Illinois, Part 1

Because I have a whole week of vacation time left....

Since the Virginia trip ended early and most of what we had wanted to see seems to close on October 31st, we're now off to Illinois. Specifically Springfield, the "land of Lincoln". Reservations had to be made on short notice (which made for some very interesting and creative online maneuvering at the Amtrk website for me to get seats and sleeper car arrangements). However, after a fairly uneventful trip by train (ask me about the two obnoxious "teenagers" who sat in front of me in coach), we arrived in Springfield.

In the middle of a downpour. The weather for the last two days has been rather miserable at worst, overcast at best. Add to that the fun of trying to find our way around in the dark, driving a rental car I've never seen before, and you can guess what some of the trip has been like.

Fortunately, the attractions have been good. Our first stop was the Abraham Lincoln Home Historic Site. This is the home the Lincolns owned and lived in during the 17 years they were in Springfield. The home is open to the public through guided tours, on which the guide points out items actually owned by the family that are still on display. The tour takes about 20 minutes. The house is at left.

At right is a "parade float" from Lincoln's campain in 1860. A team of horses would pull this during parades, accompanied by marching bands and walkers and other mobile displays.

Since the Lincoln Home is a National Park site, I got my National Park Passport stamped while in the Visitors' Center. I've started collecting the stamps and cancellations this past year. I'm surprised at home many of these places I've already been. I probably shouldn't be....

Our second stop was the Lincoln Museum and Library in Springfield, which was well worth the visit. The woman at the ticket counter suggested about 2.5 hours for the whole thing, but we ended up taking nearly four hours.

The museum consists of two walk-through displays, two theater shows, Mrs. Lincoln's Attic (a place for children to play with Lincoln-era toys and try on period clothing), a gift shop and a cafe. The show "Ghosts of the Library" was particularly well done. I've often suspected that the library back home has a few ghosts of its own, although not necessarily like this.

At left is the entrance to the "log cabin years", a walk-through display of information on Abraham Lincoln's early life, up until he took office as president. The "tour" is a series of rooms, hallways, and video screens. As you enter the cabin, there is a statue of Lincoln reading by the fireplace, with a dog asleep at his feet. Someone in the room is snoring (there are a couple of beds with lumps under the blankets that suggest the rest of the family is sleeping). Other sections show Lincoln debating Stephen Douglas over slavery and states' rights, working as a shopkeeper, and reading in his law office while his two sons create havoc. A series of computer screens in another room presents the campaign of 1860 as it would have been televised 100 years later. (The late Betrand Russel provided the commentary.)

At right is the entrance to "the White House Years", which deals with Lincoln's presidency and assassination. Beginning with a display of the gowns worn by Mary Lincoln's Washington, D.C. "rivals", the tour takes you through a room of political cartoons blasting the presidents policies and personal character (while a soundtrack of voices criticizes him on every imaginable subject). The frames on the cartoons start out as rectangular; by the end of the hallway, the frames are noticeably slanted.

Another scene of a kitchen has the voices of several Aftican-Americans debating the Emancipation Proclamation, followed by statues depicting Lincoln's advisors as the first draft is read to them, and then followed by a series of faces (suspended in air) offering comments and criticisms of the idea. A large screen in another room shows "the Civil War in Four Minutes" -- each second of the show = one week of the war. The colors of the Northern and Southern armies expand and contact on a map, as the names of battlefields literally explode on the screen. The tour wends its way through the end of the war, Lincoln's assassination, and a room depicting his coffin lying in state in the Old State Capitol Building.

Along with the show "Ghosts in the Library", there is another show called "Lincoln's Eyes", which includes smoke effects, explosions, and the actual movement of the seats in the theater. Both shows had impressive special effects. I can see where kids would get a lot out off this entire experience. We were in the museum along with at least one school bus-load of elementary kids, and I didn't seen any behavior problems.

In Mrs. Lincoln's Attic, my mother and I both learned how to roll a hoop with a stick, a common activity during the time of Lincoln's youth. The museum staff member there told us girls/women didn't usually spend much time doing that particular game, and he was impressed. He rewarded us by giving us directions to Darcy's Pint, a pub that offers "horseshoes", a local specialty food.

A "horseshoe", or its smaller version, the "ponyshoe", is made with toast, covered with some sort of meat (chicken and turkey, in our cases), topped by french fries and covered in cheese sauce. If you don't a cholesterol problem before you start, you will have one when you're finished.... They were pretty good, but we all agreed that one was enough.

Despite the weather, the trip so far has been reasonably good. Tonight I'm in Rockford, Illinois; tomorrow we will be off to the Ulysses S. Grant home in Galena, and then it's back to Springfield for more Lincoln history.

Reading material this trip (which has nothing to do with Lincoln): Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, by Jane Austen and H. Ben Winters. It's the original Jane Austen novel (mostly) combined with all kinds of odd oceanic creatures and done for laughs. I don't think this is as funny as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but it all seems to flow much more naturally than events in the latter. Plus, it's not a teen vampire novel -- a major bonus right now!

Virginia, Part 3

One of the most notable places to eat around Stuart is the Mabry Mill, a historic site that also boasts a restaurant and gift shop. It's located on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is something of an extension of the Skyline Drive. We had planned to come down the Parkway, but ran out of time the day before.

However, we did get on for a while to visit the Mill. At right is a family picture in front of the Mill; below is a short video of the Mill in action. My camera picks up all the noises and sounds around when I'm filming, so in addition to water you'll hear voices. Just kind of tune them out....




Mrs. Wood spent the day showing us some of the sights around Stuart and the surrounding area. We visited Lovers' Leap, a small mall featuring gift shops with local crafts, and a housing development with the homes built right up against the hills. I think it was Elkhorn Acres, but don't quote me.)

We returned to the Woods home and met up with Delano, and the five of us went to dinner together. At right are my parents and Mr. Wood in the carport of the Woods home. Below are all of them on the front porch of the Chocolate Moose, which the Woods had recommended to my parents.


The following day, however, we noticed something odd about the car. Unlike many of our trips, we drove this one ourselves, so it was the family car and understandably my parents were worried. Mrs. Wood gave us the name and location of her mechanic, and we took the car in. The problem was in the transmission -- it wasn't shifting out of third gear into overdrive. The mechanic fixed it, but we decided to cancel the rest of the vacation and head for home.

All was not lost, however. We started back up the Blue Ridge Parkway, so we did get to see a lot of scenic areas we missed the first time. Again, a 35 m.p.h. speed limit. Also, it was rainy and the visibility was poor in places, but it was still a nice area to drive through. We stopped at the Peaks of Otter lodge for lunch, which consisted of mostly sandwiches. At right is the view out the back window of the lodge. We also visited the gift shops and the National Park Visitors Center down the road.

There is a lot of wildlife in the park, and this herd of deer decided that traffic rules were only for humans.

We made reservations via cell phone for a motel in Harrisonburg, Virginia, on route 81 North, which was about as far as we thought we could go that day. From there we drove home the next day, running into snow in the Poconos. The next round of vacation time is in November, and instead of finishing our Virginia trip, we'll save that for some time in the future and will instead be off to Springfield, Illinois, "land of Lincoln". Those write-ups will be on next.

Virginia, Part 2

Left Front Royal, Virginia and headed down the Skyline Drive through the Shenandoah National Park. The weather was rather chilly, as we were at a higher altitude, but here the leaves were turning.

We stopped at one of the park Visitors' Centers for a brief movie on the history of the area, and a look out over the valley. Then we headed south on the road. The speed limit was about 35 m.p.h., so no one got anywhere very fast. It was a bit overcast, but mostly dry.

Established as a national park in 1935, Shenandoah contains about 196,000 acres, which are home to many plants and animals, including 66 rare plant species. The Skyline Drive is the only public road through the park. You can pull off and explore 75 scenic overlooks (we only stopped at a few).


Much of the road and stone work was done by the Civilian Conservation Corps, established during the Great Depression to put people to work.

About midway through the park is the Big Meadows area, one of the few fairly flat places along the route. If you look carefully at the picture, you can see a couple of people, which will provide some perspective for the area. This is across the road from another of the Visitors' Centers, which includes a walk-through display of area history.

The park is lovely, but it takes about 4 hours just to drive through it. We discovered we would have to change our route if we wanted to make it to Stuart, Virginia that night, where we had reservations. We got back on Route 81 South until we crossed Route 8, and then spent half an hour navigating the narrow and twisting road through the countryside. It was a little like riding Space Mountain at Disney World.

We finally found our accommodations, a Bed and Breakfast called the Chocolate Moose. It's run by a couple who are very much into healthy living -- all of the breakfast food is organic, there is a garden outside the breakfast window for bird watching, and the owners counsel people on maintaining a healthy diet.

Our reason for coming to Stuart was to visit the Wood family. My father met Delano Wood when they both served in Korea, and they've kept in touch ever since. The Wood Brothers have owned and operated race cars for many years, particularly the famous #21. They also maintain a racing museum, which we were allowed to visit during our stay. At left, we're posing with one of the versions of car #21.

More on the Woods, and Stuart, in the next post.

Virginia, Part 1

For various reasons, we decided to stay a little closer to home this fall. Even though we've all been to Virginia several times, we're doing the middle and western part of the state again. Can't complain, though; Virginia's always worth a visit.

This time we're driving the entire trip instead of taking the train. So we left home on Friday night, stayed in Wilkes Barre, PA overnight, and continued on to Front Royal, Virginia the next day. We're staying at the Holiday Inn, and apparently most of the hotels in the area are full, because not only is it Columbus Day Weekend, but two local colleges are having Homecoming/Parents' Weekends, so there are people everywhere. Still, our reservations were made in advance, so we had rooms waiting for us.

Our first "tour" stop was actually the local Catholic church, St. John the Baptist. We actually attended mass in the "new" church (below), right next to the original church (picture left). The original building was erected in honor of John Carroll Jenkins, a young man from Maryland who joined the Confederate Army during the Civil war. After he was killed in battle, his family donated money to build the church; they also donated a number of related items. The above link goes to the parish website. (Note: scroll down a little to find the information. For some reason, the top part is blank.)

The advantage to finding the church is that the historic area is right down the block. The next day we returned and found the Visitors Center, where we picked up a brochure for the walking tour, which took about an hour. The Center is a former railroad station, with a park around it. There is a caboose you can walk around and climb on.





Visitors Center








Gazebo in the park.





Most of the historic buildings date from the Civil War era; the rest are from the early 1900s. At right is Chester House, named for the man who ran a ferry over the Shenandoah River beginning around 1736.






The Petty-Sumption House, so named because of the two owners. Henry Petty purchased it in 1873 for his parents. In 1923, the lot on which the house stood was sold to the local school board. Charles Sumption purchased the house and moved it across the street, where it remains today. The Sumptions were renowned blacksmiths.




The Belle Boyd home. Ms. Boyd is a local heroine for spying on Union forces and aiding the Confederate Army early in the war. She was eventually captured and imprisoned, was later released, and spent time in England. She returned to the US and became and actress.

This building is located just behind the Warren Rifles Museum, which features the largest collection of Confederate artifacts in the country. An entire case there is devoted to Ms. Boyd, including an opera gown on display.

The museum also hosts displays on the Warren Rifles brigade, part of the local militia, which fought in various Civil War battles. Other displays show Confederate money and medals, dolls of the period (which were originally used as "fashion catalogs"), letters and cards from soldiers, and actual surviving Confederate flags.

After the walking tour, I took time out in the afternoon to do some horseback ricking. My steed here is John Henry, and we did reasonably well, except for the one point where I managed to fall off at the end of a jump. (Yes, I am fine, though I was sore in the morning.)

Idaho, Part 8

Guess I'd better finish this up before the next vacation starts. Oops, too late....













Well, let us leave Idaho with pictures that are actually in Montana. No, really, there's some logic behind this. We ended up with most of a day free, and decided to go back to Glacier National Park, in northwestern Montana. We had been there a few years back (yet another reason to never, ever say, "Oh, we'll never see this place again"...), but at that time much of the area had been experiencing wildfires, and the pictures I have are rather murky and foggy. So we thought we'd take a chance and try this park again.

Definitely a smart move on our part. Glacier National Park is one of those places where it's almost impossible to take a bad picture. No, really -- you have to plan to take a bad picture. The only criteria for taking a good picture is to point the camera out the car window, or just straight ahead, and push the button.

I ended up with nearly 50 pictures from this part of the trip alone. I'll only choose a few to post, or we'll be here all weekend....























































And that will about do it for Idaho/Montana. Up next -- Virginia.

Idaho, Part 7

Two of my main interests are wildlife and Native American culture. Having just finished our tour of the Wolf Education and Research Center, we spent part of the next day at the Nez Perce Indian Heritage Center outside Lewiston, Idaho. (There is a nearby town called "Clarkston", too. Guess what this part of Idaho is famous for....)

The Heritage Center (left) hosts a set of displays with traditional Nez Perce regalia, artifacts, and information, as well as a theater for a short film about the tribe's history. The people call themselves the Nimi'ipuu, which means "The People"; "Nez Perce" comes from a word meaning "those with pierced noses", a name given them by people outside their tribe.

The Nez Perce met the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805, provided them with food, shelter and medicines, and sent them on their way. Today the Nez Perce nation is one of the largest employers in the area; they own a casino and many of their people work in the local industries.

I have no pictures of the heritage center displays (flash photos are usually discouraged in museums, although the woman at the receptionist's desk said I could have taken pictures if I'd wanted to). I did spend a fair amount of time to talking to the receptionist about an item in the cases called a "woman's calendar". It looks like a ball of string with knots tied at intervals. The receptionist explained that the string was given to a girl at puberty; she tied a knot in it each time she experienced a significant event in her life (got married, had a child, survived an attack on camp, etc.) In that respect, the receptionist and I agreed, it was more like a journal than a diary.

The receptionist explained that up until about 20 years ago, anthropologists had been more concerned with finding information on the chiefs and warriors -- in short, the male members of the tribe. However, they were discovering that they were missing large portions of information on tribal life and various activities. Now they are interviewing women to get the stories told to them by grandmothers, mothers, and aunts -- the female members of the tribe. Better late than never, I suppose.

After leaving Lewiston, we stopped at Cataldo Mission (also called Sacred Heart Mission) is the oldest standing building in Idaho. Run by a Jesuit order, the first church was orignally founded at a site about 35 miles away in the early 1840s. The mission was relocated here around 1848, when a new church was erected here, just outside Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho. You can take a walking tour of grounds, which include the housing for the Jesuits (now the Welcome Center and museum), plaques describing the area and history of the church, a garden, outdoor kitchen, and the mission's bell.

On either side of the church's altar are two rooms with displays of the vestments warn at various times in the church's history (at right).



This is the altar itself. Services are still held here.






After a couple nights in Lewiston, we headed out for the last (we thought) pair of sites on our vacation. One was a gold mine tour in Kellogg. The Crystal Gold Mine is no longer a working mine (no one has dug there for nearly a century), but a lot of the equipment used for mining a hundred years ago is still in the mine, and our guide described the techniques as we walked along the path.

For example, at right is a candle holder that would fit on the side of a miner's hat. No hard hats here -- just a general hat that apparently had seen plenty of candles in its time.

At left is a quartz vein running along the mine walls. Miners looked for quartz because gold was often found in the same vicinity. Quartz comes in a number of different colors; this vein happened to be white.












Yes, that's us. No, we didn't strike it rich. Maybe next time....








In Wallace, we toured a the Sierra Silver Mine, which is still up and running, although the section we toured was not active. At left is our guide, who started by explaining various kinds of safety equipment. Back in the 1970s, the mine suffered a major fire, and some of the equipment in the picture was used for rescue, including the oxygen tanks and pump. If the wire near the top of the picture looks like a bird cage, that's because it is. Birds really were used as an early warning system for toxic gases in the mine.


At right is a simulation of rock blasting. The length of fuse on the dynamite determines the amount of time miners had to get out of the area once the fuse was lit. It could also be used to control the blast itself by cause different parts of the wall to explode at different times, essentially causing the shock waves to channel or limit the explosion. The white dots in the picture are just lights set into the tunnel wall; instead of an explosion, we just say flashing lights symbolizing the explosion.

Once the blasting is over, motorized equipment rakes the stones into a cart that then carries the stone where it can be separated. Stone containing the silver is sent off to be processed; stone that won't be used is sent back into the mine, where it is sealed up along with left-over stone and chemicals from the processing. This waste often contains hazardous chemicals and is sealed up to keep it out of the local water supply.

At right is what silver looks like just after being removed from the surrounding rock.



While in Wallace, we discovered the former local train station. This had been moved from its original location when the new highway had been put in (part of the deal with the DoT for allowing the new highway), and was used to display railroad items and other materials from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

At right is the station itself. At left is the station master's office, complete with his hat. The staff at this station often stayed right on the premises, so bathing and sleeping areas were installed.

Below is a sampling of the tools used to build and maintain the railroad.

Idaho, Part 6

I apologize for the fact that I've delayed posting the last of our trip, but once I got home, things got busy. However, the next two posts will finish the rest of the Idaho vacation

One of the main sights I wanted to see in Idaho was the Wolf Education and Research Center, located outside Winchester. The Center essentially takes in wolves or wolf/dog hybrids whose owners can't or won't care for them anymore. These animals don't know how to take care of themselves in the wild, and lack the instincts that tell them to stay away from people, so the Center provides them with a safe place to live, and an opportunity to study wolf behavior up close.

The Center essentially started with the formation of the Sawtooth Pack in 1991. Photographer Jim Dutcher wanted to do a documentary film on wolves, and spent several months living with the newly-formed pack in their original home outside Stanley, Idaho. This first pack consisted of one adult male, Akai, one adult female, Makuyi, and four pups (females Aipuyi and Motaki, and males Kamots and Lakota). As time passed, Makuyi was removed because of eye problems, and a year later, Akai went to a new home as well. At that point Kamots because the leader, or alpha male. More adults and pups were introduced: Motomo, Matsi, and Amani, all brothers in the same litter; Chemuhk, who would become the alpha female; male Wahots, and female Weyekin. The wolves' names, as you can probably tell, are taken from Native American languages, and generally describe something about the wolf.

Dutcher has produced both a movie, Wolf: Return of a Legend, and a book, The Sawtooth Wolves. There is also a documentary called Living with Wolves that presents much of the same information.

The pack moved to its present location in 1996.

Our guide met us at 4:30 in the afternoon. Morning and evening are the best time to watch for the wolves, which live in large, wooded enclosures that provide space to roam (and hide). Our first walk around the pen revealed no animals in sight, so we moved on to the visitors' center, which was built to resemble a Nez Perce Indian lodge (at left). The WERC is actually located on Nez Perce land, and the inside of the lodge doors feature hand-carved pictures (one shown at right) done by a local artist.

Our guide explained some of the wolves' biology -- what they eat (both in the wild and at the Center), their life cycle, their physical characteristics, and their relationship to some of the other animals that live in the same habitat. He also talked about conservation efforts to preserve wolves, which have been on the Endangered Species list for many years. One of the most publicized pograms is the release of timber or gray wolves into the Yellowstone National Park back in 1995. Idaho, Montana, and other western states have preserveration plans for wolves and other animals.

After the talk, we walked outside to the pens. I'm very pleased with the telephoto lens on my camera, as it got me some excellent pictures. We needed binoculars to actually see much of the animals, although after a while three of them came very close to the fence to sniff the air and see who we were. They must have been comfortable with our smells, because they hung around the fence where we could see them for several minutes.

Right now, five wolves live in one enclosure. They form the Owyhee pack and are named A, B, C, D, and E while the Center's staff works with them and decide what official names to give them.

We also walked out to the enclosure that houses the last two members of the Sawtooth Pack, but didn't see either of them. Our guide told us this is not unusual; both animals are getting very old, by wolf standards, and even the staff doesn't see them much any more.

After two hours with the wolves, we drove on up the highway to Lewiston. However, before I describe that, I have to related a couple of incidents from Winchester. First, while I was in the local post office looking for the location of the WERC offices, I met one of the few unfriendly people we discovered in Idaho. He had noticed my T-shirt, which had a picture of a wolf on it, and proceeded to tell me how much he hated wolves and wanted to see them wiped out, and followed it up with stories about how wolves kill deer and other animals. I wonder if he realizes that wolves are carnivores, and eat other animals for a living, and that there's a valid ecological reason why they do that.

The other story is one of our official "trip stories". We seem to get at least a couple of these on each vacation. They're the stand-out experiences we have each time we travel. This time, we were looking for a place to eat, since we had gotten into town in early afternoon but couldn't meet with our guide until evening. Winchester is a small town and has only a handful of places to eat, but we located one restaurant that was supposed to close at 2 p.m. However, the waitresses told us to come in and order, since they were going to be there until 2:30 anyway, and had another customer finishing his meal.

For desert, we asked for a banana split, which was listed on the board. The waitress told us they had no bananas. (Yes, I'm familiar with the song, thank you....) My parents just kind of looked at each other, and then my father went out to the car and came back in with a banana. (Yes, he really did have bananas in the car.) He handed it to the waitress, who gave him a disbelieving look, and then went off to make our banana split. (And it was good, too!)

And, as promised, I have a library photo from Winchester. We spent over an hour exploring the Winchester Public Library's collection of books and magazines after lunch was finished. It's a nice little library with a small children's section, adult and young adult fiction, and adult non-fiction, as well as a couple of computers. Picture is at right.