Tunkhannock

We arrived in Tunkhannock on the evening of July 4 and after setting up Snoopy watched the fireworks across the valley. We started working Monday morning on various projects, including: installing doors and door hardware in the basement bathroom and laundry room (Bob), applying sheetrock mud to the garage ceiling (Wendy), insullating and vapor sealing the outside wall of the bathroom (Wendy), soldering about 60 plumbing joints between the bathroom and laundry room and the water heater (Bob), and opening up the six bedrooms in the Cottage (Wendy). Applying sheetrock mud is really hard. Similarly, installing doors is really hard because they have to be level and square in all dimensions. In addition, the first week was really hot (90+ degrees, including one day of 103 degrees [the hottest place in Pennsylvania]). We swam a lot in the pond, where the top several feet were almost bath-water warm. Still, it is beautifully peaceful in the evenings. We've gone to see "Toy Story 3," a great movie, have eaten out once, visited the Tunkhannock library to blog and send longer e-mails, gone to the Tiki Club in Scranton on Friday night (a social club of the German-American organization where you get a meal for $5 and beer ($1) or hard liquor ($1.50) and dance in an open-air space overlooking one of the numerous valleys in Scranton among an eclectic group of people), had dinner with Tiny and Cathy Sands and met a bunch of the neighbors and hung out around the Cottage. There are numerous animals around the Cottage. Can you find the large black snake in the above photo? It's a good thing I like snakes and black snakes eat rodents of which there are a plethora in the Cottage.

The pond is filled with frogs who are a constant chorus all day and night. When we head down to go swimming they all chirp and jump into the water. The edge of the pond now has water plants and these guys (with bodies about 4") hang out and croak. Some have bright yellow throats and others have white throats. Briar, Markus' dog, can be persuaded to float on noodles or in a single-person raft. Darwin stays far away from the water. Bob and Darwin play 18 holes of golf every day since the course has been mowed (Bob participated in some brush-hogging and Markus is engaged in "extreme" brush-hogging the steep sides of the pond).

One of the other projects I was involved in was creating this mosaic for the floor of the basement bathroom. Bob, Andrew, Julia and I designed the bathroom. Julia purchased all the tiles and delivered them to a warehouse on Markus' return route from Berkeley. The tiles came in 1" squares which had to be cut into halves, quarters, triangles and various other shapes. After initially breaking a lot of tiles Markus showed me how to use the tile cutter which made cutting the halves or thirds easier. The design turned out pretty well, particularly considering they didn't supply us with all the tiles we needed. I had to use some tiles from the floor of the shower (which is in shades of blue). We ordered the mosaic from England and they shipped the tiles to Tunkhannock (including the shower tiles which were made in Mexico). We have a large carbon footprint with this project.

Each morning we wake up with the above view from Snoopy. It has rained a couple days (desperately needed) and been foggy. We have been visited by a cardinal who threw himself at the windows of Snoopy, waking us at 5:30 a.m. We are in a desperate rush to finish the bathroom for the Barn Raising in August.

Bob and I leave Friday for Richmond, CA for son-in-law Jens' 50th birthday, returning Monday. We then work for two days before heading for Urbana, IL and my 41st high school reunion, followed by the Professional Disc Golf Competition in Indiana for Bob. He will take Snoopy and I will fly back to Scranton to work on the Cottage for the last week of July. Markus and Carol are graciously agreeing to care for Darwin as we fly around.

Saugatuck, MI

While Bob competed in the Amateur World Disc Golf Championship in Ohio, I spent time with Carolyn and Paul Jarvis in Saugatuck, MI, where they have been going every summer for over 20 years. They rent a lovely, old yellow cottage right on Lake Michigan. It is wonderful! The life is very informal; people are on their own for breakfast and lunch and we cook simple communal dinners. Saugatuck is a big tourist center and filled up for the Fourth of July weekend. It has all sorts of shops, including a great spice shop and a shop selling many varieties of olive oil and balsamic vinegar (all of which you can taste). Among other things, we all enjoyed Elsa and her antics. She is very close to crawling. We took in the Saugatuck Arts Fair on July 3 and I took here for a walk in the stroller. She certainly gets the attention as a cutie.

One day Paul and Sarah Jarvis, Andrew and I went kayaking down the Kalamazoo River for about 9 miles. We wanted to rent kayaks right in Saugatuck, but due to the holiday they were all reserved. Instead we went up-river (Paul and Andrew knew where Old Alegan Canoes was located due to Paul's bicycling adventures all around Saugatuck). We got there to discover they took only cash and we were $10 shy, but the lady let us rent the kayaks with a promise to drive into the nearest town with an ATM upon our return to get the remaining $10. The Kalamazoo River was running bank full and there was even a little current (3 mph) so we could float along. On the way we saw this Great Blue Heron (I know they are called blue herons, but they always look grey). This one was truly blue.

The river was also filled with turtles. They were on almost every downed tree (of which there were many) in the river. There were at least three different types: Snapping Turtles, Leatherback Turtles, and ordinary turtles. They would usually plop off in the water as we paddled nearby. The above photo shows a leatherback turtle (his shell is not rigid) and another smaller turtle.

Can you count how many turtles there are on this log? We saw a turkey vulture and possibly some Golden Eagles, swallows nesting in a sand cliff and other birds. The river borders a swamp, so there was very little evidence of human habitation. It was very hot and sunny. When we got to the take-out point, we were picked up, returned to the rental place, got our $10 from the ATM and had ice cream on our way home. What a lovely way to spend a day.

Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park V

Neodymium Reeds and Herons.

Blue Polyvitro Crystals, turtle and ducklings. This was my least favorite piece as the turquoise blue really didn't fit with the wetlands.

Sculptures in the Conservatory. Can you tell the real leaf from the glass ones?

Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park IV

Summer Sun.

American Horse. This huge horse is based on a design by Leonardo Da Vinci which was commissioned by the city of Milan which ran out of money before it could be cast. After many years the Meijers commissioned an American artist to make the sculpture in accordance with Da Vinci's design.

Andy Goldsworthy Grand Rapids arch with Julia and Elsa.

Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park III

Aria.

These floating pieces were like Hershey kisses.

Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park II

Citron Green and Red Tower.

Mad Mom.

Alexander Calder Two-Faced Man.

Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park

Today Paul, Carolyn and Julia Jarvis, Andrew and Elsa Trou and I traveled to Grand Rapids to visit the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. The gardens consist of 128 acres, some of which are in their nature state and some of which are beautifully landscaped filled with world-class sculpture. In addition, there was a special exhibit of Chihuly glass sculptures. They were amazing. I will post multiple pictures on the blog. The sculptures above were in the English bulb garden and are titled Garden Glass.

Ann Arbor Michigan

We spent a day in Luddington, MI while Bob played disc golf and I visited White Pine Historic Village. It was so hot that we went swimming in Lake Michigan before returning to our campsite. The next morning we headed south and east on blue highways through Michigan. Boy, you can really see the effects of the recession in abandoned houses and really decrepit houses that are inhabited. We arrived in Ann Arbor by dinner time and did a wash to get Bob ready to leave for the Amateur Disc Golf World Competition in Ohio. The next morning I got to watch grand-daughter Elsa enjoying her rice cereal. She was really getting into it. What a happy girl.

After Julia and Bob left, Andrew and I painted their kitchen white. It was a great two person job - one person masked all the purple areas while the other person applied the first coat of primer. The second coat of primer and the coat of paint was divided between one person doing the edging and the other person rolling on the paint. It was a good day's work. We went out to Ypsilanti to the Sidetrack Bar and Grill for really great burgers at the end of the day.

On Sunday we got up to wet, cloudy weather and headed off to pick sour cherries. The trees were pretty picked over, but we found that if we got into the centers and pulled down the branches we could get plenty of cherries. We also weren't so picky about bruised fruit. You can't climb into cherry trees as they are very brittle and break easily. As long as we were willing to get wet, we were successful. We picked 42 pounds of cherries and paid 25 cents a pound to have them pitted. Then we returned to Ann Arbor under a tornado warning which resulted in a very heavy rain storm for about 15 minutes. Once we got home we started processing the cherries into jam. 36 jars later and five different recipes (four were iterations of the basic recipe), about 4 jars of cherry jelly (we tried to get a lot of fruit into each jar of jam) and boiling down the juice to make about a quart was the result of our efforts. We also froze five bags of sour cherries for Julia to make into pies.

Wisconsin

From Lanesboro, MN we headed to Wauconda, IL to stay at Bob's aunt Florence's house. We traveled down the Mississippi and over to Wauconda in stifling heat. While I was reading in bed, I heard all these sirens go off and wondered whether they were tornado warnings; they were. We headed to the basement to wait out the tornado watch, watching television until 11 p.m. No tornadoes or high wind occured. We then headed north to Manitowoc, WI, going through the Kettle Moraine State Forest. The Wisconsin glacier, the last of the glaciers, came down as far as Indiana about 10,000 years ago. The Kettle Moraine area had all sorts of glacial features: kettles (potholes caused when a piece of the glacier was covered with dirt and the ice slowly melted causing a subsidence), teardrop shaped hills caused by the glacier moving forward and pushing rocks, domes caused either by rockfalls at the forward edge of retreating glaciers or by deep crevices down which water and rocks poured, and other interesting features. We stopped at Mauthe Lake to have lunch in a dog picnic area and then headed for a walk around the lake. We only made it half way before we were stopped by deep water over the trail caused from all the rain in the area. We continued to Manitowoc and a state campground on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was extremely buggy due to all the rain. After dinner we headed for the beach to walk and get away from the mosquitoes. There is an active Coast Guard lighthouse (an old floating lighthouse from Chicago).

The sunset was beautiful. Darwin was chasing his disc until it was so dark he couldn't see it any more. The moon was almost full and was over Lake Michigan.

The next morning I took Bob to a disc golf course on the University of Wisconsin Manitowoc campus. He had tried to play the course the previous afternoon, but it prohibited dogs and he took Darwin until someone told him he could be given a $181 ticket. I went to the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, a wonderful museum. Manitowoc was a serious ship-building area for many years. During WWI the builders built many boats. In WWII one of the builders was asked to build submarines. It retooled and during the war 28 submarines were built there. They would be side-launched into Lake Michigan and their crews would test them in Lake Michigan. Submariners (2% of the total Navy and comprised of volunteers only) would learn their skills on their assigned sub, which they would sail to Chicago where the sub was placed on a drydock barge, taken down the Mississippi to New Orleans where it would be armed, and sailed through the Panama Canal to the Pacific. Four of the subs were sunk during WWII. The museum has a wonderful exhibit of boats built in Wisconsin (many of them wood), models, an exhibit on the car ferries and on the Great Lakes fisheries. Twin Rivers, just north of Manitowoc, was a center of the fishing industry which crashed due to over-fishing.

We had reservations on the S.S. Badger, the last coal-powered steam car ferry on Lake Michigan. Car ferries were not built for automobiles, but were built to carry rail cars. Before they existed, freight would be off-loaded from rail cars onto steamers and then re-loaded onto rail cars. The car ferries could carry up to 24 rail cars for the 4 hour trip. Now the coal is delivered in ground form and is further pulverized before being forced into the boilers. It was a beautiful day for a crossing. Earlier in the 20th century the car ferries ran year round (partly because the railroads didn't own their own track through Chicago and it was very expensive to move cars through Chicago). During the winter, the crossings were difficult. The car ferries were designed to work partly as ice breakers. If the ice was less than 10' thick the front of the ferry was designed to ride over the ice and crush it. If it was thicker, the ferry would back through the ice using its screw to develop a wash of water that would rise over the ice and crush it. If a ferry had to back most of the way across it could take up to 24 hours. There were so many ferries that they developed routes through the ice where the ice was thinner. At times Lake Michigan was totally frozen over and the frigid weather caused a huge build-up of ice on the ships.

Lanesboro, MN

In 2008 when Bob and I first went travelling with Snoopy, we stopped in Lanesboro, MN. Bob had met a couple in Guatemala who lived here and we were hoping to meet up with them. Due to various e-mail snafus, we didn't manage to hook up in 2008, but we enjoyed Lanesboro so much that we decided to return. This time we did hook up with Bill and Karen Swanson. We camped again in Sylvan City Park right in the center of Lanesboro (population 780). The park has trout ponds and a nice camping area with restrooms and showers. Yesterday we took a 13 mile bike ride on the Root River Trail, an abandoned railroad right-of-way along the Root River, begun in 1986. We rented a tandem bike and attached a kid's trailer. The route was relatively flat, going through the forests, next to corn fields, below the limestone bluffs and next to the Root River. We were limited by the fact that our butts were not used to sitting on bike seats for a long time and the difficulty in riding a tandem. The second rider (me) has to pedal whenever the front rider is pedaling and stop when they stop. Knowing when Bob was going to pedal and stop pedaling was difficult. In addition, we had to get on and off the bicycle in tandem. Lastly, we were pulling 48 pound Darwin and the weight of the trailer. Despite all this, it was beautiful.

Darwin in the bike trailer. We stopped in Whalen, home of a pie shop that caters to all the bikers (we didn't try it) for our picnic lunch in the town park. Returning to Lanesboro, I headed off to Harmony (the center of the Amish community) to check out the quilts and stopped at a farmer's market with Amish women selling quilts, bread, beaded items, and canned goods. When I returned with the car, Bob headed off to St. Charles to play a disc golf course. We had tickets to a concert of Celtic music played by Laura MacKenzie and Gary Rue. She plays every conceivable wind instrument (3 different bagpipes, 2 different tin whistles and innumerable flutes). He plays wonderful accompanying guitar. She also sang. The audience was sparce in the old, rehabilitated movie/vaudeville theater.

Lanesboro used to be considerably larger than it is now. The building above is the Sons of Norway Hall next to Sylvan Park. Today is a big artist's fair in the park, along with food and music. While Bob played another round of disc golf in St. Charles I checked out the booths and bought a replacement rug for Snoopy (to replace the really ugly yellow, frayed bath mat). True to its history, Lanesboro had vegetarian curry, pulled pork (from a local hog) and brats. Tonight we're going to Karen and Bill's for dinner.

In Lanesboro is this wonderful garden. Though you can't read what's on the chair, it says "Norma's Garden." Norma's husband was in the garden explaining that she had started to develop it in 1986 when it was just a plot of weeds higher than him and filled with mosquitos. It's now filled with lovely plants, unusual planters (the 1912 wheelbarrow she played with as a child, a cream separator, etc.). It is just below Karen and Bill's house and is advertised with a little sign.

If any of you are in the neighborhood of Lanesboro, it's a delightful place to visit. The downtown is filled with old buildings and there is a lot of culture. We will head off tomorrow for Waucanda, IL to visit Bob's aunt Florence, after having breakfast in the wonderful Lanesboro Pastry Shop (you go in and tell them what you want for breakfast; there is no menu).

Black Hills, SD

After leaving Grand Teton, we traveled across Wyoming on blue highways ending up in Lusk, WY, almost at the SD border. The next morning we headed to the south end of the Black Hills. Our first visit was to Wind Cave National Park (the seventh national park). Wind Cave was discovered by two guys out checking their cattle whose hat was alternately blown off and sucked in by the approximately 1' diameter hole in the ground. Caves breathe in order to equalize the atmospheric pressure with the outside world. Wind Cave is the fourth longest cave in the world (after Mamoth Cave, KY, Jewel Cave, SD, and a cave in the Ukraine). So far 136 miles of cavern have been discovered in various levels within the space of approximately one square mile. Based on calculations related to the atmospheric pressure, geologists estimate that only 5% of Wind Cave has been discovered. Every year more miles are added (2 miles were added last year). In addition to the cave, the national park serves as a refuge for various charismatic megafauna, including the buffalo above which is eating dirt in a mineral lick (something they do in the spring when they are nursing).

Wind Cave is the home of 95% of the world's boxwork, which is created when calcium leaks into the minute cracks in the limestone and the limestone is dissolved away. The Black Hills used to be 14,000' tall and there is a 300-600' thick layer of limestone, laid down by multiple inland seas. As the tectonic plates pushed into the west coast of the US, the Black Hills were pushed upwards and fractured. The cave doesn't have any real stalagtites or stalagmites or large rooms. Most of the way is in narrow passageways, filled with boxwork. The water level is at 450' below the surface. Very few people, us included, know about Wind Cave. It was viewed as sacred by the Native Americans who would not enter it.

We camped at Pactola Reservoir, about halfway up the Black Hills after taking the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park and seeing lots of buffalo, pronghorns, wild burros, whistle pigs, birds and other wildlife. The second day we drove to Spearfish, SD for Bob to play a disc golf course at Black Hills State University via the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway. It's a remarkable canyon with a relatively small Spearfish River in it and a few waterfalls. While he and Darwin were doing that, I drove back to Lead (pronounced LEED), SD, the location of the Homestake Mine, the largest gold mine in the US. The mine was discovered by two guys in 1876. Due to the erosion of the Black Hills, the quarts, which holds the gold, was exposed and was washed into various streams in the Black Hills. That lead to a gold rush which caused many whites to enter an area which had been granted to the Native Americans and from which they were to be excluded. Gen. Custer tried to remove them shortly before his end at the Battle of the Big Horn, but was unsuccessful. The claim was ultimately bought by George Hearst (the father of William Randolph Hearst) for $70,000. He also bought various surrounding claims. George Hearst owned the Ophir, CO and Anaconda, Montana mines also (he had a head/nose for good mines). The Homestake Mine operated until 1998, producing 50,500,000 ounces of gold from both underground works (down to 8,000') and two huge open pits, one 1,200' deep. There was little labor unrest in Lead as the mine treated its workers fairly. Hearst's wife built the first Carnegie library west of the Mississippi and a 1,000 seat opera house and recreation center. The Homestake Mine (so named because you could earn enough to stake yourself to a new home) also built three hospitals which provided free medical care for workers and their families. At the end of its run, it was extracting gold via cyanide heap leach mining (yuck!). The mine has been sold to another company and demolition and rehabilitation is under way. The huge stamping operating is still visible. Lead is pretty down on its luck now.

After picking Bob and Darwin up we drove down to the Crazy Horse Memorial. The sculptor, a Polish emigree living in Boston, left Boston at the age of 16 and worked on Mt. Rushmore. He made a name as a sculptor and the Lakota elders asked him to build a memorial to Crazy Horse. After securing the property, he began working in 1947. He has never taken any money from the federal or state governments and he and his wife had 10 kids (they were good Catholics). He died in 1982 and seven of the kids and his wife are continuing the work. In addition to the monument, which shows Crazy Horse on a horse pointing to where his people are buried, there is presently a museum containing Native American memorabilia from multiple tribes (including 16 of the original trade beads used to purchase Manhattan Island), the sculptor's home and an area where Native Americans can sell their crafts. The ultimate plan is to have a Native American university and medical school along with the museum and other facilities around the monument. It will be much bigger than Mt. Rushmore. Makes me think a little of our work at the Cottage (though hopefully we won't be at it for more than 60 years).

These two photos show Crazy Horse's head, which was unveiled in 2000, the tunnel underneath his outstretched arm and the outlines of his arm. Work continues all year long and quite a bit of the explosives and large machinery is donated. It's a very impressive undertaking.