Thunder Bay to Marathon, Ontario

Posted on August 16, 2023 by admin

On the first day of August, I made the acquaintance of Terry Fox. In bronze, anyway, and perhaps in spirit, since he’d been dead for over 42 years. Died very young; he’d be 65 now, had cancer not taken him away. A contemporary.

Apparently every Canadian knows who he was. Ignorant as I am, I didn’t, but I learned some remarkable things about him after seeing his memorial, which is just off the Trans-Canada Highway not far east of Thunder Bay.

It was a foggy morning in northwest Ontario. The memorial features Fox as a runner, which he was. But not just any runner.

He had only one leg, the other amputated to prevent the spread of osteogenic sarcoma, bone cancer, from his knee.

“In the fall of 1979, 21-year-old Terry Fox began his quest to run across Canada,” the CBC says. “He had lost most of his right leg to cancer two years before.

“[He] hatched a plan to raise money for cancer research by running across Canada. His goal: $1 for every Canadian. Fox’s plan was to start in St. John’s, Newfoundland on April 12, 1980 and to finish on the west coast of Vancouver Island on September 10. With more than 3,000 miles (5,000 km) of running under his belt, he was ready.”

So he ran almost every day early that year, gathering attention as he went. By the time he got to Toronto, the nation was watching. But he didn’t make it all the way to the West Coast.

“As Fox headed towards Georgian Bay, his health changed. He would wake up tired, sometimes asking for time alone in the van just to cry… On August 31, before running into Thunder Bay, Fox said he felt as if he’d caught a cold. The next day, he started to cough more and felt pains in his chest and neck but he kept running because people were out cheering him on. Eighteen miles out of the city, he stopped. Fox went to a hospital, and after examination, doctors told him that the cancer had invaded his lungs… He had run 3,339 miles (5,376 km).

“Terry Fox died, with his family beside him, on June 28, 1981… Terry Fox Runs are held yearly in 60 countries now and more than $360 million have been raised for cancer research.”

My goal that day was much easier: drive to the town of Marathon, Ontario, from Thunder Bay, about 300 km as things are measured locally. I actually like having road distances measured in kilometers on lightly traveled Canadian roads, since they seem to go by quickly. For example, 50 km to go? Ah, that’s only 30 miles. The conversion is easy to do in your head – half + 10%.

Though I have to stress that kilometers should have no place in measuring U.S. roads. Miles to go before I sleep; You can hear the whistle blow 100 miles; I’d walk a mile for a Camel. There’s no poetry to the metric system.

(The conversion of U.S. to Canadian dollars is pretty easy these days too: 75%, or half + 25%. That way a $20 meal magically costs only $15.)

East from the Terry Fox memorial is Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park, which I visited as an alternative to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, which is highly visible from Thunder Bay but which looks like an all-day sort of place. I preferred to spend the day on the road, stopping where the mood struck.

Ouimet Canyon is striking. A easy walk of 15 minutes or so takes you to the canyon’s edge. Foggy that morning but worth the stop.

There was another place to stop in the park: a pleasant river view seen from a bench not far from the road, but tucked away behind some greenery, so that the road seemed far away. There was virtually no traffic anyway. I sat a while and watched the world go by not very fast. Or at all. I had to listen carefully to realize just how quiet the place is.

Also, the fog had started to burn off. Temps were very pleasant, whether Celsius or Fahrenheit.

The Trans-Canada is King’s Highway 11 and 17 at this stretch. Highway 11 eventually splits off and goes way around to Toronto, including Yonge Street, while highway 17 hews closer to Lake Superior, and is the longest highway in the province. It is the one I eventually drove all the way to Sault Ste. Marie.

Much of the roadside is uncultivated flora. I took this to be fireweed, which meant I was far enough north to see it. I saw it in a lot of places in this part of Ontario.

But sometimes fauna, of the non-wild sort.

I found lunch in Nipigon, pop. less than 1,500. I could have had my laptop repaired, if it had needed work, or bought worms and leeches, if I were in the mood to go fishing. I never am.

Nice church. The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Roman Catholic Church. Closed, of course.

Nipigon has an observation platform just off the highway, free and open to all, and completed only in 2018.

Naturally I climbed to the top for the vista. I need to do that kind of thing while I still can.

The Trans-Canada crossing the Nipigon River. Elegant, but with a troubled recent history.

The bridge was also completed in 2018. Or rather, it was reopened that year.

“[The reopening] comes nearly three years after the bridge, described as the first cable-stayed bridge in Ontario, failed in January 2016, just weeks after it opened,” notes the CBC. Oops. Apparently no one died as a result, so there’s that.

“Engineering reports found that a combination of design and installation deficiencies caused the failure, which effectively severed the Trans-Canada Highway. Improperly tightened bolts on one part of the bridge snapped, causing the decking to lift about 60 centimetres.”

Further to the east: Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. Another short walk to a nice vista. Another thing to like about this part of Canada.

All together, it was a leisurely drive, but even so I arrived in Marathon, pop. 3,270 or so, before dark – long summer days are a boon up north – and took in a few local cultural sights.

Just the exterior of the curling club. Wok With Chow, on the other hand, provided me dinner that evening, inside and at a table. Good enough chow, and demonstrating just how deeply ingrained Chinese food is in North America.

Fort William Historical Park

Posted on August 15, 2023 by admin

On the last day of July, I stuck up a conversation with a tinsmith. I’d wandered into his shop, a structure he shared with a blacksmith, but the blacksmith wasn’t around, his furnace cool. Tinsmiths don’t need as much heat for their work, so his space was missing a furnace and bellows. The shop was cluttered with tinsmith work, laid out for me or anyone to examine: cups, funnels, pots, candle holders and other items.

“The North West Co. always had tinsmiths working for it,” said the tinsmith, a sandy-bearded and -headed young man in a smock, who went on to share some of his knowledge of tin working with me: the raw tin sheets, actually thin iron sheets with tin coating, the various tools, how the cool shaping was different from shaping hot iron. You only really needed heat for soldering joints, when you’d put an iron soldering rod in a charcoal brazier. This thing he had on hand.

Why made goods here, at a post on the edge of Lake Superior? he asked rhetorically. I guessed the answer before he said it.

“The tinsmiths made trade goods to trade with First Nation peoples for fur pelts,” he said, using a term that is unlikely to have been used 200 years ago.

“Bet they were in high demand,” I said.

“That’s right. Very much so. You know how they heated water before they had tin pots? They’d put heated stones into a leather bag. Tin pots were so much better, but they couldn’t make them themselves.”

Heated stones in leather bags probably hadn’t changed much since the Ojibwa ancestors were new to North America, or more likely well before that.

Then it was my turn to teach the tinsmith something. I asked where the tin came from.

“Cornwall,” he said. “That’s in England, but I’m not quite sure where it is. I’m not too good with geography.”

“You know the peninsula sticking out from the southwest of England? As far southwest as you can go? That’s Cornwall. Devon, then Cornwall, out that way.”

He still looked a little uncertain, but never mind.

“There’s been mining in Cornwall since before the Romans came,” I said. “That’s more than 2,000 years ago. One reason the Romans wanted Britain was for the tin.”

He expressed mild amazement at that.

Not long before our conversation, I’d come to Fort William Historical Park, at the southern edge of modern Thunder Bay, Ontario, where the tinsmith shop and many other buildings stand.

As an open-air museum, Fort William opened a little more than 50 years ago. As an actual North West Co. fur trading post, a major one, its heyday was more than 200 years ago. I understand that the target year the museum is trying to evoke is 1816, not long after the NWC moved here from Grand Portage, and as far as I can tell, it’s spot-on.

The museum and its 42 reconstructed buildings, Ojibwa village and small farm aren’t in the same place as the original. That is several miles (OK, kilometers) away, mostly occupied by a rail yard these days, an interpreter told me. Some, but hardly all of the buildings featured one or more costumed interpreters who were more than happy to talk about their character and his or her times.

The Fort William reconstruction isn’t quite as elaborate as Colonial Williamsburg, but the original settlement wasn’t either, and even so is quite impressive.

Looks empty, but there were a scattering of visitors, along with costumed interpreters, as such the tinsmith, who also happened to be an actual tinsmith. Who better to interpret?

At one moment, another interpreter played his fiddle and yet another one, a woman, led four or five visiting children in a vigorous dance in the main courtyard. Entertainment before electronic gizmos.

Well-stocked interiors, too. Best thing is, you can wander around inside and touch pretty much anything. That’s an advantage of faithful replicas, rather than artifacts.

That last one is the hospital. I also had a chat with the resident early 19th-century doctor, who showed me many horrific medical instruments of the day, such as a bone saw or mechanical leech. Advanced items for such a remote outpost, the doc assured me. Medicines were on hand as well. He discussed several, but the only one I remember now is calamine lotion. Much too expensive to use on itchy bug bites, he said. You just lived with those. Calamine was for serious rashes.

I popped into a large barn-like building to find it stocked with canoes, many hanging from the ceiling, some on the floor, with two interpreters working on building one. A third interpreter, a woman who introduced herself as a member of Ojibwa Fort William First Nation, told me at some length about canoe making as it would have been practiced in 1816. More than I’d ever heard or known before: The raw materials, the sizes and other varieties, how long they lasted (a few seasons), the possible individual markings – figures on the sides.

“This is the most important place in the fort, isn’t it?” I said. She agreed that it was, and the men working on the canoe sounded their approval of the idea (they didn’t talk that much).

You could easily make that case: how could you facilitate pre-modern trade across vast territory connected only by rivers and lakes? No roads, no airplanes, no communication devices. What you had were canoes and muscle power.

More artifacts in more buildings.

Some obsolete currencies I’d never heard of — the Halifax pound and the Halifax livre, for instance.

The reproduction detail is remarkable all around. I don’t think anyone’s buried here.

But I’m sure the original Fort Williams had a small cemetery, its occupants now lost to time.

Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park

Posted on August 14, 2023 by admin

The old real estate saw stresses the three important aspects of a property: namely, location repeated three times. That’s something I thought about at the glory that is Kakabeka Falls on the Kaministiquia River, which passes through part of Ontario and drains into Lake Superior. A drop of about 130 feet in two parts.

The closest city to Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park is Thunder Bay, Ontario, which is only about a 20 minute drive to the east of the falls. Thunder Bay’s population is about 108,000, which is nothing to sneeze at, but also not one of the larger cities in Canada.

If Kakabeka Falls could magically be moved closer to a larger city, even something on the order of the Buffalo-Niagara Falls MSA, I believe the sight would have been several times more crowded than I experienced on July 31 (a Monday) and the entrance fee would be more than the reasonable $5.25 Canadian I paid (about $4). Good thing that kind of magic isn’t real. It would be easier to build a city near the falls.

Back in the fur-trading years, the Kaministiquia River had been a route for voyageurs until the North West Co. decided that the Pigeon River (Grand Portage) was better. That was before the American Revolution. After Grand Portage became part of the U.S., the NWC returned to using the Kaministiquia as a main route.

We see natural splendor at Kakabeka Falls. The voyageurs no doubt saw a pain-in-the-ass obstacle to their forward motion, a place they needed to portage around.

I arrived mid-morning after spending the previous night in Thunder Bay, stopping on the way for breakfast at – where else? – Tim Hortons. The falls were the first of a number of grand sights I’d see in Canada on the drive around Lake Superior. If you can’t see those, why drive such a circuitous route?

Once you’ve had your fill gawking at the falls, which I’d say are in almost in the same league as Niagara, the park offers some hiking trails downriver. I headed off on an easy one.

That one soon connected with a “intermediate” trail – the Little Falls Trail — leading to a small waterfall on a creek that feeds the Kaministiquia. I decided to take that trail, even though I didn’t bother to go back for water or a walking stick, both of which were in my car.

That was a mistake. “Intermediate” means many tree roots, lots of uneven rocks, and some change in elevation, though I’ve been on plenty of steeper trails. I don’t believe I was in any real danger, but it was slow going and I got pretty thirsty along the way. At least I had decent hiking shoes.

Still, I enjoyed the feel of being the Ontario woods. A very small slice of them, considering the vastness of the province. Twice the size of Texas, but a lot more empty.

Eventually the trail led to a pleasant little waterfall.

Then it loops back to the banks of the Kaministiquia, and heads back toward the falls.

With a few vistas along the way, after you’ve climbed a bit.

I might have been thirsty at the end of the trail – and I’ll note here that the small shop near the falls run by Parks Canada sold no cold drinks (and I’d have paid a premium) – but better, I believe, to be a casual walker along this river in our time than a voyageur in a much rougher century, with a voyageur-sized load to carry.

Grand Portage National Monument

Posted on August 13, 2023 by admin

So far since taking office, President Biden has proclaimed five new national monuments under the authority granted him by the Antiquities Act of 1906, including one only last week, with the lengthy name of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which is in Arizona near the Grand Canyon. (For those keeping score, his immediate predecessor proclaimed five over four years.)

How can we keep up with all the new ones? For now, there are 133 national monuments, with more coming, I’ve read.

Grand Portage National Monument has been around a little longer. Longer than me, but not much, being one declared by President Eisenhower. It occupies land very near the tip of the arrowhead region of Minnesota, within a few miles of the Canadian border, which happens to the Pigeon River at that point.

I arrived fairly late in the afternoon of July 30. The U.S. flag, Minnesota and – what’s the other one?

The flag of the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa; the national monument is entirely within their reservation. More about them is here. Gichi Onigaming = The Great Carrying Place.

“Grand Portage was a fur-trade depot and route of the voyageurs at the western extremity [sic] of Lake Superior,” says the Canadian Encyclopedia. “It was the first and most strenuous of the 29 portages from Lake Superior west to Lac La Croix, requiring that each voyageur carry four loads of 80 kg over some 14 km of rocky trails around the cascades of the Pigeon River.

“The North West Co. (NWC) established an extensive post at the mouth of the river, which by 1784 was the wilderness capital of the fur trade, providing a meeting place for the voyageurs bringing supplies from Montréal (porkeaters) and the traders bringing furs from the North West (winterers). Within the post, which was protected by a 5-m high palisade, reinforced with a bastion and a heavy gate, were the Great Hall, living quarters, shops, warehouses and a stone powder magazine.”

The NWC packed up and left after it was finally determined that, according to the Jay Treaty of 1794, the site was in the United States rather than British North America, though it took some time for the company to actually leave (1802). In more recent times, the United States reconstructed the Grand Hall and the wooden palisades.

Along with Native structures of the period outside the palisade.

Inside the palisade, work still seems to be under way, or at least renovation. The Great Hall wasn’t open.

The North West Co. flag still flies.

As you’d expect, the Great Hall faces Grand Portage Bay. Once upon a time, it was a busy place in the short northern summers. Now, not so much.

Another view of Grand Portage Bay from the edge of the national monument.

Way off in the distance – though not really that far, about 20 miles – is Isle Royale National Park, a large island in Lake Superior, which was more distinct with the naked eye than in the digital image.

Still, I was a little surprised that it is visible at all. Except for some of the Alaskan properties, it’s pretty much the definition of remote among national parks, with only a few more than 25,400 visitors in 2022, according to the NPS. The fifth-least visited park in the system.

Since getting there and staying there is an involved process, I couldn’t make Isle Royale work logistically as a destination. This time.

Highway 61 Revisited

Posted on August 11, 2023 by admin

A little more than five years ago – where does the time go? (Time stays, we go) – I wrote: “When I was very young, I had a U.S. map puzzle that I put together who knows how many times, fascinated by the individual shapes of the states. Some states more than others, including Minnesota, with its rough northern border, more-or-less straight-back western border, concave eastern border and pointy southeast and especially northeast corners.”

The road that follows the Minnesota coast of Lake Superior is Minnesota 61. We went part of the way in 2018.

I’d wanted to return to the pointy northeast corner since our last visit, so I did on July 30, heading north from Rice Lake, Wisconsin. I’d have stayed in Duluth the night before, but most places were booked there (well, it was a Friday) or insanely expensive. I know there’s been some inflation in hospitality property rates lately, but those prices represented something else. The popularity of northeastern Minnesota in summertime?

Probably, with many visitors heading up to lakes or into the woods. But the crowds along coast from Duluth to the Canadian border near Grand Portage weren’t that intense.

Not long out of Duluth the vistas appear, if you want them. I did.

So do the trails.

And the rocks.

Some miles northeast on Minnesota 61 is a scenic view stop specifically so passersby can see Split Rock Lighthouse.

Still in working order, but not used as a navigation aid since 1969. Its heyday came immediately after its construction in 1910, when it proved invaluable in preventing the grievous loss of men and cargo into the depths of Superior’s ice-water mansion off this particularly treacherous stretch of shoreline.

Cream City Brick? I asked one of the docents, who said he needed to check on that, since I wasn’t the only person who had asked.

Humble quarters for the lighthouse keeper.

Orren “Pete” Young was the charter keeper at Split Rock Lighthouse, attending to his duties from 1910 to 1928. Wonder who should play him in the in-development prestige streaming drama Split Rock: The Early Years. Lighthouse Service intrigue. The fleshpots of Duluth. Young’s heroism during the Great Storm of 1913. Anyway, casting can be decided after the strike.

“A former sailor, Young began his lighthouse career in 1901 serving along Lake Superior’s Michigan coast,” explains the lighthouse web site. “In 1910 Young moved to the new Split Rock Lighthouse. His family, a wife and four children, would come to live at the lighthouse in the summer months but never lived there permanently. In the later years of his career, they lived in a year-round home 20 miles south of Split Rock in Two Harbors.

Split Rock wasn’t only a light, but it had a fog horn as well.

Best of all, a Fresnel lens, that extraordinary amalgam of art and science I’ve only encountered on the shores of Gitchee Gumee. This one is in situ and operational. And rotating. One that can and occasionally does beam its candlepower to some miles out into the lake.

You climb up a few flights of stairs inside the tower to reach the room it occupies.

On I went from there, along the two-lane and sometimes winding highway, with periodic views of the lake, and sometime walls of trees on the landward side. Traffic was light, the weather perfectly clear. Near car-commercial driving.

Until about 30 years ago, I’ve read, the road was designated U.S. 61. For reasons enshrined in some file at the U.S. Department of Transportation, the feds de-designated it, leaving it to the state to give it a number. Conveniently, 61.

Grand Marais, Minnesota, pop. 1,300 or so, is up the coast on highway 61 from the lighthouse, and where I went next. I have to like a place that has an event called Moose Madness. That’s in October, so I missed that bit of local color.

Instead, I arrived in time for lunch, and I looked around the main shopping street, which was alive with people, tourists every bit as I was, but not jammed with them. I had my choice, among fixed-address places, of Java Moose Expresso Cafe, Gun Flint Tavern, Blue Water Cafe, Sven & Ole’s (pizza), Superior Creamery and World’s Best Donuts, among others.

There was also a cluster of food trucks. I ordered a small pizza from a one of those, paying tourist prices. It was good, though, sustaining me during the next few hours, when I crossed into Canada.

Sid Boyum’s Neighborhood

Posted on August 10, 2023 by admin

Some seriously bad news: the destruction of Lahaina, one-time whaling village and short-time capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii in the 19th century, as Maui wildfires torched the historic town. My memories of the place are vague after more than 40 years, but I do remember thinking at the time, how cool is that, a royal capital.

As for Sid Boyum, I never had a thought for him until a few weeks ago, when I read about the outsider artist of that name, whose work is sprinkled in public places in an unpretentious neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin. He’s been dead quite a while, and information about the conservation of his body of work tends to come in rarely updated spurts.

Still, there’s no doubt that much of his work is still easy to see. Such as this one.

“Faces,” according to a concrete plaque.

Syd Boyum died so long ago (1991) that his obits were on paper. Fortunately, they are linkable in our time, including one by a friend of his that that informs us that Syd lived with his many cats, created a fair number of artworks that depicted naked women, and was a fishin’ fool. Also, he won the Burlington Liars Club contest one year, and was a friend of House on the Rock impresario Alex Jordan, who died not long before Syd. This more bare-bones notice stresses his sculpting abilities.

I’d say old Syd did have a knack for sculpture.

“Man-Eating Mushroom,” part of a set.

These particular works are along Atwood Ave., a mostly commercial street that runs through Syd’s neighborhood, which according to the city of Madison is known by the clunky name Schenk-Atwood-Starkweather-Yahara. Signs on the ground indicate Schenk’s Corners, at least on the ground near where Atwood and Eastwood Dr. and Division St. meet.

I already knew the area a little: Atwood is home to Monty’s Blue Plate Diner, where we had an (obviously) memorable lunch passing through town five years ago, and took note of the Barrymore Theatre across the street. Both are still standing. The first night of the drive this time around, I had dinner at Monty’s, which served me a most tasty hamburger.

There are many other Boyum works in the neighborhood, but I contented myself with that handful that morning; it was the second day of the drive, and I wanted to head north. But not before I’d taken a stroll through the neighborhood, whatever you call it, to the edge of Lake Monona. Toward that end, I hit the sidewalks.

Monona forms the south shore of the downtown Madison isthmus. A shallow lake known to the Ho-Chunk and which witnessed the death of Otis Redding and members of the Bar-Keys in 1967.

A handsome house near the lakeshore.

In back of that house, a tree house.

That has to be the best tree house placement that I’ve ever seen.

Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison

Posted on August 9, 2023 by admin

I spent the first night of the drive in Madison, Wisconsin, ensconced in a motel room as a late evening thunderstorm, a powerful one, blew through. Little is so pleasing as the sound of wind and thunder and strong rain outside while you are comfortably in your bed – in a rented room.

The next morning dawned clear and warm. So of course the first place I went was a storied old cemetery, a creation of the 19th-century rural cemetery movement, in this case Madison’s Forest Hill Cemetery, dating from 1857. It’s an expansive place.

A small section near the entrance is devoted to Civil War dead.

It was a pre-dog tag war.

A couple of small chapels grace the grounds.

But not a lot of large memorials. Rather, a fair number of mid-sized ones.

Along with many old stones, of course. Some crumbling, as the decades of Wisconsin weather do what they do.

Still, Forest Hill, which is forested but not very hilly, is an active cemetery, with newer stones as well.

Fighting Bob La Follette and some other La Follettes are buried at Forest Hill, but I didn’t look for anyone in particular and didn’t know he was there until later. Seeing his bust at the capitol the day before counted, by my attenuated standards, as visiting a presidential site.

After all, he headed the Progressive ticket almost 100 years ago in ’24, getting a respectable 4.8 million votes (Davis got 8.3 million and Coolidge 15.7 million). He also got some electoral votes – Wisconsin’s 13 — which not all third-party candidates do. George Wallace was the last such candidate to do so, in 1968 with 46 votes, but none can compare to the haul made by TR when he ran as a Bull Moose (88 votes). And I’m not counting the 1860 election; everyone was essentially a third-party candidate that time.

The Wiki data on presidential elections is quite granular. From it, I learned that the county with the highest percentage of Progressive votes in 1924 wasn’t in Wisconsin, but Texas: Comal County, with nearly 74% going for Fighting Bob. That’s a nice go figure fact.

The Wisconsin State Capitol

Posted on August 8, 2023 by admin

When I visited the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison in late July, I didn’t see this building.

Rather, I saw this one, late in the afternoon of the first day of my drive.

The beaux-arts capitol is actually Wisconsin’s fourth, replacing the one pictured in the postcard, which burned down in early 1904. The state tasked George B. Post to design a new structure, which took a while to complete, finally being finished in 1917. Post was known for late 19th-century mansions – paid for by robber barons who wanted to show off – but he also did other elaborate buildings, such as the New York Stock Exchange.

The gilded bronze on the top of the dome is yet another Daniel Chester French work, “Wisconsin.” French was a prolific fellow.

Like the Tiffany Bridge, this wasn’t my first visit to the capitol. That would have been sometime in the late 1980s. Wisconsin is, however, one of the few capitols, along with Texas and Illinois, that I’ve visited more than once.

So this visit didn’t change my vanity map of capitols, but I thought I’d update it anyway (green for interior visits, orange-pink for exteriors only, Hawaii gold because I don’t remember, but I might have seen it).

Lilly and I spent some time in the Wisconsin capitol during a December 2016 visit to Madison. It was cold that day, naturally, and visiting was a relief from the chilly air. This time the building interior was a relief because the day was hot and sticky. Besides, who doesn’t enjoy a view inside the dome?

The interior is as resplendent as the exterior. Badgers were in a few prominent places.

Those paintings are allegories. Liberty in this case, but also Justice, Government and Legislation, on the other three corners.

This capitol doesn’t feature a lot of statuary, unlike some, but there is a bust of Robert M. La Follette, no doubt considered a Wisconsinite among Wisconsinites.

I like these pics of him, lifted from Wikipedia. Fighting Bob all right.

The Assembly chamber was closed, but I could still see Old Abe through the window. He looks down on the legislators, presumably reminding them to do their duty.

I’ve seen Old Abe depicted before: on a tractor and a memorial at Vicksburg. Another Wisconsinite among Wisconsinites: He was the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment from 1861 to ’64.

“The regiment procured a large, shield-shaped mount and perch to carry the eagle,” says Atlas Obscura. “Old Abe witnessed all of the regiment’s battles. He was taken into combat with the regimental colors… Old Abe participated in 37 battles and skirmishes. The regiment mustered out of service in 1864. On September 26, 1864, his army comrades returned Old Abe to Wisconsin and gifted him to the people of the state.”

When the bird died in 1881, he was stuffed and put on display at the capitol – the one that burned down in 1904, reducing Old Abe to ashes. The one you can see now is another stuffed eagle, doing homage to the mascot. I didn’t remember seeing him on previous visits, but now I have. Huzzah for Old Abe.

Turtle Creek Parkway, Tanks and White Line Frankenstein

Posted on August 7, 2023 by admin

Tooling along one of southern Wisconsin’s two-lane highways a week ago Friday, the radio station I happened to be tuned into – I’m not giving up terrestrial radio on road trips – introduced a new song by Alice Cooper, with a few words from the artist himself. That got my attention. Alice Cooper, shock rocker of my adolescence, is still making records?

He is, at the fine old age of 75. I never was a big fan of his, except of course for “School’s Out,” but I was glad to hear that all the same. Keep on keeping on, old guy.

For my part, I kept on driving, passing the greens and golds of high corn and the utilitarian buildings that support farming, intersections with gravel roads, hand-painted signs and, now and then, another vehicle. It was an obscenely pleasant July day, clear and warm and not nearly as hot as much of the rest of the country.

The new song came on. Title, “White Line Frankenstein.” Remarkable how consistent Alice Cooper has been through the years. What does he sound like, now that he’s a senior shock rocker? Sounds a lot like young Alice Cooper. A good showman finds something that works and sticks with it, and there’s no arguing his showman abilities.

About half way through the song I was inspired to pull off to the side of the road near where a rail line crossed the road, and take pictures.

Missed the last half of the song, but oh well.

Near Beloit, Wisconsin – close to the town of Shopiere, but not in any town, is a spot called Turtle Creek Parkway, a Rock County park. At four acres, it’s the rural equivalent of a pocket park, with its star attraction across a field next to Turtle Creek: the Tiffany Bridge, or the Tiffany Stone Bridge, vintage 1869, which as far as I know is still a working railroad bridge. (Tiffany is another nearby town.)

More than 20 years ago, I visited the bridge, accompanied by small child and pregnant wife. It wasn’t a park then, just a wide place in the road to stop. Enough people must have stopped there for the county to get a hint, I guess, and acquire and develop the land by adding a boat launch on Turtle Creek, a small rental event building, and a small parking lot.

Regardless, it’s hard to take a bad up-close picture of the structure.

Just a hunch: the arches are too sturdy to destroy in a cost-effective way, so it abides.

Rather than return to the Interstate right away, I headed out from Shopiere onto the small roads where I eventually heard about Alice Cooper. Not long before that encounter, I spotted a tank in the hamlet of Turtle, Wisconsin.

Another former Wisconsin National Guard tank, an M60A3.

It’s part of a plaza honoring veterans of the area. Interesting to run into another tank in southern Wisconsin so soon after the last one. I decided to keep an eye out for tanks on the rest of the drive, and sure enough I spotted more as the drive progressed.

Around Lake Superior

Posted on August 6, 2023 by admin

Long stretches of the Trans-Canada Highway along or not far from Lake Superior are lightly traveled, even in summer. Driving the road isn’t exactly solitary, but traffic-free enough to allow your mind to wander. And by your mind, I mean mine, a few days ago.

Dear Mr. Prime Minister, I thought.

There must be a correct way to address the prime minister of Canada in a formal letter. Who writes formal letters to politicians any more? Still, the formal must exist, and I could look it up. Never mind, on with the letter.

Your Excellency,

I’m about mid-way through an enjoyable six days in your country, traveling from the port of entry at Grand Portage to an exit at the grand international bridge connecting the two Sault Ste. Maries.

I have noticed that very few places in Canada sell postcards, even tourist shops, and especially Parks Canada units. I had to struggle to find cards to send to my friends back in the United States, which is a minor hobby of mine.

Market forces, you might say. An erosion of Canadian heritage is what I’d call it, and I am writing to urge that your government do something to reverse the loss, against the day when – fully dismayed by electronic media — people return to physical media.

I leave the details to you and your Minister of Canadian Heritage (cc’d on this letter). Certainly Parks Canada can be persuaded to stock them again. For private shops, perhaps tax incentives to produce Canadian-content postcards and to stock them, and a public service campaign to encourage their purchase and use.

It might not be Canada’s most pressing challenge, but it is certain worth a little of your government’s time.

Despite the minor postcard annoyance, it was nice to be back in Canada.

Every bit as scenic as the U.S., but a lot cheaper. The current judgment of the currency markets is that the U.S. dollar is strong against its Canadian counterpart (unlike in 2006).

Canada wasn’t the entire trip. Leaving on July 28, I drove from northern Illinois northwestward through Wisconsin, then to the shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, reaching the border on the afternoon of the 30th. I left Canada yesterday, August 5, proceeding home through the UP and then southwestward back through Wisconsin, arriving home today.

In effect, I went clockwise around Lake Superior: 1,937 miles all together, though some fraction of that was measured in kilometers.

This particular drive has been in the back of my mind for years. Years and years. In September 1989, I drove to the UP and went camping. One day I headed north from my campsite to Munising for breakfast, and then on to Marquette. Somewhere along the way, around the time I first saw Lake Superior, I also saw a sign like this (except not Ontario).

I’d seen Lake Michigan Circle Tour signs in Illinois and Wisconsin. Those were brand new in those days, created to encourage tourism in the Great Lakes region, and if you asked me a brilliant bit of design. Drive around the lake, the sign says. You will be well rewarded.

I agreed: The ’89 trip itself was around Lake Michigan, though I’m sure I would have done it without the signs.

I’d never seen a Lake Superior Circle Tour sign before, but I liked the idea immediately.

The prospect intoxicated: around Superior would be mean driving to Minnesota, through that remote part of Ontario, and the back through the UP. Or vice versa. What was up that way? Exotic boreal territory; small towns; few services; moose? At the time, my experience with Canada was limited to a rewarding but short stay on Vancouver Island.

The actual Circle Tour follows a specific set of roads around, and during this trip I followed them on the whole, mostly because that was often the only option, but in some places I took other roads, usually since they were more convenient. So I can’t claim to be Circle Tour purist.

Even so, now that I’m done, driving around Lake Huron seems like a good idea too – either by way of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitouline Island, or the long way around Georgian Bay. I don’t expect to have another 34 years to get around to that, so it will be have to be sooner, if at all.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling