The Octagon House

 

Octagon House

We had our last tourist stop of this trip at the Octagon House in Watertown, WI. I hadn’t been to Watertown since my senior year of high school. At that time, I took first place in the state for my knowledge of the U.S. Constitution.

The Central Staircase

The Octagon House was built in 1854 by John Richards. It has early forms of central heating, running water and ventilation. There is a cistern on the roof of the 5-story house and piping for running water, assuming it rains. The house is fitted with French doors, air vents, and a top hatch for ventilation. Each room as a stove in it with piping to the four chimneys on the roof. The Watertown Historical Society maintains the home with furniture from various times; sixty percent is originals from the family. In the yard is the first kindergarten established in America. 

The Cliff at High Cliff State Park

We continued to High Cliff State Park and had dinner with my brother, Bob, and his wife, Cindy, at the Out of Town Supper Club. We go here every time we’re in the Appleton, Wisconsin area. The most reasonable prices for drinks ($3.75 for an Old fashioned) and delicious steaks and seafood (I had the halibut).

The remainder of our trip was spent visiting relatives in Wisconsin and our daughter's family in Minnesota. We celebrated Claire's fifth birthday and noticed how tall Mallory had become at age seven. In Minnesota, we camped at Lake Elmo Reserve and made use of their beach area. 

Claire, Greg, and Mallory at Lake Elmo

New Salem State Park

New Salem Historical Park

 

Time to head to Wisconsin. We headed up Interstate 55 through central Illinois. There are a lot of sites in Illinois to learn about Abraham Lincoln including the Lincoln Presidential Library and the site of his home in Springfield. We’ve visited both, this time we went to the New Salem State Historical Park. Lincoln spent 6 years of his life in his mid-twenties in this village. 

Lincoln, the surveyor

He was a shopkeeper, surveyor, and postmaster here. He also spent a lot of time reading, eventually becoming a lawyer. He left the town to become a state legislator, the start of his political career. The park movie explained this as well as the fact that the village died soon after he left. The. Site has about 15 or so buildings, mostly recreations that represent this historical village. Unfortunately, there were no folks who replayed the characters of the town today, so the village wasn’t very exciting. The highlight of the place was the 15-minute video. We camped that night at Starved Rock State Park.

The Coopers shop

St Louis - Chahokia Mounds and Missouri History Museum

 

Monk's Mound

I had planned on going to Chahokia Mounds, the largest prehistoric Indian site north of Mexico. Unfortunately, the museum was under renovation, but we still headed out to the site since the rain of the morning had paused. This land was settled in 700 AD and became a highly structured community in about 1000 AD. This was a rich land for crops and wild game. Cahokia became a regional center from 1050 to 1200 AD with a population of 10,000 to 20,000 people. Cahokia was organized around Monks Mound, a 40 acre Grand Plaza and many smaller plazas. The mounds were made from earth dug up from ‘borrow pits’ with stone tools and then transported to create the mounds in baskets on people’s backs. Monks mound rose over 100 feet and covers over 14 acres. A massive building once stood on the top.

What Chahokia might have looked like

We then went on to visit the Missouri History Museum. This was a disappointment after the great museums we visited in the last two weeks. It seemed more like a promotion for the Missouri Historical Organization than anything. The museum is in the park that had the 1904 World’s Fair but was built later. The best of the permanent collection was the exhibit about the fair. 

Model of 1904 World Fair Grounds

But most interesting was a collection about the LGBTQ+ community and their struggles over the years in this community. It really did a great job of explaining that there are lots of variation in sexual nature. We really appreciated the video testimony of a man who became a woman after discovering that they had XXY chromosomes and was going through menopause.

LGBTQ+ Exhibit

Car Troubles

 

We left Montgomery, AL headed for Natchez Mississippi on June 1^st, but just west of Demopolis, AL we had a indicator light indicate that our car was overheating. We crept into Demopolis, bought some antifreeze and continued. But the temperature light kept going up and down from normal to overheated. So, we turned around to head back to Demopolis, but the car decided to stop running. Time to call AAA for a tow. We had lunch at about 1:00 in the trailer while waiting for the tow truck. It arrived about 3:00 and carried the car while towing the trailer on the back.

Our Car on the AAA tow truck

We dropped off the trailer in Cuba, AL on their lot and proceeded to Meridian, MS arriving at the Firestone car repair shop just before 5 PM. It was open and they took the keys and some basic information. We took an Uber to the Holiday Inn about 5 miles away. Calling in Monday morning, the manager said he probably couldn’t get to it today but would try on Tuesday. I called Tuesday afternoon, and there had been a communication issue, they hadn’t looked at it yet, but they would take a look now. Of course, we were imagining all the things that could have been wrong. Worse case had we fried the engine? What would we do? We had a trailer here, you couldn’t rent a car to tow a trailer that big. We decided we would repair the car up to an engine replacement, so we could keep camping for a few more years. About 5:30 we got a call from Firestone, the car had a leaky water pump, needed a new water pump, thermostat, and a radiator flush. The thermostat would be delivered the next morning; the car should be done that afternoon. Next day, we got a call about noon that the car was done at a cost of $1288. Another Uber ride to pick up the car and then we picked up the trailer, 18 miles down the road. We decided to do laundry at the hotel and then pick up our itinerary in St. Louis. This Natchez Trail camping trip would never spend any time on the Natchez Trail.

Our trail parked at the tow truck parking lot

We got up at 6AM this morning to get an early start to our long day of driving. We got out to the trailer and were boxed in by a vehicle and trailer in front, so while we could attach the trailer we couldn’t pull forward. And behind us was a fire truck, taking care of a diesel spill. We had decided to have cereal in the trailer for breakfast. While we were eating the fire trucks left and the owner of the car and truck in front showed up. Meanwhile the Enterprise truck next to us moved, so that we finally had a clear turn around to get out of the lot. We took most of the day to get to St. Louis, arriving just before 5 PM.

 

Gunter Hill Campground

We travelled to Montgomery Alabama, camping at Gunter Hill Campground. The Legacy Museum is built on the site of a former slave warehouse. It tells the story of blacks from enslavement to mass incarceration. It is quite an emotional experience as numerous stories are told via film, holograms, and placards.

Legacy Museum

Interesting findings:

·       In 1730 half the population of New York city had slaves.

·       Savannah, Georgia was the arrival port to half the transatlantic slave traffic.

·       Two million people died crossing the Atlantic to become slaves.

·       Congress abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1808.

·       The domestic slave trade separated nearly half of all black families.

·       The Reconstruction period after the civil war offered a brief hope of equality for blacks.

·       Over eighty percent of black males registered to vote during reconstruction in Alabama.

·       But a series of supreme court decisions allowed state laws to ensure racial superiority for whites. 

·       Blacks could be arrested for vagrancy if they weren’t employed.

·       By 1898, 73 percent of Alabama’s state revenue came from convict leasing.

·       From 1877 to 1950 over 4400 lynchings of African Americans have been documented.

·       We read a newspaper headline about out a lynching to be held the next day. Ten thousand whites showed up to hang the man and shoot him with bullets until it ended when a bullet hit the rope.

·       In the 1960s through the nineties the Drug War and “tough on crime” bills built many new prisons that were filled by predominately black inmates.

·       The projection for the 21^st century is that 1/3 of black baby boys will go to jail or prison.

Of course, the story of Segregation was also told. It was here that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man and was arrested. The Montgomery bus boycott led by the young new pastor, Dr. Martin Luther Jr, lasted for 11 months, one of the early civil rights protests. A sampling of the videos is available on youtube. 

Suspended tombstones - one for each county

We then went to the Peace and Justice Memorial with its suspended tombstones, one for every county where there is a documented lynching.

Each lynching

We finished our day with some Alabama barbecue at Dreamland BBQ to have some ribs. 

World War II Museum, New Orleans

 

We had an interesting trip to the World War II Museum, we had thunder and heavy rain, the streets started to flood and twice a passing truck doused our car with enough water that we were temporarily blinded. We spent over five hours at the museum seeing five main exhibits. 

Cook books and ration books

The first exhibit was about how civilian life changed prior to and during the war. We went from most people taking an isolationist stance with a slow move to supporting Great Britain against the Germans and Japanese. When Pearl Harbor attacked there was a quick change of heart and quick enlistment into the services. Soon industries changed their purposes to make tanks, ships, planes, and munitions. Goods were rationed, and people had new cookbooks based on what wasn’t rationed. 

Ships and Planes on D-Day

The second exhibit focused on D Day, the largest invasion in history. 11,000 aircraft, 6000 naval vessels and 2 million soldiers, sailors and airmen from 15 countries.  We went on to the 4D presentation beyond all boundaries which presented numerous stories about the war. 

Hopping island to island

The exhibit Road to Tokyo made us realize how close we were to losing the war with Japan. A few courageous actions and luck ended the domination of the Japanese Navy and allowed us to hop from island to island to allow our planes to attack Japan. Still based on the “die for the emperor rather than surrender” on Okinawa and the emperors refusal to surrender despite the death tolls in Japanese cities, made the choice of the A-bomb a logical choice for Truman. Finally, we went to the Road to Berlin. The many videos available in each of these exhibits made the day more interesting than reading a lot of placards.

Bombing Japan

New Orleans

 

We’re expecting rain this afternoon, so we parked near the National Jazz Museum and walked through the French Market to Jackson Square. The French Market was founded in 1791 along the banks of the Mississippi. At 10:30 AM the market was just opening since their lifeblood today is tourists. Lots of drinks, food, and souvenirs. We looked over Jackson Square with its statue of Andrew Jackson who defeated the British here, not knowing that the War of 1812 was already over. 

Jackson Square

The St Louis Cathedral is the backdrop to the square. It is the oldest cathedral in the US. 

St. Louis Cathedral

We stopped at the Café du Monde for the obligatory beignets and café au lait. (I had to sneeze when I breathed in the powdered sugar accidentally.) 

Beignets and Cafe au Lait

We headed back to the Jazz Museum. It had lots of artifacts from famous blues and jazz musicians, but we were disappointed that it didn’t have more recordings. We did enjoy those they had. We learned about the invention of the bass drum pedal in 1907, allowing for the creation of drum sets where one drummer could set the beat for all the musicians. The highlight of the museum was hearing other visitors making rhythm on a Congo drum.  We also learned about Louie Armstrong playing trumpet when he attended the school for Waifs. We left about 2:00 just as the rain began.

Wetlands Acadian Culture Center

 

Flat bottom boats designed for the wetland

Our timing problem came again today. We were supposed to visit the Oaklawn Manor, but it was temporarily closed (but it looks permanent). We went on to the Wetlands Acadian Culture Center. Run by the National Park Service, it just had a small museum and several interesting videos. I had hoped to do a boat tour of the wetlands, but none were scheduled for today. The video we watched focused on the Cajun culture through modern times, especially the music and the unique Cajon words, most borrowed from French.

We’re camping at St Bernards State Park, about 12 miles southeast of New Orleans. We passed ports and refineries to reach a forested countryside with signs: “Do not feed the alligators".  The campground is beautiful with great campsites – what a find!

Do not feed the Alligators!

Exploring the Acadia Region

 

Maison Oliver

We’ve been to the Acadia region of Louisiana before, so we’re planning to visit new sights. We started in St. Martinsville at Louisiana’s first state park, the Longfellow-Evangeline park, inspired by Longfellow’s poem. Here we visited the Maison Olivier built in 1815. An example of a raised Creole cottage. We went into town and had lunch under the Evangeline Oak, the meeting place of the two lovers in Longfellows story. 

Evangeline Oak

Then walked to St. Martinsville of Tours church. The town was built on church land and paid rent to the church.

St. Martin of Tours Church

In the afternoon, we visited the Rip Van Winkle Gardens. John Jefferson built his home here in 1870 atop a Salt dome. John Jefferson was an actor who played the part of Rip Van Winkle over 4500 times. The gardens were created in the 1950s by John Bayless. On November 20, 1980, a Texaco oil rig pierced the salt mine caverns underneath Lake Pigneur outside the gardens. The lake disappeared flooding the entire salt mine including the Bayless home.

Home in the Rip Van Winkle Gardens

Texarkana to Scott LA

 

We drove to Lafayette, Louisiana today. I had planned a stop at the Acadia Culture Center here, but it is temporarily closed (probably due to flooding. We arrived too late to visit the Vermillion village. So, we relaxed at the KOA in Scott, LA. It is a huge campground, but was only about 2/3rds full, probably due to all the rain in the forecast.

Talimena Scenic Drive

 

The Mountains of Talimena Drive

We started driving east to take the Talimena scenic drive through the Ouachita mountain range. On the way after stopping for gas, I noticed that the trailer had lost battery power. The gas station was next to an auto parts store. I asked the clerk if any repair shops were open, but it’s the start of the Memorial Day Weekend. He did have the battery clip I needed and a crimping tool for attaching it. After a couple of tries, the connection was made and we were on our way. The mountain range runs West to East and is 2000 feet above the surrounding land, the road goes up and down the top ridge, providing many beautiful views. We stopped that night at Clear Spring Campground near Texarkana’s, TX.

Clear Creek Campground

Oklahoma National Memorial

 

A chair for each victim

The Oklahoma National Memorial Park and Museum was an emotional visit. We started at the memorial with its chair for each of the 168 victims, each engraved with a name. The museum tells the story in photographs, video, interactive media, and witness stories of that fatal day in April, 1995 when a third of the Federal Building collapsed from a home made bomb parked in a rental truck next to the building. A normal day when people were working in various federal offices and children were attending day school changed dramatically at 9:02 AM. Rescue workers started pouring in within minutes often delayed by the threat of walls falling again. Investigators started looking for clues. By chance a state trooper arrested Tim McVeigh for a missing license plate. He was soon matched to the suspect drawing. Eventually he and his partner were found guilty.

Oklahoma Federal Building after the Blast

That night we had a violent thunderstorm at 2 AM and heard the tornado warning sirens. A rotating system was detected about 10 miles away. We made it safely through the night.

Museum of Treasures, Witchita, KS

 

The Dalton Gang

We traveled through Kansas and the turned South to get to Oklahoma City. Our stop for the day was the Museum of Treasures in Wichita, Kansas. The Treasures were quite diverse: Egyptian mummies, ancient statues from Mexico, minerals and gems, dinosaur skeletons,  uniforms and arms from World War I through Vietnam, and the true story of the Old West:

·       Most cowboys were Confederate veterans, over a half million were African Americans.

·       Westerns would have you believe that bank robberies were a regular occurrence in the old American West, but there were less than a dozen bank robberies in 15 western states from 1859 to 1900.

·       The notorious Cow towns of Abilene, Caldwell, Dodge City, Ellsworth and Wichita saw 45 murders from 1870 to 1885 among the five cities that’s three murders per year.

Wilson Lake State Park, Kansas

 

Campsite at Wilson Lake

We left Fort Collins and took US 34 west and CO 72 South rather than taking the toll road around Denver to get to I 70 through Kansas. It worked well with almost no traffic after Greeley. We spent the night east of Hays at Wilson Lake State Park. It was quite scenic.

Sunset on the Lake

Barcelos, Portugal

 

Barcelos Bridge and Count's Castle

Today, we’re visiting Barcelos along the Cávado River, famous for its medieval bridge which leads to a tower gate and the town’s wall. We walked the grounds of the Count’s 14^th century home. The symbol of the town is a rooster. The town is on the Portuguese Way and  legend says that a pilgrim was accused of stealing,  but proclaimed his innocence. Seeing the bishop eating a roasted rooster, he predicted that the rooster would crow proving his innocence.  They were about to hang him when the bishop came running, declaring a miracle brought about by St. James. We visited the church built by the Count, where we found some of the floats for the Our Lady of the Crosses Festival. 

Floats for the Festival

The story behind the festival is from the 15^th century. The town was suffering from a pandemic when a peasant dreamed that a cross was buried nearby. After uncovering the cross, the pandemic ended. We walked through the town, climbed a tower, then visited a cylindrical church which houses the cross of the legend. For the festival, it had several carpets made of flowers. The markets were open, and a carnival was in town. We had a delicious lunch of duck rice at a nearby hotel. After lunch the group practiced our painting skills by painting our own rooster.

Painting our own roosters

We had some time to pack and then we had a final gathering for a toast and to find out the times for our transfers to Porto airport. Our 6:15 flight called for a 2:30 AM transfer. It was a restless night.

This is a hard trip to summarize. The delays at the locks turned a river trip into a bus trip and at least 4 times we felt that we were rushed during our site visits. We were surprised that the riverboat couldn’t sail at night, and yet we only had one night of local talent. A 16-hour power outage closed restaurants, shops, and ATMs. This taught us to always carry several days cash, and then we had a minor panic when we got stuck in an elevator (only for 10 minutes).  On the positive side: the Douro is a gorgeous river valley and we enjoyed the free flowing wine. Our highlight sights were Santiago de Compostela, Salamanca Spain, and the Bom Jesus de Monte. We became close to several fellow passengers, and the guides we had were an outstanding lot. I was particularly impressed with our post-trip guides: Haya, Carlos, and Rafiela. Rafiela impressed me with her strong backup plan if we had a second day without power. The river portion of this trip needs improvement, but I cherish the post-trip.

A video of this trip is available on youtube. 

Our hotel in Braga

Braga, Portugal

Bom Jesus do Monte

We started our day by visiting the Bom Jesus do Monte. The bus took us to the base of the hill, where we took a funicular to the top. This funicular is unique in the world. They pour water into the top car to make it heavier than the bottom car, taking into account the number of passengers in each, and let gravity do the rest. The hill is designed as a Way of the Cross with 16 stations, each having its own chapel.  Since traveling to Jerusalem was so difficult, this was Portugal’s Way of the Cross attracting many pilgrims. It was meant to impress the pilgrim and tell the story of Jesus. It was built to counter the Protestant message of Northern Europe.  The final fountains represent faith (veiled woman doesn’t need to believe) hope (Noah’s Ark) and charity (a heart). The top fountain is a pelican feeding 3 babies. This UNESCO site was really interesting and unique.

Station for the Crucifixion

We then toured Braga, known as Portugal’s Rome because of its 57 churches. Its cathedral is the oldest in Portugal, it has been the home of Portugal’s archbishop since the 9^th century. It historically had attracted many pilgrims, until Santiago de Costella stole their relics. (The relics were returned in 1955.) We started at Republic Square from where you can see Bam Jesus in the distance. 

St. Barbara's Garden

St. Barbara’s Garden which is next to the bishop’s residence was quite colorful. The residence was built in 1450 and has windows from various centuries. Below the Residence is the city hall with a fountain with the sphere of knowledge (the state) surmounted by a pelican (the church). Nearby is the cathedral. It is quite plain inside with the organ being its most interesting feature. In the afternoon I explored further coming upon several musical groups celebrating May Day. 

Wine and lunch on the drive to Braga

 

Aerial view of Palacio da Brejoeira

We drove to the Palacio da Brejoeira originally built in 1806. It has gone through three different owners before being sold to a company who runs it as a wine estate. Their 18 hectares produce 8000 bottles of wine a year primarily green wine and brandy from Alvarinho grapes. We sampled some green wine.

The Palacio's wines

Nearby was the town of Monção where we had lunch. Rain was pouring down. The bus dropped us off, but we could find places to drink, but nothing to eat. Rafiela found a restaurant about a block away and acted as a translator for the menu of the day. Most of us had a salad, pork ribs, salad, fries, beer ,desert, and coffee for 8.50 Euros. The price also included dessert and coffee, but we didn’t have enough time after the search for lunch. Then we headed for Braga. The Villa Gale Collection hotel is unique; it was a former hospital with a large chapel. The rooms are modern. Breakfast is in a former cloister. Best of all it is located 2 blocks from the main square.

Our Braga hotel

Breakfast is in a former cloister. Best of all it is located 2 blocks from the main square.

Breakfast in a cloister

Santiago de Compostela

 

The Cathedral from a nearby park

Our local guide, Haya, continued her stories today in Santiago de Compostela. Our hotel is only 2 blocks from the old town of Santiago. At the Chapel Maria Salome, we have statues of a Pregnant Mary and one where Jesus is breastfeeding feeding. Haya then told us of the statue of Daniel in the Porto Gloria of the Romanesque church. It was one of the first medieval statues that had a smile rather than a serious, holy look. Opposite Daniel was a statue of a woman with well-formed beasts. The story went around was that Daniel was smiling at this well-endowed woman. The church decided to do the first breast reduction. But can still see the breasts in the local “boobie” cheese.

St James and his disciples dressed as pilgrims

We walked the last kilometer of the Way to reach the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral built over St. James the apostle’s burial site. St James, the apostle, came to this region of Spain spreading the word of Jesus and baptizing the locals. He was called back to Palestine, where he was beheaded. The legend has it that two of his disciples returned his head and body back to Spain. Nine hundred years later a hermit was led to his grave by a star and discovered three bodies including one that had been beheaded. The bishop declared it be the remains of St James. The king declared in 1075 that a Cathedral should be built there.  King Alfonsa II became the first pilgrim to walk the Way. The Baroque façade protects the Roman façade. At the top of the façade under the arch is St. James on either side are his disciples all dressed as pilgrims. The Square of the Workshop not only has the cathedral, it also has a hostel, formerly a hospital for the pilgrims, city hall, and the administration building for the University. In the middle ages. In the middle ages, pilgrims had to undress, burn their clothes, and bathe in the central fountain in the cloister before entering the cathedral.

Pilgrims in the square (city hall behind)

We visited the museum of the church, but pictures weren’t allowed, the cloister, the balcony, then the body of the church. We were able to enter the crypt area and hug the statue of St. James above the altar.

St. James above the altar