The Former McLean County Courthouse

Posted on January 31, 2023 by admin

Now we’re in the pit of winter. Temps last night and into the morning dipped below zero Fahrenheit for some hours and didn’t rise much higher than positive single digits afterward. As of posting time, it’s 3 degrees F. hereabouts. But at least the roads aren’t iced over, as they are in parts of the South.

As far as I’m concerned, zero Fahrenheit is the gold standard for cold, as 100 F. is for heat. Thus demonstrating the genius of Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit when it came to thermometry, though I don’t disparage those other men of science, Anders Celsius or William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin or even William Rankine.

Temps (F) weren’t quite as cold when I took Ann back to Normal on Sunday, and there was no snow, so the traveling along I-55 was easy enough. Once I’d dropped her off, I took note of the fact that it was still light. So I headed to downtown Bloomington, where I’ve spent some wintertime moments, and took a look at the former McLean County Courthouse, now home to the McLean County Museum of History.

Impressive. Design credit is given to a Peoria firm, Reeves and Baillie, who were busy in their time, it seems.

This is the third – or fourth – building on the site, depending on whether you count the restoration following a major fire 1900 (the small image is post-fire). Whatever the count, the building took its current form in the first years of the 20th century, and remained an actual courthouse until 1976.

For the last 30 years or so, the museum has occupied all four floors of the place. Ann told me she and some friends went there one day earlier this semester and found it worth the visit. I would have gone in, but it’s closed on Sundays. So I had to content myself with the sights to be seen circumambulating the building.

Such as war memorials.

It took considerably longer to get around to this one.

In Illinois, Lincoln Was Here plaques are plentiful.

Looks like Lincoln is still in Bloomington. Bronze Lincoln anyway, and those are plentiful in the Land of Lincoln too. Of course they are.

By local artist Rick Harney and dedicated in 2000. That’s the bearded, presidential Lincoln, so one that never actually would have made an appearance in Bloomington, but never mind. Lincoln is Lincoln.

The Bronze Giraffe

Posted on January 18, 2023 by admin

Took Ann back to school on Sunday. Mostly a straightforward shot down to Normal and back, with one small detour. A stop to see Maybelline and Charley.

At least, that’s what paper signs taped to their necks called them. They can be found at the Bronze Giraffe Antiques.

The shop is in a grocery-anchored strip center just off I-55 in Normal, next to the grocery store in fact. Ann needed a few items for her room, so we stopped at the grocery. Then we took a peek at the antique store.

I liked the place. Not only stuff in profusion, some neatly arrayed on shelves and tables between partitions – as you often see at antique malls – but some spots as cluttered as an old-timer’s garage. Was there ever any mention of a garage on Fibber McGee & Molly? It surely would have shared some jumbled characteristics with the famed closet.

To be fair, most of the cubicles were less cluttered. But whatever the organization, there were oddities to see. For instance, a bath toy of some vintage.

The bartender in Hell.

“Horseshoe ornaments.”

A Nativity set with a few additional characters.

And Whiz Kids. It was a publication I’d never heard off.

In a rack of third-string titles? I don’t know comics well enough to know for sure, but I have my suspicions.

TV Tropes has a short description of Whiz Kids.

“The Tandy Computer Whiz Kids series was a series of promotional comics published by Radio Shack from 1980 to 1991, and produced initially by DC Comics, then later by Archie Comics. In them, the two titular Whiz Kids, Alec and Shanna, teach their class (and by extension, the audience) about Tandy computer products and occasionally other topics (substance abuse, child kidnappers, environmentalism, etc.).

“They [the Whiz Kids] love school and learning, spend their summer vacations doing charity work and/or something educational, and help the police catch criminals out of a sense of civic duty.

“Alec and Shanna seem more interested in the educational software for the computers they promote than any video games that the computers may have.”

Well, that sounds bad. Nothing I saw in my quick look at the issue made me think otherwise.

Just before we left, I asked the clerk about the bronze giraffes, which are prominently placed at the front of the store. A whim of the previous owner, she said. If you don’t have some whimsy at your antique store, you might as well hang it up.

Daily Leader Mosaics, Pontiac

Posted on December 20, 2022 by admin

At the corner of West Howard and North Main Street in Pontiac, Illinois, is an unassuming building.

The building itself didn’t catch my attention on Saturday morning before I ducked out of the numbing cold into the Route 66 museum across the street, nor did the glad fact that Pontiac still appeared to have a newspaper.

Rather, there seemed to be small murals on the walls. I went to take a closer look. Turns out they aren’t murals, but mosaics. Five all together.

They are part of the Daily Leader building, to go by the name on the wall. Except I have reason to believe that the paper, which is a Gannett asset, moved a few blocks away recently and a furniture retailer bought the building. That is what this item published by the Illinois Press Association says.

“For the first time since 1968, the Daily Leader has a new home,” the association reports. “As of Wednesday morning, July 13, the Leader office moved approximately four blocks to the northeast, to 512 N. Locust St. The Leader building on North Main Street was put up for sale earlier this year and purchased by Wright’s Furniture on May 13.

“The Pontiac Sentinel was begun as a weekly newspaper in 1857 and the Pontiac Weekly Leader arrived on the scene in 1880. In 1896, the weekly became a daily and the Daily Leader was born.”

One nit to pick: there’s no date on the item. You’d think that would be an important thing for an organization like the association to include, so I’ll assume it’s just an oversight. Happens to everyone.

But I do know it’s from this year, since July 13 was a Wednesday this year, and the story mentions 2019 as being in the past. Still, you shouldn’t have to rely on internal evidence to date a news story.

The mosaics taken together have a theme, the history of the graphic arts. This is the first of the mosaics as they proceed chronologically around the building’s two street-facing walls, beginning with cave dwellers and their art.

Ceramic tiles (tesserae) were put in fully regular x-y grids form the images, though within many of the squares, irregular shapes are cut to fit each other, as long as it serves the purpose of creating the overall image. The more I look at the mosaics here in the warmth of my office, the more I like them.

Next, the scribes of ancient Egypt.

Each mosaic has a caption at the bottom. This one, for example, says:

Graphic Arts 2000 B.C.
Egyptian Hieroglyphics

Next, a medieval scribe.

Notice the detail. Seems simple, until you spend time looking at it. A lamp with candles hangs overhead; shadows lie more-or-less believably around the room; his hair is short but unkempt; the sandals are well depicted; the quill has a pleasing wave; the base of the desk and the bench are in matching dark colors; the top of the desk and paper, along with the contents of the box the right — scrolls? — are in matching light colors; the door is an oddly large part of the image, until you realize it leads the viewer past bushes and a tree to a building with a pointed window, like the room’s window. I can’t help but think that’s a church window.

Next, Gutenberg is making printing by hand obsolete.

The end mosaic, which is on the north face of the building, is longer than the others. This is a detail. It depicts the modern newspaper office. Modern, as in 1970.

I assume that date can stand in for the year the art was created. Let’s say ca. 1970, since I didn’t see a date or an artist’s name, though I didn’t inspect every inch of the mosaics as the wind blew the only direction it blows in winter — in my face.

I never worked for a newspaper professionally, but the characters remind me of the first jobs I had working for paper magazine publishers. To the right, a reporter making notes and another taking photos. Yet another reporter makes a phone call.

The news is thus gathered and then prepared for the press. I like to think the woman at the typewriter is a reporter too — women were entering the ranks of journalism in numbers by 1970, like in other professions — but she might have been intended as a typist.

From there, the text goes to a human typesetter. At my first writing job in Nashville in the mid-80s, we had two typesetters, youngish women back in their own room, though the editors consulted with them often enough about the text. They could be fun, smoking their cigarettes and accumulating coffee cups on nearby flat surfaces and bantering with the staff when they weren’t otherwise fixated on their jobs, which involved screen concentration and flying fingers.

At my next job, the typesetting job was automated by a typesetting program simple enough even for me to use, and I never again worked with human typesetters.

After the typesetter, who had created long strips of glossy paper with text — galleys — the layout man took over, waxing the backs of the galleys and placing them on thin cardboard sheets to create mocked-up pages, which in turn would be photographed for the presses. Man, I haven’t thought about the process in years.

At my second job, the layout man was old, opinionated, and sometimes prickly, having seen and (more likely) heard enough working with Chicago journalists to harden his character. There was a hint of cynicism in everything he said, and often enough much more than a hint. He was probably smarter than he let on. He didn’t smoke and had contempt for those who did. I suspect he drank and had contempt for those who didn’t. After my time, I understand he took retirement, and was replaced by computer programs.

All in all, the mosaics were quite a find on a casual walk. But that’s why I take them.

Get Your Kicks at the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum

Posted on December 19, 2022 by admin

Those three ships that come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning will be trapped in ice this year, according to the National Weather Service.

That’s the forecast for 8 a.m. Central on December 25. Bitter temps, unless you happen to be on the West Coast or in Florida, and even those places will be relatively chilly. Bah, humbug.

On Saturday I drove down to Normal to pick up Ann, leaving a little early so that I could drop by the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum, which is in the handsome former city hall and main fire station of Pontiac, Illinois, a building that dates from 1900.

The building, now called a museum complex, is home to more than the Route 66 museum, which is on the first floor. Other floors feature a “Life on the Titanic” exhibit, the Waldmire Experience (more about its namesake later), a local war museum and a room devoted to the music of the Civil War. You might call it an eclectic mix.

You might also call the Route 66 museum itself that. It’s a large room full of a lot of stuff. Just what a local museum should be.

Regional, really, since it covers the road formerly designated U.S. 66 as it passed through Illinois, from Chicago to East St. Louis, with such towns as Dwight, Pontiac, Bloomington-Normal, Lincoln, and Springfield along the way.

Display cases along the walls are devoted to each of those towns and others on the Illinois stretch, stuffed with pictures and photos and items, and arrayed in order from north to south (or the other way, if you start there). Plenty of other artifacts are placed freely on the floor or are on the walls.

Old gas pumps. Even during the golden age of Route 66, you needed gas.

A wall of Illinois license plates, one for each year from 1915 to 1984.

Trivia for the day — when did Illinois first put Land of Lincoln on its license plates? The wall tells us. 1954. The same words are on IL plates even now.

Something I didn’t know that the museum mentioned: from 1907 to 1917, Illinois issued aluminum disks to show registration, something like taxi medallions. Car owners affixed them to dashboards. The Illinois Motor Vehicle Act, which required motorists to register each vehicle with the Secretary of State’s office, became law in ’07, and specified the two-inch diameter disks.

The centerpiece of the room is Bob Waldmire’s custom-fitted ’72 VW microbus. Views outside and in:

Looks like he was a collector of bric-a-brac after my own heart. As a young artist, Waldmire (1945-2009) “determined that he would spend his life creating art that celebrated the history of Route 66,” according to a brochure I picked up. He apparently spent a lot of time driving the microbus along the historic route.

Until he upgraded to a modified school bus, that is.

The bus is parked behind the museum complex and is sometimes open for tours. Not when I wandered by. Just another reason to drop by Pontiac again, which will be easy enough during the back-and-forth to Normal over the next few years.

Golden West Nuggets

Posted on November 3, 2022 by admin

This is the kind of detail that keeps the built environment interesting. A visible part of an alarm system of some earlier vintage, operable or not.

To be found in Placerville, California. You can also take a look at a small tower of some vintage in that town.

Placerville’s old bell tower. For use in the pre-electronic communication days, with a ring meaning something’s going on, come quick.

Wish I’d been hungry in Placerville, but no.

Some miles away, a Coloma plaque. I’m a fairly regular reader of plaques.

Another. I could post nothing but plaques, but that would be more granular than I want to be.

It’s a good-looking part of California anyway.

With recreational opportunities.

Mark Twain on Lake Tahoe (from Roughing It): “At last Lake Tahoe burst upon us, a noble sheet of blue water lifted some 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft a full 3,000 feet higher still.

“As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains, brilliantly photographed upon its surface, I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”

Enjoyable vistas for sure. It was good to see other people there.

I had breakfast my first morning in Reno at a restaurant for old people — except that’s me now, isn’t it? But on a weekday mid-morning, I was one of the younger patrons. Decent food, though a touch expensive (a contagion from California, no doubt, plus the inflation du jour).

After I finished, I went out to leave, but noticed a sign I had to see, not far away. I took a closer look.

Not in the market, but someone must be. If that isn’t local color, I don’t know what is.

When serendipity is with you on the road, that kind of sighting leads to others. That’s what happened that morning in Reno. This was nearby the wedding chapel.

“Bee Dance” by Andrea Greenlees (2019), according to its sign, which also said it was created at Burning Man that year.

On the next block — all this was on West Fourth Street in Reno — was a closed off place called Glow Plaza, an outdoor event space that only opened this year. Well, open for concerts on the weekends. It wasn’t open for me to look around, though there was some construction going on at an adjacent site (probably new apartments), so maybe that restriction was just temporary.

Anyway, I got a look from the sidewalk. New-looking sculptures.

Including vintage Reno neon, or maybe close-replica homages.

Speaking of apartments, this property in downtown Reno has the look of a 2010s adaptive reuse. I checked, and it is. It used to be a motel. The loss of an SRO property? Maybe, but I didn’t know there was much of that left.

Now it’s an “upscale micro-unit living facility,” to borrow a phrase from Northern Nevada Business Weekly. I checked again, and its rents range from $1,100 to $1,700 (the low end of the range is for about 250 square feet).

Could have done an entire posting of name plates on vintage cars at the National Automobile Museum. The familiar and the less familiar.

That last one’s an attention-getter. You can find it on a Krit Motor Car Co. auto, made years before jackbooted lowlifes shanghaied the symbol.

The Battle Born Memorial in Carson City, dedicated to fallen soldiers from Nevada.

At first I thought, iron? True, iron is at the heart of modern war. But as soon as I was inside, and looked up, I realized how fitting the material is. A remarkable memorial.

Especially when you gaze up at it.

The names of the fallen are inscribed there.

Eight hundred and ninety-five names, I understand. Punch Architecture did the design, which was completed in 2018.

Later I looked up Battle Born. I didn’t know that was a nickname for Nevada. Everyone’s heard Silver State, but not Battle Born State. I puzzled on that a while, but eventually realized that when Nevada entered the union (1864; Lincoln needed another two Senators), it joined the fight, as a state, to keep that union together.

A much smaller metal-work, underfoot in Carson City. Good to know I’ve been on the Kit Carson Trail.

Underfoot in Reno.

On the road to Virginia City.

The drive out from Virginia City to I-580 is along Nevada 341, and it’s a winding drop of a drive through arid landforms. This snip from Google maps illustrates the winding-est part of the road, called Geiger Grade Road at that point. The entire drop is from more than 6,100 feet above sea level at Virginia City to Reno’s 4,500 feet.

Light traffic on a sunny weekday afternoon. A fine drive if you’re paying attention. Almost car commercial driving.

This instead of a real map.

No, California. Don’t do this. It’s false economy. I don’t know how, I just know that it is.

I figured out my way around without a gizmo map. I even found a spot a few hundred yards from a parking lot, and a little off a nearby trail, where I could sit in the sun for a few minutes, and listen to only faint sounds. Almost as quiet as Joshua Tree or Big Bend NPs.

The Hotel Charlotte in Groveland, California. Now a hundred years old, it’s the kind of place that gives you a brass key, and lets you know there’s a fee for replacing it. Basic and comfortable, though the most expensive place I stayed on this trip; you’re really paying for near access to Yosemite NP.

Main Street in Groveland (California 120), just after dawn.

A few more images. Such as in Sacramento.

I had to look up lumpia: spring rolls found in the Philippines and Indonesia. And northern California, it seems. Too bad I wasn’t hungry. Also, it was closed. Not long after, I saw a Balinese restaurant in Old Sacramento. Still wasn’t hungry. Damn.

I was driving to the last place I was going to stay in Sacramento on the late afternoon of October 7, and I got a little turned around, wandering some neighborhood streets before the inevitable moment when I pulled over to consult Google Maps.

I chanced on this place.

What a garden it is.

An extravaganza of roses.

Go in the garden and ask the rose its meaning.

The Golden West ’22

Posted on October 16, 2022 by admin

Early this month, I ventured near the West Coast again, though to places in that vast region I’d never seen before. That is, parts of northern California, where you can see the likes of marching bears looking to sell you band merch, though you have to provide your own hallucinogens.

Across the border in Nevada, signs say howdy, come on in and enjoy games of chance that favor the house.

This year’s travels have followed a specific design. The overarching goal was to travel with members of my family and by myself. Early in the year, the prospect of a bonus trip with old friends emerged, and toward the end of the year, the prospect of going somewhere for company business did as well.

That has all come to pass. In March, I went to Savannah with Ann. In May, the Colorado Plateau with Yuriko. In late July and early August, around Lake Michigan with old friends. In September, Jay came to visit me – but we also popped up to Milwaukee. Early this month, I went to California and Nevada, a trip I’ll call the Golden West because one’s trip ought to have fanciful names. Lilly joined me for part of the time.

Sacramento was the trip’s fulcrum. I flew in on October 1 fairly late and spent the first night there. The next morning, I headed east, following narrow roads across the Sierra Nevada, to the shores and vistas of Lake Tahoe, by way of the site where John Marshall found gold in 1848, an event he came to rue. At least he’s remembered: the place is called the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park.

I spent two nights in Reno. My first morning in that town, October 3, I took a walk near the Truckee River, which I had no notion existed before coming to this part of the country – a feeling I had more than once during the trip, along with a few moments of ah – that happened there? Reno is also home to the National Automobile Museum, which takes a bit of a different approach that the one in Fairbanks, sporting a lot of interesting old vehicles, but also some not so old.

That afternoon I drove to Carson City. When I was young and started poring over maps, I found it curious that Carson City, by all appearances a small place, was capital of a large state like Nevada. Large in area, anyway, since it was later I’d learn about Nevada’s relatively small population. Later still – that is, now – Nevada actually isn’t that small in population, coming in at no. 32 among the several states with about 3.1 million people, ahead of the likes of Arkansas, Mississippi and Kansas, among others.

For its part, Carson City has a population of about 58,000 (that’s the MSA, third-smallest for a capital, larger only than the Pierre, SD, and Juneau, Alaska MSAs). Naturally I ambled over the state capitol for a look. The Nevada State Museum, which includes the former Carson City Mint, unfortunately wasn’t open. Cactus Jack pictured above, incidentally, greets Carson City visitors. I didn’t go in to that casino. Or any in Reno.

Virginia City was another thing I didn’t know about Nevada. It was a name on a map and I had the vague notion that it was little more than a ghost town, the residuum of long-finished silver mining. False. Silver mining did take place there in a big way, but now V. City lives on as a major tourist destination, the sort of place that has refurbished its vintage buildings into bars, restaurants, souvenir shops and small museums.

It occurred to me when visiting the site of the Comstock Lode in Nevada — V. City is built on top of it — that that was the silver part of the trip. The gold part had been on the the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in California. Silver and gold. Gold and silver. Either has a good ring to it.

The next day, I walked the colorful Virginia Avenue in Reno, and visited the Reno Art Museum before I quit town, heading back to Sacramento by way of the larger I-80, which allowed me to stop at Donner Memorial State Park. That place provided me a that-happened-here? moment. It isn’t called the Donner Pass for nothing, though I suspect the members of the party who didn’t survive would have taken a pass on posthumous fame, in exchange for making it across the mountains.

Fairly early on the morning on October 5, I picked up Lilly at the airport in Sacramento. Our goal for the day was a hotel in Groveland, California, near the entrance of Yosemite National Park, but we lingered for a look at the state capitol, and then headed south on California 99, a four-lane freeway through the San Joaquin Valley.

We stopped briefly along the way, feeling the heat and sensing the dryness of the place. California is in another drought, after all. Yet the crops grow there in abundance, at least as long as the ag industry has the political muscle to get the water it needs.

Back up in the Sierra Nevada, temps were also surprisingly warm – in the 80s most of October 6, the day we spent at Yosemite NP. I acquired and sent a number of postcards of Yosemite, because I’m a traditionalist that way. On some of them, I wrote that I was much impressed by the massive rock formations, but had no urge to climb any of them.

The next morning, we drove back to Sacramento, where I took Lilly to the airport. That left me with half a day more to kick around that city, which I did, leaving on the morning of October 8. The surprise for me in my last walk around Sacramento was the collection of impressive modernist and postmodernist buildings, especially along the Capitol Mall.

All in all, a good trip. I even got to meet a local, there in Reno, more about whom later. That’s the gold standard for an authentic travel experience, at least according to some lines of thought. That or “live like a local,” though that somehow always seems to mean visiting the right bars, but never (say) spending time stuck in traffic like a local would.

Bishop Hill State Historic Site, 1997

Posted on August 28, 2022 by admin

I’m sure there will be some chatter about the 25th anniversary of the death of Diana Spencer this week, but I won’t add to it, except to say we were out of town that Labor Day weekend.

Some years ago, I wrote: “We made it as far west as Iowa, briefly, but the main focus was getting to Nauvoo, Illinois, perched way west on the banks of the Mississippi. The first day [August 30, 1997], we stopped at a place called Bishop Hill, which itself was the site of a religious commune in the 1840s and ’50s, home to a good many Swedish immigrants that followed a charismatic Swede.

“Alas, he died [indeed, was murdered] and there was no one to take his place, unlike certain other cults that flourished around that time and later went to Utah, so they parceled out the commonly held lands to cult members in the 1860s. About a hundred years later, their descendants became interested in restoring some of the town’s buildings, which have their charms. The church was nice in a sort of plain way, and the hotel was a fine example of 1850s Midwest architecture.”

In our time (including 1997), Bishop Hill is a small town in Henry County, Illinois, and a few of its buildings constitute Bishop Hill State Historic Site. The name is an English version of the birthplace of sect founder Erik Jansson, who was from Biskopskulla parish in Uppland, near Uppsala, Sweden. There may be a hill at that place in Sweden, but I’m pretty sure there’s no hill at Bishop Hill in Illinois.

I took some pictures. It was still the days of film cameras, so only a few. Such as of Yuriko, who was large with child at that moment. The child will be celebrating her 25th birthday come November.

Note the bed of brown-eyed susans. Late August is their time. The other day, we saw an enormous crop of them along the shore of Volkening Lake.

A local cat, who was large with tail.

Next, I’m standing near one of the older buildings in town, though I don’t believe it’s part of the historic site. Someone used to sell beer there. Curiously, the same building can be seen in the image illustrating Bishop Hill’s Wiki page.

Another view

I won’t swear to it after 25 years, but I think we arrived too late in the day to see the interiors of most of the historic buildings. In any case, it was our last trip before full-blown parenthood.

Back to Normal

Posted on August 24, 2022 by admin

Last Saturday, I drove Ann and some of her stuff back to Normal for her new school year as a sophomore. Her room is in this tower.

Which is next to this tower.

Nearby is basketball —

— and religion.

But not that much religion. According to a sign near the door, the building is occupied by the New Covenant Community (a “tri-union congregation”), the Judson Baptist Fellowship, the Lutheran Student Movement — and the Center for Mathematics, Science & Technology.

Maybe the landlord (ISU, I assume) considers scientism a religion, but more likely, a tenant is a tenant.

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?

Mackinac Island Walkabout, Part 2

Posted on August 15, 2022 by admin

Open up the Fibber McGee’s closet of Mackinac Island, and countless turtles come tumbling out.

By “open up,” I mean Google the term “Mackinac Island turtle” and the references come fast and thick: Lore of the Great Turtle, a book published by Mackinac State Historic Parks; Great Turtle Park; Great Turtle Kayak Tours; Great Turtle Toys of Mackinac Island; the Great Turtle Drop, which happens on New Year’s Eve; the Great Turtle Half Marathon & 5.7 Run/Walk; Great Turtle Brewery & Distillery; Great Turtle Creations of Mackinac Island; Heart of the Great Turtle Island – Gchi Mshiikenh Deh Minising Project; Turtle Fudge; the Great Turtle Sunset Voyage; and Great Turtle Lodge.

The association with turtles goes a long ways back, long before the appearance of Europeans in this part of the world.

“Mackinac Island is a shortened version of the Native American name pronounced Michilimackinac,” says the island’s web site. “The Anishinaabek people named this area and Mackinac Island Michilimackinac, meaning place of the great turtle.

“Why great turtle? They thought that Mackinac Island, with its limestone bluffs, looked like a giant turtle rising out of the water.”

Dig around a little more, and more emerges.

Writing in 1896 in a book called Mackinac, formerly Michilimackinac (isn’t the Internet Archive a fine thing?), one John R. Bailey had this to say:

“Michilimackinac is claimed to be derived from the Indian words Michi, ‘great,’ and Mackinac, ‘turtle,’ from a fancied resemblance to a large mud turtle; also from the Chippewa Mi-chi-ne Mau-ki-nouk, the two meaning ‘the place of giant fairies.’ [Henry] Schoolcraft says there is another meaning besides ‘great turtle.’ It also means ‘spirits,’ or ‘fairy spirits.’ The spirits were want to take the form of a turtle and become ‘turtle spirits.’ ”

All that goes to explain this sight, at the Gate House restaurant on Cadotte Ave. on the island.

While wandering around on the hilly territory of central Mackinac Island, we contacted Gate House by phone for reservations. They offered us a slot for an hour later, or about enough time for us to walk there after a detour through one of the historic cemeteries. Such is scheduling in non-motorized Mackinac.

We wanted to avoid Main Street, so after descending from the highlands, we walked along Market Street instead, just a block inland from Main. A lot of people were on that street, but not as many as the mob on Main.

The street is lined with many fine structures, originating during the great age of private development on the island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Traffic wandered along. Pedestrians and bicyclists, of course, but also no small number of horse-drawn carriages. Including something none of us had ever seen before: a horse-drawn UPS wagon.

As we had our lunch — really an early dinner — al fresco at Gate House, I couldn’t help but notice the difference in aural texture of a busy non-motorized road compared with what we are used to, here in the lingering age of the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. The intermittent clop-clop-clop was actually pleasant, though of course the horses sometimes leave less pleasant mementos of their passing by.

Late lunch-early dinner was pleasant as well, though at island prices. I had the walleye.

Almost across the street from Gate House is the Little Stone Church. We took a look after our meal was done. It isn’t that big, definitely made of stone, and looks like a church (as it is; Congregational). Unfortunately, it was closed.

Within sight of the church is the much more famous Grand Hotel. We took a stroll in that direction.

Grand indeed.

And trolling for social media mentions.

The porch is said to be the world’s longest, and a special enough place that it charges admission. We would have paid, but as it turned out we’d arrived just as a dress code went into force on the porch, and none of us were dressed for it. So we went for ice cream at the shop under one end of the porch. A good treat, at island prices.

A sign memorializing a lesser-known conference that happened here. It wasn’t Bretton Woods, but the hotel will take what it can get, historically speaking.

The hotel dates from 1887, back when railroads built hotels. In this case, a joint development Grand Rapids and Indiana and the Michigan Central RRs, as well as the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Co., a Great Lakes steamship company of yore. These days, the Grand Hotel is owned by KSL Capital Partners, a private equity investor.

Though the porch was off limits, we hoi polloi could take a walk on the street below. Up close, one notices that the hotel paint is peeling, and in places needed more than a little touch up. Could be that, like the Golden Gate Bridge, the structure is always being painted, at least in the warmer months.

From the hotel, we followed a street lined with fine old houses — the summer “cottages” of the wealthy of 100-plus years ago. Of course, if you owned one now, you’d be wealthy, at least on paper.

Soon the street changes into a bluff-side path, with good views. We followed it a while.

Eventually, wooden stairs led down to the road that circles the island, and we walked back to Main Street via that road to catch the ferry back to the mainland. We made occasional stops on the rocky shore of Lake Huron.

If there’s a next time, maybe I’ll rent a bicycle. But Mackinac Island is a perfectly fine walking destination.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Small Town USA