Wachau Valley and Melk

 

Dornstein Castle

In the morning, we sailed through the Wachau Valley of the Danube. This valley has been a wine region for 1200 years. Our first castle was Dornstein Castle where Richard the Lion hearted was imprisoned during the third crusade. We cruised by several towns, churches, and castles for the next hour.

Vineyards above the town of Spitz

Melk Abbey has been here for 935 years as a Benedictine order. The Benedictine Rule was to pray, work, and study. It was a favorite retreat of Empress Maria Theresa who visited three times.  Today it houses a school for 10- to 18-year-olds. It also has 60 guest rooms. The museum tells the story of the abbey with artifacts over the centuries. The main hall looks like it is made with stone columns, but they are just stucco. The ceiling which is flat appears to the eye as a vaulted ceiling. 

Ann and Char at Melk Abbey

The library is the most impressive room with over 9000 books written in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. The church was very impressive. We continued into the gardens and then walked into town.

The Library

Vienna Day 2

 

Hapsburg Palace

We started our day with a bus ride tour of the ring road around the old walls of the city. The road is constructed where the city walls used to be. Many of the government buildings and museums are visible along the road as well as numerous parks. Our walking tour began at the Statue of Maria Theresa, who reigned the Hapsburg empire from 1746 to 1780. She had 16 children, 10 reached adulthood, and were married to other nobility.  We entered the Hapsburg Palace  through the gate remaining from the old city walls. The palace was built from the 15^th to the 19^th century and has over 2600 rooms.  We walked to St Steven’s Cathedral built in Romanesque and Gothic Style. It was destroyed in WW II but rebuilt in 7 years.

St. Stephens

In the afternoon, most of our group went to Schoenbrun Palace, the summer home of the Habsburgs. 

Schoenbrun Palace

I visited the House of Music, which is the museum of the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. It featured rooms for each of the major Viennese composers: Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mahler. The highlight was the piano keyboard staircase, which played music on each step.

Before dinner, we heard a lecture about Austria, Past and Present. The lecturer made it interesting as he had various audience members play the various emperors, empresses or composers. The Danube was the border between the Roman Empire and the barbarians. An important Roman fort was in Vienna right where St. Steven’s Cathedral now stands. Austria was ruled by the Hapsburgs from 1273 until 1918. The Hapsburg Empire included much of Germany, Hungary Spain, the Netherlands, parts of Italy, the Spanish colonies of the New World. The Habsburgs would marry the royalty of other countries and take over when those dynasties died out. Austria also was influential in classical music. For example, Mahler created the rules for Opera. After WW II, Austria was split up similarly to Germany between the US, USSR, UK, and France. In 1955, it became a neutral state, neither in NATO nor the Warsaw Pact.

Vienna Day 1

 

We flew from Denver to Vienna through Dulles without incident arriving at 8 AM. We were shocked to be able to go immediately to our cabin when we arrived at the River Aria. 

The River Aria

After lunch, I went to the Sisi Museum in the Imperial Palace. Sisi, Elizabeth was the wife of the Emperor, Franz Joseph. They were wed on April 24, 1854 and she became Empress Sisi. She was considered very beautiful with her hair tresses down to her ankles and her hour glass figure. A bit of a rebel, she had tattoos and would strap herself to the mast of a ship for thrills in a storm. She found Hapsburg court life quite suffocating. After the death of her son, Rudolf in a murder/suicide she withdrew from court duties and began traveling widely. While visiting Geneva in 1898 she was stabbed in the heart and died. 

Portrait of Sisi in Franz Joseph's Study

I managed to catch the end of an organ concert at St. Peter’s on the return to the ship. St. Peter’s is a domed Baroque church built in 1733 with the Coronation of Mary in the dome. 

All 11 members of our family were on the ship by dinner time.

Balza Family and cousins

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.