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Epilogue

The Forces of Nature Tour is now but a memory … and what a sweet memory it is! Transcribing journal entries and notes along with curating/editing the many photos taken has seemed a bit overwhelming at times, to the point of being somewhat of a chore. But ultimately, I believe it’ll prove worthwhile because as memory fades, I can bring it all back with the aid of this blog.

In fact, while creating the blog I was somewhat surprised to find that a number of experiences had already slipped from my recall! I chalk it up to having crammed so many wonderful experiences into a relatively brief period. But there was nothing else for it: this was a much more ambitious trip than last year’s Grand Adventure. We really needed to get the most “bang for our buck” as the old saying goes. If you’ve already driven a couple of thousand miles, just to get to a place, you’d probably better wring everything you can out of being in the place, right?

And yet I know that we left so much unseen; I’m already talking about “Next time … ”

Fourteen US states and three Canadian provinces – over seven thousand miles of driving! You may be wondering why we did not fly. Short answer: Both Sue Aughey and I are “journey,” rather than “destination,” people. By flying we would have found ourselves limited to a single destination or perhaps two; certainly we would not have seen Badlands AND Yellowstone AND Glacier, not to mention the sights from our brief time in Canada. 

We would have missed the weird and wonderful BoatHenge!

We would never have discovered Forget!

We’d never have seen Niiemii of Bemidji!

We would have missed the fun and the randomness promised each time someone yells, "Road Trip!"

Worst of all, for me at least, would have been not being able to travel with my beloved little adventure dog, Henry.

He really seems to savor the experience of new things, and when he stops – for what sometimes seems forEVER – to investigate a new smell, he makes me stop and appreciate the simple pleasure of Being.

The Forces of Nature Tour was one of those “trip of a lifetime” events, portions of which I’ve spent practically a lifetime dreaming about. It was awe-inspiring and humbling and exciting, providing insight and, often, profound reverence. It’s changed me and my attitude.

I’m pleased to share the adventure with others. Whether you take it as an armchair adventure, or it motivates you to take a similar adventure or your own, I hope that you enjoy!

More photos from the Forces of Nature Tour at Flickr.

Click here.

from Nashville, TN to Marietta, GA

I needed to wait until my brother, with whom I needed to conduct a little business, called me. And that would have to wait until he’d gotten back home after an early-morning flight from wherever he’d been working on location this past week. So … do you wait lounging around in a hotel room, or do you set out for Nashville?

We did what you would have done: packed the car and headed for downtown Nashville.

Breakfast at the hotel had been nothing to write home about, so we chose early lunch (to beat the crowds, too) at a place that definitely is something to write home about: Jack’s. Now, I’m no huge fan of BBQ in that I don’t stop at a Sonny’s or even a Smokey Bones every chance I get. But good ‘Q done right is awesome and I have a few favorite restaurants (plus a food truck) of which Jack’s is definitely one. I will go here any time I get a chance.

 

Full of brisket and smoked turkey (Sue chose ribs because she will never pass up the opportunity for BBQ ribs), we headed over to the Ryman Auditorium and opted to take the self-guided tour. Am I glad we did! This place is SO important, not only as the best-known home of the Grand Ole Opry – a relationship that would establish Nashville as the home of country music – but in so many other ways, too numerous to list here. Definitely I would suggest taking a tour of the Ryman if you’re ever in Nashville, but I might also suggest it as a reason to go to Nashville. I will definitely go back to spend a lot more time at the Ryman.

And my brother should consider this a warning – or a promise, however he wants to view it: I will be making special trips to catch some of the concerts at the Ryman. I honestly had no idea that SO much, and of so much variety, goes on here.

Leaving the Ryman, I actually passed on making my usual stop at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, another favorite Nashville destination. It was just too busy and too noisy on a Friday in Music City.

So finally out to my brother’s, to finally take care of our business and enjoy a brief visit, then we set out for Marietta and the end of our trip.

Quick stop for supper in Chattanooga, and then …

Home.

More photos from the Forces of Nature Tour at Flickr.

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from Madison, WI to Nashville, TN

Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’

Though your ankles swollen

Keep that Escape rollin’, Marcille!

(With sincere apologies to Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin and Frankie Laine and Clint Eastwood and The Blues Brothers and anybody else who has a connection with one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.)

Boring does not even begin to describe this day. We made no stops, except to fuel up and relieve ourselves and/or Henry.

We took no pictures except this one.

At least one of us was perfectly relaxed and content!

But we are stopping for the night in Nashville, because that piece of business that led us to Nashville at the beginning of the trip is finally gonna happen tomorrow.

More photos from the Forces of Nature Tour at Flickr.

Click here.

 

from Houghton, MI to Madison, WI

Well, the Cinnamon Rolls were superb. As always. The HIE did not have great walkie opportunities for Henry, but we made that up to him later on.

The Keewenaw Peninsula sure is lush and green! And with little wonder, because they apparently do get a lot of … uh … precipitation here in winter. Yikes!

If you want to see how many THOUSANDS of inches of snow they get here every year, click on the picture for an enlargement.

  

First stop: The Beginning of Highway 41.

Some readers may wonder why on earth we would make such a big deal out of this stop. After all, every road has its beginning and its end; if you happen to be in the area – like when you visit Key West you take a selfie at “Mile Marker 0,” which is the end (or the beginning, depending how you look at it) of US Highway 1. But no one goes to Key West specifically for that reason, right? You go to Key West for other reasons, and take in this sight while you’re there.

But Sue and I had each lived along US 41 when we were both living in Charlotte County, FL. I’d traveled that highway pretty much every day I went to work, for 20 years. My experiences with that roadway went back even further, as it was the route my parents took to visit relatives living in Southwest Miami. In fact, growing up in the part of Florida that I did, US 41 was known as the Tamiami Trail, or simply “The Trail,” because it was THE pre-interstate route from Tampa to Miami, with all sorts of stops in between, including Sarasota, Fort Myers, Naples, Ochopee (that’s another story for another time), Everglades National Park, so yes, we went to this area of Michigan specifically for visiting the beginning of US 41.  

To get to the site, you pass by Fort Wilkins State Park. But unfortunately that park is not dog-friendly, so we passed on it. Another unfortunate revelation was that the Copper Harbor Lighthouse is privately owned, so there went my notion of Sue and me taking turns climbing to the top of the lighthouse to look out over Lake Superior while the other one let Henry play in the cold waters of the lake. A helpful – and believe me, I am being VERY generous with this label of “helpful” – park ranger suggested that we could access the lake by traveling the unpaved roads (uh-oh) of Copper Country State Forest and she “helpfully” gave us a Michigan Department of Natural Resources map by which to navigate.

Flashbacks to driving in the Henry Caldera. Logging road after logging road, veering off this way and that. And the map was no help at all. We finally met up with a vehicle driving toward us, and I flagged them down to ask about the condition of the road ahead of us. The young man said, “Depends. How good a driver are you?” To which I replied, “Pretty fair, I guess.” He sized up my vehicle and said, “You’ll probably be OK then.”

“Probably?”

I thanked him and, noticing the kayaks secured to the top of his Land Rover, hopefully asked, “So how much further until we can get to the lake?”

He said, “Gee, I don’t know. We were looking for a place to put in, but never found one so we camped out here for the night and we’re just now getting away. I don’t know how to get to the lake from here.”

Scrutinizing his Land Rover, with its dings and bumps and rusted places and need of a paint job, remembering his query as to how good a driver I may be, and not wishing for my own vehicle to prematurely attain the state of his, I thanked him, wished them well on their journey … then found a suitable place to turn around.

Back on paved road again

we walked along the lake’s edge as best we could,

Copper Harbor Light

then headed toward Eagle Harbor, and what we hoped would be easier access to the lake. Happily, along the way we found a couple of different places where we could just savor beautiful Lake Superior in all its shimmering, non-pink, glory.

Arriving at Eagle Point

there was no place to turn but south. The question became: Do we continue the journey eventually to turn east through the UP toward Sault Ste. Marie? Or do we turn for home? Going through the UP has its delights, for sure! But they are delights that deserve more than a drive-by. They would deserve a more carefully thought-out trip, perhaps in another year or so.

Then the question became: make a straight shot south, through Green Bay, Milwaukee, and greater Chicago? I knew from previous experience that Chicago traffic can be brutal unless you hit it just right, and the odds of hitting it “just right” were not in our favor. (Not that they ever are, but sometimes you get lucky. I just didn't feel like taking a chance on that luck.)

So we chose a slightly more western path, and are spending the night in Madison, home of University of Wisconsin-Madison. I. Love. This. Town.

Had never been here before, but am sure I’ll have to come back some day. It is a lovely and vibrant college town, seems very artsy.

And lucky us! We chose to have dinner at what is apparently one of Madison’s casual dining hot spots: Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry. They don’t serve dumplings here. They do serve highly tasty burgers and fries, and have raised both to an art form. There was something on the menu called “Poutine Fries” and I’ve been passing up on poutine all the way through Montana and Alberta and Saskatchewan and – well, basically, all the way through the latter part of our trip – all because it sounded like this killer (not in a good way) cholesterol blow-out.

I was wrong. Or, maybe I was not wrong before, but it would have been very wrong of me to pass it up at this place because fries with fried cheese curds (gotta have cheese curds in Wisconsin!) topped with sausage gravy was Ah-MAY-zing! We shared these, then each had a burger. And here again, What Have I Been Missing My Whole Life, because the bun was this feather-light thing with sesame seeds and HolyCow! it was toasted to perfection and the feather-lightness did not detract from the burger (which, by the way, was topped with “Maytag Blue” cheese – whatever that may be besides awesome, – smoked bacon, and Louisiana hot sauce). Sue had a lamb burger and I noticed she was awfully quiet across the table so it must’ve been really good also.

And beer. Besides cheese, Wisconsin’s also known for beer, and my choice to go with an offering from Wisconsin’s Ale Asylum Brewery was excellent.

So all in all, a great day! Is the trip really over soon?

More photos from the Forces of Nature Tour at Flickr.

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from Duluth, MN to Houghton, MI

Today was a looong one, due in part to a human error – map reading, communication and general unfamiliarity with the area – and for the other part due to massive flooding that had occurred just prior to our visit.

It was pretty, though, and yielded up some fun and interesting things that we might otherwise have never seen/done. So. Happy accident! (Except, I hope it's understood, for the flooding part.)

Sue and I had agreed, last night, that we were headed to the Keewenaw Peninsula of Michigan, which juts into Lake Superior. Not to be confused with the Bayfield Peninsula of Wisconsin, which also juts into Lake Superior. But when you’ve never visited either, you don’t necessarily notice the difference. And especially when you can’t see “the big picture:” there is no map in a Road Atlas, except for the giant picture of the entire United States, that clearly shows both peninsulas in relation to each other. Road Atlas publishers generally treat the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as almost an afterthought, so it can be super-difficult to navigate using such maps.

So instead of taking an hour-and-a-half to get from Duluth to Ashland, our mistake tacked on an extra hour, just in time behind the wheel alone. Not counting the stop for delicious Cornish pasties in a town whose name I’ve regrettably forgotten.

Not counting the “Local Traffic Only” sign that we saw and ignored as we tried to get up to the banks of Lake Superior, only to find, a few miles later, that the road was closed with extremely good reason: the aforementioned flooding had caused a massive drainage pipe to float up and buckle the roadway – resulting in a wide gap that even the Dukes of Hazzard wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try to jump.

Not counting the wild ride on unpaved roads, trying to get around the detour without going all the way back to the last town. (Lawsy! Here we go again!)

And of course, that far up in Michigan (or so I thought) my cell phone wouldn’t be working; I’d had prior experience with that on previous trips to the UP. I took the map, asked Sue to show me her best guess as to where we were, and just exactly where she’d been trying to navigate us to … and it was then that I realized she’d taken us onto that peninsula in Wisconsin.

As far up on the peninsula as we were at that point, it would have taken us almost as much time to backtrack as it would’ve taken to stay the course. Eventually (obviously) we found our way around the detour and arrived on the banks of Lake Superior to find

No kidding! No, the road hadn't led directly into the water; my best guess is that the debris you see to the right of the signs is what remains of the road bed after the flooding had buckled it. And notice the unusual color of the water! From my visit to Lake Superior a few years ago, I had distinct memories of its shimmering, shiny, silvery waters. Not … Pink.

We went further, to find a park on the banks of the Lake, and discovered that kayakers use this park to head out to the Apostle Islands Sea Caves.

  

In our “exploration” of this small park, I learned that kayaking out to these sea caves is 1. not for the faint of heart, 2. not for any except the absolute best kayakers and swimmers, and 3. absolutely not for foolhardy people who are heedless of weather. Lake Superior is unpredictable – cue Gordon Lightfoot, singing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” – and even if you started out under the best of atmospheric conditions to find the conditions suddenly changed, even youth and athleticism won’t save you if you get into trouble around these caves. I won’t go into gory detail, but the word “treacherous” keeps popping into mind.

Still, it was a lovely little stop, with a couple of nifty hiking trails. And more pink water. I think it must be pink from silting during all the flooding.

The town of Bayfield is cute as can be, very touristy, reminding me a lot of Cape Cod destinations. And one of the local seafood markets offers excellent smoked fish spread and smoked salmon!

We finally made it to the once relatively populous port city of Ashland … and more pink water.

Our next stop was Wakefield, Michigan, and what a lucky stop that was! We stopped because Sue had noticed a statue that was very reminiscent of a statue that stands in Punta Gorda, Florida, where we both had lived significant portions of our lives. Sue went inside to the adjacent Visitor Center, to learn the story of Peter Toth, a Hungarian immigrant and sculptor who became fascinated with Native American culture. Toth made it his mission to place at least one of his statues (as a gift) in each of the 50 states, thus creating the “Trail of the Whispering Giants.” He completed his mission in Hawaii in 1988; additionally there are statues in Ontario, Manitoba and his native Hungary. As of this writing, Toth is very much alive, aged 70.

As wonderful as it was to learn of Toth, the stop turned out to be lucky because the gentleman in the Visitor Center explained what was going on with the massive flooding, and saved us a LOT of time by showing us which routes to take to avoid road closures. So the route we’ve taken to Houghton was probably not the most interesting, but it’s gotten us here!

We’ve done a little exploration of Houghton and neighboring Hancock, to discover even more horrifying damage done by the flooding. But we are safely tucked away in a Holiday Inn Express, ready for a good night’s sleep, with the promise of Cinnamon Rolls for breakfast followed by finding the beginning of Highway 41, tomorrow.

More photos from the Forces of Nature Tour at Flickr.

Click here.

 

from Grand Forks, ND to Duluth, MN

We set out this morning for the headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi, located in Lake Itasca State Park (Minnesota).

Had this portion of the trip not been a late addition, we might’ve made arrangements to stay a day or two. Just in the brief time spent in the visitors’ center, where we bought our car pass, I noticed some really cool exhibits explaining the lake and surrounding area from several different scientific aspects. It would have been fun to do more exploring.

Among other things, I did note that Lake Itasca is little changed from its natural state, and I loved that! In the past couple of hundred years, there have been major undertakings to protect Lake Itasca’s old-growth pine forests from logging.

There were a number of families there to enjoy the various recreational pastimes of summer … though from the snowmobile and cross-country ski trails that we saw, this park gets use year-round. Which is WONDERFUL!

Here’s a glimpse of a boat tour on the lake:

We headed up to the headwaters site. Which is very different from other headwater sites I’ve visited, because there’s no bubbling spring or anything that you can point to and say, yes this is where it starts. Which kind of explains how there was so much “controversy” over locating the exact headwaters … and, as a side note, there are STILL geologists who challenge this location as THE headwaters of the Mississippi!

Apparently, all the fuss over finding the source of the Mississippi – what the Ojibwe called “Gichiziibi,” or the “Great River” – was quite amusing, perplexing, even, to the Ojibwe. To them it was unimportant where it started; they considered the whole river to be of importance, the whole of the river to be beautiful and powerful. I kind of see their point. The river just Is, and where or how it began is not significant.

Notice how crystal-clear the water is!

But all the same, it’s fun to visit the Mississippi before it becomes Mighty. There are steps leading down on either side of the river, and you can wade across or, if you don’t want to get your feet wet, you can cross a footbridge. Since Henry loves playing in rivers, we thought it would be fun for Sue to take him down the steps on one side of the river, and I would call him from the other side of the river. So that’s exactly what we did. Here are the photos of Henry Burns Ford, fording the Mississippi:

We both got our feet wet as well; here’s Sue:

And a couple more pictures of my dog. He is such a great little traveling companion, so whenever I find such a "Henry-friendly" site, I like to give him as much time as possible to enjoy it. 

Back to the patio of the Mary Gibbs Mississippi Headwaters Center, named in honor of the 24-year-old park superintendent who, in the early days of the park, faced down armed lumberjacks to protect the Mississippi. We enjoyed a picnic lunch and some ice cream. And I learned that wild rice harvesting is a big deal here.

Back on the road, we decided to follow the Mississippi for a while, which led us to Bemidji

Paul Bunyan, and Babe, the Blue Ox

Both were built for a winter carnival in 1937. They are permanent symbols of Bemidji and its most colorful era of logging and lumberjacks.

Niiemii

Part of Bemidji's Sculpture Walk, Niiemii -- "he dances" -- is dedicated to all pow-wow dancers.

and past the Big Fish Supper Club, which is unfortunately closed on Mondays.

And now we’re spending the night in Duluth, Minnesota, after having pizza and beer at Thirsty Pagan Brewing in Superior Wisconsin.

And since we’re on the banks of Gichigami – Ojibwe for “Great Sea” – we have decided YES! to make yet another change to our itinerary, to see the beginning of US Highway 41, way up on the Keweenaw Peninsula which juts into Gichigami (Lake Superior).  

More photos from the Forces of Nature Tour at Flickr.

Click here.