Roadtrek Tour No. 95

Lake Michigan Loop

July 2002

18 Days

2,552 Miles

Itinerary

Jul 25-Aug 11, 2002 Tour No. 95 Lake Michigan Loop (18 Days)

Cumberland Co. Museum, Carlisle, PADonegal CG, Donegal, PAOglebay Park, Wheeling, WVMansion Museum, Oglebay Park, Wheeling, WVGlass Museum, Oglebay Park, Wheeling, WVWV Independence Hall, Wheeling, WVTappan Lake Park CG, Cadiz, OHRailroad Depot Museum, Dennison, OHSchoenbrunn Village State Memorial, New Phila, OHAlpine Hills Museum, Sugar Creek, OHForest Hill Lake CG, Coshocton, OHRoscoe Village, Coshocton, OHMonticello II Canal Boat Ride, Coshocton, OHWarren Harding Home & Museum, Marion, OHHarding Memorial, Marion, OHHuggy Bear CG, Middle Point, OHFt Wayne Historical Museum, Ft Wayne, INLincoln Museum, Ft Wayne, INWindy City Camping Resort, Tinley Park, ILCanal Museum, Lockport, ILHickory Hills CG, Edgerton, WIWisconsin State Capitol, Madison, WIWI State History Museum, Madison, WI

WI Veterans Museum, Madison, WIHappy Hollow CG, DePere, WIBeyer Home Museum, Oconto, WIRiver Park CG, Menominee, MISandpoint Lighthouse & Museum, Escanaba, MIGitche Gumee CG, Marquette, MIMarquette Maritime Museum, Marquette, MIStraits State Park, St Ignace, MIFather Marquette Memorial, St Ignace, MILittle Traverse Museum, Petosky, MIValley Plaza RV Park, Midland, MIHerbert Dow Museum, Midland, MIBradley House, Midland, MIDow Gardens, Midland, MIFrankenmuth, MIPortage View Campground, Portage, OHHayes Presidential Center, Fremont, OHInland Seas Museum, Vermillion, OHSandusky, OHKool Lakes Resort, Parkman, OH

Wheeling, WV

Log Entry: Stopped outside of Wheeling, WV at Oglebay Park, to tour the Mansion Museum and the Carriage House Glass Museum. The park is a real find and features extensive gardens, paved walks, a floral clock and urns of flowers on all the light posts. We got a private guided tour of the Mansion Museum, which was the estate of Cleveland industrialist Earl W. Oglebay who used the mansion as a summer home.

Oglebay Park

Log Entry: Stopped outside of Wheeling, WV at Oglebay Park, to tour the Mansion Museum and the Carriage House Glass Museum. The park is a real find and features extensive gardens, paved walks, a floral clock and urns of flowers on all the light posts. We got a private guided tour of the Mansion Museum, which was the estate of Cleveland industrialist Earl W. Oglebay who used the mansion as a summer home. It is furnished with many original Victorian pieces. We then visited the glass museum which has over 3,000 examples of Ohio Valley glassware produced 1817-1939. The 21-gallon Sweeney punch bowl on display is the largest piece of cut lead crystal ever produced. It is five feet tall, weighs 225 pounds and is world famous. A beautiful punchbowl belonging to Admiral Dewey is also on display. A glass blowing demonstration was also presented.

Wheeling, WV

Oglebay Park

Wheeling, WV & Cadiz, OH

Log Entry: We next drove into downtown Wheeling to tour the WV Independence Hall, the birthplace of West Virginia. The building is a former customs house that was also used as a post office and courthouse. During the Civil War it housed the loyalists' government for the restored State of VA. President Lincoln declared the separate state of West Virginia in 1863. Arrived at Tappan Lake Park CG at 2:30 PM and got a grassy flat site with electric only services. The park is a county facility on a very large lake and most sites are filled with seasonal rentals. There is a large marina and a beach.

Tappan Lake

Independence Hall

Dennison, OHLog Entry: Stopped to tour the Railroad Depot Museum in Dennison, OH. As you approach the depot you can hear the music of WWII. The 1873 railroad depot was called the Servicemen's Canteen in 1942 and was known as "Dreamsville. Volunteers and the Salvation Army offered free food and comfort to 1.5 million transient soldiers stopping at the depot during World War II. All the trains from Altoona, PA to Columbus, OH stopped here to take on water because all steam engines need water about every 100 miles. There are seven rooms of displays including railroad memorabilia, uniforms, photographs and World War II relics. There is also an extensive miniature train layout of the entire railroad facility during its heyday, with its two roundhouses and extensive trackage.

Railroad Depot Museum

New Philadelphia, OH

Log Entry: Our next stop was Schoenbrunn Village State Memorial in New Phila, OH. David Zeisberger founded the village in 1772 as a Moravian mission to Delaware Indian locals and some Lenape Indians brought from Pennsylvania. Schoenbrunn was the first settlement in Ohio. The town grew to include 60 log buildings and 300 inhabitants who drew up Ohio's first civil code and built the first church and schoolhouse. British and American Indian hostilities caused abandonment of Schoenbrunn in 1777 because they were pacifists and wouldn’t defend themselves. They moved to Canada. The village has 17 reconstructed log buildings and the original mission cemetery.

Schoenbrunn Village

Sugarcreek, OH

Log Entry: Our final stop of the day was Sugarcreek, OH and the Alpine Hills Museum. Sugarcreek calls itself the “Switzerland of Ohio” and “Om-Pah-Pah” music plays throughout the town. Everyone smiles. The museum features the history of the community with its Swiss and Amish heritage. There is a Swiss cheese factory from the early 1800s, an Amish kitchen from the 1890s, a restored 19th-century woodworking shop and Sugarcreek Firehouse from 1895, with original equipment.

Alpine Hills Museum

Sugarcreek, OH

Continued: There is also a display on newspaper printing featuring an old Linetype machine for setting type from lead ingots. The local train station has tourist train rides and there is a lot of alpine architecture and shops.

Alpine Hills Museum

Coshocton, OH

Log Entry: Toured Roscoe Village, Coshocton, OH at 10:00 AM. It is a delightful restored 1825 Ohio-Erie Canal town, with homes, shops, restaurants and an inn mixed in with private residences. The tour includes craft demonstrations with pottery, weaving, printing, broom making, etc. being done by docents in period costume. There is a canal tollhouse, doctor’s home with a working kitchen with sample food, an open school, a cooper making wooden buckets and a blacksmith working the forge. A full size reproduction of an early canal boat shows how goods were transported. The visitors center for the village shows how canals were constructed and operated with many dioramas of work along the canal.

Roscoe Village

Continued: We then toured the Johnson-Humrickhouse Musum, adjacent to the village. The museum was founded by bequest to the city of Coshocton of two brothers, John and David Johnson who were world travelers and collectors. The museum features American Indian, oriental, Americana and decorative art collected by the brothers. The American Indian collection has beaded work, pottery and ceremonial baskets work. The oriental collection includes china, statues, carvings, Japanese painted silk, lacquered objects, carved screens and a samurai warrior. There was a special exhibit featuring hand made quilts. The decorative art collection includes many American and European art treasures, glassware and pewter. Some of the carved items are outstanding.

Coshocton, OH

Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum

Coshocton, OH

Log Entry: When we left the village, we drove a few blocks to see a canal boat operated as part of the county park system. We wound up taking a 2 1/2-mile round trip ride in the Monticello III, a restored canal boat, on a rebuilt section of the Ohio-Erie Canal. The boat was pulled at 4 miles an hour by two Belgium draft horses led by a “Hogie”, the person walking with them. The horses walk about 13 miles a day. President James Garfield was a “Hogie”. The canal, which ran 309 miles from the Ohio River to Lake Erie, was completed in 1830 and back then, the boat went about 100 miles a day (24 hours straight) with the horses changed every 15 miles. For oncoming boats to pass one another, one boat slackened its towline and let it sink to the bottom of the canal and the other boat passed over it.

Ohio-Erie Canal

Middle Point, OH

Log Entry: Stopped in Marion, OH to tour the Warren G. Harding Home & Museum but it is closed on Mondays. Harding was a newspaper owner and was a state and U.S. Senator before becoming President. He died in office two years after he was elected. Mrs. Harding helped the paper start “home delivery” service. Because some one was working, we did get to go through the former campaign press building out back that contains a museum chronicling the Harding administration. Harding conducted "Front Porch Campaign" in the 1920 election from here. The museum has a new “touchscreen” virtual computer tour of the house that highlights many of artifacts there. We also found out that have there been eight presidents from Ohio. We drove to the nearby cemetery to see the impressive Harding Memorial with their tomb.

Harding Home and Memorial

Fort Wayne, IN

Log Entry: Drove to Ft Wayne, IN to tour the Ft Wayne Historical Museum, which is in an 1893 former city hall. The museum has exhibits relating to the area, including locally produced old time washing machines. There are also exhibits on the Erie-Wabash Canal, the Miami Indians, WWII production and the railroads. We next toured the nearby Lincoln Museum that features possessions of Abraham Lincoln and family. The admission is $2.99 so they can give you a like new Lincoln penny as change. There are photographs and paintings, exhibits and audiovisual presentations on Lincoln's life. Lincoln Insurance obtained permission from Lincoln’s son Robert to use the family name and the museum was established and financed by them and their sucessors, Lincoln Finance. Fort Wayne is the birthplace of blond actress Carole Lombard, who was married to Clark Gable and tragically died in a plane crash.

Lincoln Museum

Historical Museum

Lockport, IL

Log Entry: Stopped in Lock port, IL to tour the Canal Museum, which is in the 1837 home of canal commissioners. There are displays on 19th-century life along canal and early banking, tools, a carriage and scale model of Lincoln's Tomb. The town is on a National Heritage Corridor dealing with the Illinois and Michigan Canal that ran from Lake Michigan to a tie-in to the Mississippi River. The refurbished Gaylord Building houses a museum dealing with the construction and operation of the canal. The canal was 91 miles long and the last boat ran through it in 1933. Nearby Joliet was first thought of for a canal in the 1700’s by a French expedition with Father Marquette. When the canal was finally built the State of Illinois was given 20 extra miles on the northern border with Wisconsin. The building was a supply warehouse when the canal was being built and was then used for storage. Gaylord Donnelly (Donnelly Directory and worlds largest publishing house) restored the building which was later turned over to the National Park Service. We took a walk along the remains of the canal to what was Lock No. 1 in Lockport.

IL & MI Canal Lock 1

Madison, WI

Log Entry: Stopped in Madison, WI to tour the WI State Capitol, which was built in 1917 and is Roman Renaissance style. Got a guided tour of rotunda, governor's conference room, Supreme Court & Senate & Assembly chambers. The Capitol is very impressive and is built in an “X” shape whose wings point to the compass points and it takes up a city block. The dome is the world’s fourth largest and we walked outside around its base. There are many murals and a lot of marble and gold leaf throughout the building. It is on a peninsula between two lakes. We were surprised that there were no security checks to get in the building. The guide said they had them and discontinued them a couple of months ago.

WI State Capitol

Madison, WI

Log Entry: We then went across the street to the WI State History Museum, which is very well done and features the industry in the state. There are exhibits on paper, lumber, mining, dairy and farming. You even go through a lead mine. There is a 1948 Nash Ambassador and another auto that were made in the state. Our next stop was the excellent WI Veterans Museum, featuring life sized dioramas of troops and their equipment (planes, tanks, etc.) in wars from the Civil War and the cornfield of Antietam to the Persian Gulf and a helicopter assault. One WWII display shows wounded servicemen and nurses around a piano in an English castle. Another display shows the battle of the bulge in the snow. There were also displays on code breakers and veteran’s organizations like the VFW.

WI History Museum

Oconto & Marinette, WI

Log Entry: Stopped in Oconto, WI to tour the Beyer Home Museum, an 1868 Victorian home and a museum annex containing displays of Old Main Street and shops, a cabin, Copper Culture artifacts and displays of Oconto County history. A barn houses tools and historic vehicles including 2 antique electric cars, a 1911 model and a 1922 Detroit. The museum showed how loggers went out in winter to cut trees and stamped the cut ends to identify ownership when they returned with the spring thaw to float them down the river to the mills. Nicely restored home with many pieces original to the Beyer family. Mr. Beyer, the “Vanderbilt of Oconto” fought in the Civil War and was a prisoner of the Confederacy at Andersonville, GA. He weighed 85 pounds when released. The house is the first brick structure in the county and has three beautiful stained glass windows. Our guide was born in Oconto and knew local customs and stories of people. As a child she rode in the “Detroit” motor car as a friend of the Beyer’s granddaughter and her mother had many of the antique kitchen items in her house growing up. Mary Eddy Baker, who founded the religion in Boston, built the first Christian Science church in the country here. Arrived at River Park Campground at 1:00 PM and got a flat paved cite in trees at this outstanding, well-maintained campground.

Beyer Home

Menomonee River

Escanaba, MI

Log Entry: Stopped to see the Sandpoint Lighthouse & Delta Co Historical Museum in Escanaba, MI. The lighthouse has been restored to its original 1867 appearance. The tower adjoins the keeper's house and is furnished in period. The lighthouse opened with the first woman keeper on the Great Lakes, Mary Terry whose husband died just before it was to open and since the keeper’s family lived in the house, she got the job. The museum next door chronicles development of Delta County and the UP. There are Items on logging, railroading and shipping. 1905 motor launch powered by a one-cylinder engine is on display. The lighthouse is located in Luddington Park, on the bay, and they were having an arts festival that day. There is also a large, new marina.

Sandpoint Lighthouse

Marquette, MI

Log Entry: Drove downtown to tour the Marquette Maritime Museum. The museum chronicles the maritime heritage of Marquette and Lake Superior. There are displays of boats, including one of the first motorized lifeboats, and models, antique engines, photos and charts. A film of the last day and the sinking of the Edmond Fitzgerald is shown. She was an ore carrier over 500 feet long that went down in Lake Superior in 1975 during the worst storm ever. Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world and is 350 foot deep and 330 miles long from east to west. The dockside offices of Marquette's first commercial fishing and passenger freight companies are re-created, and replica of a fishing shanty. There is a diorama showing an ore carrier being loaded from ore docks originally designed in Marquette and now used throughout the Great Lakes. The dock is high enough to allow rail car loading directly into ship’s holds. They have a huge 2nd order Fresnel lens that was made in Paris and weighs almost to 2 tons. We next took a tour of nearby Marquette Lighthouse, which has been automated and is still in use. Later in the afternoon, we saw the Algosteel, an ore carrier come in to an iron ore pier and get ready to load ore.

Maritime Museum

Gitchee GoomieOre Carrier Dock

St Ignace, MI

Log Entry: Arrived at Straits State Park at 1:00 PM and got an electric only fairly flat grass site with pine trees. Much of the water in campgrounds in IL, WI and MI has had strong mineral tastes. The campground is located on Lake Huron next to the causeway approach to the Mackinac Bridge. There is a weather alert of high winds for RVs and campers on the bridge which is 5 miles long including the approaches. After lunch, we drove over to the Father Marquette Memorial with depicts life and work of the French Jesuit explorer. Artifacts from Marquette's journeys and an American Indian longhouse and canoe are displayed. Drove into St. Ignace and walked the boardwalk along the harbor. Ferries make the 4-mile trip from here to Mackinac Island.

Mackinac Bridge

Mackinac Island Ferry

Petrosky, MI

Log Entry: Swung west to Lake Michigan to stop in Petosky, MI and visit the Little Traverse Museum. It is in a beautiful park on the water and housed in an 1892 railroad depot. Found out Petosky means shining water in Obijwa Indian. The museum has exhibits from area's American Indian, pioneer and Victorian past as well as about Ernest Hemingway, who summered nearby, Civil War author Bruce Catton and area's lumber and resort industries are also featured. The area was originally a Victorian village where people came by train to vacation and see the sunsets on the lake. Before the museum, we had taken a walk around the paved walks in the park and out to the light on the end of the breakwater for the nearby marina. The park has a sand beach and a picnic area along the Bocer River, which empties into the bay. The area has “Petosky Stone”, extinct coral deposits at the lake’s edge that is from the pre-glacier era. It is the state stone.

Little Traverse Museum

Petrosky Docks

Midland, MI

Log Entry: Visited the Herbert Dow Historical Museum which chronicles the life of the founder of Dow Chemical Co. The museum is in a gristmill replica and nearby shed 1890 Midland Chemical Co. Laboratory, Dow’s 1st plant, was in the shed and he got power from a steam engine in the mill. Dow conducted pioneering chemical experiments there. Dow attended Case School of Applied Science (now Case Western Reserve) and he was so bright, when he graduated, his professors financed him to go into business. He picked Midland to settle in because of the brine (salt-water) deposits in the ground. He invented a process to use electrolysis to extract the bromide from brine, which was used in photography and other industries. Later he was able to remove chlorine, magnesium and potassium from the brine. He sold the chlorine rights to Clorox for producing bleach. Exhibits include Dow's first office, his father's workshop and his wife’s kitchen. Midland Chemical Co. became Dow Chemical, a worldwide industry. Next to the Dow museum is the Bradley House, a restored 1874 gothic home originally owned by the owner of a lumberyard.

Dow Museum

Bradley House

Midland, MI

Log Entry: We next drove over to the Dow Gardens, initially developed By Dow on the grounds of his home. There are wooded walks along flowered paths next to streams and lakes with many bridges to cross. There is a large glassed in conservatory with birds flying in it. An exploration garden for trial plantings has roses, perennials and annuals. The children’s garden has flowers and vegetables along with many scarecrows. Dow’s son, Alden B. Dow an architect (John Alden was a distant relative), built his studio and house on an island within the grounds. We had lunch out in downtown Midland, which is decorated with Trolls on the street corners.

Dow Gardens

Town Troll

Fremont, OH Log Entry: Stopped in Fremont, OH to visit the Hayes Presidential Center. It is on a 25-acre site known as Spiegel Grove. There is President and Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes’ house, a Victorian mansion and their wooded estate. A memorial building contains a museum with family mementos, a library and public and private papers and books. The library is the first presidential library. Hayes wife was the first, first lady to graduate from college. The iron gates at the entrance were at the White House during Hayes administration. The house is spectacular inside with a four-story butternut wood staircase. The Hayes family has always lived in the house and all the furnishings are original. It was given to the state in 1965. Hayes was a general in the Civil War, was wounded four times and had several horses shot out from under him. William McKinley served under him and went on to become the 24th president. Hayes was best known for being the first president to travel to the West Coast and he was also known as the president who removed Federal troops from the south after the Civil War. He won the election by one electoral vote, just like the last election. There were three Ohio presidents in a row; Grant, Hayes and Garfield. Hayes’ son Web was a Lt. Colonel in the army and fought at San Juan Hill, in Cuba and in the Philippines, where he won the Congressional Medal of Honor. He also traveled to China and Russia and was the last Hayes to live in the house. The lower level of the museum had a special exhibit called “Edison, the Music Makers” featuring old phonographs. Edison’s gramophone was first demonstrated in the White House when Hayes was president.

Hayes Presidential Center

Sandusky, OH

Log Entry: We stopped to walk in Sandusky, OH, one of our favorite stopping places. It is right on a bay of Lake Erie and is a city of flowers with a floral clock. That made our 4th Great Lake of the trip.

Sandusky Harbor

Floral Clock

Vermillion, OH

Log Entry: Went on to Vermilion, OH to visit the Inland Seas Museum which has models of sailing ships, yachts and lake freighters and paintings, photographs, a steam tug engine, a pilothouse and items depicting navigation on Great Lakes. A 62-foot, full-size replica of the 1877 Vermilion lighthouse is outside.

Inland Seas Museum

Gregg Graphics Gradyville, Pa.

A Presentation of