You lose some. You win some.

And Detroit is a winner. Actually its neighbor - Dearborn. We had to lose one of our intended big stops - beautiful Mackinac Island in the northern lower peninsula - due to a pretty major storm that made ferry travel and sightseeing problematic. That gave us time to reach Detroit early enough to visit the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village - both in Dearborn, MI. Wow. This place is amazing. Check these out.

Weinermobile-1952

Chair in which Lincoln was assassinated.

Rosa Parks' Bus

Robert Frost's Home







Other original homes/facilities transplanted to Greenfield Village: George Washington Carver; Noah Webster; William Holmes McGuffey (McGuffey Reader) home and school; Thomas Edison labs (some of them); and the Wright Bros. Cycle Shop. The museum has incredible automotive, rail, airplane, industrial and product displays - including Presidential limousines, Buckminster Fuller's first production geodesic home, and this addition to our railroad set to be placed under our christmas tree:

We'll definitely be getting a 9 ft tree this year.

We arrived in Dearborn via several days driving the northern shores of MN, WI and MI. Voyageurs National Park in MN is beautiful and we had the most perfect day of the trip there. During these few days we got to see the world's largest Walleye (or at least in this town where it was mounted),world's largest voyageur (early trader), and world's largest Indian. Don't believe me? Take a gander at these two big boys:

Have you ever seen a bigger voyageur or Indian? Thought not.

Traveling the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was especially scenic. Stopped at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Pretty spectacular.

As I mentioned, we had to bypass Mackinac Island unfortunately due to our only really bad weather day on the trip, bringing us to Dearborn and the wonderful museum here.

Now we are entering the latter stages of our trip through parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and home.

Until then.

40 Degrees Below Zero!

We're in International Falls, Minnesota and of course the temperature here is almost always 40 below zero. But it's June and a nice 60 degrees.

Still have not corrected the "Comment" option so I know most of you are unable to do so. Sorry. But please keep reading, and you can send comments to our email address.

Today we landed in the westernmost point of this trip - Voyageurs National Park - and will explore here tomorrow and then begin our return East. All has gone very well so far, even the financing for the purchase of our new lawn tractor. This little number was located in the John Deere HQs in Moline, Il. You might be able to see Janet up there driving it off the lot.

On a serious note, while visiting family in Iowa, Janet was able to visit her Dad's birthplace in Buffalo, IA (near Davenport). She was also able to see her great grandparent's home nearby and to walk the streets of the small town on the Mississippi and remember many of the town's landmarks she recalled from her last visit there over 20 years ago. It was a beautiful day and a perfect way to add great memories to the trip.

We've known that some of the best surprises of our trips are likley to be the most unexpected. In that regard we found Herbert Hoover (UNICEF and Boys Club initiator - oh, and maligned President) and his birthplace in West Branch, IA, and the especially small and almost forgotten Carl Sandburg birthplace in Galesburg, Illinois to be pretty neat places. Two other landmarks in these towns:

Reid's Beans, a great local coffee shop in West Branch Iowa, next to Herbert Hoover's birthplace.

Knox College in Galesburg Illinois - site of the 5th of 7 Lincoln-Douglas debates and just a few blocks from the Sandburg home (though separated by a generation and a half).

And almost as important to the makeup of the American spirit, the Field of Dreams movie ballfield and home in Dyersville, IA. As we sped from Iowa to Minnesota, we decided to bypass the Mayo Clinic and the 3M company and head straight for the aerial dance team that performs on the sides of walls.

This occurred in St.Paul, MN in the center of their wonderful downtown. We got only mildy dizzy from watching this - actually we were kind of scared to death. This troupe is amazing.

This brings us to International Falls. To get here, we traveled through several thousand of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes and will try to hit the remaining several thousand before passing through Duluth on our way to WI and MI.

All for now. Janet and Jim

Airplanes, Food, Cars, Family, Indians, Explorers

Five days in, here's a collection of sights so far.

To the left, Jim in front of Bockscar - the bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. (from the Air Force Museum, Wright-Patterson - Dayton)

Next, here we have Janet skydiving in Dayton. It was all I could do to strap her in the chute and get her on the plane. But I think she ended

up really liking it.

Because we were just a little bit hungry, the sandwich Janet ordered at Lumpy's in Cambridge City, Indiana. Have been making meals from this for days.


Corvettes from Midwest Motorsports in Effingham, Illinois. According to the literature, 3 of these are valued at over a $1M each. (The CERV-I Indy Car model (1960?) in the first photo - of which only 4 were made - is valued at $2.5M!!!.) Is that possible?

Jim reading his Dad's Lindbergh letter at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis - plus the actual receipt signed by Charles Lindbergh for his Ryan "Spirit of St. Louis" aircraft.

The "Arch", our first ever World Heritage Site at Cahokia Mounds outside St. Louis (incredible - why didn't we learn about this in school?), and Lewis and Clark stuff we continue to study as we travel along the Mississippi and Missouri.

All for now. More narrative the next time around but I'm so thrilled to have successfully downloaded photos that I wanted to do this catch-up. Tomorrow we head to Springfield, Missouri, dodging tornados, and then on to Iowa.

Next:

And We're Off

Hey! Day 4 and just getting to our 1st on-road update. I know there is a problem with viewers trying to post comments. We're looking into this and will hopefully be able to post a solution sometime soon. My frustration continues as tonight I've had to overly struggle just to pull up even this one photo.

We've hit VA, WV, OH, IN, IL, and now MO. We've had a great time and so far have only counted 17 dents in our car from the hail storm that greeted us in Dayton, OH. Yikes. I know everyone has been suffering through some horrible spring weather but this was incredible. Guess that's why we have insurance.

In spite of this mild annoyance we loved Ohio. We were 1) wonderfully surprised with our visit to the Hopewell Culture Indian burial grounds (200 BC!) in Chillicothe - see Janet photo above, 2) not too surprised (due to reputation) but loved the incredible US Air Force Museum in Dayton, and 3) gave horizontal thumbs to the Aviation Heritage National Historic Site also in Dayton (though Janet and I did vote it as having the most informative National Park film so far - about the Wright Bros. -in our 2 years of traveling.)

Today we stumbled upon the Midwest Motorsports Museum which houses one of the premier Corvette collections in the U.S. Incredibly, some of them were for sale. We bought a t-shirt.

All for now. Frustrated about photos. HELP! Jim

Our trip to Voyageur National Park

Hey, It's 2011 and we're on the road again. We are traveling through the central -mid-and upper-central-mid and northern mid upper central USA. What the...? Just know that we're going west to St. Louis, then north to the Minnesota Canadian border (and Voyageur National Park where we kind of turn around and begin our trip back home), then east to the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan, then south and east back home. It will take us 3+ weeks.

Mostly we're seeing the landscape and sights as identified by the National Park Service. And we'll sneak in some local haunts along the way. Fortunately for us we are seeing family and friends at a number of our stops.

Here's our old fashioned map with stick pins of our route. You old hands will recognize it. Follow the yellow pins starting along the bottom leaving Washington DC. If you can enlarge the photo you'll see pin numbers. If you follow the red pins you'll be covering our Grand Canyon trip of last year - and you'll just be confused (plus you'll fall off the edge of the photo.).

OK I've spent too much time trying to figure out why I can't edit this to bring the map photo right here rather than at the top of this entry. I'll work on this during the trip.

Hope you check in with us from time to time. And please add a comment or two. Bon voyage.