8/16/2000 Wednesday
The day of our departure was really hectic. We both had meetings at work in the morning, but fortunately Monika could take the afternoon off and get home by 12:30 to pack the car. I was trying to tie up loose ends and didn’t make it home until 1:10, which made for a hurried lunch (5 minutes) before we had to drive to Dr. Alber’s office for my FAA flight physical. I passed with flying colors (!pun!), but we started talking about an accident investigation he had done on the Viscount jet in 1964 and that took a while.

We finally drove off at 3:00 pm, but luckily did not hit any backups on the beltway or 270. In fact, we had clear sailing to Breezewood and along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Although we had initially wanted to get to Wheeling, West Virginia, for the evening, we both were getting too tired to drive as we passed Cambridge, PA, an exit with several competing hotels. So we turned off for the night and surveyed the offerings. The competition at this exit apparently kept the price down because we found a nicely "refurbished" Econolodge for an affordable $42. "Refurbished" in this case meant old but with new beds, furniture, room decorations, bathroom fixtures, and so forth. Only the overhead light didn't work, but that didn't keep us awake!

8/17/2000 Thursday
We had a nice breakfast at the Denny’s next to the Econolodge. There I found a new fruits-and-yogurt Grand Slam breakfast which I tried. It was not my usual "sticks and twigs" breakfast, but it was reasonably low-fat. Monika had her two eggs, sausages, bacon, and pancakes, which was not exactly low-fat but quite filling. Afterwards we set off for a long day of driving. Roadwork was pretty common on I-70, often closing it down to one lane, but we were fortunate to only be stopped once, and then just briefly.

We checked the Starting Point for possible walks to break our drive and settled on a walk at Canal Winchester, a small historic town just southeast of Columbus, OH. The walk explored every edge of a rather small town. We first looped through the downtown where we discovered a historical plaque describing the origins of the town on an early 1800s canal from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. The residents were so enamored of the new canal that they added "Canal" to the town's name. There were few if any traces of the canal left as it was abandoned in 1901 after being superseded by the railroads, but I might have found the remains of some canal walls or locks near our parking lot.

From the downtown we looped northeast to a new subdivision just outside of town. A cloudburst overtook us as we walked out of town, but fortunately we had brought our raingear and could stop under a small tree to get it on. We waited until it let up a bit and continued on our walk, crossing over the northern part of town and coming back past an old railroad station. They had two cabooses (cabeese?, caboosi?) on a track just beside the station, and it looked like the station was still in use. We later also saw a bus connection to the Columbus metropolitan transit system, so living in Canal Winchester and commuting to Columbus would be possible.

One thing I noticed in this small town was the open friendliness of the people. While we were donning our rain gear, a woman came out from her house to drive off and offered a friendly hello. Children we met on the street looked at us directly and fearlessly. They didn't react at all the same as urban children who are taught to be afraid of strangers and tend to avoid eye contact.

From the train station we started a loop to the southwest of town. We found a Dairy Queen along the route and we stopped for a bathroom break and a chocolate dip cone—fortunately Monika bought a medium-sized cone so I could share some as we walked along thru the historic village. Monika thinks I got the lion’s share, but I think she should have ordered a large—I just didn’t want to yell out “Get a LARGE!” from the bathroom while she was ordering. A man yelling that from the bathroom might have been misinterpreted by the other customers.

We also passed an 1876 school building that was one of the oldest schools still in continuous use. You could clearly see the oldest section and where at least two additions had been made in more modern times. Even the oldest section, however, had been extensively remodeled with more modern, larger windows which probably made the interior much lighter, but looked somewhat odd on such an such an old building. As the route left the town it led to an old covered bridge, apparently the only such bride in Franklin County, Ohio. This was a patented “double-truss” bridge built in the 1870s, which was probably the heyday of this historic town. The bridge cost $2,639, but that was in 1870 dollars! The bridge had been restored (refurbished?) and rededicated about 10 years back and felt rock-solid and sturdy when we walked across it, but it was closed to car traffic so we could enjoy it at our leisure.

We wound up our walk at the senior center and drove back to Arby’s for lunch. While we ate lunch the rain started coming down in earnest and we were happy to be done with the walk. This was a very easy walk in a nice old town with several interesting sites that we would recommend to other folks.

We continued on the drive around Columbus, thru Ohio, and around Indianapolis toward Champaign-Urbana. By switching drivers each hour, we avoided getting too exhausted by the end of the day. We checked in at the Sleep Inn in Urbana and called Martin who drove over from his work. We talked with Martin nonstop and caught up on all his latest adventures while we had dinner at the nearby Urbana Garden Restaurant. Martin told us about his backpacking trip in the Rockies, relating several hair-raising stories.

First we heard the "backpack stories". Since his companion was taken ill just before the trip, Martin made the backpacking trip solo. Since no one else was with him, Martin started taking pictures of his backpack in all the different settings as if it were a person. He showed us one hilarious picture of the backpack in the driver's seat of his car, arranged to look as if it were driving. Another picture was of the backpack sitting up in the campsite, while another was the backpack enjoying a scenic vista, and he took many other pictures in this vein.

So when he hiked up to some waterfalls near the crest of the Continental Divide, he naturally thought that he should take a picture of the backpack by the waterfalls. Unfortunately, he felt the perfect placement would be at the TOP of the waterfalls (he blames the altitude for not-very-sensible idea), so he started climbing up the waterfalls with his backpack on. Somewhere during this climb he started to slip and couldn't stop sliding down the slope until he landed in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, where the water was chest deep. His first thought was that at least he had plenty of water to drink! But the sides of this pool were steep and slippery with moss, so he found out that he couldn't climb out, which caused some little consternation as the water was quite cold. After exploring all sides of the pool very carefully, he finally found a ridge that he could wrap his legs around sufficiently well to inch his way up and out of the pool. After he finally crawled out of the pool he took off his soaked clothes and spread them out to dry. Naturally at that moment a ranger came along and asked him what in the world he was doing, like taking a bath?, and Martin had to explain that a bath was not really his intent.

The second story was the nighttime attack by a marmot. Martin heard animal noises during the night and shined his flashlight out of the tent but couldn't see anything and went back to sleep. He awakened again to hear gnawing sounds outside and he thought he should investigate even though the food bag was tied up in a tree away from the campsite. So he went out with his flashlight in stocking feet and saw the marmot gnawing on the shoulder straps of his backpack! Martin was very irritated and chased the marmot with his flashlight down the trail for a half a mile to put a good scare into him. Unfortunately, that meant that he also had to walk back up the rocky trail in his stocking feet in the dark, which was a high price to pay! The marmot didn't come back that night but Martin found his shoulder straps were chewed through in the morning and he had to take time out to sew them back together before pushing on.

The final story was his encounter with a "cupcake" on the way back out to the visitor's center. Martin had already walked about 10 miles down from the Continental Divide area and took a rest break where there was a crowd of college students. He was chatting with a girl when her apparent boyfriend came over and said that he sure seemed to be walking slowly. Martin saw the "tennis" insignia on the boy's jacket and figured he wouldn't be in very good condition, so he challenged him to a race up the mountainside to the visitor's center. He even let the other guy have a head start, but naturally caught up with him fairly soon. Then the other guy started to jog to try to get ahead and Martin started jogging also, even with his backpack on, which must have been quite a sight. Martin finally blew past the guy and finished his hike to the visitor's center to end his backpacking trip.

Afterwards he stopped at a local diner that advertised bad food, and just had multiple steaks and beers while chatting with the locals for a couple of hours. Fortunately he waited for the beer to wear off before driving back through the mountains. Mountain roads can be pretty tricky when you're not used to them, and I still remember the little rolled-up ball of a Mustang I saw when I first drove through the Rocky Mountains. Apparently, the driver had not made a curve and went rolling down the mountain, with the result that the car was rolled up and compressed into this ball of twisted metal about 2 yards in diameter. I never asked what happened to the driver of that car, but I have a pretty good guess about it. In any case, we were glad that we hadn’t known about all of Martin's adventures at the time, or we would have been very worried. Although we were very tired after our dinner with Martina and this long chat, we wanted to see the house he had just moved into with his college friend Matthew, so we drove over there for an hour.

The house was very nice indeed. Matthew’s grandparents, who are in their 90s, had lived there up to the previous year when they had to move into assisted care living. Matthew is living there while he pursues a 2-year Master’s degree in electrical engineering and he had asked Martin to move in with him and share the house. We thought it was a great arrangement for Martin, much more “homey” and more space for the cats. But since the house was fully furnished, Martin didn’t need even half of his stuff from the apartment, so we offered to take it home with us and made plans to help sort the stuff the next day, after which we drove home and dropped into bed.

Unfortunately, a large group of young, loud girls was having a party inside and outside the hotel. The shouting and laughing lasted until the wee hours of the morning, keeping us awake even though we turned on the air conditioning to try to drown out the noise. I finally called to complain about the noise on our floor, and that abated. But they either didn't or couldn't do anything about the yelling and screaming out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, which carried clearly to our room and was loud enough to keep us awake.

8/18/2000 Friday
We were somewhat groggy the next morning but woke up a bit as we had the complimentary breakfast (coffee for Monika, hot cocoa for me). We were looking forward to spending a day with Martin as we drove over to his house. He had planned to fix us a fancy dinner that evening, so first we all went shopping to buy the fixings at the local IGA. Since the house had a beautiful porch with 4 plastic chairs but no table, we had also decided to buy them a matching table and searched for a suitable one. We finally found an appropriate white, plastic table at a Lowe’s store, and also picked up a little grill so that they could have cookouts. This filled up the car, so we drove back, unpacked, and had lunch.

Then we settled in for an afternoon of serious sorting up in Martin’s room. Martin was performing triage of the contents of many boxes and bags into “must keep here”, “can keep at parent’s house”, and “can give to Goodwill or trash” piles. As usual, this process was very time-consuming. Monika went out and bought some more ingredients for dinner while I helped Martin with the sorting. By the end of the afternoon, our car was full and Martin could walk in his bedroom (but not sleep on his bed!).

Monika helped Martin fix dinner while I assembled the new table for the porch and Matthew connected speakers to the sound system. Martin prepared eggplant parmesan, gypsy soup, and foccacia bread, all of which were vegetarian and low fat, but very tasty. We had a convivial dinner with Matthew in the dining room, surrounded by the antique furniture of his grandparents. We returned to the misnamed Sleep Inn for the night and for once got a good night’s sleep.

8/19/2000 Saturday
We popped over to Martin's place in the morning and had a fancy breakfast at the nearby"Original Pancake House" that Matthew had recommended. Despite knowing about where it was, we missed it on the first pass and had to come back from the other side to find it. Matthew had recommended the deep-dish apple pancakes, and fortunately he had warned us that it was large enough for 2 people. Martin and I shared an order, and I couldn't quite finish my half even though it tasted so good that it was a shame to see it go to waste. I was raised in a "clear your plate or you don't get dessert" family and had some hungry times as a kid, so it is difficult for me not to finish a meal--old habits die hard.

We spent the morning with Martin shopping in campus town. Some of the older shops were being torn down for a new mini-mall, but Follett’s bookstore and the ex-Baptist Student Center were still there. I pointed out the lowest floor of the old BSC where they had the cafeteria. I remember the overweight but very cheerful cook, "Pauline", who fixed fresh eggs, pancakes, and French toast for the starving students--it was much better than normal dormitory food. Monika recalled she bought a meal plan for dinners there for a year, and we always ate together there during the early part of our relationship. We became very close during that time. Pauline would always cook extra-special meals for Thanksgiving and other holidays. She would decorate each table with a tablecloth and have turkey or ham with all the fixings. We both remember the tiny loaves of fresh-baked bread that would be given to each person for those meals. What wonderful memories we have about that place.

Our goals for this shopping trip were Illinois T-shirts and a Chief Illiniwek doll. We found plenty of the T-shirts at a store on Green Street which also had a clearance sale of funny hats in the Illinois colors of blue and orange. I bought 3 of the funny hats for $20 and Monika bought 3 T-shirts for $20 (I think I got the better deal, but she probably does too). We didn't find a nice Chief Illiniwek doll, though, which was a shame as they will probably be phasing out this old tradition soon, a sacrifice on the altar of Political Correctness. Sigh.

After returning to Martin’s for a final confab, and packing yet another box of his stuff into car, we reluctantly left to drive toward Chicago. The drive North was as boring as I remembered from my student days, and I took a nap while Monika drove. As we approached Chicago, we found that the area around Monee and Peotone was more built up than it used to be, with businesses next to the interstate and housing subdivisions next to the exits. We exited at Matteson and checked the Matteson Hotel (tacky) before registering at the Baymount Hotel for the evening.

Having our lodging secured, we drove over to see my foster mother, Ruth Winterringer, at the Rest Haven nursing home. When we first arrived she was asleep, so we took a ½ hour walk around the South Holland neighborhood. We found the neighborhood had small but uniformly immaculately kept homes, many with flowers growing in the yards. When we got back, mom was awake and very chipper. I was relieved that she was less confused and participated much more in our conversation than she had on our previous visits.

We showed her our photo album from last fall and winter, which recorded many of our walks and the Thanksgiving at Lois’s home in Burlington. We tried to point out and emphasize the names of all the people that she could know from the past like Lois, Phyllis, and their families. She seemed to enjoy the pictures very much, although she said she "couldn’t hardly recognize" anybody. She complained about her memory failing but otherwise seemed in very good spirits. We gave her a small jar of homemade raspberry jam and rolled her wheelchair into position for the evening meal before we left to drive to Lee’s house.

We arrived Lee’s about 6 p.m. and talked to him, Shelby, and their son David for a half an hour before we drove over to Frankfort to have dinner at Die Bier Stube, a German restaurant. The inside was full, so we sat out in the biergarten where a small Oompah Band was playing. I had a smoked Kassler pork chop, which was very tasty, while everyone else had bratwurst of one type or another. Monika had the homemade version, which was very good and quite authentic (I had some of hers and it tasted just like what we had in Germany).

The band, or more accurately a trio, that entertained us during dinner was quite a lot of fun. They sang some German folk songs but did a variety of other things. When we knew the chorus to a folk song, we sang along with them. Their "Chicken Song" was definitely designed for audience participation as they put chicken hats on kids and had them do a clucking motion, a wing-flapping motion, and so on associated with the comical lyrics. One performer did a yodeling number which was impressive and quite authentic, says Monika. Another guy played an Alpenhorn (very large, no valves) and then shouted at the end "Gricola", which was a play on the cough drop maker who uses these horns in their adds. The high point of the evening for me was when they used an assortment of cowbells to play "Edelweiss" and "Laura's Theme" from Dr. Zhivago. With all this entertainment and our conversation going nonstop, it was a very "Gemutlich" evening.

We drove back to Lee’s and looked at his photo album from their Alaska trip. He showed us very nice pictures of both their cruise and the inland trip thru Fairbanks, Denali, and Anchorage. Some of the cruise pictures brought back memories as we had seen the same sights on our Alaska cruise. I also tried out Lee’s new recumbent bicycle, an E Machine, and found it quite comfortable although it was less stable than a traditional bike due to small wheels and a different steering geometry. It was a blast and I didn’t crash!

We spent the rest of the evening discussing David’s divorce situation in some detail—he was currently on the court schedules for 4 separate trials and living with his parents while all this was settled. He had pleaded guilty to a domestic violence charge after accidentally kicking his son in the face and was in mandatory therapy for that. He was under a court restraining order that prevented him from contacting his wife or children except through the courts. He was also not allowed to see his children even during specified visitation times except with a third party present. His wife April had filed for divorce, which was being negotiated glacially slowly by his and her lawyers--he seemed to think that three months was a long delay, so I didn't have the heart to tell him that Tony's divorce had already dragged on for well over a year. He said that April had also filed a suit for child support during the interim period. Altho this almost sounded like a soap opera, it was all quite real. All together, it was a legal mess and very expensive.

8/20/2000 Sunday
We drove over to Rest Haven to see if we could have another visit with mom, but she was dozing while they played a religious video and I just couldn’t awaken her. That put me in a pickle as I really wanted to talk to her but also really hated to wake her up if she was sleeping that soundly. After a couple of tries, I gave up and we continued driving East on the Indiana and Ohio turnpikes to Toledo, Ohio.

Just East of Toledo we made a detour to Maumee Bay State Park for a Volksmarch. First the Volksmarch went on a boardwalk thru a wetland area for a 3 km loop. We started from the Nature Center which had a small pond out front with a couple of turtles sunning themselves on a log. Other than that pond, it seemed pretty dry for a swamp and there was nary a mosquito to be found during our entire walk. But certainly a lot of the vegetation was reeds, bulrushes and similar wetland flora. While walking this loop, we took a short detour to a small observation tower to look out over Lake Erie where we took some pictures. The visibility was good and we could see steam rising from the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant across the lake, which is not very wide at this point. The boardwalk continued back thru the swamp to a large, modern lodge at the edge of the lake which looked like a nice place to stay. A lot of couples were strolling hand-in-hand, so maybe this is a honeymoon locale or something.

Curling around the lodge on the lakeside, we passed a small marina, maybe 20 slips all together, and crossed a bridge to get to the beach on the other side. A wide, paved trail beside the beach was being used by walkers, bicyclists, and roller bladers. Out on the lake we saw sailboats, powerboats, wave runners, and one ore or bulk cargo boat. You can tell the boats made for inter-lake commerce as they are flat-sided to fit into the Soo locks at Mackinac, and don’t have the sharp bow of a “salty” or ocean-going ship. Just inland we watched a fascinating variety of kites being flown in a nearby meadow. I could see how the traditional kites and the paraglider worked, but I really couldn’t understand how the circular and tubular kites managed to fly.

We walked along the beach to a small lighthouse and turned inland to complete our loop. Along the way we passed a campground and saw a bright yellow bird with black wings—very pretty but it fluttered away much too quickly for me to snap a picture. The loop led us back past the kite-flying area and then around an inland lake with a large swimming area and, thankfully, bathrooms! We curled back around the other side of this lake to return to the lodge and the parking lot where our car was waiting patiently for us. We both felt that this was a very nice walk (with the longest nature trail boardwalk I have ever seen), one we might want to do again while staying over at the lodge.

From the park we drove South to rejoin the turnpike and headed East toward Cleveland. We finally got tired of driving about 7:30 as we were passing Elyria, Ohio, which seemed to have a goodly number of hotels included some of the cheap ones. In our experience, that tends to hold down the prices of the others due to competition, perhaps. We checked out a Howard Johnsons, but it was a really old one right next to the turnpike, and besides, it looked rather run-down. So we drove back up the road to a Super 8 motel, which was quite nice and even had a complimentary breakfast! We quickly threw our things in the room, plugged the computer in to recharge, and headed off to look for food. After a light dinner of salads at Denny’s, we returned to our room and hopped into bed for a good night’s sleep.

8/21/2000 Monday
The continental breakfast was quite good for me as they featured cereal, bagels, English muffins, and other rather healthy fare rather than pastries and Danish. We fueled up on food, gassed up the car, and drove the short hop to Berea, Ohio, to take the Volksmarch there. But when we drove into the shopping center and looked for the Big Boy start/finish point, we found it was closed for renovations! We checked around to see if they had left the box outside somewhere, but saw no trace of it, so we gave up and returned to the turnpike. Monika drove while I checked the 2000 Starting Point book for other Voksmarches in Ohio. Finding none along our route, I checked the Pennsylvania listings and found one just off Exit 6 of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, just East of Pittsburgh, and we decided to try it.

The start/finish point was a convenience store just off the turnpike. We signed and took a set of directions. Our first challenge was driving to Boyce Park, and we found the directions none too helpful. The “Orange Belt” street marking was a small orange ball on a small white sign, and at one intersection we had to look very hard to find the marking at all. This should have given us a clue.

We found the start of the walk and immediately discovered that the directions were quite ambiguous. We took the first of several wrong turns and had to retrace our steps. The park was a ski area and the walk went along nicely groomed cross-country ski trails for the most part. Although it was very pretty, the first part of walk was also very frustrating. For the next hour we floundered around up and down hills, trying to guess what was meant by the instructions or interpolating where we were and where we should go from a very crudely drawn map. The signs posted for the walk were few and far between, and even then capriciously located on whatever surface was convenient. We found the signs on posts, trees, and even other signs. The “blue markings” were unreliable as all trails and side trails seemed to be marked in blue. We got lost and completely turned around at least three times during that hour.

However, the scenery was beautiful, ranging from the open vistas on the top of Indian Hill to the grassy slopes of the ski areas of the park, to the narrow forest trails. At one point, Monika suddenly grabbed my arm and pointed as a large hawk launched from the top of a tree just ahead of us. I watched as he soared soundlessly over us to a copse of trees behind us, but I wasn't quick enough to get out my camera and take a picture. As we descended Indian Hill a deer broke from cover and ran around the curve of the hill in front of us, but again it happened too quickly to get a picture.

The second part of the walk was a loop around the part of the park on the other side of a bisecting road. That part of the walk was a much simpler loop and the markings were adequate to keep us on track. The walk as a whole was rated a 2+ with lots of moderate ups and downs. We felt the rating was accurate and were glad that it had not rained recently as some low spots were churned up by cross-country bicycles and would have made large mud holes. The second loop started as an access road that passed an archery range, soccer and baseball fields, and tennis courts before turning into a wooded path for the rest of the loop.

I was just marching along lost in thought on this section when Monika again grabbed my arm and pointed right ahead of us. We both froze and I saw a large woodchuck or ground hog sitting in the grass almost at our feet. It was smaller than a beaver but larger than a muskrat and had gray-speckled fur plus a short furry tail. It eyed us suspiciously but didn't move as I slowly edged my camera out of its case and zoomed the lens out. Thinking that at any moment he would turn and run, I quickly put the camera up and snapped the picture. That seemed to break the spell, and he turned and quick as a flash he kind of bounced back into the underbrush before I had time to snap a second picture. I said thank you for him holding the pose long enough to get my picture and we continued on the walk.

Our route led past an old barn where there was an optional side trail to an even older log cabin. We took the side trail and the cabin looked interesting, but it was only open on weekends so we turned back and pressed on as we were both getting tired. After crossing the street back to the main part of the park, the walk led gradually uphill and culminated in a model airplane flying field just above the start/finish point, where we climbed wearily back into the car. We felt that this was a very pretty trail on natural surfaces that offered a variety of scenery and even the chance of seeing wildlife. However, the trail was badly in need of better markings, a better map, and better directions. We would suggest that other walkers take with a compass or GPS to help orient themselves and plan on a minimum of 2.5 to 3 hours to complete the walk. Of course, this was the one time I could have used my GPS and I cleverly left it sitting in the car. There was one point during the first hour of this walk that I seriously considered backtracking to the car to get the GPS so we could better do point-to-point navigation.

We were starving when we were done and explored the strip near the turnpike entrance. We found a Ponderosa Steakhouse and had a wonderful lunch there--we both ordered the 6 ounce sirloin steak from the senior’s menu. I didn’t know whether to be happy or disappointed that they didn’t demand proof of my age. It’s kind of like being carded for the drinking age when you are young, but in reverse. We continued down the turnpike to Breezewood and turned onto I-70 and I-270 for the trip home. We heard about an accident on I66 on the radio, so Monika turned off at Route 123 and drove back thru Vienna to our home sweet home in Fairfax. That route was slow but less frustrating than sitting in a backup. All in all, it was not exactly a relaxing vacation, but certainly an interesting and fun one.