Québec, Ontario, and back to the U.S....(and finally, the Total Eclipse in Wyoming)
We arrived back on the mainland in Canada. One of the things that we did not have time to do before we left Nova Scotia en route to Newfoundland was to go to the Fortress of Louisbourg (Forteresse de Louisbourg). This is a National Historic Site of Canada and the location of a partial reconstruction of the 18th-century French fortress at Louisbourg on Cape Breton island. Its two sieges were turning points in the Anglo-French struggle for what today is Canada. You can see part of the main street of the town above. There are shops and houses and lots of history about the people who owned them.
This is the main gate to the parade yard. As you can see, there are lots of people in period costume which makes the experience a ton of fun. Unfortunately it does not seem to be a custom for the visitors to dress up 🙃 We went to see a parade of soldiers, the firing of muskets, and the triple firing of the cannon. It was a lot of fun but not as good as Signal Hill in Newfoundland.
This statue was in a reconstructed church that is just outside the parade yard. Mike made the comment that it is a statue commemorating Sydney eating the 6lb ham... miss that puppy...
The fortress and town were reconstructed in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the driving forces behind the project was to help with the economic development of the region. Unemployed coal miners were retrained to work on the restoration projects. Now it provides many local jobs and is operated by Parks Canada as a living history museum. This is the largest reconstruction project in North America.
This is another amusing event at the park. One of the visitors pays for the privilege of being a thief. They are cuffed, dragged through town, put in the stocks, humiliated and eventually set free. The guy in white and gold was very funny and did a good job of getting the crowd to come up with good punishments for his crime. You can hear him read the crime report on our YouTube channel.
We had a great time... and then we came out to our camper van, being parked in by this jerk! Mike had to squeeze it out of the spot. To this day I can't believe he did not hit the motorcycle, car or lightpost. Castor was so appalled he left a note...
Next we did a long drive to arrive in Québec City. I had always wanted to see the city in the summer and I was not disappointed. Our first stop was at the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec. My parents and I were here years ago, in the Winter, and I could still see the neo-classic façade of the altar in my head. On the other hand I also had a cool linguistic moment... I got out of the Beaver Lodge to read the parking signs (all in french). And a couple stopped me and said, "Excusez-moi, où se trouve la rue Saint-Louis?" In my best French I quickly replied, "Je ne comprends pas le français, je suis américaine." They got out a map and pointed. I thought thank God I can read maps and know what they just asked (in retrospect, after mentally regrouping). In bad French I said go straight, it is the first street on the right. They quickly switched to English... baffled, I said the same thing in English, with hand gestures. The woman smiled, waved at me and said, "Wow your English is excellent." "Merci beaucoup" I replied before entering the Beaver Lodge and dissolving into laughter. I then retold the story to Mike. Thanks Mom for helping me practice my pronunciation...clearly I sound French to someone.
We then went to visit the old city. It is lovely to walk the cobblestone streets, hear French spoken everywhere and smell the great smells of baking bread and good food. It is as close to being in Europe as one can get in North America.
Here is another street. Here you can see the flower boxes in every window, the famous (hotel Fairmont) Le Château Frontenac, and the Old Québec Funicular that will take you back up into the more modern parts of Québec City .
I love being here! We are at the waterfront in Québec City (on the shore of the St. Lawrence River).. We walked along, saw the farmers market and of course took this ultra-touristy photo. Xoxo
After seeing the old city, we moved on to have dinner at 3 Brasseurs. It was very nice and gave us a chance to see Parliament House. Cities are so different in different seasons, but they are also different as the day progresses...
We parked overlooking this fountain, sat at its tables and watched the sun dip. Then we came back in the evening and planned our next day. I love open space in cities!!
And then there is this... We left Québec City passed Montreal... passed Toronto... oops... at a rest area, where I was eyeing up a Frosty, Mike came up to the window and said, "So you want the bad news? The shock is lying on the sub-framing. Do you want to go to the US or stay in Canada?"
I opted for Canada. They let us go to Fastenal, buy a Grade 8 bolt, nut, and washers that the local shop will install for $50. No joke. The guys at Fastenal were amazing. They helped with the van, talked about tiny houses, and lent us a tool to gauge the thread of our sheared bolt. We love Canadian mechanics.
Next we overnighted in Kingston... well, near it in a new housing development because there was a festival in town. Mike wanted to see the town because he used to visit this area with his friend Brett. They used to fish in a lake north of Kingston, and came down to the brewery each time they were up here.
I am getting better at reading French! The signage here is all in French and I am able to read complex text with context... for example the history of the 1947 KB3 International that stands in front of the brewery. It is affectionately called the "Dragon Wagon" and was a functioning Paddy Wagon in Ottawa.
Bruce Peninsula National Park straddles the Niagara Escarpment, which is a huge forested ridge that runs through southern Ontario, Canada. The drive in is a long, but nice, ride past fields, windmills and small towns.
The biggest draw is the Grotto. As you can see, it is a limestone cave overlooking Georgian Bay’s clear waters. Thus was nice but for me I wish that we had done the Bruce long trail. About 35 miles of this trail run through the park along the shoreline... looked amazing! Guess it is a reason to come back.
Google was the first to welcome us back to the USA as we crossed the border at one of the most popular crossings, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario into the eastern side of Michigan. We waited more than 30 minutes in line, but no hassle once we got to the crossing.
Also as we crossed, Castor became a US citizen! Feel free to congratulate him when you see him. This is quite an occasion, seeing that most of the expatriating is going in the other direction.
We tripped into Kalamazoo Michigan and voilà two amazing breweries in one smaller town. First we went to Arcadia Ales brewing. They have a lovely outdoor area with a fire, corn hole and lots of tables. The beer was fairly good and we met two nice locals at the bar. The father had his son out for his 21st birthday. Next we went to Bells. This was probably the most expensive brewery that we have ever been to; about $5 for each sample glass! We also got to hear the band Here Comes The Mummies for free as Bells has a music venue behind the brewery. Odd band.
This is one of the stops that we made that I wish my Dad were here for. He loved Notre Dame football. Here are some of the shots that I took on campus.
We also got lucky because we met Tyler. He is an RA in Zahm house and took it upon himself to be our impromptu tour guide. He took our photo with the reflecting pool and the stadium behind us...
...and Touchdown Jesus in front of us. It is a famous Notre Dame mural commemorating “Christ and the Saints of Learning.” The mural is on the Library and its formal name is “Word of Life”. It is meant to unite the Divine and the Academic. It depicts Christ surrounded by some of the great theologians, doctors and teachers such as the Gregory’s, the Jerome’s, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. The artist who designed it was Millard Sheets and he placed Jesus at the top with arms upraised, rejoicing over the work of the teachers and doctors portrayed below him. If you go just around the corner of Hesburgh Library, you can also see this...
there he is, index finger raised: “First Down Moses”. Yes they are a Catholic university first but they are a football university second!
Another reason that we were so lucky to meet Tyler was that he took us to see his dorm, Zahm house. At Notre Dame they do not have Greek life so most students stay in the same dorm for all 4 years and it becomes like a family. Also each residence hall on campus has at least one resident priest and a chapel. Tyler was very open about his faith and how important it is in his everyday life.
Right before he left us, he took us to see the Grotto which is a near perfect reproduction of the one in Lourdes. Crazy how similar actually. Really, what are the odds that I would see two Lourdes Grottoes on the same trip???
Since we were passing so close to Chicago, Mike wanted to get a Lou Malnati's pizza. On the way to the restaurant, in front of the library I saw this bench commemorating Shel Silverstein's book Where The Sidewalk Ends. I love his books, and here is one of my favorite poems of his, just in case there are readers out there who have not read his work:
Melinda Mae
Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae, Who ate a monstrous whale? She thought she could, She said she would, So she started in right at the tail. And everyone said,'You're much too small,' But that didn't bother Melinda at all, She took little bites and she chewed very slow,
Just like a little girl should... ...and eighty-nine years later she ate that whale
Because she said she would! ! ! -Shel Silverstein
So this is my first Lou Malnati's pizza. I love Chicago deep dish, and the Lou's Vegetarian pizza is delicious.
This is Ottawa, Illinois.
It is an amazingly lovely little town. We just stumbled into music in the park. The fiddle player in the band was incredible. They did great rock-and-roll covers, as well as some country that I was less familiar with. If my mom had been here she would have known it because I think some were Willie Nelsons.
Just to the left of the band there was this statue commemorating the site of the first of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858. During this debate Stephen A. Douglas, the shorter figure and leader of the Democratic Party, openly accused Abraham Lincoln of forming a secret bipartisan group to bring about the abolition of slavery. Remember, political parties were not always named as they are today. In the 1850's the Democrats were the conservative party, and Lincoln, who was a Whig and then a Republican, was more liberal.
Iowa-80 is the world's largest truck stop. (God I love silly roadside attractions!) It is located on I-80 exit 284 in Walcott, Iowa. It is on a 220-acre plot of land. This is about four times larger than an average truckstop. They say that they get 5,000 visitors daily.,,,which seemed accurate as it was packed when we were there. It features parking for 900 trucks, 150 fuel pumps, with each fuel pump also having another dedicated pump for dispensing bulk diesel exhaust fluid. You can see the Beaver Lodge is dwarfed by the gas pump area.
"Dignity" is a sculpture on a bluff in South Dakota overlooking the Missouri River just off I-90 between exits 263 and 265. The 50-foot-high stainless steel statue was created by Dale Lamphere and shows an indigenous woman in Plains-style dress receiving a star quilt. The star quilt has 128 blue diamond shapes that move in the wind "like an Aspen leaf". The sculpture was designed to honor the culture of the Lakota and Dakota peoples. And the sculptor used three women as models for the project.
We stopped at another rest area just a bit further into South Dakota and I was so taken by the flat vastness of this area. I just don't know if it is something that you can really understand if you have never been to middle America. I mean there is just nowhere in Pennsylvania where you can see so far with so much open sky and not be standing on a mountain.
We just tripped across this Historic Site that is right outside the Badlands National Park. It was created in 1999 to illustrate the significance of the Cold War in American history. The arms race, and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development is well described in this three-part site that preserves the last remaining Minuteman II ICBM system in the United States.
The museum had this fascinating display that describes how many times the US or Russia almost launched Nuclear war by accident!!!
Here is the first display that you see. I found it amusing but then just wanted pizza. Camper vans can cook good meals but pizza is not really among them.
The Ranch Store originated in the 1950s along the old Highway 16 in Kadoka, SD. Like many businesses of that time, The Ranch Store’s original location was no longer viable after the completion of Interstate 90. So it needed to move...
The feature event at The Ranch Store is the same as it was fifty years ago – a large prairie dog colony to the north of the store, where one can walk among the dogs and toss them a snack of unsalted peanuts.
There are lots of Prairie Dog things here...
but none is as funny as the one standing guard at the entrance to the entire colony. It is a six-ton Prairie Dog and he seems to be here to ensure that nothing changes in the colony or the store. Oh by the way, allow us to introduce two things: GS, Castor's new friend, and Mike's new and incredibly trimmed look.
Here is the main entrance to the Badlands National Park where 244,000 acres of mixed-grass prairie are protected. In this park you can see a rich fossil record, beautiful rock formations, and open land where bison, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs, and black-footed ferrets live.
Much of the park hiking is concentrated along the main road on very short hikes and platforms. This does not mean that the landscape is not lovely to see, just that you have to work hard to get away from the crowds and really get a feeling for the park.
This was taken at the Door and Window trailhead. You can see us having fun looking at the pink and white rock formations.
I think that I was so amazed by how different these formations were from any other park that I have been to in the American West.
Now much of the park is just not accessible or viewable from the short walk along the road, so Mike and I decided to go out into the backcountry. This was a genius idea because we spent the night in the park on an evening when there was a crazy thunder and lightning storm in the area. What was really crazy is that we were right near the storm but it did not rain too badly on us so we got to view the storm all around us but not get wet. It is an experience that I will not soon forget.
So deciding to go into the backcountry was such a lucky thing. If not, we would never have seen these two big-horned sheep. Two males just meandered into the area we were hiking in and let us get up-close shots.
After hiking in the back country we went to do the Castle Trail. This 10-mile hike is the longest in the park. It is kind-of an out-and-back, and kind-of a loop...
Here is Mike showing off the Medicine Root Trail. It a spur off the Castle Trail that gives hikers a good view of the prairie land that the park protects.
On your return trip you can come up to Saddle Pass and summit one of the higher hills in the park. It gives you a great 360° view of this area in the park.
All of this area was at one time underwater. Eventually the sea drained away and with the uplift of the Black Hills and Rocky Mountains, the black ocean mud was exposed to air. The upper layers were weathered into a yellow soil, called Yellow Mounds. The mounds are an example of a fossil soil, or paleosol. And they, along with the more common pink and white soil, make the Yellow Mounds overlook so cool.
This is one of the parks that I missed in my 2012 trip with Paula that I was really disappointed about. So it was amazing to see it this time.
Devils Tower, really called Bear Lodge Butte by the native peoples, is a laccolithic butte composed of igneous rock in the Bear Lodge Mountains. It is very sacred to many of the native tribes in the area and is closed to climbing in the month of July because of the Summer Solstice. This Butte has a different personality on each side, as well as when viewed from afar.
To really experience the area, think about doing the longer loop around the tower and then out to the adjacent park land. Here you get to see the Butte as a Native person would as they came to this special place. As you hike around the tower and surrounding land you often see prayer offerings left by these pilgrims.
Now for the exact opposite... we did not intentionally stop in Deadwood, but since we were passing through we stopped. It is supposedly named after the dead trees found in its gulch.... odd, right? The entire city is a National Historic Landmark District, for its supposidly well-preserved Gold Rush-era architecture. I have to say that the town itself was a huge tourist trap and casino haven. Skip it, unless....
..you want to visit the Deadwood cemetery. Yes you can see the graves of the famously murdered gunman Wild Bill Hickok and his girlfriend Calamity Jane, but there is a lot more here too. For the bargain price of $2.00 you get to see the cemetery and get a newspaper that tells you all about the people buried there. For example the man who found the largest gold nugget, and the man who died killing the current customer of his favorite whore or the three mass graves for events such as a dysentery outbreak and town fire. It was a cool find even though the Beaver Lodge had one heck of a time getting up the narrow streets to the visitor parking lot.
Mt. Rushmore... Completed in 1941 under the direction of Gutzon Borglum, the sculpture's granite faces depict U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, all of whom Borglum chose for their great contributions to humanity. It is interesting to see, but costs $10.00 to park. I do not think that it is worth the stop because there is SO much to do in the Black Hills.
In fact when you are on your way to do some hiking in the Elk Wilderness you can catch this cool profile of Washington on the back side of Mt. Rushmore.
Really, who needs to stare at granite when you can walk the Osprey Trail. The Trail is aptly named because Osprey are often seen in the Pactola Lake area. Unfortunately we did not see them but we did see a Golden Eagle in a field on the way in to the hike so I think we got the better end of the deal. P.S. the swimming is amazing!
So after a lot of searching and going to the worst visitors center ever!! we finally chose a long hike in the Black Hills. I am really serious, if you are ever in Rapid City don't use the Black Hills Information Center. People are very nice; they will push armloads of brochures on you, but unfortunately it appeared to me that they had never actually been to the Black Hills and thus could not recommend any hikes over .5 of a mile. So off we went with our crappy map and a lot of hope for a great overnight hike.
The Black Hills get their name from the Lakota Sioux. The Native Americans called this land in western South Dakota, “Paha Sapa” or hills that are black. You can see why if you look above. Both trees are Ponderosa Pine. The young one, on the left, shows the dark bark that is so characteristic of these hills. It is not until they are mature, at about 90 years old, that they shed this black coloration and become reddish and then yellow. Ponderosa pines are very long-lived with a natural life span of 250 to 400 years.
We were only 2 miles into this walk when we started to see these stone formations towering over us. It is amazing to see them just appear in the woods.
Here is a view back on the rock structure that you saw in the last photo. We chose to do a 24 mile trail in 2 days so there was plenty of time to go off trail and climb rock formations for a look back at where we had just been. Keep these rocks in mind. They are going to be tiny gray dots in our picture at the end of the day.
The most dramatic area that we hiked through on this trip is actually in Custer State Park. It is known as the Needles region. There are many eroded granite pillars, towers, and spires.
This 180° panorama was traken at the top of Little Devils Tower. On the left you can see Harney peak, then in the middle you can see Mt. Rushmore, and the Needles are on the right. There is a short but lovely out-and-back hike in the Needles called Cathedral Spires. When you look up at them you can imagine that they are part of a church.
Here is another closer shot of the Needles.
Oh we liked this area so much we camped here. One of the best things about the area, other than the view, is that there were millions of raspberry bushes. Mike picked fresh raspberries for us to have on top of our morning oatmeal.
When we went to bed, the sunset was spectacular... what we should have noticed was that it was a red hazy sun, which foretold of tomorrow's weather. Even though we got up really early it was hot. I have to say that the second day was not as great as the first but I did not burn too much and got to nap in the van in sheer heat exhaustion when we got back to it around 3:00.
After our hike in the Black Elk Wilderness, we made our plans to see the eclipse in Wyoming. As you can see, we got a great spot next to a photo enthusiast. His name was Bernie and I want to be like him at 86.
We had a perfect day for the eclipse, and unfortunately I don't have words to describe how good it was. We put out chairs and made some great friends. Werner, from Belgium, came to sit with us early in the day. He also teaches so I liked him right away. He teaches Geography and loves the American plains states. He says that when you come from a country as small and developed as Belgium it can feel claustrophobic. Mike said he'd take claustrophobic to sample their beer and chocolate!!
Here is a shot of what it looked like during totality. I was not ready for the 360° of sunset. It was truly amazing. We saw the Corona, the diamond effect, and Baily's Beads.
Here is a shot of the Corona during totality... notice you can see Venus, down low, just next to my bike seat. And I could see Regulus (Alpha Leo), but unfortunatly the camera did not pick it up.
The eclipse took longer than most people thought, and right after totality most of them packed up to sit in traffic. Trust me, it was total gridlock for 8 hours where we were. Mike from Colorado, Bernie, Werner and the Beaver Lodge residents stayed to watch the whole thing. I had read that anything less than totality was not worth driving for. I have to say that I am not a fan of extremes and so thought the experts might be overstating the case, but now I know they were not. Seriously Pennsylvania, don't miss the one in 2024.
