Hidden Things around Utica,Ill

Sailors have to sail around Cape Hope which has some of the most treacherous waters in any of the seven seas, well today we have to face our Cape Hope, we call it Cape Chicago. We left La Porte and before we knew it we were navigating into the jaws of Cape Chicago, in a flash we were surrounded by eighteen wheelers each trying to muscle their way into our tiny space. With white knuckles gripping the wheel I managed to keep it under control. Then once we reached the far side of Cape Chicago and thought that we were in the clear the orange barrels started to appear forcing us all into one lane of stop and go traffic for about 20 miles. The good news is that we beat the Cape again this year and made it safely to camp in Utica, Ill.

After setting up and lunch it was time to do a little exploring, I had read about a few thing in this area so we decided to try and find them.

First the city of Cherry, Cherry was a company town that was started in 1905 for the coal mine that was started there the same year, the mine was owned by a railroad which used all the coal itself. In 1909 a fire broke out in the mine and caused the death of 259 of the miners.

Click on a picture to read about the disaster.

The Centennial Monument in the center of town

Monument to the miners at the local cemetery.



Most of the stones in the cemetery are marked "Died in Mining Disaster"

After that the GPS took us on a lot of one lane gravel farming roads over to Troy Grove, if you ever played Cowboys and Indians then you should know about Troy Grove, birth town of James Butler Hickok, “Wild Bill”. His home is gone but on the lot they have a monument and bust of Wild Bill and some history about him.

One more stop to make, the crash site of Lucky Lindy. This is the best picture I could get, the white streaks that you see are hail, I tried to get Cathy to get out and hold and umbrella over the monument so I could get a good picture but she wasn't having any of it.

The story goes that he was flying the mail between St Louis and Chicago, the airport at Chicago was fogged in, so he was returning to St Louis when he ran out of fuel and crashed in the farmers corn field. He later found out that his mechanic had put a smaller gas tank in the plane so he could carry more mail.

After the hail storm pasted and we were heading home I snapped this picture out the side window, it looks like a cell trying to form into something bad so we hightailed it home to sit it out.

South Bend

Football Sunday, normally on a Sunday we just sit around and watch football, but it's a bright sunny day and is going to be pushing 80, so we decided to push Mondays activities up to today, besides it's suppose to rain most of Monday.

So it's off to South Bend, we're going to lose our Michigan accents while we're there since Michigan State beat Notre Dame in overtime yesterday. We dug out the old TomTom GPS, slapped it on the dash and we were on our way. Traffic in South Bend is a nightmare, roads go from one to two lanes then back to one lane at will, ten feet before an intersection our lane turns into a turn only lane without warning, stop signs are just a suggestion. I think with Notre Dame being here the driving method most used is, point the car, hit the gas and pray to Jesus that you get where you want to go.

Of course we got lost again and just started wandering and we ended up driving by the Stadium and seeing the giant touchdown Jesus on campus. I had to call our grandson and let him know that we saw it since his long term plan is to attend Notre Dame, he's already visited the campus twice for a weekend and is dead set on going here. When you look at the brochures for Notre Dame right beside where it sez tuition is shows $$$$$$.

After lunch at Culver's we finally found our objective, the Potawatomi Zoo. We almost turned around and left because the parking lot was full and we figured that it would be to crowded to enjoy, but we need the exercise so we thought that we would give it a try, good thing we did because it turned out that all the cars were for a couple of family picnics in the adjacent park and the zoo had very few people in it.

This is a very nice smaller zoo, very simple to navigate, just decide whether you want to go clockwise or counter-clockwise and you'll end up back where you started and see everything. We spent close to two hours here and the animals were very active today. Here's a few pictures.

Albino Boa.

..........Hairy Thing





Barnyard animal display



......................Cute thing





Macaw


......................Ugly thing






Red Panda that gave birth last month to three kits





University of Michigan Bird

..............Scary thing

And Finally a self Portrait, the face only a mother and Cathy could Love.

Finally, Back on the Road

Since our lot at Light House Village is empty we must be back on the road for the winter.
We did an easy drive across southern Michigan to La Porte, Indiana and set up camp for a few days.

Our plan was to drive back to Niles, Michigan and tour the Fernwood Botanical Garden & Nature Preserve and the Fort St Joseph Museum. I programed the GPS for a few stops and we were on our way. First stop was the Museum, the building that it's located in is the old carriage house of the Chapin house.

This is another one of those great little museums that has few one of a kind items that you would expect to find in a much larger museum. The items I like best were twelve sketches made by Chief Sitting Bull after his surrender out west. The story is that a local girl was married to a military officer who was stationed out west and was in charge of Sitting Bull and his family, she was living there with her husband and became friends with Sitting Bull and his family. She saw some of his sketches and asked him if he would make some for her, she provided him with a sketch book and he did a series of drawings showing some of the different battles he was in during his life. When her husband died she moved the family back to Niles and after her death her daughter donated the drawings to the museum. Every year in October Chief Sitting Bull's Great-Great-Great Grandson comes to the museum and spends the day, talking about Sitting Bull and telling stories that have been passed down through the family.

There is also an interesting display on the Underground Railroad which Michigan played a large part in helping run away slaves get to Canada. Some of the old slave songs that they sang were really codes telling them which routes to take north and what houses were safe to stop at to receive help and assistance in their journey.

We also found out that Niles is the home of Simplicity Patterns, the founder of Montgomery Wards which was a large Department store chain in the mid-west, the Dodge brothers of automotive fame and many more things. The museum is well worth the hour and a half or so to tour. Admission by Donation. No Photography allowed in the museum.

The Carriage House is a pretty impressive building so here is a picture of the house in front of it. The house is used by the city as their City Hall, how would you like to come to work here every day.

When we came out of the museum it was very overcast and looked like the rains were moving in so we decided to hold off on the gardens and see a few other things, when I went to program the GARMIN GPS all I got was a screen telling me that I was locked out of my maps and nothing would work. Since we started using a GPS I've pretty much stopped carrying a map in the car, so we were unable to locate the other small places that we wanted so it was time to start wandering and see what happened.

The first thing we stumbled on was the old railroad depot, we thought that it looked very photogenic and when we stopped we found out that we were right, it's appeared in the movies Continental Divide, Midnight Run(one of my favorites) & Only the Lonely.

After 45 minutes of wandering around Cathy was happy because we ended up at a giant outlet mall in Michigan City, she decided that this was the perfect place for us to do our daily walking exercise, some how walking around lifting a credit card doesn't do the same as lifting weights.

Well the rain caught up with us so we found a local hamburger stand and enjoyed a Schoop's burger, after that it was back to camp to dig out the old TomTOM GPS and hope that I still have all the cables for it.