ILINOHPANY

Our trip to Indiana started with a snafu at Chicago Midway airport, where for the second time this year we arrived at a rental car counter with a reservation and were told that they were out of cars. Seriously?? But I had a reservation! Other companies had cars, but were charging 2x for a one-way rental to Boston. Luckily, we checked out Bloomington, where they offered 1/2x for the same one-way rental - another reminder of the advantages of living outside metropolitan areas. So, for the bargain price of $220 we got a 1-day rental out of Midway and then swapped the car in Indiana. Lesson learned: beware the Midway! 

The Chicago Portage NHS reminds visitors why the city was founded where it was: in order to link the Mississippi watershed to the Great Lakes. The site was housed in the Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center and allowed the girls some much-needed space to run around.

The Pullman National Monument (dedicated to the planned neighborhood established by the train baron) is less than a year old.

Because all it contained was black-and-white photos, the girls were not impressed

We were looking forward to Indiana Dunes, our first National Lakeshore, and it delivered. First, the location, which is basically all reclaimed land from the huge steel mills on Lake Michigan, was striking. Some mills still exist, and our parking lot to access the beach was adjacent to this enormous US Steel plant.

The visitor center had hand chairs and a big nature display about what one can find living in the shadow of the mills

The Ranger was in a good mood, and because we had done the Great Lakes booklet and the Indiana Dunes booklet, he awarded the girls 2 badges and 2 patches.

 Cruising down I-65 in Indiana, the Meadow Lake wind farm makes for striking scenery
(photo courtesy of Caroline)

Holiday World was minutes from Lincoln's boyhood home (not to be confused with his birthplace in KY, his Springfield home in IL, and the home he almost bought in Ohio but pulled out of escrow)

Another heavyweight site, the Wright brothers bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio.

The exhibits explaining early airplanes were awesome. Although I've since forgotten the details, I remember that adverse yaw was a stubborn problem, but wing warping corrected it.

Upstairs from the aviation museum was another museum dedicated to military parachuting. It was kind of out of place, if you think about it. Downstairs is all about the long and challenging effort to conquer flight, truly a triumph of humanity, and then upstairs celebrates what had to be invented once humans starting employing airplanes as weapons of war.

Most people have heard of Mesa Verde and the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North America in the West, but few learn about the people in the East, because so little has survived. Enter the Mound People, who traded all over the US and built giant burial mounds in the Ohio River valley filled with artifacts.

This site was called Mound City at the Hopewell Culture NHP. After Dayton and the airplane/parachute juxtaposition, we were kind of hoping to see an exhibit here of the natural enemy of the mound, the hole.

The next day we visited a huge hardware store in Mennonite country

The store is renowned for its buggy department, but we left loaded with penny candy and pickles

Due to our arrival over their lunch break, we only experienced the gift shop at the First Ladies NHS in Canton, OH

It's hard to place Cuyahoga Valley National Park in the same league as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, but we're not complaining. Once the fires on the river died out, the government created a large, usable park with kid-friendly visitor centers. Now the girls know what a canal boat looked like.

and what canal clothes felt like

The Erie canal in New York is the most famous, but the visitor center made sure to remind you that the canal through Ohio was equally vital to the nation's early prosperity

More useful than trying on canal clothes, in this exhibit the girls learned how to spot counterfeit currency

And we got to see Milton Bradley's Checkered Game of Life. A New Yorker article tells the whole story, but having played the 1960s remake and the 2000s version, it's cool to see the original, where Suicide and Ruin were in play as game-ending squares and the best option in early life was a Fat Office.

The selection of certain President's homes for NHS inclusion is capricious, as evidenced by James A. Garfield's house.

They did their best to bring to life the memorabilia from Garfield's life and times, but as the girl's will tell you, the only take-home memory was of the bed where Garfield died after being shot. Erin was hoping that there would be more blood.

It's probably against the law, but Erin learned how to pump gas on this trip

The reward for all of our hard driving in Ohio was an indoor splash park in Erie, PA. It's terrible to say this, but the number of plus-size people at this park was noticeable.

Erie's got a great state park on the water, and we caught it at sunset


We thought that these grape vines in Chautauqua county in far western NY were for vineyards, but this is the Concord Grape Belt, home of our precious Welch's jam

Of all the attractions in the Buffalo-Niagara region, the only National Park site is Theodore Roosevelt's Inauguration NHS. Before and after going there, I still don't understand it. Niagara Falls vs the place where TR spent one afternoon taking the oath of office, which is more worthy? In order to make the inauguration site more entertaining, they re-created parts of the 1901 Expo, which was held in Buffalo and the reason why McKinley was visiting when he was shot.

None of those words apply to this site. In fact, take their opposites and you've got it about right.

I'm with you, Erin. The rangers insisted that we take the tour of the house, but the period furnishings failed to inspire.

Someday, the Department of the Interior will wise up and start creating NHRs, National Historic Restaurants, and this place will be near the top of the list, the Anchor Bar.

Now, unlike me, the girls will not spend their childhood wondering what part of the buffalo the hot wing comes from

Teressa Bellissimo, we salute you

We polished off 30 of their mildest wings at a nearby park in West Seneca

I had to take a couple of calls for work while the girls played. This scene will be remembered for two reasons. First, I learned that when a 40 year-old consumes half of one's age in wings, it is a recipe for indigestion. Second, such things are forgotten when one receives a call with a job offer.

Creekstomping, Buffalo style

The water was clean enough for crayfish

We couldn't leave western New York without a trip to Wegman's

The Women's Rights NHS in Seneca Falls

Thankfully, the girls didn't understand this joke

True story: Erin picked up the telephone receiver and asked, "what is this for?" before figuring out that sounds were coming out of it

Some exhibits were approachable to younger kids

It's crazy to think that this game was released in 1990

Other exhibits were pitched for a more mature audience

Throughout the whole trip, the girls behaved like best friends

Historic forts continue to land on the top of our National Park site rankings. Fort Stanwix, in Rome, New York, was located at the site of the Native American Oneida portage to the Great Lakes.

Many pelts were on display at the visitor center.

Life in the fort, sweeping and muskets

See, girls like to play with guns, too

We even got to handle a real musket

Saratoga NMP was beautiful, located outside of town on the banks of the Hudson

Redcoat headwear

From Minuteman to Yorktown, with Morristown, Valley Forge, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and Fort Stanwix in between, and now arguably the most critical site, Saratoga, we have completed our study of the Revolutionary War through National Park sites. It's been such a chock-a-block tour, though, that we'll see how much actually sinks in. I wouldn't be surprised if Erin recalls that General Edgar Allan Poe led the redcoats at Antietam.

Our reward this day was the Minions movie at a drive-in theater outside Albany. It sounded like a good idea, but one thing my body did not need was another 2 hours in the car with a kid on my lap.

Kudos to the Thomas Cole NHS for this interactive exhibit. Caroline's contribution is in the blue box and Erin's in the pink, and to be honest she really, really does love shrimp rolls, and maybe someday they will be the inspiration for her college entrance essay


We couldn't leave the Thomas Cole site without some work of art


Even 150 miles from its mouth, the Hudson River impresses

Martin van Buren may be a little obscure, but his home Old Kinderhook was OK for us

Any guesses? It was one of the two original federal armories (gun makers), and after Harper's Ferry was destroyed it supplied the majority of hand weapons for the Civil War and both World Wars.

 This exhibit at Springfield Armory shows what could happen to your musket if it were hit by lightning or shot by another gun or gnawed by a porcupine

Feeling lift and drag


Creekstomping in Buffalo


Fort Stanwix evil robot