Cody, Wyoming

 Today we were in Cody, Wyoming.  Trish and I spent the night at the historic Irma Hotel, built by Buffalo Bill Cody in 1903 and named for his sixteen year old daughter, Irma.  It was an experience!

This morning we went to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West Museum.  You could spend days here. It is actually five museums in one.

Since Trish and I know that we get “museum overload” after a couple of hours, we decided to spend most of our time in two of the wings:  Buffalo Bill and The Plains Indians.  The most fascinating thing about the Buffalo Bill Museum was the preserved garments from throughout his lifetime.  The workmanship and the decoration, all done by hand, were complex and beautiful.  It was also remarkable that these very perishable things have been so preserved for more than a hundred years.

We learned a lot about the growth of this man’s thought processes and discovered the extremely inclusive ethnic and racial nature of the Wild West Show by the later years of his life.

On the Plains Indian side, there was very beautiful and realistic appearing diorama settings interpreting the always moving life of these First Peoples. That practical possessions were always decorated, many with handmade precision, made what we saw here especially impressive. Beadwork was mind-boggling. Again, a remarkable aspect here was the plethora of artifacts collected and assembled.  We could have stayed much longer and will surely come again another time.

Bison Safari

 On our last day at Custer State Park we decided to go on a Bison Safari.  The American Bison herd here is about 1,400 at this time of year.  In another week they will have a roundup and sell off until there are 1,000 to keep over the winter.  Then, with the spring calving season, the summer number will go back up by four to five hundred.

Since the big Sturgis Motorcycle Gathering brought 30,000 noisy motorcycles to the park just over a week ago, all the bison left the lowlands near the roads and retreated to the backwoods and the hills.  Because of this, there were none to be seen anywhere on the wildlife loop road.  So…the Safari!

Our wonderful guide, Jim, took us out in one of these Jeeps.  He knew exactly where the bison were hiding.  He was careful not to make turns when any cars were present so they could not follow.  We finally took a totally off-road route back to a valley called Robbers’ Roost.  There they were!  Maybe four to five hundred in this location.

In the Jeep we were right in the middle of the herd.  The dominant cows keep their families together and join with other families to make this herd.  Maybe a dozen to twenty families.  Adult males do not stay with the herd.  They are loners.  All the ones we saw were either female or males under the age of three.  We watched and watched as they paid no attention to us. After they reach age three, the males are run off by the cows and they become lone bulls (except for mating season!).

What a great way to finish our stay in the Park.

Riding Around Custer

 One of the nicest things about being at Custer State Park is simply riding around the fascinating roads here.  

One of the highways, South Dakota 61A, takes you up toward Mount Rushmore through a series of over and under pigtail wooden bridges and through two very tight tunnels.  The charming thing about the two tunnels is that they exactly frame Mount Rushmore in the distance so that you emerge with the mountain in their framed view.

On another drive, the Needles Highway, the road wanders through towering granite “needles” where you are actually “threading the needle” when you come to certain crevasses and tunnels as you drive.

The unique scenery makes these rides in themselves something to see with appreciation for the wonder of the creation.  What insight South Dakota had to preserve this land for the whole future to love and enjoy.

Mount Rushmore

 Trish and I are in a cabin called Blur Bell Lodges in Custer State Park just south of Rapid City for several days.  Just north of where we are staying is the Mount Rushmore Memorial, so, of course, our first stop was a visit there.

It is interesting to not only see the mountain but also try to understand how this sculpture project was carried out.  We learned that Gutzon Borglum had more than 1,200 workers employed over the seventeen years until completion in 1941. We got to visit the studio where is housed the giant-sized clay model from which the final work was created.

We are going to came back here later in the week for the nighttime lighting of the monument.  As we left to head for our cabin, we got an unexpected view of Washington in profile from almost behind the mountain.  This was a total surprise.

In the Badlands!

 We arrived at the Badlands National Park and spent the night at Cedar Pass Lodge at the tiny town of Interior, South Dakota, population 65.  The scenery here is both desolate and hauntingly beautiful.  It moves quickly from high plains to deep rock formations that show up out of nowhere.

At one of our stops we met a large group of young Amish families from Wisconsin.  They had rented a bus and a driver to take them on vacation.  As long as someone else did the driving, it was okay to travel. Almost every one of them came with binoculars.  

The only wildlife here was prairie dogs.  It seems too desolate to sustain much that is living.  We did, however, see lots of rabbits around our Cedar Pass cabin…must not be many predators for them!

Back on the Road

 This morning Trish and I had our breakfast and then walked down two blocks to the ferry terminal to ride back over to our car.  When you get to the ferry here, they check all of the luggage and the bicycles and then you get them back on the other side.  It is interesting to think through all the things that have to happen to have a vehicle free island.  Even UPS delivers by horse-drawn wagon!  We boarded for the short twenty minute ride.

Only about two dozen people were leaving on this early ferry, but the incoming one had a full load of maybe two hundred coming over for the day. 

We have had a wonderful and restful time here, but three days pretty much covers the whole island. Now it is time to head west.

Most people do not realize that between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, Michigan has more light houses than any other state in the US. Here in this very harbor is one tiny example.  It was manned by three people until finally electrified. What a tiny thing compared to what we have on the ocean.

The strait dividing most of Michigan from the Upper Peninsula was crossed by boat passage for nearly 300 years though the idea for a bridge was first raised in 1883.  Finally, in 1957, the bridge opened.  It is the longest span between cable bases bridge in the world at 5.8 miles.  What a feat of engineering and construction…and it only cost four dollars to cross.

After crossing the bridge, we drove 168 more miles to Fairmont, Minnesota in order to move as far west as we could and get ready for the rest of this week.

Still on Mackinac

 Today Trish and I had a beautiful sunny day walking all around Mackinac Island.  Being a Monday, there were fewer day-trip people here and that made our walk even more pleasant.  We went up the the Grand Hotel. (Just before leaving home we had watched “Somewhere in Time,” because it was filmed here.)

The Grand Hotel is so huge and certainly represents the preservation of something from another era. 

Of course, being here, you are in fudge country.  There are easily more than a dozen different fudge makers just on Main Street, and most of them have additional marketing outlets.  There are always samples to be had…this is the way purchases are tempted.  We tasted our share, bought some, and spent a long time watching and meeting some of the fudge makers.  It was a nice diversion.

We learned that while the summer population is around 900, the year round population is only about 600.  This made us wonder how the several large churches on the island manage to survive.  Then we started seeing the “have your wedding here” signs outside them and got our answer.  Being originally a French fur trading headquarters, the earliest religion here was Roman Catholic.  The beautiful St. Anne’s Church is the present embodiment of that history.

Mackinac Island, Michigan

 Trish and I are having a little three-day rest on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

Located just at the meeting point of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, Mackinac Island, like Ocracoke, is only accessible by ferry.  But, unlike Ocracoke, Mackinac has no motor vehicles, only bicycles and horse-drawn vehicles. The short Main Street center is about two blocks long. 

It is totally a tourist town and many, many people catch one of the ferries each day for the brief twenty-minute ride over from Mackinaw City for a day trip.  We are fortunate that we are at a small inn on the island for three nights and part of four days.  

We are simply sleeping, eating, walking, and reading.  What a better way to spend a long weekend.

The climate here in Northern Michigan is perfect for flowers.  The whole little town is filled with colors and blooms that are vibrant from the cool nights and long days of sunshine throughout the summer season.  Lots of things thrive here that do not live at all back at home.

We are just about to end the day by getting ice cream and sitting by the water to watch boats while we eat.

Lake Orion, Michigan

 From the year that she was ten years old, Trish grew up in Lake Orion, Michigan.  Today her mother, Betty, still lives in that same house at age ninety-three.  Her three brothers still live nearby also.

For the past three days we have gotten to be in Lake Orion for a family visit.

We got to explore the house and yard again with all of the contained memories.  We also got to ride around town and play “that’s where so-and-so used to be.”  One day we even went out to Cook’s Dairy, an old favorite place for her, and had huge cups of ice cream for lunch.

Trish’s mother has for a long time enjoyed tatting.  When she visited us at Ocracoke two summers ago, she was beginning a tatting project.  Now it is finished and we had a chance to admire her lovely handiwork and be assured that one was made for Trish.

That gave Trish a chance to show her mom what she was working on. They got to examine and admire the paper-piecing quilt that is traveling with us as it moves toward getting finished.  It made her mom remember how much she used to enjoy sewing .

We also got to both go out and stay in for meals together with brothers Jerry, Wayne, and Doug and with Wayne’s wife Marsha.  It was a good time.

Still at the Henry Ford Museum

 If Trish and I lived near here we would surely have a membership to the Henry Ford so we could come over and over again.  There is so much stuff of interest presented so well that you get “a museum overload” in a little while and need to take a break and then pick it up again.

As we think back, there are three more things we want to be sure to remember:

First is the C & O  1601 locomotive.  This is the heaviest multiple production and most powerful steam locomotive ever built. The double-drive locomotive has two sets of six articulated drive wheels to enable it to negotiate curves and produced 7,500 horsepower.  It pulled coat trains that were 1.25 miles long.

The second thing is the Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion house.  Designed by Fuller and first built in 1933, the house was was to be factory built and then assembled on the spot. The house idea was fascinating.  It looked like an Airstream house to be in a permanent place.  Only the demonstration models were ever actually built.

Finally, there is Trish standing beside Rosa Parks’ seat on the Cleveland Avenue bus on which she refused to give up this seat and move to the back of the bus.  To visit the actual bus itself and have identified the very seat she occupied was an almost spiritual and moving experience.  It shows us how much one person of true courage can do if we are determined to do what we know is right.

There were so many more things there to be remembered, but, we must move on to our next adventure.

The Henry Ford Museum

 Trish and I have stayed over in Dearborn today to visit the huge Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation located beside Greenfield Village.  This is a place to see!

We spent most of the morning on the transportation side. They have here four Presidential limousines in beautiful condition.  After the assassination of John Kennedy, the Lincoln in which he was shot was impounded as a crime scene vehicle.  Then it was returned to Ford and the outfitter where it was totally refitted for continued use as replacement was so very costly.  A permanent hard top was added, it was additionally armored, and other changes were made.  It was in service 15 more years and last carried Jimmy Carter.  

Behind it was the bubble top Lincoln used by Eisenhower mostly.  The car was heavily armor plated, but Ike chose to stand and hold on so that he could be seen.  There is a small windshield in front of the bar he would hold on to. He stood in front of the bubble.

The last of the limos was Franklin Roosevelt’s “Sunshine Special” the first limo specifically built for the President.  Again, it was armored and with two-inch bulletproof glass, but the President almost always rode with the top down so he could see and be seen.  It is a wonder something tragic didn’t happen  before Kennedy.

There is so much here, I will tell about more tomorrow!

Greenfield Village, Michigan

 Today Trish and I are in Dearborn, Michigan, where we spent the day at Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village.

We started our day with the steam train ride all around the Village as a sort of orientation venture.

Then we got to take a tour in a 1921 Model T all over the Village.  By now we were ready to walk around and visit the Wright Brothers’ Bike Shop (brought here from Dayton, Ohio, along with their house), Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park invention facilities (also brought here) as well as a host of other homes and shops including the Robert Frost home.

One of our favorite stops, though, was the glass blowing studio.  We love to watch Blown Away on television and this was like getting to be in the show.

It is well worth spending a whole day here.

Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum, Auburn, Indiana

 We drove up to Auburn, Indiana, today to visit one of my favorite museums and one to which Trish had never been.  It is the Auburn-Cord-Deusenberg Automobile Museum and it is located in the original factory showroom at the Auburn-Cord factory in Auburn.

This beautiful Art Deco building is perfectly restored as the home for approximately 150 Deusenbergs, Austins, and Cords.  The Austin Company was founded here in 1900 and expanded to produce Cords here as well under the presidency of E. L. Cord.  Cord pioneered front wheel drive, superchargers, and even pop-up headlamps.  The designs are beautiful. Here is a 1936 model:

While the Cords and Auburns were built in Auburn, the Deusenbergs were built near Indianapolis.  The whole company went out of business in the Great Depression in 1937.

It was a joy to see a fairly small town project preserve more than just local history in this way.  This first quality collection also tells the stories of the more than 100 different car companies that in early years were in Indiana. 

You can see that there was absolutely no shyness about color in those days.

Cataloochee Reunion

  Today Cataloochee Valley is part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Prior to the Park’s formation in 1934, the valley was occupied by more than a thousand people in several communities who were subsistence farmers.

In the Great Depression many of them had sold their land to several lumber companies, which had almost clear-cut the land, and were desperate to find ways to survive the hard times.  As the creation of the Park progressed, all the land was eventually bought and all the people, some life lifetime tenancy, gradually moved away.

Every year (except for COVID 19) on the second Sunday in August, descendants of those settlers gather in the old Palmer’s Chapel Methodist Church to worship, visit, eat, and remember.   Dinner on the grounds follows the service. My Uncle Gudger Palmer was born and raised in the valley.  His childhood home is currently being repurposed as a National Park visitor center here.  He died in 2012 at the age of 103.

Only about 150 people can squeeze into the little church building.  Others look in the windows or just visit outside saving up for the picnic time.

This year’s preacher was The Rev. David Russell. David and I went to WAYNESVILLE Township High School together and both played in the band.

The organizer and presider at each reunion for many years is Steve Woody.  Steve’s father, Jonathan was born in the valley. Later he was President of First National Bank in WAYNESVILLE and my father worked there with him for nearly thirty years.

A great feature of this year’s gathering was that North Carolina Secretary of State, Elaine Marshall, came for the Governor to present Steve with membership in the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian order that can be bestowed in a citizen of North Carolina.  Elaine is a frequent attendee at the reunion.  This puts Steve in company with the likes of Andy Griffith, Dean Smith, Maya Angelou and many other stars in the North Carolina galaxy.

Before the service ends, the names of descendants who have died during the pats year are read and the church bell is tolled for each of them.  In the afternoon people revisit their ancestors’ home places and many take home jugs of water from the same source as that used by those ancestors.

It is a deep time of memory and we shall return next year.

Boyd Mountain Cabins

 We are back on the road for a six-week trip that links storytelling engagements with lots of fun on the way.  After a stop in Greensboro to see Kahran, Jonathan, and Cash, we came on up to WAYNESVILLE ahead of a Sunday event nearby.

We are staying at Boyd Mountain Cabins, a wonderful collection of restored and enhanced log cabins built (along with their Christmas tree farm) by my high school classmate, Dr. Danny Boyd and his wife Betsy.

This time we are staying in the Long Branch cabin where we have been joined by our son, Doug, his wife, Jill, along with our son, Kelly and his wife, Erin, and son Frank.  This cabin sleeps eight people.

The cabins are almost all out of sight from one another and arranged throughout beautiful landscaped mountain land that includes flowers, trees, two little lakes, and waterfalls.

If you need a quiet place to relax and hide out, you might like this place as much as we do.

The “New” Variety Store

 Many people who have not been to the island ask us, before they come, whether they need to bring all their groceries with them.  The answer is: no.  We have, maybe a quarter mile from our house, the Ocracoke Variety Store.  Tommy Hutcherson and his crew work very hard to keep us stocked with an always growing inventory of grocery and hardware items.

During Hurricane Dorian the Variety Store was flooded.  But, through working day and night, they were back up and running in less than a week.  The hard thing was getting delivery trucks to come over to the island at that time.  Then one day an entire tractor trailer truck loaded with goods arrived.  It had come out of the stock of Conner’s Grocery on Hatteras Island.  They had generously come to our rescue and even sent staff to help get things stocked.  We are community.

This past winter a wholesale remodeling and enlargement of the store was undertaken.  It was fascinating to go in each day and see the overnight progress while at the same time they were open to customers.  Now the reworking is almost finished and we have a totally new store with greatly increased capacities especially in areas such as frozen foods, meats, and produce.

While there is much more stock variety, things seem to still fly off the shelves during tourist season and stocking goes on constantly.

The hardware side is also totally reconfigured. Yes, we have a real old time hardware store where you can buy one screw at a time along with tools to borrow for your own plumbing fixes.  We could not get along without it.

If you need it, the Variety Store almost always has it.  Thanks to Tommy!

Ocracoke Sunset

 On most evenings we check out the time for sunset and then look out from our house to see whether the sky looks promising.  If it looks clear and probably good we then put the top down on the convertible and ride down to the “sunset place” at the edge of the Pamlico Sound to watch the color show.

There may be more than two dozen golf carts and an equal number of cars here with gatherings of families and friends for the show of the day.  It is lovely to see how happy people are in having a good time on our island.  There are always residents as well as tourists.

Everything from colors to brightness changes as the sun descends toward the water.  We always try to guess whether it will make it all the way in clarity or perhaps a previously invisible cloud will catch it and hide its last appearance.  It is always unique and different.

When the finale comes, we do not leave quickly.  There is always a very different afterglow that lights clouds and different parts of the sky with such a variety of colors.  This is an ending of our day for which we are always thankful.