St. Ignace

August 18, 2009
St. Ignace, Michigan. We're ate the southern edge of the Upper Peninsula. Tomorrow when we leave here, we will get on the Mackinac Bridge and cross the Strait of Mackinac, which is the point where Lakes Huron and Michigan come together. We're at the eastern edge of Route 2, which we picked up in Duluth, MN a few days ago. It has been a very beautiful portion of the trip, with plenty of wildflowers, big trees, lots of green, and even the beginning of the fall colors. We have enjoyed being in some rural areas and driving through small towns. There were many “For Sale” signs on various tourist-related businesses, so I guess the economy is having an impact.
The campground here is nice. It's very quiet, which is appreciated after the noisy, chaotic mess that was Hayward. And it's clean, which is something we all appreciate much more after Moorhead! I am reminded of Fairbanks, because the leaves are changing, though they are probably farther along up there than they are here. We have lots of birch trees around us here, which is what we were surrounded by at our house in Alaska, as well as pine trees. When we lived there, I would start sticking my head out the door every morning at around this time of year to see whether that nip was in the air yet. I knew fall was coming. And so I am reminded here that summer is passing and soon we will be in a new season.

The town of St Ignace is very pleasant. It is apparently the 3rd oldest city in the US and was founded by father Marquette. It seems that the French were big colonizers around here. We drove downtown earlier today, parked and spent a few hours walking around. The main street is State Street and it borders Lake Huron.

There's a boardwalk that goes along the lake and one that goes out to a lighthouse and a fishing dock—at least, fishing is permitted in a corner of the dock. Along the boardwalk is a public marina and a little park with a couple of picnic tables and grills. I was happy to see this. One of the things that struck me as we have been looking at various downtowns on this trip is the lack of public community space. There are plenty of places to buy things, and even places to gather if you want coffee or food. And revitalization always seems to mean putting more stores in so people will come downtown, buy stuff, and leave. I understand this and think that it can be a positive thing, since usually downtown areas consist of small merchants who are local and not giant chain stores. On the other hand, since I am not a fan of mindless consumerism, and many of these places need to encourage that to stay in business, I am uncomfortable with that being the only focus. I think there need to be more places where people can come together and just be without having to buy something.

And to their credit, the people of this community seem to have done some of that with the public areas by the lake, and the summer activities like music in the park a few nights a week, and fireworks downtown every Saturday.
It's been interesting to see how the available food has been changing as we've come across the country. Here it's pasties. For those who don't know what these are, they are little pies filled with meat or fish, potatoes, onions, and sometimes rutabagas. As far as I know, these were common food for miners in Wales and other parts of Britain, because they were cheap, filling, and the miners could bring them down into the mines and eat them there. I was kind of surprised to see them as a big thing here, because when we started out in Iron Mountain, we were in Scandinavian territory—the next town was Norway. But there are pasty shops and stands everywhere—much like you see salt water taffy everyplace in a coastal town. Somewhere in the midwest—I think it might have been Moorhead—I noticed the summer sausage. I had forgotten all about that. It's a big thing here and I remember it from my days in Illinois as a child. As I recall, I used to eat it once in awhile, but I never liked it as much as Italian sausage. And somewhere in Montana or maybe it was in Bismarck, I started noticing how hard it was to find chicken and stuff like turkey sausage. When I could find it, it was outrageously expensive. At that point, it was practically all beef and pork. In the store in Hayward there was a section near the deli with premade sandwiches. One of the selections was a pork roast croissant. I thought that was interesting. And food simply seems more expensive. Maybe because I am not shopping the way I normally would, but it just seems like everything costs a great deal more.
I got a sad email from a friend yesterday telling me that her dog had died. Kiki was 15 and a wonderful 4-legged-furry person. She was very important in the life of my friend and I felt so bad for her. I was remembering my own pain at the loss of my dogs over the past couple of years and I wish I could do or say something to make it a little less painful for her. I know she will get through it, but it's hard. I met Kiki when she was just a puppy back in 1994 when my friend was living in idaho and we went to visit her. It seems like she's just always been there. She loved to play ball and would go get it and bring it back for you to throw again and again and again.
We are enjoying what will probably be our last rural stop until we get to Vermont in a couple of weeks. We are heading back into congestion and crowds and all of that. I imagine there will be some space in between cities as we are driving, but we will zip right by it. We are also supposed to be getting rain and thunderstorms, so we will be moving along a bit faster and planning to stay in motels for a few nights. Tomorrow we will be in Flint, Michigan. The next night we will be in Streetsboro, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland. We found a good deal on a room there—only a few dollars more than the campground, and the campground looked most unpleasant. Based on the map they provide on their website, it looked like a small city unto itself. And it was expensive. So we will stop, sleep, and move on. On Friday we will be somewhere in Pennsylvania. And on Saturday we will go to my aunt's house in New Jersey. I am looking forward to that. I have not been there or seen her in over 12 years. She was very important to me when I was a kid and I spent lots of happy times in the house where she still lives. She is going to show me how she makes sausage and peppers. My Nana always made ravioli and Aunt Marie always made sausage and peppers. I do love sausage and peppers—especially hers! So it will be great to be there and see her!

Downtown

July 2, 2009
So here we are in Ellensburg. Looks like downtown is not a very happening place. I went into a yarn/tea shop and it was very quiet. Partly that’s because summer and 90 degree heat is not the time to work with wonderful mohair and wool yarns. And the shop didn’t really have any thread or anything that would be the kind of thing that might be more likely to sell in the summer. The workers were eating lunch and didn’t seem very interested in starting a conversation, so I chatted a bit and let it go.

We stopped into the museum so Bill could ask where he might buy a postcard and the woman looked at him like he was from Mars. “You mean a like, picture postcard?” she asked with wonder in her voice. When he said yes, that’s what he meant, she was clearly very puzzled, but she directed him to the Chamber of Commerce. There were no visitors to the free museum, either. Possibly the fact that it is Thursday has something to do with that. There does seem to be a big issue about downtown and how the town will develop. This seems quite like Klamath Falls and other areas that are trying to save their downtown areas while the box stores keep on coming in. And I am sorry to say that we contributed to the problem. We needed some groceries and there was Fred Meyer, big as life and easily accessible. We could have--and maybe should have--tried to find a locally owned store that we could shop at. But we did not. We were all hot, the truck is full of stuff, and we didn’t want to drive around looking for someplace that may or may not exist. In any case, they have a Farmer’s Market on Saturdays downtown, so that probably helps get people down here. One thing that I am finding very interesting is how food keeps coming up as an issue. We don’t often think of all the roles it plays, but here and elsewhere farmer’s markets are being used as a tool to help revitalize the downtown area.

In The Dalles, our hosts told us about how they are using their own yard and the vacant lot next door to grow food themselves and also to let other people come in and plant vegetables for themselves. Then they share it with other people in the neighborhood. And sometimes people bring their kids along to help plant. Then there is the CSA (community supported agriculture) movement. Ellen and Brigg have joined such a thing in their area. Brigg does grow some food in the yard and they have cherries and raspberries, which Ellen processes. Because their growing season is so long, she can grow cool weather crops in the spring and fall and use those while not doing any gardening in the summer when it is hot and she has other things she wants to do. The CSA arrangement works well for everyone. She gets fresh, locally grown veggies and gets to sample things she never even heard of while not having to sacrifice her summer to food processing and gardening when it’s too hot for her. This is good for Ellen and Brigg because they are getting a variety of high quality, organic, locally grown produce. It’s good for the environment for the same reasons. It’s good for the young woman farmer who gets to have a sustainable farming operation. And it’s good for the local economy because the dollars are staying within the community. I think we may see many more kinds of small-scale, local solutions to problems as we move forward and food may well be at the center of many of them.

The campground is kind of interesting. I am not sure which came first--the tent sites or the overpass, but it is not exactly a relaxing experience to hear the cars whizzing just over your head at night. When we got here yesterday, Bill went in to register. We went to our tent site and I was not sure whether to laugh or cry. Every other tent site in the place had some shade where you could set up the tent, except the one we were assigned to. No trees, no shade, just relentless sun beating down with temperatures in the miserable 90s. Bill went and asked for a different site and we were able to move. Crazy! Bill decided that he had to take a photo. He chuckled about that for several hours.


We’re in the library at the moment. It seems like a nice little place. They are fielding calls about when they will be closed for the holiday--reminds me of when I used to work at Klamath County Library--we got the same thing. But we would probably only have been closed on the holiday itself. These people get Friday and Saturday off! YIPPEE for them!

Bargains for the Road

Only 2 or 3 weeks now until we leave. We’re still waiting for answers to a couple of emails we sent out. We’ve started getting provisions for the trip. We are trying to get stuff that is nonperishable and can just be eaten without much preparation. We will fire up the camp stove for awhile in the mornings, most likely, so we can heat water for coffee or tea and to fill our thermos. We have a grill that we can use once in awhile to cook some chicken or something, but we plan to cook enough during those times to last for a few days. There will be so much to do on this trip and we will never know what will happen, so we need to be prepared. I have issues with my blood sugar--there are times when I get hungry and just feel hungry. But at other times, I feel queasy, get a headache, and have trouble focusing. I need to be able to eat something right away during those times and Clif bars seem to do the trick. Bill also has issues sometimes, though his symptoms are different. The Clif bars work for him, too. So we knew that one thing we wanted to have was a good supply of those. Happily, the weekly ad for my local Fred Meyer store had those and Luna bars on sale for 89 cents this week. We each got a box of Clif bars and a few Luna bars. They also had bulk walnuts--$2.99 per pound, which is a $2 a pound savings over the regular price. Walnuts were on our list too and I was hoping they’d go on sale. We mix them with raisins and eat this with breakfast, lunch, or for a snack. They can be tossed into what I call soaked oats. I put some raw oats into a container and cover with vanilla soy milk. Let it sit in the fridge overnight. For breakfast, I put some of this in a bowl, top with berries, peaches, or raisins, add a handful of walnuts and then add a bit more soy milk if needed. Yum!
We had also hit pay dirt a bit earlier in the day when we went to our local Grocery Outlet store. We’d gotten our cold brew tea bags already, since in the summer we drink a great deal of water and iced tea. But we still needed some kind of coffee. We had decided on instant coffee. I am not sure how this will go--I don’t think I’ve actually had instant coffee in a couple of decades. But practically speaking, we won’t have time or equipment to keep on making coffee on a camp stove with a percolator. So instant it shall be. We knew it would be cheaper at Grocery Outlet and indeed it was--$2-3 cheaper per jar. I would have preferred to get some kind of organic/fair trade coffee, but we couldn’t find any. Anyway, we picked up some other stuff for the trip there--canned fruit, peanuts, and a few other things. But the big bargain was the crackers. We both love Stoned Wheat Thins, but they are so expensive--$3 per box in one local store. I’d gotten some at Grocery Outlet before when I found them for 99 cents a box and was happy with that deal. Yesterday, I turned the corner into the cracker aisle and figured they’d be out, but it didn’t hurt to check. They were not out and the price had dropped to 2 for $1! That’s because the date on the end was a couple of weeks ago. For some things that would make a difference, but not for crackers. Since we’d already put a dent into the boxes I’d bought before, we decided to buy the two full boxes they had on the shelf. Each larger box contained 12 boxes of crackers. We left four loose boxes of crackers on the shelf for someone else. So it was a day for bargains on stuff we really needed. The crackers cost us $12. Had we bought them in another store, they would have cost $72. I probably would not have bought 24 boxes at that price, but now we have them. Buying the Clif/Luna bars on sale saved us about $20. And buying the walnuts saved us about $18. Best of all, we will have healthy food that we can grab and eat on the run if we need to and enjoy in a relaxed way when we can. We plan to stop at farmer’s markets when they are available to buy fresh local produce that will supplement the staples we are stocking up on here. It’s important to us to maintain the healthy food lifestyle we usually have. It makes such a huge difference. It would be really easy to end up eating lots of stuff that has too much fat, sugar and salt or that is just empty calories. But if I do that, I will end up getting sick with my migraines and blood sugar issues and I don’t want that! Plus, we just feel better when we eat better. We’ve gotten used to a diet rich in fruits and veggies, with some lean protein (chicken or fish), nuts, and whole grains. Whenever I deviate from this way of eating, I can feel it. I get more headaches, I feel lethargic, and just out-of-sorts. Since I do not want to be dealing with those things on this trip (or anytime, really!), I will make it a point to eat well. And it will be easier to do that if I provide myself with the staples to do that. Then we’ll see what we can find at the farmer’s markets to round things out!