New River Gorge National Park and Preserve: The Bridges

Posted on April 5, 2023 by admin

I didn’t appreciate the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia until I’d driven across it more than once, and more importantly, seen it from a distance.

A handsome design for a magnificent setting. Elegant. Sturdy. Spanning the gorge spider-web like. Imagine a species of large, intelligent arachnids that can extrude metal and spin webs of steel across the many gorges on their forested planet. Artful shapes like the New Gorge River Bridge, maybe.

Even better, such an artful shape was made by us clever apes here on Earth. Within my lifetime, completed in October 1977. If I’d been in that part of West Virginia then, I could have driven across the newly minted bridge carrying my newly minted drivers license, obtained in some haste that summer to take a girl I’d recently met on dates. But I wasn’t anywhere near the bridge in my South Texas adolescent driving days, and never heard of it till much later.

“The bridge reduced a 40-minute drive down narrow mountain roads and across one of North America’s oldest rivers to less than a minute,” the park service says. “When it comes to road construction, mountains do pose a challenge. In the case of the New River Gorge Bridge, challenge was transformed into a work of structural art — the longest steel span in the Western Hemisphere and the third-highest in the United States.

“The West Virginia Division of Highways chose the Michael Baker Co. as the designer, and the construction contract was awarded to the American Bridge Division of U.S. Steel. In June 1974, the first steel was positioned over the gorge by trolleys running on three-inch diameter cables. The cables were strung 3,500 feet between two matching towers. Cor-ten steel, with a rust-like appearance that never needs painting, was used in construction.”

Good to know, but if anything, the experience of driving across the bridge is too detached from the sense that you’re passing over an 800-foot void. The opaque fences along the edges of the bridge obscure the drop, though you do get a glimpse of the far-away cliffs of the gorge.

The bridge transits New River Gorge National Park and Preserve land on either side. A few minutes walk from the park’s visitor center takes you to a view of the bridge, which we saw on the morning of March 23, the brightest, warmest day of the trip.

The gorge, looking away from the bridge.

The old way to cross the gorge by vehicle involved spending 40 minutes or more on small roads that switchbacked their way down into the gorge, to just a few feet above the river, where there’s a much shorter bridge.

Stop there and you see the postcard-Instagram view of the New River Gorge Bridge in all its glory.

We drove down to the river the morning of March 24, the day after we’d seen the bridge from near the visitors center. Cold rain fell periodically and clouds clung to the side of the gorge.

A small aside. I saw that a number of things are named after Sen. Byrd in West Virginia, and I’m sure if I’d stayed longer, I’d have seen more. Why not this grandest of Mountaineer State bridges? Than again, maybe the thought of it being the “Byrd Bridge” has given policymakers second thoughts on a renaming.

The bridge down near the banks, where a few generations of West Virginians before 1977 made the crossing, does have a name: Tunny Hunsaker Bridge.

I had to look him up. I thought, local politico? A local man who didn’t return from a war? No, he was a prizefighter who later was police chief of nearby Fayetteville, West Virginia (d. 2005). I’m not up on the history of boxing. Now I’ve read that Muhammad Ali’s first professional win, in 1960, was against Hunsaker.

The current bridge dates from 1997, built to replace an earlier iteration. You can’t walk across the New River Gorge Bridge (except on Bridge Day), but you can walk across Tunny Hunsaker any time. So we did in turn. When you can cross an interesting bridge in an epic setting, you should.

Ohiopyle State Park

Posted on March 30, 2023 by admin

The curious name Ohiopyle has naught to do with Ohio, which is apparently from a Seneca word meaning “big river” – but rather apparently a Delaware (Lenape) word meaning “frothy waters.” Standing on the banks of the Youghiogheny River, looking at Ohiopyle Falls in Ohiopyle State Park in southwestern Pennsylvania, that’s easy to see.

For its part, Youghiogheny, also Lenape, apparently means “flowing backwards,” and so it seems to at times, as it twists along, including in the park. I say apparently each time because I only know what I read, and am not an authority on any Native American language, or the place names that evolved from Indian words, which have a long history of being mangled or given over to (apparently) fanciful translations.

The state park is large – more than 20,000 acres – and Fallingwater is just outside its bounds. After visiting Fallingwater, we sought lunch in the town of Ohiopyle, which is actually the borough of Ohiopyle. Pennsylvania has counties, cities, boroughs and townships, but not towns, according to the Pennsylvania Manual, Volume 125, page 6-3. Boroughs form a middle rank of populated areas between cities and townships.

Anyway, the borough of Ohiopyle is only a few blocks in any direction, and clearly a tourist town, but not on the order of Gatlinburg in Tennessee or Wisconsin Dells or Hannibal, Mo. Rather, it caters to visitors to the park, who are mostly there for rafting, kayaking, and canoeing on the waters, and hiking, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, mountain biking and snowmobiling on land. I have a feeling the place is best known to Yinzers and unpleasantly crowded on summer weekends.

Mid-March is low season, and so pleasantly uncrowded. Only one place that served food seemed to be open, and we got sandwiches to go. There must be some full-time residents. Someone goes to Ohiopyle United Methodist Church.

Across the street from the church is a former train station, these days a tourist office with public bathrooms that serve recreational travelers on the Great Allegheny Passage. I don’t think I could think of a more Pennsylvania-y name than that for a trail. If we had a mind to – or more to the point, time for it – we could have walked to Pittsburgh. Or to Cumberland, Maryland, going the other way.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the trail was formed from a series of abandoned railway lines: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, Union Railroad, and Western Maryland Railway. Standing in Ohiopyle, all you see is that the trail crosses a cool old railroad bridge.

Love locks. Not many, though. Guess that beats graffiti.

Yuriko and the dog went on ahead. I paused here and there to push my camera button, and take in the views of the Youghiogheny in that better way, with your eyeballs.

I’d just planned to cross the bridge and come back, but they found a trail at the bottom of the stairs, one leading off onto the Ferncliff Peninsula.

Looked easy enough. Mostly the trail followed the river.

Eventually the trail lost its through-the-woods vibe and offered us rock surfaces and large underfoot stones and mud patches, which slowed us down.

Better shoes and our walking sticks were back at the car, so eventually we turned around, but not before getting a close look at the top of Ohiopyle Falls.

Just another bit of turbulence destined for the Gulf: Youghiogheny, Monongahela, Ohio, Mississippi.

Tri-State Appalachian Equinox Road Trip

Posted on March 26, 2023 by admin

Old Chinese proverb, I’ve heard: even a journey of 1,000 leagues begins by backing out of the driveway. That we did on Friday, March 17. We pulled back into the driveway on Saturday, March 25. In between we traveled 2,219 miles, using the ragged marvel that is the system of roads in the United States.

My fanciful name for the trip refers to three states that were the focus: Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. We actually passed through seven states, also including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and very briefly, Maryland.

We saw a lot of places, but two in particular motivated the trip as a whole. One was Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright sculpture – I mean, house – perched over an irregular drop on Bear Run, a creek in rural Pennsylvania. Visiting Fallingwater had long been an ambition of Yuriko’s, maybe since before she lived in this country, since FLW is known far and wide; but I needed no persuasion to go myself.

The other was New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in eastern-ish West Virginia. This was my suggestion, since I keep up on national parks. But I’ve wanted to go there a good while, long before Congress promoted it to national park, which only happened in 2020. Besides, it was high time I spent a little more than a few minutes in West Virginia which, for whatever else it has, is known for its surpassing scenery. This reputation, I can confirm, is deserved.

Weather-wise, spring travel is a crap shoot. The day we left a cold, unpleasant wind blew in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and it followed us under the same gray skies and at temps barely above freezing the next day, into central Ohio.

By last Monday, in southwest Pennsylvania, temps had moderated with the appearance of the sun, and each day was more pleasant than the last as we headed south into West Virginia, where the grass had greened and some bushes had too, though most trees were at the barely budding stage. Thursday, March 23 proved best of all, with sunny skies and temps in the 70s, allowing us to enjoy the best meal of our trip — ricebowl meals — at a picnic table in Fayetteville, W.Va.

A cold rain came calling on Friday as we headed from West Virginia back to Ohio. On Saturday, again in central Ohio, it wasn’t bitterly cold, but the wind was so strong at times that it jostled my car as I drove and my body as I walked. Rain squalls came and went, with a spell of sleet I actually enjoyed, sitting in our parked car listening, knowing that the ice was too small to do any damage. Returning home yesterday, Illinois was pretty much as we’d left it, chilly and not-quite-spring.

The upshot of it all is to pack for the weather variety you’re going to encounter, and I was more than glad – as I returned to the car in a stiff wind, crossing a green field in small-town Ohio, feeling wind chill that must have been around zero (and I mean Fahrenheit) – that I’d brought the coat I use most of the winter.

We brought the dog. We don’t want to leave her at a kennel any more, and no one was at home to mind her. Having your dog along is something like traveling with a small child you can’t take into restaurants or a lot of other places, but we don’t regret a bit of it. Long drives in the car don’t faze her at all, since after the first few minutes, that’s like lying around the house and, as the comedian said, a dog’s job is lying around the house.

She had her energetic moments too, more than you’d think for an ancient dog, such as walking the trail to Diamond Point overlooking the New River Gorge, with its smooth straightaways through forests giving way to patches of mud, large rocks or tightly packed tree roots underfoot, sometimes all of those in a single stretch. Our reward for the sometime-slog was a vista of rare beauty. Her reward? I don’t think it was anything so visual. Maybe following the pack is its own reward for her.

Companion dogs also mean you acquaint yourself with the look and feel of the front office and main entrance of limited-service hotels during the empty early a.m. hours, well lit as a Broadway stage but without any players. Except maybe for the night clerk, just outside the door, who is peering into his phone, cigarette in other hand. Probably our dog, as any dog, could be trained to pee on a disposable rug in the room during the small hours, but somehow we’ve never wanted to do that. There’s something appealing somehow about the ritual of dressing as simply as possible a few minutes after waking at 2:30 or 3, or 25 or 6 to 4, hitching a leash to the dog’s collar and repairing to the first patch of green, or pebbles ringed by a curb, outside the hotel door

Take me home, country roads. I’ll say this for West Virginia, it’s got some crazy-ass serpentine roads through its ancient and forested mountains. The Laurel Highlands in southwest Pennsylvania was no piker in that regard, either. You need to keep an intense focus on the road as it winds this way and that, rises and falls, and passes ever so close to boulder walls, massive trees and wicked ditches. If you don’t mind thinking about your mortality every now and then, that’s some good driving.

Mostly good driving. There are moments when a red sedan, or a black pickup truck, decides that tailgating you at roughly the speed limit as you wind around and navigate switchbacks, is a good idea, and blasts around you at the first marginal opportunity, double solid stripes be damned.

Yet I only got the smallest sampling of the twisty roads. No roads without pavement this trip, though plenty enough didn’t bother with details such as guardrails. Another, entirely unpaved and mostly unregulated network of roads and tracks, many perhaps pre-New Deal, must exist in West Virginia. Out away from the nearest town, while we were parked a national park site on a small paved road, three ATVs buzzed past, each with two people. They were headed toward town after emerging from the woods, their vehicles streaked with mud. I was just close enough to see in their faces they’d had a fine time out in the unpaved network.

Also, if you really wanted to get home to West Virginia, wouldn’t you take the Interstate?

We made stops in Ohio going and coming.

On Saturday, March 18 we made our way south from Ann Arbor, where we’d spent the first night, to Columbus, Ohio, to spent the second. On the way is the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation, a Byzantine edifice rising in a small town, which we visited, but also sites associated with Warren G. Harding: his memorial and burial site, and also his home, in the large town of Marion, Ohio.

Our return home, beginning on Friday, March 24, took us back through Ohio, to Columbus for the last night of the trip. Saturday morning, after takeout breakfast at Tim Horton’s – for that part of Ohio is in the Tim Horton’s orb, we were glad to learn – we visited downtown Columbus and the Ohio Statehouse in a howling cool wind. Ate lunch, Korean-style chicken and salad, sitting in the car in a clearly gentrified neighborhood, the bricked-streeted German Village. We spent the rest of Saturday driving back, via Indianapolis.

On the morning of Sunday, March 19, we left Columbus and made our way east through the remarkable town of Newark, Ohio, then Wheeling and Moundsville, West Virginia and from there to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, a mid-sized far outer suburb of Pittsburgh. Or at least it will be in a few years.

On Monday, we paid our visit to Fallingwater, taking turns on tours, after which we had lunch in a low-season tourist town and took an impediment-rich hike in Ohiopyle State Park, along the rocky shore of the Youghiogheny River, at that point boasting a highly picturesque waterfall. That was enough for one day for Yuriko, who napped in the car (along with the dog) as I walked the much shorter and smoother path to Fort Necessity National Battlefield late that afternoon.

On Tuesday, we made our way back west a short distance, to visit the Palace of Gold in rural West Virginia, in the peculiar north panhandle of the state (which I’ve long thought of as a conning tower). We returned that day to Uniontown by way of Moundsville, W. Va., home of an ancient mound of remarkable height, a former penitentiary of remarkable solidity, and a bridge across the Ohio River of remarkable elegance. Those things, and some tasty if not remarkable barbecue.

The next day, we left for West Virginia, but not by the most direct route, because I wanted to see the Flight 93 National Memorial in deep rural Pennsylvania. Progressively smaller roads lead there, including – as we traveled it, which I figured would be the quickest route – a short stretch of I-68 through the oddity that is the Maryland panhandle. Late that day, Wednesday, we arrived in Beckley, W. Va.

We spent almost all of Thursday at the national park, at one sight or another, driving and hiking and pondering historic and sometimes crumbled structures. But that wasn’t quite enough. On Friday morning, before we left for Ohio, we went back to the park. Around noon, we headed west, passing through Charleston long enough to visit the West Virginia State Capitol and eat Chinese takeout, though not at the same time. A little north of Charleston, we crossed back into Ohio after gassing up near the small town of Ripley, West Virginia. Believe it or not.

One other thing: this was a vacation from the news, which following is part of my job. Except for the briefest snippets on the radio, when sometimes I didn’t change stations out of habit for some seconds, I ignored the news of the world, or even smaller parts of it. I think that’s a good thing to do.

But of course, a few things got through. I heard the opening bars of The Dick Van Dyke Show theme on a news program one day, and I jumped to the conclusion that he had died. That isn’t a big jump, since he’s 97. But no, merely a one-car accident.

Image being that well regarded, that your minor auto accident as a nonagenarian is national news. Anyway, glad not to say, RIP, Dick Van Dyke.

Buffalo Creek Park, Long Grove

Posted on February 28, 2023 by admin

This is all the that Long Grove Park District has to say about Buffalo Creek Park in Long Grove: “Buffalo Creek Park became the Park District.”

Maybe that’s just a mangled placeholder. Guess the district will get around to finishing that description sometime. Unless they decide to let generative AI do their jobs for them, like certain exceedingly lazy employees of my alma mater did recently. They need to be careful, though.

Me: Describe Buffalo Creek Park in Long Grove, Illinois.

Generative AI: Buffalo Creek Park is a public park located in Long Grove, Illinois. The park covers an area of approximately 408 acres and features a variety of natural habitats, including wetlands, prairies, and savannas…

There was more, but I’m skipping it because clearly the program mistook this small park with the much larger Buffalo Creek Forest Preserve. Oops.

I don’t know the park’s actual size, but I know for certain it isn’t anything close to 408 acres – 20 or 25 would be my guess. One entrance to the park is near Long Grove’s historic covered iron bridge.

At the stub end of February, the park is a brown expanse.

In contrast to what it looks like in July.

A single bridge crosses Buffalo Creek.

Buffalo Creek is a short (about 11 miles) tributary of the Des Plaines River, which eventually flows to the Illinois, itself is a tributary of the Mississippi. I enjoy knowing that some of the chilled water under that little bridge is bound for the warm reaches of the Gulf.

A gazebo. Long Grove wouldn’t be a very civilized place without one, after all.

Time to see what ChatGPT knows about gazebos.

Me: What’s the difference between British and French gazebos?

Generative AI: British gazebos are typically more traditional and classic in their design. They often have a hexagonal or octagonal shape, with a pointed or domed roof. British gazebos also tend to feature intricate details such as latticework, ornate moldings, and decorative finials. They may be constructed from wood, metal, or other materials.

French gazebos, on the other hand, are often more ornate and elaborate in their design. They may feature curved lines, intricate ironwork, and decorative scrollwork. French gazebos may also have a more rectangular or oval shape, with a flatter roof. They are often made from wrought iron or other metals, and may be adorned with flowers or other decorative elements.

Oh, really? I can make up stuff about gazebos, too, Mr. Robot Brain. It takes me a little longer, but I’d say my make-believe is still higher quality. For now.

Looks like some Eagle Scouts – and their leader, Aadi Jain? – this troop, since Buffalo Grove isn’t far away? – take an interest in civic improvement projects. I’m happy to report that the gazebo ramp is smooth and stable.

One more park feature: a plaque-on-boulder memorial.

The honoree is one Edward H. Wachs III (1907-99), who, according to the words in bronze, was on the local school board, the village board, the park district board and the architectural board. That’s a long lifetime on boards.

The Peace Bridge

Posted on February 15, 2023 by admin

Not long ago, I learned that gephyrophobia, an irrational fear of bridges, is a real thing. I find it a little hard to imagine. I’ve been on a few white-knuckle bridges in my time, such as the unnamed span that crosses the Mississippi from Savanna, Illinois, to Sabula, Iowa, which is as narrow as two-lane bridge can be and still be two lanes. But that was a rational reaction, not a generalized dread.

“In Michigan, the Mackinac Bridge Authority drives vehicles for free over a bridge that connects the state’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas and rises 199 feet above the strait below,” Car & Driver reports. “Formerly known as the Timid Driver Program, it’s now referred to as the Driver Assistance Program. Bridge staff, who are also responsible for escorting hazardous-materials trucks and maintenance chores, drive up to 10 people across the bridge each day.”

Mostly I have the opposite reaction to bridges, wanting to cross them in one way or another – walking, driving or by public conveyance. That includes the grand bridges I’ve crossed, such as Mighty Mac but also the Brooklyn Bridge, Golden Gate, Sydney Harbour and Seto-Ohashi, as well as mid-sized and smaller ones. Sometimes it’s an essential part of visiting somewhere, such as crossing the bridges on the Thames in London, the Seine in Paris and the Vltava in Prague. Or even the Tridge in Midland, Michigan.

In Batavia, Illinois, a footbridge crosses the Fox River from the west bank peninsula to the east bank. I had no hesitation in crossing it during our Saturday visit. It’s a fairly ordinary iron structure with wood planks, the kind you see in a lot of places.

Except for one feature, best seen from nearby.

It’s known as the Peace Bridge. The “PEACE” and “EARTH” letters are 12 feet tall; the “ON” letters eight feet. Beginning from their first installation in 2008, the letters were seasonal each year — around Christmas — but now they are year-round.

Remarkably, the sign was the idea of a local barber, Craig Foltos, owner of Foltos Tonsorial Parlor, who persuaded the Batavia Park District to install the letters he had fashioned (with help).

Foltos Tonsorial Parlor. I like that name so much I might have my hair cut there someday.

Capitol Mall & Old Sacramento Stroll

Posted on November 1, 2022 by admin

One place to go from the California state capitol is down Capitol Mall, a boulevard that generally heads west-northwest from that building to the Sacramento River three-quarters of a mile or so away.

The view down the Mall from the capitol.

The yellow-gold structure in the distance is Tower Bridge, which I decided was my destination that afternoon, on my last full day in California. The day was very warm, but I had a hat (acquired at Joshua Tree NP) and a bottle of water.

U.S. Bank Tower (621 Capitol Mall), an HOK glasswork, rises 25 stories over the street, making it the second-tallest building in the city.

I liked the blue tones of Bank of the West Tower, 500 Capitol Mall, designed by E.M. Kado and started construction in 2007, just ahead of the panic.

There are bears in front.

Another excellent styling, I thought: Emerald Tower, 300 Capitol Mall, an ’80s building designed by DMJM (pronounced Dim-Jim). It was a go-go decade for office development, after all, and this was one of the fruits of that era.

Soon the Tower Bridge was well within view, near One Capitol Mall.

An excellent bridge.

Built in the 1930s, the distinctive golden color is actually much newer than that: 2002.

I wanted to walk across it — walk across bridges when you can — and so I did, even though as a vertical lift bridge, there was a chance I’d be stuck on the other side for a while. But I made it across and back without the lifting-bridge alarm bells sounding, and I even got a view of Old Sacramento on the riverfront.

In full, Old Sacramento State Historic Park. It’s a renovated tourist district these days, with restaurants, shops and a few museums, but of course it was a working riverfront in the 19th century. Actually, I suppose it’s merely doing a different kind of work in our time.

Not to forget the good ship Delta King, built in 1927 and docked at Old Sacramento.

Except it isn’t really a ship anymore, but a floating hotel with restaurants and a theater. Popular as a wedding venue, too.

Delta King used to ply the Sacramento River to San Francisco and back as a passenger ferry. After its days as a ferry were over, it suffered the usual period of neglect and shifting ownership, but was renovated closer to our time. It’s a remarkable story.

Nature Boardwalk

Posted on September 21, 2022 by admin

Toward the south end of Lincoln Park is the fittingly named South Pond, flush with floral glory last Saturday.

That, and U.S. Grant off in the distance.

The pond is mostly ringed by a feature called Nature Boardwalk, which is an extension, without large animal habitats, of the Lincoln Park Zoo. It’s called that pending a really generous gift, most likely.

I didn’t need any more prompting than that to take a walk along most of the raised walkway.

From one vantage, the handsome Café Brauer building is visible.

The building has a history as home to a successful Chicago restaurant in the first decades of the 20th century. Developed in 1908 with a design by Prairie School notable Dwight Perkins.

The life of the building continues as a wedding venue. A nicely written description — though at heart ad copy for the place — is at The Knot, which specializes in articles and other tools for wedding planning:

Café Brauer overlooks the zoo’s Nature Boardwalk, a lively pond ecosystem. Thanks to the event space’s terrace, couples and their guests can easily admire the setting’s beautiful biodiversity as they celebrate. From this vantage point, a clear view of the surrounding park and city skyline is also visible.

Inside, the… historic Chicago landmark features eye-catching ceilings supported by exposed green-colored beams, with Tiffany-style chandeliers and warm uplighting. Thanks to its stained-glass windows, natural light can flood the interior as guests dine, dance, and mingle.

And what was this?

That must have been there the last time I came this way, but I didn’t remember it.
I walked the path, and over a stone bridge, to the other bank of the pond.

Closer.

Inside.

The Peoples Gas Education Pavilion, it is. I’ll assume the natural gas company of that name had something to do with paying at least part of the construction tab for the structure.

“It was completed in 2010 by Studio Gang, the world-renowned Chicago architecture firm led by Jeanne Gang. It is built from prefabricated glue-laminated timber ‘ribs’ and fiberglass domes,” writes Chicago area photographer Lauri Novak.

Novak lauds the spot as a good one for taking photos. Is it ever.

Wood Dale-Itasca Flood Control Reservoir

Posted on September 12, 2022 by admin

Heavy rains started around daybreak on Sunday, continuing through until mid-afternoon, at least around here. Some parts of Chicago suffered flooding.

Just before sunset the same day, we walked the dog and noticed very little in the way of puddles, even in the low ground of the park behind our house. Odd, I thought, considering the heavy volume of water, but then it occurred to me that it’s been a warm two weeks since the last rain. The ground just soaked it up.

Saturday was one of those warm, sunny days. About an hour before sunset that day, we went back to Wood Dale, but this time walked around Wood Dale-Itasca Flood Control Reservoir.

The water is visibly the haunt of birds, including some herons, and probably fish that can’t be seen. The level looked low, which is reasonable, considering there hadn’t been any rain lately.

The trail goes more than a mile all the way around, not always with views of the water.

O’Hare isn’t that far away.

As the name says, the point of the basin is to catch floodwater, rather than have it damage the surrounding suburbs. The facility was completed in 2002.

“Floodwater enters the pump evacuated reservoir through a diversion weir made up of series of four sluice gates located at the end of School Street in Wood Dale,” says Du Page County.

“During flood events the sluice gates are opened, allowing stormwater to flow down the spillway into the reservoir. The stormwater is temporarily stored until flood levels along Salt Creek have receded. Stormwater is then pumped back to Salt Creek through a pump station and discharge channel.”

There’s a short bridge over the spillway.

That got me thinking about the origin of “sluice,” which I didn’t know. So I looked it up later. Mirriam Webster: “Middle English sluse, alteration of scluse, from Anglo-French escluse, from Late Latin exclusa, from Latin, feminine of exclusus, past participle of excludere to exclude.”

Around Lake Michigan Bits & Pieces

Posted on August 22, 2022 by admin

Here’s a set of facts that only I’m likely care about, but I find remarkable anyway.

My recent trip with friends to the UP and back began on July 30 and ended on August 7. Fifteen years earlier, in 2007, I took a trip with my immediate family to the UP and back, from July 30 to August 7. I didn’t know about the coincidence until I read a previous posting of mine. I wish I could say that I’d taken a July-30-to-August-7 trip 15 years before that, in 1992, but no: Singapore and Malaysia was June 29 to July 10 that year (I had to check.)

Both were counterclockwise around Lake Michigan, but such is the richness of worthwhile sights in that part of the country that the two trips touched only at one point: the Mackinac Bridge. And in the fact that we spent time in the UP.

Is it so different now than 15 years ago? Except for maybe better Internet connectivity (I hope so) and maybe a worse opioid problem (I hope not), not a lot seems to have changed.

The UP’s population in 2020, per the Census Bureau, was about 301,600, representing a decline from 311,300 in 2010 and 317,200 in 2000. Truth be told, however, the UP’s population has never been more than about 325,600, which it was in 1910. After a swelling in population in the 19th century, especially after the Civil War, numbers have held fairly steady, meaning an increasingly smaller percentage of Michiganders and Americans, for that matter, live in the UP.

A spiffy public domain map.

Of course, the trip started in metro Chicago, and our first destination was BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Chicago in Bartlett, Illinois. A striking piece of India within short driving distance of home, I once said, and I’m pretty sure my friends agreed with that assessment.

Next: Indiana Dunes National Park. I had in mind we’d walk along a trail I knew, and a beach I liked, but no parking was to be had on a Saturday in summer. We were able to stop at the the Century of Progress Architectural District for a few minutes, and amble down to the beach for a few more from there. They liked that, too, and I’m sure had never heard of that corner of Indiana.

Across the line in Michigan, we went to Redamak’s in New Buffalo. Crowded, but it was then that we collectively decided, though it was unspoken, that good food in a restaurant setting was worth the risk of the BA.5 variant. I’m glad to report that none of us had any Covid-like symptoms during the entire run of the trip.

Those were my first-day suggestions. Now my friends had one: Saugatuck, Michigan, which is actually two small towns, the other being named Douglas. I’d seen it on maps, but that was the extent of my awareness. Turns out it’s a popular place on a summer Saturday, too. Especially on the main streets.

Once we found parking, the place got a lot more pleasant. We wandered around, looking at a few shops and buying ice cream for a short sit down.

A small selection of Saugatuck businesses vying for those visitor dollars (no special order): Uncommon Coffee Roasters, Glik’s clothing store, Kilwin’s Chocolate, Sand Bar Saloon, Country Store Antiques, Bella Vita Spa + Suites, Tree of Life Juice, the Owl House (“gifts for the wise and the whimsical”), LUXE Saugatuck, Santa Fe Trading Co., Marie’s Green Apothecary (“all things plant made”), Mother Moon book store, and Amazwi Contemporary Art, just to list only a fraction of the businesses.

Not a lot of neon, but there was this.

I liked the little public garden. Rose Garden, at least according to Google Maps.

And its sculpture, “Cyclists,” by William Tye (2003).

At the Frederik Meijer Park & Sculpture Garden, we encountered a flock of what looked like wild turkeys.

The marina at Mackinaw City, from which boats to Mackinac Island depart, and a highly visible structure nearby.

You can be sure that we spent that afternoon on Mackinac Island.

Besides the Mackinac Island Ramble (that’s what I’m calling our walk there), we took a number of other good walks on the trip.

One was at the 390-acre Offield Family Working Forest Reserve, near Harbor Springs, Michigan. Its excellent wayfinding — clear and immediately useful signs and maps — helped us through its mildly labyrinthine paths that curve through a lush forest with no major water features, including parts that had clearly been used as a pine plantation.

Clouds threatened rain but only produced mist in the cool air. Wildflowers might have been a little past peak, but there was a profusion, and a rainy spring and early summer put them in robust clusters of red and blue and gold and white, near and far from our path. Everywhere a damp forest scent, wonderful and off-putting at the same time.

On August 5, our last full day in the UP, we had lunch in the small town of Grand Marais, on the shores of Lake Superior. As tourist towns go, it’s minor league, but all the more pleasant for it. The extent of souvenir stands at the main crossroads was a single enclosed booth, staffed by a young college woman who was maybe a relative of the owner. The selection of postcards was limited, but I got a few.

Right there on the main street of Grand Marais is the Pickle Barrel House. You can’t miss it. We didn’t.

Afterward, we found our way to the eastern reaches of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, since the town is considered the eastern gateway to the lakeshore. That end of the lakeshore doesn’t have the pictured rocks, but there’s a lot else.

One trail on lakeshore land took us down to a beach on the south shore of Lake Superior. Sabel Beach, by name. You climb down a couple of hundred stairs to get there, but see the vigorous Sable Falls on the way. The way wasn’t empty, but not nearly the mob city on the southern shore of Lake Michigan or the waterfront at Mackinac Island.

Another lakeshore trail took us along Sable Dunes, which only involved a modest amount of climbing — not nearly as much as the Dune Climb at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — though sometimes the path underfoot was sand without vegetation. On the whole, the dunes support a full collection of the sort of hardy yellow-green grasses and bushes and gnarled trees you see near a beach. For human hikers, the dunes eventually provide a more elevated vista of the lake, which reminded me of the look over Green Bay last year.

We spent two nights in Newberry, Michigan. Still no more signs of møøse than the last time I was there. I did have the opportunity to take a short walk around town. This is the Luce County Historical Museum (closed at that moment), which was once the county jail and sheriff’s residence. It’s complete with a time capsule on the grounds for the Newberry centennial in 1982. Planned re-opening: 2082. That’s optimism.

A few other nearby buildings.

Saint Gregory’s Catholic Church.

We encountered rain much of the last day of the trip, August 7, so mostly it was a drive from our lakeside rental near Green Bay (the water feature) in Wisconsin home to the northwest suburbs. We didn’t stop in Milwaukee, though we buzzed through downtown on I-94, which offers a closeup of the skyline.

We did stop at Mars Cheese Castle before we left Wisconsin. How could we not do that?

Pop Up to Canada

Posted on August 16, 2022 by admin

When planning our recent trip, I suggested a visit to Sault Ste. Marie, mainly to see the locks that connect the higher-level Lake Superior with the lower-level Lake Huron (and Lake Michigan, for that matter). Engineering marvel and all that.

The idea of crossing from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, didn’t really register with me. Maybe because I’m blasé about visiting Canada, having done so a number of times.

Or maybe because I dreaded whatever rigmarole Covid-addled Canada would force upon us to cross the border. After all, it was only about a year earlier that I’d seen the near-empty Rainbow Bridge between Niagara Falls, New York and its counterpart in Ontario, bereft of its tourist traffic.

Someday, I knew I’d want to go to the Canadian Sault St. Marie, because it’s the jumping off point to take the Agawa Canyon Tour Train and see other sights northeast of Lake Superior, but all that would take more time than we wanted to spend on this trip.

My friends had other ideas about visiting Canada. Namely, they wanted to. Just a pop across the border on August 3 and spend the night in Ontario, returning to the UP the next day. Two of them had never been to Canada, a slightly flabbergasting notion, and the third had only visited Vancouver Island on a long-ago organized bus trip in high school. They were keen to go, if only for a brief sojourn.

I didn’t object, and we went across the international bridge that afternoon. The rigmarole turned out to be fairly modest, uploading our Covid vaccination cards and passport numbers and a few other details the day before at a web site called ArriveCan, which generated a QR code on our phones that I was sure the guard would want to see, along with our passports.

She did not. Just the passports, and she asked a few perfunctory questions to make sure we weren’t degenerates trying to sneak into Canada, and we went through.

Our visit to the Great White North was short, but sweet. We had dinner — the best of the trip, I thought — at Uncle Gino’s Cafe & Ristorante. I had the penne alforno. The food was delicious, not too expensive (helped by the relative strength of the U.S. dollar), and the waitress was a peach.

Sault Ste. Marie is a small industrial town, including steel and paper products, and more recently hydroelectric and wind power. We drove around town a bit, and soon took a riverside stroll.

Wind chimes inside funnels along the boardwalk, the likes of which I’d never seen. Makes a pleasant tune, though.

We made it as far as the historic Sault Ste. Marie Canal, which includes smaller locks than on the American side. Reminded me a bit of the Erie Canal.

The canal’s historic structures were closed for renovation, but nice to look at.

So were the clouds.

We spent the evening at our rented house, drinking wine, conversing and watching videos each of us selected in turn. I suggested a few Caro Emerald videos, and she was a big hit, as was Tammi Savoy, a delight I only discovered myself in January.

We left in the next morning and I forgot to suggest we visit the local Tim Horton’s. Damn. My friends missed an essential Canadian experience. They probably would have liked the coffee and I know they’d have liked the doughnuts. Guess they’ll have to visit the country again sometime.

As for me, I came to consider my visit to Sault Ste. Marie as a scouting expedition. One of these days, I need to come back to explore the region more thoroughly — take that Canadian train and see those U.S. locks.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: bridges