for him, and I still do.”

Listen to a sample of Edwards’ music from his Folkways album.

Come see animals like this porcupine at mealtime. Photo courtesy National Zoo

Monday, August 29 Zoo Cuisine

What do zoo animals eat? Find out at the daily feedings beginning at 10:15 with the fish feedings at the Kids’ Farm. You can see up to seven feedings a day, including the giant Pacific octopus at the Invertebrate House at 11:15 and 3; the sloth bears at 11:30 on the Asia Trail, and the small mammals at their house at 1:45. Don’t be late; the feedings last only 15 to 20 minutes. Free. National Zoo

Tuesday, August 30 “For All the World to See”

Members of the Civil Rights movement made heavy use of visual imagery in spreading awareness of their cause, from television to movies, magazines, newspapers, and posters. Experience the “For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights,” exhibition with a firsthand docent-guided tour to get a fuller understanding of this critical period through this fascinating lens. Free. 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. African American History and Culture Museum.

Wednesday, August 31 Let’s Eat!

The Museum of the American Indian is home to one of the most unique restaurants in D.C.: Mitsitam Cafe, a renowned eatery that provides visitors the chance to sample traditional Native cuisines from five different regions of the Americas. Come meet Mitsitam’s executive chef Richard Hetzler as he discusses and signs copies of The Mitsitam Cafe Cookbook. Free. Noon to 1 p.m. National Portrait Gallery

Thursday, September 1 Apache 8

Watch the remarkable documentary Apache 8, a thrilling account of the all-women firefighter crew from the White Mountain Apache Tribe. The group has fought fires in the Southwestern United States for decades, and the acclaimed film captures both the professional feats and personal challenges these women encounter on a daily basis. Free. 12:30 and 3:30, daily in September except Wednesdays. National Museum of the American Indian

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Online Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Chesapeake Bay research from 2006, photo courtesy of SERC

Yesterday and today, our friends at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, 25 miles east of Washington, D.C., have been busily preparing for the wrath of Hurricane Irene. The 2,800-acre research site is on the Rhode River, a sub-estuary of the Chesapeake Bay, where a storm surge of two to three feet is predicted.

According to Liza Hamill, SERC’s safety officer, boats are either being removed from the docks and hoisted up to safe areas on land or attached to a hurricane mooring, all loose equipment on site is being secured, sandbags are being placed around doors and rotating facilities teams are gearing up to monitor the center around the clock. All, as one might expect. But what threat does the storm surge pose to ongoing experiments there?

Well, for one, research biologist Mike Goodison had an important decision to make about a seawater pump that provides a constant flow of water from an area near the site’s docks to a wet lab 75 yards away, where tanks of live oysters, crabs and clams are held.  The storm surge could destroy the seawater pump, but if he moved is somewhere safe, he would have to cut off that aspect of the experiments. Ultimately, he says, “It’s a $10,000 pump, so I can’t have it going underwater.” He will be removing the pump this afternoon and probably not reinstalling it until Monday.

So, what does that mean for the animals? “Normally, researchers keep their animals in tanks and the water constantly moves through, rather than being like a static fish tank,” says Goodison. “Basically people now, this morning, are going to have to start hoarding water and storing water to go with their animals. They are just going to have to turn their animal holding tanks into static systems until Monday.” Air pumps will continue to provide oxygenated water for the animals, as long as nothing happens to the backup power that is in place. “We have backup generators to supply power for everything at SERC. So if the power goes out, which we fully anticipate it will, then the backup generators will supply the electricity for some of the necessary infrastructure like the air pumps and keep the animals alive through the weekend,” says Goodison.

Luckily, the wet lab itself is about 20 feet above the water level, so it would have to be an incredibly high storm surge to cause damage or severe flooding to it.

About a mile across the water as the crow flies, or a 10-minute drive, from SERC’s main campus, is the Smithsonian Global Change Research Wetland, which is the site of four major experiments right now. The longest running of the experiments began nearly 25 years ago and is aimed at understanding the effects of elevated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on plant communities. “The other three experiments all sort of build on that theme in order to make the experiments more and more realistic with respect to our forecast of the near future,” says Patrick Megonigal, an ecosystem ecologist and deputy director of SERC. One, for instance, looks at how elevated nitrogen levels in the water, in addition to raised carbon dioxide levels in the air, affects plants (essentially, simulating a polluted Chesapeake Bay). Another adds predicted sea level rise to those variables. And, another still, looks at how these global change factors will affect the ability for an invasive species called common reed to spread throughout native marshes.

For the experiments, open-top chambers, or plastic cylinders, that raise the carbon dioxide concentration around the plants to the level forecasted for 2100, are installed in the wetland. “Because the site is a tidal marsh, it is low in elevation, and it is right at the front lines for both storm surges. The stature of the plants is fairly low, which means the wind whips across it as well,” says Megonigal. “Our structures are hardy, but they are not built for hurricanes.” He and his colleagues have been dismantling parts of the chambers that might catch the wind and cause their destruction, and they are shutting down the carbon dioxide supply to the experiments. “We run it roughly from May through October,” he says. “Hopefully, it is a relatively small interruption.”

Megonical and his team are bringing in expensive instruments called infrared gas analyzers and raising other pieces of equipment above what they think might be the high water mark in the marsh.

“Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best,” says Hamill. That is the plan.

Still from "67 Bows" (2006) by Nira Pereg. Courtesy of the artist.

If flamingos were able to watch the new Hirshhorn “Black Box: Nira Pereg” presentation of the looped video 67 Bows (2006), no doubt they’d warn each other about Israeli digital artist Nira Pereg. In her video, she explores herd response theory when she appears to disrupt the serenity of a German zoo’s flamingo community with the repeated cocking and firing of a gun.

But all is not what it seems.

67 Bows was filmed during a snowstorm over Christmas in a nearly empty Karlsruhe Zoo. Though Pereg had initially desired to shoot a portrait of a flamingo, her project expanded into a study of group behavior utilizing the indoor colony of social birds.

“While visiting and studying the flamingo exhibit, [she] realized when visitors put their hands up, if one bird ducked, they all started to,” explained Hirshhorn curator Kelly Gordon. “This behavior inspired how this work was filmed and “scored.”” After shooting video of the flamingos being flamingos, making flamingo sounds, and then nodding and ducking in unison, the “score” was added.

The “score” in this case, being the repeated threatening sounds of a gun being cocked and then fired that break the silence and appear to shock the pink feathered video stars. Pereg synched her “score” with the pre-existing ducking “choreography” of the flamingos, making it appear as if they were reacting to the gunshots.

The timing of the gun soundtrack provides the illusion that the flamingos are actually responding to the sounds–and doing so in a Pavlovian manner. Initially, they only appear to duck when a shot is fired; however, eventually they cower at the sound of the cocking of the weapon and don’t even wait for the sound of the blast. The sight of flamingos bobbing their heads in unison almost in rhythm with the gun blasts is almost hypnotic. View a clip of the piece here.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1969, Pereg was raised in an environment where the threat of  terrorism loomed daily. So was this piece designed to see if a potential threat affects individuals in a community the same way? “I was trying to make them [the flamingos] do a certain move in order to see the ones who don’t move,” Pereg said in a July 2010 Artis Video Series interview. “So 67 Bows is a lot about the ones who don’t bow.”