Home Again Home Again... Awhile Ago
/I started this blog what seems like ages ago. It was the last installment of our Maritime Canada summer adventure. I never got around to finishing it because… well, there’s been lots going on which I’ll explain in subsequent blogs. In the meantime, here are the last miles of the trip back home to Las Vegas.
Mid-September and it was now time to head west and finish up this 15,000+ mile road trip. From Niagara Falls, we had a leisurely morning drive to Wheatley, Ontario on the shores of Lake Erie near Leamington, the Tomato Capital of Canada. Acres of hot houses line the roads for as far as the eye can see. For over a century Heinz maintained its Canadian ketchup plant in Leamington. Then it 2014, it moved its operations to the U.S. leaving 700 full-time workers out of work and farmers left with rotting tomatoes. French’s Tomato Ketchup took advantage of the Heinz closure to enter the Canadian ketchup market utilizing the Leamington plant as well as the local produce, touting it as ‘the patriotic choice to support Canadian farmers’. Subsequently, Heinz lost a considerable share of the Canadian market. Yea, French’s!
Leamington’s Big Tomato
Canadian residents and longtime cruising friends, Marlene and Benno, previously of M/V Diesel Duck, were waiting for us with open arms… literally! Their home is absolutely lovely and though we haven’t seen each other in ~12 years, we picked up right where we left off… like good friends do.
Thanks for taking pictures, Marlene!
They’re in the process of recommissioning another vessel and it’s sitting in a cradle in their side yard. We had a tour. David was most impressed by Benno’s workmanship and most importantly, his workshop (man cave). Lots of boy toys!! I regret I didn’t take any photos, so I nicked a bunch off Marlene’s blogsite, which is both informative and entertaining. Give it a look-see.
Benno’s man cave - wow! Photo credit: Marlene Klopfer
Marlene is an excellent cook. She had afternoon ‘coffee’ ready when we arrived. A gourmet dinner was served along with a scrumptious German specialty dessert… pflaumenkuchen (blue plum cake) served with a generous dollop of whipped cream.
Marlene’s Pflaumenkucken just out of the oven Photo credit: Marlene Klopfer
Though we were welcome to a longer visit, we felt compelled to move on the next morning. The clock was ticking. Marlene had coffee and breakfast waiting for us and after lots of hugs and well wishes, we headed back to the U.S. It’s hard to imagine that this part of Canada dips down and shares the same latitude as northern California, Barcelona and Rome. We were over the Ambassador Bridge and into Michigan in no time heading to Kalamazoo for the night. The rest of our trip home was circuitous, but very enjoyable.
It was a friend and family hop, skip and jump across the rest of the continent. After negotiating Chicago traffic, we stopped in a western suburb to visit with one of Marcie’s old high school classmates. We met up with George at a local watering hole, The Four Coynes, for beers and dinner. It was a fun evening and great to spend time catching up with George.
Chicago’s Skyline
Next morning, we headed into Wisconsin to visit some old friends. We lived and worked in Wisconsin for five years after selling our own Denver-based medical equipment company in 1995. The five years in Wisconsin were good years and we made some lifelong friends there… and ate lots of cheese (no curds, though… not even the fresh, squeaky ones).
Silos, cornfields, livestock and farms highlighted our pleasant drive through rural Wisconsin to Janesville. We met up with Paul and Chuck at Jake’s Junction Pub in Milton for drinks and dinner.
That’s Chuck in back and Paul to the right. You probably recognize the other two.
The next morning we paid a visit to our old house, Century Elms. Note that it’s the only house we’ve ever owned that had a name.
Built in 1858 in the Victorian Italianate style, it was historically known as the Payne-Craig House. Set high on a hill off Memorial Drive in Janesville, this 14-room house featured a lovely wraparound porch, columns, a massive front lawn with a fountain and even a cupola. It was way too big, needed lots of work and ongoing maintenance and was definitely impractical for us. We immediately fell in love with it with nary a thought of its impracticality. We worked hard to restore it when we lived there, but when we returned several years after selling it in 2000, we were sad to see it had fallen into dismal disrepair. However, new owners, Chris and Richard, have done lots of work and turned it into a B&B. Chris welcomed us warmly and let us roam around to see the changes they’d made and let us reminisce about our time there. It was definitely our favorite house of all time.
In Edgerton we visited with a good friend in a nursing home. Jim, Deb, Paul and Hunter, the dog, met us there to visit with Karen. She was in good spirits and pleased to see everyone. Sadly, we learned that Karen passed away recently, but having had a chance to see her one last time was wonderful.
It was great to see Karen. That’s Jim and his dog, Hunter to the left. Photo credit: Paul Johnston
Back in Janesville, we met up with Kelly, one of my favorite people, for a quick visit to the Janesville Rotary Botanical Gardens. We weren’t even aware that the gardens existed when we lived there, but they’re absolutely gorgeous. Kelly and a friend had entered the annual gardens art project themed ‘ Optimistic Owls’. We viewed several of the entries, but Kelly’s was prominently displayed almost immediately as we entered. Later, we joined Kelly and husband, Mike, for dinner and the opportunity to catch up with their busy lives.
Then we were off once again south through Illinois then west on I-80 into Iowa and into Nebraska. The heartland of America… America’s breadbasket… endless fields of tasseled corn, farms, wind turbines and rolling hills. Sunflowers alongside the highway assuaged the fact that we were driving on an interstate instead of our preferred ‘blue highways’.
We were all about making miles now and interstates make it happen. We were reminded of Eisenhower’s legacy of the Interstate Highway System developed after WWII. As we whizzed along on I-80 at 75-80mph for hours, we appreciated the depth and breadth and geographic diversity of our country and how easy it was to span the continent.
Eisenhower’s legacy… the interstate highway system
In Kearney, Nebraska (pronounced Karn-ey) we stopped for the night and returned to ‘The Archway’… a traditional stopping place for a morning walk and/or a stretch along the North Platte River on the Great Plains Cultural Learning Trail. You can’t missed this stop… the arch spans the highway. There’s lots more at this stop, but we walked and then got back on the highway The weather was hot, humid and stifling, but bearable in the early morning hours.
It was somewhere in Nebraska that we noticed the fridge had crapped out again. David puttered with it for a bit, adding refrigerant in hopes that would help, but to no avail. Thankfully, we were ‘hotel-ing’ it and it was less of a pain.
In Gothenberg, we took a break to check out the Pony Express Station here. Sylvia, the volunteer docent, really knew her stuff! Across the street, we spent a few minutes at the free Gothenburg Historical Museum before heading to the Sod House Museum. If you’re interested in legendary, but short-lived Pony Express, David wrote a blog about it. Check it out.
Living in a sod house would not have worked for me at all, but it was interesting to look out… from a distance. Also on display, the world’s largest steel plow, an 1837 John Deere invention that changed farming forever in the nation’s breadbasket.
We spent the night in the old Wild West town of Ogallala which we’d visited before (Boot Hill was interesting). After all the highway driving, we were weary and a comfy hotel room trumped more sightseeing. David found a trail for a morning walk that meandered through several parks where the prairie wildflower blooms were lingering in an end-of season show. Giant blue sage, blue flax, yellow broom and snakeweed all provided some color to the dying yucca and mullein.
Onto I-76 and Colorado’s eastern plains, we could barely discern the hazy outline of the Rockies to the west. In Denver, our old stomping grounds, we spent the night and had dinner with nephew, Erik. Then on to Florissant where we visited our youngest son, Brad, and his family. We couldn’t pass up a stop in Albuquerque to visit with Gentry and family before driving the final stretch home. Whew!
Our Route Back To Las Vegas
Nearly four months on the road (111 days), 15,424 road miles, 17 U.S. states and 11 Canadian provinces. Other than Nunavut, we have visited all of the Canadian provinces now. We managed to travel through all 50 states 25 years ago… we called it 50 by 50.
So you ask, what’s next? As far as travel goes, no decisions have been made yet though we’re considering several options. But a lot is went on in September and October. Stick around… we’ll fill you in on the details.