Back to the Netherlands

We all think of the Rhine River as being in central Germany. But it actually flows into the North Sea, making its way through the Netherlands as it does. Our cruise through the Netherlands had us on the main channel of the Rhine at times. But because the Rhine delta as it nears the North Sea is immense, we were always on some branch of the Rhine.

We had a chance to visit Brussels on a day long bus excursion, which I jumped on. It turns out that whenever the Germans decided to wage war with the world, they had to plow through Belgium and the Netherlands to get at northern France and good ports nearer the English Channel. So, they were both pretty much devastated in both WWI and WWII. There are military cemeteries everywhere you turn, mostly British, Canadian or American occupants.

Flanders Field was a WWI battlefield where John McCrae, a Canadian Lieutenant Colonel, penned the infamous poem about the poppies. He originally wrote the poem on May 3, 1915 after presiding over the funeral of a fellow soldier who had died in the Second Battle of Ypres. But he was not happy with it, and he crumpled it up and threw it on the ground. Fellow soldiers who had heard him recite it retrieved it, and the rest is history.

We found the cathedral in the main square in Brussels. Originally built in 1519, it was not given cathedral status until 1962, which is unbelievable given how huge and beautiful it is. Like all the cathedrals we have visited anywhere in central Europe, we found the clam shell outside which signified the start of another leg of the Camino de Santiago. It brought back really strong memories.

Not far from the cathedral we found the Manneken Pis, which in Dutch means “Little Pissing Man”. This 1618 bronze two-foot-tall sculpture of a boy urinating into the fountain’s basin is the best-known symbol of both the sense of humor of the Belgium people, as well as their independence of mind. Probably due to both, Manneken Pis is dressed daily by locals with a new and very complete set of clothes – funny!

Remnants of the both WWI and WWII are part of everyday life in Belgium. We visited a trench warfare line where the Brits had tunneled under the German lines and planted a massive pile of explosives, which were later detonated to the dismay of the Germans. The Brits did this something like 29 times. Only 26 of them were successfully detonated – the other 3 are still buried somewhere, but nobody actually knows where. On a daily basis, farmers find unexploded armament in their fields, and local specialists go around and collect and dispose of them. Creepy!

There’s so much more I could say about the Netherlands and Belgium, but it was time to move onto Italy. The anticipation was killing us!

Talk to you soon.

Gatherings

We’re trying to make the most of our brief time in Minnesota. The Woman was busy scheduling a picnic to get as many of the local siblings and their young’uns together as a group. A picnic shelter was rented in Inver Grove Heights (sort of central to all) and a pot luck set up. The turnout was great. Barb and all her kids (with husbands, partners and their kids) Judy with all her kids, and Ted and Diane with all their kids (with husbands and kids). Chris and Kathy couldn’t make it, and sadly Tevin was at Tomahawk Scout Camp. But it was a rousing success!

The next gig was a gathering with the local cousins at the Olive Garden, and it was a rousing success as well! Barb came, and Chris and Kathy made it to this gathering. Diane, Mark, Craig and Mary Fran Alshouse were all in attendance so, except for Gary and Susan (in Birmingham), the whole gang was in attendance. The food was good, and the conversation better.

It was a strafing run, but we headed over to my brother Mike and his wife Bonnie’s house. My nephew Devin was going to be passing through along with his wife Liz, daughter Maia and new son Mani who we had never met before. It was a brief visit, but we actually got to spend a bunch of time with Maia and Mani (with the cutest smile ever), so it was well worth the drive across town. Mike and Bonnie looked great as well, and we’ll see them again before we go.

On our way over to Mike’s house, we stopped in the Cathedral District of St. Paul, which we have roamed many a time in the past. But somehow, we never knew that F. Scott Fitzgerald (writer of the Great Gatsby) was born in St. Paul, and lived much of his childhood on Laurel Avenue, the same street we lived on before heading out to Eagan. We managed to locate the home where he was born in on September 24, 1896 – bonus!

It’s always nice to stroll around the Twin Cities. There is a lot of bling around to remind you where you are!

Talk to you soon.

Hanging in Minnesota

Having made it to the Twin Cities we immediately started looking up old friends and acquaintances. Robin’s good friends, Priscilla and Roger Starn, were based here. Sadly, Roger passed during the last year, but we were able to locate Priscilla and visited here early in our time here. We hope to be able to visit her several times more while we are here.

My brother Jerry sent me an email showing him at the Arizona Cardinals Training Camp. We hadn’t even thought about that, but we knew that the Minnesota Vikings new training facility had been built in Eagan, our old stomping grounds for a couple of decades.

So we scoped it out and found that Vikings Training Camp was in process through the month of August, and that the public was welcome. We googled Vikings Training Camp and found that you could get tickets to see them practice pretty much through the entire month. Seeing first hand an old and hopefully not washed up Kirk Cousins was a treat.

The facility was impressive. The training fields were nicely banked by reserved seating that gave the interested a bird’s eye view of the action. Since I wear a Randy Moss jersey, there was no chance that I was going to get to see my jersey mate. However, the Woman was able to see her jersey mate, Stefon Diggs, make some pretty impressive moves on the turf. All in all, it was a fun afternoon.

While the facility was impressive, the comfort of the attendees was meh. There really was not much for food choices, even through the practice session started well before the lunch hour. Beverage accommodations were bare bones – if you didn’t really care for a Miller or Coors Lite, you were pretty much out of luck. And even the on-site Vikings Museum, which you would think you could visit after having ponied up for a seat ticket and a parking ticket, cost another $15 each – hopefully they got their pretty pound out of us. The only good news was that the Woman dot to see how she sized up against her jersey mate.

Talk to you soon.

Heading north!

Well, we are finally making the last slog to get back to Minnesota. Most of the folk here we only get to see when we come back, so that is exactly what we are doing.

We did manage to find something to see on the way. February 3, 1959 was the Day the Music Died. Tired of the cold and cramped conditions on the tour bus, Buddy Holly decided to rent a Beechcraft Bonanza to continue their Winter Dance Party tour the next day in Moorhead Minnesota. There being limited seating, only Holly himself, as well as Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were onboard when the plane crashed shortly after leaving the Clear Lake Iowa airport.

We found the crash site, which is marked by a private memorial as well as some pop art. Interestingly, because there was not enough room on the plane, Waylon Jennings did not die that day, nor did Tommy Allsup and Carl Bunch, other members of the band who rode in the bus. I couldn’t help but hum the tune of American Pie as we paid our respects.

Before we left Clear Lake, we took the pooch on a walk around the RV park. It seemed to us that perhaps we weren’t the only folk here that were living full time in their rig.

I managed to find the one highway in Iowa where you could go every direction except for West. I can understand the East and South or the East and North. But I am still scratching my head on how I could have been going both North and South.

Talk to you soon.

Central Iowa

You would think there couldn’t be anything we haven’t seen in central Iowa, but you would be wrong. The little town of Riverside Iowa has a claim to fame, and they milk it for all it is wort. Riverside is the birthplace of James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the starship Enterprise – oh yeah, not until March 22, 2028. But that doesn’t stop them from enjoying it.

We started at the Star Trek museum where I stood on a functional transporter – at least it was functional as far as lights and sounds go, but I didn’t actually go anywhere. The Woman sat in Kirk’s captain chair from the deck of the enterprise, and we saw Data’s actual desk used in the series and sold by Sotheby’s to a local here, and later donated to the museum. We saw the spot of his future birth, mingled with a statue of the young Kirk in the local park, and generally just had a blast – no Romulan ale however.

We spent the day snooping around the Amana Colonies National Historic Site. Back in the early-1800’s a group of Germans calling themselves the True Inspiration Congregations believed that communal living and worship was the way to happiness. Being generally pushed out of everyplace they tried to establish in Germany, they fled to the US where religious freedom would welcome them. After settling for a while near Buffalo NY, they bought land and set up 7 communal communities surrounding Amana Iowa.

Their communities flourished in the 1800’s. They didn’t disavow technology like the Amish, they just lived in communal communities. Each of the 7 Amana colonies had one kitchen where the entire community shared their meals. Each person did what they were skilled at, and in return the community provided food, shelter and what they needed. It flourished until the Great Depression, when the communities struggled to meet the needs of its residents, and the residents fell prey to their increasing knowledge of how the rest of the US with its capitalism worked.

In 1932, the communities voted to reorganize. Private ownership of land was now the norm. Women cooked meals for a family of 4 rather than a community of 40. Taxes were paid on earnings, and essentially the only thing the community provided after that was a sense of community, and a strong church that still preached the same virtues. The grand experiment was over.

Only 30 some miles from Amana we discovered the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site and Presidential Library. Hoover was born in West Branch Iowa in this tiny two room home on August 10, 1874. One of three children of modest parents (his father was the local blacksmith), he went on to become the 31^st President of the United States.

His time in office tested his Quaker upbringing. He won a landslide victory in 1928, but was sworn into office just 8 months before the Great Depression. The Nation largely held him responsible for its woes – Will Rogers was quoted as saying “If you bit into an apple and found a worm, it was Hoover’s fault.” Despite trying hard to enact programs to help the ailing citizens, Congress had no appetite for spending and declined to pass most of his legislation. He was routed by FDR when he ran for a second term. Ironically, most of FDR’s New Deal was based on legislation that Hoover tried to pass but Congress blocked.

Hoover and his first lady, Lou Henry, were instrumental in creating the National Historic Site. Many of the original homes in the neighborhood sit on their original foundations, restored by Hoover and his Foundation. His father’s blacksmith shop, his childhood schoolhouse and other significant homes that he would walk by as a child are still there. Herbert and Lou Henry are buried on a hill in the Historic Site that overlooks all – the Presidential Library, his childhood home, and his father’s shop.

While at the Hoover NHS we managed to catch a glimpse of an Eastern Meadowlark, a bird we had not spotted before. So we will consider it a lifer, since we have not identified it in any of our travels to date.

Talk to you soon.

Another unexpected bonus!

We headed to Lincoln Nebraska, initially only thinking of it as a stopping point on our slog across I-80. We were surprised to learn that the Homestead National Monument, created by Franklin Roosevelt, would be only an hour south of Lincoln. It turns out that the Homestead Act that essentially settled the West was created by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, concurrent with his Emancipation Proclamation.

Franklin Roosevelt on March 19, 1936 created a National Monument at the site of the Daniel Freeman homestead. Daniel Freeman staked the first claim of land under the Homestead Act of 1862 just outside Beatrice Nebraska (not a town at the time). Daniel Freeman, a free man in the US, staked his claim at 10 minutes after midnight at the land office in Brownville Nebraska on January 1, 1863 as soon as the law came into effect. He improved and farmed the claim for the required 5 years, after which he received the deed to the 160 acres allotted to him under the act.

We walked around his original 160 acres, now managed by the National Park Service. We found the gravesite of Daniel Freeman, who indicated he wanted to be buried on his claim if he should die. He was buried on the site in accordance with his wishes. His original headstone is unreadable, although visible. The upgraded stone is more informative.

We also walked to the monument erected by the Daughters of the Revolution, which had been placed originally on the main highway to commemorate the first Homestead Act claim. The highway is no longer anywhere hear this marker, but the marker is in good shape.

We then headed to what we hoped was the location of the Whispering Giant in Lincoln Nebraska. We found the actual location, but sadly learned that the Whispering that Toth left for Nebraska had failed to internal rot and had been disposed of.

We did however visit the Nebraska Indian Center and met Jered. Toth’s carving had stood here onto 2017 and was cherished by the Center. It was interesting for us to learn that Jered had never heard of Peter Wolf Toth, and only missed the Whispering Giant that had graced their Center.

We wrote down Thoth’s name for Jered and he told us he would try to reach out to Toth to see if there was any way that they might be able to reclaim their Whispering Giant. We also reached out to Peter Wolf Toth through the internet to see fi that might happen. We had been following Mr. Toth’s alleged activities, and believed he was in Louisiana attempting to restore a Whispering Giant there.

Talk to you soon.

Unexpected bonus

Making our way to Minnesota, we just planned to drive across Nebraska on I-80. We had been on this road many times in the past, and thought there was nothing more to see. It turned out we were wrong.

I-80 essentially follows much of the route of the early pioneers that left the eastern US and settled the west. The Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, the Pony Express Trail, and at times the California Trail all wound their way along the corridor that now is home to I-80. Near the town of Scottsbluff Nebraska, we found the Scotts Bluff National Monument. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed on December 12, 1919 that Scottsbluff be designated a National Monument. Its 100^th anniversary is this year, along with that of Grand Canyon National Park.

Scotts Bluff was a vortex for all the trails heading west. The manageable passes combined with the water of the Platt River assured the hordes moving west that they would have some more hospitable experiences. Also, the high rocky features of Scotts Bluff would be essentially a highway sign for the travelers helping them find the right way to their destination.

In all the written journals and diaries of westward pioneers, Scotts Bluff is the second most written of geologic feature and signpost. There is only one geologic feature that is written of more than Scotts Bluff, and that is of Chimney Rock. Being only about 20 miles from Scotts Bluff, we headed to Chimney Rock. We understood that this formation looks nearly identical to how it looked to the early pioneers and settlers. It’s weird to think that we are looking at the same geologic formation that those who settled the west saw.

We caught a bit of a side story while we were here. We have visited many historic sites dedicated to particular people or families that braved the conditions to settle the west. Many of those stories don’t end that well for the heroes. That to would be the case for Rebecca Winters. Rebecca was born January 16, 1799 in New York. Rebecca and her husband Hiram felt the persecution of Mormons in the east and decided to head west with throngs of other Mormons in 1852. 

In their journey they reached the Chimney Rock area of the Mormon Trail. On August 13 1852, she became sick with cholera, which was not at all uncommon along the trail. At the time cholera was fairly common along the trail. They did not know at the time, but it was likely caused by drinking contaminated ground water. Her death on August 15 would have likely gone unnoted as many others except that William Fletcher Reynolds, a family friend, carved her name into an iron wagon wheel rim and marked the site for us to see still today.

Talk to you soon.