Sep 2007

My uncle Bob and Aunt Madeline had a lot of suggestions for places to show us that sounded really interesting, but I thought we should also stay in a bit and do some visiting. We did that Monday morning, which was really fun also. I got some pointers from Madeline on using my camera (what the White Balance graph was for), I also looked up the manual for Mom's camera on the internet so she could learn to use it a little more effectively. Madeline also showed us some of the pictures that she's taken with film in the past, very nice. She is using a Canon 30D now, which clearly produces pictures with much better resolution then my little digital, but it is also big & heavy compared to mine - so as always, a trade off.

Uncle Bob was able to export his family history file so that I could load it onto my PC. He goes out on the internet and flushes out all sorts of ancesters. I figure I'll never be as proficient at extending the ancestry chart as he is, so maybe I'll work on adding more 'color' (notes & details) to the more recent records. This is probably more what my interest is anyway, but as long as we're out east in some of the area's our relations came from, I might do a little digging around.

Later, Aunt Madeline arranged a nice little lunch with my cousins daughter, Laura. (First cousin once removed I believe). She is attending Andrews University as a sophmore, majoring in marketing. She continues to enjoy horseback riding, plays soccer, and is maintaining a high GPA - some kids just seem to have their act together.

Madeline also picked up some Apple Juice on the way back, as my cousin Robert had recommended. We enjoyed that throughout the afternoon and have brought some with us on the road.

Madeline also took us to the Berrien Springs Courthouse (now a museum) that was built in 1839. It also had a sherrif's house and part of the old county jail which had the cells arranged in a circular pattern around the guard's area. As we walked around the museum grounds, black walnuts were falling on a regular basis. I wished I had a hard hat on, but nobody got hit fortunately.

I had to work on some personal business when we got back to the house, but was able to fit a bit more visiting in here and there. We decided to continue on our journey the next morning, but we enjoyed our visit very much.

Day 22 - Here we are in Southern Michigan. We are visiting my brother-in-law and his wife. We went to a concert last nite at the University (Andrews). It was a piano & wind quintet. Contemporary. Jeanette is trying to catch up on the blog because she has good internet service here. Yesterday we drove drove drove, but we got here in time for the concert. It's beautiful here. Quiet and serene. Bob, my brother-in-law, is working on my family history. We will probably tour the college and a nearby lighthouse. We may pick up sand at the sand dunes on Lake Michigan this afternoon.

Day 25 - We are in Ohio now on our way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We'll pick up sand on Lake Erie on the way. I have a nephew in Pittsburgh so we will stop there for the nite. We saw several things yesterday including an underground railway stop.

Day 26 - We are "camped" in a Wal-mart parking lot, did a little shopping when the store opened this am. It's not a "Super Store". My nephew, Paul, is meeting us this morning at 10. I don't know what he has planned, but we shall see. Since we planned to meet Paul this morning, we took the turnpike and freeways so there was no stopping or picture taking. We did get sand in Lake Erie however. Pittsburgh has few (almost no) campgrounds nearby.

Day 27 - My, what a day we had yesterday. We were in Pittsburgh and had a vusy day with Paul. Went to the Heinz Chapel in Pittsburgh University. It had beautiful architecture. There were many stained glass windows, some as much as 73 feet hight, others smaller. There was a pipe organ, but the pipes were behind. We then went to the "Cathedral of Learning" (42 stories 500+ feet tall). Several of the many classrooms in it were decorated by a number of nationalities, such as German, Ukrainian, Japanese, etd. We had lunch at a little cafe and then went to the Episcopal Chatedral downtown. Paul is one of the ministers there and gave us a tour. He took us to his house and he had some pastoral visiting to do so I took a nap (Jeanette caught up on her Dancing with the Stars shows that she missed). When Sharon, his wife, came home we had a delightful supper. He took us back to Wal-mart and we "camped" over another night.

Day 28 - We visited my nephew in Pittsburgh. He is an Anglican minister. He gave us a "grand tour" of Pittsburgh. He and his wife were delightful and we had great fun. I had not seen him since he was a teen and of course not met his wife, Sharon.

We are now in New York on Lake Erie. I attended church this morning in Erie, PA - the church was a medium size church, but also had a pipe organ. We hadn't realized there was this much shoreline on Lake Erie in upstate New York and that it is a grape growing region. Tomorrow we plan to go to Niagra Falls and the Erie Canal.

Berrien Center is SO small, I thought it might be better to list the larger town that they are very close to (and is their primary stomping grounds - Berrien Springs).

This morning, we stayed home and visited some. I am trying to get Mom's photo's uploaded first, then will try to get mine caught up. We also spent some time discussing photography in general (my aunt has been taking very good pictures for years, so I tried picking her brain a bit during this visit). My uncle has been keeping the family history up to day and done a lot of research on the subject - going back many, many generations.

Later we had a nice lunch at home, including a grape pie my aunt had made. It was very good, it tasted a little like a cherry pie, but a little milder.

After lunch, they gave us a tour of Andrews University here in Berrien Springs. My uncle had been a pastor and teacher in Korea many years ago when I was young. He came back to the US and got his doctorate degree, then taught here and was a Dean at Andrews U. As we walked through the Library, I was impressed with how many people still came up to him and clearly look up to and respect him even though he is now retired. Andrews U. was founded in 1874 as Battle Creek College by the newly organized Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church. It is still one of the major institutions in the SDA church and contains the "Center for Adventist Research" with an impressive collection of historical documents and information for researchers.

Later, we drove over to the coast of Lake Michigan and visited Warren Dunes State Park. Michigan has the largest collection of fresh water sand dunes in the world due to it's long shoreline on the western edge of Lake Michigan. These are strange dunes (compared to the one's I'd seen in California as a kid anyway) in that the sand dune is clearly visible from the beach and climbs up steeply to a crest - then is covered with tree's and vegetation from then on. From the western (landward side), it looks just like any other hill from a distance. The sand was soft and the water from Lake Michigan was cool, but pleasant. Like Lake Superior, we couldn't see the other side (so it is a bit like the ocean), but there was not salt foam on the small waves (the lakes are fresh water), no salt smell, and few if any shells. Other than that, the lakeshore and small towns dotting it could be from any seaside postcard anywhere.

We had a bite of icecream from a really good shop in St. Joseph, then drove across the river to watch the sunset over a lighthouse. I don't know if my pictures came out very well or not, will have to check those later. My aunt and I had a great deal of fun walking out the pier towards the lighthouse trying to figure out the best way to photograph it in the darkening sky. Later, my uncle walked out also and we all enjoyed a very pleasant evening watching the sunset, the boats coming back into the harbor and the seagulls. Mom watched from the far end of the pier as she'd already had enough walking for one day, so we joined her on the way back.

Having been somewhat embarrassed by my lack of knowledge of my camera (it takes such good pictures on the Auto setting, I hadn't bothered to learn how to use the other features), I came back to my RV and read the owners manual after everyone else went inside for the night... We will probably stay her through Monday, then head back out on the road. Few plans on this trip are solid however, so stay tuned...

Starting Mileage: 113488, 20 Mi N of Cadilac MI
Ending Mileage: 113705, Berrien Springs MI
Weather: Sunny & very nice, maybe 70 F

One more housekeeping item I forgot last night - I haven't been able to get the map working since I left Shelton. I'll try contacting the support forum, then if necessary just delete it and start over (on the Travellerspoint map that is). Just in cause anyone is wondering.

ps - also just started working on a blog entries for Mom's wildflower pictures. If you checked it and didn't see much, I apologize - it was just a rough draft (should have saved it as a draft, I'll eventually learn how to use this).

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Somehow, it managed to rain quite a bit last night but we woke up to clear blue, sunny sky's! There must be something different Michigan Weather? We didn't quite get up as early as we'd hoped, probably because our bodies haven't shifted into Eastern Time zone as quickly as our RV did - but we got back on the road and headed licketly split south towards Berrien Springs, Michigan. We did stop at a scenic overlook - it didn't have any signs explaining what we were overlooking - but I guess it was for fall colors (which haven't quite arrived yet on the 'lower' peninsula. We also took the western route, along Hwy 131 then I-196 because on the atlas it looked like they hugged the shoreline of Lake Michigan. In reality however, you can't see the lake unless you get off and go a little farther west.

We did get off in Holland, MI because Mom thought that might be where Michigan Bulb Company is located. In Washington, there is a big tulip growing community in Mount Vernon (north of Seattle) and in addition to the big tulip festival in April, most of the growers have show gardens and gift shops open all year round. However, the people she talked to in Holland didn't seem to think they had anything like that except during the tulip season itself. Since we were a little pressed for time, we didn't research this very deeply and just got back on the highway.

Then we left the freeway again in Saugatuck because the map showed a Saugatuck Dunes State Park (and a sign on the freeway also indicated such a place at that exit). After we got off the freeway, there were no more signs to the state park. We drove around a bit and it looked like a very quaint and lovely place to visit (if a bit crowded - the weather was fantastic and I guess a lot of people decided to it would be a good place for a Saturday excursion). We also found a sand dune excursion company, but decided we shouldn't take that much time as I'd promised my Aunt & Uncle we'd be at their place by mid afternoon, so got back on the freeway.

Michigan miles are similar to Montana miles, they are just a little bit longer than normal miles - no make that quite a bit longer... How can such a small state take 600+ miles to go from one end down to another? We did drive through some lovely farm country down Hwy 140, there were grape vines (do you think they'd really miss a bunch of concord looking grapes? Maybe not, we didn't try but were tempted - they looked good). We also found Berrien Center, the city listed for Uncle Bob's mailing address. It basically consisted of one corner - there was a Mexican Grocery, a (small) U.S. Post Office, a civic building of some sort, and an ARCO station that didn't look like it sold gas anymore (maybe an old auto repair shop now?) Neither the man at the grocery or the man mowing the PO lawn had any idea where the street was that Uncle Bob lived on (nor how Uncle Bob was), so I fired up the laptop and sure enough - had just enough signal to pull up the internet. Thankfully, Mapquest did find the street and it was only a couple of miles farther.

So we made it safely. We had a little time to kill before my aunt and uncle got back from their pot luck, but the weather was very pleasant and it was nice to have a little time to relax. When they got back, we had a little time to visit, then they had some tickets to a concert (one reason we hadn't wanted to risk getting here late). We didn't known what sort of concert to expect, but knowing my aunt & uncle, I was pretty sure it wasn't rock and roll. It turns out that Andrews University was lucky enough to receive a generous donation to help build a really nice performing arts center, which they did about five years ago. The concert was by Leon Bates, a world renowed pianist and the Borealis Wind Quintet. We were very impressed.

http://www.howard.andrews.edu/

We will probably stay here for a couple of days, so I may or may not be able to get a lot done on the blog - don't you just love (not) those totally uncommittal promises? but it's about midnight (eastern time, which I'm not quite on yet) so maybe I'm getting a little punchy

Thought I'd display all of Mom's pictures of flowers in one blog entry here. As she takes new ones, I'll add them at the top and change the Updated date. I don't have any captions for these yet, will try to add more later, time permitting. In the meantime, if you know what these are please feel free to add comments! (ps - these are Thumbnails, you can click on them to see a larger version):