Nadia wanted to do a classic Americana summer road trip. The USA is a huge country, tied with China for the third largest in the world by area. My current resident country is Uzbekistan ranked #56 in the world. 21 Uzbekistans could fit into the USA. Mylifelsewhere.com has a nice feature to compare the sizes of places. Below is a map of Uzbekistan superimposed on Michigan, my home state. We drove from my hometown in the western part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (the “rabbit” shape above Wisconsin) to Washington DC and back. The light blue line was our route from Caspian, Michigan to Washington DC and the orange route was our way back. As I write this blog post, I sit in the Wyndham Hotel in Ellicottville, New York, 45 miles south of Buffalo, New York.
We first stopped in Green Bay, Wisconsin for two nights to see Saint Norbert College in DePere, Wisconsin. Oliver will be attending SNC next month and we wanted to visit the campus. I’ll blog more about that later. We then drove to Huron, Ohio to rest before completing the drive to DC. We ran into a lot of traffic going around Chicago and tropical depression Beryl caused a steady rain most of the day. We planned on taking a break at the Indiana Dunes National Park. The 15 miles of “protected” Lake Michigan coastline was pleasant, but not as spectacular as the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore or Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, two other protected areas on the Great Lakes. The city of Gary and the rest of northern Indiana is industrial and poor so I guess having a national park there gives locals a cheap summer holiday. I wouldn’t recommend going, however. It looked like the beaches of Singapore, with refineries, ports, and steel mills seen prominently in the distance on both sides of the park.
I had a delightful evening walk and morning swim in the small town of Huron, Ohio. I love the Great Lakes and I don’t think I ever swam in Lake Erie. Huron gets its name from the 15-mile river that empties into Lake Erie. Like many small towns in America, it has seen better days economically. The interstate system eliminated tourists driving through the town. City officials developed a marina and have plans to do more with the waterfront. The city has lost 14% of its population since the turn of the century. It is a pleasant place to hang out for the day, however, and much quieter than nearby Sandusky, Ohio, home to a Jersey Shore-style amusement park. The rest of the drive was uneventful, with the one observation that Pennsylvania is much more beautiful than neighboring Ohio and Indiana. The Appalachian Mountains create pretty views of the valleys and forested hills which are lacking in Ohio.
On the way back we stopped in Ellicottville, New York for the night. This is my first time in upstate New York and I wanted to compare it to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It looks similar although it is much more busy than the more remote UP. Elliotcotville has a nice ski resort right outside the quaint downtown and I read where property values have risen due to Canadians from Toronto buying vacation homes. It is only 45 minutes south of Buffalo, New York, home of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. I’ll report more on the trip when we return to Marquette.
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