June 26, 2008

June 26, 2008

By accident we are at Letchworth State Park. I had never heard of the place until yesterday. A picture of the park was gracing a brochure I had picked up to read while waiting for the canal boat. It is billed as the “Grand Canyon of the East”. How could we pass this up?

Unfortunately it is drizzling and foggy this morning so I am afraid we are going to have a poor impression. I guess that it is the breaks. The park is long and thin and runs along a length of the Genesee River. From the first overlook we can see that the winding river has carved a pretty steep canyon thru the hills here. Impressive for the eastern US. A few more overlooks later and we are hiking to the first of three large waterfalls on the river. Between the drizzling rain and the falls overspray, it is a challenge to take a picture without water droplets covering the camera lens. While taking a break to eat lunch our friend the sun finally makes an appearance. Losing the raincoats we make our way to the middle and upper falls. In the sunshine they are beautiful. Although much smaller than Niagara, these falls make up for it with a much nicer forest ambience. We are surprised this park doesn’t get more press. A true hidden gem!

From Letchworth we drive southeast and stay at a nice private park in Campbell, NY.

June 25, 2008

June 25, 2008

After dinner last night, we took the shuttle back to the Niagara Falls for the night view. After dark they light the Falls with multicolored spotlights. The Falls are pretty at night but nothing to write home to mom about.

This morning we drove to the Niagara River at a point below the Falls where the river makes a hard turn. Here the boiling river forms an immense whirlpool. The Niagara River connects the higher Lake Erie with Lake Ontario. Below the Falls the river is at the bottom of a steep gorge. Thousands of years ago the Falls were in this area but the power of the water continually cut the rock moving the location upstream. Niagara Falls no longer erodes upstream as most of the flow is now diverted to drive hydroelectric plants. They only spill enough water over the falls to keep tourist dollars coming in.

After viewing the whirlpool we cross over the river into the US and head east to Lockport, NY. Lockport is a city along the historic Erie Canal that connects New York City and the Hudson River with the Great Lakes. When it opened in 1825, New York City quickly replaced Philadelphia as the nation’s largest port and center of commerce. At Lockport the Erie Canal has to climb up the steep Niagara escarpment. Originally a double set of five locks raised canal boats the sixty feet. When the canal was widened in the 1900’s one of the sets was replaced with two very large locks. After taking an interpretative walk around the locks we decide to take a two-hour cruise on the canal. Most of the cruise time is spent passing up the two locks and later passing back down the same locks. It is a nice relaxing ride on a beautiful sunny day.

From Lockport we head southeast and spend the night at Letchworth State Park.

June 24, 2008

June 24, 2008

After leaving the Ford Museum last night we drove into downtown Detroit to cross the bridge into Ontario, Canada. We missed the bridge exit and had to take the tunnel instead, but not before getting stuck in bumper to bumper traffic heading to watch fireworks on the river. We spent last night in a resort park just east of Windsor, Ontario.

We spent most of today traveling across southern Ontario towards Niagara Falls. At Niagara Falls we got a site at an RV park on the Canadian side and took the shuttle to the falls. Many years ago, I had seen Niagara from the American side but the Canadian view is much better. The Niagara River makes a 90 degree turn at the falls, with the Canadian shoreline facing the falls. From the US you only can glance at the side. In addition the rivers splits in two here forming two sets of waterfalls, the American and Horseshoe Falls. From the US you can’t even tell there are two. Horseshoe Falls is the more dramatic but it is obscured in the huge cloud of mist churned up by the drop. Niagara is an impressive set of waterfalls but you can’t stare at them forever. We pass on the Maid of the Mist boat ride and the staircase along the side of the falls. Both require you to get totally drenched. Instead we shuttle back to the RV for dinner.

June 23, 2008

June 23, 2008

We are back in Dearborn, MI this morning to see the Henry Ford Museum. Greenfield Village was Ford’s collection of houses and buildings. The museum is his collection of everything else. It is impressive, unbelievably large and impossible to do real justice in a single day. Not surprisingly automobiles are a large part. The museum seems to have one illustrating every single step of the evolution from horse carriage to modern car. They also have all the presidential vehicles, including the one Kennedy was shot in. They even have a Model T that they take completely apart every day and let kids assemble throughout the day. Of course I helped, installing the radiator. The Model T is a surprisingly simple compact design. I would like to get one myself. Don’t mention this to Aimee but restored versions sell on E-bay for only $8000.

Beyond cars, the museum has a collection of airplanes, trains, carriages, steam engines, farm equipment, and household goods. The central theme is the innovation that drove industrialization. If that wasn’t enough (it really is too much), the museum has a special exhibit on the history of chocolate and a large exhibit on American freedom. This last section unbelievably covers the original Independence movement, the Civil War and slave freedom, the Civil Rights movement, and Women’s right to vote. I could have spent all day in this one section. We breezed through it mostly just to see Rosa Park’s bus and the chair Lincoln was shot in.

Henry Ford is famous for his use of the assembly line to mass-produce affordable cars. He ought really to be known as an insatiable collector. But he is a man of my own heart. It turns out he also explored the country in an RV with his buddies Tom Edison and Harvey Firestone. And I bet Mrs. Edison didn’t complain about their RV either!

June 22, 2008

June 22, 2008

Just west of Detroit is Dearborn, MI and the site of Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village. You can spend all day here and we did. It is the late 19th century version of Virginia’s Williamsburg. Opened in 1929, this huge complex contains an eclectic collection of buildings that inspired or merely interested Ford. Aiming for authenticity, he bought the actual buildings and their entire contents and moved them to this sprawling complex. Greenfield contains everything from his early home, his jobsite as Chief Engineer of an electricity generating plant, Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, the Wright Brothers home and bike shop, homes from famous men of his day, to dozens of buildings from across the nation that represent Americana at the turn of the century. Like Williamsburg the whole complex is teaming with very knowledgeable docents in period costume, working at crafts. I now know more than I ever wanted to about weaving machines! All the while we are surrounded by the sights and sounds of early industrial America, coal burning steam locomotives, horse drawn carriages, bicycles, and lots of Model T’s. (Model T’s are actually very quiet!) It really is the Disneyland version though. In the real one we would have been walking down dirt roads, stepping over smelly horse manure, while coughing from the thick haze of coal fires and tired from working six long days a week. Greenfield Village is a testament to how far we have come and how different life was only a hundred years ago.

June 21, 2008

June 21, 2008

Before leaving Warren Dunes State Park, we drive to the beach for a morning stroll. Driving sure beats the safari desert crossing. We have the whole beach to ourselves, if you don’t count the few thousand sea gulls.

Afterwards we head east across Michigan, stopping once to restock the refrigerator and once in Battle Creek to check out Kellogg’s Cereal City. Tony the Tiger must not work weekends so we push on. Outside Detroit we stop for the evening at a public campground. The adjoining fairground is hosting a dog show so we walk over to it. We always like looking at the variety of dogs. Unfortunately it is a show just for American Bulldogs and Pit Bulls. Not our favorite dogs. Not surprisingly the owners are not your typical pet owner. The star attraction is a cement block sled-pull to crown “Iron Dog”.

June 20, 2008

June 20, 2008

We are in the money!! Even without any earned income or Social Security, Uncle Sam saw fit to send Stimulus Checks to both Aimee and me. Thank you George Bush. We are ready to do our bit for the economy and spend it. Our checks are going to the Saudis for enough gas to get us from here to Maine. In the meantime we sold a few more pieces of furniture from storage to pay for the return trip. With gas money in hand we wave good-bye to Aimee’s mom and point the RV southeast around Lake Michigan. With traffic and construction, it is slow going. We try stopping at Indiana Dunes State Park but it is completely booked. Continuing on into Michigan we luck out and get a spot at Warren Dunes State Park. It is crowded and for the first time we are greatly outnumbered by families and tents.

It is still early so we decide to walk the mile path to the beach for a stroll along Lake Michigan’s eastern shore. A hundred yards into the walk and we are staring at the tallest steepest sand dune I have ever seen. A dozen steps up and we are wishing we had worked out during our month off. It is one step up and slide down a couple. What keeps these insanely steep dunes in place? I would think they would blow flat in no time. After a big struggle we make it to the top and we are rewarded with a wonderful view. Unfortunately we are still a mile of undulating sand dunes away from the beach. (I am now wondering how those Arab caravans in movies can possibly travel hundreds of miles across the Sahara??) By the time we make it to the lake we are exhausted and have no desire to do the beach stroll. On the return trip we get smarter and find a trail that skirts the dunes instead of up and over. (Maybe that is the Arab secret!)

June 17, 2008

June 17, 2008

For the past week or so we have been in the Chicago area, staying with Aimee’s mom. (That is payback for her winter visits to Tucson.) Sticking with our desire to see something new every visit, we spend today exploring part of the I & M Canal National Heritage Corridor. We start at the Visitor Center in Lockport, IL where we watch a movie about the canal history. It turns out instead to be a very interesting story of early Chicago. It starts with Father Marquette and Louis Joliet, who on their return from exploring the Mississippi River system, used the two-mile Chicago Portage to return to the Great Lakes. Starting with Joliet, people dreamed of a canal connecting the Illinois and Chicago Rivers to provide an uninterrupted water route to the Midwest. In 1804 the US built Fort Dearborn to secure the portage. Finally in 1848, after bankrupting Illinois once and with the help of thousands of low-paid Irish immigrants, the 96-mile canal opened, making Chicago an instant transportation and manufacturing hub. Initially hugely successful, the canal was soon obsoleted with the laying of rail lines, but not before fueling Chicago to the position of “fastest growing city in history”. By the end of the Civil War, Chicago was the biggest US port, larger than the next six combined! In 1870 the canal hump at Summit, IL was deepened reversing the flow of the Chicago River ridding the city of its sanitary waste down the Illinois River. In the 1900’s the canal was replaced totally by the wider and deeper Sanitary and Ship Canal.

After the movie, we peruse the exhibits and walk along the old canal. From Lockport, we drive north along the corridor to the Isle a la Cache Museum. This park sits on an island in the Des Plaines River. The museum is dedicated to the fur trade business that the Chicago Portage funneled thru the area. It was a natural meeting place for the local Potowatomi Indians to exchange beaver pelts for manufactured goods from the French Canadian traders.

June 3, 2008

June 3, 2008

Aimee and I are on somewhat of a quest to see most of the National Park Systems’ sites. We didn’t start out that way, but the more we have seen the more we want to see. In general all the sites are interesting and well done, although a few I suspect the result of a politician’s deal to get federal government money. The NPS holdings have ballooned to almost 400 locations and rising. So in that spirit, we took a break from our vacation and drove into St. Louis to see the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. I had assumed I had seen it as a kid on the almost yearly school trips to Grant’s Farm, but that Anheuser Busch-owned venue is separate and next-door. Both were originally part of the once-larger Dent plantation.

After graduating West Point in 1843, Grant was stationed at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. That is where he met Julia Dent, whom he married in 1848. At the site we join a guided tour of the bright green plantation house and then peruse exhibits and a film on Grant’s life. Grant was an ardent anti-slavery advocate who married into a slave-owning plantation family resulting in frequent heated arguments with his father-in-law in the years leading up to the Civil War. This history brought alive why Grant was so successful as a general. He was cause-driven, whereas most of his failed predecessors were closet southern sympathizers who weren’t committed to winning the war.

On the way back to Godfrey, we stopped at the St. Louis Zoo to see the animals that we missed on our visit last Christmas. I am a little worried about gas prices. Despite the high price, the roads are still packed in the middle of a weekday. Prices apparently are going to have to rise considerably higher before we really reduce consumption. And our RV is not helping the situation either!!