Erie Pennsylvania

Having never been there, we headed to Erie Pennsylvania, where the slogan is “Were Erie-sistable!” While it was nice enough, I am not sure the slogan is warranted. We spent most of the day in Presque Isle State Park. Presque Isle was the location of French fort established in 1753 – Fort De La Presqu’lle. Today it is a wonderful park on a spit of land across from downtown Erie, creating a massive bay that served the locals as a major port on Lake Erie. The spit is so narrow in most places that you can walk from the shores of Lake Erie with water as far as the eye can see, to the shores on the bay with views of Erie itself.

In the Park we found one of the many lighthouses that dot the shores of the Great Lakes. Since ocean going vessels ply the Great Lakes, lighthouses have been here since the early 1800’s. Lake Erie alone has over 2,000 sunken ships on its floor. The estimate is that the Great Lakes in total were the site of more than 25,000 shipwrecks. Lake Erie, while the smallest of the Great Lakes, has so many shipwrecks because it is also the shallowest.

We learned about Oliver Hazard Perry, an American Naval Commander. Perry led the Battle of Lake Erie against the Brits during the War of 1812. On September 10, 1813 he engaged a squadron of the Royal Navy. After a grueling battle which the Brits thought they had won several times, Perry sunk several, and then captured six ships of the Royal Navy.  He is remembered for having said to his friend Captain James Lawrence “Don’t give up the ship!” and he emblazoned those word on his battle flag. A monument on Presque Isle commemorates his heroic accomplishments.

We started to head toward Akron and were surprised by a surprise we didn’t expect. In Mentor Ohio is Lawnfield, the farm owned by President James Garfield. We spotted a sign saying the Garfield Historic Site at the next exit. Figuring out it was only a couple miles off I-90, we headed there. It must be that we are in some kind of assassinated President vortex – first McKinley now Garfield – but we actually visited his on September 19 – the actual date that he died from the shot in the back delivered by Charles J. Guteau.

While Garfield served only some 275 days, we learned a lot of things that he would have been known for. He was the last American President to be born in a log cabin. He was the first President to campaign from the front porch of Lawnfield – many would follow him in this practice. We learned what it means when candidates “stump” – in the 1800’s when a candidate wanted to speak to large crowds, he often went to a large field near town. They would cut down a tree in order to give the candidate an elevated place to speak from – on the stump. We also learned that essentially Garfield had the first presidential library – the farm remained in the family until the early 1960’s. The family agreed to donate the home with all its furnishings to the government if they created a museum out of it. For that reason, nearly 90% of the interior furnishings were those of James and Lucretia Garfield. This unexpected gem was awesome!

Talk to you soon.

More family

Our border crossing was easy peasy – literally only one car in front of us. And not a question asked by the border agent – no “any alcohol” or “any firearms” or “any produce” or “any firewood” – we’ve never had that happen before! The plans had changed and we were going to meet the Woman’s sister Nancy and her family near Montreal. By heading there, we would be able to have a couple of family dinners together, and a great big bonus – Nan’s son Nathan plays on the football team at his school in Waterloo, and they were playing a game in Ottawa the 2^nd day of our visit.

Nathan goes to Laurier College in Waterloo, where he is working on his MBA. He has been the Golden Hawks kicker his entire first four years there. We learned that he is the #1 ranked kicker in all of college football in Canada, so we really looked forward to the game. He also holds many records at Laurier – most points scored by a student in his career, most field goals kicked, longest field goal and other. (We learned too late that Laurier stole its colors and uniform layout from the Minnesota Vikings – I had suggested we wear our Vikings jerseys to the game, but the Woman wouldn’t have it – it would have been epic!) So, when we watched Nathan kick a 46-yard field goal, his long for the season, we also watched him set two new school records!

After nice family time we headed to Buffalo. This border crossing was even easier – nobody in line at the booth and again not a single question – what is the deal! In Buffalo, we headed to the Martin House Complex, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1907. Darwin Martin was a big wig at the Buffalo base Larkin Company, and had heard about Wright when he was in Chicago. He introduced Wright to Larkin, and Wright got the commission to design the Larkin office complex.

At the same time Martin hired Wright to design a complex of homes where his family would live, surrounded by other members of Martin’s family. The 15,000 square foot main residence is surrounded by the carriage house (room above for the stable hand), the home of Martin’s sister, a gorgeous arboretum, and the home of the resident gardener. According to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the Martin Complex may be one of the best examples of Wright’s prairie style architecture.

Since we were only 15 miles away, I couldn’t bear the thought of not visiting the falls. We had been to Niagara Falls with the kids decades ago. But when we went, we only visited the Canadian side. The parkway along the Niagara River on the Canadian side gives you a perfect view of both the Canadian and the American falls. So, we finally made it to Niagara Falls on the American side for real. I still think the horseshoe falls are more stunning, but the American falls are pretty spectacular as well when you get up close.

We found a gem in Buffalo, the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site. The Site was the home of Roosevelt’s friend Ainsley Wilcox. In 1901, Buffalo was a boom town, and not surprisingly the Pan-American Exposition was held there. Then president William McKinley came to the Exposition and while there, was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. All thought McKinley would recover, but days later he died, and Roosevelt was called to Buffalo to assume the presidency. On September 14, 1901 John R. Hazel administered the Oath of Office in the home of Wilcox where Roosevelt was staying. The Site gives you a very comprehensive perspective on what was happening in 1901 during that tragic few days.

We searched and found out that the Whispering Giant of Peter Wolf Toth was sitting in Dunkirk New York. Since it wasn’t too far off our planned travel route, we made a slight detour to take it in. Yippee! One more thing off the bucket list!  

Talk to you soon.

One more off the bucket list

We made our way somewhere we had wanted to visit for a very long time. Elkhart Indiana is known as the RV capital of the world. According to the locals, more than ½ of all the RV’s manufactured in the world in any given year are manufactured in Elkhart. There are a number of reasons this happened – central location on rail so both supply chains and distribution chains were easy, near the industrial factories on Lake Michigan, and the location of the largest Amish community in America, brining the industry both outstanding woodworking skills for cabinetry and interiors, as well as a competent and hardy workforce. While here, we visited the RV Hall of Fame and Museum, getting to see and even enter vintage RV’s, dating back to when Henry Ford put boxes on the back of a Model T and called it a touring car.

We had our choice of plants to tour, but we chose Jayco since we could make our arrangements online. And, it turned out to be a great pick. Our tour was conducted right on the production floor while assembly was in process. Our group had to move a number of times to allow for an overhead crane to carry a sidewall of floor to the waiting chassis. It may have been the best factory tour we have experienced so far. We learned that 40% of the Jayco workforce was Amish, and over 10% was female. All in all, it was an excellent introduction to Jayco, and RV manufacturing in the US today.

Being in Amish country was an unexpected surprise to us. We decided to do an auto tour of the towns in the center of the cultural region – Elkhart, Nappanee, Shipshewana, Goshen and more. Each of the towns had a historic central district full of brick and stone buildings from the 1800’s. Local crafts and locally grown meat, cheese and produce were sold everywhere. You really can’t do the auto tour in a hurry however. The horse and buggy crowd had the right of way on the main highways.

While touring Amish Country we learned about something new to us. In our various travels, we have always been interested in quilts and quilting. When we were roaming through the countryside in central Ohio, we learned about “Barn Quilts”. Barn Quilts are generally wooden squares or diamonds displayed on a barn that resembles a quilt pattern. We saw them on many barns in that area, and even saw many on display on businesses here. But new to us were “Quilt Gardens”. The Amish apparently will take their favorite quilt pattern, and replicate it in their gardens using various species of plants to fill in the right colors. Ingenious!

After taking in a play at one of the many local Amish dinner theaters, we headed up to Durand Michigan, just a bit west of Flint. Our good friends Ken and Georgia Halloran live there, and we wanted to swing by, grab dinner and catch up on old times. We learned that the publisher of Ken’s book Travel Tales was indicted and is serving time for stealing from his writer clients, as well as other bad things. Ken doesn’t know how much the guy might have pilfered from the sales of Ken’s books, but he assumes it was not just some pennies. Tomorrow we cross the border – yippee!

Talk to you soon.

Slowly making our way to Canada

After escaping the twin cities, we began to make our way to Canada with stops for fun along the way. Because it was an easy stop along the way, we stopped in Madison Wisconsin as we had enough miles in for the day.  Madison is only about 40 miles from Spring Green Wisconsin, site of Frank Lloyd Wrights second studio, Taliesin, which we had toured before. Because of that, there are many Frank Lloyd Wright designed structures in Madison.

Since we had seen all the Capitol sites on our last visit to Madison, we just made this a Frank Lloyd home tour. We managed to find the Eugene A. Gilmore House, the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House, the Robert Lamp House and the Walter Rudin House. While it wasn’t open for touring in the afternoon, we did find the First Unitarian Society building. All in all, we had a very enjoyable adventure.

We headed out to visit Indiana Dunes, what may be the newest National Park. It was on our bucket list for a long time as it was designated Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966, but it was designated the nation’s 61^st national park on February 15, 2019.

Not unlike the Western national parks, locals began the movement to preserve the dunes as early as 1899 as heavy industrial development along the lakeshore threatened the extinction of this unique environment. Even today, as we hiked out to the dune covered beaches along the shores of Lake Michigan, each section of the sensitive shoreline that is protected is sandwiched between immense steel mills. The beaches are beautiful, but the odd contrast clearly shows the tension between preservation and industrial development.

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay here. We hiked out to each beach, we hiked to the top of the tallest dune you are allowed to hike on in the Park, we circled Mount Baldy, the tallest dune in the Park, but not open to hiking in order to preserve it. We did a bunch of geocaching, we hiked as many of the trails in the park we could find, we visited all the visitor centers, and we made sure to visit all 3 of the separated zones of the park. While we set out to do some birding, we never spotted anything new to us, but we did encounter some deer and one angry racoon who snarled at me as I opened the dumpster to add our trash bag. I hope he enjoyed it!

Since we were so close to Chicago, we couldn’t help but visit with nephew Jonathan and his family, Julie and Stella. But since we didn’t know exactly how long it would take, we decided to set out on another Frank Lloyd Wright adventure in Oak Park, a Western suburb. We visited and toured Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home and studio in Oak Park. We have now toured all 3 of his home/studio complexes, including Taliesin in Spring Green Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Scottsdale Arizona.

Since Wright designed many homes in the area, we set out to see as many as we could. We visited the Frederick Robie House – designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We also managed to find Unity Temple, as well as the homes of Nathan G. Moore, Arthur Heurtley and F.F. Tomek. The unique features we see in most Wright homes we visit were prominent – very broad roof lines, art glass in most of the windows that bring sunlight into the home and lots of them. The only thing we saw here in Oak Park that we have not seen elsewhere are the garages. Most Wright homes we have visited only have a built-in covered car port.

After our Wright trek, we gathered at the Little Beet Table restaurant in downtown Chicago, meeting Jon, Julie and Stella. Due to his celiac diagnosis, Jon has to totally avoid gluten, and this restaurant guarantees it is gluten free throughout its entire menu, making it a go to for them. We caught up on all things Bougie, and learned that in a couple weeks, Stella would be turning 7. We ate Jon, Julie and Stella, but drank Devin, Liz, Maia and Mani – the chardonnay we sipped was from the Finger Lakes area of New York where they live. We enjoyed the time together, and can’t wait until the next opportunity. 

Talk to you soon.

More Norway

As we headed back down the western coast of Norway, we managed to cross the Arctic Circle again – just this time we were heading south. There was a much hoopla as when we crossed in Finland, but there still was a visitor center and some monuments. We enjoyed our visit.

We began our trek out toward the Geiringer Fjord and the town of Geiranger. On the way we stopped in the ancient village of Lom for a lunch break and to take in the sights. Lom is the location of one of the oldest stave churches (or Stavkyrkje in Norwegian) in Norway, built in 1160. 

We wandered all around it and eventually made our way inside. Because it was built while the Vikings still occupied settlements in Norway, the decoration on the church had very distinctive Viking symbolism. The dragons on the church peaks were one of many such pagan symbols to adorn the church.

As we got a little near Geiranger we wanted to drive up Dalsnibba, a mountain at the end of the Geiranger fjord valley. Both our guide and driver had warned us that visibility conditions at the overlook some 4,500 feet above the fjord were often obscured at best. In fact, as we approached the turnoff to head up to Dalsnibba, our guide announced that it was totally socked in, and we would skip it for now, and try to go there on our way back out from Geiranger.

We stopped at the turnoff and our driver made some cell phone calls to other drivers he knew were in the area. He was told there was some clearing at the top, and that it might be worth a visit now. So, we got everyone on board the bus and headed up.

By the time we arrived, not only was there some clearing, but the clouds had simply vanished, both above and below us. We could see nearly all the Geiranger Fjord, the town, and all the surrounding valley without any obstacles at all. Both our guide and the driver said in all their years working in Norway, they had never, ever seen conditions at Dalsnibba so nice. Keeping our fingers crossed that the weather luck continues.

Geiranger was awesome! Not only was there a couple of cruise ships here ever day, but the fjord is spectacular. We went on a cruise of the fjord one afternoon, and experienced waterfall after waterfall. Each one was more spectacular than the previous. The wildlife, both in the water and on the valley walls, was just fun to see.

One day we drove the length of the fjord, caught a ferry, and continued on to the Trolls Road, or Trollstigen in Norwegian. Opened in 1936 after 8 years of construction, it connects the towns of Andalsnes and Rauma. It soon became a tourist attraction because of its steep incline of over 10% and its 11 hairpin turns up a steep mountainside. How our bus driver managed this 40-foot beast on that road I will never know.

Now heading to cosmopolitan Oslo, we stopped in the quaint town of Lillehammer. This area was very much the inspiration for Edvard Grieg in his musical rendition for “Peer Gynt”. The 1994 Winter Olympics were held here, and we made a stop to see the infamous ski jumping facility. In the summer time, locals use the base of the ski jumps as a water and recreation area.

Norwegians love trolls. The love of Trolls actually dates back to the days of the Vikings. The word Troll came from the Germanic Trullan which means fiend, demon or giant. Generally, Trolls were considered dangerous to human beings. Trolls were said to dwell in isolated mountains, rocks and caves, but were sometimes also considered friendly or helpful. One common belief was that Trolls could not be exposed to sunlight – if they did, they would turn to stone. That was the explanation early residents had for the stony hillsides all over Norway – unwary Trolls. We saw them everywhere!

The ancient port town of Bergen was a stalwart part of the Hanseatic League. Founded in 1070, its access to the North Sea made it a central trading port on the Scandinavian peninsula. 

Bergen was one of the first members of the Hanseatic League, the trade group founded in Germany the protected the trade routes and diplomatic privileges of member cities from the 14^th to the 17^th centuries.

While the feel of Bergen was similar in many ways to that of Amsterdam with its canals, the buildings that lined the water in Bergen were not the luxury residences we saw in Amsterdam. Rather, they were water side warehouses built to unload and store the myriad goods coming into this active port.

Tomorrow we head back into Denmark to begin to finish our exploration of the Nordic cultures.

Talk to you soon.

On to Norway

Since we crossed the Arctic Circle in Finland, we headed to the North Cape. North Cape (in Norwegian Nordkapp) is the farthest north you can drive anywhere in Europe, and we came here in search of the Midnight Sun. We arrived at the end of the road to find dozens of RVs and several buses, but the crowds weren’t oppressive, and our private Champaign and caviar reception was nice.

We got there around 11 and the sun was still high in the sky. We watched as it slowly descended toward the horizon, and kept our eyes on our watches at the same time. As midnight approached, we were apprehensive as some clouds began to gather, and the sun was not really very close to the horizon. Imagine our surprise that just after midnight the sun began to rise again – it never got anywhere near the horizon! The whole experience was just plain fun.

We set out for the western coast where all the fjords are clustered. But before the fjords we headed to Alta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the early 1970’s, rock carvings were discovered in several sites around Alta. Scientific dating methods have placed the oldest at nearly 4,200 BC. We got a chance to walk among several groupings of rock art that were quite impressive. My favorites had to be the big game hunters.

Also, it turns out that Alta is one of the three cities with concentrations of slate quarries producing nearly all the roofing and decorative slate both for Norway, but also for much of Europe. We visited one quarry and got a demonstration by an artisan of the age-old practice of hand splitting a foot-thick sheet of slate into a roofing tile thickness sheet. He split it flawlessly!

After the demonstration, he gave each of us a piece of what he had just split, and some traditional slate hand tools. Then each of us set out to create our own souvenir of our day at the quarry. We each carefully chipped away with the hand tools and grinding wheels to create our own slate coaster – what fun!

We learned that the real Vikings weren’t Norwegian. The original Vikings were actually Danes who raided and established settlements in Sweden and Norway to find new homes and supplies for their expanding populations. The Vikings then set our west, establishing settlements in Iceland and Greenland, and finally making their way to North America on the coast of what is now Newfoundland. We had actually visited L’Anse aux Meadows when we were there.

On our way to Trondheim Norway, we decided to pay a visit to Hell. Hell is a small town on Trondheim Fjord that has become a bit of a tourist attraction solely because of its name, not because of any particular amenities. At a population of just over 1,500, there’s not much to do. But at least I can now say honestly that I have been to Hell and back!

In Trondheim we were able to see some actual Viking long ships that were complete and fully functional. The reason for this is the Viking practice of burying wealthy kings in their ship. They would dig simply huge graves, bundle up the body and place it in the ship, and then bury the entire ship. Because of this practice, historians have been able to exhume completely functional Viking long boats, and several are on display. It was really cool to 3 complete ships that are well over 1,000 years old in just one museum. 

Talk to you soon.

Back to Finland

We got on a ferry to cross the Baltic Sea to Helsinki, the capital of Finland. This was no small ferry boat. In fact, it had a 5-story atrium with restaurants, shops, bars, a casino and all kinds of adult entertainment! We enjoyed the trip, but didn’t really take advantage of the entertainment aspects.

In Helsinki, we visited the Temppeliaukio Church in the Rock. Built directly into rock in 1969, it is a result of plans that began as early as the 1930’s. Construction began in 1939, but the war and other economic issues derailed its construction. Final work began in again in earnest in 1968 and this grand vision was completed the nest year.

We found Finland fascinating. Finland is not part of Scandinavia, although it is considered Nordic. Finland actually borders Russia on the West rather than being on the Scandinavian peninsula. Because of this, it was devastated in all the Russian war efforts. In Finland, the Scorch and Burn tactics were exercised, meaning in occupied territory, all buildings were burned before the Nazi’s left. Because of this, there are very few buildings in Finland dating before 1945. The only buildings that remained are those that Nazi generals felt like keeping around, like the church that had the organ where a Nazi general went to play for his own relief.

We learned that there are no wild reindeer in Finland. The primary farm raised meat in Finland is reindeer. There are more reindeer in Finland than people, but while they roam the land, they are all accounted for. All are tagged by their owner. If a reindeer has a baby, whoever owns the mom that the calf hangs around at birth gets to tag that new baby reindeer as its own.

We visited a reindeer farm in Lapland and took in a nice dinner of reindeer stew. The owner of the farm might have been the funniest guy we have ever met. He took his raising of reindeer seriously, but not the visits of his guests. There were many selfie opportunities this evening!

When we got to the arctic circle, we ventured on the Santa Claus Village. Near Rovaniemi, we saw the summer version of what is really meant to be a winter experience. Be that as it may, we did get to sit on Santa’s lap, and tell him all about our dreams and aspirations. We even sent some post cards from the North Pole.

While here, we could understand the attraction to Minnesota for the Scandinavians. As we drove through most of Finland, we totally felt like we were in northern Minnesota. When they came to America, we have no doubt that the northern Minnesota pine trees were a compelling attraction – who could resist!

The Finns simply adore their saunas. Everywhere we went there were saunas available and we were strongly encouraged to partake. But it was always so cold that the motivation was very hard to muster. Finally, in Ivalo in Lapland I mustered up the courage and headed to the sauna. I was glad I did – it was wonderful!

Talk to you soon.