The Dixie "Die-Way" and Mar-Mar

It was a beautiful drive to Louisville- and we pulled into our KOA just north of the city- or should I say, squeezed into our site. We got ahold of Martha and Jeff and had them over for cocktails in "Maby Dick" before going out to dinner. I think Martha was stunned by our lifestyle- and Jeff was fascinated. He simply didn’t want to leave- suggesting take-out. Martha was anxious to get him out before he got any “ideas” about life in a motorhome. It was good to see her again- she still looks wonderful. It was, however, a bit strange- my memories of Martha were of the “life of the party” girl- always off to some exclusive party or flying off to the Derby- and full of adventure. How life changes- she’s become a suburban, golf playing mom with an SUV – traveling on Disney cruises with her son. Irrespective, we had a great time at a river side restaurant and it was wonderful to catch up after all these years.

The following day, we explored Louisville- seeing Churchhill Downs and the huge historic district downtown. We were stunned by the block after block of beautiful old houses- in white neighborhoods. For old times sake, we drove down “the Dixie Die-way” to Fort Knox, where John did basic training. We took in the Patton Museum- the largest collection of military hardware- tanks- that I’d ever seen and drove through the base trying to find a bit of John’s past.

On Blueberry Hill...

From the “Jazz” of Kansas City to the “Blues” of St Louis. We stayed at a RV Resort at St. Charles, just outside St Louis. The campsites were great- wide concrete pads long enough for the motorhome and tow car. It was, however, a bit of a drive to downtown St Louis.

We explored St Charles- it was a bit like New Hope, PA. Brick streets with quaint old shoppes and restaurants. We took a City Tour and got a bit of an overview of the city. Part of the tour was a stop at Anheuser Busch Brewery- the largest brewery in the world and home of Budweiser. They have 49% of the American beer market with Bud and Bud Light! The tour was quite well done, but didn’t really give you much of a plant tour. We saw the Budweiser Clydesdale horses and had a few beers at the tasting center.

While the City Tour was a bit on the “lite” side, we did our own driving tour and saw the various neighborhoods around the city. Soulard and Cherokee Street, just south of downtown, were filled with 19th Century brick homes. It has become a residential area with an infrastructure of pubs and restaurants and Cherokee Street- 4 blocks of antique and junk shops. Lafayette Square was a beautiful square surrounded by Painted Ladies. We drove through the Central West End- what they call “Little Europe”. It was a bit more like Jewish West End. The Loop, by St Louis University, was a funky college street filled with ethnic restaurants- Thai, Ethiopian and even Nigerian. We had lunch at “Blueberry Hill”, a nostalgia restaurant where Chuck Berry still comes to play. The Grand South Grand area was filled with beautiful Victorian houses- in a largely black and Asian area. We stopped for a famous Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard (called a “concrete”- and probably the inspiration for the DQ Blizzard). Just blocks from Grand South Grand was an area called “The Hill”- their Little Italy. The fireplugs set the boundary for the neighborhood- painted in red, white and green. The neighborhood went from totally black to totally white and from Asian and ethnic restaurants to Italian bakeries, grocery stores and pasta places.

We spend an afternoon at the “Arch”- taking the ride to the top of the arch in little astronaut like carriers. Under the Arch was the Museum of Westward Expansion with a special section devoted to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. We had lunch at Lacledes Landing (the “Flats” of St Louis)- where old warehouses have been turned into clubs and restaurants.

Finally, we visited the “Museum of the Dog”. They accept “well-behaved” dogs so Mija got to see her first museum. She promptly threw up after being in the museum for only a few minutes. I guess that she’d rather visit PetsMart than see old painting of other dogs.

Mormons, Harleys and Truman

With Mormon books to keep us from boredom, we headed from Nauvoo to Independence, Missouri (the supposed site of the Garden of Eden as well as the site for Christ’s second coming – according to Joe Smith). We had a campsite in the middle of town- in fact, within walking distance of all three of the LDS Visitors Centers. The Mormons/Salt Lake City group had their own visitor’s center. The Community of Christ (the smallest of the three) had a visitors center and church (built on the site of the original stones set by Joseph Smith). The Church of Christ (formerly RLDS) had their “Dairy Whip” temple and auditorium. We, of course, visited all three.

At the Mormon/SLC group, we got the standard film and the young female guide giving us her personal witness to the truth of the faith. (Interestingly, the film was done without any speaking parts. It showed the miracles of Jesus followed by the story of his visit to the America’s. Virtually all of the America’s footage showed little brown people looking remarkably like South/Central American Indians. It would be quite a propaganda film to attract the peoples of South America.).

At the Community of Christ, we met a very nice man who took the time to explain the differences between the various LDS churches. And, at the Church of Christ, we got a personal tour of their new temple.

As a break from the Mormons, we spent some time in Kansas City exploring the city. The city felt like Cleveland years ago- a few pockets of older neighborhoods with some character that were filled with restaurants and clubs, a new development with “the stores of Newbury Street” and a significant part of the city left to decay. In the city limits of Kansas City, there was only one building designated on the National Register of Historic Buildings- and it was at 18th and Vine, the old Negro Jazz area.

Independence, the home of Harry Truman, was a charming little town. We had a great German dinner at the Rheinlander Restaurant, toured Harry Truman’s home and bought strudel at a Croatian bakery.

The highlight- a trip to the Harley Davidson "Vehicle and Powertrain Operations" plant. We timed our visit perfectly- they had an open house at the plant- so it was a free-form walk through the plant with the chance to talk to any of the assembly line workers- not a canned tour. The KC plant does assembly of the dyna-glide and the sportster models and just started doing assembly of both the frame and engine for their new V-Rod. I did have a great tour guide- John..... I not only got the plant tour, but a full explanation of all the pieces and parts. It was fascinating. After all these motorhome factory tours- and the almost total lack of automation, I was surprised to see the robotic technology at the Harley plant- huge robots doing the welding, polishing, frame-bending, and painting.

Finding a family connection...

The drive through Iowa seemed to last forever. After a terrifying ride on a narrow toll bridge across the Mississippi, we finally got into Nauvoo, Illinois. The entire town was Mormon and the first thing John had me do was ask where we could buy wine and beer. This was not an easy task- since Mormons don’t drink alcohol- they don’t even drink anything with caffeine! Our campground manager was a dyed in the wool Mormon who told us long stories about his ancestors and their role in the pilgrimage to Salt Lake.

We stopped at the LDS bookstore- snagged a Joe Smith plate and marveled at the young (20 year olds) women in their long skirts with their 50 year old husbands.

We started our Mormon pilgrimage at the Carthage Jail where Joseph Smith was murdered. We had the story told by a Morman elder and again via their canned film and audio presentations in the jail. The LDS Church has put a tremendous amount of money into presenting their story via extremely high quality video presentations in all of their major pilgrimage sites. We think that it’s to make sure that the story is told consistently and at a high level. After seeing where Joe was killed, we went to the LDS Visitors Center in Nauvoo. We saw the requisite film about Joe’s life and prophecies and started to walk around the exhibits. As we stood in front of the “Government in Nauvoo” exhibit, we found ourselves looking at two of John’s ancestors. The Mormons had a short tenure in Nauvoo- only enough time for 4 mayors to hold office. Two of them were Spencers- one was John’s great, great, great, great grandfather, Daniel Spencer and the other Daniel’s brother, Orson.

Seeing the faces of his ancestors started us on our own search for any records of these people. We spent a morning at the Land and Records Center and walked away with pages of information on the lives of Daniel, Orson and their children. As we started to put together a simple family tree, we began to see the complications- Daniel and his son, Claudius Victor, had both embraced the concept of polygamy whole-heartedly. It took a bit of time to try to figure out which of their multiple wives fit into John’s family tree.

Winnebago...

On our drive south, we couldn’t miss the Winnebago factory in Forest City, Iowa. The tour was quite unlike anything we’d seen in other motorhome factory tours. Winnebago was truly a manufacturing plant complete with some degree of automation on a large scale. (Didn't get to see the "drop test" -but, when we came back from the tour to a broken refrigerator, we would have considered a drop test for our "Maby Dick". John quickly became a refrigerator mechanic- studying wiring diagrams, checking fuses and through the process of elimination, found the problem. Heading into the Labor Day weekend without a refrigerator wasn’t a problem that we really wanted to deal with!

Our State Fair is a great State Fair!

After 2 weeks of rural Wisconsin, we were dire need of a city fix. We had a great campsite just outside St Paul (right by 3M headquarters). We made it to the campsite in time to clean up and head out to meet Jack and his wife, Walker. We had an absolutely hysterical time. Jack and Walker are the perfect complement to each other. They had us in stitches talking about being Southerners (Charleston) living in Minneapolis. The time flew by at lunch and we had to get Walker back for a nap (but not until she had two scoops of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream). Jack took us for a quick tour of Macalester College and we got to see his office- a bit of a tribute to Mongolia.

We took a tour of Minneapolis/St Paul. It was interesting to see the city from a tourist perspective- and re-visit both downtowns, Minnehaha Falls and the Chain of Lakes. After our intro tour, we did our own driving tours of both cities – enjoying the sites and the ethnic restaurants. We had Korean, Afghani, Ethiopian and Southern Indian. We ate and ate and ate. We also toured Stillwater, my old stomping grounds in WBL, the U of M and Dinkytown, Old St Anthony.

I think that the highlight had to be the Minnesota State Fair. After much protesting, John finally relented and we spent the day at the fair- eating and watching huge people eating – constantly. Every food you could imagine was offered- on a stick: walleye, pork chops, cheese, meatballs, catfish, pickles, and key lime pie. If something on a stick wasn’t enough, you could get a huge bucket filled with French fries or chocolate chip cookies. We grabbed a beer and watched the people- eating and the X-er’s taking rides like the “Free Fall”.

Viola Lake

More rural Wisconsin time- we headed for Mom’s house on Viola Lake. We had limited electrical power, but a great lake view out of our front window. We had happy hour on the pontoon with Mom and ED and Denny and Sharon. It was a complete tour of the lake complete with commentary.

We drove to Duluth for the afternoon and explored the new developments by Lake Superior, Park Point and saw my childhood house. We topped off our evening with a “Fish Boil” at the local lodge. Evidently a Scandinavian tradition, it was a process of boiling water in a huge kettle, adding onions and potatoes and finally adding the fish. The finale was a dousing with kerosene and a huge whoosh of flames as it was lit. Then, it was time for a taste test. The fish was actually fairly good- quite bony and not much in the spice department, but worth a one-time try. We had dinner at the “Sip n Suds” – taking advantage of the $1.00 hamburger night. Since Mom was in the middle of her “porch project”, John signed me up for a painting day. Mom and I attacked the trim priming and painting. It took us all day, but it looked great at the end.