Day 5...

Day 5...  Niagara Falls!  Debbie had never seen the falls before, so I laid out our trip to give us a few hours there.  We drove most of the way from Ashtabula to Niagara Falls along the shore of Lake Erie, through a series of waterfront towns.  In Ashtabula itself, we drove over this really old-school draw bridge.  The controls have been updated to something a bit more modern, with computers and everything – but the mechanics are straight out of the start of the 20th century.

As we passed by Erie, Pennsylvania on I-90, just east of the intersection with I-79, we spotted a cemetery that stood out for the flags that appeared to be on every grave, along with a profusion of fresh flowers.  We got off the freeway and found a road that would take us there, and we spent a half hour or so just walking around (photos below).  Something we've both noted in our travels (including a ridiculous amount of international business travel for me) is that different places have very different notions of how to honor or maintain graves, especially of military veterans or casualties.  Even different places in the U.S. differ greatly.  For example, in San Diego (where we used to live, and with a large military presence), the beautiful veteran's cemetery on Point Loma is meticulously maintained, but there's little evidence of visitors – every time I've visited I've been nearly on my own.  In much of Utah, the situation is virtually reversed: even the non-military cemeteries are well maintained, and a high proportion of graves have fresh flowers, carefully maintained greenery, and often a flag or other patriotic symbol.  Most of the U.S., in our experience, is somewhere in between – with urban areas tending toward the rarely visited side, and rural areas the opposite.  This was a veteran's cemetery, and it was obviously visited very often (we had trouble finding even one withered vase of flowers).  There was a relatively large and well-equipped staff there to tend it.  The oldest graves I found in my walking were from WW I veterans; some were just days old.  I find such places very moving, and all too rare (both here and in other countries).  Some big exceptions: Japan, South Korea, and Estonia.  I'm sure there are others, but those three I have quite a bit of experience in.

We settled into our B&B quite early in the afternoon, and set out to walk all around Niagara Falls.  This turned out to be about 3.5 miles of walking all together – more than Debbie has done in several years because of her knee injuries.  First up: some videos I made from three different viewing points:







Now the photos:

Walking around Niagara Falls – which I last visited nearly 50 years ago – was quite the shock for me.  The changes in the area are stunning, most especially on the Canadian side.  I was not prepared for the high-rise hotels, giant casinos, and the thousands of visitors.  Despite this, our viewing of the falls was actually better than it was all those years ago, because a ginormous platform has been built over the river that lets you walk to a perfect viewing position, high in the air.  It cost a whole $2.50 for the two of us to gain admission to that, and it was well worth the money.  The trails that lead around to the upper end of each of the falls are now paved and graded for wheelchairs – so walking to all of them wasn't much different than walking on a sidewalk in the big city.  There were crowds of visitors everywhere we went, even on the longest of the trails (which wasn't actually very long at all).  At a guess, I'd say two thirds of the visitors were foreign, dominated by Japanese and Chinese.

We ate dinner partway through our walking, at a restaurant called Savor.  It was just wonderful (photos of our meal below).  Debbie had two appetizers instead of an entree: a rather spectacular salad, and some excellent mussels.  I had a mixed seafood and pasta dish in an absolutely delightful sauce.  Our excellent and very entertaining waiter talked us into dessert even though we were both quite full – and we were very glad he did.  The chocolate cake with unsweetened whipped cream (whipped to the just-shy-of-butter point) was insanely good.  We departed with zero hunger, big smiles on our faces, and very, very happy tummies...

While walking around downtown, we spotted the little guy at right up in a tree (actually, just outside the restaurant's doors).  He's got a cupcake wrapper in his paws that he'd stolen from a (still occupied!) table nearby – the people at the table never saw him do it.  We don't have any squirrels or chipmunks in the valley where we live, and we miss their antics!

To my great surprise, Debbie wanted to walk some more after our dinner.  Some of our falls viewing was during this walk.  We also ran across some old monuments, one of which is at left.  There were probably a dozen or so in all the places we walked.  It is pleasant to see them in a location where so many people pass by, even if few people stop to look.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day.  We walked back, finally, to our B&B and went straight to bed – we have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow...

Day 4...

Day 4...  We drove from Champaign, Illinois to Ashtabula, Ohio.  Basically today we were just covering ground; nothing in particular expected in scenery or things to do.  We woke up this morning in our pleasant B & B in downtown Champaign (at right): the Champaign Garden Inn. The previous evening we'd taken a nice walk around a few blocks in the area – brick streets and older homes with big, big trees.  We explored around a defunct and rundown YMCA – very grand looking, it must have been.

The drive across the rest of Illinois, all of Indiana, and most of Ohio was not especially remarkable in general.  There was lots and lots of beautiful farmland, and the occasional annoying city (I'm looking at you, Indianapolis!).  We were both taken aback by the terrible condition of the roads in Indiana, and frightened by the rude and aggressive drivers.  As in nearly all of our trip, we kept running into construction delays – often for no apparent reason, as there was nobody doing any actual work.

We also noticed for the first time that the big birds circling overhead were nearly all buzzards or vultures – hawks were rare.  In the west, it is precisely the opposite, with hawks (or other raptors) dominating the thermal-effect gliding crowd.  Neither of us remembered this from our childhood, so either we've become so accustomed to raptor domination in the west that we've forgotten – or raptors have befallen hard times in the east.  Once we noted this (to us) strange fact, we were on the lookout constantly – and the raptor shortage held for our entire trip until we got well into South Dakota on our return.  Weird!

The highlight of the day, without a doubt, was Akron, Ohio.  I've been in Akron before, though not since the mid-'70s, and I was not expecting what we found on this day: the city was clean, green, and filled with prosperous businesses.  I've no idea why it's an island of attractiveness in the middle of a desert of relative poverty, but it is.  When scouting for a place to eat our dinner, we spotted something that seems most unlikely: a restaurant specializing in poke (the Hawai'ian raw fish dish that we love).  We decided to try it, and we were very glad we did!  Our poke bowls below:

These were made to order, and delicious!  The style wasn't much like the poke we've had in Hawai'i, but no matter –  it was really good.  Then after we downed our poke, we wanted some ice cream – and we found Mary Coyle's homemade Italian ice cream parlor.  Heaven!

At one of our supercharging stops (I've forgotten which) on this day, we had something unusual (for us, anyway) happen: at the same time there were four Teslas at one supercharger, and three of them were Model Xs (the oddball was a Model S)!  This was so weird I had to take a photo of it. :)  I understand from friends that in the big cities the superchargers are often full, with a waiting line, but we've never had this happen.

Day 3...

Day 3...  We drove out of Nebraska, across Iowa, and halfway across Illinois today.  We stayed last night at the Westview bed & breakfast, just outside of Lincoln.  It was a delightful place to say – beautiful grounds, a grand view to the west, and a most pleasant room (at right) with a full kitchen.

We told Angela, our hostess, that we'd be leaving early in the morning – and she insisted on making us a (delicious!) breakfast and bringing it to our room at 6 am.  Wow!  That's a photo of her concoction at left.  I've no idea what you'd call this thing, but it was really yummy.  A nice way to start off the morning, and as things turned out, this was the only time on the entire trip when we got our breakfast part of the bed & breakfasts we stayed at.

Angela found out we had a Tesla, and she asked us to take her picture with it so she could tease her boyfriend about seeing a Tesla before he could.   That was fun.  :) 

We passed miles and miles of beautiful farms on today's drive – gave us a real appreciation of the stunning productivity of America's farmlands.  In Iowa we saw lots of terraced farms.  I don't remember this from the trips across Iowa I made in the '60s and '70s, but that could just be my memory.  In addition to the terracing, we noted an interesting technique for preserving soil – wherever there was a place in a field where water ran off, permanent grasses were planted instead of a crop.  These hold the soil in place and slow the runoff down enough that it will drop any entrained soil.  Combined with the terracing (which reduces runoff in the first place) this appears to be a very effective way to keep soil from running into the rivers.

Iowa had particularly beautiful rest areas on the Interstate, nicely landscaped, well-tended, with interesting displays and art.  Much of the latter was related to soil conservation – apparently a very big topic in Iowa.  At one of these rest stops, as I climbed back into our car, I noticed an (expensive-looking) cell phone lying on the pavement.  After some messing about (the phone was completely unlocked), Debbie (who knows more about Android phones than I do) managed to call the boyfriend of the phone owner.  Turns out he was in the car with the young woman who owned the phone, and they were just a few miles away!  We waited a few minutes for them to return, and then gave the phone back to the very grateful young lady.  We were cell phone heroes!

Day 2...

Day 2...  We got an early start this morning, leaving Cheyenne at just about daybreak.  Our route was basically I-80 all the way, but we sure traveled through some beautiful country.  Much of it was through rolling hills, or along the Platte River.  All of it was green, green, green – except when there were flowers.  Nebraska has way more trees than I remember, and far more water.  We really enjoyed that drive!

About two-thirds of the way into our trip to Lincoln we stopped for a while at the Crane Trust preserve.  There's a beautiful trail there that we spent a half hour on, but to our surprise there was live music, food, and more – it seems we stumbled into their 40th anniversary bash unawares.  That's not our kind of thing, so we left – but it looks like a great place to come back to.

The highlight of the day for us came at an unlikely location: the Gothenburg, Nebraska Tesla Supercharger.  We took a little walk to the sod house museum there, where I spotted a very weird windmill and spent a few minutes trying to figure out how it could work.  A little old lady popped out of the museum, the guide there – and we spent the next 90 delightful minutes just talking up a storm with her.  Her name is Suse Pederson, 85 years old, and she's as full of great stories as anyone we've ever met.  She and her husband used to own the local airport and the associated flight training school.  Both were pilots and instructors.  We learned a tremendous amount about the town and the area in that short time!  We parted reluctantly, and only after several tries and several rounds of hugs.  We've been smiling about that encounter all day long. :)

Some memorable events of the day:

• We saw a few more baby antelopes.  As we got closer to Lincoln, though, the incidence of antelopes gradually petered out to zero.
• At one stop we ran across a mother plover with four babies – cute as buttons – who was simultaneously herding the young ones while trying to lead us away from them.  What a good mom she was!
• We saw our first deer on the plains.
• We're ensconced in the Westview B&B in Lincoln, a big house divided up into guest rooms.  Ours is a spacious suite that includes a full kitchen, and has views of the countryside to the west.  The facility is just outside of town, on a large property that you'd think was out in the country somewhere.  We love it!
• We ate at the Leadbelly Bar and Grill in downtown Lincoln.  The food was spectacular!  The first photo below was my entree: the Smokehouse Mac & Cheese.  The second is Debbie's Southwest Cobb Salad with rare steak.  We also had a peach cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream, and the cobbler was miraculously not mostly sugar – it was delicious!
• We finished off the evening with a walk through the sunken gardens in Lincoln.  It's a beautiful place, though a bit formal for my taste.  We quite enjoyed it, though, both for the gardens themselves and for the very nice people we met there.

All-in-all it was a very nice day...

Day 1...

Day 1...  We made it to our planned destination (Cheyenne, Wyoming) safely, and with some time to spare.  The trip over here was more interesting than we expected it to be.  The fellow at right was near the second supercharger we stopped at, in Rock Springs, Wyoming.  It's actually associated with the restaurant in the background.  Looks weird from the front, but a little shocking from the back. :)

Along the road on today's trip we spotted quite a few Sandhill cranes, and about two bazillion antelope (including one baby!).  There were lovely flowers as well, most especially Camas lillies in the low wet spots.  We saw several places where there were patches of them alongside snow fences – Debbie came up with a plausible theory for that: snow piled up in front of the snow fence, melting to make a wet spot conducive to Camas lillies.  Sounds likely to me.  There was beautiful, well-watered sage over a stretch of 150 miles or so.  I love that color!  At one point we got sprinkled on, but the nearest cloud was at about a 45 degree angle to us – all we can think is that the wind blew the rain onto us.  We also saw patches of gorgeous yellow flowers that we're pretty sure were yellow lupine (they were too far away to be positive about).  The photo at left was taken about 75 miles from Cheyenne as we passed through some particularly nice terrain.

One interesting thing we saw was hundreds and hundreds of automated oil wells.  These are much less intrusive on the landscape than the old rocker-arm oil wells.  Most of them have no visible infrastructure outside a small shed, other than a fuel tank (propane, I think) and a satellite antenna.  I know these are remotely monitored and controlled, which means the companies save a great deal of money in labor (traded off by the increased capital cost).  I think they're a huge improvement on the old style wells.

Once we made it to Cheyenne, we stopped to eat at a place called Ribs and Chops – had a great meal of fish tacos for Debbie and fish-and-chips for me.  Very nice.  Then we went to the Cheyenne Frontier Days museum, associated with the famous annual Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo.  The museum was fascinating, especially for the collection of horse buggies there (one example at right).  We spent almost two hours in there, leaving only because it was closing.  Cheyenne must have a dozen or more museums, most of which look interesting to both Debbie and I.  I suspect we'll be returning here someday to explore them.  There's also a botanical garden that looks quite promising.  And our bed-and-breakfast is super nice.

And then there are the shops.  Debbie spotted one called “The Wrangler” and spent some time in there while I charged the car.  She sent me several texts, the gist of which was “I love this place!”.  When I picked her up, her eyes were glistening and three giant shopping bags were in her hands.  I shudder to think what she did to our credit card account. :)  She said she got a pair of boots like the giant one at left.  Those fancy boot statues are scattered all over Cheyenne.  Apparently they're some kind of city symbol...