Aussie Nomads - The Road to Nowhere

Leaving Portland, Maine we made our way south towards Boston, via New Hampshire over the Piscataqua River and crossing into state #44 - Massachusetts. The goal of 50 states was definitely looking achievable as we were able to cover a lot of states in this last stretch without too many miles! We made our way south stopped at the border at the visitors center which was well equipped and had composting toilets...nice!

Before we knew it we were driving over the Boston harbour into the town itself. Unfortunately the weather was a bit bleak, and I was keen to get some blogging done, so we made a beeline for the public library downtown. The town made a nice first impression, and the first thing that came to mind was the mix of old and new buildings. There were some very modern commercial dwellings, but also some really old beautifully restored buidlings, facades, monuments and churches which gave the town a very european feel. Nice. I had heard a lot about Boston, being a real academic center with Harvard and MIT, and seen many pics of the town in winter covered in snow - so I was really happy to finally get to see it with my own eyes. On arrival at the Boston Public Library, we were treated to more beautiful architecture - the library is a gorgeous majestic stone building (Renaissance Beaux-Arts Classicism) with beautiful marble stairs as you enter and high dark wood archways leading into really beautifully designed rooms with ornate trimmings. It really felt like we'd stepped back in time. As we entered the public area with free WIFI, I immediately recognized the setting - I'm pretty sure this is where they filmed scenes from the movie Good Will Hunting. Green lampsides lined the desks with big wooden bookcases at each end. It was the most pleasant library environment. Marty read his kindle while I blogged for the afternoon.

Driving over the harbour into Boston

Blogging in the Boston Public Library / movie set for Good Will Hunting (right?)

We had one more night to kill before visiting the parents of a friend further south, so we looked up a cheap motel on the outskirts of town and headed there for the evening. The camp sites were few and far between in the big cities. Thinking back to Telluride, Colorado, where they had a campground in the centre of town made me wish that every city did this! Imagine if you could camp in the middle of the city :-)

The next day we rose and headed for the nearest train station where we could park the van and then commute into the city centre. We were both excited to see Boston. The train station had a old but funny system of paying where you folded your dollar bills up really small and pushed them through a tiny slot - bizzare. We really like to ride transit in each city and do a comparison of the quality, timeliness and area of coverage. We gave a big thumbs up to Boston's trains which were on time, frequent and tidy.

Time to park

paying our parking fee old style - hee hee

Off we go

Our day in downtown Boston was fantastic - we walked a lot and really really enjoyed seeing the sights.

The Capitol building - Boston is the capital of Massachusetts and one of the oldest cities in the U.S. (is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region)

Walking the Freedom Trail - a 2.5 mile trail signed by red bricks and a red painted line throughout the city which highlights historical markers and points of significance.

The beautifully landscaped public park - the Boston Common - starting at the frog pond

Just in case you forgot what city you were in...

Into the park

We loved this grand old tree - a weeping beech


Every angle of the Boston Common is so picturesque - I can imagine how gorgeous this park would be in all of the various seasons


A romantic feel to this city

The beginnings of many great architectural styles that combine old with new

This place is old!

Best churches in America are in Boston, me thinks (I also think we were lucky to visit on a nice clear sunny day)!


We went back to the library for another look

The library courtyard

So much english influence - including the pride in learning and academics

The marble staircase

The Good Will Hunting room (note, not official name)

The beginnings of the gorgeous terrace houses in Back Bay, fell in love with these streets (no doubt this is upper class living!)



hehe


Love the little alleys


These cute shops reminded me a lot of Bleeker St in NY

Plenty of history to be retold....by men in character

We headed to through downtown to the Quincy Public Market for lunch



There was a lot of great food on offer - I had to try the local favorite...clam chowder




Seafood market - fresh caught that day from just off the coast...mmmm

There were so many distinctly different cultural neighborhoods in Boston too e.g. little Italy, it made you just want to sit down grab a coffee and soak it all up!

Following the Freedom Trail across the harbour - the same harbour where in 1773 the colonists resisted against the British government (who, via the East India Company, controlled all the tea imported into the colonies) by throwing tea into the harbour


Visiting the U.S.S Constitution - the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat (launched in 1797)

We then boarded a train and made our way over to the neighbouring town of Cambridge - home to the elite Harvard!


On arrival we decided to take a 'free' walking tour guided by a Harvard student to hear more about the university and learned some very interesting facts:

Here is the statue of John Harvard - it is actually not really him because no one really recorded what he looked like so they just guessed! People rub his foot before exams for good luck - but ironically freshmen (1st yr students) get drunk and pee on the statue as a dare - they call it 'going to the john'......ick!

Love love loved this hand dryer - a student environmental group had printed information on the dryer as to why it had lower environmental impact than paper towels - nice!

The various architectural styles of Harvard



The Widener Libarary at Harvard is part of the largest university library system in the world (15.6 million-volume system) and is named after Harry Elkins Widener, a 1907 graduate, who collected books but drowned at a young age in the Titanic disaster. His mother donated $3.5 million to build the library and created strict rules regarding any renovation, as a result it has been expanded vastly underground. Apparently there is a myth that to enter Harvard, students had to take a swimming test (which Harry's mother instituted after he drowned) but it isn't true, and nowdays you don't have to be able to swim to get accepted into Harvard :-)

This is the fire station, which was a point of contention between the city of Cambridge and Harvard - there is a strong rivalry between the two (Harvard is prestigious and Cambridge is working class)

These people must be smart, they're at harvard :-)

Our quirky, but informative, tour guide - he was not far from graduating, and pretty bored with giving the same speech over and over - but he certainly knew a lot

Some environmental initiatives were visible

All in all, Harvard wasn't as clean and prestigious as I had expected - I thought it would be more inaccessible to the public, but you can really go anywhere and, while many of the buildings are very pretty, it isn't as 'upper class' as I thought it would be. Parts of it reminded me of my university back in little old Brisbane Australia (University of Queensland) and/or Berkeley in California and many of the stories our tour guide shared made it seem that underlying the pretentiousness was a pretty ordinary institution. Something that really shocked me was the fact that Harvard did not accept women as students until the 1970s (!), and were only officially awarded diplomas in 1999 (!!) but good to hear that women graduates outnumbered men in 2008 :-) Another thing I loved about Boston was the local accents - its a bizzare combination of American and English and very distinct - Marty and I loved listening to people talk and kept making fun and saying "we're in booohhhston" to each other throughout the day :-)

As the day drew to a close we jumped on the train and headed back to the van - we had arranged to visit with our friends parents Anne and Bob down in Plymouth, about an hour south, so gave them a call and hit the road. The traffic in Boston was thick and we thought perhaps the drivers were a bit cheeky when they drove in the breakdown lane to overtake other cars, when we finally saw a sign saying that it was ok to do so in peak hours....huh!

Before we knew it we were in Plymouth and pulling into Anne and Bob's place! We received a very warm Boston welcome into their lovely home (just a block from the beach!) and were taken to the local seafood restaurant where we feasted on some lovely quahog (yes, not just the name of the town in Family Guy but also a clam with meat a bit like calamari) and fresh fish....mmmmm! Little did we know we were in for some great Massachusetts hospitality over the coming days..

Even Marty tried the quahog

Our welcoming hosts (sorry, bad picture)

Mmmmm......fresh atlantic fish!

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We set off early on the morning of September 13th from Acadia National Park with our sights on Maine's major urban center: Portland. We had scheduled to visit with a friend's parents south of Boston in a few days so in the meantime we decided to drive a scenic drive of the Maine coastal hway 1 south and then hit Portland for a bit of city-time.

The morning was foggy and made for limited visibility out to the coast - it was quite eerie in a nice way, I expected to hear a foghorn or bell of the fishermen coming into dock. We wound along the pretty coastal fishing villages in and out of the fog, with a glimpse of a few pretty marinas, orchards and clapboard cottages and mansions. Lincolnville Beach and Camden were particularly scenic spots. I didn't spot any lighthouses but they must have a lot along this rugged coastline!

foggy crossing



Lincolnville Beach

Camden

foggy orchards

As the weather cleared into quite a lovely warm day, we decided to take a side trip to Popham Beach State Park where the Kennebec River empties into the sea, have some lunch and take a walk on the beach to stretch our legs. We had some leftover steak from our time in Acadia and decided to make a nice salad for lunch - delish (a pesky seagull thought so too!). We then took a stroll on the sand, watching a cute sandpiper dart in and out of the waves. There were some pretty houses and dunes reminiscent of the landscape in the Outer Banks in North Carolina - abandoned Fort Popham was in the distance on the horizon. There were quite a few people out enjoying the sunshine. No one was in the cold water though!! This is a very different coastal environment than we are used to in subtropical Australia - but has it's own unique beauty.

Marty and our seagull friend at Popham Beach State Park

Not bad for road trip food!

Butts!

Sand piper





Fort Popham

We made our way into Portland - and decided to treat ourselves to a hotel for a couple of nights. Not sure why I wanted to see Portland....I think for some reason I thought it has similar characteristics to Portland, Oregon....but as we pulled into the motel in the not so nice part of town we weren't overly impressed. We were happy though to have a nice shower, watch some TV and a big spacious bed that you could sit up in :-)

The next day we did some exploring of the city - highlights include:

Portland Museum of Art that had some interesting Winslow Homer baby portraits

But also some other nice pieces of artwork

A restored house

Yummy flatbread pizza at The Flatbread Company on the water

A hot and relatively underwhelming stroll along the waterfront (which was a bit stinky in parts, particularly near the wastewater treatment plant!)

A trendy arts district and university - one documentary studies institute gallery on the global recession and individual stories from the working class in various parts of the world - particularly moving

Recharging our batteries with some movie and hotel time!

Portland took us a while to discover but under the surface is an interesting arty and progressive, yet sleepy town culture.

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We woke in our campground in Moose Brook State Park in New Hampshire to a very cold morning indeed at 41F compared to the lovely 70F weather we had experienced the day before - chilly!! The night before we had braved the cold to take showers in the state park - which luckily were nice and warm...once we had figured out how to put the 'operate' in coin-operated shower :-)

This morning was a sad morning for several reasons....firstly and most importantly, it was September 11th - anniversary of that awful day in New York - but also, and by no means comparative in scale, the day our trusty and beloved gas camping stove broke!!! Now, it may seem silly, but as two nomads who had spent over 5 months travelling with this Coleman stove as our most useful and reliable kitchen item that had seen us through hundreds of meals in a variety of climates and locations - we were totally bummed! The stove had also accompanied us on several trips in California, Utah and Nevada in our early days of road tripping a few years back. To add salt to the wound it was seriously cold and we wanted a hot cuppa!! Oh well, RIP little fella :-) If you're looking for quality and longevity - go Coleman!

Cold and no hot tea/coffee!!

RIP Coleman Stove!

That morning we sat with the map and made some decisions about the next 6 weeks and where we were hoping to end up as the October 8th deadline was looming. We wrote a list of key spots we wanted to see, and where would be a good place to finish up the journey before returning to Australia - via Alaska and Hawaii of course! We had considered driving to Alaska, but at this point we were both in strong agreement that that is a ridiculous idea and we were already ready to ratchet down the driving miles!

We had planned to find somewhere to stop at least a week before we needed to be out of the country so we could figure out how to ship home/sell our possessions and sell the van. We were fortunate enough to have an invitation to return to Panorama Farms in Charlottesville VA by the very generous and hospitable Murrays and decided this would be a good goal. The idea of camping somewhere while trying to sell possessions didn't really appeal too much! Having places to stay in America was something that really made our trip and we are eternally grateful to all of those lovely folks who opened their homes to us - thank you Brainards, Thorpes, Laneys, Murrays and soon...Maternas!

So, we looked on the map east to our next state - Maine. How far north to go? I had always been curious about the very eastern provinces of Canada (Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island) but this would have to remain on the bucket list - for obvious reasons. We had heard from several friends that Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor were both worth a visit so we decided to take a long driving day to get from New Hampshire to this point on the east coast. Our plan was to hit that area for a few days and then make our way south through the remaining 5 states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, quick stop in Penn again to check out Philadelphia, Delaware, Maryland and end up in Virginia. Phew! We had seen New York city already a few years back and were keen to return once more so we decided this main transport hub would be our final city to depart out of on our plane trip.

So we set off and enjoyed the final landscape of New Hampshire, entered into Maine and before we knew it (well, not really, took many hours!) started seeing signs for the delights of Bar Harbor. Here were some highlights of western Maine along the way:

Eating boiled eggs - a staple snack of our travels

A cool suspension bridge

State #43!

Pretty towns and houses



Rocky fields and fences



Almost there!

First glimpse of lobster..

Made it!

This is what you look like after driving 220 miles for 5 hours :-)

Arriving into the park the landscape changes from forests to the more rocky and barren cold coastal habitat of Maine that is famous for its blue, chilly and rugged waters and seafood - especially lobsters! We entered the park, grabbed some brochures and found a campsite under the trees. Marty decided a fire would be nice if we were in for some more cold weather that night......luckily the forecasted low was in the 50's so the New Hampshire cold snap was just that. We settled in for the night and ate dinner while planning our sightseeing of the national park - what a luxury, to have TWO nights in one place! This was becoming rare indeed :-)

Acadia National Park is on Mt Desert Island and juts into the Atlantic ocean on the north coast of Maine. Compared to the huge western national parks we had visited (Glacier, Rocky Mountains, Big Bend) it is seemingly small but encompasses mountains, ocean coastlines, beaches, woodlands and lakes. It captured our attention being one of the few national parks on the east coast - and the fact that it was a dramatically different landscape than we had seen anywhere else on the continent. The park landscape was shaped by huge glaciers which created the rugged granite peaks and woody troughs with salty marshes, coves and beaches in between. The surrounding area is characterized by fishing villages, lighthouses and stately coastal vacation homes. Cadillac Mountain is the prominent peak and feature of the park being the highest on the east coast (a mere 1,532 ft) and one of the first places in the county to see the sunrise. There are good quality driving roads throughout (once you get used to the one way loop and trying not to miss the turn!) and the best part: over 40 miles of carriage roads that were originally built by John Rockefeller Jr. These aren't just any old roads, they were painstakingly planned and built by hand using granite stone to border and shape bridges/overpasses. We were immediately impressed with this fantastic car-free resource.

As you might expect, on waking the next morning we pulled out the bikes and planned a day of exploring the carriage roads that could lead us all the way to the nearby township of Bar Harbor. We had a great morning biking these wide dirt roads through forests, past lakes and under some very lovely bridges.

A few hours later we arrived in the town of Bar Harbor - a beautiful, but prestigious, seaside village filled with gourmet gift shops, restaurants and and very pretty little marina and harbour looking out to some lovely forested islands. It was very picturesque and we were lucky enough to have some wonderfully warm and clear weather - great for photography!

We decided it wouldn't be a trip to Maine without trying the local delicacy - Maine lobster! Many people had said we MUST try a lobster roll so we found a cafe and settled in, stomachs rumbling in anticipation. Now Marty is not a big seafood fan and doesn't like the 'fishy' taste of most seafood, so he asked to sample some lobster first and the waitress was kind enough to give him a mouthful. Verdict - good! Not fishy at all! We ordered our lobster rolls and tucked in - basically it is a white bread roll with lobster meat which has been mixed with a very light mayonnaise.....and that is it! Oh, I see, I thought, an east coast version of the southern po boys - but smaller and lighter. We both finished them in about two bites and wondered what all the fuss was about. Ahwell! Its funny how food can be so much more than taste - it can be linked to a place, a time, a memory....

Lobster roll

Eat it!

Not sure what I'm doing with my finger here - trying to be posh?

Moving on, we hopped on the bikes and took a quick ride around Bar Harbor - the town has a lovely grassy knoll that overlooks the water. Very pleasant. We then headed back into the national park and rode along the carriage roads past some marshy swamps and through forests with leaves just beginning to turn. I was sad to realize that we were definitely too early for the fall colors which would likely happen in about a month during October. Apparently the whole landscape lights up in reds, yellows, oranges - so bummed we missed it!!!

A pond with beaver activity

Turn leaves turn!


Marty trying out his MTB skills

That afternoon we took a drive through more of the park on the park loop road and to the various harbors and sounds of Mt Desert Island - some highlights:

Towns like Seal Harbor with little vacation homes tucked away in the trees


The views of Somes Sound

Getting stuck behind stinky seafood trucks

A stroll along Sand Beach

Drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain for some lovely views of the coastline






View down to Bar Harbor

That night, our tired bodies from the bike riding gave us an excuse to head back into Bar Harbor and try a bit more of the local seafood. We found a nice Italian restaurant and.....got the real experience - I can't even remember what Marty ordered, but my seafood pasta dish was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS and the best seafood I have ever had. Perhaps it was that good, or I was just hungry, but I was definitely satisfied with that meal - fish, mussels, prawns, lobster - yum yum!

My 'to die for' marinara

We strolled back to the car and drove back to the campsite that night under a full moon - it was very pretty and calm and romantic as it shone on the ocean. All in all - a really good day! We decided we would head off the next day as we had had our fill of Acadia, but I definitely would love to go back and see it in it's fall glory.

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We woke at our KOA campground in Queeche, Vermont and decided to grab some breakfast in a nearby town. We headed for the border town of White River Junction VT and enjoyed a quiet coffee and eggs, got our fill of liberal magazines, papers and bumper stickers and sadly, saw more flood damage to a local bridge whose pylon had been shifted in the huge wave of water and was being fixed by a giant crane.

We then crossed the White River into the state of New Hampshire....staet #42...one more state and we're back on the east coast! Wow! We crossed the bridge into a town called Lebanon which was very cute and neat and tidy. This whole area of the country just has a lovely small progressive town feel to it, people take pride in the buildings and houses and from what we saw....education, as we drove through the town of Hanover - home to Dartmouth College. The college campus was beautiful and reminded me a lot of Oxford in Cambridge, England. We have hit the heart of New England.

Crossing the river into Lebanon - welcome to New Hampshire


We took this picture later when we could find a state line sign :-)

Hanover - home of Dartmouth


Very Oxford-ish campus buildings



Run college boys, run!

We had heard from our good friends Steve and Merrick Murray, that the White Mountains of New Hampshire were worth a visit, particularly Mt Washington (tallest peak in New England), so we drove north east to check them out, passing some very upmarket country retreats on the way. As we entered the White Mountain National Forest via the Franconia Notch Parkway the landscape began to grow taller around us, with rocky peaks, pine forests, flowing rivers and snowmelt lakes. Quite undeveloped and a lovely scenic landscape.

We set our sights for Mt Washington and decided that would be our goal for the day. We had researched the 10 mile hike to the summit which is quite popular, and being a Sunday, this was evident with a lot of parked cars at the trailhead. But in learning more we found that the very harsh weather conditions and difficult terrain make the hike a full day affair - with no guarentee that you can get back down if the weather changes. We also read about hundreds of people who have died on Mount Washington, from falls, hypothermia, avalanches, ice falls and natural causes (e.g. heart attacks) - yikes - not to be taken lightly. I was keen for the challenge but we decided we would have needed a few days to prepare ourselves....and we just didn't have the time! So driving up the mountain would have to do instead.

We found the entrance to the Mt Washington Auto Road and waited patiently in a line of cars while other tourists slowly crawled through the gates. We decided to pay for the Mt Washington experience due to the fact that:

1) it had been recommended by a friend
2) I had read about it in Bill Bryson's book about the Appalachian Trail 'A Walk in the Woods' and
3) it had a audio guided scenic tour

all good reasons to give it a go!

The 8 mile road starts at 1,527 ft (465 m) and goes to 6,145 ft (1,873 m) , an average 11.6% gradient. As we started our way up, we hoped that the van would survive the climb....but figured if it had climbed some 10-14,000ft peaks in Colorado and Montana, we should be ok. We were advised to stay in a low gear and take stops to rest the brakes or fill radiator with water....advice taken!

The audio tour was quite good and we listened with interest as we made our way through various types of vegetation at different elevations (hardwood to evergreen and crooked hundred year old trees that have survived the harsh weather) and eventually to the upper portion of the road where there isn't much vegetation at all (a fragile alpine zone)! The road passed some pretty steep sections and at times felt a bit hairy in our big wide van on quite a narrow road bordered by cliffs! It brought back memories of the Going to the Sun Road in Montana's Glacier National Park. Since the Mt Washington Auto Road opened in 1861, all manner of propulsion has been used to get people from the bottom to the top, including one's legs (lots of hikers and runners), horse and carriage (used to take 4 hours versus our 25 min trip), bicycles (many parts are much steeper than the Tour de France!) and the various models of automobiles through the years. There is a race up the road every year and the audio guide talked us through the various record holders which were quite impressive - almost a cult following and momentous achievement to win the race. We did see a few runners on the road who we took our metaphorical hats off to - the road is seriously steep....after walking Mt Abraham in Vermont the day before it was hard to imagine you could run up that grade! The audio tour also talked us through the most famous facts about the mountain - that is home to some of the harshest weather on the continent: the 2nd highest windspeed on earth was recorded on top of Mount Washington at 231 miles/hr on April 12, 1934. Wowser. As you would expect, there is a weather observatory station at the top, which was waiting for us at the end of the road.

It was lovely and warm at the bottom, but seriously cold at the top!!!


The lower elevation habitat

One of the crazy people we saw running

Marty deep in concentration

The climb up - its hard to capture the grade on camera!


Made it to the top and donned our jackets - here is the windiest point!

Note this observatory is anchored to the ground with huge steel cables so it doesn't blow away!

This is a picture of it buried in snow in winter - seriously harsh weather!

There is a railroad that goes up the mountain also - cool!

There it goes, hope the brakes work!

We enjoyed the views, bracing ourselves against the cold wind - after a few minutes I started to wish I had long pants on!! At the observatory museum we learned some interesting facts - it was quite an entertaining experience and incredible to know that the weather can be so harsh and cold up top and so lovely at the bottom. The Bill Bryson book I had read had mentioned a video at the basement of the museum with a 'breakfast of champion' skit where they try to serve a customer breakfast on the deck during extremely high winds - needless to say, all toast, cereal, milk, plates, cups, cutlery and even the table blow away sideways. Heehee!

This was one of the saddest displays - a list of all the people who had died on the mountain....

Testing the wind speed

Back down we go!

Marty and I had big aspirations to see a moose while we were travelling through New England-sadly, this is as close as we got :-(

We headed back to normal road grades and temperatures and found ourselves a campsite for the night at Moose Brook State Park. On the way we stocked up on food and in our search for a local supermarket were sad to learn that all the local shops had gone out of business because WalMart had taken over - so we reluctantly grabbed a few things from the giant box and headed to camp. I took a stroll to stretch my legs that afternoon in the state park and enjoyed seeing some lovely forest and creeks.

Some hang overs of the past few states lingered that day, as we.....

...passed dairy trucks on the highway

....crunched on New York apples (we were there only a few days earlier!) and drank fresh apple cider

....sucked on maple flavored candy whilst blogging

Little did we know that we were in for a cold night - as the dark fell, so did the temperature and we had to retreat to the warmth of the car that night....lucky for angry birds phone app! Wonder how cold it was on Mt Washington that night!?

All in all, we enjoyed our quick visit to the 'live free or die' state of New Hampshire....but the east coast was beckoning...and time was running out!

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We woke in upstate NY in our campsite in Paradox Lake, a bit tentative about moving on due to all the local flooding. Our goal for the day was to see Vermont, which was just across the waters of the giant Lake Champlain. We saw the camp host early and asked if they knew of any closed roads or flooding that might slow/stop our progress and were informed that the Fort Ticonderoga ferry was still in operation...as far as they knew. So we scoffed breakfast and set off with fingers crossed! As we reached the fort, the ferry was on it's way back over to the NY shore - yay! There was a very cool sign you could pull down to call the ferry and we had fun playing with it while we waited. The lake looked quite full and the scenery was very green from all the rain - quite european feeling...but also quite desolate, really not that many people around on a Friday.

The final shots of upstate New York


Calling the ferry at Fort Ticonderoga

Here it comes

As the ferry pulled in, we drove the van on - I believe this was the second trip on a boat for the van, the first being the ferry across Mobile Bay in Alabama on our way to Florida. The ferry was small and cute - much of the feel of this area was very cute, quiet and 'country'. As the entrance to Vermont from NY, the ferry crosses Lake Champlain which the guidebook aptly described as a 'long island-dotted jewel set in the expansive valley between New York's Adirondacks to the west and the green mountains of Vermont to the east'. The lake is massive and we could see up and down the huge water body as we crossed. The highlight for me was definitely a cute little 'honor system' stall on the ferry that had little white paper bags of Vermont apples and maple syrup (didn't buy any unfortunately as we already had a bag of local apples from NY which were quite tasty!). What a lovely little gesture - quite fitting for our entrance to the state and what was to follow. Marty chatted away to the ferry conductor about the flooding while I snapped pictures. He learned that the impacts were quite extensive with some flooding in Vermont also. Many of the locals couldn't give us advice about the state of the roads too far away, they seemed to exist quite happily in their own little world (I have since learned that Vermont is the least populous state in New England so there you go!). We soon realized why the locals don't leave as the ferry conductor pulled into dock, unclipped the chain and waved us back onto land where we crossed into state #41 - yeah!! We definitely felt a sense of achievement, now with only 8 states to go....and the mysterious new england region ahead of us, quite exciting.

We're on!

Love this - our introduction to Vermont


Lake Champlain

The entrance to Vermont was just gorgeous, with rolling emerald hills, apple orchards, dairy farms and very cute little farm houses - we felt like we had stepped right into Switzerland. I had heard many good things about Vermont, and I was beginning to see why!! We stopped briefly for gas and craving a boost, I headed inside to grab a coffee. Now, the coffee we make on the stovetop espresso maker is generally 10x better than the gas station c#$p, but I made a double-take when I walked in to find at least 10 different types of freshly brewed coffee on offer at the gas station!! What a nice surprise. The Green Mountain Coffee company - score 1 - as I poured a dark roast and proceeded to thoroughly enjoy every mouthful as we drove on......very good second (or was it third?) impression!!

We made it - despite the flooding!

This place was just on the border - isn't it pretty?

Green, green, green!

Apples!

We were...as you are probably gathering the more you read....time limited for our visit to the state, so we read through the scenic drive in our book, picked a few key sights and made a beeline for Middlebury. The town is home to Middlebury college and as we drove into the town, noticed several of the very large and very tastefully designed college buildings and beautifully restored old european style churches. Wish I went to uni here! We then entered the main street and were really impressed with the progressive and community-oriented feel of the town; solar panels, organic cafes, community gardens and art galleries. It definitely tapped into our hippy sides :-) Middlebury College known for its leading liberal arts program, and has a strong reputation for international studies and environmental education. Impressed, we were!

Alas with time ticking, we continued on, driving through the countryside, enjoying the beauty and pleasantness of it! Driving through Vermont is very easy - there is so much to see out the window and with all of the rain, the fields and forests were all the best shades of green. Coming from some of the somewhat less scenic sights in the mid-west, it was a feast for the eyes! We decided to stretch our legs with a hike on part of The Long Trail: the longest and oldest hiking trail running the length of Vermont and constructed between 1910 and 1930 by the Green Mountain Club. The trail is also part of the Appalachian Trail for 100 miles (160 km) in southern Vermont. We climbed the van up a very steep, but beautifully forested hill to the Lincoln Gap trailhead, got out the camelbaks and put on the hiking shoes with our sights set on the summit of Mt Abraham. The temperature was quite cool, and the ground a bit wet from all the rain, but the skies were clear and we were ready to expend some energy. A group of old timer locals were setting off for the hike before us and gave us some tips on where to go and what to see. As they ran through the local restaurants and pretty towns, this confirmed the sneaking suspicion I had that we had left ourselves nowhere near enough time to see, explore and enjoy all of this state - so begins the day of kicking myself!! I had heard much about the beauty of the state, and the maple forests that make the delicious maple syrup and wished we had an extra week to enjoy it!

We made our way up, up, up the trail which was steep, rocky and a bit wet, but with very pretty and what felt like enchanted forest. It was quiet pleasant. As we approached a camp hut where overnight hikers take refuge during winter (gets very cold!), we ran into a fit male hiker who informed us he was hiking the entire long trail, in segments of a few months. A really nice guy who we followed as he lead the way to the Mt Abraham summit. We chatted about politics and the environment, us huffing and puffing as he seemed to get progressively faster the steeper it got - he was in good shape!! Everything about Vermont from the moment we crossed the border screamed progressive, blue, liberal and generally right in line with our way of thinking. It was quite a 'twilight zone' experience to be honest, and the contrast to the neighbouring surrounding states really seemed uncanny.

up, up, up!

reached the summit of Mt Abraham

We reached the summit via pine forest which slowly decreased in size as we gained more elevation and had fun scrambling over some big rocks towards the last section. The views at the top of Mt Abraham were beautiful, over the Green Mountains, down to Lake Champlain and across to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Our hiking buddy pointed out several features to us which was helpful - including Mt Washington in New Hampshire. We snapped some pictures, farewelled our recent acquaintance (who still had 10 miles to go that day!) and headed back down as the wind started to chill our skin. The hike was lovely and definitely worth doing - the Long Trail would be a fantastic adventure, and I'm sure definitely a highlight of the full Appalachian Trail.

Our hiking mate!

The dwarf pines at the top

Looking out over the Green Mountains

We continued on into the Mad River Valley, and noticed a large solar array in a field and a very cool looking sustainable house. It seemed like a commercial establishment with a sign out the front, so we headed in to check it out. The facility was called Yestermorrow and is a school for sustainable design, construction, woodworking, and architectural craft. Given our passion for sustainable design, and desire to build our own sustainable home someday, we happily agreed we would take the time to do a tour. We were greeted by a lovely intern, who had been working at the school for a year, and showed us the vegetable garden and gave us one of their delicious lemon cucumbers, fresh from the vine. Lovely! We headed inside the main school building, which was purchased in 1990 and underwent multiple phases of renovation including Forest Stewardship Council certified timber, energy efficient lighting, triple-glazed windows, super-insulated walls, natural paints, solar hot water and more. As the staff seemed busy, we had a quick browse of their library, used the toilets and grabbed a self-guided tour brochure to have a look. We walked through the grounds and viewed several different styles of cabins that had been built by the students themselves - love the hands on learning! There was a strawbale cabin, fabric formed concrete cabin (high thermal mass, very durable), pine cabin (used locally harvested milled pine lumber and salvaged windows), tent platforms where students can camp, composting toilet, very cool treehouse cabin, yurt (easily assembled and disassembled and built for under $1000) and a portable solar PV trailer that is used to provide power for various project around campus. The only problem was that many of the structures didn't seem well maintained and the place generally felt quite overgrown and a bit disorganized. But still a great example of where people can learn more about sustainable design, architecture and more. More info here.

Solar that caught our eye

Vege patch and lemon cucumber gift


Heading inside for a look


Composting

Portable solar trailer


Love this design for the outdoor shower

The Tree House - inside

The Tree House - outside

Main building

We moved on to Waterbury, stopping briefly for a quick lunch in a local park of one of the villages. I grabbed some local wine and cheese for the evening and we moved along. We decided a trip to Vermont wasn't complete without visiting the home of the famous Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory in Waterbury. We arrived at the facility, and after Marty took some lactaid tablets (darn lactose intolerance) we headed into the factory. It was quite underwhelming, small with a little gift shop and ice cream parlor. The tour was also very quick and, as would be expected, quite oriented towards kids with decor that matches the ice cream punnets you buy from the shop. The highlight of the tour was definitely the video feature which talked about the founders Ben and Jerry, their idea to create ice cream with various flavors and toppings, and the social and environmental initiatives of the organization. The milk is sourced from local dairies, hormone (rGBhH) free, local eggs, fair trade ingredients, hiring local staff and contributing back to the community. Generally the company prides itself on having a social conscience. This all seemed pretty legit until the part where they sold to the giant multinational Unilever. Hmmm.....now they're quite the global company - a bit of a sell out me thinks, but hey, globalization has given us many things that we all enjoy, including Ben and Jerry's ice cream! We proceeded to look at the factory through some windows from above and saw where all the various toppings and dressings get mixed into the ice cream. I'm quite fan of the Phish Food flavour myself. I decided, however, to try the chocolatey-st chocolate flavour (personal weakness) and, being a Stephen Colbert fan, Marty had a go at the Americone Dream flavour (Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge Covered Waffle Cone Pieces & a Caramel Swirl) created by the man himself! We left feeling very sick, and a little false from the tourist-trap nature of the place, but it had to be done!

boo for lactose intolerance! yay for lactase tablets!


Yum!

We moved eastward, we decided to hit one last Vermont attraction, the covered bridges. There are over 100 authentic covered bridges within the state, the most per square mile in the U.S. We drove through several other very cute towns and close to Tunbridge, checked out the Howe Bridge which was built in 1879 over the White River. It was very cute and we took the van for it's inaugural drive through a covered bridge. I would imagine in winter this would be just as beautiful as it is in summer! The landscape continued to boast gorgeous green rolling hills, dairy farms, farm houses and rivers - Vermont is fabulous!

We pulled in on the eastern side of the state at Quechee (love that name) and found a KOA campground where we could get some washing done. That night we made some calls to friends and felt quite satisfied with what we had achieved in one day. I still felt that we didn't do Vermont justice and wished we had left more time. Ahwell, better to have loved and left, than never to have been at all, right?? Vermont - you are on my list of places to come back to!

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Feel like reading a good book? Well, this post probably won't be worthy of publishing, but it certainly has the length....get comfy!

Departing our campsite in western Pennsylvania, the rain continued to fall - and we both had hangovers from our '5 months on the road' celebration the night before. We mutely drove through the northern part of the Allegheny's and entered state #40, the Empire State: New York! Move over Big Apple, there is a huge state to explore outside of Manhattan and the five boroughs and we intend to check it out! We crossed the border and, in need of strong coffee and greasy breakfast, stopped at a local diner- it was a welcome relief.

What? More rain?

Boo!

Only 9 states to go!

Ah, American Breakfasts are the best cure for a hangover :-)

Continuing north, we set our sights for Niagara Falls - Marty hadn't been before, and I had only seen it from the Canadian side, so we were excited to get to this famous sight (is it a wonder of the world?). As we crossed the Niagara River we noticed a big plume of smoke on the horizon and wondered what kind of industry it was.....until we realized it was the spray from the falls!! Cool! Unfortunately the weather was a bit dreary so the general feel of the day was a bit grey but we entered town and paid our overpriced parking fee ($20!) to check it out.

Crossing the Niagara River

Can you see the plume?

Some facts:

• Niagara Falls marks the border between the US (Niagara Falls, New York) and Canada (Niagara Falls, Ontario)
• Niagara Falls is actually three waterfalls: Horseshoe Falls is the largest and most powerful (the Canadians got this one) and adjacent American Falls and comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls (the Americans got these two)
• combined the falls form the highest flow rate of any waterfall in the world
• the vertical drop is more than 165 feet/50 m
• the falls are on the Niagara River which drains Lake Erie into Lake Ontario
• the falls are a valuable source of hydro power - various power plants (one is called Sir Adam Beck - Mr Adam Beck if you are reading! :-) have capacity to produce 4.9 million kilowatts - enough to power 3.8 millions homes!
• they were formed by a combination of glaciation (long time ago) and eroson (continues at approx 1 ft per year!)
• to allow tourists to see the falls year round, they divert water (375,000 gallons/second!) to the hydro power station - and in winter they use boats to break up the ice and send it over the falls to keep the flow constant

We contemplated riding the Maid of the Mist boat that gives tours under the falls (Bruce Almighty!) but the whole area just felt so touristy and tacky we agreed that walking around the falls would be our preferred method of tourism :-) Also, I already did the boat trip from the Canadian side which was good but very wet and low visibility and not worth the price – the view is much better from a distance. We enjoyed looking across Horseshoe falls and got a nice little shower from the massive spray plume off American falls. The scale of these falls is just breathtaking!! We wandered to various viewpoints, just taking in the enormity of nature – very cool. We also walked over to Goat Island that separates American from Horseshoe falls and wandered back along the river, which is very wide, but not overly deep from where we were standing. The water flows very very fast and we recalled hearing a news report about a woman who had accidentally fallen in and gotten swept down and over the falls – ouch! We also contemplated what it would feel like to get in a giant barrel and go over them – much like a washing machine I would imagine! I must admit after my visit to the American side, the view from the Canadian side is better :-) After a quick visit to the museum in the visitors center (ok), we decided to skip the huge gaudy tourist shops (so many tchotchkes!) and moved on.

American Falls



Horseshoe Falls is behind us

Can you see the Horseshoe shape?

Looking across the river to Canada - below is an old hydro plant

Niagara River - upstream from the falls

The river downstream after diversion to the hydro plant(s)

As we drove out of town and alongside Lake Ontario, we gave a wave to the skyline of Toronto across the lake in Canada, then decided to check out Fort Niagara State Park which had a beautifully restored fort – the longest continually occupied fort in the U.S.

Hello Toronto!

Fort Niagara State Park - well done!

Our trusty scenic drives book had highlighted a ‘seaway trail’ drive that made its way north east along the shores of Lake Ontario to the entrance of the St Lawrence River which separates Canada from America. We followed the trail until dark and pulled into the pretty, but virtually empty, Golden Hill State Park, which sits right on the shore of the lake. This was a very common occurrence on the trip – very empty campgrounds all to ourselves….which is nice, but a bit unnerving when you go into a shadowy shower block and no one is there except some insect friends ;-) I showered with a nice little spider that night....but didn’t have to worry about hot water running out ;-) After a gusty night in the van (wind from the lake, not us :-)) we woke and strolled to the lake which had some sizeable waves lapping on the shore – the wind was quite cold for summer! We took a quick look at the main attraction of the state park – the Thirty Mile Lighthouse. This is one of a series of lighthouses all along Lake Ontario’s shore to direct the freight ships moving through – these lakes are so huge they need lighthouses! Also, I thought the name ‘seaway’ for the trail was appropriate, given that the lake is the size of an inland sea! Departing, we drove through some very green and very lush farms. We also drove through Mexico……the City of Mexico in upstate NY, that is :-) I wonder how many quizzical looks those people get when they say they are from Mexico and it snows in winter!

Our camp in Golden Hill State Park....it was cold!

Morning! Is the coffee ready yet?

Pretty grass flowers

Lake Ontario....literally - a sea, with waves!

Thirty Mile Lighthouse

Lots of lighthouses along the shore of Lake Ontario

upstate NY farmland - very green, very pretty



This is Mexico.....Mexico, New York

Our destination for the day was Thousand Islands – which, yes you guessed it, is famous for Thousand Island dressing – who knew! The area gets its name from the archipelago of islands at the entrance to the St Lawrence River at the northern end of Lake Ontario. The total number of islands is 1,793 and can be as large as over 40 square miles (100 km2) or as small as a few rocks that are home to bird habitats. Many of the small islands have a single residence on them – wonder how much that property is worth!

We decided to stay a couple of nights in the area to recoup after covering 4 states in 5 days (phew!) and selected the well-reviewed Wellesley Island State Park as our base. In order to get there you have to cross the 1000 Islands Bridge – on our approach we started to wonder if perhaps we were going to drive over the bridge into Canada. Given that our visas would expire if we did, we took a quick moment to pull over and double check :-) All clear! While it would have been nice to visit Canada during our trip, the immigration situation wasn’t ideal so we opted for staying in the U.S. To us, there is still something so exciting about international borders that you can drive over – coming from the island nation of Australia, we’ve never been able to do that. So whenever we came close to Mexico or Canada we got a bit excited :-) There were a few border patrol cars in the area, but nowhere near as many as we saw on the border with Mexico at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

Some sights along the seaway drive

Shall we cross the bridge

This is the map of the drive (in red) - 1000 islands is right up the top right corner of the lake

The Thousand Island Bridge was a large, dominating but aesthetically pleasing 150 ft suspension bridge - the view over the islands from the top was fantastic. Always nice to get a good view when you pay the toll. The view reminded me a lot of glacial lakes in Europe – the islands have little houses tucked away under large pine trees, very picturesque. The area is home to Boldt Castle which is very fitting and was a summer playground for New York City’s elite in the 19th and 20th centuries so there are some very palatial homes.

Crossing the 1000 Island Bridge

View from the top of the bridge - aren't the islands gorgeous?

One of the very few border patrol cars we saw

So, for a brief history of Thousand Island Dressing, shamlessly taken from Wikipedia:

“The Thousand Islands gave their name to the popular Thousand Island Dressing around the turn of the 20th century when Sophie LaLonde, of Clayton, New York who served the dressing at dinner for guests of her husband, a popular fishing guide, gave the recipe to Clayton hotel owner Ella Bertrand and New York City stage actress May Irwin. Irwin shared it with hotel magnate George C. Boldt.” (of Boldt Castle)

We reached Wellesley Island State Park and found a campsite (there were hundreds of empty ones) right on the lakeshore – sweet! The feel of the area was really peaceful – with the water gently lapping on the shore and multitudes of coves tucked away along the seaway, very unique and very pretty.

We took a hike through the state park to stretch our legs and the glacial lake similarities were confirmed when we saw signs for glacial potholes. Our hike looked out over Eel Bay, which, from every angle, was very beautiful and calm. I imagine in winter it gets pretty darn cold this far north though! Another unexpected treat on our hike was beaver-watching! We walked around a small lake and suddenly heard a big splash in the water – it was a beaver slapping it’s tail on the water! Super cool – we stopped for a while, silently watching a couple of them swimming across the surface of the lake – we think they were looking for bugs on the surface but hard to know for sure. The tail slapping was definitely the highlight ;-)

Not a bad place to live - in summer at least!

Marty mistook this glacial pothole for something else ;-)


The work of a beaver

Beaver!

Wellesley Island State Park = peaceful!

On the way back to the campsite we also got to see a groundhog, just chillin in the grass. Not sure if it was Punxsutawney Phil or not, but looked a lot like him :-) That night, we were treated to an absolutely spectacular sunset (best since Bahia Honda State Park in Florida) over the water which lasted for at least 40 mins as the colors slowly deepened to gorgeous pink and reds. The weather was quite cool that night as we rugged up in the van – with the rain and clouds hanging around. But great for snuggling :-) We were definitely glad we had picked this spot to stay a few nights!

The next day we took a drive into the local town of Alexandria Bay (locals call it Alex Bay). A very pretty little village – where we drank local coffee, ate reuben sandwiches (with thousand island dressing of course) and caught up on some blogging at the very cute local library. Quite therapeutic! Yachting is very popular in the area so many of the towns have marinas where people can dock their boats and go ashore for dinner or to shop. The architecture in the area definitely has a European influence, with many german-looking buildings and churches.

Boat parking for local residents

Cute town of Alex Bay


The famous Boldt Castle

Alex Bay marina



The next day we packed up and took a quick look at Thousand Island Park on the far western end of Wellesley Island. The site was formerly a Methodist community but is now an exclusive suburb. As we entered, we passed a ‘private’ sign at the entrance but the state park guide assured us that us 'normal people' could go in and have a look. Turns out the beautifully Victorian cottages that line the streets are passed from generation to generation on 99 year leases. The houses were so well maintained with a variety of styles and colors – fantastic. Not affordable, but definitely worth viewing from the comfort of our cheap cargo van :-) What a nice little corner of New York State.

The exclusive suburb of Thousand Island Park




Crossing the 1000 island bridge once more

We decided to continue west across New York state, aiming for our next state, Vermont and FINALLY entering the elusive New England region of America that we have been waiting patiently to see, and sadly which we haven’t left nearly enough time to see properly. But for today, we decided to gain some ground through New York’s Adirondack Park. The park is a huge publicly protected area in north east New York - mostly controlled by the state's Forest Preserve, but more than half is privately owned, including several villages and hamlets. There are more than 3,000 lakes and 30,000 miles (48,000 km) of streams and rivers in the park – definitely a defining feature as we drove through cute little towns and the Fulton (named after the steamboat inventor Robert Fulton) Chain of Lakes which they must of ran out of ideas to name when they discovered them so are called fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh etc lake! The lakes are connected by small watercourses and you can canoe through the entire chain – very cool. The highlight of the area is definitely the artisans who have made the locally designed and built Adirondack Chair world famous. We stopped a few times long the drive to admire the beautifully still lakes, surrounded by thick woods of pine maple, beech and birch, some of which were changing color (yay!). I can imagine this would be a cross country skiers paradise in winter when everything freezes over. We stopped for lunch at one of the local lakes – we had been gathering rubbish over the past few days and there was not a bin to be found!!

As we climbed in elevation into the High Peaks area we passed briefly through the village of Lake Placid, which hosted the Winter Olympics in both 1932 and 1980. The luge and bobsled runs and ski jumps still remain as a tourist attraction. We were hoping to get up Whiteface Mountain but the entrance was closed, so we pushed on west. We passed through yet more lakes and pretty villages and started to wind through a valley beside the Ausable River. We noticed the river was flowing quite fast and stopped for a short walk along High Falls Gorge where a deep cleft was sliced into a mass of layered rock creating a thundering waterfall between the walls, dropping 100 feet over three downriver ledges. Would not want to accidentally fall into that thundering and cold water - although we did pass some youth who were jumping off rocks into the downstream pools - yikes!

The beautiful landscape around Lake Placid

Ausable River

Hiking up High Falls Gorge


I believe the color is from tanin

As we pushed on, aiming to get closer to the eastern side of NY state and the border with Virginia, we suddenly started to notice a lot of debris and mud around - the upstate flooding from Hurricane Irene. Soon enough, we needed to cross a river and found that it was closed down due to flood damage. As we wound our way through the back roads to find an alternative route, we began to realize the scale of the devastation - all low lying houses were badly damaged, some completely slumped as their foundations were washed away. People's belongings were strewn out across yards, and mud/silt had been piled up beside the road like snow from a snow plough. It was shocking to see so much damage! Trees had been flattened or ripped from the shore and carried downstream - many bridges were badly damaged by all the debris carried down. It was quite incredible that a hurricane could do so much damage this far inland from the Atlantic! We were fortunate enough to have a local help us out with alternative directions as we tried to make our way to a campsite for the night. The locals seemed to be rallying and helping each other out and there were plenty of work crews around helping to clean up and restore power. We definitely agreed that if we every bought a house we would be checking and double-checking the flood levels!!

After 3 attempts to find national forest campgrounds - one of which was closed because of damage by the floods, several hours later we finally found a campsite at Paradox Lake (NY state operated) under the trees where the mozzies were out enjoying the low lying water (!) Upstate NY was beautiful and so sparsely populated, it is hard to believe that two fifths of the population of the state live in NY city!

Love the forest in this part of the world!

First closed bridge

Someone's belongings

Debris caught on the bridge

Yikes

Saw many houses slumped like this

Third attempt to find a campsite and still no luck!

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We woke in Streetsboro, Ohio and realized that today, 4th September, which also happens to be the Labor Day long weekend, marks 5 months on the road - wow! We are still here, still travelling, camping, sightseeing the great US of A and we’re aiming for state #39 today – Pennsylvania. Yay for us! It is funny when you have accomplished something quite significant but have no one to celebrate it with. But we rallied by giving each other a big hug and packed up camp in Ohio. Before long were across the border into Pennsylvania. It was a hard to decide to enter Penn at the western side of the state and travel north through the Allegheny National Forest, over heading to Pittsburgh – but our instinct was telling us there are some beautiful mountains and lakes to be seen. What our instincts didn’t tell us is that rain was on the way, so sadly the day was a wet and cloudy one…but we continued on in our trusty van.

I do what I'm told

One of the better border crossings - the welcome center was v entertaining

I'll have a healthy dose of religion with my coffee thanks!

The Allegheny National Forest stretches over 513,000 acres in western Penn and protects forests (including virgin white pine), wild and scenic rivers, lakes, ridges and valleys. As we progressed from the larger Highway 80 to the smaller Highway 257, green hills appeared all around us and we began to see some beautiful red brick architecture and European looking towns nestled beside a big flowing river – aptly named the Allegheny River. We liked it already! With lots of water everywhere, and deep green foliage, it was a nice change from the cornfields of the mid-west. The Allegheny Plateau is known for black cherry, maple and other hardwoods, but two hundred years ago these species were less numerous and logging was prevalent – declaration of the area as a National Forest in the early 1900’s allowed for protection and regrowth (most of the forest is second generation). Interestingly, the forest lies at the heart of Pennsylvania's oil and gas region. Within the forest is Kinzua Dam, which dams the Allegheny River to form Allegheny Reservoir. We saw a little bit of all of this – beautiful forests, huge reservoirs and oil processing plants during our brief visit to the region!

We like the feel of this area


Allegheny River

Very European - eh?

Given that it took half the day to get to the area we stopped in the cute village of Tionesta for lunch. I had spotted a sign for ‘perogies’ and, being a perogie virgin, Marty was keen to try these steamed meat/veg dumplings. I had first tried perogies in Canada back in my student days and loved them – I believe they originate from Poland. I’m not sure where the European influence came from, but it was 5 months on the road, Labor Day weekend – what better reason to stop and try some perogies! I had the sauerkraut and potato and Marty tried the same but with kielbasa sausage. They were oilier than I remember, but still tasty with some fried onion on the side. In Canada we would eat them with bacon, shallots and sour cream – big carbs but big yum!!

Lots of bridges across lots of water

Our first stop on the scenic drive through the Allegheny's - Tionesta

More water

Perogie time

Moving on we decided to hike off lunch at the Hearts Content Recreation Area, where we luckily escaped the rain showers for a short hike in the beautiful lush and green forest. The short hike was lovely as we stretched our necks to look up at huge maple, oak, ash, pine and hemlock trees which stood in very pretty groves of green green undergrowth. The only downside was swarms of bugs, which weren’t in the forest, but rather hanging around the drop toilet – peeuuwwh!

See what I mean about green?



Are these trees in love?


Back on on the road again

We continued on through some very cute but very quiet towns with little cottages (more barn stars!), churches, taverns and unfortunately one whopping big oil refinery which sat right on the river and stuck out like a sore thumb against the landscape. The fumes entering the car weren’t pleasant either!!

The source of the stinky fumes - refining oil is a smelly business!

Not so aesthetically pleasing!

We followed a scenic byway around Kinzua Dam which is huge, and actually not entirely full so I’m guessing the locals were welcoming the rain. We took a stroll to a lookout over the lake which was quite pleasant. As the rain set in in the late afternoon, we hit the bottle shop to grab some beverages for our 5 month celebration – drinks and a game of scrabble! Sadly, all the bottle shops were closed (!). But we were fortunate enough to have a very friendly local direct us to a winery that was still open where we grabbed a few bottles of local plonk. The guy was so friendly he got in his car and said to follow him all the way to the winery! We like these Pennsylvanians :-) We then found a campsite and celebrated our milestone together over a game of scrabble while it rained it outside.

We definitely wished we had more time to explore this area as there were hundreds of hiking trails and a lot of river activities. It reminded me a bit of the parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, but also of the Ozarks in Missouri. The Allegheny’s I believe are part of the Appalachian Mountain range so that would explain that. Thanks Penn - it's been great - hope to visit your eastern side soon!

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Farewelling Michigan, we drove south and crossed the border into Indiana – the land started to get a lot flatter as we made our way back to the mid-west prairie land. We decided after several national park campsites and hikes that it was time to get some washing done, so checked into a nice KOA campground in the northern Indiana town of Middlebury amongst wide flat cornfields. While we waited for our washing, we took a dip in the pool and had a game of mini golf, on a quite dodgy little golf course - but anything entertains when you’re changing your location everyday! That night we were treated to a very nice sunset over the hills and having phone reception gave us a chance to catch up with family at home. The phone calls usually start with “where are you now?” and it is fun to be able to give a different state name every time we talk :-)

State #37! Surely that deserves an Arnie pose??

Our KOA campground sunset and setup in Middlebury IN

The next day we decided that the best way to spend our one day allocated to the state of Indiana, without losing too much ground as we moved east on the Indiana Tollroad 80/90, was to check out the Amish part of the state. We had seen a place called Amish Acres in our guidebook which seemed like a nice park to visit. But when we arrived in the area, seeing the big billboards and advertising, we soon realized that it was a tourist trap – doesn’t seem very Amish!? The KOA had some information on an Amish heritage trail: a scenic drive through several of the local Amish communities so we decided to check it out. We headed to the local visitors center at Elkhart and found that there was an audio CD with commentary that guided you through the loop scenic drive – perfect! Any chance we can get to listen or read about the local area, whilst seeing it is a huge bonus! Most of the time I read out of our Most Scenic Drives in America (Readers Digest) book or from a cheap guidebook we bought before leaving – one disadvantage being that I can’t see the landscape as I read! So we were stoked to have a CD we could play as we drove through this country on rural highways. If only we had this for all the other drives we did. I think you could make a killing creating a GPS program with directions as well as commentary of scenic drives in America – just putting it out there!

We made our way through the town of Elkhart – a few miles from the Michigan border. Most of the towns in this area focus on heritage, arts and historical sights. Many were settled by French traders and lots of trade went on between the French and native Americans in the 17-1800’s. The town was settled on the junction of St Joseph’s River (which begins and ends in Michigan) and Elkhart River and definitely had a rural feel, but with regeneration to attract tourists (lots of museums) and the houses along the river are nicely maintained. We’re not huge history fans, but it was still pleasant to drive through – especially the architecture of big homes of old industry barrens along Jackson Blvd. As with many rivers, in the U.S. the St Joseph’s was used as a transport mode (timber) and energy source back in the day – what caught our attention was the use of waterwheels to power grist mills.

Yay - audio CD!

Elkhart


Local architecture

St Joseph's River

The CD informed us that there was still an operating mill – Bonneyville Mills - so we checked it out and were quite impressed. The mill is preserved as a county park and had four levels within an old wooden building with steps between each storey. The horizontal waterwheel was at the bottom which turned huge big grinding stones, conveyer belts carry the grain, and the final step is packaging of stone-ground flour which they sell to visitors. Very cool – Marty loved it - but seemed quite dangerous with many large and exposed operating parts for appendages to get caught in! The gardens surround the mill were pretty too, with some beautiful flowers in bloom.

Bonneyville Mills




As I said - many moving parts!

Good to see fire protection in this all wood structure :-)

Loved the gardens!

Sadly the river stopped being a resource as the ‘iron ribbon’ railroad was built through the area. There were also a lot of “underground railroad’’ stations in the area, homes of abolitionist farmers who harboured escaped slaves from the south, helping them to a free life in the north. The town of Bristol has some history of farmers who were convicted of hiding slaves, but the charges were overturned by the states courts. Another feature of the area was an RV Hall of Fame – but not really our cup of tea so we didn’t bother.

In the towns of Middlebury and Shipshewana, we started to get a glimpse of the black buggies being driven by the Amish people. Amish culture has quite a mystique which has created a local tourist trade – guilty as charged! The Amish settled in Indiana the mid 1800’s and were attracted from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Switzerland and Germany because of the fertile farming land. The Amish call the non-Amish “English” and choose to live without modern conveniences – which are seen as unnecessary and “contrary to God’s plan for us”. Actually seems to be a good way to live really – except for the religion part :-) It is not an authoritarian society and they mingle with the local “English” people quite happily. They are highly skilled as farmers and craftsman so contribute to a lot of the local building, infrastructure and economy. Most Amish have religious objections to being photographed – which we didn’t realize until the audio CD told us….so I snapped a few through the car window discreetly and hoped it wasn’t too much of an intrusion. Although I did feel like an obnoxious tourist while doing it!! The horse-powered buggies share the roads with cars and aren’t required to move to the shoulder. This didn’t seem to be too much of an issue given the width of the roads and you can easily pass beside them. The horses seemed to be pretty used to it as well and didn’t scare with all the traffic surrounding them. You can definitely tell, however, the wear and tear on the roads which are in pretty bad shape in these parts! The Amish seem to use plenty of other transport modes too – walking, bikes (is that counted as modern convenience? But who are we to judge!) and mini buggies pulled by ponies for the kids – cute! It was also funny to see the buggies tied up next to cars in the parking lot.

The Amish sell lots of stuff from homes and shops – food, crafts and baked goods – but, as you would expect, not on Sundays. Luckily we were there on a Saturday. Plenty of flea markets and various craft stores everywhere. When observing the Amish, I found them to look quite tired of the attention, or perhaps this was me mistaking tiredness for introversion? We were definitely surprised by how enterprising the Amish were with plenty of commercial operations that they own and run – they have big families too, so lots of cheap labor I guess!
We pulled into Das Dutchman Essenhaus which is a popular restaurant and bakery in the area – Marty’s mouth was watering for a savoury baked treat but was soon disappointed to learn that all the baked goods were sweet – pies, cookies, cakes and more! I resisted and was quite proud of myself :-) They had 20 varieties of pies and big pot roast lunch, which wasn’t overly appealing given the summer outside.

tempting!


what - no meat pies?!

We did, however, stop at another spot – the Yoder popcorn shop that sold popcorn made from local corn. The corn is grown just for popping - Yoder, a local farmer, used to share his corn with friends and it soon became a business - the corn is made from the smallest kernels at the end of the cob. The girl serving us was quiet and reserved. With tummies rumbling (popcorn isn't very filling!), we eventually caved and went to a local eatery, mostly to try the amish-made noodles, a local specialty. The verdict – nothing special – just like soft pasta…and the ‘buffet’ all you can eat meal was mediocre and of the quality of a cheap Sizzlers (in Australia at least)! Ahwell!

they should build a cinema next to this place ;-)

local noodles

ah - American portions...or is it proportions?

Dining on Amish homecooked buffet....so so

The noodles....so so

We explored the other towns briefly – Shipshewana and Goshen - the land is broad flat prairie with sprawling farms and big houses. This area has the third largest amish population in America. Amish communities don’t build churches, services are held in people’s homes, with different families hosting every second week from 9am-12pm followed by lunch and afternoon popcorn ;-) The Amish end formal schooling at the 8th grade level – they generally operate their own schools too, but some still attend public schools. Clothing is simple, plain and functional – even buttons and bows are too fancy. Patterns and bright colors are not allowed – the most creative are pastel colors. Beards are ok, mustaches not – this may have been to distinguish Amish from the English back in the day. Their customs and practices are based on a spiritual code – this varies based on interpretation so lots of grey areas! They are dutiful taxpayers but seldom have insurance or use public services – but rather take advantage of ‘mutual aid’ of their families.

yay for line-drying

Traffic Amish-style

Carpooling Amish-style?

Fancy a game of volleyball in your smock?

The farm houses are two storey and painted a plain white. They add on bedrooms and living spaces as the family grows and the family patriachs are built a 'granddaddy' house where they can chill in their old age. Most Amish own large successful farms where they grow/raise corn, buckwheat, soybeans, fruit and veg and dairy cows. They harvest crops with man or horse power only which means no modern farming equipment. Although we did see a guy with a mower which we suspect used fuel, but who can blame him with all that grass!? It's funny how you automatically start to pick apart the non-traditional - when we're all so resource intensive ourselves! The Amish seem to evolve with the times which is probably necessary and many find employment in local industries. They speak a swiss/german dialect which we didn’t hear but the CD told us about ;-) it also told us about Amish weddings, which take place in the home and occur after the last crop is harvested in late fall and before the xmas snow. Family and friends act as cook and servers at the wedding (no caterers!), the bride makes her own wedding dress and that of the bridesmaids and no one carries flowers. Most interesting is that the groom has to live with the brides parents after the wedding until the following spring, before the married couple are allowed to move out together! The whole time through our visit I was reminded of an interesting documentary I had watched the on the Amish teenagers and their 'rumspringa' (a time when they are allowed to venture out into the real world to try it out and decide if they want to continue living the Amish way!) - it is called Devil's Playground and is fascinating. I highly recommend!

not a bad life!

the mowing is endless :-)

love the variety of bikes!

As the afternoon approached, and we'd had our fill of Amish tourist sights, we decided to push onto our next state - Ohio. The only real attraction for me was Cleveland...and that is only because of the Drew Carey Show. Ah, how shallow our research is, when it is based on TV sitcoms! The drive along the Indiana Tollroad was quite pretty with flat prairies of soybean and corn and some cute villages in the distance. On the way we passed the exit to Sandusky where a friend had told us is home to the world's largest rollercoaster....but we opted out to cover more ground - New England was waiting.

pretty towns on the way to Cleveland

hello Ohio, state #38

no rollercoaster rides today

Soon we saw the highrises of Cleveland on the horizon and made our way into town. Our first stop was somewhere with a toilet - the public library was around the corner so we checked it out - actually had some cool architecture. We then strolled into town and were mildly entertained by a few buildings and a shopping center that had a bum steer through to a train station. We did, however, stop briefly in one of the last Borders bookstores whose shelves were almost empty - the only thing remaining, tasteless right wing propaganda....I wouldn't buy it either! The feeling in the city was quite depressing really, with lots of rubbish and homeless lying around - plenty of people just seemed to be sitting doing nothing and no one looked particularly happy about it. It was what I would imagine Detroit to feel like - a rapidly industrialized city that has flopped economically with high unemployment. Perhaps a stereotype or perhaps not.

Approaching Cleveland, OH

Cleveland Public Library


Some of the more interesting architecture


And the not-so-interested Cleveland-ites

Bye bye Borders

blah blah

Ah, some green space!

there must have been a body-building contest going on as this chick stripped off for a picture

Industry - not yet rejuvenated

A glimpse at Lake Erie

The saving grace of Cleveland was definitely the University which had a lovely corridor of green space leading up to it's entrance from the lake. This side of town felt more vibrant and generally more pleasant.

We bid farewell to Cleveland and covered some more ground before crashing for the evening in a campground just north of Akron in Streetsboro, OH.

To be honest, the mid-west is interesting historically, but is definitely not as exciting as the scale of the west coast sights we had been seeing. But for all those mid-westerners out there, I agree, we probably didn't dig deep enough! Maybe next time. But definitely thumbs up to the Amish in Indiana for keeping it real!

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One of our key destinations in Michigan was the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which was directly east, about 80 miles across the waters of Lake Michigan from where we were standing. Sadly, no ferry was at our disposal (from what we could tell there was only one that went across further south where we had already been) so we set our sights on driving around the top of the lake and back down the eastern side. We began the day ambitious, thinking we could cover the 11 hour drive – but soon realized that wasn’t going to happen - ah, you think we’d learn :-). We set our sights on a scenic drive on what they call the upper peninsula of Michigan. We soon crossed the border into Michigan – state #36 – and wound our way along the lake shore, getting some really nice views.

We stopped briefly at a rest area on the lake and soaked it in for a bit – seeing a freighter on the horizon belch out a giant plume of diesel smog….nice. We had read that several ice breakers are used to break up the ice on the lake and the narrow gap between the lakes allows passage of ships from the east coast all the way through to the Atlantic! I’ll say it once, and now I’ll say it again –the amount of water on this continent is truly mind-boggling!!

As we made our way east, we passed into the Hiawatha National Forest, which is a beautiful combination of deciduous and perennial trees that line the long straight stretches of road. A very pleasant drive between forests and lake – my mind keeps wishing it was fall so I could see how the landscape changes. We would also constantly make comment about how different life would be here in a few months when the snowy freezing winter begins - in this area they get 140 inches of snow per year! We passed a lot of snowmobile traffic signs and trailheads for cross country skiing – oh, and plenty of poor quality road surfaces no doubt from the snowplowing and grit during the winter. Coming from Brisbane, Australia, where the seasons are relatively consistent year-round, it is hard to imagine landscapes changing so dramatically throughout the year – strange….and mystical. We had noticed the upper peninsula of Michigan is quite narrow and there was a national lakeshore in our scenic drive which fronted onto Lake Superior, so we decided to drive the extra 20 miles to have a look. The area is called Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and we grabbed some information from a local visitor’s center and, given that the day had gotten away from us, set off to find a campsite for the night.

Michigan has a lot of industrial towns centered around the mineral resources under the ground, vegetation resources above the ground, and local transport provided by the lake. We passed a paper mill on our way to the park at the town of Munising – haven’t seen one of them for years!! We stopped briefly to have a look at Munising falls and got our first glimpse of the sand stone that forms the bluffs that are the main feature of the national lakeshore. At one point, the bluff above the waterfall was loose sand! So I would imagine it is quite a rapidly changing landscape!

Our next stop was an overlook called Miners Castle and we got our first look at Lake Superior – another beautiful expanse of water, this time though, the coastline was steep sand and limestone cliffs with a variety of colors from minerals that are carried through the rock dissolved in groundwater. This creates a pretty hue which seems to change with the sun’s angle in the sky. It is a very pretty spot and we decided we were quite glad we came!

This feeling increased as we stopped in the next spot – Mosquito Beach which was a beautiful golden sand beach with views of the cliffs and lovely calm waters gently lapping on the shore. Seagulls hovered above as we strolled up the beach and found a collection of very smooth round rocks – they had been carried here by the glaciers that carved this landscape thousands of years ago. We had some fun skimming them over the water and generally taking in the peaceful-ness of the lakeshore landscape (not too many other people which was great!). I recommend visiting this spot, despite it being out of the way, it was quite a pleasant surprise. I’m not sure what we had expected from the lakes area, but this wasn’t quite in our imaginations, which made it that much more enjoyable.

We then drove up a dirt road for a few miles through a tunnel of beautiful green forest and found ourselves in a cute little campground on Beaver Lake. The campground had 6 spots only, and there were only two left so we quickly grabbed one, agreeing we had been lucky to arrive when we did.

We chilled out by the lake and met a few people in the very friendly campground (the norm seems to be unfriendly generally!) – met a local Michigan who had been coming on vacation to the national lakeshore for 30 years, as well as a Californian from Los Gatos who gave us a tour of his Airstream trailer. It was interesting talking with someone from the bay area after being away so long – definitely made me feel homesick when the conversation is familiar and hits on common interests. Dave’s hobby was landscape photography and he showed us some of his work which was impressive. He was travelling from west to east and then east back to west on his own – quite impressive, not sure I could travel on my own!! We exchanged recommendations, given that he had just come from the New England area on the east coast and we had just been to Wisconsin where he was heading.

The next morning we rose to a beautiful clear day - we were feeling pretty lucky with the weather - so warm! We decided to take a look at a few other sights in the park before moving on and got a few more pleasant surprises. We pulled off to have a look at the Log Slide. Unsure of what to expect, we wandered down a forested trail and hit a sand dune which we climbed and were blown away by what was in front of us - a huge steep drop to Lake Superior down a massive sand dune! The size of these Grand Sable Dunes that line the shore of the lake is incredible - 300ft high! They used to log the forests and slide the logs down this dune to the water where they were freighted away - we read about a few fatalities where occasionally a man would get in the way of the log - not pretty! You could actually walk down the dune to the water but we imagined that the hike back up would be hard work (given our traipsing through Mesquite Sand Dunes in Death Valley, Jockey's Ridge on the Outer Banks and Great Sand Dunes of Colorado!) so we opted out and just took in the views instead. There was one fella there who decided to run down at very high speeds and wiped out quite impressively just before disappearing from sight. His friends spent quite a while calling down to him...with no answer for quite a while!

We also drove through the pretty town of Grand Marais at the eastern end of the park and stopped to have a look at the beach. It is so weird visiting beaches that front onto lakes - I'm just saying! The views at this point out onto the lake, over grassy dunes and back west towards the steep dunes of the park were just beautiful. The little beach houses here were very cute too - but we were still glad it wasn't winter during our visit!

We bid adieu to Lake Superior and crossed the Upper Peninsula from north to south back to the Lake Michigan. Unfortunately we didn't have time to visit a popular spot, the town of Sault Ste Marie (pronounced Soo Saint Maree) which sits on the border with Canada and is the worlds busiest canal (on tonnage) - it a series of locks that carry huge freighters between the lakes. Oh well, next time! Instead, we crossed the harbor that separates Lake Michigan from Lake Huron on the (tolled) Mackinac Bridge. Funnily enough, the day was hot and quite smoggy, and the bridge was one of the longest suspension bridges in the U.S. and looked a lot like the Golden Gate bridge, so we had a nostalgic moment as we drove across it :-) The difference being that we were going across freshwater and were thousands of miles from the Pacific Ocean!

We continued down the eastern coast of Lake Michigan for the rest of the day, winding through some cute country-side and some not-so-cute sprawling touristy towns. We had read about a town called Traverse City which claims to be the ‘cherry capital of the world’ and produces one third of the world’s cherries! We headed into town, our mouths watering for a taste of the juicy red fruit, but saw not one sign or indication of cherries for sale anywhere! We hit the local grocery store and soon realized they probably weren’t in season, so grabbed some grapes instead :-) We also drove through a beautiful scenic drive called the Tunnel of Trees which wound its way through lovely forest with some rather pretty but prestigious lake-side homes nestled in amongst the trees. We decided this is where the wealth of Michigan must be as the houses only got more and more luxurious (although many for sale!) and we passed a few country clubs and golf courses. The towns were beautifully laid out with gorgeous architecture and immaculate landscapes - we even saw a guy leaf blowing the clippings off a lawn - god forbid!

We continued onto our destination which we finally reached late in the afternoon - Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. We had seen that this had been voted most beautiful national park recently so were excited about seeing the sights. We pulled into the D H Day campground, and being two days before the Labor Day long weekend, were told we were lucky to get a site as this was one of the most popular campsites in the area! Phew! We emerged from the van to realize the temperature had risen significantly since our departure from further north and were happy to learn there was a beach right beside the campground. We donned swimsuits/togs and headed for a dip in Lake Michigan. It was a lovely refreshing swim. We had noticed many people weren’t swimming and were advised the lake was quite chilly, but it was fine! Definitely swimmable and we enjoyed stretching out after the long day in the van and then lazing on the sand, still having to constantly remind ourselves that we weren’t looking at an ocean but rather a lake!!

We woke in the morning early to get a look at the lakeshore – we took a drive through a scenic loop which wound through some beautiful thick green forest. The sunrise over the lake was very pretty at this time of the morning. We stopped at the Cottonwood Trail and took a 1.5 mile hike through the dunes. It was ok, but admittedly we had seen some nicer dunes on our travels. Our stop at the Lake Michigan Overlook was entertaining as the wind whipped up off the lake and almost blew us off our feet. The sand was being carried along too and we ran along the path as it stung our legs! We took a third short hike up a trail called Empire Bluff and got some fantastic views of the huge dunes and looking out over the lake. The geography of this place is amazing and we were glad we had come.

The rest of the day was spent driving to our next state: Indiana. I had wanted to take a look at Detroit and Ann Arbor but time was ticking away so not to be. It was at about this stage in the trip we didn’t pay too much attention to the details of the ‘in between’ areas and focused on just the major things we wanted to see – we had definitely had reached a saturation point and at times, were just feeling like we wanted to get this last bit done! We definitely felt, however, that we had seen some unique and beautiful parts of Michigan and were so glad we had taken the route we did - the great lakes are just awe inspiring and I definitely recommend a visit to Pictured Rocks if you're ever in the area!

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Bidding farewell to our lovely family and hosts in Chicago, we set north to explore more of the great lakes region. After these stays with lovely guests our adventurous spirit always seems to be replenished and we get that one-of-a-kind feeling that is wanderlust and the magnetic pull of unexplored territories. Although, at this point in the trip, it also comes with a big pinch of salt as we move from a spacious bedroom, accessible and private bathroom, kitchen stocked with all the food we could want, washing machine readily available and couches in front of TV that we can laze on - to the cramped quarters of the van and at times shower-less nights, often dictated by weather and campsite availability. Not to mention hours of driving, podcasts, conversations that seem to go in circles and mind-numbing routines of gas refills, rest area lunches, token photo stops and last-minute planning. It's funny how each month of the trip has a different feel - like a book, beginning, middle and end all bring different feelings. We're definitely over the halfway point, which to be honest, felt like a hump at times - but suddenly having time ticking down towards a final destination feels like turning the page to a new chapter and suddenly gives perspective to all we've done and how little is left to go in comparison!

We crossed the border into Wisconsin and followed roads north to the Green Bay area. We passed briefly through Milwaukee and had a quick look at the lakefront park and drove through the famous Miller brewery. It seemed like a nice city but we were still cognizant of our time limit so we reluctantly moved on. Of course, if we were football fans we might have stopped in the home of the Green Bay Packers, Green Bay WI, but we're not, so we didn't!

There was a scenic drive that looked nice at a place called the Door Peninsula - it is the part of eastern Wisconsin that juts into Lake Michigan like the thumb of a mitten. The drive was pleasant but got a lot nicer once we started to wind through some beautiful little villages tucked into the northern part of the peninsula. The Green Bay side of the peninsula is calm whereas the Lake Michigan side is wild with big wind and waves. Similarly to the views out over Lake Michigan in Chicago, we were still struggling to imagine that this huge body of water is actually an inland lake - to see such a broad and never ending expanse makes you subconsciously think you are looking at the ocean! Especially when there are waves - obviously not tidal but whipped up from the winds that fly across the lake and hit the shore. Door County got its name from the treacherous waters to its north, which French fur traders navigated in the 1800's - many were unsuccessful and there are a large number of shipwrecks on the lake floor in this area. The French nicknamed it Porte des Morts ('deaths door') and the name stuck.

Lake Michigan!

Lunching by the lake

As we were driving up the peninsula we noticed signs to an Energy Center, and being big fans of renewable energy, we decided to check it out. Having noticed a few windmills and observing the various energy sources around us - a lot of biomass, animal waste, waves on the lake, sun beating down - we brainstormed what kind of energy they might display: solar, wave, methane capture. Alas, it was a nuclear power plant! Ah, nuclear, so incredibly powerful, yet so risky. The energy center was right beside the nuclear power plant in the region, which was right on the lake – and obviously used the lake water for cooling. We guessed that no ice would be forming in this area of the lake with all the hot water dumped into it, that, and a peculiarly large bird population from all the fish that must hang around in the warm soup. The energy center was quite disappointing given all of the billboard advertisements we had seen on the highway – they could have put more funds into the center rather than the advertising! It was directed more towards school kids and had basic information and not bad displays on the production of nuclear power…that is, except for the various displays that weren’t working. We were reminded about the power of uranium atoms – one pellet is equivalent to 1,780 pounds of coal! And they had several informative, but quite outdated videos that discussed security following 9/11 (big boost in on-the-ground presence) and the sensitive subject of waste disposal (it is cooled for months in pools and then stored in thick concrete tanks until they can figure out what to do with Yucca Mountain :-)). Interestingly, 17% of Wisconsins energy comes from nuclear power. The Fukushima plant disaster was in the front of our minds as we wandered through the center – I couldn’t help but hope that no earthquake struck while we were right next to the huge Lake Michigan!

As we drove through Wisconsin, one prominent feature, apart from all of the smells in the air (Wisconsin is dairy country!), was the diversity of trees and what was the start of the deciduous forests we will be seeing more of on the east coast: mapes, pines, birches, beech trees, oaks and more. We also got our first glimpse of some reds and yellows on the tips of branches - very exciting to think that soon this will turn into a whole different world of colors. I've been dying to see the 'fall' colors that the eastern side of the U.S. is famous for!

Lovely!

We drove through some adorable towns throughout the peninsula (Sisters Bay, Egg Harbor, Fish Creek), which all had very cute boutique shops, restaurants and a quaint little marinas. The area also seems to be home to a lot of artisans with plenty of galleries displaying pottery, sculptures, paintings and more. There were also plenty of orchards (cherry, vineyards, peaches, apples) and signs for a weekend “fish boil” at many of the roadside eating establishments. Not sure how tasty boiled fish would be, and if that was what it was advertising, but sadly we never got to find out! I’m guessing there is some good seafood in this part of the country – or is it lakefood?? The door peninsula definitely has a european feel, like we were in germany or Sweden, plenty of cheese shops and wineries and we even saw a Mennonite church.

Cool barn

Boiled fish anyone?

Pretty harbours and houses on the bay

Orchards

Leaving the energy center we passed through a lot of dairy farms and the only way we knew was from the smell. For some reason I had expected Wisconsin to be green rolling hills with lots and lots of fat and healthy cows munching grass in the fields. Sadly, we saw very few and finally realized they were most likely locked up in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s) which create truly awful aromas and, from my research on this industry in my previous job, very concentrated and polluting wastes. Interestingly at the time we were listening to a podcast about antibiotics being used for animal health in Australia and the controversy surrounding their use. We have seen a lot of grain being grown in the U.S. and believe a huge proportion is for cattle feed. I didn’t want to venture into U.S. standards on livestock feed or nutrition but had a vague idea after seeing documentaries like King Corn (www.kingcorn.net) and Future of Food (www.thefutureoffood.com). I highly recommend watching these to get an idea of the crazy monopoly corporates have on agriculture in the U.S. – and for those living in the U.S, I highly recommend membership to a great film club called Ironweed (www.ironweedfilms.com). I had done a lot of research in my previous job on reduction of methane emissions from livestock through installation of anaerobic digesters – big tanks that basically catch the methane as an energy source – and remembered that a lot of Wisconsin dairies had been installing these clean technologies and registering the carbon reductions to produce carbon credits which are sold in a voluntary carbon market. From our quick visit, however, I didn’t spot any digesters in this particular part of Wisconsin.

Moo cows

Stinky CAFO

We did purchase some chilli flavored cheese curds to try - not bad - rubbery, salty, spicy!

Probably should have gotten some from here but by this time we were all cheesed out :-)

Anyway, I digress, as we made our way further north into some gorgeous countryside. We hadn’t planned much about where to stay for the night, so decided to check out Newport State Park for the evening. On arrival, we were told that the only campgrounds were a 2 mile hike into the wilderness – as enticing as this sounded, we moved onto another state park (thank goodness there were others on the peninsula) and made our way to aptly named Peninsula State Park on the Green Bay side of the peninsula. On the way we passed through the very cute town of Ephraim which sits on Eagle Harbour and caught a glimpse of the sun setting over the lake – beautiful! Arriving at the park, we wound our way through thick forests of beech maples and to the office where we were able to find a campsite. The park was very large and had many walking and biking trails along the lake and forest. The forest was a sample of the native habitat that existed in the region prior to human settlement and was very peaceful and pretty – we were impressed, and I hadn’t expected it to be so green and lush but rather thought it would be rather more coastal in nature i.e. barren, rocky and bare. However, we cooked dinner and hit the sack under the forest, listening to a weird sounding bird up in the branches.

Eagle Harbour

Looking out over Green Bay from Peninsula State Park

That night we sat down to figure out the remainder of the trip and where/how we might cover it in the time remaining. Our ‘allocation of nights per state’ approach has gone out the window, and we now look at the state, pick one or two key sights to see and then allocate a number of nights. In some states it is difficult to settle on what to prioritize and what to sacrifice – and at times you feel helpless when you consider how little you can see in the time you have anyway. However, you make your bed, you lie in it! And this bed isn’t half bad (Marty used to work for Sealy Posturpedic :-)) so we determined that in approximately 20-30 days we would be able to cover the remaining states, with a priority on the New England coast over some of the mid-west states i.e. Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. So we took a deep breath and shook hands on the fact that we would have some big distance to cover in the next few days!! Planning ahead is sometimes a challenge given Marty’s urge to keep moving and covering ground, and my urge to stop and take every sight in. But we seem to be finding our groove, and it is becoming easier as time goes on.

The next morning I took a run through the hiking trails to a beautiful spot which overlooked the bay. It was extremely therapeutic and a great way to start the day – I felt so grateful for the opportunity to have a different setting as my backdrop each morning and so lucky to be doing this trip. Some people never leave the town they were born in and never get to experience this incredibly liberating feeling – and that morning I felt extremely grateful for the opportunity to be where I was!! On departure from the park, as hard as it was with all of the bike trails (!), we climbed the Eagle Tower (fire tower) and got some great views over Nicolet Bay, local islands and into the beech maple forest. The first leaves were beginning to turn with a few tips of red and gold and I can only imagine what it would look like in a month’s time! But alas, we must keep going!

View over Nicolet Bay

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So we bid farewell to the Cooney’s and Iowa and moved onto our next destination – the Windy City: Chicago! I have an aunt, uncle and cousins in Chicago so we were excited about seeing them and catching up after, for me: several years since my last visit, and for Marty: to meet them for the first time. We crossed the Mississippi River for the final time, bidding farewell to the huge beast and drove eastward through yet more corn and soy crops into Illinois.

Crossing the Mississippi for the last time

We had previously crossed into the state of Illinois briefly when we were finding our way from Kentucky to Missouri, so technically this wasn’t officially our first time in the state, but we counted it this time for the record – state number 34!

It wasn’t long before we started passing through the sprawling outer suburbs of Chicago and before we knew it, had arrived in Inverness, an outer suburb in Chicago’s north-west. We settled into the Laney residence with ease – it was to enjoy family hospitality and chill out in a house – thanks Aunty Julie and Uncle Russ!!

Family!

Our 4 days in Chicago were action-packed with visits to the cousins and cousins-once-removed. For one day, Marty and I boarded the Chicago Metra regional rail and made the hour long commute into downtown Chicago. We enjoyed some spectacularly clear and warm weather as we wandered the streets. Highlights definitely include:

Walking beside Lake Ontario, hard to imagine such a huge water body lies so far inland from the ocean

Wandering the various public spaces in the city, it has a great participatory feel to it and an abundance of urban sustainability initiatives include the Chicago Climate Action Plan (which I had studied closely in my previous job) which seeks to to reach a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050 (more info at http://www.chicagoclimateaction.org) through energy efficiency, renewable energy, transportation, waste and adaptation measures

Loved this fountain

Visiting the Millennium Park which has a fantastic gardens as well as giant mirror statue which holds anyone’s attention for at least 15 mins as you look at yourself from various angles :-)

Taking a 90 minute architecture tour (recommended by local Dave Norem!) hosted by the Chicago Architecture Foundation which was delivered from the deck of a boat sailing up the Chicago River (which, yes, freezes in winter!), and listening to the incredible array of architectural styles that have been built over the years: Art Deco, Prairie School, Moderne, Gothic and Greek Revival. An extremely interesting and reasonably priced tour which is very well done, highly recommended

Chicago River



They call this one the 'corn cob' :-)


Viewing platforms on the Sears Tower (not for the faint hearted!)

This one had rocks from all over the world embedded in the building - how cool is that!?

Dropping into the Macy’s food court for sushi (ahh!) and a Chicago style hot dog (green relish…interesting!)

We skipped the famous Sears tower (I had already been up) and saved some money by going to the rooftop bar at the John Hancock Center which gave us amazing views of the city’s almost never ending sprawl over miles of plains but also views of the many uniquely designed rooftop green spaces – awesome! We enjoyed some (very expensive) local beer, wine and cheese while enjoying the view!

We really liked downtown Chicago a lot and it was on our list of places we think we could live, but the winters would have to warm up a bit first!! Interestingly too, we didn’t notice a lot of wind in the windy city and had a spectacularly clear and warm day when we visited. Nice!

During our stay we were also treated to some great cousin hospitality – ice skating with my cousins once removed. Both boys are under the age of 10 and confident ice skaters and ice hockey players – such a different upbringing to living in the subtropical suburbs of Brisbane! We enjoyed a feast of deep dish pizza followed by a movie night (Under the Hedge is actually quite funny!) at the Knappik Household. Deep dish is an understatement for this pie of a pizza – the best part, definitely the tomato sauce, very flavorful!

mmmm- deep dish

skating lessons at the ice skating rink

movie night!

We also spent a night rocking out to a corny, but significantly entertaining, 80’s cover band with cousin Natasha at the local Palatine Street Fest. Let’s just say it was a big night – delicious sushi dinner followed by much singing (Footloose!), dancing, people watching (mullets!), darts (I hit the bullseye!) and lively debate :-) Lets just say Marty may have been a bit sore after that night.

sushi time - delicious, even marty had some!

Palatine Street Fest!

Hands on hips!

The 80's band "Sixteen Candles" - not bad!

Bullseye!

Silliness :-)

We also got the bikes out and rode around the northwest suburbs of Chicago, which had some extravagantly large houses on rather large blocks, but also some fantastic green spaces alongside creeks with plenty of green lawn and weeping willow trees. I was quite impressed with the bike paths in the suburb of Inverness and surrounds, however, the car definitely dominates over any other transport mode! My aunt also showed us the religious routine at her community church, quite different to churches I grew up with, stadium sized performances, guest speakers during the week, a restaurant, bookstore and more!! Mega church was definitely an appropriate term and the place was almost full on a Wednesday night! A once in a lifetime experience and the live band was very entertaining.

exploring the burbs and bike paths

church time

Once again, the Laney’s put on a fantastic show of hospitality for their visiting Aussie relatives and we were very grateful to have such a great time!

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Setting off from our campground in the burbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota we were feeling tired and blurry eyed from a very long previous day of travel in the van. I blame this reason for our oversight of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul – we passed them before we even had a chance to exit and decided to head to one of the token sights in the guidebook instead, mostly because it was somewhere where we could get coffee and breakfast: the Mall of America. Can’t say I am proud of this decision, and in hindsight there were plenty of things I would have loved to see and people I would have visited (Ebet!) in the Twin Cities had we been a little more on the ball. But hey, sometimes you just can’t be bothered planning anything and this is one of the consequences! Anyhoo, we spent the morning wandering the unnecessarily huge consumer’s paradise that is the Mall of America – it is ridiculously large (96 acres of retail) and even has a amusement park in the middle of it. Ironically, the one thing we actually wanted to buy – an anti-glare screen for the laptop – no one sold….go figure! We consumed some breakfast as we watched the rollercoasters and rides in the theme park – there was a cool Lego shop with ginormous figures (e.g. 3 story high transformer) made out of Lego which Marty thought was cool but we didn’t spend long, especially after I dropped my coffee on the floor of the shop, making a right mess - oops – should have blamed it on all the kids that were there….anyhoo! Within an hour we were feeling the zombie trance that overcomes one’s brain when stuck in the neon, air conditioned, retail maze that is a giant mall so we hot-footed it right out of there and moved onto our next destination, a scenic drive down the Mississippi River.

a glimpse of the Twin Cities


good to know - I feel a lot safer now....

We spent the rest of the day winding our way through some lovely farming country and small towns along the MIsssissippi River that separates Missouri from Wisconsin. We were lucky enough to have the sun come out and enjoyed the views of the river and stopped for a picnic lunch in one of the cute towns. Highlights include Red Wing, Lake City (apparently birthplace of water skiing) and Winona (where we lunched). The Mississippi is absolutely huge and many of the towns existed purely from its presence as a transportation route for resources back in the 1800’s – sadly the advent of railroad soon saw boats become a defunct method of travel. We decided to cross the river at one point into Wisconsin to have a look – from that side, which was also pretty. At many points the river is so wide it forms lakes, and many large lakes lie adjacent to the river – so much water! We crossed the river at the border with Iowa and stopped for the night in Pikes Peak State Park, a cute park on top of one of the many bluffs overlooking the river in this region. On the way we spotted a cute riverboat sailing the river and many places offered cruises. We also passed a riverboat casino – reminded us of one we had seen in Natchez, Mississippi. I guess some of these states only permit gambling on the river? We decided, having passed through Wisconsin briefly, that we had to try out the food that makes Wisconsin famous – cheese (hence the term ‘cheeseheads’ for Wisconsinites) - so we had picked some up earlier in the day. That evening in the campground, we did a taste test – our old faithful and never disappointing Irish Dubliner mature cheddar (aged 2 yrs) versus the local Wisconsin mature cheddar (aged 5 yrs) with that omnipresent orange hue that seems the essential characteristic of American cheese :-) Back in Australia Marty worked in dairy technology for a few years and bought home some very aged cheddar that has been the benchmark for all of our cheese experiences since. Sadly, the Wisconsin cheddar, sharp but too salty, did not win over the Irish (more smooth, creamy, slightly sweet and better aftertaste), and definitely not the Aussie cheddar (drool!) :-)

The Mighty Mississippi at Red Wing


One of the many adjacent lakes

Lunch at Winona









the big test

The next day I took an early morning stroll through the state park, and saw a beautiful sunrise from the bluffs of Pikes Peak over the Mississippi and watched some hummingbirds have a morning feed. Interestingly, Pikes Peak in Iowa was named after the same guy, Zebulon Pike, who the Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs (that we had driven past back in July) was! What are the chances!? Zebulon (cool name!) explored the Mississippi valley back in 1805 in search of military post locations. The park also had an interesting feature – Effigy Mounds, prehistoric mounds in the shape of animals built 1400 years ago by native american tribes – their origin and meaning are a mystery to this day. They’re not overly interesting to look at – just a grassy lump – but apparently when viewed from the air, they form the shape of various animals. Quite interesting really!

We continued on with our travels in Iowa that morning – our destination, a town called Muscatine. Way back in our travels through Texas's hill country in April, we had stopped for the night in a campground in Kerrville, and were visited at our campsite by a friendly fella named Dave, who was on a hill country multi-day road bike event. We had spent the night drinking Texan beer with Dave and sharing travel stories and he had mentioned, should we be in the vicinity, that we come visit him in Iowa later in our trip. Well, believe it or not we didn’t know anyone else in Iowa so we looked him up and dropped by his local digs in Muscatine! It was great to see him again, and him and his lovely wife Linda offered us a place to stay for a few nights, which we gratefully accepted. Muscatine is a cute little town on the banks of the Mississippi, famous in it’s heyday for the clam harvesting and subsequent pearl button industry (at one point it was known as the Pearl Button Capital of the World), and also where Mark Twain spent some time writing for the local rag: the Muscatine Journal. We spent a fun few days with the Cooney’s catching up and seeing the local sights. Dave (or Coondog as he known locally) was an incredibly gracious and generous host and took us:

• To visit a friend who was in the process of a lengthy but absolutely magnificent renovation (labor of love) of an old antebellum home (we even got a private tour!) situated on the bluffs overlooking the mighty Mississippi
• To view of the local Misssissippi Lock and Dam which allow navigation to the Upper part of the river
• To a dinner party where we enjoyed several drinks and a delicious meal with his friendly and fun mates accompanied by many laughs and cat fun
• To dine out at a lovely local Thai restaurant and drink martini’s at a bar overlooking the river
• To see the local park where he had been involved in a community initiative to save and restore a small historical cabin and garden that was once the sight of the city zoo

driving to Muskatine - this is corn country!


the labor of love!


it had many levels

how huge is this corn!?

our lovely hosts in the widows walk

the lock and dam

this was the bar design at the local drinking hole, aptly named 'The Pearl Button'

the house Dave restored

drinks with the Muskatine locals

We were also privileged enough to feast on Linda’s delicious home cooking – roast venison tenderloin (locally slayed!) is delicious, and take with us some yummy homemade apple sauce (apples picked from the Cooney orchard) and cherry jam with us on the road! We love learning about how others live simply and locally and participate in their communities and the Cooney’s had a lot to share! It was a fantastic way to see some of Iowa and catch up with Dave and meet Linda, who are more than welcome to come stay with us in Australia anytime!!! Thanks Coondog!

the Cooney's apple orchard

delish!

what great hospitality!

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Given that time was ticking away, and that we had seen the one priority assigned to the state of Montana (Glacier NP) – we moved on from our cushy Great Falls KOA campground and completed an epic 400 mile day of travel all the way across the great plains to the next state east: North Dakota. It was a long and boring day in the van. Eastern Montana is surprisingly un-scenic and whoever named them ‘The Great Plains’, were referring to size alone! But 7 hours later we made it to the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park just over the border in North Dakota. A funny occurrence that day – there seemed to be a lot of bugs, grasshoppers and moths as we crossed through eastern Montana (perhaps from the wheat fields?) and the windscreen has never had such a large number of ‘gut splatters’ – when we arrived the front grate of the van was chock full of little bug carcasses – gross!! I should also note (or shouldn’t?) that they stayed on there for at least a week until Marty finally gave in and cleaned it :-) Ewwh!

Love the prairie grasslands

Made it


Gross bug splatter

Anyway, back to the national park – it is named after president Theodore Roosevelt who was an avid conservationist. He lived in North Dakota for much of his life and had a ranch that he owned there, which was donated and eventually it became this national park. During his tenure as president, ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt set aside land and features including 18 national monuments, 5 national parks and 51 wildlife refuges. Makes me wonder what legacy today’s presidents are leaving?? He is quoted as saying "I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota". He also said the badlands were "so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth." I couldn’t agree more. The park boasts very similar badlands country that we had seen in South Dakota – it is really a unique view - wind and water erosion of sediment carried to the great plains which creates an incredibly bizarre and unique landscape of buttes (pronounced ‘beaut’s….unfortunately :-)) and tables topped with prairie grasses. On arrival at the campground we took a short stroll to stretch our legs down to the Little Missouri River which was lined with reeds. We saw some bison on the other side of the river and walked up one of the strange looking buttes to watch the sunset over our campground. It was very pretty and peaceful. Some other cool features – the park has a herd of wild horses, a few of which were munching on grass and leaving special steamy deposits in our campground! As well as the ever so cute and playful prairie dogs.

Badlands


Little Missouri River


cuties

We decided, after contemplating another night of blogging/scrabble/philosophizing over the increasing polarization of U.S. politics/talking in circles about hypothetical future scenarios/reading our kindles/staring at the scenery, that we would mix things up and attend a ranger talk that night in the campground. It was quite fun actually – and it seemed that everyone else in the campground had the same idea as the amphitheater (something I never thought was actually used in these campgrounds!) was packed! The ranger was a young bloke, very passionate about the history of native american people in the region. He gave a very animated (big campfire, powerpoint slideshow, music and he even climbed a ladder and then lay on the ground at one point!), but very informative, discussion about the native American tribes and their relationship with bison. I had no idea you could get that many uses out of one animal – food, shelter, tools, various bizarre rituals and ceremonies and even a boat built from the hide. It was great! Sadly, much of the bison in the area was hunted and almost completely wiped out so the herd that still exists in the park is lucky to be there!

The next day we decided we would rise early and instead of driving the scenic route through the park, we would bike it! With these long travel days, I’m constantly whining about needing to get outdoors and stretch my legs, even though if I was back working, I would be sitting at a desk all day long anyway! But even in an office you can stand up, stretch out, walk around – in the van a bit of what I call ‘seat dancing’ is as good as it gets :-) I’m surprised we haven’t gotten any back/neck problems with the amount of time we sit in the van – especially Marty. I guess getting in and out of the bed requires a bit of acrobatics – and when we stop we generally keep active. I guess being a nomad is at times interesting and at times challenging!
But enough about that! We jumped on the bikes early and took a lovely ride on the scenic road through Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We saw prarie dogs playing on the low lying prairies, rode amongst buttes and mesas of varying stages of erosion, biked beside wild horses (they seemed to enjoy running alongside us which was very ‘man from snowy river’!) and dodged an incredibly large number of mounds of bison and horse poo on the road :-). However, it was a lovely ride despite being a bit saddle sore after 30 or so miles! On return we checked out of the campground and continued on with the trip, deciding that we would head to our next state: Missouri that day. We headed to town to get a coffee to begin – and found a cute kitschy café. It was at this point I tried my first funnel cake – really good! Basically a donut with icing sugar, but a bit more pastry-like. Quite yummy, given my weakness for baked goods :-) Or perhaps it tasted so good because of the 30 mile bike ride we had just done??

lets ride!






poop!


bison herds

yay helmet hair!

So, this was probably going to be our longest day yet, making our way across the state of North Dakota and into Missouri. We decided to be ambitious and see if we could make it all the way across the state to the twin cities of Minneapolis/St Paul which border Wisconsin. Needless to say, it was a very long day and in preparation we downloaded lots of podcasts as well as an audio version of Obama’s book ‘The Audacity of Hope’ which kept us occupied. On a previous trip when we were living in California and drove 6 hours to snowboard at Mammoth Mountain in the central valley we had listened to Obama’s other book ‘Dreams from my Father’ and enjoyed it. This one was equally as good – he writes about his life as a congressman, his political ideals, family life, being an African American in America and is frank and honest about his experiences. It was most interesting listening to all of this knowing that he is now leader of the free world! He is a good writer and speaks a lot of sense, albeit was a little idealistic in his views of the future, considering what he is now facing with a ‘stick in the mud’ republican presence in congress! I recommend his books though, as he writes incredibly well and is very intelligent (ex-law professor).

So, travelling North Dakota on the major west to east highway 94, was very flat with field after field of corn and soybean and a large number of billboards promoting ethanol use. A few small towns looked cute from a distance but I must be honest and say that I didn’t mind one bit that we only spent one night in North Dakota – as with many of these central states, it wasn’t high on our priority list. We passed a few towns but didn’t venture in – I thought Fargo might be interesting (given the movie….lame, I know) but it was flat, sprawling and not very interesting so we only stopped briefly for some groceries and pushed on. As we neared the eastern part of the state we started to notice quite a bit of water lying around and as we crossed the border into Missouri, the effects of summer flooding were quite apparent as low lying areas were flooded and everything generally felt quite damp and wet!! The storm clouds were darkening around us and seemed heavy with water – soon enough it was raining - not the best welcome to the state. We drove into the night and finally pulled into a KOA campground in an outer suburb of Missouri – tired and ready to crash! Phew – second longest day yet with 545 miles and 8 and a half hours in the van (Kansas to Colorado holds the record with 570 miles and 12 hours)! But we felt quite happy that we had covered some ground, ND was behind us, MN in front, and we were closer to our next destination – Iowa.

some of the more interesting scenery


support corn, support ethanol


flooding


as exciting as Fargo, ND got!

sun setting - and we're still driving..

As we continued north into Montana through the Bitterroot National Forest (the bitterroot is a plant that was a staple of the native american diet for a long time!), we finished off the day with a night in a KOA campground in Missoula – feeling too travelled out to explore the town unfortunately. After a few days of state/national park camping, these ‘upmarket’ campgrounds are great and I got to have a nice long chat with my mum back home which made my day. The next day we moved north through the Flathead Indian Reservation , apparently home to over 5,000 native americans but we didn’t see anyone there and it appeared to be quite desolate and empty. We noticed a national bison range on the map so decided to drive there. On arrival we decided it wasn’t worth the 19 mile auto tour side trip through the park given we had seen some already in North Dakota and Yellowstone. The feeling of Montana when passing through was a sleepy, quiet, unassuming state but plentiful in beautiful views and fertile land. Definitely lives up to its slogan – big sky country with amazing vistas that seem to stretch on forever! As we drove on the jagged peaks of the Mosquito Mountain Range began to appear to the east. We unexpectedly passed through some wetlands – the Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. I guess you can have wetlands in the colder climes too – we still hadn’t seen a moose (who love the wet areas) yet and kept our eyes peeled to no avail. We rounded a crest in the road and Flathead Lake stretched before us – it is very large (largest freshwater lake west of Mississippi) and nestled in rolling hills. As we drove around the lake it reminded me of Lake Tahoe in California – we contemplated a swim but pushed on. Soon we were seeing a lot of cherry orchards and farm stands and stopped in to pick us up some Flathead cherries – they were delicious and we consumed quite a few over the course of the afternoon!!

Bitterroot National Forest (this was an animal crossing bridge - nice)

National Bison Range in Flathead Indian Reservation

First glimpse of the Mosquito Mountain Range

Ninepipes National Wildlife Refuge

Flathead Lake


Cherry growing country - delicious!

Before we knew it, we had hit our top Montana destination: Glacier National Park. We had heard a lot of good things about this park, and were also excited about being this far north – the most northerly point we had been so far on the trip. The temperatures were still beautifully balmy though – lucky us! The park borders on Canada and is connected to the Canadian Waterton National Park – which we wouldn’t be crossing the border to see given my tourist visa and not wanting to risk rejection on re-entry! It is amazing to think we have gone from the southern border of the U.S. with Mexico in Arizona (Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument) and Texas (Big Bend National Park), been a short boat trip from Cuba down in the southern-most point at Key West in the Florida Keys and now we were a stones throw from Canada. I feel like for Aussies there is definitely a novelty that comes with international borders you can cross by foot, given we don’t have any on our island country (and continent!). As it is known locally, the Waterton-Glacier National Park were separate parks that crossed an international border, so because of this, the governments of U.S. and Canada linked the two parks in 1932 as the world’s first International Peace Park. This didn’t have a whole lot of significance to us as we hadn’t heard of an International Peace Park before, and come to think of it, still doesn’t as I haven’t seen or heard of another one?? Must google that. What we had heard of was World Heritage Sites, which these parks were also named in 1995 – one of the worlds great treasures. As we spent time in this park, I can definitely see why it got all these accolades – there is something about it that just feels pristine and peaceful and extraordinary. If you want to get away from it all and get some inner calm, I definitely recommend Glacier NP! The park got its name from the many glaciers that exist, and the landscape that they shaped over time. Sadly, but not surprisingly they are predicting that, due to man-made global warming, they will all be gone by 2030. The park is also home to extraordinary ecological diversity – ecosystems converge from all directions at this the narrowest point in the Rocky Mountain chain, prairie plains rise almost immediately to huge mountains and various watersheds meet at this point - this supports an amazing variety of plant and animal species including grizzly and black bears, wolves (which returned to the park in the 80’s and have been growing in number ever since), elk, deer, bighorn sheep, mountain goats and many bird and fish species.

We stopped in at the visitors center and were told that we’d better get to a campsite quick to secure a spot, so we made our way to the nearest available sites at the Avalanche Creek campground. We got ourselves a nice site under the trees and set off for an afternoon hike on the nearby Avalanche Creek Trail. We soon passed the creek which was an absolutely beautiful gush of aqua blue glacial meltwater carving its way through a stone gorge surrounded by forest – our first taste of the park’s beauty. Very nice!! We continued onward past what looked like a massive amount of felled trees, but soon realized this was avalanche damage (hence the trail name) – whole mountainside of dead trees all lying on their sides, incredible. Avalanches are a huge shaping force in this park. Our final destination, Avalanche Lake was far and beyond one of the most amazing lakes I have ever seen (on par with Lake Louise in Canada…and of course Lake Eacham back home in Australia). We counted at least 4 waterfalls cascading down the snow-capped mountains into this beautiful lake – breathtaking and like a painting/postcard…we sat for a while just taking it in before snapping about a thousand pictures (none of which do it justice!). It was quite a treat. We headed back to the trailhead, spotting a mule deer on the way back past the creek (they get their name because of the big ears) and took a side turn to the Trail of the Cedars, a walk that winds through a grove of massive old growth red cedars – so majestic and beautiful. We love big trees and this put some very nice icing on an already delicious cake!! We returned to our campsite, excited for what we would see tomorrow, and ate dinner agreeing that we’d chosen well to come to Glacier NP!

Avalanche Creek


The devastation of avalanches (hard to see)

The reward - wow!






Mule deer (running away)

Trail of the Cedars

The next day, we took a look at the giant Lake McDonald – the far shore had a bunch of dead trees, we never did figure out why they were dead – perhaps pine beetle, or fire, or frost? We also drove along McDonald Creek and saw some nice waterfalls. In the afternoon we decided to take advantage of the shuttle service in the park, which was recommended as a way to reduce traffic and pollution on the famous Going-to-the-Sun road, the only road going through the park. The shuttle weaved its way up in elevation to the highest point in the park, Logan’s Pass which sits at 6,646 feet. The trip was long due to a lot of roadwork, which is necessary given that snow and ice sit on it for the majority of the year – the shuttle driver noted that winter stretches from October to June and ‘there is very little sunlight – so we love summer around here’! Again, we were grateful to be lucky enough to be here in the small window of time when it is actually a comfortable temperature! Would not want to be here in winter – especially when we finally disembarked at Logan’s pass and felt the rather chilly temperature! Plenty of snow still lying and we noticed a few people with skis who were trekking up in their boots to the patches of snow that probably never disappear. We decided to tackle the Highline trail which is etched precariously into the very steep mountainside and makes its way 11 miles from the pass down about 4,000 feet to a mid-way point on the road where you can get the shuttle the remaining distance back to the campsite. It is always nice when you can hike one-way or in a loop rather than out and back! The views on this hike were just spectacular – looking out over the rocky mountains, down to the cars on the road, and through groves of alpine trees, across snowmelt creeks and waterfalls and even over a few patches of snow. It was a thoroughly enjoyable hike – despite some very arctic winds which almost blew us off the ledge in the first few miles: you can tell that nature definitely rules here. We also saw plenty of life – lots of other hikers (boo) but also some beautiful wildflowers (glacier lilies are pretty, bear grass is cool!) and mammals (a mountain goat shared the path with us for a bit, lots of Colombian ground squirrels, as well as a bunch of marmots, one of which I had a staring contest with!). Some other hikers had commented on seeing a bear as we passed them going in the other direction, but we didn’t come across it luckily. We passed a pretty little lodge at one point, where they had some rustic/primitive accommodations on offer (no thanks!) and the last 4 miles we hiked down down down in elevation. At one point, we went through a forest of dead trees, which was very creepy – with some cloud and rain moving in, the effect was one of an eerie haunted tree graveyard with the sound the wind was making as it whistled through the dead tree limbs and branches - made the hair on the back of my neck stand up! There is definitely something about how this park feels – it’s like it is alive – or perhaps when you are isolated your imagination gets creative? Either way, we definitely liked it! It’s not often places can really evoke strong feelings like that!

Lake McDonald - see the dead trees (grey) on the other side?

The Going-to-the-Sun Road

McDonald Creek and Falls


Look who came to say hi when we were waiting for the shuttle


Waiting for roadworks - along with everyone else, but not bad views!

Made it to the peak!

Lets go!

The views, that only got better and better!

Looking down at the road from the trail


Spectacular!



Well hello there - the tastiest grass must be tastier beside the trail!


Where are the snowshoes when you need them?


Marmot staring contest!


Alpine wildflowers

Bear grass - cool stuff!

The haunted tree graveyard

We returned to our campsite, tired but with enough energy to look at what other parts of the park we would like to see the next day! That night it rained, as it had the previous night, but it seemed to pass by the morning and both days we had fanatsically clear sunny weather – yay! It was funny to see the peaks that towered above our campsite clear one day, and then dusted with snow the next – obviously stays pretty cold up there!! Lucky it didn’t snow in the valley we were in! The next day we decided to head to the south-eastern part of the park (cause we needed to head east anyway) to an area called Two Medicine. On the way, we stopped at a viewpoint to have a look at Jackson Glacier – we really wanted to hike to a glacier during our time in the park, but unfortunately access was limited, and we were also told that the snowpack had been very heavy last winter so they were all still buried under snow! We decided that we’d prefer they not be exposed to the sun if at all possible, and were able to see a little bit of the bottom of the glacier from a distance – good enough! We also passed by St Mary's lake which was absolutely beautiful, with a little island in the middle - this park is the bomb! We were told the road to Two Medicine was “bad cause it is on indian reservation” but it wasn’t too bad and we found a trailhead and set off on another hike up the Mt Henry Trail to Scenic Point, this time in quite a different environment, with less forest, more tundra ecosystems – this is the part of the park where the mountains abruptly met the prairies as they stretch east-ward. The hike was another climb to a summit and challenging, but we were treated to a small herd (?) of bighorn sheep on the way, and some gnarly but characterful dead twisted trees. The view from the top was unbeatable, but brief, when the arctic winds froze us in a few minutes!! Very cold– I would have loved to have known the wind chill factor at that summit! The view into the park was over Medicine Lake which was beautiful, and then out to the green praries in the other direction. Awesome! As we completed the hike and jumped back in the van we agreed we had hit the jackpot - we love love LOVE Glacier National Park – don’t think – just go!

Not a bad morning view as we ascended Logan's Pass once more


biking this? you crazy!

The lodge at Logan's Pass


Glimpse of Jackson Glacier



Glorius St Mary's Lake


The south-east side of the park has different terrain

Our second hike

Bighorn!

Love these trees!

Very cold wind!

Looking down at Medicine Lake

With two nights of no showers in Glacier National Park, we drove through the praire land east of the park and made our way to Great Falls, for some down time in a KOA campground. Great Falls struck me as a distinctly a blue collar town. The city had a ‘lovely’ oil refinery at its heart (which made for a lovely sunset one evening when the city was shrouded in smog), but also a wind farm on the horizon and small hydro operation on the river. The town sprawled uncontrollably and our campground was on the outskirts where the farmland begins - this region grows a lot of winter wheat and the fields have a very distinct golden glow as the crop blows in the breeze. I felt, perhaps unjustified, that the town it may have bit hit by the economic downturn in parts? The locals there just looked very tired and worn out with their daily lives – but I didn’t talk to any of them so I could be wrong! Also plenty of ‘adult’ clubs beside churches…hmmm. We spent the next two nights just chilling out, showering, washing, reading, knitting, blogging and I took some very peaceful morning walks through the wheat fields, taking in the beauty and calming effect of Montana’s big sky and never-ending views. This state is very unassuming, but there are hidden treasures not to be missed! At this point in the trip, we felt like we were over the halfway hump, but still getting that sightseeing ‘saturation’ that seems to reduce the appreciation of what we were seeing to, what feels like, an unacceptable level. Marty was spot on with this comment when we were lying around in the campground “I wish we could go back to our work lives for a month and then come back to the trip so we’d get that appreciation that comes with a short vacation”. I couldn’t agree more! But I’m sure the appreciation will be abundant when we return to work :-)

Back to the great plains

The falls at Great Falls

Wind power!

and oil refining!

makes for a nice sunset...

Morning walk through winter wheat is very peaceful!

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Looking at the map while in Yellowstone, we decided to head west briefly to catch a few sights in Idaho before moving north to Montana. We hadn’t done a lot of research on Idaho and didn’t know much about the state except for its potato-growing capabilities :-) We checked the scenic drive book and found a nice south to north drive through the Sawtooth Ranges and agreed we could hit that. There was also another spot with an interesting name that caught our attention and we decided that we would give it a go – Craters of the Moon National Monument. We departed Yellowstone (reluctantly!) and drove west across the border, through the neon and tack of West Yellowstone (just as offensive as Gatlinburg outside of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park!) and south through potato growing country – a town called Ashton claimed to be the largest seed potato producing area in the world – quite an achievement! We stopped for lunch in Idaho Falls – a lovely sprawling country town full of strip malls and apparently home of the annual ‘duck race’ (?). Before we knew it, strange black rock began appearing on the rather boring landscape and we entered the Craters of the Moon National Monument.

So green!

Made it!

Po-ta-toes

You didn't believe me right?

First glimpse of lava flows



This was called Big Southern Butte (hehe)

Everything is black!

The monument protects miles and miles of lava fields of varying ages and arid sagebrush habitat – another volcanically-formed landscape but much different to the one we had just seen at Yellowstone. It is quite a sight to see, with lots of black volcanic rock covering the otherwise green/brown landscape. We found a campsite amongst the piles of black rocks and headed straight to the visitors center to find a hike for the afternoon. We were rather surprised to learn that the seasons are incredibly varied in the park – with extremely cold winters (average 13F/-10C and temperatures may drop as much as 30 degrees after sunset!) and very dry hot summers. It really is hard to imagine it being so cold when it is so hot and dry outside. Also interesting is that NASA’s Apollo mission scientists learned basic volcanic geology at the monument in the sixties as they prepared for their missions to the moon! Hence the name, I guess. We took a quick hike through the youngest lava flows which were from an eruption 2,000 years ago (oldest flow is around 15,000 years old!) and learned the Hawaiian names for different lava – pahoehoe (pronounced ‘pah hoi hoi’) which is very fluid flowing lava which forms a smooth rope-like surface and 'a’a (no pronunciation instruction required) which is when thicker and more viscous lava emerges rubble-like and crusty – perhaps named after the sound you would make when you walk over its spiky surface? :-) We took a drive through the scenic loop, marveling at the black-ness of the rock everywhere and fascinated that anything could grow in it! There were, however, plenty of pine trees and tiny dwarf buckwheat plants that carpet the surface of the rock – quite peculiar and almost looked landscaped the way they were evenly spaced over the rock. Even some wildflowers were growing! The pictures show this diversity. We were horrified to learn that the park rangers had poisoned 6,000 limber pine trees, thinking a dwarf mistletoe growing on them was a pest, only to learn later that the mistletoe and tree have a symbiotic relationship! Big mistake! The dead trees and mistletoe everywhere were quite beautiful in an eerie kind of way against the dark rocky landscape.

Cool landscape

This is what it looks like in winter - cold!

Is this what the moon looks like?

Dwarf buckwheat plants


Pahoehoe lava

A a lava



Dead limber pine and mistletoe

We then headed further afield to some caves that the visitors center had recommended we check out. These are actually where lava flowed under the earth forming tubes that have hardened on the outside. We hiked for a few miles over a huge black lava flow – quite an amazing experience and eventually found the caves. We headed down into one that had a few areas where the roof had collapsed so there was enough natural light to walk through. The rock formations inside were bizarre, with lava dripping from the roof creating weird shapes on the walls and roof as it cooled at different rates. The sound the rocks make when you walk over them is hard to describe – kind of like walking on a bunch of really heavy pumice, really crunchy but really cool! We then went to some fascinating caves that needed torch/flashlight…and some interesting maneuvers through small cramped spaces to enter. It was a fun adventure for the afternoon. The most fascinating part was that the caves retain the cool of winter all year round and within a few minutes inside, it is definitely noticeable – like being in a big dark freezer! There is even ice on the floor of the cave that never melts! It was amazing to explore underground and then emerge afterwards into the bright sunlight and heat of the day!! A really cool park, and we were glad we took the time to visit. We returned to the campsite (to find our site had been stolen by someone! Lucky there were plenty more!) and witnessed a beautiful sunset over the black volcanic lava flows as well as a full moon rising. An isolated but strangely peaceful place – very cool! The temperature in the evening was perfect that night – we are able to use our doona/duvet but it is never so cold that it is uncomfortable – then it warms up just nicely during the day – shorts and t-shirt weather. We feel really fortunate that we have time to explore all of these amazing spots during summer!

Strolling across lava fields

Marty looking for bats - none found!

This one had some areas where the roof had caved in so plenty of natural light to guide the way


Now for the dark cold caves!

Torch/flashlight time

Brrr!

Yes, that is ice on the floor!

Our campsite

Idaho moon-rise

The next day we took our time driving north through the ‘Sawtooth Sampler’ scenic drive north towards Montana. Idaho is very scenic – we wound through beautiful valleys, climbed over mountain ranges and followed rapid flowing rivers. The day started with driving through lava beds bordered by beautifully green undulating hills. We then hit what appeared to be incredibly fertile (or very well fertilized) and green farming land with pretty ranch houses, some with very interesting architectural styles. We then hit Sun Valley and Ketchum – two very famous ski resort towns – Bald Mountain is where the Sun Valley resort lies and is famous for Ernest Hemingway and a host of movie stars visiting this exclusive area for winter vacations. The towns reminded us, of course, of Aspen and Telluride – but with less of the thick alpine vegetation and more of a western ranch feel. I was very impressed with a bike path that seemed to run endlessly along the valley and beside the Big Wood River (hehe). Biking was obviously the biggest hobby in this area during summer and we happened to be travelling during a ‘century’ bike ride that day – we passed a lot of bikers climbing and sucking in the big ones as we wound our way up to Galena Summit at 8,000ft in the Sawtooth National Forest. The view on the other side was very pretty – big wide valley with the Snake River….well, snaking it’s way along the valley, bordered by tall and jagged mountain ranges. We wound our way down into the valley and stopped briefly at the Sawtooth Fish Hatchery. They breed Chinook salmon here in an attempt to rebuild the fish population which was almost wiped out by a series of dams on the river which destroyed the salmon habitats. We were gobsmacked by the size of some of the salmon in pictures from the 60s and 70s that we saw in the hatchery – that is a lot of fish!!

Idaho ranchland

Bad picture - attempting to capture the interesting architecture we saw

Sun Valley and Ketchum



Sawtooth National Forest

Galena Summit

Sawtooth Fish Hatchery

That is one huge salmon!

We continued onto a pretty spot called Redfish Lake, a beautiful lake with the signature aqua blue hue from its frozen source, at the base of the jagged and snowcapped Sawtooth Mountains – very picturesque and very beautiful. Idaho is quite lovely! The rest of the day we wound our way through the valley beside the gorgeous Salmon River – listening to our podcasts and just generally taking in the surrounds. We passed through a town, not surprisingly named Salmon and I was interested in buying some salmon but the local grocery store didn't sell it!!! Weird! Many locals were out fishing, whitewater rafting and enjoying what we imagine is a fleeting summer before the snow begins again! During the afternoon the landscape changed into more barren and rocky landscape which seemed to go on forever – or was it the amount of time we had been driving!? Before we knew it, we passed over a peak with ski areas and we had reached the Montana border – so farewell Idaho – and hello state #30!!

Redfish Lake

Salmon River


Not a bad lunch spot! No salmon for lunch though...

The change in landscape as we moved further north

Yay - state #30 - only 20 states to go!!

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