(This is where Henry Ford was evicted from the train as a teenager for catching the baggage car on fire with his experiments. Ford’s friend Edison had the depot packed up and rebuilt in Ford’s own Greenfield Village without telling him about it. Anyway it’s a long story, go check it out.)

I was having a detailed telegraph discussion with a lady who portrayed a conductor on the train. She had a telegraph key and sounder set up as a demonstration. Of course I stepped up and bragged that I was a telegrapher on the Northern Pacific Railroad in the 1960’s and offered to demonstrate. She handed me a telegraph form that had the code printed in a table on the back. Only the code was the international code, not the railroad code. I spent the next quarter hour explaining and demonstrating the difference. For example an “O” in International Morse is dah-dah-dah and in American Morse it is dit – dit. Not di-dit like an “I” but dit – dit like an “O”. Also “Y” becomes di-dit – di-dit instead of dah-di-dah-dah.
As a reward for all my effort the lady conductor offered us a ride on her train. So for my kibitzers I have a steam locomotive video on the website this time around. (Note: I have not been able to insert it here, so jump to my Facebook page to see the video clip.)

We did have some excitement the first day. When we returned to the coach for lunch there was a big puddle of antifreeze under the front of the coach. The heater core had sprung a leak. To get by I connected the inlet and outlet hoses together. We don’t really need the heater this time of year. Temperatures run in the 80’s by day and 70’s by night.
It is just after nine here and the big red meatball of a sun is just setting at the Isabella County Fairgrounds in Mount Pleasant Michigan. We have the whole campground to ourselves. Good Night and pleasant dreams from Gary and Judy in Michigan.

Below are some photos of our travels, click on the photos to see larger versions.
Love to all from New Mexico, Gary and Judy

We are driving the Cabot Trail. It is a very scenic road around the northern end of Cape Breton Island and is about 150 miles long. Now I have looked all through the travel literature and nowhere does it tell us the origin of the name. I have a theory, however. I think it is an old Gaelic word for “horrid roads.” There are times when we slow to about 25 miles per hour and even that feels to fast on some stretches. We are finding stretches of highway here that rival those of the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec; rough, uneven, twisty and steep. In addition the cost of fuel is jumping by 5 percent every few days. I suppose that is happening where you are too. We saw diesel today proudly advertised at $1.069 per liter. Translated into US terms that is $3.46 per US gallon in US dollars. The television is talking of $1.21/liter fuel in Newfoundland, which is real close to $4.00 per US gallon. At the same time the local Cape Breton Post has a headline, “Finance minister contemplating lowering fuel taxes.” The roads are horrid and they are collecting too much money. Is there something wrong with this picture?

On the other hand the scenery is spectacular, the people are friendly and the campgrounds are half empty. Simply put, we are having the times of our lives. We spent a lovely three hours in the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck today. It is exceptionally well done. We learned that he chose to live in Baddeck specifically because it reminded him of his native Scotland. His Votiar research facility was in the United States, I believe it was in Washington D.C., but his heart was right here in Nova Scotia, Canada. He is remembered for the Telephone, but he was awarded over thirty patents. He dabbled in kites, aeronautics and hydroplane boats over his lifetime, but his passion was teaching the deaf to speak.

The time has come for us to bid you adieu once again. We send along our love to all. Gary and Judy.

What we so thoroughly enjoyed here was wonderful warm sunshine for all three days. The roads inside the Gettysburg National Military Park are ideal for bicycling. Most roads were one way and the traffic is calm and sedate. Path, our trusty tandem bicycle, had a fine romp. The self guided auto tour was perfect and we kept passing the same cars time after time as we looped around the battlefields.

Again we welcome a new family to our Blog today. I think Judy found a new friend and confidant in Marilyn Sudbeck, a fellow quilter. I know Francis Sudbeck and I share a hobby, whiling away some time whenever our mates find a fabric store. Marilyn and Francis are from Federal Way, Washington, not far from where we lived in Tacoma for a year. I also need to correct a name for the last blog episode Those nice folks were Betty Kelley and Rick Updike. Thanks for the correction Betty.

We are on the move again today. At the moment we are in the parking lot of a small Sewing and Knitting Studio in Fredrick Maryland. We expect to make our way to the Udvar-Hazy Center at Dules Airport outside of Washington D. C. this evening. Then spend tomorrow airplane viewing. This is one of the Smithsonian Air and Space museums. I expect it to be just a little larger than the Piper Avaiation Museum.

We will say goodbye for now and send our love to all our friends and relations.

Gary and Judy

North Carolina Monument, Gettysburg, PA

Yesterday we bicycled into town and that was a bit scary. The wide shoulders ended just at the campground we are staying at and the highway was quite busy. We walked long stretches of the route. The park roads were much better and we rode to the trail-head of a 2.2 mile hiking trail to Cadillac Mountain. This is rated a moderate trail and climbs from 400 ft to 1,500 ft elevation. Judy and I made it in good time, but if that was a moderate trail, I sure don’t want anything to do with their extreme trails. Cadillac Mountain is a granite mountain and we were scrambling over boulders the size of melons to boulders the size of Cadillac’s to boulders the size of Mac trucks. They blaze the trail with a splash of blue paint on the rocks, and you just scramble up the best you can. The GPS recorded just over three miles traversed for their indicated 2.2 mile trail.

The area is a high density tourist area, and with the weekend crowd and a cruise ship in the harbor, Bar Harbor itself was like a zoo. We only dropped into town long enough to switch shuttle buses and head out to another adventure. Today was to be a low intensity day so we could recover from Cadillac Mountain. On one trip we dropped off at Jordan Pond, an access point for a group of carriage trails. We walked a mile or two on some very lovely roads. You must focus on your feet, however, to dodge the “road apples.” They are real carriage roads and people rent different types of horse vehicles to drive around with. Plus they can all be walked and some allow bicycles. One of the bridges that we visited was built in 1917. We understand that the carriage roads were built by and for the rich folks to get around and visit each other.

We returned to the tea house on Jordan Pond and had seafood chowder and a popover for lunch. Very delicious! After lunch we hopped another shuttle bus and joined a ranger led walk to Great Head. We learned all about the rich and famous people who played in this area in the early 1900. People like the Rockefellers and J. P. Morgan. It seems the fire of 1947 pretty much leveled all the “cottages” and much of the blackened land was donated to the US Government for Acadia National Park.

We probably arrived in this area at just the right time. The summer crowds are gone, and the weather is still nice. The trees are just now starting to show autumn colors. We will be working our way through the New England states to see the best of the autumn colors.

We close now with love for our many friends and relations.

Gary and Judy

Judy on the North Ridge Trail to Cadillac Mountain

We have spent the last couple days visiting Ricky Lord’s Computer Repair Service in Calais Maine. Our Laptop Computer caught a virus and wasn’t feeling very well. You could punch his go button and he would make a brave attempt to get up, sniffle a couple times and go back to bed. Ricky finally identified the critter, a Trojan called Dropper.32.delf. It had been lying dormant since October of 2004 and woke up on September 16, 2005. This virus took over ownership of our computer, assigned its own password and wouldn’t let anyone start up or change the computer. Thanks for the help Ricky.

This took several trips in the motor home to Calais Maine where Ricky has his shop; a fellow camper came up and pointed out that the cover door over our hot water heater was missing after one of these trips. He took a ride on his Harley later in the afternoon and retraced our route to Calais and he did find our cover door…it had been run over…repeatedly. A couple hours with a ball peen hammer and a bumping steel and the door fits again. It ain’t pretty but it is functional.

But wait, that is not enough. When I went to start up my newly remodeled computer I was missing my power supply. A call to Ricky confirmed my fears. It was 30 miles back up the road in Calais Maine. We are starting to feel like commuters.

What next; how about the bedroom curtain jumping its track. Now we are experts at removing the window treatments and putting them back together.

Through all of that we have continued our travels. We exited Canada on Monday, September 18th. We crossed over from St. Stephen, New Brunswick to Calais Maine. Along the way we ate our way through the Ganong Chocolate Museum, filled up with cheap(er) Diesel in the USA and restocked our totally depleted supply of vegetables and fruits. We have been riding Path, our faithful Tandem Bicycle, daily and are starting to get back in shape after doing without the bicycle for so long. We rode out to West Quoddy Head Light House today. This cape is the most easterly point in the United States, and it has a very pretty red and white striped light house on it. Tomorrow we plan to do about a 20 mile ride on Campobello Island which is back in New Brunswick. To get there from Canada they have to take a series of ferries. Here in Lubek Maine there is a short International bridge to the island. It is famous for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s summer home. They tell us we can walk out to the light house on the far end if this island also, but the tide needs to be out to do it. These are still Bay of Fundy tides so there should be lots of semi-dry ocean floor to walk on.

Well it is time to say good bye and send along our love to all.

Gary and Judy

West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, Easternmost Point in the USA

I have a check list ritual that I go through every morning before we move. I check and double check the important things that must be done before we ever start up the engine. On Thursday I was working my way through the list when I had to do a double take on the tire pressure I had just measured. I was expecting 95 PSI and it read 70. I backed up and took that one again. It was indeed 70 PSI and the tire looked very normal. I got out the air hose and pumped it back up to 95 and then we started looking for a tire shop. What we found when the tire was removed was a half inch stainless steel bolt driven right through the tread and protruding inside the tire. Anything larger than a nail is dangerous to patch, so we wound up buying a pair of steering tires for Arcturus. Ouch! It was about then that we heard about Katrina and its dance through New Orleans. You all know what that means. The fuel prices jumped a bunch even here in Canada. Current price is $4.69 a US gallon in US dollars. Ouch again!

Our plans once we get back to the US of A are pretty vague, but I think we are going to skip New Orleans. We met a group of RV’s that are signed up with the Red Cross. I expect they have all been deployed to the region to help route supplies by now. It saddens me to see the way the Canadian news service plays on the ugly side of the disaster. They are really playing up the disaster as an example of how the US, the richest country on earth, cannot even get aid to our own people. To their credit, however, the Canadians are sending money, supplies and people to help in the region.

It is time to say good bye again. We are both fine and getting into super shape. We send love to all those back home and prayers for the victims of the hurricane.

Gary and Judy

September 5, 2005

Walkabout Update:
We were unable to get good internet access here in Witless Bay, but the campground on the beach is just wonderful. We are parked about 30 ft from high tide on cobblestone that gives way to a sandy beach. Yesterday we walked down several of the town streets and at the end of one street we located the East Coast Trail. When I post this I will place a picture of the trail below. This trail apparently runs the length of the coast. We have seen it in three different places. It is well used and well maintained. Along the trail were blue berries by the fist full, There were also two other varieties called bunch berries and partridge berries. The weather was sunny and warm. What a perfect ending to a visit to Newfoundland. The Canadians poke fun at their Newfi neighbors, but the people are warm and friendly. For the folks back in the lab, however, I am also including a photo of a Newfie ladder system that was being used to service the roof of a church in Bonavista. It gives a whole new meaning to “tying off your ladder.”

Bye again, Judy and Gary

Section of the East Coast Trail System near Witless Bay

Tying off your ladders, Newfie Style!

I know, I have used Hi Everyone since the start, but around here we almost always get greeted with “Good Day.” It is not “g’ day” like the Ausies say. But when we get way out in the province we are finding that we have to listen real keen-like to understand the Newfoundland dialect. They speak quickly and they put just a little different twist on their sentence structure. They use their own metaphors. One example we were shown a couple nights ago was ‘tin like an ‘erring. The translation was thin like a herring, meaning rather slender. Judy and I were at a museum today and asked the tour guide the cost of the tour. The answer came back as a fairly long response in a quiet Newfoundland accent. Judy and I looked at each other and shrugged. Neither one of us had understood a word of it. We eventually worked it out with her and were directed to the gift shop to purchase our tickets. Our tour would start as soon as we did that. I still don’t know exactly what she said the first time.

This tour was about a small population of aboriginal peoples that lived in Newfoundland at the time of the European colonization around 1750. They called themselves the Beothuks. Their encounter with the white people was very tragic, and they became extinct a few decades later. A major archeological dig was done on one of their villages, and they know a lot about their tools and diet. The neatest feature of the site, for me, was that one of the staff places small plastic marker tags on metal stakes and names the plants alongside the 1.5 kilometer long trail to the archeological site. We learned to identify wildflowers like Bunch Berries, Squash Berries, Heals All, Bright Eyes, Bottle Brush, Indian Pipe and two varieties of wild blueberry.

One of my favorite sayings about some of the remote locations that we have visited is, “It is not the end of the Earth, but you can see it from here!” Well today we were there and we saw it. This is according to the 2005 Visitors Guide to the Kittiwake Coast, published by the Kittiwake Coast Tourism Association. I am reading from the section about Fogo Island. I am quoting, “This significant landmark is considered to be one of the ‘Four Corners of the Earth’ by the Flat Earth Society.” Now we were just up at the Long Point Lighthouse on Twillingate Island. While we were there trying to spot some whales or icebergs one of the local residents pointed out Fogo Island about ten miles away. So there you have it. We was there and we seed it.

Tonight we are camped in the tiny village of Crow Head. We have reservations to a dinner theater. After the show we will stay right here in the Community Center parking lot overnight. What a treat, “Dinner out of roast Atlantic salmon, local theatre attraction and then walk 30 feet home.” I will tag on a few lines after we get home and give you the roving critic’s review of the performance.

It is several hours later and Judy’s comment after the show was, “What a hoot.” We started out with a nice salmon dinner served by the cast and a couple extra helpers. After supper there was a rip roaring show that alternated between music and comedy skits. The music was often of Irish origin. The lead player and singer, Reg Stucky, played accordion, guitar, banjo and what he called the ‘Ugly Stick.’ This Ugly Stick was a four foot broom handle with a boot on the bottom, side arms made of bottle caps arranged like tambourine castanets and a doll’s torso and head mounted on the top.

The skits were hilarious take-offs on Newfi life. One skit was a staged Newfi wedding. The characters were all sawed off and short. That is they were really on their knees and were using their hands to portray their feet. After the bride and groom prepared to leave to their wedded bliss the preacher instructed them. “The first year the man does all the talking and the woman listens. The second year the woman does all the talking and the man listens. The third year you both talk and the neighbors all listen.”

We were also instructed in some typical Newfoundland sayings. If something is “underside before” it is inside out.

In closing, if you are in the neighborhood, make it a point to stop in for the Crow Head “All Around the Circle Dinner Theater.”

Now we once again say bye for now and lots of love from Gary and Judy.

The Long Point Lighthouse: