Most of what I know about Lewis & Clark beyond what I learned in HS comes from “Undaunted Courage,” a great book by Stephen Ambrose. It is a book I recommend. But the cover of my book has an error. It shows Lewis & Clark dressed in buckskins. It fit my frontier image garnered from watching Walt Disney’s “Davey Crockett,” hardly a work of strict historical scholarship.
I learned today that Lewis & Clark tended to wear their dressy uniforms. This should really not be much of surprise. Consider how well dressed officers were in civil war armies.
We went to visit the Lewis & Clark museum in Sioux City, Iowa. There is not much there, but it is nicely done and worth the visit if you are passing through.
The Lewis & Clark expedition was instrumental to the expansion of our country. It was an expedition of exploration and science that captured the imaginations of Americans of the time and every generation since, even if most of us do not know the details. My pictures are from the museum and the grounds. They had a robot Thomas Jefferson, not exactly “West World” but lifelike.
We finished up in Sioux Fall, SD after a day of driving across Iowa. It is so different from Virginia. Lots fewer trees and lots more row crops. And the soil is black or brown, not red as in Virginia.
Ash trees are still alive in Sioux Falls. It is nice to see them. I know that it is possible to defend trees against emerald ash borers, but it costs a lot. I am hoping that native birds or bugs learn to relish the EAB and keep their numbers down. It is heartbreaking to contemplate having no more ash.
My first pictures are from Granite City Brewery. It was a very pleasant place. Last picture is the Lego version of Lewis & Clark. Beth Harvey Barch might want to share this will Lee, as I think he likes things like this.
Drove through Ohio, Indiana & Illinois. As we move west, the land becomes a bit dryer and flatter.
The death of the ash trees made me sad. Ohio & Indiana were full of ash trees. The emerald ash borer has killed most of them. There are vast ghost forests along the the highways. Ash trees were wonderful trees. They were fast growers, adaptive to a variety of conditions and resistant to many pests. Until now.
My first picture shows ash trees at a roadside, dead. Next is a living white ash tree in Quincy, Illinois. Magnificent trees. Picture after that is a very large bur oak tree and next are a grove of hickories. Last picture shows some linden trees. They are blooming and I just love the fragrance. Midwest forests with their widely spaced trees, oaks, hickories, are woods of home.
We are spending the night in Quincy, Illinois. Never heard to the place before, but it is a nice old city. It has seen better days, but is still pleasant. I didn’t know that this was a venue for one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
On our way to Missoula, Montana for a conference on fire science. Missoula is a center for the study of wildfire, so when I saw a conference on the subject in that place, I thought it would be great to go at least once.
A few interesting sites along the way. One is a rest stop in Maryland that you see in the first picture. It has to be one of the best rest stops I have ever seen. Next is a place that claims to have invented the hot dog, at least in its current form. We checked into it. There are other claimants. This place was a little cramped. Worth seeing but not worth going to see. Chrissy had the hot dog. It was like other hot dogs. Later that day we stopped at Jackie O Taproom in Athens, Ohio. It is not named after Jackie Onassis, but they admit that it is a draw. Next two pictures are our usual beer drinking pictures.
Also on the road are pre-Columbian earth mounds in Chillicothe, Ohio. The people who built them disappeared from the archeological record around 1500 years ago. While they are probably related to some contemporary groups, there is no direct line.
By the time Europeans arrived, none of the local tribes were mound builders, so the ancient culture is called “Hopewell” after the guy whose farm they were found.
The Hopewell people did not build cities or villages. Archeologists have never found remains of more than a few huts. They were mostly pre-agricultural. But they did like to build earthen mounds. This was no easy task. They did not have metal tools or pack animals. There is evidence of long-distance trade, including copper from around Lake Superior and shells from Gulf of Mexico. My first two pictures show the mounds. You can see me in the first picture for scale. Last is a groundskeeper doing some work. It occurred to me that this guy with his metal shovel and powered vehicle could move as much dirt as a hundred guys on foot carrying baskets and digging with sticks.
Looked around Richmond today. The Fan District reminds us of Mariza’s area of Baltimore or maybe some parts of Madison when we were going to school there. Seems to have lots of young people – students or recent graduates. We would have loved the place some decades ago, but maybe not now.
Monument Boulevard features statues of old rebels like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson & JEB Stuart. The houses along the road look pretty expensive. Nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there.
The part that would likely best fit our needs would be the Bellevue, but it is still a long ways off before we get very seriously. We maybe will look around down near Williamsburg. Lots of nice places around.
We are also thinking about a peripatetic existence. Neither of us much likes the idea of traveling in an RV, but it would be possible to drive around & stay at hotels part of the year, following the good weather in various places. There is so much of America to see. We would still want a home, but it would not need to be for all things or all seasons. Who knows?
I have come to believe that there is not THE place for us. We have contradictory desires. We both grew up in very stable circumstance. Chrissy’s family occupied that farm since 1859. My parents bought their house in 1946. Both of us came into an established place and stayed there. On the other hand, in the FS we moved to whole different countries every few years. On the third hand, we bought the house we still own in 1997 and kept it when we left. We got used to having change on top of permanence. On the fourth hand, I have become very attached to Virginia. I have plans for my tree farms that go until 2045. I want to be near my trees, at least part of the time. Maybe the most important thing is unknown and unknowable. Where will the kids end up living? We want to be near them, but will that even be possible if they choose to live in different places. Confused and unlikely to become less so and will need to live with the ambiguity.
My pictures are from around Richmond. We have J.E.B. Stuart & Robert E. Lee. We had lunch at Starlite Cafe in the second picture. The only one that requires explanation is that last one. Look closely. There are big statues of the M&M characters, as well as Mr and Mrs Potato Head. It is kind of a traditional area. I wonder how the neighbors feel about that place.
The National Road The National Road was authorized by Congress and signed into legislation by Thomas Jefferson in 1806. It started in Cumberland, Maryland and ended in Vandalia in what became the State of Illinois. It was the first piece of big public infrastructure that facilitated the settlement of western Maryland, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois – the first “West.” Vandalia was the first capital of Illinois and the place where young Abe Lincoln got his start. I went to see young Abe and the terminus of the National Road. Life was tough for the pioneers. Imagine carrying everything you own in a wagon and establishing yourself in a wilderness. It was primitive. It is amazing that they could build our great country.
The first picture is the monument to pioneer women. It stands at the end of the National Road. Next is Abe and then Abe and me. My friend Steve Holgate used to do Lincoln one-man-shows, so he should appreciate that young Abe kind of looks like him. Next picture is the busy US 40. US 40 more or less follows the route of the National Road. It is now superseded by Interstate 70. Last is the old State Capitol.
The Iron Curtain “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an “iron curtain” has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.” This is what Winston Churchill said in a speech in Fulton, Mo on March 5, 1946. It was a recognition of the Cold War. Some people, many people, thought that our wartime friendship with the Soviet Union could continue, but our goals and values were fundamentally incompatible. I stopped at Fulton to see the place where the speech was delivered. It sort of completes my middle America history visits, since I went to see Eisenhower and Truman This part of history has always been fascinating for me. Fighting world communism was one of the reasons I joined the FS. For the trip back home, I got a new audio book, The Cold War: A World History by a couple Norwegians, Julian Elfer and Odd Arne Westad. It is a different perspective.
The authors go way back to pre-WWI times and characterize Russia under the Czar as a hierarchical anti-capitalist country, while the USA was where the market developed most. After WWI, several flavors of anti-capitalistic/anti-democratic regimes developed, including the Soviets, Nazis, along with various other sorts of fascists and authoritarians. Fascists and communists shared hatred for free market democracy, but they also hated each other, since each wanted to impose its own sort of totalitarianism. This is as far as I got.
Anyway, we vanquished the Nazis in 1945 and the communists in 1989, but these bad ideas have ways of resurfacing. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. My pictures are from the Churchill memorial. The first is a piece of the Berlin Wall. We sort of got used to it, but consider how truly evil it is to kill people who want to leave your country. Reagan was right to call it an evil empire.
The Wright Brother
In the worth seeing but not worth going to see department, I went to see the birthplace of Wilbur Wright. You have to drive around seven miles from I-70 along a pleasant country road fittingly called “Wilbur Wright Road” that connects with “Wilbur Wright Circle.” Chrissy suggested that if his parents had anticipated having such an illustrious son they would have investing in a more appropriate house.
There is a good book on the Wright Brothers by David McCullough (the same guy who wrote bios of John Adams and Harry Truman). The early the last decades of the 19th century and the first ones of the 20th were a dynamic time in American history. Airplanes, automobiles and lots of other things were being invented and perfected. My Brazilian friends don’t credit the Wright brothers with the invention of the airplane. They credit their own Alberto Santos-Dumont, who they also say gave us the wrist watch. The Wright brothers flew in 1903. Santos-Dumont flew in 1906, but Brazilians argue that Santos-Dumont’s machine took off on its own power. Suffice it to say that they were all pioneers of aviation.
I didn’t take a picture, since I thought it might be rude, but there were lots of signs opposing a proposed wind farm in the area. I think it would be appropriate to have big propeller-like structures, but the locals disagree
Of course, the big reason that it is fun to tour is because I get to be with Chrissy in new situations. You can see in my first photo when we had supper at a nice Italian place. The second photo is from the Navy Pier on Lake Michigan. As we walked back along the pier, I mentioned that this scene reminded me of Lake Michigan (I was thinking of Milwaukee). Chrissy made fun of me, pointing out that maybe it reminded me of Lake Michigan because it WAS Lake Michigan.
We stayed in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst. It is an “trolley suburb,” i.e. one built around trains and transit. These are pleasant suburbs, since they are fairly dense near the train stations. This one featured restaurants and beer gardens, surrounded by leafy suburbs.
We also toured the Quincy Street Distillery. They make a variety of spirits there, including various sorts of whiskeys and gins. The owner and manager, Derrick Mancini, was clearly an enthusiast for his profession. He explained how the system worked. The key to flavor is aging. Whiskey acquires flavors from the wood in the barrels. If they use smaller barrel, it ages faster, but produces a less mature whiskey. We did the tasting. Chrissy liked the younger whiskey. We bought three bottles, each of the different sorts.
As I listened to Mr. Mancini and perceived his love of what he did, I thought about the future of work. We have passed through the machine age, where we need to mass-produce standard products. Maybe we can do products the are also in their own ways works of art.
Continuing with Chicago, Chrissy & I went the architecture tour on the river. I recommend it. We had an exceptionally good tour guide. He even played blues harmonica was we came in to dock.
Since I live in Washington, high-rise buildings are not something I see often. Chicago is the place to see high rise buildings and the river is the best way to do it. It is a beautiful city.
Frank Lloyd Wright Catching up with recent activities, Chrissy and I went to Chicago to take a look at some of the architecture and specifically at the Frank Lloyd Wright house and neighborhood around Oak Park.
The neighborhood is very pleasant, but I do not think that it results exclusively or even mostly from the Frank Lloyd Wright contribution. I like many of his innovations – and many have entered American vernacular architecture, but the totality of his deigns were not always that good.
The neighborhood is part of the “garden city” movement of he late 19th and early 20th Centuries. What I like about the area is open aspect, varieties of buildings and – more than anything else – the nice big trees.
My first photos shows Wright’s house and studio, followed by one of the Wright designed houses. Next is an ordinary Victorian house, that also adds to the beauty of the neighborhood. Wright evidently hated those things. Last tow are the nice trees. First is a big elm. Next is a ginkgo ‘s Wright’s yard. The tree was there when he bought the place in 1887, so it is at least 130 years old. It is the widest ginkgo that I have ever seen, although not the tallest. As I examined the tree, I notice that the top had been cut off. It looked like damage from wind and not a aesthetic choice.
Alligators used to be so rare that they were put on the endangered species. Today they are so common as pigeons, common enough to be a nuisance. We visited Everglades and Big Cypress. One stop featured a 15 mile loop you could ride on rented bikes. We did. We hoped to see maybe one alligators. There were dozens. The rangers said that they were not dangerous as long as you didn’t get too close. The ones we saw barely moved, but Chrissy did get a good action picture of one that you can see in the first photo.
The bikes were not very good. They had only one very low gear. I felt like one of those clowns on a little bike. The distance that I easily cover in less than an hour on my own bike took two hours on the little ones.
The second last photo shows the Everglades from an observation tower. It is an interesting ecology, very flat and wet most of the year but with a dry season. During the dry season, it often burns. We saw smoke from a fire (last photo) but all I know about the fire is contained in the photo.
I learned a new word from my cousin Dorothy Bozich. The word was polydactyl. It means that the animal has too many toes. It was good to know because we went to visit Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West. Hemingway thought that cats were lucky and that those with six toes were even better. He had as many as 70 cats. Today there are only 53. All have the pterodactyl gene, although not all have six toes.
The cats have names from the Hemingway’s life and times. For example, there is a Greta Garbo, a Humphrey Bogart and we actually saw a Patsy Cline. My photos show the various cats w/o names I know. Actually, I Chrissy says that the cat on the fountain is called Elizabeth Taylor. The last photo is just Hemingway’s house.
The cats are free to go, but none do. It is a kind of cat heaven. Why would they leave? The only lost cat was called F. Scott Fitzgerald. Evidently a visitor loved that cat and wanted to buy him. He was told that F Scott was a free agent and not for sale. A few days later that cat mysteriously disappeared. Got a better offer?
A few photos from around Key West. We have Chrissy and me eating breakfast and then Key Lime pie, separate places. Last is me at the very end of US. 1. Save
