48stateroadtrip.com

Wendesday, Telkontar and I went out to Nauvoo, Ill. If the name’s not familiar, then you’re probably not Mormon. (You can check out Nauvoo Mormon history separately if you want or here’s the two-sentence version:

Nauvoo is a city on the Mississippi River in Illinois to which the Mormon church relocated in 1839 after the state of Missouri legalized exterminating them. After eight years, mobs forced the Mormons to leave Illinois for, well, Mexico (present-day Utah), leaving behind a bunch of pretty cool old brick buildings and the sites of some key events in the church’s history, some of which have since been re-acquired and restored.)

Anyway: I gotta figure out how to take better architectural photos. Maybe next trip.

Seventies Hall, grass, fence. Back in the 1840s, there would’ve been a bunch of out-buildings on the grass.

My great-great-great-grandfather’s porch. And house.

My bro and I posing in front of our own grandpa, who started the restoration of Nauvoo back in 1960 (or so) and ran it for a couple of decades. Our great-great-great grandpa is in the portrait in the room behind us.

The re-built Nauvoo Temple.

Joseph and Hyrum Smith ridin’ home with the temple tower straight ahead.

Same statue, other direction.

Illinois sky, ground.

It was a fun trip. My bro drove the whole way, which was a very welcome change. The missionaries in the homes seemed like they all had just gotten yelled at by the mission president that morning. I figure someone spouted space doctrine to a local journalist or something. It was kind of weird. Made a rope, though, which was cool. Got another prairie ring. They always seem like a good idea until you realize they don’t really fit. Oh well. Also got to introduce someone to the paradox of choice, which may or may not have been appreciated.

Nauvoo is my favorite part of the church’s history. It’s the time in church history that I best identify with — “we’re sick of getting treated like crap, so we’re going to do something about it — we don’t need you”. I kind of wish more (any?) of that spirit showed up at church on Sundays.

I also get a little choked up at seeing a portrait of my grandpa in a place that doesn’t belong to one of my relatives. And one day I’d like to claim my 1/24th of that house.

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Third of the way there! Seems like midwestern states that start with the letter “I” have a lot to say when it comes to welcoming folks. Wonder how many accidents that causes. Maybe zero.

Crossin’ the tame Mississip’.

Iowa’s a disarmingly pretty state. A disarmingly pretty state that I didn’t spend much time in on this trip, but still: disarmingly pretty. It has hills and stuff and not every roadside is bracketed in corn. Go Iowa.

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I’m catching up. Oh yes, I’m catching up. Went to Chicago (all things go, all things go, I know) to meet up with my buddy Dayn Perry and check out burger #18. Was in Chicago sort of recently, so I didn’t make much of a day of it. And I only took my cell phone cam.

Here’s a picture I took with my phone from the train:

Taking photos in trains always makes me feel like I’m part of a Journey video — although I suppose that’s a bus rather than a train. Tja.

Yep, it’s a large city at sunset alright.

There should be a chili restaurant inside.

Those last two photos were not taken from the train. Ended up at Poag Mahones, the only Irish pub I’ve ever seen that closes before, I dunno, 2 AM? They were kicking us out at 8:30. Here’s the burger.

Pretty standard.

Regarding the burger:

• It was straightforward.
• It was good.
• Any burger place that will allow you to order medium-rare is good, IMHO.
• It wasn’t spectacular.

I sort of wish the GQ list had more gimmick burgers on it. So many of them are just plain, straight-up burgers and therefore hard to differentiate. #18? Eh, sure, why not? Seemed like a nice enough bar/restaurant, didn’t think it was cool to get kicked out at 8-fetchin’-30.

• This was the seventh I’ve eaten so far out of the 20.
• Stay tuned to hear about the eighth, which has (in the actual now) been eaten and digested.

Always cool to hang out with old friends, btw. I’m always sort of surprised how well I always still get along with people I haven’t seen in a long, long time.

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Arguably the most stirring photo to date:

No electrons were harmed in the uploading of this photo.

One particularly good thing about last week is that I got everything done that I needed to get done.

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Spent most of Day 60 working on my grad school apps (and Days 61 and 62 — so you know what you got to look forward to!). Eventually, though, at my nephew’s insistance, went to Cabela’s with my brother and his two kids. My and his wife have trained the kids to believe that Cabela’s is a museum — handy, since it’s only 15 minutes away from the house (Chicago’s real museums are 90 minutes or so away and, IIRC, charge admission).

I was going to go with “joy” initially, then changed to “dark underbelly”. I suppose “reality” would have also worked, but it sounds less inflammatory.

And when you shoot the snake, it hisses at you.

My niece and nephew both like the stuffed animals best — well, not “stuffed animals”, animals that were shot, then stuffed by a taxidermist. That kind.

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Right, night-time, on-freeway going 75 photograph:

So I took a make-up photo day before yesterday. It’s a little more legible.

I ended up staying in Illinois till yesterday (Friday). I am, as you may thereby deduce, way behind on postings.

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Trust me, that’s what it says.

Indiana is a fantastic state, however, under the auspices of this trip, I only acknowledge it because it happens to be one of the Lower 48. I’m thinking there’s some pretty decent probability I’ll be coming back this way for interviews or campus tours in the next few months anyway. At least I hope so — Purdue looks like it might be a very good fit.

As for the photo — well, night and speed aren’t very helpful. Indiana was the first state crossed into on an interstate freeway and also the first crossed into at night (a little while later Illinois became the second). Fortunately, I’ve done very little night driving on this trip (maybe three days total). Unfortunately, the days are getting shorter.

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The headline overpromises, although, yes, I did visit Mackinac Island and my niece and her husband, whose last name is Nate. Maybe it doesn’t overpromise so much as it leads the post to under-deliver.

The island is basically like being ont he TV show The Prisoner, but with better special effects. The concept is that you start out in Mackinaw City, just across the bridge from the Upper Peninsula, then take a 20-minute ferry ride across (a small part of) Lake Huron to Mackinac Island, a small island community where internal combustion engines are not allowed. As such, transportation is done via horse-drawn buggy, bicycle, and foot.

Should’ve skipped straight to the fourth paragraph.

Mackinac Island waterfront.

Main Street, which features the highest per-square-foot concentration of fudge retailers in the Lower 48. I would know.

Horses, buggy, people. Road also. Grass, trees.

Prisoner with bubble.

Pathway up to Fort Mackinac, which dates back to the Revolutionary War. It wasn’t our fort back then.

I’m not sure why the six-year-old gets to be the officer, but I’m guessing nepotism.

Pretty similar picture to that other one, but I figured if I put the one with the rifles in between you wouldn’t notice so much. I think it’s an Episcopal church.

And on the way back, I took this photo of the Round Island Lighthouse.

• Cloudy day.
• The fort was cool.
• I pretty well liked hanging out in a non-motorized town, especially walking around a little further to the island’s interior. It was easy to imagine horse-drawn carriage rides to someone’s house in the woods.
• OTOH, the streets all smelled like horse manure.
• And if I wanted to get rich, I’d open up a shop on Main Street there and sell something *other than* fudge.

After escaping the island I drove down to Grand Rapids and saw Andrea and Preston, went to dinner with them, and then left. No pictures. Their new house is pretty nice.

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PS, Mackinaw City (where I stayed in a hotel before catching the ferry over in the morning) was a nice place also — friendly locals and it’s a very well-kept town. Someone there’s doing *something* right. Probably mafia.

10.5-mile loop hike starting at the Mosquito Chapel Trailhead, about 20 miles east of Munising (where the Upper Peninsula’s purported powerhouse high school football team is located).

At which point I worried I’d chosen a bad trail. I mean, remoteness is its own reward and all, but these are parking lot-quality waterfalls at best. Unless you’re in Orange County, in which case you’d hike 40 miles straight uphill for them and be grateful for the opportunity.

Chapel Rock and the start of my shadow-sun issues. Probably if the tree had been in full sun — except that the colors on the rock are the real-life interesting part.

Meh.

Rocks, pictured.

Cliff-rocks, pictured.

The so-called “Grand Portal”.

Rocks at Mosquito Beach.

The edge of the world. Fine: *an* edge. And if you fall off, you’re in a lake, not some fiery abyss. The fiery abyss would’ve made a good photo, though.

I and My Breakfast

A red-headed step-duck starts a voyage of a thousand miles with a single foot-flap.

• About as easy a 10+-miler as you’ll find.
• My route took me past Chapel Falls down to the beach at Chapel Rock, then along the lakeshore past the Mosquito campground, then back to the trailhead via Mosquito Falls.
• I regret that I didn’t add three miles to include Spray Falls in the hike. I’ll have to go back for that one. Per the pictures, it would have been the one waterfall worth visiting.
• The photos don’t look as great as reality — it’s a north-facing lakeshore and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with shadowy cliffs above fully-lit water. (If anyone could lmk, that’d be cool.)
• For being the warmest Saturday of the year so far, it wasn’t crowded.
• Would probably be a fun place to do an overnighter — either two very easy days along the trail I took, or a shuttle hike along the Lakeshore Trail.
• The water’s colder than it looks — but I *did* swim in it (not pictured).

I’d go back here again, no questions asked. All hail Lake Superior!

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Drove across the U.P. to Christmas, Mich., where I got a campsite for the night, then headed out to Munising (a town!) and then Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to see what was there, half-way intending on finding it to be lame and then leaving first thing in the morning.

I found out Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore existed by going through a list of all National Parks Service properties on Wikipedia and seeing that this one looked kind of pretty in the pictures, plus somewhere in my mind I thought I remembered someone telling me that the “claw part” of Michigan had something worthwhile about it. Turns out that real life is prettier than the pictures, most especially *my* pictures (in this case). IMHO.

See that there? And if you squint hard enough, you can almost see a waterfall!

So Munising Falls wasn’t the good part. It was close to town, though, and thus got visited. The next site down the line was Miner’s Castle, which was recommended by RS’s Reader’s Digest book.

The Miner’s Castle; the miner himself may be in one of the ‘yaks. But probably not.

Sans paddlers.

Was mostly struck by how pretty the water was. Looked like something you’d expect to find in the South Pacific, but it was on Lake Superior. Pretty cool. I figured I hadn’t seen enough of it and then found what looked like a good 10-miler I could try the next day.

Meanwhile, my writeups get continually lamer. This one’s almost *sincere* [shudders]. Only another 68 days of blogging to go (give or take)! Maybe my second (writing) wind is waiting for me in, oh, let’s say the Adirondacks. Seems likely enough.

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PS, The campground was an NFS site, so you know it had to be good. It was a pretty big NFS campground (40 or so sites) and privately managed, which meant it was a little on the expensive site for NFS ($16). But: potable water, plenty of trees, and I could do laundry without my neighbors having to watch. NFS campgrounds über alles.