The Empire State

We had an awesome if rainy time in Ithaca, visiting with Jenny and Trevor, playing dress up, drinking, grilling, and playing cribbage. We discored that Ithaca is gorges.

We also popped by Niagara Falls, the American side on the way. It was great to meet up with Lindsay and Gange on the minimoon, fresh post wedding. We also had fun doing the Cave of the Winds.

Look at these awesome  sandals they give you to prevent squishy sock.

Enjoying the ride at the Hershell Carousel Museum.

We rode our way back in to MA via Old Sturbridge Village on Saturday and are excited to have some family time over these next few weeks as we wind down this Vagabonding life and transition into the gray area of job searching  and reestablishing some more preminent form of residency. Superlatives, reflections and more blog posts to follow!

Metal Parks and Museums

One of the things we realized while visiting some of the museums and national parks out west is that a lot of the informational signs had some phrases that would make up an excellent tracklist for a metal album.  Then it became a game to look for the best one.  Here's the best of the lot:

Mass Death Assemblage

Mordichinal Trailway

Zone of Confinement

The Predator Dines

Moonax

A Beast the Color of Winter

Shaped by Fire

Chi-town and The Motor City

We popped into Chicago for a day to check out Wrigley Field and watch a Cubs game.

Look, it may not be the same spelling, but I'm the official nut of the Chicago Cubs

The quintessential baseball lunch, the Chicago dog. NO ketchup allowed.

Wrigleyville, the nighborhood around the park, has several buildings with rooftop bleachers where even though you're not technically in the park,  you  can easily watch the full game. You know, like an outdoor version of the HoJo study lounge ( for our BU readers )

Cubbie wants you to be mindful while at the game.

We pushed on through Illinois and Indiana, and worked our way through Kalmazoo and into eastern Michigan for the 4th of July. For festivies, we got tix to see the Detroit  Symphony Orchestra play at the Henry Ford (a massive historic /education complex) Ford brought out the Red, white and blue, as you can see. 

We also checked out the Detroit Institute of Art, where Jim rediscovered this VanGogh, a print that hung in his grandfather's house when he was a kid. Interesting how art can sometimes trigger memories of place and time.

One of the most famous pieces are the Diego Rivera murals, created as an homage/comment on industrialization  and capitalism in the hay-day of the Ford production line. 

We took a pleasant  stroll around down Detroit, enjoying the Art Deco and Nouveu  architectural styles that permeate the area, as well as the public art (the Joe Frasier fist),and the waterfront. We also wandered around the GM global headquarters  for a bit.

Wisconsin

We spent about a week in Wisconsin and had a nice relaxing time.  We stopped in Madison for a night and wandered around a bit.  The University of Wisconsin has a nice campus, but really the most important thing was that we bought small pieces of 5 different kinds of cheese to sample over the next few days.  It is Wisconsin after all.  The sheep cheese wasn't my favorite but the Asiago was tasty and the 10 year aged cheddar was intense.   Hard to beat the stuff from Gouda when we were with Sandy and Norman in the Netherlands, though.

Then we moved onto Milwaukee or Milewokie as Christiana could not stop calling it.  Of course Alice Cooper taught us that is Algonquin for "The Good Land."

This is the Milwaukee Art Museum.  Most of the collection is not open right now due to renovations so we didn't go in but it is a pretty cool building right on Lake Michigan.  Those wings are actually shades and they can open and close them.  Every day at noon they "flap" them once by closing and reopening them.

We also went to Summerfest which is the largest music festival in the world.  They have over a thousand bands over a couple weeks.  We didn't see anyone particularly of note the day we were there but the fairgrounds are really nice and fried cheese curds are the real deal.

Doing my best Captain Frederick Pabst impression.

The Pabst breweries complex is really interesting.  There are 28 buildings that were saved from demolition and they are in various stages of renovation.  They take up a good chunk of downtown Milwaukee.  They do tours in the old office building and have turned some of the others into condos and hotels and restaurants.  You learn some really cool history on the tour.  Pabst is still an American owned brewery and they have acquired enough old brands to be one of the largest wholly owned American breweries but all of their beer is now contract brewed by Miller.  They are really a giant holding company.  

Fun fact: Pabst Blue Ribbon never actually won a blue ribbon.  It won a gold medal.  The name comes from the fact that it used to be sold with a blue ribbon tied to the bottle and consumers gave it that nickname which stuck.  It was eventually formally renamed.

There are a lot of Danish immigrants in Racine and the specialty in this area is the kringle.  It's a giant iced danish the size of a small tire.  Ours had cherries, cranberries, and cream cheese.  We enjoyed it here on an awesome if a bit windy beach on Lake Michigan.

SC Johnson is based in Racine and they give free tours of their offices designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  This first picture is just outside the main entrance.  Notice the lily pad columns.  These go throughout the inside of the office building as well.

This is the research tower which was used from 1950 to 1982 when fire regulations required it be closed.  This is where scientists invented Glade, Raid, Off, and Pledge.  It alternates circular and square floors.  It's really neat architecturally but you wonder how easy it was to work there in practice.

Frank Lloyd Wright also designed the home for one of the Johnsons.  This house is called Wingspread.  Again, it's pretty cool architecturally but it would be strange to actually live there given the set up.

The Grain Belt

Hello Minnesota! 

Hiking the waterfalls at Minneopa state park

Touring the 2nd oldest continously operating family run brewery in the country, Schell

Enjoying the public art in Mankato

Visiting the "Minnie Apple", checking out the sculpture garden and the Walker

Public art mini golf, curling instalation

The Mall of America, not as impressive as we were perhaps expecting

The American Swedish Institute,

A delightful afternoon fika at the institute  with Americanized  versions of swedish classics

Starting East

We had originally planned to drive all the way to the Pacific Ocean, but decided to scrap that plan as it would have added more miles than we wanted and felt rushed.  So, after Glacier we started to head east.  After Montana we went back into Wyoming briefly and across South Dakota.  Here's some of what we saw on that stretch.

This is Devil's Tower in northeastern Wyoming.  It is a giant rock in the middle of nowhere basically that was formed by an igneous intrusion.  That is, magma cooling and solidifying before it reaches the surface and then the surrounding area eroding away and you have what you see today.  It's pretty big, you can see a speck of a person on the rocks at the bottom.

There are large caves in the Black Hills in western South Dakota.  We visited two and both have interesting calcite formations.  Jewel Cave is on top and that calcite looks kinda like brains.  If it wasn't dirty it would be white and glisten like crystal.  Wind Cave is the second picture and it has the greatest collection of boxwork in the world.  It's still calcite but it forms (from erosion because it's harder than the limestone around it) in a thin box like pattern.  Pictures in caves never come out great but the boxwork can be really creepy looking.  It would be a good setting for a horror movie.

Wind Cave also has some nice hikes.  Christiana did this one herself and is relaxing by a creek here.

Custer, South Dakota is one of the main tourist towns in the Black Hills because it's right in the middle of most of the attractions.  Caves, parks, Mount Rushmore are all less than a half hour away.  This also attracts some quirky museums as well like the National Museum of Woodcarving.  It's really a showcase of the life's work of Harvey Niblack.  He did thousands of elaborate animated wood carvings and even did some work for Disneyland.  A lot them of are pretty strange scenes like an 1800's dentist office complete with movement to simulate ripping out a tooth.

Mount Rushmore is an interesting place to visit to learn about its creation, but it honestly doesn't look a ton different in person than in pictures.  They were supposed to do more (like give Washington a full coat) but the creator died and then World War II happened so work stopped.  

One cool story: workers had a baseball team in the South Dakota amateur league and there was a famous game where both pitchers had no hitters going into the 10th before Mount Rushmore had a walk and a triple to score the winning run.  They guy who hit the triple is the only surviving driller who worked on Mount Rushmore and was there signing books when we visited.

The workers played cribbage in their downtime so we had to play a game their too.  This was when we were waiting for the nightly lighting ceremony which is so patriotic it feels like American propaganda.  That small bit of cynicism aside, it was a cool ceremony and they call down all active and former military at the end and have them give their names and branch which is nice.

Here's the Badlands.  Nice to look at for a second driving through and then you move on.  Also the ranger didn't want to give Christiana a junior ranger book so we didn't stay long.  On to Minnesota!

Crown of the Continent, Backbone of the World: Part II, East Glacier

Driving around to the east side of Glacier, we stopped at Two Medicine to check out the "trick" waterfalls. Notice there are two.

Also, the rocks. Their color variation in the combination in which we see it is also caused by glacial movement. Each color essentially  represents a different set of millions of years. We get to see them all together because the glaciers grind things up and push them together. Also at Two Medicine, we were treated to some lovely lunch conversation.  We sidled  up next to a picnic bench with the best view, and got to chatting with Shawn and Kim. A heart attack at 51 prompted a life change and they sold everything, bought an RV and are traveling the US 150 miles at a time. Check out their blog here: ktmissouri.blogspot.com . We never cease to bump into fellow travelers who just reinforce that  if you work to make it real, anything is possible. Shawn and I both agreed, it's amazing what you can manage to do if you're willing to crunch a few numbers. 

Up to Many Glacier, this is the view from our "lake level" room

We were excited for the hiking at Many Glacier, and kicked off the day with a boat ride and the ranger guided hike to Grinnell Lake

Check us out at Grinnell Lake

Looking back at the boat on Lake Josephine

Our second hike of the day was to get as far up the Grinnell Glacier Lookout trail as the park service would let us go (the full trail won't  open until July when they blast away the remaining snow with dynamite). This is the bear grass glacier post card shot.  Misnomer on bear grass though, bears don't eat it, and it is not a grass.

On the trail we met a couple celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary. They took this photo for us. Maybe in 20 years we'll  be able to hike this trail again, we'll have to see how the knees hold up, it is well over 5 miles with a 1600ft elevation change.

This was as far as we could get, but it proved to be probably our favorite hike in the park, and maybe a favorite view too. On the upper left-middle, the round snow section is Gem glacier, next to it on, the right, sort of in the bowl of the mountain, Grinnell Glacier, and to the right of that, Salamander glacier. Feast your eyes now, because it's  likely that by 2030, these won't  be glaciers anymore (global warming is real!)

Looking back at the Many Glacier lodge, this swiss chalet style attracted wealthy Americans back in the 20's under the slogan, "See America First", as promoted by the great northern railroad  company. Now it feels a little hokey, and kind of big. If you could pick up Lake MacDonald Lodge and put it down here instead, you'd have a pretty winning combination. But seriosuly, no complaints,  this park is awesome.