Our Annual Ride

August 25, 2006 (5:52am)
65º F, Rain, NE wind 11 mph.

Good morning,

Where were you at 2:00 P.M. on August 22nd in 2003? I was getting married to my Dutch Woman. Well, we decided to celebrate that event by doing some bumming. My original intent was to "surprise" Margriet and just head out after packing our suitcase, but she brought it up a day or so before. Of course I fainted ignorance of remembering our anniversary, which she finally figured out on along the way. I again had made arrangements to miss Bible study with a couple of unnoticed (by Margriet) emails.

My original plan was to head to Marinette, Wisconsin/ Menominee, Michigan to snoop around, then off to Wabeno, Wisconsin and the Camp 5 logging museum and antique railroad. Well .... We made it to Marinette/Menomonie, but not too Camp 5. The weather has some say in that. After watching the weather from Marinette, the rains were supposed to be rather heavy there, so looking at the map we went to Fayette Historic State Park, around the horn a bit (125 miles) to the east, located near Garden, Michigan. The alternate turned out to be a very good choice.

Fayette turned out to truly be the highlight of our annual ride. It was a very good alternate choice. Fayette is the reconstruction, and preservation of a mid 1800's company town. The town was built to support an iron smelting operation, which had something over 500 people living there. Parts or all of many buildings still stand and are being stabilized and reconstructed on a small bay along the north end of Lake Michigan. Since there were huge supplies of limestone and iron ore in the area, along with hardwood forests to make charcoal from, it was a perfect place to set up the operation.

The original log cabins for the laborers are long gone, but one has been constructed to give you the idea of what they were like. The construction is far better than the originals, but the interiors are pretty much what they would have looked like. These were houses for the poorest of the folks living there. There also were many frame homes, mostly two story, for the more skilled worker families. Each style of home and occupants, has it’s own neighborhood and the houses clustered together on their own "streets" on the pinnacle. The better homes were along the lakeshore and the cabins were in the woods. The really "upper class" had very nice homes and very well equipped. All were very interesting to go through and wonder what the stories were the walls could tell.

The town is (was) very complete, containing everything for life there. But it still was a company town, so everything was controlled by the Jackson Iron Company. It even had their own railroad complete with 6 miles of track and roundhouse to service the furnaces. There also was an opera house where the town’s coronet orchestra played a weekly concert. In all there were at one time over 100 buildings in the town. Seeing the old company store, blacksmith shop, rail shop, doctor’s home, and all of the other necessary services of a normal town is really interesting. I probably will be looking up more about the operation and the efforts to restore it. Michigan really does a good job in a measured and ordered way with their history. We spent 3+ hours there and could have spent a lot more. Our bodies wore out a bit though going up and down the hills.

We did find a couple of very nice motels and cities. We had stayed in the motel in Marinette a couple of years ago when we were there. We were pleasantly surprised by the cost being about $10.00 less than indicated on the web. Like that! It has improved and is in the process of being improved more. They are redoing a few rooms at a time with new paint and carpet, plus updating the furniture in it. It was a good choice to spend the night and celebrate in. Of course we brought our required bottle of Algoma sweet cherry wine along to toast the next 30 years of marriage.

Our second night was spent in Escanaba, Michigan at another very nice motel. While chewing on a Belgian waffle at their breakfast, we met a couple from Frankfurt, Germany. They were on vacation and traveling in a bit of the U.S. and Canada. Margriet had a chance to practice her German and had a good time chatting with them. I think they did also. The morning before, as I was loading the van getting ready to go, there were a couple of boys, about 10 and 12 years old, waiting for their Dad to open the door for them. I said, "Good morning." They didn’t say anything, but went to their Dad. I think they too were German, with my untrained ear. They I am sure asked their Dad what I had said and he told them. I didn’t need to speak German to understand their intent! Cool! Oh yes - the waffle was good too!

Today it looks like rain for most of the day. Time to get out "kit" cleaned up an put in order again for our next adventure. Probably should pay a couple of bills too. We got home something after 3:00 P.M. yesterday and didn’t do much, other than empty the van, take a nap, and go for cheap chicken at Birchwood. It was very tired out so seemed to just "set" for the evening mostly.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><