Tag: Native American
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Osage Orange
It seemed strange to fixate on a single tree for more than a decade but that’s exactly what happened. I notice it a few weeks every autumn and then quickly forget about it for another year. That all started sometime around 2013 when I began to ride a stretch of the Capital Crescent Trail along…
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Inland Northwest, Day 6 (County-Centric)
We were now between race days again, with two races down and one more to go. So we could do pretty much whatever we wanted now and I decided to focus on some county counting. It was all virgin territory to me and I intended to cover as much of it as I could during…
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Inland Northwest, Day 2 (Walla Walla to Pendleton)
We awoke in Walla Walla at the beginning of our first full day. We couldn’t check-in at our accommodations in Pendleton, Oregon until mid-afternoon and the drive would only take about an hour. So we needed to find something we could do locally and we got another chance to explore Walla Walla in a little…
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Dayton, Ohio Part 3 (Museums)
Sure, I visited the various Wright Brothers museums, historical sites, and memorials but they weren’t the totality of Dayton’s remarkable legacy. It wasn’t even the reason why we visited. I mentioned the younger kid’s interest in all things aeronautical earlier and it traced back to that. Honestly the only place we had to see was…
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Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 9 (Lake Shore Road)
Bicycles are the most popular form of transportation on Michigan’s Mackinac Island, other than foot. They’re perfect for an area of less than four square miles where motorized vehicles are essentially prohibited. There are plenty of places to rent bicycles within an easy walk of the ferry docks. However, I had an inside track. My…
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Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 4 (Petoskey)
One day we decided to explore Emmet County, at the northwestern tip of Michigan’s lower peninsula. Prior to that, my only exposure to this place happened along a brief segment of I-75 barely clipping the county line before crossing the Straights of Mackinac. My entire elapsed time in Emmet lasted mere seconds. However I’d completely…
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Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 2 (Counting Fingers)
The purpose of the trip wasn’t county counting, it was visiting our older kid who worked on Mackinac Island for the summer. Even so, I still had a bunch of uncounted counties in that area so I planned to use that convenient occurrence to my advantage. That’s how a day that normally should involve a…
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Ohio River, Part 10 (Heading Back Upstream)
All good things must come to an end. So, after spending a week in Louisville, we needed to begin the long journey back home. As before, this unfolded over two days of driving. The penultimate day would be the most arduous day of the trip by design. It was a highly technical route, too complicated…
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Visiting the City of Bayfield
Bayfield, Wisconsin, USA (August 2007) Bayfield (map), the Apostle Islands gateway, owes its identity to Admiral Henry Wolsey Bayfield. He charted much of the western Great Lakes in the 1820’s as a Royal Navy Surveyor. That included Chequamegon Bay and areas surrounding present-day Bayfield and Madeline Island. When the Bayfield Land Company platted their town…
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Madeline Island Historical Museum
La Pointe, Ashland County, Wisconsin, USA (August 2007) We rolled off the ferry and nearly onto to the doorstop of the Madeline Island Historical Museum (map). Flags from each era of European-American settlement fluttered in the wind, high above the stockade corner. The modern 50-star United States flag claimed its rightful prominence atop the pole.…