The East of the Mid-West

We are now in Port Washington, a pretty little town on the shores of enormous Lake Michigan.  This is still the mid-west, but it feels a great deal more sophisticated here, probably because the cities of Milwaukee and Chicago are directly down the coast.  It feels like the East Coast (where NY and Washington, Boston etc) are, so Tony commented that this must be the east coast of the mid-west!  We are here to visit Holley car number 2 tomorrow, in Cedarburg which is nearby.  Then we head back west again, to end up back in Fargo, where we will hand back our car and Betty Lou, our trusty GPS.  After a couple of beers tonight Tony was looking at Betty Lou in a whole new light, so maybe its good we are handing her back soon!!

Tony with the show Holley,
Kanawha, Iowa.

On the way here, we travelled east from the dry expanses of the Badlands of South Dakota through to corn country, Iowa, pushing some high miles for two days in order to get to see the first Holley car in a farm in Kanawha, Iowa.  This place was so small it was on gravel roads, hidden in a mass of corn.  The Holley is owned by a couple who specialise in restoring classic cars for other people.  They do a pretty darn good job of it for their own vehicles as well, as the 'showroom' in which the Holley rests is wallpapered in awards, silver trays, plaques and shelves of trophies for their show cars.  Their Holley is a show car, which means it sits idle except when they trailer it to a car show, where it is driven into the show ring and out again.  It also means it is absolutely immaculate.  However Tony and I had to smile a little, for the car that Tony has built out of nothing is very similar to this original pampered pet, AND Tony still gets to drive his.

Buddy Holly crash site,
Clear Lake, Iowa

Before we'd visited that Holley, we'd been to the site of another Holly - Buddy Holly; actually where his plane crashed just one day after Tony was born.  The plane that Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper were in crashed in terrible weather in a cornfield, and the crash site has been turned into a sort of shrine, the info about which we found by accident in the hotel brochure.  We also found out that there were two Frank Lloyd-Wright buildings in the next city over!  Amazing the things we find in small towns.  So we went to see those buildings, too.  It was incredibly hot yesterday - they reckon the heat index stood at 112F, which is 45C!! Way too much like the desert, and we were wandering around outside looking at buildings..but when on holiday you do silly things like that.

Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin

Then after leaving Mason City we drove on to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, a beautiful little town on the banks of the Mississippi River.  First look at the mighty Mississippi, and we even saw a paddle steamer tied up at a dock, which was great.  And lo and behold, in the hotel lobby, we found a brochure for yet another Frank Lloyd Wright house - his own house, Taliesin.  So today we went on a tour of that incredible place.  The house was the scene of 7 murders and 2 fires, so it's had its share of excitement, but now it sits in gentile decay while Lloyd-Wright's remaining disciples and apprentices try and maintain and restore the place before the weather and time takes too much of a toll.

All this traveling means we've stayed in a lot of hotels, but trying to distinguish them is nearly impossible. They are all different hotel chains (Howard Johnson, Super 8, Country Inn, Carlson), but they all have the same room layouts, the bathrooms all look the same, they all have the same facilities, and the breakfasts are the same. Today when we got to breakfast in Prairie du Chien however, we shared the breakfast nook with Amish on holiday! That was something different - I didn't even know they used motorised transport.  All the women were in plain dark dresses and white bonnets, the men had bushy beards and suspenders, and they spoke to each other in some sort of German dialect.  I wonder if they watched TV in their rooms last night...The checkout woman said they were in a van, so maybe it was some sort of Amish convention?? Who knows, but that was just another experience to chalk up to this holiday :)

Road Trippin'

1200 miles into Road Trip No.1(yes, miles - get with the program!), and we are overnighting in the small town of Oacona, South Dakota (population 390.  And one snake.).  Road trippin' pros we are becoming, with experiences to tell the grandchildren as we are rockin' on the porch sucking on a cobb pipe. Well the pipe might be a bit fanciful but I saw a whole lot of them today in a museum, so they now feature in the blog! What have we learned thus far?

Sign in Medora, ND.

1) That Betty Lou, our GPS, is our best friend. She has steered us to from Fargo to here without a hitch, and never misses a beat when we miss our turnoff - so polite is Betty Lou.  In fact, we can't believe how polite the general populace is here.  I don't know where the 'pushy Americans' are that we hear all about, but they ain't in the mid west, that's for sure.
2) That the mid-west has some mighty fine golden oldies radio stations.  And the land is so damn flat that you can go for miles before they fade.  And the lyrics we have been singing for years and years at home suddenly make sense cause we are in America and that's what all the songs are about.
3) That jerk chicken, catfish, buffalo burgers and sweet potato fries are maaghty faan food.  But salads are sometimes real difficult to come by.  And washing it down with a Shirley Temple, a Root Beer, a real lemonade or cherry coke is just peachy! And coffee is best as just coffee - no foam, no swirls, no demi-semi-shot-half-caf-latte-with a twist. Just coffee. For 75c. With half-and-half. And the waitresses wear jeans or jean shorts and white t-shirts and an apron, just like in the movies.  And they come round and ask you if you want pie or ice-cream after your dinner.  And the pie is DAMN good, most of the time.

Bikes parked up in Spearfish, SD.

4) That fellow travellers seem to be either staunch-ass bikers with huge Harleys and expressions that swear at you without even saying anything, or the blue-rinse brigade with their 5th wheelers (large caravans) anchored onto massive Ford trucks. And 99.5% of them are American because foreigners are a rare breed in these here parts. Except for all the waiting and serving staff, who all seem to have come from Eastern Europe for the summer.
5) That this country is so incredibly vast and so incredibly diverse that there are no stereotypes, hard as we try, and the difference between New York city and and Spearfish might as well be planetary, because they sure as hell can't be the same country, can they?

The world's largest buffalo
Jamestown, ND.

6) That if you walk along a road at night you might find a snake! Which we just did coming back from Al's Diner tonight.  And prairie dogs live in huge communities, but they all seem to get along just fine (and they are so cute!). And buffaloes are a myth because try as we might, we haven't managed to see a real one yet - we've seen the poop, the hoofprints, tufts of hair on a signpost,  the bones, stuffed ones, carved ones and soft toy ones, but no REAL ones.  Grrr.

Anyway, that's the sum total of our road experience thus far.  Tomorrow we cross out of the Dakotas into Iowa.   Thank you Dakotas - you've been a blast :)

To see more photos of what we got up to today on the road (and in the air - we went up in a helicopter!), please click here.

Of Men and Mountains

What can one do with mountains?  Well, you can climb them, photograph them, explore them, plunder them for gold and minerals, or name them.  You might scratch your name into a  rock on a mountain to say you've been here, and 'Elroy Heart Alma 4EVA' kinda thing.  Then there are the men who have way grander ideas. Two at least decided to shape the mountain into sculptures, and that's what we went to see today.  And yesterday we saw a town that illegally sprung up in the mountains so that men could scrabble around for gold, and one mountain that thrust its way out into the light and has awed everyone who sees it ever since.

Mt Rushmore, South Dakota

Crazy Horse Memorial, South Dakota

Mt Rushmore (completed between 1934 and 1939) and Crazy Horse Memorial (1948 -) are classic examples of men who had way too much time and dynamite on their hands.  Rushmore is finished; Crazy Horse may never be.  Rushmore is famous white presidents; Crazy Horse is an American Indian who tried to save his people's way of life from settlers and soldiers ruled by those presidents. Both are amazing works of art blasted into mountains.  Rushmore is picture-perfect - no photo is a bad photo.  It's amazing the details you can see, and the museum attached to the site is full of interesting information about how the images were planned and made.  Crazy Horse is a herculean effort by one family to complete the largest sculpture ever made.  It's not federally funded so work progresses slowly, but you can gradually see the details emerging.  They are starting to work on the horse now. By the time your grandchildren are old enough to drive, they might see that finished.  Both these monuments are within easy drive of the other, in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota.  The whole area is stunning, full of great rock formations and thickly wooded slopes.

Devils Tower, Wyoming

The Devil's Tower National Monument, in Wyoming is truly awesome. You can't help but be silenced by the thing, as you see it rising out of the plains.  It's no wonder that it was held sacred by local American Indian tribes.  The tower is called many different names relating to bears by the local tribes, but the interpreter accompanying a white expeditionary force in 1875 mis-heard this, and thought they called the tower 'Bad God's Tower', hence the English name.  However, I certainly can see why one WOULD think it was the devil's work - it's unnatural how this mound of rock is perfectly formed, just sitting there on the plain. How did it get there?  Why?  The scientific explanations in the Ranger's Office go some way to trying to explain, but they are also not sure.  I just prefer to think it's something special, and can easily see why Richard Dreyfuss made a sculpture out of the thing in mashed potato, and Spielberg had aliens landing on it in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'!

Main St, Deadwood

The final allusion to men and mountains is the famously bad town of Deadwood, in South Dakota. I loved the HBO series, and being here was something special.  This town was born bad; settlers, seeking gold in the Black Hills mountains held sacred by the Dakota Indian tribes, put up saloon and hotel tents and established a town here without permission.  Eventually Deadwood was granted town status, but it had a pretty colourful reputation, which has continued to this day.  Wild Bill Hickok was shot here while gambling, and Calamity Jane made her presence felt.  Today it seems to be all booze and gambling - every second building was a casino and bar, and various seedy people were reeling in and out of the different places when we arrived there at night.  Very touristy, but with its past it probably suits this image now - I think the characters who inhabited this place would shudder to think of it being sanitised and sanctified.

Anyway, those were the four reasons for coming to the South Dakota Black Hills region, and tomorrow we leave for our trek to Iowa and Wisconsin to see old cars. Spearfish has been a great little town to stay in for 3 days - it's nice to have somewhere the same to come back to for more than a day!
To see more pictures from our trip in this area, click here.

The Earth is Flat

No, I haven't been brainwashed by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party!  The Earth really is FLAT, or it was today for nearly 500 miles to the Canadian border and back.  Flat to the point of insanity; apparently quite a few early pioneers to the 'big sky country' went mad from the endless nothingness on the horizon and had to head for the hills.  I've seen this before when I was in Canada, but it still hits you every time you crest the top of a small rise, and there it is, stretching before you so far that the eye gives up. Green and sky, sky and green.  Take some sky. No, take A LOT  of sky.  Then multiply it by endless.  Amazing stuff.

Geographic centre of North America,
Rugby, North Dakota

On our way today we passed the geographical centre of the North American continent, which warranted a photo stop (and it's in a place called 'Rugby'!).  We also saw the second-highest structure in the world, the KVLY-TV mast, off in the distance, but we didn't get to go see it up close. I hope to get a photo of that tomorrow.

Tony and I straddling the
border of  the US and Canada,
Peace Garden

Anyway, we drove up to the International Peace Garden to meet my great friend, Denisce from teaching in Japan days, up there. She lives in Manitoba in Canada and I hadn't seen her for two years, so she made the drive down and met up with us for an afternoon.  The Peace Garden straddles the border of the USA and Canada and was incorporated in 1932.  It's a bit like Panmunjom (between North and South Korea), except there are no mine fields and you won't get shot if you cross the stream running along the middle of the park. (!)  It's very civilized actually, taking great pains to equally represent both nations and doing a lovely job of it.  Lovely formal gardens, nice monuments, lots of places for picnics, wilderness and lake areas, small gift shop.  We had lunch there, walked and drove all over the park and then relaxed and shared photos until it was time to make the 4-hour drive back to our respective cities in our respective countries.

We are enjoying Fargo. It's a place to relax, full of extremely friendly people, and it sort of smells like New Zealand - farm smells, green grass, fresh air, sun-warmed concrete in small amounts. The gun shop full of assault rifles is a little different however...(!)  Yesterday after we'd arrived and picked up the car, we told our GPS to find us a place to eat lunch. It recommended a tiny cafe that we think was in a retirement village complex!  But they were THE friendliest people there. We had our first, certifiably delicious pieces of 'paah' (Pie).  And the elderly couple dining near us who we got chatting to, well. The woman's favourite place in New Zealand  (where she has been several times) is Invercargill!  It's about as surprising as finding two kiwis sitting in a retirement village cafe in Fargo I guess...Anyway, we have to leave Fargo tomorrow, which is a bit of a shame. We could almost do with a day of doing nothing before we start our big stint south, just to regroup, do some laundry and relax.  But we can do that later I guess.

Time to sleep!  Tomorrow will have to find a car wash to scrape off the bug populations of several counties that are embedded in the windshield before we leave, and find somewhere to buy a thermos and cups for coffee on the road.  Time is flying, but the memories are stacking up nicely :)

To see more photos from our visit, click here.

Henry Ford is God?

Statue of Henry Ford
at Rouge Factory

Henry Ford said of his museum:

I am collecting the history of our people as written into things their hands made and used.... When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived, and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition. (Wikipedia)

After spending two days at the Henry Ford museum/park complex, one would think Henry Ford was divinely inspired, or someone to be deified. Reminds me a lot of where I live, with pictures of the divine trio plastered all over the country.  There are books of Henry Ford quotes, his statues and pictures are everywhere, his achievements lauded, his works examined.  To be fair, he did a hell of a lot for the advancement of production, and he was one heck of an innovative, shrewd, intelligent businessman.  He was also extremely cantankerous, a real b***d to work for, had some extremely shady friends, and admired Hitler. But his museum complex displays amazing  foresight, and he must be admired for putting it all together.  In Dearborn, near Detroit, there is the Henry Ford museum, and alongside it the Greenfields Village complex. You can also go on the Rouge Factory tour, to see Ford trucks being made, but when we went yesterday the plant was shut for the workers' annual vacation, which was a real pity.

The chair in which Abraham
Lincoln was shot

Yesterday Tony and I  also went to the Henry Ford museum. That's an amazing place, full of American history and interesting displays.  The bus Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on, the seat in which Abraham Lincoln was sitting  when he was shot, JFK's presidential limousine, and lots and lots of cars, trains, tractors and trucks.  Unfortunately we also missed out in the museum; they have shut down the biggest exhibit, 'automobile in American life' until 2012, which is the exhibit most people like.  Anyway, it was a brilliant museum apart from that. I actually liked it better than the Smithsonian museums; it was interactive, dynamic and interesting to walk through. The Smithsonians are impressive, but they seem rather lifeless compared to this place.

Farmers in the Greenfield village

Today we went to the Greenfields Village - an amazing 240-acre complex put together by Henry Ford, full of working farms and workshops, historically famous houses, staff in period costume, authentic 1800's food, a working railroad, vintage cars to ride in....it's an incredible place that you could spend at least a couple of days exploring. Unfortunately we were so tired from yesterday that we didn't arrive at the park until 1pm, so we only had 4 hours to look around it, but we managed to see quite a bit.  My favourite place was the restaurant where we had authentic, and delicious, 19th century food (including dandelion soup!), and the workshop where I used an old lathe to make a small candlestick.  But oh, what a lot of things to see and do.  It was very hot; we hugged the shade wherever possible, but still by the end of the day we were again exhausted.  But what a great day!

Now it's further westward tomorrow - we are taking our final legs on the train for a while now right across to Minneapolis, and then will try and make our way to Fargo by bus, where we can pick up our rental car.  Wish us luck!

For more photos from the Henry Ford museum complex, click here.

History and Herstory

Lower Humbolt covered bridge (1865)

We had a fantastic final day in Connellsville, PA, while waiting for our train.  When we woke up it was pouring with rain, and the thought of waiting around till 9:45pm for the train, half of which time we'd have no car, wasn't good. So while we still had our rental car, we set off into the wilds of Fayette county to find some covered bridges.  We were prepared to get HORRIBLY lost, after the experiences yesterday with the lack of road signs, but nope - got to find 3 bridges with not a hiccup, apart from the horrendous driving conditions - driving rain, mountain mists and road surface flooding.  The bridges we found are really lovely, and date from 1806 or so.  There they sit as solitary sentinels from the past, and I'm sure you could hear the echoes of horses' hooves and wagon wheels in the rafters if you listened hard enough.  Then it was time to drive to Uniontown, hand the rental car back, and get driving back to Connellsville by the congenial driver (who chatted to us about mountain lions and bears in them thar hills).

This part of Pennsylvania used to be rich, full of coal and steel barons, dozens of banks, department stores and all the service industries there to cater to the thousands of workers who manned the hundreds of coke ovens and coal mines.  Now, however, the counties in this area are extremely poor and depressed; brought to their knees by the gradual closure of all the big industries and now just shadows of their former selves.  Our wonderful B&B hostess, Lucille, was a child in this area, and in the afternoon she took us on a wonderful historical tour of the place, full of reminiscences about the end of that fabulous era. First off were the remains of the once-proud town of Connellsville, where we stayed.  Dozens of houses that used to be great, now either boarded up or let run to seed, taken over as 'Hud' houses (government housing for the poor).  She took us through the good neighbourhoods and the not so good, and on occasion you could see some houses where people have taken pride to restore them.  Churches by the dozen used to serve the large community. I wonder now about the size of their congregations.

Leisenring patch town company store

Lucille used to live in the 'patch' town of Monarch, near Connellsville; these were the small satellite communities that were built to house the coal mine and coke oven workers and their families. These 'patches' were remarkably spacious, with 2-bedroom duplex houses for the workers each given half an acre of land to grow plants or raise animals.  Each patch had a grander foreman's house, and also a company store, primary school and community centre, which housed a library, dance hall and other free time activities. Workers and their families lived, shopped, studied and celebrated in their own patches, with only occasional visits to other patches by trolley if there was a fair or other big event.  Lucille told us some great stories of living in a 'patch'; by the time she was a kid there, the end of the coke and coal era had come, but workers' families still lived in the communities. She can remember a few lit coke ovens but the grand era had gone.  We also visited Dunbar town, another place fallen into disrepair, full of boarded up buildings and lost dreams, to see a replica of a honeycomb coke oven.  I wonder if this area can ever climb out of the depressed state it is in now and find some of its former glory. It's such a pity to see it falling into decay.  But with people like Lucille around, the past can come alive for visitors to the area.

By the time we went to the train station, we had learned so much about the history of this area; we had visited a real down-home bar in the middle of nowhere and surprised the hell out of the locals ('dang, we had foreigners in our bar!'); eaten fresh, organic raspberries from a roadside community garden in Connellsville and chatted to the Vietnam vet in charge of it, who now grows organic produce for the local foodbank, and marshalls his gardening volunteers to take pride in their community; and had seen our first lightning bugs (fireflies) - which were very cool indeed!  All-in-all a very special day, mainly thanks to our wonderful hostess, Lucille.  If anyone is wanting to cycle the Great Allegheny Passage, or visit Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, then please stay at the Connellsville B&B with John and Lucille - wonderful people and a great historical area.
For more photos from the day, click here.

Tony and Lucille, in front of a replica honeycomb coke oven, Dunbar township.

A Place to Call Home?

We are now in Western Pennsylvania; the green, lush, wooded Laurel Highlands to be precise.  Beautiful area full of forests and tiny towns, rivers and hiking trails - and Frank Lloyd-Wright houses.

We actually had a GREAT train ride getting here, which has restored my faith in the Amtrak Railpass somewhat. There was even a drunken idiot on board who had to get escorted off by police, to provide on-board entertainment, but other than him the other passengers were friendly as anything, we were up on a double-storey carriage with tons of leg room, and the train was smooth as silk.  Anyway, back to clean, green Pennsylvania.  We are staying in a very nice little B&B whose very obliging hosts had organised a full-day Frank Lloyd-Wright package for us, including a gourmet packed lunch and dinner at a restaurant, along with in-depth tours of both Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob properties.  We also rented a car, and my driving skills were put to the test for the first time on American roads.  Very frustrating roads they are, too - the signage is extremely confusing, and we got a little lost quite a lot!  Then again, we also found some awesome roads, including one with grass growing down the middle, which Tony and I class as our favourite kind of road!

Fallingwater is probably the most iconic Lloyd-Wright home; built in the 1930's for a rich family, it cantilevers out over a waterfall and is quite the architectural marvel, with beautiful angles and light in all directions.  Of the two properties we both preferred this one for sheer pleasure and live-ability. It just invited you to take a good book and a cup of coffee out to sit on one of the beautifully sunny terraces that angled their way up the hillside.  The house, including all the original furniture, implements and artworks were gifted in their entirety by the son, and it's just extraordinary what was in there - a couple of Picassos, Diego Riveras, Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, tiffany glass, medieval sculpture - mindblowing. And, of course, all the custom designed Frank Lloyd-Wright furniture, made especially for the house.  Just loved the place.

The second properly, Kentuck Knob, was built in the Usonian style in the 1950's.  While impressive, Tony and I both felt that it didn't have the welcoming atmosphere of Fallingwater - it has very low ceilings (Lloyd Wright cared nothing for tall people) and was very dark and narrow feeling, apart from the lovely hexagonal kitchen smack in the middle of the place.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos of the interior, for this place was full of even more treasures than Fallingwater, and photos of the outside I found just couldn't do it justice, but it was a very interesting property, just the same, and the view from the edge of the property over the surrounding hills was stunning.  Also stunning were some of the sculptures dotted all around the grounds - everywhere you looked there were sculptures peeking out at you from behind trees or in meadows, including the famous apple core sculpture by Claes Oldenburg.

Between the tours, we found a beautiful, private little picnic spot in the woods to eat our gourmet packed lunches - I kept an eye out for bear all the while but we didn't see anything....we also went to have a look at the waterfall and beautiful swimming spot that is Ohiopyle, and generally drove around just looking at things.  Very nice.  Tomorrow we will be spending the day trying to find covered bridges, and then will hop back on the train, this time heading for Dearborn, Michigan - home of the Henry Ford Museum.  Architecture to old cars - pretty much sums it all up, don't you think :)

Further pictures from the day can be seen here