Driving the interstates is efficient, but monotonous. Now that we're both retired, we decided to take secondary roads as much as possible on our most recent trip to Hull in late March. We were able to find our way over to Duluth without assistance. Once we crossed the bridge into Wisconsin we opened Google Maps app on my phone. Superior is a city of many dead-ends, and you just have to trust that the voice on your phone knows what it's talking about.
Normally, we'd take 53 to Eau Clair and hop on I-94 to Chicago. But instead, we stopped in Chippewa Falls just north of Eau Clair and found a motel. That was day one. After our fine continental breakfast next morning, we found a nice limited access highway, which I define as a four lane highway with access from side roads. Sometimes it goes around towns and other times it goes right through the downtown. On some stretches you can cruise along at 70 mph and other times you hit one traffic light after another for ten miles.
Our goal today was the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield where our old friend Ana lives. Along our route was the town of Marshfield. Our middle son Joe lives in Marshfield, Mass. and whenever we mention Marshfield around our friend Catherine, she perks up, because she grew up in the Wisconsin Marshfield. Her father was a pilot and owned a small airline based there and Catherine had this charmed childhood, so we felt we needed to swing by the airport and send Catherine a pic. The sign at the airport was surmounted by a Beechcraft D18 and the airport was named after Catherine's father. These are the kinds of things you won’t see from the interstate.
Milwaukee was a little out of the way, but what’s that saying about the road to a friend's house is never long. When we were getting closer, we cheated a little and hopped on I-41 to Brookfield. We wanted time for a chat with Ana before her three girls got home from school. Ana was originally from LA. She had gone to law school in Milwaukee and took a job as a law clerk in Roseau because she wanted to experience small town life. Teresa also worked at the courthouse and we became good friends before she moved back to LA.
She got married to John from New York City, had her three daughters, and returned to Wisconsin when John found a job there. Ana is very involved with the girls school activities. “It’s nice to be able to do this while the girls still want me around,” she says. The family took us out for supper and we tried to reciprocate by making crêpes the next morning. Day two.
After breakfast, we hopped back on I-41. I had no interest in messing with the back roads of Chicagoland. We were planning to visit my Aunt Mary and Cousin Liz at their home in the Beverly neighborhood on the south side of the city. Liz advised going straight through downtown. There are no stoplights on the interstate, just the guy in front of you who’s not moving. But the downtown jam soon unstuck and we arrived at Aunt Mary’s in the early afternoon. Mary, age 91, had a stroke last year which has limited her mobility and vision. Mary has always been a high spirited woman and while the stroke has slowed her down, it has not affected her demeanor.
We had a fine visit with Mary and after watching Jeopardy, Liz's friend Ralph drove us over to the excellent Franconello's for an early super. We had to get back home to watch the local favorite, Loyola, beat Nevada to get into the Elite Eight. Madness! That was followed by two episodes of the overheated "Chicago Fire." Liz never watches this show, but a neighboring house would be appearing in that night's show. Liz said their street had been sealed off earlier for several days during filming, a real pain for getting Mary out to rehab. But it was good for the economy. The local subshop had done $6,000 in extra business. The house in the show was empty and on the market. Liz said all the windows had been removed and replaced with temporary steel frames for giant propane tanks to belch out flames. We had to watch two hours of overwrought drama to get to the fire which was pretty impressive. Liz was disappointed she could not catch a glimpse of her own house down the block. All in all, Day Three was quite a day.
On the morning of Day Four, Liz gave us a fine breakfast and a sack of sandwiches. We hopped on I-90 to get out of town. When we got south of Gary we headed south a few miles till we found a limited access highway running east. It was 1,000 miles to Hull, or I should say Marshfield, as we'd be spending a couple of nights at young Joe's. I wanted to make around 350 miles per day and Akron, Ohio looked to be a good stopping point. Our road, U.S. 30 had me worried. There was a stoplight about every mile and we were hitting all the reds. But we were just too close to the big city. Once we passed Valpariso, the stoplights thinned out. U.S.3 was a fine road, but it was slipping south so at Columbia City Siri put us onto a narrow country road to keep us on track towards the south edge of Akron where the mid-range motels cluster. We were now on a winding, narrow road that appeared on our Rand McNally as a thin red line. I had selected the "No Highways" option on Google Maps and I later realized that Google was stitching together the shortest routes for distance, not time. This was perfect. I did not have to think about where to turn. In her friendly voice Siri alerted me to upcoming turns. I could just relax and enjoy the countryside. Traffic was always light on these country roads and we had no need to stop for lunch thanks to Liz's sammies.
Only the small towns slowed us down. Some of these towns were neat and well preserved. Others were squalid, but interesting in their own way. This was working America, not tourist America, or show biz America. We were taking a break from those aspects of the country. Teresa hates being boxed in by semis on the interstates, and had no problem with our slow pace. She had loaded a goodly supply of NPR podcasts onto her iPad, so we were doubly entertained. We had lots of leftover sweets from our recent St. Patrick's Day party. We really had no need to stop, except for gas and rest rooms. and we needed rest rooms more often than gas. We felt a little guilty using the facilities without buying anything, but didn't see a "customers only" notice until Massachusetts.
Western Ohio was hilly, but soon gave way to flat farm country. We passed through an area of lakes and resorts between Akron and Canton and pulled up to our motel at five p.m. Not that it matters, but these motels are often located in mercantile wastelands of car dealerships, storage facilities, or the backsides of malls. There was a TGI Fridays next to the motel, with a deep discount for motel guests. This trip was not meant to be a gourmet tour. For being in the middle of such a lifeless area, we were surprised at how full the restaurant was. Of course it was a Friday.
Day Five was to be a long. but pleasant slog out of Ohio and across the Alleghany Mountains of Pennsylvania and up to Binghamton, NY for the night. When I had looked at the mountain road on the map it seemed extra wiggly, but it proved to be an excellent road, uncluttered with traffic. Here we were, travelling across the most populous part of the country and the main impression was of emptiness and peace. We passed through a stretch of Amish country where every yard had a horse carriage and a long line of drying clothes. At the edge of a small town, we saw a young man in an open wagon, directing his horse to a hitching post in front of a store.
We climbed through a beautiful national forest along the Alleghany River and across a pass and down into the valley alongside tumbling streams. We followed Route 6 through old towns with "Port" in many of their names. There were thicker or thinner deposits of snow along our entire route starting in Ohio. Again, the feeling was of being in a part of the country seen only by the locals. We could have stopped and visited the shops and little museums, but we had not budgeted time for that. We had no time to meet the locals. We had to get to Binghamton and our motel.
And again, our motel was located in an odd spot. Even Siri said "Good luck, guys." But it didn't matter. Once checked in we pulled the curtains and logged onto wifi. We are not big steak house fans, but we had an old Outback gift card, so we ate steak and watched Loyola beat Kansas State to get into the Final Four. It had been a fine Day Five all together.
Next morning when the clock read six a.m. we jumped out of bed, eager to get an early start on our final day. It took an hour to get organized, but the clock in the breakfast nook read eight. Housekeeping had neglected to turn our room clock ahead to Daylight Savings Time. That's an hour we'll never get back. A couple of inches of snow had fallen during the night and as we made our way through the hills and towns of southern New York, we were in and out of sunshine and overcast.
Siri guided us over the Catskill Mountains along highway 23.The panorama near Wyndham Mountain was the best of the trip since Duluth Harbor. We crossed the Hudson on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. Soon after we were being welcomed to Massachusetts. Siri has a charming habit of welcoming you to whichever new state you've just entered. When a few minutes later she said "Welcome to Connecticut," I wasn't so charmed. As we sat in a parking lot checking the atlas, she welcomed us back into Massachusetts. We'll not be getting one of those home assistant robots anytime soon. Here on the home stretch I really needed to break out of my Siri induced trance and take control. She was leading us down Algorithm Alley, long stretches of residential streets at 30 mph. But we were too committed to this track. And really, what's the rush. We arrived at the home of Joe and Ashley, Isla and Nash at 5:45 p.m. Plenty of time to pick up where we last left off.
The Catskills 20 Years Ago
