Cars & Guitars 2

The sun finally decided to come out so we loaded up the grand kids and heade for the “Henry Ford & Greenfield Village”. If you have never been there and are coing to be in the are you really should set aside at least one day but two would be much better to visit. If you have a large family or plan on going more then one day check out their special Annual Family Pass it could save you some money.


We spent the first 3 hours wandering around the village, touring the Ford farm, the Wright brothers house and bike shop, Edisin 's laboratory and a ton of other sites, as you walk around the streets you have to dodge the Model T's as they wizz by at 15 mph (there are about 30 of them that you can take a tour in), the horse drawn bus, the men racing their big wheel bikes, barbershop quartets, marching bands and much more. There is something of interest here for everyone, young and old. By mid afternoon it was getting a little hot so we headed for the air conditioned museum.

Rachel wanted to sit on the Rosa Parks bus since they just studied that in school and Nick wanted to see the Lincoln assassination chair from the Ford Theater. After this it was grandpa's turn and we ran over to the traveling exhibit ”Rock Star's Cars and Guitars 2”. It was just like stepping into the Jimmy James Time Machine and setting the destination dial to Rock & Roll, the King of Music. The kids managed to run through here in a record 30 seconds, but then they had to wait about 45 minutes until grandpa emerged from the exit and I could have spend a lot more time in there. I'm just going to throw in a few pictures up to give you a little hint of what it was like.

Z Z Tops 33 Ford Coupe. it had legs.


Alice Coopers Ride.




Jimmie Vaughns set of wheels.



Kid Rocks Lincoln.






Ricky Nelson's Coupe, the same one that he drove in the TV series.














B B King's
































And you always save the best for last Roy Orbison's

SE Michigan, city camping

The lack of a Blog entry for awhile can only mean one thing, we're back in SE Michigan for the summer messing around with the grand kids. We're camped about an hours drive north from the kids, this is one of the few parks that has a decent monthly rate and we're to far away for the emergency kid sitting phone call.
We've been running back and forth for the baseball games but they finally came to an end this week so we might get a few things done know.
This is a city campground that connects to the big city park which is also a wetland area, there are plenty of trails around the lake and to the other city parks (about 4 miles worth). The grand kids are getting a little big so we're bringing them up one at a time this summer and it is so much easier to handle in the confined space of a Class “C”.
There is a lot of wildlife in this area, thousands of geese, turtles and other type birds, they said that there is a Gray Fox in the area this year, that might explain the reduced rabbit population. On one walk last week we spotted about ten different turtles lying their eggs.
Here's a few pictures of the area.

Trail from the Campground.



Baby Geese in the park




Crossing the wetland.



They think we have food for them.




Part of the lake.




Bridge across the lagoon



Mr Black bird.



Mom lying the eggs




UPDATE: Today while sitting and looking out the window I saw the Gray Fox come right through the middle of the campground and into the woods, it was about 2:PM and I watched him for about 200 feet,

Fort Wayne

To start with we are camped at Johnny Appleseed Park in downtown Fort Wayne, this is a little park, about 25-30 water and electric sites w/honey wagon, in the corner of the park. It's a little hard to find but if you plan on doing anything in Fort Wayne this is the place to camp, you are within minutes of any place in the city.

Fort Wayne has a ton of things to do, one of the nations largest genealogy centers, Botanical gardens, Zoo, over 20 miles of paved bike trails that follow the St. Joseph, Maumee and St Marys Rivers, and every type restaurant you could thing of. If you get bored here it's your own fault.

There is a beautiful new minor league baseball park downtown where the Tin Caps play, we didn't get a chance to go to a game as they were on the road this entire week. The name Tin Caps comes from the fact that Johnny Appleseed used to wear is tin pot as a hat while he was wandering the country side, hence the Tin Caps, we did see a sign that said “ It's the Tin Caps not the Pot Heads”.

I dropped Cathy off at the genealogy center for the day then I drove about 15 miles north to Auburn to do the museums, there are about eight museums in this area. I parked the car and the Auburn-Dusenberg Museum was to my right and the National Automotive and Truck Museum was to my left, time for a decision, I went left the the automotive and truck museum, this seemed more like the kind of place an old street racer would like.





But my favorite section was the muscle cars from the late 60's and early 70's, a 429 Ford Torino, 426 hemi Dodge Charger, 440 dual quads Plymouth GTX, 440 six pack Dodge Cuda, 396 Chevy Z-28.

I swear, I closed my eyes and it was a hot humid August night in 1969 and we were cruising Woodward Ave, looking for something that would give our midnight green 440 Charger (just like the one the bad guys drove in the movie Bullet) a challenge. We spot a 396 Chevelle at the light, pull up next to him, both drivers give a little nod, the light turns green and it's nothing but screaming engines roaring exhaust and smoking tires for the next ten seconds. Our ten inch slicks gave us a big jump off the line and he never stood a chance after that, a couple of quick turns through the side streets just in case any cops were around (which I ended up being one for 25 years in Detroit) and then to the nearest Drive-in so the loser could buy Cokes.

I'm sorry, was that out loud?

Mean while back at the museum, I enjoyed it a lot more then I thought that I would, I then got in my 4 cylinder PT Cruiser and all the way home I was looking for a Corvair to race.

Cathy decided to take a break from research today so we thought that we would take a look at the zoo, and a look is all we did, there were at least 20 school buses there so it was time for plan B. Plan B is drive back to Auburn and go through the World War II Victory Museum, Half of the building is the Victory Museum. This part of the museum is so large and covers so much information that you just have to come here yourself and wander around for a couple of hours so I'm just going to post some pictures and try to explain it that way.

Show us your WAR FACE!






This is a 25 foot long model of a ship that was used in the "Winds of War" series.





General Patton


The red Ball Express, they even made a move about them.










Click on this picture to read all the fine print, it's pretty interesting.










These are the war plans that would have been used in case the Atom bomb didn't work

When you exit this area you come into the Baseball section which has a few displays about the different ball players from this area and about the Womens Baseball League, from some reason they had a lot of Tiger stuff.

In the center there is a room about the history of the television, there were a bunch of old TV's and displays from the old time television shows, one of the displays was about the Lone Ranger and his faithful companion Tonto.

OK, I'm going to regress a little here back to about 1957 or so.

Growing up in Detroit, which is the home town of the Lone Ranger TV show, he was pretty much every kids hero. The kid two doors down from me was having a birthday party and we were all down the basement celebrating, they had just got us seated for the ice cream and cake, when we heard a familiar voice yell “Whoaaaa Silver, stay right there”. Our eyes were the size of silver dollars as we all watched the Lone Ranger and Tonto came down the stairs, they stayed for about a half hour, had ice cream and cake with us and then were on their way, the screen door slammed and all we heard was “HI-HO Silver Away”. Of course they made sure that we all stayed in the basement so we wouldn't see them get into the car and drive off down the street. The kid whose birthday it was, was the son of the producer of the Lone Ranger Show and that's how he happened to show up. Fifty plus years later and every time I see some thing about the Lone Ranger that's the first thought in my mind.

Now let's pop back outside of my mind, because Cathy sez that, that's a scary place to be and get back to the museum.

Across the lobby is the Kruse Automotive & Carriage Museum, from what I gathered Kruse makes a lot of the cars for Hollywood, he also does custom cars for auto shows and collects notable Carriages.

With the carriages they have pictures of what they looked like when he found them along with the display, and it is unbelievable the work they did to make them look probably better then they did new. They had President Grant's carriage , one from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, but our favorite was the Coronation coach for King Ernest Augustus of Hanover, son of King George III of England.





The next set of displays were of the custom cars that he has made, then the Hollywood stuff which everyone will recognize and then a lot of race cars that he built or sponsored. What we thought was going to be about an hour turned into four hours.




Some of his custom work.








Indy cars

Dragsters







Driving around on a few of the back roads and side streets of Fort Wayne we came across this neighbor park , which was huge, it had a nice size lake with a fountain, a big rose garden (we're about a week early for the blooms) and a reflecting pool, this is really a great area to visit.

Drive down a little side street that's blocked by a school bus and see all the kids coming out of a little park between two house's and you just have to park the car and see for yourself, see what, well I guess we'll find out.

The burial site of Meshekinnoquah, or as his friends called him Chief Little Turtle, he rose to be the Chief of the Miami Nation. He led the Indians in the defeat of Colonel LaBalme in 1780, then defeated General Harmar at the Battle of Kekionga in 1790. In 1791 at Fort Recovery, Ohio he defeated General St. Clair in America's worst defeat by Indians with over 1000 killed. He was stopped with the entire Indian Confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers by General “Mad” Anthony Wayne, he was a signer of the Treaty of Greenville, met with three US Presidents; Washington, Adams and Jefferson and when he died in 1821 he was laid to rest in the Miami burial grounds with full U.S. Military honors.

Since we're doing genealogy and graves when we got back to camp we took a short walk through the woods to visit another grave, Johnny Appleseed, he's buried on a knoll in the middle of the park.




It's Memorial Day weekend so all the weekend campers are out and have the park filled with smoke from their campfires (we call them smokes because they never seem to get any flames going, just smoke) so we're on lock down in the motor home with the windows close and the air on so we can breath while we watch our FIRST PLACE TIGERS play ball. I know that I'm forgetting a lot of things since there is so much here, but this is getting a little long and I have to make a pizza for lunch and then maybe another for dinner, after all it is a holiday.

The Battle of Tippecanoe

We just finished up a week in Cerro Cordo, Illinois, this is a little town, very little town that's east of Decatur . The first day here we went o the County Historical Museum which was very interesting, they had a lot of Lincoln stuff an some other very interesting artifacts but they don't allow any type of photography so it's hard to show you how nice it is.

The little campground we found right in town, we're the little guy on the right.

The second day here I twisted my back a little an then Cathy wrenched her knee so it was a few days of trading the heating pad and ice packs back and forth. Cabin fever started to set in so we took a little drive yesterday to the nearby Amish town of Arthur, not very much there but on the way home Cathy spotted an Outlet Mall so we both did some walking to ease our pains.
I think that we have already had 12 days of rain this week so that gave us plenty of time to rest up, but now it's time to pack up and take that long drive across the flat empty corn fields of Illinois and Indiana.

We're at a really nice campground that's on a lake that was formed by damming up the Tippecanoe River, they're calling for a lot more rain this week so we're going to try and take advantage of any sunshine we can get.

Sunshine, so we're on the road, first stop The Tippecanoe Battlefield and Museum, we were her about 20 years ago but there was no museum at that time.
Time for a little history about this area and battle.

Prophetstown was founded in early 1808 by Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa (the Prophet), they planned to unite all the tribes in the Midwest and organize a defense against the settlers moving into this area. It also became a training center for the almost 1000 warriors that were based here.




The settlers in the area became scared of the large number of Indians and the power that Tecumseh was gaining. Gen. William Henry Harrison, Governor of the territory, put together a small army of 1000 men in the late summer of 1811, to destroy the town. The plan was to attack while Tecumseh was down south attempting to recruit more tribes, he met with the Prophet and it was agreed that they would hold a meeting the following day, Harrison and his troops then move about a mile west to a clearing to set camp, not trusting the Indians he placed a large detail on sentinel Duty.



Prophet had been warned by Tecumseh not to attack the white man until he returned and they were able to make the confederation strong, ignoring this warning the Prophet gather his warriors that night and got them worked up for a battle , he cast a spell that would turn the white mans bullets into dust so they could not hurt the warriors then just before dawn he gave the order to attack.

A sentry heard a sound in the brush and fire a blind shot in that area, with luck it struck an Indian, who let out a scream and the battle was on, after two hours the Indians retreated leaving thirty-seven soldiers dead ans another twenty-five who would die of injuries, and over 128 were wounded. The Indian casualties were unknown, feeling that they had been deceived by the Prophet the warriors stripped him of his powers and left Phophetstown, abandoning their belongings. Harrison waited for a second attack but when it never came he entered Prophetstown and finding it abandon burnt it to the ground before returning to Vincennes.

Prior to the battle Prophet had told his warriors that Harrison would be the only one riding a light colored horse and that they were to kill him, in all the confusion at the start of the attack Harrison grabbed the closest horse, which was black, and started directing the battle, one of his officers grabbed Harrison's horse and was killed immediately, a small incident like this allowed Harrison to escape death making it possibly for him to go on and become the 9th President of the United States.

Following this defeat Tecumseh joined up with the British for the war of 1812, Harrison continue in the army and was Commander of the troops at the battle of the Thames where Tecumseh was killed in 1813. Prophet with a small band of followers, wandered the Northwest and Canada until his death in 1834.

The museum here really does a great job of explaining the battle in detail and has a lot of unique artifacts found during archaeological digs.

Just an interesting story and it mentions Detroit.


From here we drove around to the Prophetstown State Park and toured the 1920's living history farm. This was an interesting hour and a half, starting with our new friend Jake the tour dog who followed us the entire time, he goes to the corn bin and brings back a corn cob to play fetch with. There is a Sear catalog house (nine rooms an a bath), a barn with the cows and a young bull which we got to watch as they tried to corral him into a trailer to be moved to another part of the park, this only took them about 20 minutes.


They also have a team of eight Belgium work horse here, these are the same type of horse that are the trademark for Palm beer which is produced in Belgium. Budweisers horses are a copy of the Palms horses.
Now it's time to batten down the hatches for the thunderstorms that are coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday.


Just a few more pictures of the farm.

She followed her babies where ever they went.

Just an old tractor

Springfield in the Spring

On your way to Texas in the fall we traveled through the southern Illinois area and enjoyed it so much that we detoured to go back through that area on our way north.
Our first stop in the area of course was Charlie Parker's Diner for a Pony breakfast, Charlie Parker's was featured on Diners Drive-ins & Dives a few years ago, if you have a few minutes here's the clip from the show.

Charlie Parker's Video

After a day or two of Cathy locked in the State Archives, we drove over to the little zoo they have here. Only about a 45 minutes stop, they need to do a lot of cleaning to get it ready for the summer but they exhibits that were open had were very nice.

We had planned on a St Louis trip from here but the weather is really sucking this week, cool super over cast and rain everyday, so that will have to be put on the back burner for awhile. The one thing we do want to get in before we move on is the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Museum, we'll try that Monday, right after we have a Pony at Charlie Parker's Diner.

Another cloudy cool day, so we did a road trip down to Vandilia, this is the site of the second capitol of Illinois and they have converted the old Capitol Building into a museum. This is the Capitol where Lincoln started his political career as a staet representative. It's a small museum with about 6 rooms of displays, the tour takes about 20 minutes and is worth the stop if you're in the area.



The Madonna on the Trail.
Twelve of these large monuments mark the National Road and were erected by the DAR in the late 20's , the statue is of a mother holding her baby and here young son gripping her dress as they move to the western territories of the United States.

Map of Madonna's
This is the fourth Madonna that Cathy and I have come across in our travels.




Time for a Rant.
After dealing with the traffic in this area of Illinois for a couple of weeks (fall and spring) I'm starting to understand how Rod Blagojevich got elected governor of the state. If the people vote the same way they drive then they voted with their heads up their arse and got what they deserved.
Let me explain first of all I've never seen so many cars with personalized license plates,(over 50%) and it appears that since they paid extra for them they really want you to see them. Well if they're behind you in traffic then you can't see it so what they do is race up on your bumper (about as close as they can) then at the first opportunity, whether it's safe or not they pass you cutting back in front of you with maybe two feet to spare so that you are able to read their plate and discover how clever they were to come up with ,UR BHD ME or IM W STPD (and there is only the driver in the car). I understand the Blago's plate reads NT GILT.
This morning I was slowing down on a two lane back road to make a left on the only road for two miles, with my turn signal on, and a lady in a pickup passed me on the left in the intersection, another vote for Blago.
If I've offended anyone with this little rant, I won't apologize, but I will shove my head up my arse and be on my way. Happy motoring.

Tecumseh, Garden of the Gods & Decoration Day

A day of adventure, Cathy's daring adventure was to enter the archives in the courthouse at Harrisburg, Illinois, surrounded herself with stacks of 200 year old papers ten feet tall and hope that they don't come tumbling down, burying her with the very ancestors that she's researching. Too scary for me, I'm going to wander around the countryside and find my own adventure.

My quest today is to walk in the Garden of the Gods, I have read about this place now all I have to do is find it, about 15 miles SE of Harrisburg as the crow flies, but since I'm driving it's about 30 miles and 50 turns on some pretty narrow farming roads, take a couple of turns that you don't see and you're there.




But first I had to make a quick stop at the Saline Co. State Fish & Wildlife Area to pay my respects to Tecumseh, or at least his bronze statue that is near the campground there. My favorite Tecumseh quote is:

“When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song like a hero going home”.




Well I finally made it to the Garden of the Gods, there are two different trails here, the upper trail is the most used one and is about ¼ mile long and takes about 45 minutes to navigate, the second one takes you down to the bottom of the cliffs and is about 5 miles long.

This garden was planted about 300 millions years ago when it was the bottom of a shallow sea, millions of years of weathering has shaped the gardens into what we see today. The trail is paved with stone and easy to follow, climbing on the rocks is allowed and recommended so you can see the beautiful views, I'm just going to let some pictures take you on a tour of the gardens, enjoy.


This sign is the first thing you see at the start of the trail.













A nice scenic view.

The trail leads into "Fat Man's squeeze" Yes I made it through.







After the squeeze.


Rock on the right looks like Donald Duck, at least to me it does.





The rings on the right are formed by iron that solidified between the different rock layers and did not weather away as the rock did.






Chimney Rock, it's about 30 feet tall.












Just a few more views from the trail.





This is a close-up of the iron rings in the stone.






Another Day

Remember when Memorial Day was called Decoration Day, well click on the plaque and read about how it all started at a little cemetery in Carbondale Illinois.


There is an interesting grave here, at the center of the cemetery there is a stone sarcophagus sitting on top of the soil. There are two stories for this.

The first one is that a lady from Vicksburg, Mississippi died here and did not want to be buried in Yankee soil so it was placed above ground.

The second is that a Union officer was buried here and that when is family heard that a Confederate officer was to be buried in the cemetery, they had his body dug up and placed in the sarcophagus so that they would not occupy the same soil.