Month: July 2014

I left London, Ontario on Monday, June 30th en route to Chicago where I would see my sister Kitt and her daughter and son-in-law, Stef and Eric. I arrived at their place late in the afternoon; soon after we enjoyed a good dinner, cooked by Eric, and good conversation. My thanks to Stef, Eric, and Kitt for their hospitality!

Tuesday AM I cycled north toward Madison where I was to meet with brother-in-law Larry at a restaurant in Waunakee, a small town that is a bit north and west of Madison. The restaurant rendezvous was closed for the duration of a downtown street building project, but we met and ate at a bar/restaurant just across the street. Larry and I had a good talk for a few hours, after which  I rode 40 minutes to visit, and stay the night, with friends of ours in Daleyville. (We lived in Daleyville for a few years.)

Willis and Judy Volden, the friends I would be staying with, invited me to a community concert as the evening’s entertainment. Their daughter-in-law was a clarinetist with the band. Sounded good to me! There is nothing like a community concert in the summer. This one, the last of 5 for the summer season, featured a variety of music including military service anthems, songs from Showboat, and ending with a Sousa march. Good stuff, and a reminder of when I was in band and playing in summer concerts in Greenwood. We had a delay waiting for a storm to pass, but once that happened the band was off and running. It made for a very pleasant evening.

Community concert in Wisconsin

After we returned to the Volden home Judy served a delicious dessert of award-winning cheesecake baked by the Voldens’ 11 year old  granddaughter. It was really good!

The next morning I awoke to a steady light rain so held off heading to my mother’s house in central Wisconsin, my next destination. The Voldens and I  spent the  extra time in more conversation and enjoying an excellent breakfast served by Judy. Eventually the rain quit and I started on my way. Given the rain and the time of year, I decided to take back roads a bit of the way; the greenery and rolling hills made pleasant scenery as I  rolled along.

I arrived in Greenwood by late afternoon and soon settled in for a couple of days worth of visiting and doing a few jobs for Mom. The biggest of these was cutting and splitting some fire wood, which I did mostly on the following day. Mom pulled out some CDs of trips she and Dad had taken to Alaska and Hawaii several years past and those were quite entertaining.

On July 4th I took a short ride over to Bloomer, Wisconsin to see Craig’s and Dianne’s lake shore lot. They have a very nice piece of land and have already begun improving it. Craig took me to lunch and gave me a tour of the area. As much as I like the mountains, lakes are also quite scenic and I think Craig and Dianne will have an excellent retirement along the lake. I did take a few photos during this visit:

The Paroubek lot is on a lake inlet

Craig while he was taking me for a boat ride on his lake.

Craig took this photo of me getting ready to leave:

Jerry getting ready to leave the Paroubek lot

The last few days had been filled with visiting and talking. However, on July 5th I headed home to Colorado, and that meant a couple of long, hard riding days on the road again. As on the way to the rally, I spent a return night in Lincoln, Nebraska, then back to Colorado on Sunday, July 6th. While I should have taken a day off to recuperate, I didn’t, so it was back to the office the next morning, the 7th.

It was quite a trip…5,122 miles over 13 days…and I was able to include visits with friends and family, ride with fellow motorcycle club riders, see some new sites, and revisit Niagara Falls. I did get rained on a couple times but had no physical or mechanical problems the entire trip. Biggest headache was traffic; going through Toronto at rush hour and Chicago [anytime] reminds me again of why I will never be a city person.

My next post will be about our Sanderling lot and what has transpired there in the past few work weekends.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

On Sunday, June 29th, I began heading home from the motorcycle rally in Brockville, Ontario. Originally I had planned to leave on Monday and enjoy the 2nd day of the rally, but a check on my route showed I had under-estimated the travel time from Brockville to Chicago, my next planned stop. I decided to break that link up into two days and had made arrangements to spend Sunday night in London, Ontario, and make Chicago on Monday night instead.

This gave me some time to take a side trip to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Pam and I had been through there decades ago but our stop had been very brief. I was looking forward to refreshing my memories of the place.

Here are some photos I took during my stop:

Niagara Falls from the Canadian side

Niagara Falls, American side

Just downriver is another set of falls:

Downriver on the American side

Here is a closer view of people looking at the downriver falls from observation decks:

Now that’s a “River Walk!”

Finally, a photo of me taken by another visitor:

Jerry at Niagara Falls, June 29, 2014

Here is a 7:24 video clip I took of the falls. Sound track is not good; the sound of the falling water pretty well messed up the sound track, but there are a few good clips within the video.

[cincopa AMIA427x7pOv]

I reluctantly left the falls and headed up to London, Ontario where I spend the night. It had been a good visit and pretty much wrapped up my Canadian part of the trip.

Next time: Wisconsin visit.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Continuing on with my series of motorcycle rally posts, this one deals with the main ride of the rally.

Each rally has a character all its own, but each features a “main ride” for all rally attendees. This ride is often the highlight of the rally and offers a trip through the local countryside, a good lunch, and a social gathering over dinner at the end of the day.

To begin with, here is a 3:38 video clip of the group getting ready to start the ride:

[cincopa AsKAi17vrdGn]

After the ride came a surprise, to me: we ate at a Pizza Hut that also serves beer and wine.  The way the locals explained this was that the Canadian government is looking for revenue and taxes and beer and wine are fairly high revenue producers. The more places licensed to sell these products, the more tax revenue the government takes in. Apparently there is a move on to make it easier to get a liquor license providing the restrictions (no off sales, no bartender) are followed. It was quite nice to have an adult beverage with the meal! Beer was on tap and in cans/bottles, wines were available in red and white varieties.  Nice.

The video is a bit long but it does reflect the “herding cats” nature of trying to get a group started doing the same thing at the same time.

We rode through some very pleasant country. This area of Canada is fairly flat, but there are numerous lakes to ride around and small villages to ride through. Here we stopped at a small store for gas, candy bars, and cool drinks:

Fuel stop in rural Ontario

At other times we stopped to regroup and make sure everyone was together :

Group stops for a break

Here are some shots from around the hotel:

I met  – and rode with – some very interesting people and considered the rally a good time overall. Unfortunately I had to start my trip home the next day; I would have liked to stay longer!

Next post: Niagara Falls and The Trip Home.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

In my last post I got as far as the morning of Day 4 of my motorcycle trip, spent visiting Fort Henry (located near Kingston, Ontario).  I’ll pick up from there.

After Ralph, Earl, and I finished our visit to Fort Henry we needed to decide what to do next. I had read about a tourist attraction called the 1000 Island Tower which offers superb views of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The tower was a short trip off our route home; we had seen it from a distance on the way to the Fort. Earl and I decided to visit the tower while Ralph headed back to Brockville to spend some time with his girl friend.

For background, the St. Lawrence Seaway is controlled by locks at both ends so the water level is very consistent. There are 997 islands in the seaway; Canada owns about 2/3 of them but America has the bigger islands. As a result, the two countries have about the same amount of real estate. Almost any tiny island has a structure on it. Bigger islands have wells and septic systems; smaller islands have holding tanks.

Tiny island has a house

Sometimes it looks like there is more house than island:

Big house, small island

These all look like summer or vacation houses as the seaway freezes over in winter making access difficult. The house above has  boat garages to house the summer transport.

The 1000 Islands Tower looks like this from the ground:

1000 Islands Tower

Basically one buys a ticket to ride the internal elevator to the top observation decks. The last two floors, one with windows, the other open, are reached by spiral steps. I did shoot some video from the top but still photos tell just as good a story so I will stick with them.

Here is a shot of the bridge we traveled to get from Canadian 401 to the tower which is located on Tower Island:

Bridge to Tower Island

Stern-wheel boats provide a fun way to view the islands up close

Stern-wheeler cruises the islands

The top of the tower is a good place to spend some time looking out over the islands and water.

Islands and water view from top of the tower

After a pleasant visit, and some great ice-cream at the Tower’s restaurant, we headed back to Brockville. There we met some other rally folks and went to dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. Good food, good talk, and a few adult beverages rounded out a good day.

I have a couple more seaway photos that I’ll include here as they would be out of place in another post.

Sailboat entering a city-owned marina in Prescott

City of Kingston, Ontario, Canada from Fort Henry

This concludes Day 4 of my trip. Next time: The rally gets under way!

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

(PS: Pam says she has no comments for this post.)

Day 1: Made it from De Beque to Lincoln, Nebraska, 703 miles. Went through 1 heavy rainstorm near Gothenberg. Eastern Colorado and Nebraska are the greenest I’ve ever seen for this part of the country. Nothing to see of note.

Day 2: Lincoln to South Bend, Indiana, 604 miles. Found Toby’s house OK; it is nicer than I expected. Took Toby out to dinner, had a good talk. Breakfast the next morning at a mom-and-pop shop, good food at really good prices. Breakfast was $3.99 plus beverage. Nothing of else worth noting.

Day 3: South Bend to Brockville, Ontario, Canada, 701 miles. (Just over 2,000 miles into trip.) Crossed into Canada via Detroit. No problems with Customs. Did not know you could enter Canada by bridge or by tunnel; I took the bridge. Disappointed that Canada 401 had no views of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Had the misfortune of hitting Toronto traffic at rush hour. First and only time I arrived at destination after dark.

Day 4: Met up with a couple guys from the motorcycle club and decided to visit Fort Henry, (Near Kingston) built to protect Canada from an American invasion.

Ft. Henry history

Canadian politics in early 1800s

American politics – 1840

Here are two of my friends, Ralph (back) and Earl (with cannon) playing “Sink The Ship” in the Ft. Henry Visitor’s Center:

Earl (with canon) and Ralph at the Visitor’s Center

Here I am near one of the fort’s canon:

Jerry near one of Ft. Henry’s canon. (Photo by Ralph)

All-in-all this was a very good stop with good views, a bit of history, and some hard cider in a wine tasting room.

A couple more photos I found interesting:

Brass canon in courtyard

Upper walk in fort proper

Next time:

Continuing with Day 4 activities (1000 Islands Tower) and meeting some of the other rally participants.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

While the Mr. was beginning his trip, I was starting my “Staycation.”  The dogs, cats and I established our own schedule for meals and sleeping.  It was great.

Happy Trails.